Mark Bassekey Youssef was remanded to a year of incarceration and sentenced to serve four years of supervised release following his use of the alias 'Sam Bacile' in violation of the terms of his probation sentence in a bank fraud case. Youssef used the alias while tricking actors into making a film that was overdubbed into the anti-Islamic piece infamous for its connection to the recent September 11 anniversary attacks and protests against United States diplomatic missions in the Middle East. The probation had been conditioned on the fraudster's use of his own name to the exclusion of aliases. The alias was likely immaterial to actors' willingness to participate in the project, however; those who gave interviews said they would not have participated in the project if its actual post-dubbing dialog had been revealed to the actors.
Neither punishments nor charges have been brought in connection with the film's dialog or the deceptions involved in recruiting a cast.
Those that murdered Americans in Benghazi had motives other than the film.
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Monday, November 12, 2012
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Charlie Wilson's War
Charlie Wilson's War shows that Americans in policymaking positions had actual knowledge of the risks of abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban following successful ejection of the Soviets, and simply failed when they tried to sell the need to protect long-term U.S. interests after Afghanistan's victory in the same way the U.S. protected long-term interests after securing objectives in Germany, Japan, and Korea. The film does show the significant impact asserted by a few people in the right place in thwarting a significant effort to expand Soviet influence in the world. And it's got some great characters.
The impact of a relatively miniscule number of CIA personnel in formulating and implementing strategy to change the fate of millions is something to think about. Looking for a few good men? The fact a story like this is nonfiction is simply boggling: if you'd written this as fiction, it would have been dismissed as implausible.
The impact of a relatively miniscule number of CIA personnel in formulating and implementing strategy to change the fate of millions is something to think about. Looking for a few good men? The fact a story like this is nonfiction is simply boggling: if you'd written this as fiction, it would have been dismissed as implausible.
Mike Vickers, interestingly, isn't retired. He currently serves with the Department of Defense as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict & Interdependent Capabilities.
Enjoy it!
For my part, I'm going to have to add the book to my reading list.
Enjoy it!
For my part, I'm going to have to add the book to my reading list.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
New Star Trek Movie Approaching At Warp Speed, Sir!
I noticed a new Star Trek movie when I stumbled upon its virtually content-free trailers. They are big on emotive grip, though: images of sweating welders with a sound track of classic clips from the first years of the space program, with the camera slowly giving the image of an Enterprise under construction. Looking over the official web site (warning: Flash), I note that there's no information about the timeline, characters, etc. However, it seems suggested that the story will pick up with the launch of the first Enterprise crew we knew from the TV series, complete with Kirk, Spock, Checkov, etc. -- but ... younger.
As seen here, the director of MI:III and Lost seems to envision Sylar from the first season of Heroes as the proper model for Spock. A bit much emotion in that one-handed choke hold, though. He's supposed to be half-Vulcan, and passionless. Or maybe they are playing on the half that isn't Vulcan, and writing him as an on-the-edge head case who hasn't yet mastered the irrational impulses with which he is cursed by his unnatural heritage. According to the web site, we're supposed to find out near Christmas, or else 5-8-09 -- a suggestion that maybe they blew an initial release target and ended up in summer of '09, and didn't take the time to re-edit all that Flash.
Being long addicted, I'll definitely want to see more ....
As seen here, the director of MI:III and Lost seems to envision Sylar from the first season of Heroes as the proper model for Spock. A bit much emotion in that one-handed choke hold, though. He's supposed to be half-Vulcan, and passionless. Or maybe they are playing on the half that isn't Vulcan, and writing him as an on-the-edge head case who hasn't yet mastered the irrational impulses with which he is cursed by his unnatural heritage. According to the web site, we're supposed to find out near Christmas, or else 5-8-09 -- a suggestion that maybe they blew an initial release target and ended up in summer of '09, and didn't take the time to re-edit all that Flash.Being long addicted, I'll definitely want to see more ....
Friday, August 22, 2008
The Silent Gondoliers
I justfinished S. Morgenstern's illustrated book The Silent Goldoliers. What's that? Who's S. Morgenstern?
You poor thing.
I recall when I first saw The Princess Bride -- yes, I saw it first, in a theater, with surround sound, on a date -- and I can assure you I didn't believe for a minute there was such a person as S. Morgenstern. The Princess Bride is a story about a grandpa reading a boy too sick for school "the good parts" of the book his father had read him when he was too sick for school. (The film's Grandpa is entertainingly portrayed by Peter Falk, whom I would like to say is famous from Himmel Über Berlin (titled Wings of Desire in English), but who is in fact famous for playing Columbo, which is what he was purportedly doing when he appeared as Peter Falk in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire). The book Grandpa reads to the sick boy (who only with great reluctance turns off his video game when Grandpa arrives) is supposedly "The Princess Bride, by S. Morgenstern." But nearly all the action of the movie happens in the story-within-a-story, and there is no evidence of an S. Morgenstern, and nobody on the planet had ever heard of S. Morgenstern or The Princess Bride before the movie came out, which all suggest this book, like the Necronomicon, is a piece of fancy existing only to advance the plot of the movie.
