There’s Nothing Suspenseful About a Character Who Lives Forever: My Musings on THE HURT LOCKER

"This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war …"

Opening titles of Lewis Milestone’s ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930)

"The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug."

Opening quotation of Kathryn Bigelow’s THE HURT LOCKER (2009) c/o Chris Hedges, “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning”

Why do I go to the movies? For the length of time it takes for my bladder to hold out (Hitchcock was onto something there), the movie theatre seems an opportune place I can patronize to release the stresses of my day and/or escape from reality. Images flashed onscreen from the projector overhead complemented by sounds emanating from the corners of the enclosed screening quarters can trigger earlier thoughts or convictions I may have had that are manipulated by characters and shapes as they wriggle and bend through beams of light on the vinyl screen before me. This experience can be a place of negativity or something completely positive and escapist. I suppose that once I select a comfortable cushioned chair to sit on after passing through a threshold of double-doors as an aroma of warm-buttered popcorn and stale nacho cheese sauce fills my nostrils, I feel like I’m in my very own hurt locker.

Why do soldiers go to war in the movies? Most films in the War genre tend to serve up eternal conundrums that go unanswered not because there’s a specific reason why one fights - - it could be for the sake of pride for one’s country, to uphold security, for reasons only they themselves know - - but probably because it is something more elusive than that. Is it the thrill of victory; are soldiers in it to win it? Or is success to win dependent on the desire to get out with one’s own skin when staring death in the face?

Enter Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner): James is somewhat like George Steven’s “Shane” in the way he’s able to easily ingratiate himself into Bravo Company than he is fresh meat for the grinder. And like Alan Ladd’s titular character, he expresses a weariness as if he’d just been intensely and emotionally drained by some (or a series of) disaster(s), while exuding a cool detachment against life’s trivialities. Just as Shane’s origin is unexplained, from where exactly does James hail? James takes command of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) squad with his new team members Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) after their Staff Sergeant, Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce), is regrettably killed by a ‘roadside bomb’ in an excitedly explosive scene unleashed in the first ten minutes of Kathryn Bigelow’s THE HURT LOCKER. That Thompson’s orthodox approach to bomb disposal is procedurally by-the-book, James’ methods are otherwise employed with controlled abandon complemented by a hint of adrenaline abuse. His teammates are not happy.

Upon their initial meeting, Sanborn quips to James that the name of their Camp recently changed names from Liberty to Victory. Unable to sense sarcasm and immune to healthy human interaction, James isn’t aware of the joke because he harbors an obsession with disarming bombs that gives him a veneer of militaristic Teflon. Generically, the film as a film of War is a façade, as SHANE is not a Western so much as it is a Dramatic parable. THE HURT LOCKER is more reminiscent of a Detective film: where an exploded bomb and its accompaniment of aimless confetti-like shrapnel or a bullet emptied from a sniper rifle will not only send one to the hurt locker, but to “The Big Sleep” and as James evokes Humphrey Bogart’s Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade or in this case, Sam Grenade, he is tasked with disarming a series of elaborately-designed, inanimate exploding devices utilizing complex facilities of deduction.

James feeds his craving for adrenaline by disarming bombs and keeping the inactive detonators in his footlocker as a reminder of what may have destroyed him. Is it really James then, that’s detonating the bomb, or is it the bomb - - which tests him each time - - that is slowly disarming James and his crew to the point of sending them to oblivion? The bombs resemble human machinery complete with wires, cogs, colors, wheels and a battery, like a beating human heart. The characters are just as hollow as these bombs. Eldridge, the one soldier who shows an affection for his therapist shares the only visible attempt at connection with another human being and the boy’s doctor, like clockwork, is predictably destroyed thereby re-leveling the playing field.

