What is it With Blonde Movies Lately?

This week’s comedy theme is clearly Blondes. First there was Blonde and Blonder and now we have Blonde Ambition. Come to think of it I think I saw at least 5 different new films with the word Blonde in the title when I was picking out this weeks rentals, it's the latest fad I guess. Anyway I figured that any film with Luke Wilson is a good bet for comedy, in this case, a guarantee and that to the one catastrophe after another approach it was absolutely hilarious.

Unfortunately there wasn’t much that was unique as far as sound goes. There was at least one example of Mickey mousing in the scene with the kid’s birthday party disaster when the fireworks that fall out of the piniata are set off, but other than that it’s just a normal comedy. Most of the pit music was added in and synced. There were quite a few good examples of punctuation, especially with the toilet exploding, but the best was the on screen sound when the group of Norwegian priests were at the bar singing karaoke to Baby Got Back. I laughed so hard I almost cried.

Other than that, most of the sound heard was related to the location, it took place in New York, so you heard the normal associated sounds, taxi cabs, car horns, construction, elevator bells in the business scenes etc. Not really all that original, but synced to fit. Aside from its apparent lack of audio originality, it was a fairly good film comically.

A new twist on Dumb and Dumber

I found the greatest example of Mickey mousing this week. In a brief attempt to relax during finals week I rented a few movies. Against my better judgment I picked up the new film Blonde and Blonder and found that while it was extreme corny it was also absolutely hilarious and it was a great example of Mickey mousing.

It wasn’t really special sound effects that worked this way, although there were a few times that followed this usual example, but the musical accompaniment itself. Most of the pit music was made up of empathetic Broadway style motives and songs that worked to punctuate certain scenes and events and make the film absolutely ridiculous. To top that off, the film makers saw fit to decide that they even needed to add verbal punctuation in to the scenes to send it over the top.

I don’t think that there was any music specifically composed for this film, but instead certain motives were added from older comedies that through semantic listening were easily recognizable and extremely noticeable. These specific motives were highly effective combined with the verbal and filmed punctuation within the scenes and made for what I’ve labeled stupid comedy which rates right next to Austin Powers, but with a few less lewd jokes. I’ll just leave it at I was pleasantly surprised with the comical aspect of this film.

Mute Math

I was just thinking about some cool music videos and the video "Typical" by a band called Mute Math came to mind. Its a pretty good song in my opinion, i havnt listened to much of their other music, but they seem legit. The video is real freakin cool though. The entire video seems like its running in real time, forward. But its actually a recording being played in reverse. Its not a completely original idea, but i think they pulled it off real well. Its almost obvious the entire time that you are watching a reversed recording, but the music and lyrics seem to synch up fairly well the entire time. For instance, there is a short section in which the lead singer has massive ammounts of paint flying off of his body (reversing the process of splattering it on) however, he is singing right into the camera and his vocals seem to match the forward playing music track, for the most part. Okay, i tried posting links to this video as well as a bunch of others, but it didnt really work out. But you can find the video "typical" on youtube fairly easily. Also, if you havnt seen it, look up "Parabola" by TooL.

Reflection of this Class (before completion of paper)

I remember early on posting an item about how this class could possibly change our perception of movies and the cinema in general, whether it was for the good or the bad.  I'm not sure if it was assigned or a free blog, but I thought I would address the aftermath of my own experience in the class being someone who usually gets pretty burnt out on analysis when it comes to things that I regularly enjoy.

Firstly.  I notice that among some of my peers- analysis is really fun.  Some others... pure hell. I am somewhat in the middle- being that I like analysis of things I like for a very short portion of time (for the most part- some things being excepted from this list).  

So what do I think about picking apart movies...  I think I have survived.  Although I was heavily skeptical when it came to subscribing to some of the ideas put out by the class and by Chion's book and take on analysis, I feel that I actually can enjoy cinema more after taking the class.  The only unfortunate part is that you are able to find where a movie has a hole.  Something that would make a normal movie great, for instance, I began to realize that some movies are still just normal movies although they had the chance to be something more.  This, coming from a non-movie-critic.  So I am definitely not the first choice in saying whether or not a movie *has it* or not.

But in the mean time, if others are taking a look at this class' blog from another class hoping to decide whether or not this class will be enlightening or not- it is.  

This class has not ruined movie watching for me.

Carson Daly Killed Music Video

No truer a statement could be made.

Ok, well maybe he didn't kill them.  He just had a large part in selling it's soul to corporate MTV with the 'top 10' of the week or day or whichever.  Honestly I don't remember when they stopped showing music videos since I despised the reality TV that pre and posted the show.

Where did the days of Beavis and Butthead go?  They were true troopers and protagonists when it came to deciding what music videos were good.

Ha.  No, but really, those days of televised music videos were the best.  And those cartoon two knew it too.  No matter how bad they made fun of Michael Stipe.  The video was sort of weird anyway.

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In the way that some cinema is televised radio programs- I think that the music video is in a different way- televised music.  They are both related to televised radio, but they each serve a different function.

One is to give a story to the audience- mapped and plotted out to a more semantic degree, and another to a musical degree (causal and reduced listening [depending on the listener and music])- respectively.

Two Thousand Won. 8)

It really is too bad that there isn't really a large monolith deposited in the moon, or that we aren't currently riding personal spacecraft to the moon and back to play golf.  I mean- who doesn't want to go play golf by a screaming monolith where there is 20 some percent of normal gravity there to slow the ball down once you've hit it.  Tiger Woods be afraid.  We are on the moon destroying your long shots.

But more to the point.  The Ligety piece that was placed in the moon scene was probably my favorite.  I could not imagine someone trying to mimic that piece and come anywhere close to the affect that it gives the scene.  I really would like to see the score for the piece, but I think in respect to the movie, the score really isn't all too important- UNLESS- it was performed again for the movie (not just the pre-recording that was available to Kubrick during the direction.)

I also like that it is not necessarily diagetic or non-diagetic since we don't know the exact auditory reference from which it is coming from.  Although we could postulate that since there is no atmosphere that there is no sound- thus non-diagetic.  BUT- if it happened to be some other wavelike force propagating from the monolith- then it could perhaps be diagetic since the high frequency squeal affects the people nearby and there is still no atmosphere to allow 'sound' to occur.  Very interesting.  So in this case- the sound is traveling perhaps by some other medium- electromagnetic waves or some other form of radiation.  Perhaps by dark matter or some other not-yet-discovered force.