And as one views the film, the proof the book is fake soon arrives: everybody knows that the book is always better than the movie, and the movie is so good that a better story is unimaginable. Therefore, the book described in the movie cannot exist. Q.E.D.
The book is always better than the movie.
And ... yet ... there is a book.
Therefore, you must order S. Morgenstern's The Princess Bride without delay and read it as soon as possible. I will, however, claim half-credit: The Princess Bride isn't written by S. Morgenstern, but by William Goldman, who presents his work as an abridgement of a longer work by S. Morgenstern -- a ponderous work which needed to have lots of stuff thrown out in order to make it suitable for young readers uninterested in the politics of Florin or the hat collections of ladies hoping to marry Prince Humperdink. Thus, S. Morgenstern is a joke created as a narrative device by Goldman, who takes the joke as far as anyone is willing. For example, persons writing the publishers of The Princess Bride for text that Goldman claims he wasn't permitted to publish receive bogus explanations that they cannot accede to fan requests for the requested passage due to legal troubles with the Morgenstern estate. As there was never a prior Morgenstern author, there is of course no estate with which to have legal wrangles, but this kind of interplay with fans -- and possible jokes on inattentive readers -- is also good entertainment.
Playing on the supposed death of S. Morgenstern (which one must conclude from the supposed wrangling with the Morgenstern estate), The Silent Gondoliers opens with a letter purporting to be from Morgenstern to his U.S. publishers explaining that though frightfully old, he still notices his hands moving as he writes and thus must be alive -- indeed, alive enough to have after careful research prepared a documentary manuscript of The Silent Gondoliers.
Using S. Morgenstern's puzzlement as an adult about the lack of Christmas-morning singing by Venetian goldoliers as the starting point, Goldman has Morgenstern (pretend to) faithfully report the results of his research into the reason the gondoliers stopped their world-famous singing. What? You've never heard of the famous singing gondoliers of Venice? It's all backed up by Morgenstern's claims to have documentary evidence at hand -- receipts and notes -- and he carefully identifies certain interviewee witnesses to support the credibility of his documentary.
I mean, you can't make this stuff up, can you?
The Silent Gondoliers is a good read, much shorter than The Princess Bride, and a sweet and uplifting tale. I don't want to spoil anything, but it's not a traditional boy-gets-girl in the style of ... well, in the style of The Princess Bride. It's good fun and suitable for folks without a week to spend on the much longer The Princess Bride.
The Princess Bride movie is so good that I can actually recommend it to people uninterested in taking the time to read the book. On the other hand, unless you have been diagnosed with a malady that leaves you with doubt you have enough time left to finish it, it's hard to believe you have something better to do than to read The Princess Bride. If you are worried about the time you have to read, consider The Silent Gondoliers as a possible warm-up for Morgenstern's longer work.
If you listen carefully, you can hear the dearly departed S. Morgenstern gently chuckling as you turn the pages.
You poor thing.
I recall when I first saw The Princess Bride -- yes, I saw it first, in a theater, with surround sound, on a date -- and I can assure you I didn't believe for a minute there was such a person as S. Morgenstern. The Princess Bride is a story about a grandpa reading a boy too sick for school "the good parts" of the book his father had read him when he was too sick for school. (The film's Grandpa is entertainingly portrayed by Peter Falk, whom I would like to say is famous from Himmel Über Berlin (titled Wings of Desire in English), but who is in fact famous for playing Columbo, which is what he was purportedly doing when he appeared as Peter Falk in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire). The book Grandpa reads to the sick boy (who only with great reluctance turns off his video game when Grandpa arrives) is supposedly "The Princess Bride, by S. Morgenstern." But nearly all the action of the movie happens in the story-within-a-story, and there is no evidence of an S. Morgenstern, and nobody on the planet had ever heard of S. Morgenstern or The Princess Bride before the movie came out, which all suggest this book, like the Necronomicon, is a piece of fancy existing only to advance the plot of the movie.
And as one views the film, the proof the book is fake soon arrives: everybody knows that the book is always better than the movie, and the movie is so good that a better story is unimaginable. Therefore, the book described in the movie cannot exist. Q.E.D.
The book is always better than the movie.
And ... yet ... there is a book.
Therefore, you must order S. Morgenstern's The Princess Bride without delay and read it as soon as possible. I will, however, claim half-credit: The Princess Bride isn't written by S. Morgenstern, but by William Goldman, who presents his work as an abridgement of a longer work by S. Morgenstern -- a ponderous work which needed to have lots of stuff thrown out in order to make it suitable for young readers uninterested in the politics of Florin or the hat collections of ladies hoping to marry Prince Humperdink. Thus, S. Morgenstern is a joke created as a narrative device by Goldman, who takes the joke as far as anyone is willing. For example, persons writing the publishers of The Princess Bride for text that Goldman claims he wasn't permitted to publish receive bogus explanations that they cannot accede to fan requests for the requested passage due to legal troubles with the Morgenstern estate. As there was never a prior Morgenstern author, there is of course no estate with which to have legal wrangles, but this kind of interplay with fans -- and possible jokes on inattentive readers -- is also good entertainment.