Featured in the film is a third-person shooter video game played by one of the soldiers: “Gears of War” which connotes the iconic image of Charlie Chaplin caught in the gears of the mega corporation as he struggles to survive the harsh world of Industrialization. James, Sanborn and Eldridge are also each cogs in the machine of war who are a few rungs above the common grunt in the way they use their wits to disarm nasty little bombs which hold immediate invitations to their respective demise. Unlike the subdued propaganda of War in Milestone’s ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, Bigelow’s vision of War as a drug (as is seen in so many contemporary television-commercial and video game PR in their exhibition of soldier-turned-instant-hero set against a choir of alto and soprano voices accompanied by heavy metal music-stylings and unsheathed silver rapiers in overblown CGI visuals tinted with red, white and blue) is unsavory exploitation of human life. Milestone’s classic at least makes the bitter pill of war easier to swallow by labeling the new schoolboy recruits “fresh from the turnip patch”. If we have learned anything from the War classics, War is Hell … Quiet … Solitary … Dirty … and wrought with anxious anticipation. Conversely, James’ War is reckless, wild, and epitomized by revolt; he is a charming, poster-boy rebel (James Dean parallel?) construct of the New War who relaxes to heavy metal music and showers in his gear and military fatigues. In a world overflowing with prescription drugs, painkillers and various narcotics, it’s easy to reduce War to a lethal drug (or a bumper sticker) that chooses in whose veins it will rush. I like to think that survival instincts are what pump and pulsate through one’s bloodstream and brainwaves. The threat of War instigates survival and is an exterior entity that can be equally welcomed or ignored by any candidate so willing to engage in or avoid it. Survival is everlasting so long as you continue to breathe and heightens when an element of risk appears.

Thematic ideas take precedence over filmmaking technique in THE HURT LOCKER which for the most part is hollow and clichéd. Apart from the stylized slow-motion photography of rubble levitating from the sun-baked earth triggered by massive explosions, the film’s you are there shaky camerawork leaves little to be desired. The sniper sequence is nearly devoid of suspense and trades nominal dialogue for (what felt like) a quarter of an hour of cinematic boredom which begged me to ask myself, “did they just run out of a screenplay”? The sensitive guiding of the sniper battle in Stanley Kubrick’s FULL METAL JACKET was far more inventive and inducive of the onset of grey hairs.

The film unfolds like an ambling version of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s white-knuckle WAGES OF FEAR on foot that isn’t as suspenseful and is literally a pedestrian effort. If at least one of the bombs that James was disarming went off, I would’ve been slightly more intrigued - - even Bogie’s gumshoes were occasionally battered and bruised by his nemeses.

Once James returns home to his family, domestic life mirrors scenes reminiscent of the cold, barren environment of Andrei Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS. The atmosphere is stagnant. Never has a supermarket and its patrons seemed less alive. Compared to the environs of Iraq, James’ hometown belongs six feet under ground (that is, if you could actually level an entire city; see 2012). With a dead world that’s wet, somber and abysmal where James seems utterly out of place, this last entry in the film felt as if there could have been more potential to be even emptier. James is depicted as a consumerist drone and slave to domesticity, although what’s lacking is the necessary ingredient of what his life before wartime was really like. When given the opportunity to explain to Sanborn why he chooses to fight, he literally shrugs off the question - - a microbe of a hint would've been perfectly acceptable. It’s in Iraq that James belongs but who’s to say that his home, amidst countless explosives to disarm, isn’t in the Middle East? While donning his heavy military battle suit, he moves just as casually as he did when he pushed the shopping cart down the aisle of the grocery store, but he is compelled by an innate obsession to destroy that which causes mass destruction.

THE HURT LOCKER is not a film worthy of Best Picture (of 2009). Lewis Milestone’s classic ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, however, was and still is the ultimate cinematic example of disillusionment, loss and self-sabotage ever put to screen. Not only a tour de force, it is the most intimate tour of duty for those who have enlisted. THE HURT LOCKER may be relevant given the contemporary handling of its subject matter and execution of military vernacular and soldiers’ duties, but its combined elements don’t make it a standout like a detonative device flawed by a frayed wire. Lew Ayres’ character, Paul Bäumer, in Milestone’s film shares a commonality with James in that he can’t stomach returning home after his tour is over. While sitting alert in a trench, the only link between Paul’s home and the people that populate it which has become misunderstood and unwelcoming to him is the innocent flight of a butterfly that conjures up memories of a time and place (and a personal butterfly collection) that he considered full of warmth and sentiment before being seduced by the corruption of War. He’s in his own hurt locker; his own hole, to contemplate, observe and protect against enemies. The hurt locker only has room for one - - it is the place where we can individually relax or tangle with our inner demons and an ethereal plain where we ultimately live on or die out. By peaking out of his hole to reach for the winged beast, an enemy sniper climbs out of his and fires hot lead at Paul sending him back into his muddy cavity as he coils inward like a dying dog. We never see that in James. He arrives in Victory Company and we have no back-story: only that he’s highly skilled at disarming bombs and not getting blown to smithereens. That to me, isn’t suspenseful and quite frankly, lacking in entertainment.

