Mu

The film segment The Heavenly Creature -- one-third of an anthology film titled "Doomsday Book," from three South Korean filmmakers -- is

... a lyrical and philosophical anecdote about a robot who works in a Buddhist monastery. The monks believe the machine has achieved enlightenment, and this presents a problem for the robot's corporation. Is it malfunctioning? Should it be destroyed? What does "existence" mean anyway for an enlightened one? This is like a koan, an excuse for dialectics between characters who assert opposing views, something to be puzzled over more than a narrative to be resolved.

-- Pop Matters

The monks believe the machine has achieved enlightenment. How could monks be that stupid? Clearly this is simply a comic premise. This presents a problem for the robot's corporation. Is it malfunctioning? A robot in a monastery which appears enlightened must be the best robot ever; how could anyone think it was malfunctioning? What does "existence" mean anyway for an enlightened one? Enlightened or unenlightened, there is no choice between existence or non-existence. He (or that) which does not exist can be neither enlightened nor unenlightened. This is like a koan. You think?

More anachronisms

A few months ago I wrote about the trope often appearing in Patricia Highsmith's work -- that of characters following developments in their cases (be they cases of murder, assault, or disappearance) in the daily newspaper. Last night I went to the film noir festival at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco and saw two obscure films which had another kind of mid-20th century narrative trope which has largely disappeared: the insurance investigator.

In both films -- Highway 13, which is about sabotage at a trucking firm, and The Devil's Henchman, which is about thefts of cargo from ships -- the protagonist was not a policeman or a private detective but a secret agent for an insurance company.

This trope reminded me of something I'd read about "Death of a Salesman" -- that the whole reality of life insurance was new to middle class people in the 1930s and 1940s, and that the concept, and the unintended consequences that can result when the death of one person can result in a windfall for another, had to be explained to people. And then when the play was presented to audiences in China for the first time, in 1983, the whole concept had to be explained anew for audiences to understand the plot.

Nowadays you don't see many plots hinging on insurance fraud, and I wonder why. Have the insurance companies simply gotten too good at detecting it? Is it easier these days to scam Medicare, for example?

Raymond Chandler's Catch-22

This whole 1945 essay by Raymond Chandler in The Atlantic is wonderful, but I think this is my favorite paragraph:

To me the interesting point about Hollywood's writers of talent is not how few or how many they are, but how little of worth their talent is allowed to achieve. Interesting -- but hardly unexpected, once you accept the premise that writers are employed to write screenplays on the theory that, being writers, they have a particular gift and training for the job, and are then prevented from doing it with any independence or finality whatsoever, on the theory that, being merely writers, they know nothing about making pictures, and of course if they don't know how to make pictures, they couldn't possibly know how to write them.

Speak softly and carry a big gun

Funny how you can boil down an entire movie to a few lines. Following is the entire dialogue from an advertisement for "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo":

FIRST MALE VOICE (v.o.): I need a research assistant.

SECOND MALE VOICE (v.o.): I know an excellent one.

(onscreen) But she's different.

FIRST MAN: All right. In what way?

SECOND VOICE (v.o.): In every way. She's had a rough life. Can we not make it any rougher?

DANIEL CRAIG: Lisbeth, I want you to help me catch a killer of women.

LISBETH (v.o.): They say I'm insane.

ANOTHER MALE VOICE (v.o.): Why would you want to know about such an awful murder?

LISBETH (holding a huge gun): It interests me.

I know this is my second post in a row about this movie. It's not that I'm a fan of the franchise one way or another. It's just that the marketing... (holding a big gun) interests me. Later:Sounds like a good example of the trope Small Girl, Big Gun.

Dept. of Don't Know Whether to Laugh or Cry: The "Dragon Tattoo" fashion line

I almost choked on my Wheaties this morning when I saw an ad pop up on the side of Gawker for a "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" fashion line. I guess it's supposed to be for young women who want to emulate the title character, who is a punked out Rooney Mara:

For the record, the fashion line is like this:

Somebody please help.

Boom microphone operator ruins 'The Adjustment Bureau'

I went on Saturday afternoon to see "The Adjustment Bureau," a romantic thriller starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. What's it about? Never mind. What I want to talk about is a technical point.

Do you know what a boom microphone is? Here, here's a behind-the-scenes picture from the production, showing the crew filming Matt Damon:

A man on the crew holds it at the end of a pole, just above the shot. At least it's supposed to be just outside the shot. Once in a great while, when watching a film or TV show, you'll see a little black blob in the frame just at the top, just for a half second. That's the boom mic.

Usually you see this on television, where production values are lower and shoots are faster. In Hollywood movies, almost never. When it does happen, someone is supposed to notice. If the cinematographer doesn't see it during the shot itself, someone will see it when they review the shots at the end of the day. And they surely must see it when the edit the freaking movie.

In "The Adjustment Bureau," there are three scenes in which you can see the boom mic. At least three scenes, because then I stopped counting. I stopped counting because I walked out, and I got a refund, because by that time I couldn't keep my eyes off the top of the frame.

For the record, you can see the mic:

• Several times during the washroom scene where the film's romantic leads meet. In fact you can see it in both stars' close-ups, which were of course done separately, so I think that means the boom mic operator was high all day.
• In the first scene in Union Square, where you see John Slattery, just as he sits down on the park bench with Anthony Mackie.
• In the scene in Central Park halfway through the movie, where Slattery and another actor have stepped outside the restaurant and are wondering what to do, there it is again.

WTF??!? Was this movie made by amateurs? Was anybody watching the dailies? Was anybody looking when they edited this film??

It's inexcusable.

Update: In the comments in this review of the movie, viewers from around the country complain about the boom mike. Some say you can see it ten times.