Playing on the supposed death of S. Morgenstern (which one must conclude from the supposed wrangling with the Morgenstern estate), The Silent Gondoliers opens with a letter purporting to be from Morgenstern to his U.S. publishers explaining that though frightfully old, he still notices his hands moving as he writes and thus must be alive -- indeed, alive enough to have after careful research prepared a documentary manuscript of The Silent Gondoliers.
Using S. Morgenstern's puzzlement as an adult about the lack of Christmas-morning singing by Venetian goldoliers as the starting point, Goldman has Morgenstern (pretend to) faithfully report the results of his research into the reason the gondoliers stopped their world-famous singing. What? You've never heard of the famous singing gondoliers of Venice? It's all backed up by Morgenstern's claims to have documentary evidence at hand -- receipts and notes -- and he carefully identifies certain interviewee witnesses to support the credibility of his documentary.
I mean, you can't make this stuff up, can you?
The Silent Gondoliers is a good read, much shorter than The Princess Bride, and a sweet and uplifting tale. I don't want to spoil anything, but it's not a traditional boy-gets-girl in the style of ... well, in the style of The Princess Bride. It's good fun and suitable for folks without a week to spend on the much longer The Princess Bride.
The Princess Bride movie is so good that I can actually recommend it to people uninterested in taking the time to read the book. On the other hand, unless you have been diagnosed with a malady that leaves you with doubt you have enough time left to finish it, it's hard to believe you have something better to do than to read The Princess Bride. If you are worried about the time you have to read, consider The Silent Gondoliers as a possible warm-up for Morgenstern's longer work.
If you listen carefully, you can hear the dearly departed S. Morgenstern gently chuckling as you turn the pages.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Batman: The Dark Knight
I waited to see this until I could get tickets to see it in IMAX.
It was worth the wait.
I already discussed that Christopher Nolan's achievement in Mememto sold me on his bona fides to direct a proper Batman, and I have already approved Nolan's work on Batman Begins. Batman Begins is to the Batman franchise what Martin Campbell's Casino Royale is to the James Bond franchise: a rebuild, from the ground up, of a story obliterated with gimmicks and camp, in order to show a gritty fable with enough blatant truth in it to make you squirm in discomfort about where the line of plausibility lies.
(In the case of The Dark Knight, the plausibility isn't in the roomful of criminals all lining up to let a Chinese fund manager secure their cash, but in the twisted machinations of the minds of desperate people. The loss of Tim Burton's glow-in-the-dark ammunition clips is, it turns out, no loss at all. In James Bond, plausibility was enhanced by loading most of the comic tech into the ejection seat, and sticking with gritty and brutal confrontations instead of the clean stage-fighting of earlier Bonds -- and we see Bond betrayed, wounded in the heart, and we understand something about the callous figure we assume he's destined to become. The tech that's there -- say, the automated defibrillator unit -- turns out to be unreliable; the Aston Martin may be essential for cover, but the lifesaving equipment is supplied to the government by the lowest bidder. Oh, yeah.)
The street philosophy in The Dark Knight may be a bit beyond people who think a college degree is needed to follow a Batman story, but the Batman of The Dark Knight is cast from the mold formed by Frank Miller in The Dark Knight Returns and its three sequels ending with The Dark Knight Falls. Although Robert Downey Jr. doesn't seem to understand the reason Batman is depicted to the public by government officials as a bad guy, this is straight out of the legitimate Miller Batman canon. The guardians of law and order find it easier to chase Batman, who is honor-bound not to hurt supposed purveyors of justice and proponents of civilization, than to face genuine evils plaguing the city. Chasing bad guys is, you know, dangerous.
(Note, this post hereafter mentions certain characters' development and survival, which are fairly serious spoilers. Proceed accordingly!)
The story is at once uplifting and depressing. The city's acknowledged white knight, its new District Attorney Harvey Dent, is driven to do evil to achieve vengeance -- he is unmade as a hero by the Joker. Gotham, deemed unable to handle the truth about its hero's demise, is given a scapegoat for Dent's evils in for form of Batman -- with Batman's consent. With the fall of Dent, Gotham's Dark Knight loses his chance to resign the mantle of public protection to a hero able to stand in the light, his face known to the world. But, there's a good side: the Joker's scheme to have two ferries full of passengers kill one another, each convinced the other is evil enough to destroy the other first, fails -- neither criminals nor indignant civilians are willing, in the end, to commit the murder the Joker sets them up to commit.
The movie isn't as dark as Nolan's finely-executed The Prestige. If you want a dark movie about magic that turns out all right in the end, go see Neil Burger's at-least-as-spectacular The Illusionist. (The Illusionist doesn't posit genuine supernatural activity, incidentally, merely illusion -- though, admittedly, world-class professional illusion; The Prestige, by contrast, turns very dark as genuine 'magic' ups the ante in a competition between rival performers.) The Prestige honestly can ruin your whole day. I do not say this because The Prestige is bad but because it examines driven men dying to outdo one another, and follows them to their truly desperate ends. Basically, it's a lesson in the principle that in a zero-sum game in which no-one permits another to win, everyone must lose. No-one cooperates so, unsurprisingly, everyone is destroyed. Ta-da. It's a lesson straight from game theory; it has a human truth that's hard to face even though you know the plot turns on magic. It will turn your stomach.