One of my favorite film-watching metaphors is Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW in how L.B. Jeffries is confined to his wheelchair like an audience member whose cinematic world opens before him through the curtains of his windows much the same way the curtain in a movie theatre unravels in front of a vinyl screen. Similarly, Bigelow (whose remarkable body of work includes contemporary classics NEAR DARK, POINT BREAK and STRANGE DAYS) attempted at disarming me by pushing buttons, pulling strings and snipping away at fibrous wires that affected my various emotions, vulnerabilities and preconceptions - - and I was very much hoping to explode with enthusiasm - - but I just couldn’t detonate.

‘Bonnie and Clive’: Lessons I learned from AN EDUCATION

The London captured in Director Lone Scherfig’s early 1960’s suburban portrait of Twickenham isn’t yet swinging, but it’s a tidily-organized, austere destination that is characterized as cold, damp, gray and dimly lit where diegetic echoes of French, Jazz and American Pop music emanate from wax and cigarette smoke floats amongst the musical notes. A cleverly designed title sequence (one in which Saul Bass would probably be proud of conceiving) moves in rhythm - - and in shapes and scribbles of ‘white chalk’ - - to Floyd Cramer's #1 hit (in the U.K., 1961) "On The Rebound" (a figurative title indicative of sexual relations yet to come) while the canvas of the movie screen is at once denoted to a chalkboard signifying: Class is in session.

Jenny (Carey Mulligan), is at the top of her class with marks destined to promise her a seat at the University of Oxford. At sixteen, she gracefully exudes a beauty and maturity not typical of her classmates with one foot in adolescence and the other in adulthood. A storm is afoot and changes are brewing in Jenny … and London. While leaving her literal classroom on foot during a rather torrential rainstorm, prosperity (twice Jenny’s senior) rounds the corner in the guise of David (Peter Sarsgaard) who welcomes Jenny into the comfortable confines of his Bristol luxury automobile. I was reminded of The Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”:

Wet bus stop, she’s waiting

His car is warm and dry

Like any naïve schoolgirl of the ‘60’s not accustomed to contemporary Stranger danger and with the added element of wet discomfort from the rain, Jenny eventually accepts his invitation after some clever wordplay. Additionally, she bargains for the temporary shelter of her cello and the objet d’affection for David as he is a lover of classical music and all its instruments. Incidentally, Jenny resembles the curvaceous shape and size of her negotiating chip and is undoubtedly an instrument with which he himself would like to play.

Music takes on an especially powerful significance in the film (as is typical in Screenwriter Nick Hornby’s work e.g. HIGH FIDELITY and ABOUT A BOY) with tracks that mirror Jenny and David’s playlist of their relationship including: “You've Got Me Wrapped Around Your Little Finger”; “Comin’ Home Baby”; “Teen Scene”; “Tell The Truth”; “Sweet Nothin’s”; “Since I Fell For You” and “Your Heart Is As Black As Night”. Musical cues subtly match moments of characters’ dialogue and actions for instance when David hatches a plot to lure Jenny to Paris on a Friday while Beth Rowley smokingly sings “A Sunday Kind Of Love” at the exact moment she belts out she doesn’t want a “Thursday, Friday or Saturday” kind of love. And when David and Jenny wander through a crowded casino club and Ray Charles’ backup singers cry out of the jukebox (for David no less) to ‘tell the truth’.

David reveals he is a man of the world, an accomplished jetsetter and bachelor or rather, a rebel whose suave veneer would equate him with Ian Fleming’s James Bond and it’s to David whom Jenny wishes to be bonded. Eventually, the two ‘life’ enthusiasts attend a classical music concert with David’s friends and ‘business’ colleagues, Danny (Dominic Cooper) and Helen (Rosamund Pike) who further take Jenny down the rabbit hole of art auctions, martini lunches, chain-smoking and sophistication.