The Dark Knight, by contrast, shows mercy. The love of his life rejects Bruce, but friends protect him from the brutal fact and leave him to enjoy his illusions about his dead beloved. The Joker sets up good people to be killed, and has some success, but in the end he cannot make ordinary people into monsters; he can only fertilize the monsters hiding in ordinary-looking people, who already have the evil seed germinating within them already. Ordinary people turn out to have much better common sense than they've been given credit for. The Joker is hauled off by the police when they find him bound and trussed, in classic Batman style. Batman is scapegoated for crimes he did not commit, but he gets away.
When the credits roll, you realize the movie's ironies aren't yet done. Aaron Eckhart (whom you must see in the hilarious Thank You For Smoking) lives, but cannot reprise his character because the character is dead. Heath Ledger's Joker is carefully orchestrated to live on, presumably behind bars in Arkham Asylum, but the deceased actor cannot reprise the role; one wonders who could make a Joker worthy of the mantle.
Unlike the evilly entertaining eccentric millionaire genius so brilliantly voiced by Mark Hamill in Batman The Animated Series, Heath Ledger's Joker is a lowbrow psychopath (What have gasoline and gunpowder got in common? They're cheap.) whose genius lays in ruining the plans of better men. He manipulates people into exposing their true colors -- and behind many cops are criminals, and within seeming saints mere mortal sinners. Ledger's Joker is a maniac with a death wish, living to enable destruction. He arms the villain Two-Face and calmly waits for a coin-toss to determine whether the Joker will live or die. Ledger's Joker is disappointed when Batman, on principle, declines to kill him, instead risking himself to avoid running the Joker down. He can hardly believe it when, at the end, Batman merely immobilizes him for the police rather than finish him -- and concludes in surprise that Batman is truly incorruptible.
The movie closes with the thought that (a) Gotham needed a white knight it did not deserve, a hero who was lost to the Joker's schemes precisely because Dent was the best of Gotham; however, (b) Gotham deserves a hero as unlawful and brutal and terrifying as Batman, and will have to make do with what it deserves. I disagree. Dent certainly was willing to make use of due process when it seemed to produce results, but when the pressure was on, he quickly yielded to passion and was willing to try terror and unlawful threats to get what he wanted even on people from whom he could not hope to learn anything useful. Only Batman really stood up to pressure with his principles intact. Dent was the hypocrite-waiting-to-happen that Gotham on a bad day might be thought to deserve, but principled heroes with enormous assets and the power to bring foreign threats within the jurisdiction for prosecution were frankly what Gotham seemed to need.
The Dark Knight is a great visual feast, and you should take every opportunity to stop off at an IMAX theater to see The Dark Knight in all its glory. It's dark, it's violent, and it's not suitable for little ones, but in the end it's uplifting. Heroes who don't also require credit -- and stand willing take the blame for their fallen comrades' wrongs -- just don't grow on trees. Moreover, the people of Gotham turn out to be less worthless than some would have us believe.
NOTE: If you like to watch graphic novels brought to the big screen, you may be interested in Alan Moore's Watchmen. An animated version was advertised prior to the Batman showing, which I thought was pretty good placement.
It was worth the wait.
I already discussed that Christopher Nolan's achievement in Mememto sold me on his bona fides to direct a proper Batman, and I have already approved Nolan's work on Batman Begins. Batman Begins is to the Batman franchise what Martin Campbell's Casino Royale is to the James Bond franchise: a rebuild, from the ground up, of a story obliterated with gimmicks and camp, in order to show a gritty fable with enough blatant truth in it to make you squirm in discomfort about where the line of plausibility lies.
(In the case of The Dark Knight, the plausibility isn't in the roomful of criminals all lining up to let a Chinese fund manager secure their cash, but in the twisted machinations of the minds of desperate people. The loss of Tim Burton's glow-in-the-dark ammunition clips is, it turns out, no loss at all. In James Bond, plausibility was enhanced by loading most of the comic tech into the ejection seat, and sticking with gritty and brutal confrontations instead of the clean stage-fighting of earlier Bonds -- and we see Bond betrayed, wounded in the heart, and we understand something about the callous figure we assume he's destined to become. The tech that's there -- say, the automated defibrillator unit -- turns out to be unreliable; the Aston Martin may be essential for cover, but the lifesaving equipment is supplied to the government by the lowest bidder. Oh, yeah.)
The street philosophy in The Dark Knight may be a bit beyond people who think a college degree is needed to follow a Batman story, but the Batman of The Dark Knight is cast from the mold formed by Frank Miller in The Dark Knight Returns and its three sequels ending with The Dark Knight Falls. Although Robert Downey Jr. doesn't seem to understand the reason Batman is depicted to the public by government officials as a bad guy, this is straight out of the legitimate Miller Batman canon. The guardians of law and order find it easier to chase Batman, who is honor-bound not to hurt supposed purveyors of justice and proponents of civilization, than to face genuine evils plaguing the city. Chasing bad guys is, you know, dangerous.
(Note, this post hereafter mentions certain characters' development and survival, which are fairly serious spoilers. Proceed accordingly!)