Even Jenny’s traditionalist parents, Jack (Alfred Molina) and Marjorie (Cara Seymour) living in their impeccably straight-laced surroundings (which seem to be lacking in substantial lighting fixtures) are no match for David’s quick wit, incomparable charm and when all else fails, social lubrication. Equally (if not more so) focused on Jenny’s achievement of higher education and place in the world, Jack is the clichéd stick-in-the-mud (who’s unjustifiably racist, most particularly to Jews) father with standards of excellence and frugality he wishes to impress upon his daughter e.g. when he goes so far as to check the front lawn to see if their family owns a tree upon which money grows. David is the attractive landscaper (ala Rock Hudson, ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS) who will chop down that trope.

With clever playacting and promises that he is able to introduce Jenny to Clive “C.S.” Lewis, the accomplished author, Christian apologist and former member of the Oxford faculty, David has Jack and Marjorie eating out of his hands which makes one wonder if he’s done this before (more on this later). Fallen under David’s seductive spell, Jenny’s parents are just as smitten as she is and allow him safe passage through their parental insecurities to Oxford and later, Paris. She trades in her gray school uniform for more colorful frocks and begins to sacrifice good grades for an education in worldly wisdom under the tutelage of David.

Everything seems bright and promising for Jenny until the rug of disillusionment is pulled out from under her when she discovers that David and Danny are actually self-employed sneak thieves who steal fine goods that (in their estimation) their owners cannot appreciate. To stay with David and condone such behavior suggestive of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow would go against everything Jenny has learned in her parent’s upbringing. She has a choice and for sake of argument (and the story), she decides to stay with David. No matter how difficult a relationship with David might be, to leave class (in mid-semester) would assuredly produce a failing mark.

Once in Paris, their relationship seems sealed as they reveal their respective sexual prowess to one another: that of a virgin on her 17^th birthday and an experienced older man who is just as shy as she is. An uncomfortable silence is punctuated by sounds of airplane take-offs and landings at an airport nearby while images of framed jumbo jets don the walls in their Parisian accommodations. The steps that have been taken up until this moment (despite the criminal behavior) has been carefully plotted and organized and through the act of sexual surrender on both their parts, there is nowhere for the happy couple to go but up as their relationship literally takes off and Jenny’s chances at Oxford are left to crumble on the runway.

Jenny and David return to London and break the news of their engagement to her parents to their devout satisfaction. Jack’s initial hope for his daughter to attend university is further shattered as he reveals that once his daughter found a capable husband to share a life with, that nothing else really matters. And for extra credit, Jenny seals the deal by standing off against her headmistress (Emma Thompson) and dropping out of school much to her favorite teacher Miss Stubbs’ (Olivia Williams) dismay. She is now free to lounge around Danny’s palatial residence, eat fine food, libate on exotic cocktails and swap fine clothes with Helen … A+.

David treats his new in-laws to a dinner out on the town, but reveals two flaws in his coordination of logistics: his Bristol requires a fresh tank of diesel which he didn’t plan for and he should’ve scraped the automobile for clues if he was going to leave it alone to pay the station attendant. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it most certainly also caught the cad. After searching through the glove compartment of David’s car, Jenny not only finds an empty pack of Bachelor-brand cigarettes (fitting name since David and Jenny are about to marry and he’s no longer a Bachelor) but freshly-opened envelopes addressed to David and his wife’s home. Controlling her rage, Jenny orders David to take her home - - the proverbial honeymoon is over.

David drops off his in-laws (soon to be out-laws), heads for the security of the bottle and for once is unable to consult his charm in conversing with them. With Jack, Marjorie and Jenny waiting for David to arrive with his apologia inside their home (now in absolute pitch darkness), David reverses his car in the middle of the street which glares his headlights into their living room (the brightest light that’s filled their home the entire film) and they’re able to not only see through his veil of deception, but Jenny learns her lesson and knows what she must do: return to school to complete her A-levels after which she is accepted into Oxford.

Throughout Jenny’s learning process, David brought with him a color (to oppose the dull gray and red brick consistency of Jenny’s neighborhood) and excitement (visual aids and class trips) that wakes up her conservative family to the possibilities of a new brand of post-war London which would soon welcome the Beatles and really swing. Off screen departs David and his Bristol and in its place would soon appear Cadillac automobiles.