The story is at once uplifting and depressing. The city's acknowledged white knight, its new District Attorney Harvey Dent, is driven to do evil to achieve vengeance -- he is unmade as a hero by the Joker. Gotham, deemed unable to handle the truth about its hero's demise, is given a scapegoat for Dent's evils in for form of Batman -- with Batman's consent. With the fall of Dent, Gotham's Dark Knight loses his chance to resign the mantle of public protection to a hero able to stand in the light, his face known to the world. But, there's a good side: the Joker's scheme to have two ferries full of passengers kill one another, each convinced the other is evil enough to destroy the other first, fails -- neither criminals nor indignant civilians are willing, in the end, to commit the murder the Joker sets them up to commit.
The movie isn't as dark as Nolan's finely-executed The Prestige. If you want a dark movie about magic that turns out all right in the end, go see Neil Burger's at-least-as-spectacular The Illusionist. (The Illusionist doesn't posit genuine supernatural activity, incidentally, merely illusion -- though, admittedly, world-class professional illusion; The Prestige, by contrast, turns very dark as genuine 'magic' ups the ante in a competition between rival performers.) The Prestige honestly can ruin your whole day. I do not say this because The Prestige is bad but because it examines driven men dying to outdo one another, and follows them to their truly desperate ends. Basically, it's a lesson in the principle that in a zero-sum game in which no-one permits another to win, everyone must lose. No-one cooperates so, unsurprisingly, everyone is destroyed. Ta-da. It's a lesson straight from game theory; it has a human truth that's hard to face even though you know the plot turns on magic. It will turn your stomach.
The Dark Knight, by contrast, shows mercy. The love of his life rejects Bruce, but friends protect him from the brutal fact and leave him to enjoy his illusions about his dead beloved. The Joker sets up good people to be killed, and has some success, but in the end he cannot make ordinary people into monsters; he can only fertilize the monsters hiding in ordinary-looking people, who already have the evil seed germinating within them already. Ordinary people turn out to have much better common sense than they've been given credit for. The Joker is hauled off by the police when they find him bound and trussed, in classic Batman style. Batman is scapegoated for crimes he did not commit, but he gets away.
When the credits roll, you realize the movie's ironies aren't yet done. Aaron Eckhart (whom you must see in the hilarious Thank You For Smoking) lives, but cannot reprise his character because the character is dead. Heath Ledger's Joker is carefully orchestrated to live on, presumably behind bars in Arkham Asylum, but the deceased actor cannot reprise the role; one wonders who could make a Joker worthy of the mantle.
Unlike the evilly entertaining eccentric millionaire genius so brilliantly voiced by Mark Hamill in Batman The Animated Series, Heath Ledger's Joker is a lowbrow psychopath (What have gasoline and gunpowder got in common? They're cheap.) whose genius lays in ruining the plans of better men. He manipulates people into exposing their true colors -- and behind many cops are criminals, and within seeming saints mere mortal sinners. Ledger's Joker is a maniac with a death wish, living to enable destruction. He arms the villain Two-Face and calmly waits for a coin-toss to determine whether the Joker will live or die. Ledger's Joker is disappointed when Batman, on principle, declines to kill him, instead risking himself to avoid running the Joker down. He can hardly believe it when, at the end, Batman merely immobilizes him for the police rather than finish him -- and concludes in surprise that Batman is truly incorruptible.
The movie closes with the thought that (a) Gotham needed a white knight it did not deserve, a hero who was lost to the Joker's schemes precisely because Dent was the best of Gotham; however, (b) Gotham deserves a hero as unlawful and brutal and terrifying as Batman, and will have to make do with what it deserves. I disagree. Dent certainly was willing to make use of due process when it seemed to produce results, but when the pressure was on, he quickly yielded to passion and was willing to try terror and unlawful threats to get what he wanted even on people from whom he could not hope to learn anything useful. Only Batman really stood up to pressure with his principles intact. Dent was the hypocrite-waiting-to-happen that Gotham on a bad day might be thought to deserve, but principled heroes with enormous assets and the power to bring foreign threats within the jurisdiction for prosecution were frankly what Gotham seemed to need.
The Dark Knight is a great visual feast, and you should take every opportunity to stop off at an IMAX theater to see The Dark Knight in all its glory. It's dark, it's violent, and it's not suitable for little ones, but in the end it's uplifting. Heroes who don't also require credit -- and stand willing take the blame for their fallen comrades' wrongs -- just don't grow on trees. Moreover, the people of Gotham turn out to be less worthless than some would have us believe.
NOTE: If you like to watch graphic novels brought to the big screen, you may be interested in Alan Moore's Watchmen. An animated version was advertised prior to the Batman showing, which I thought was pretty good placement.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Disney: Real Moat?
Jason Kelly writes for Seeking Alpha that Disney has a significant animation moat that will protect it from competitors.
I beg to differ.
To the extent Disney can be argued to have such a moat, it bought that moat when it acquired Pixar. Yes, Disney was once the undisputed leader in hand-drawn animation ... but when's the last time you saw a hand-animated movie?
Come to think of it, when's the last time you saw a non-Pixar Disney animation? For me, the answer is Beauty and the Beast. Yeah. From 1991. [UPDATE: Astute readers might discern from this post that I saw Fantasia 2000 when it was released, oh, eight years ago. I tell you, it was great in IMAX. I am disappointed the film hasn't had sequels, which the comic Steve Martin, the narrator following the first musical piece, suggested was Disney's intent. Disney's loss ... and mine, too.]
But, let's admit Disney now owns Pixar, and recognize that Disney agreed to leave Pixar where it is and not sell the place to move everybody under the thumb of the numbskulls who've been making Brother Bear, Brother Bear 2, the Brother Bear Sing-Alongs, and other tripe you didn't watch. Therefore: Pixar lives! And Pixar has made some good stuff under Disney ownership.
But no matter how much better Pixar is at making real art, there's even more money being made in animating lowbrow entertainment. On the heels of Pixar's ingenious Monsters Inc., Dreamworks released an orge movie that opened with fart jokes, and matured into short jokes. Maybe you've heard of Shrek, Shrek 2, or Shrek The Third? Or the animation box-office records that each one has set?
With Shrek and its sequelt having bumped Monsters entirely off the inflation-adjusted top-100 box office results, it's clear that non-Disney monster movies -- fart jokes and all -- are ample competition for good Pixar craft that I'm actually willing to show children.
So, where's Disney's animation moat?
The fact that Disney's "moat" was bought from Steve Jobs is really something to chew on in positing Disney as possessing a moat: Pixar developed its capacity to create films independently. Why can't someone else?
Why conclude Disney is impervious to competition, when it's clear that (a) Disney's "distinctive" advantage was developed outside Disney, and was available for purchase, and (b) yet-extant competitors still turn out box-office topping animation hits?
The good news for Disney (and Dreamworks!) is that the public doesn't seem quickly sated by animation offerings. That is, Monsters Inc. didn't quell appetite for Shrek in 2001, and other competition hasn't tended to preclude ticket sales. The fact that Disney doesn't really have a moat about its animation business (computers are cheap, and Dreamworks didn't grow from moon dust but originated with competition from Disney defectors) doesn't mean Disney can't keep making money. Anyone making a feature film will be making similar deals with theaters for access to the screens and the moviegoers, and there's no evidence that filmmakers are at risk of making so many films that their terms with theaters are likely to suffer. James Bond doesn't prevent Iron Man profits, and Monsters doesn't spoil Shrek.
There's enough for everybody.
But -- that's not a moat in animation. That's a barrier to entry to the industry generally, protecting incumbents' opportunity to achieve outsized returns. However, given the abundance of good stories on this planet and the falling price of computing power, computer animation is probably the place that the moat around the film studio business is narrowest.
What this means for the very-long-term movie industry will be interesting to see. For now, there's money to be made in animation and Dreamworks and Disney both probably work to grow public interest in animation much more than they compete to steal each others' viewers.
Disney may be a buy -- I haven't checked it out to know -- but if it is, it's not because animated films gives DIS a moat.
I beg to differ.
To the extent Disney can be argued to have such a moat, it bought that moat when it acquired Pixar. Yes, Disney was once the undisputed leader in hand-drawn animation ... but when's the last time you saw a hand-animated movie?
Come to think of it, when's the last time you saw a non-Pixar Disney animation? For me, the answer is Beauty and the Beast. Yeah. From 1991. [UPDATE: Astute readers might discern from this post that I saw Fantasia 2000 when it was released, oh, eight years ago. I tell you, it was great in IMAX. I am disappointed the film hasn't had sequels, which the comic Steve Martin, the narrator following the first musical piece, suggested was Disney's intent. Disney's loss ... and mine, too.]
But, let's admit Disney now owns Pixar, and recognize that Disney agreed to leave Pixar where it is and not sell the place to move everybody under the thumb of the numbskulls who've been making Brother Bear, Brother Bear 2, the Brother Bear Sing-Alongs, and other tripe you didn't watch. Therefore: Pixar lives! And Pixar has made some good stuff under Disney ownership.
But no matter how much better Pixar is at making real art, there's even more money being made in animating lowbrow entertainment. On the heels of Pixar's ingenious Monsters Inc., Dreamworks released an orge movie that opened with fart jokes, and matured into short jokes. Maybe you've heard of Shrek, Shrek 2, or Shrek The Third? Or the animation box-office records that each one has set?
With Shrek and its sequelt having bumped Monsters entirely off the inflation-adjusted top-100 box office results, it's clear that non-Disney monster movies -- fart jokes and all -- are ample competition for good Pixar craft that I'm actually willing to show children.
So, where's Disney's animation moat?
The fact that Disney's "moat" was bought from Steve Jobs is really something to chew on in positing Disney as possessing a moat: Pixar developed its capacity to create films independently. Why can't someone else?
Why conclude Disney is impervious to competition, when it's clear that (a) Disney's "distinctive" advantage was developed outside Disney, and was available for purchase, and (b) yet-extant competitors still turn out box-office topping animation hits?