Jenny’s (and London’s) maturation process leads her through a coming-of-age odyssey at once fascinated by the pleasure principle - - with a voracious appetite for culture, cinema, fine cuisine and classical/popular music - - who learns to accept her current state of reality and return to complete her proper education. By obeying this reality principle and reserving the lessons (fantasies) she had learned from David, upon being asked to travel to Paris with one of her similarly-aged Oxford peers, Jenny expresses great desire as if she’d never been - - which appears as if she has a lot to teach him and each other … Class dismissed.

TWILIGHT, L'amour Miséraaaaable: A Vegan Fantasy

1834, "hobby, pet project;" 1881 as "fashion, craze," perhaps shortened from fiddle-faddle. Or perhaps from Fr. fadaise "trifle, nonsense," ult. from L. fatuus "stupid."

Original definition of "fad"

With the cinematic unleashing of Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” Saga, the once folkloric and mythological Vampire brand of seductive, gothic romance, nightly mischief and mass hysteria has shifted into a frosty terrain of mopey, emo-tinged, sexless, blood-sucking abstinence. And let us not forget: health-conscious - - instead of stakes, the film features a steak sandwich or lack (of meat) thereof (Meyer herself makes a cameo as “Woman Who Orders a Vegetarian Salad in the Diner”) - - vampire culture has gone from blood-red to green excitement. Oh, what a sad time for a vampire to be immortal. (See how a centuries-old vampire is coping with the contemporary film and literature fictional-shift.)

By definition, Meyer’s “beloved” (doesn’t it take at least a decade to reach beloved status) vampire-based novels and (Production Designer par excellence) Director Catherine Hardwicke’s first entry in the film series, TWILIGHT, have achieved cult status amongst a rabid fan-base of young adults, primarily tween and teenaged girls. If the film and the universally accepted lifestyles it has promoted are any indication of where (young) modern America is headed, I’d welcome anyone to drive a stake through my heart and be vanquished of this culture shock.

After the ‘cold open’, wherein the film’s production and distribution company’s snow-enshrouded Summit Entertertainment logo in cool aquamarine (which constitutes the film’s main color palette) fills the screen, an equally chilling line is uttered by Isabella Marie "Bella" Swan (Kristen Stewart): “I’ve never given much thought to how I would die” - - this is both a character name and a line of dialogue given heavy weight of wisdom and maturity not befitting of a modern-day American teenager who speaks it (unless, of course, she was featured in an Anne Rice novel). I’d have been thoroughly interested if this was being spoken in voiceover by the pre-slaughtered fawn in the film’s opening minutes, a scene reminiscent of both the stately deer’s demise in Michael Mann’s THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS and the sacrificial lambs surrounding the lushly, ethereal pond setting in James Whale’s BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

As the film progresses, we discover that Bella and her peers are no ordinary teenagers, but those characterized by the stereotypical Emo sub-culture: wherein guys are more sensitive than girls, yet both sexes lead an angst-ridden, tortured and depressed existence while donning apparel that is correspondingly suicidal and where short or tall, choppy, low-banged hair makes up 75% of their ‘look’ best represented by the human mortal counterparts, the vampiric coven of the Cullen Family (Emo Royalty, who flamboyantly shimmer like diamonds in the sun’s rays) and Bella’s prey, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) who no one at Forks High School seems to understand.

Despite the ill effects the current economy has had on millions, modern-day teenagers (most particularly, Bella) in Hardwicke’s film really have nothing to feel tortured about: they have a (multiple) cell phone(s), home computer (and/or laptop), the unlimited pleasures the Internet has to offer (e.g. access to FaceBook and Twitter accounts), luxury automobiles and parents who show concern for them and fend for their well-being. Quel dommage! Incidentally, the one and only time Bella shows any sincere enthusiasm in the entire film is when her father, Charlie Swan (Billy Burke) gifts her with a truck he has purchased from his friend, Billy Black (Gil Mirmingham) and son Jacob (Taylor Lautner). Perhaps it’s in the drinking water - - in fact, the only instance anyone drinks from the tap is Bella during a conversation she has with her father in their kitchen - - as he’s typically placed near a bargain pack of Dannon bottled-water and cans of beer.