The good news for Disney (and Dreamworks!) is that the public doesn't seem quickly sated by animation offerings. That is, Monsters Inc. didn't quell appetite for Shrek in 2001, and other competition hasn't tended to preclude ticket sales. The fact that Disney doesn't really have a moat about its animation business (computers are cheap, and Dreamworks didn't grow from moon dust but originated with competition from Disney defectors) doesn't mean Disney can't keep making money. Anyone making a feature film will be making similar deals with theaters for access to the screens and the moviegoers, and there's no evidence that filmmakers are at risk of making so many films that their terms with theaters are likely to suffer. James Bond doesn't prevent Iron Man profits, and Monsters doesn't spoil Shrek.
There's enough for everybody.
But -- that's not a moat in animation. That's a barrier to entry to the industry generally, protecting incumbents' opportunity to achieve outsized returns. However, given the abundance of good stories on this planet and the falling price of computing power, computer animation is probably the place that the moat around the film studio business is narrowest.
What this means for the very-long-term movie industry will be interesting to see. For now, there's money to be made in animation and Dreamworks and Disney both probably work to grow public interest in animation much more than they compete to steal each others' viewers.
Disney may be a buy -- I haven't checked it out to know -- but if it is, it's not because animated films gives DIS a moat.
Monday, June 30, 2008
WALL•E Is About Caring
First, about the short:
Before the film started, someone told be about a Dreamworks flick they'd seen recently. And my mind cast back to that firm's work.[1] So when the ads halted and the short began, I wasn't thinking about Pixar and its output. As the short continued, and I found myself drawn in by little details, I began to think this short is good enough to compare to Pixar shorts. After the thought crossed my mind a few times, and then the curtain fell on the short Presto .... and I realized it was Pixar's work.
This kind of unconscious comparison probably says something both about the quality of Pixar's shorts -- that they form the standard -- and about the quality of Presto. It's a fun view. The all-time best, though, still has to be For The Birds.
Since WALL•E will be getting a bunch of reviews by people excited or revolted by its environmentalist or political content,[2] let me cut through the fog for you and tell you that the film is not a sudden departure from Pixar's longstanding high-quality family-oriented fare. The friendship and loyalty showcased in Toy Story and the exaltation of the family sticking together shown in The Incredibles is matched in WALL•E by a very simple idea: caring. The movie's lesson isn't that humans are bad, or that machines are bad, or that some specific problem has a specific answer -- indeed, it's clear nobody in the whole movie has got all the facts. The characters in WALL•E are so narrowly confined by their roles that they have no perspective on the supposed political or ecological messages the film is supposed to be pushing.
WALL•E is about caring.
The backstory of humans forever abandoning Earth while supposedly departing on a five-year cruise (Gilligan's Island, anyone?) while diligent little robots tidy up the mess everyone made, is not the story or its answer. It merely sets up the humans' victory condition: coming home. Of course, WALL•E is already home ... but he and his cockroach pet are lonely. And thus we know WALL•E's victory condition: companionship. WALL•E's prospect for companionship -- EVE -- turns out to be a career woman, and not easily impressed, and when we see that even accomplishing her directive isn't enough to satisfy her we realize her victory condition is purpose.
WALL•E is about caring: to get home, the humans must re-learn what home is and care enough to overcome the obstacles to getting there; to obtain a purpose, EVE must care about something beyond her pre-programmed directives; and to win companionship, WALL•E must secure everyone else's victory condition. These things aren't easy. It's been centuries since people have been on the starship Axiom, and its inhabitants all take for granted that they should live on a starship being waited on hand and foot by robots that keep them out of trouble; nobody has an objective for which to strive, and nobody cares about anything beyond the next free food offer. (Get it? On the Starship Axiom, apathetic humans take everything for granted?) And EVE has a very important classified directive to pursue, and lethal powers to achieve it; how can WALL•E hope to impress her? WALL•E's quest for companionship seems only more doomed on the crowded starship: he's immediately classified as a foreign contaminant and beset first by cleaners then by more sinister foes hoping to eject him from the vessel and into the heartless depths of space.
WALL•E is a winner not because it's about people thoughtfully saving the Earth through ecology (they think they are going to grow pizza plants for goodness' sake), but because it offers a Pixar-quality presentation of a story about one underdog against the whole of humanity (and their robot masters) to make someone care. It's a lesson so generic everyone can enjoy it. And it's so universal everyone can feel its truth.
Check out WALL•E. It's a love story about living, not surviving -- it's about having something to care about and doing something about it. It's a true story about things that never happened. It's the best kind of story there is.
[1] Where Monsters Inc. was about love and ethics and duty and betrayal and redemption, Dreamworks' ogre-movie was about fart jokes (from the opening scene, no less), short jokes, and gags that were only funny because you liked the movie from which they were cribbed. I'm not saying the flick wasn't a big hit for Dreamworks, or that the long line of sequels we should expect highlighting these characters in the future won't be a financial bonanza, but as I was told an observer once said of Baryshnikov’s thirteen-pirouette trick, "Yes, Misha -- but is it art?" (Baryshnikov was definitely capable of art. As presented, however, the thirteen-pirouette trick when I saw it wasn't so much art as an unquestionably astounding feat of technical accomplishment. Bench-pressing a car might be impressive, but that's not art, either.) I'll not begrudge Dreamworks its profit -- it does entertain -- but it's not the sort of thing I expect will, like Fantasia (and probably Fantasia 2000), still be viewed with awe by a future generation.
[2] The political digs are present ("Stay the course!") but are such a sideshow as to fade into background. Yes, the dufus CEO of the company that's sent everyone on Axiom to escape the irritations of the real world for five years while a (failed) cleanup attempt is undertaken has been given some lines and costuming seemingly calculated to remind one of the current Commander-in-Chief, but the gags are sufficiently understated that the next generation won't think they're missing a joke, they won't notice the issue at all when they view the unaltered film. This can't be said about some of the dated gags pulled in other flicks.
Before the film started, someone told be about a Dreamworks flick they'd seen recently. And my mind cast back to that firm's work.[1] So when the ads halted and the short began, I wasn't thinking about Pixar and its output. As the short continued, and I found myself drawn in by little details, I began to think this short is good enough to compare to Pixar shorts. After the thought crossed my mind a few times, and then the curtain fell on the short Presto .... and I realized it was Pixar's work.
This kind of unconscious comparison probably says something both about the quality of Pixar's shorts -- that they form the standard -- and about the quality of Presto. It's a fun view. The all-time best, though, still has to be For The Birds.
Since WALL•E will be getting a bunch of reviews by people excited or revolted by its environmentalist or political content,[2] let me cut through the fog for you and tell you that the film is not a sudden departure from Pixar's longstanding high-quality family-oriented fare. The friendship and loyalty showcased in Toy Story and the exaltation of the family sticking together shown in The Incredibles is matched in WALL•E by a very simple idea: caring. The movie's lesson isn't that humans are bad, or that machines are bad, or that some specific problem has a specific answer -- indeed, it's clear nobody in the whole movie has got all the facts. The characters in WALL•E are so narrowly confined by their roles that they have no perspective on the supposed political or ecological messages the film is supposed to be pushing.
WALL•E is about caring.
The backstory of humans forever abandoning Earth while supposedly departing on a five-year cruise (Gilligan's Island, anyone?) while diligent little robots tidy up the mess everyone made, is not the story or its answer. It merely sets up the humans' victory condition: coming home. Of course, WALL•E is already home ... but he and his cockroach pet are lonely. And thus we know WALL•E's victory condition: companionship. WALL•E's prospect for companionship -- EVE -- turns out to be a career woman, and not easily impressed, and when we see that even accomplishing her directive isn't enough to satisfy her we realize her victory condition is purpose.
WALL•E is about caring: to get home, the humans must re-learn what home is and care enough to overcome the obstacles to getting there; to obtain a purpose, EVE must care about something beyond her pre-programmed directives; and to win companionship, WALL•E must secure everyone else's victory condition. These things aren't easy. It's been centuries since people have been on the starship Axiom, and its inhabitants all take for granted that they should live on a starship being waited on hand and foot by robots that keep them out of trouble; nobody has an objective for which to strive, and nobody cares about anything beyond the next free food offer. (Get it? On the Starship Axiom, apathetic humans take everything for granted?) And EVE has a very important classified directive to pursue, and lethal powers to achieve it; how can WALL•E hope to impress her? WALL•E's quest for companionship seems only more doomed on the crowded starship: he's immediately classified as a foreign contaminant and beset first by cleaners then by more sinister foes hoping to eject him from the vessel and into the heartless depths of space.
WALL•E is a winner not because it's about people thoughtfully saving the Earth through ecology (they think they are going to grow pizza plants for goodness' sake), but because it offers a Pixar-quality presentation of a story about one underdog against the whole of humanity (and their robot masters) to make someone care. It's a lesson so generic everyone can enjoy it. And it's so universal everyone can feel its truth.
Check out WALL•E. It's a love story about living, not surviving -- it's about having something to care about and doing something about it. It's a true story about things that never happened. It's the best kind of story there is.
[1] Where Monsters Inc. was about love and ethics and duty and betrayal and redemption, Dreamworks' ogre-movie was about fart jokes (from the opening scene, no less), short jokes, and gags that were only funny because you liked the movie from which they were cribbed. I'm not saying the flick wasn't a big hit for Dreamworks, or that the long line of sequels we should expect highlighting these characters in the future won't be a financial bonanza, but as I was told an observer once said of Baryshnikov’s thirteen-pirouette trick, "Yes, Misha -- but is it art?" (Baryshnikov was definitely capable of art. As presented, however, the thirteen-pirouette trick when I saw it wasn't so much art as an unquestionably astounding feat of technical accomplishment. Bench-pressing a car might be impressive, but that's not art, either.) I'll not begrudge Dreamworks its profit -- it does entertain -- but it's not the sort of thing I expect will, like Fantasia (and probably Fantasia 2000), still be viewed with awe by a future generation.
[2] The political digs are present ("Stay the course!") but are such a sideshow as to fade into background. Yes, the dufus CEO of the company that's sent everyone on Axiom to escape the irritations of the real world for five years while a (failed) cleanup attempt is undertaken has been given some lines and costuming seemingly calculated to remind one of the current Commander-in-Chief, but the gags are sufficiently understated that the next generation won't think they're missing a joke, they won't notice the issue at all when they view the unaltered film. This can't be said about some of the dated gags pulled in other flicks.
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