The social network in Forks, Washington (population “3,120 people”, Bella grumbles) where TWILIGHT’s events unfold can only be deemed as ironic dysfunction when compared with other educational institutions (real or cinematically fictitious, you may decide). Characters engage in lingo indicative of current social trends (e.g. “google it”; “Chillax”; “I’m down the with kids” and “You’re the bomb”), the majority of the student body seem to intuit and welcome Bella as if she’s of a celebrity-status (in this case, Sherry Potter) and yet Bella gives everyone the brush advising that she’s the “silent, suffering type”. Bella’s dad, the Chief of Police, has no idea that his daughter, the metaphorical Pandora’s Box (gift wrapped by Chastity), has conveniently liberated an age-old blood feud between a race of vampires spawned by the Volturi (an ancient race of Italian vampires) and Quileute (a.k.a. Quillayute) Indians who are able to transform into werewolves.

So, Emily Bronte’s classic WUTHERING HEIGHTS has been transferred from the Yorkshire moors to the gloomy Pacific Northwest and grafted with fangs and fur! Unlike the conversations featured in this revered classic of English literature, Meyer’s discourse in wuthering Washington State tends to be commonplace and awkward. Questions are dodged; secrets are kept and then revealed later; nervousness ensues. Mankiewicz or Chayefsky wouldn’t dare partake in such screenwriting trifles and/or released work one would connote to a fad. Bella literally shakes off potential friends in a school gymnasium who try to enter in a dialogue with her. And her movements are equally oblivious when she opens a car door into Jacob or slips and falls on a patch of ice. I understand the latter being a plot device, both that Bella is on shaky ground and that it hints at an accident involving the employment of Edward’s superhuman vampire strength and a van that nearly crushes Bella in a parking lot. But her actions are consistently clumsy and mopey and why she attracts everyone in her orbit, I may never know - - unless I read the books to discover that she holds the key to the ultimate human question - - but, that’s another medium for another post (that may never be); I digress.

Bella and Edward get past their initial awkward teenage adolescent hang-ups (that still exist come the climax) and become an item. Just as Romeo and Juliet participated in a doomed romance so are Kristen Stewart and RPatz’s protagonists as Edward fears he may altogether consume (i.e. drink, bite, devour) Bella if he is overcome by his animal urges. What ensues are scenes that are as uncomfortable to watch as they are laughable e.g. when Edward erratically squirms in Bella’s presence and looks as if he’s going to V in his M. TWILIGHT’s closest cinematic counterpart (save for the nomadic vampires’ long ‘hesher’ hair that came and went with THE LOST BOYS who are intent on killing Bella) may be CAT PEOPLE that contained a similar theme of controlling one’s animal desire for the sake (and safety) of a lover in that Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) refused to become intimate with her fiancé Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) innately knowing that she’d transform into a dangerous panther thereby tearing him to shreds. Jacques Tourneur’s and Val Lewton’s horror classic however, favored style over substance (and passing fancies). And if the first entry in the book series come to screen is any sign of things to come for the TWILIGHT Saga, this will be a quadrilogy that is anything but bella.

Films That Have Inspired Social Networking

Twitter, YouTube and flickr are just a few of the current social networking tools that have contributed to the massive proliferation of users online as well as making the world (and universe) a much smaller place through the use of their technological devices and the data that has passed through them. Likewise, the cinema has been a source of entertainment and inspiration for its viewers since the first image and accompaniment of light flickered on a movie screen. By combining communications tools via the power of the cinema, the results have been highly reactive in the present social and technological marketplace.

Pre-dating contemporary computer and electronic technology, the movie-going public as well as the characters embedded in the celluloid, would (and still do) engage in an archaic form of message-delivery: stone drawings, paper/letter correspondence, radio or Morse code/telegraphic communications. Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s A LETTER TO THREE WIVES (1949) would now easily reach three million within seconds via a mainframe and companion server. In Hitchcock’s THE LADY VANISHES, Dame May Whitty’s Miss Froy, could’ve texted of her capture in the train’s compartment or uploaded the “MacGuffin” folk song carrying top secret information to a YouTube account using her mobile phone.

What follows are a few examples of films that have exhibited similar techniques and design processes of these networking tools prior to their creation. What is key here is that data was shared through an interaction with another person(s) (or user(s)) as opposed to being kept to oneself which is the crux of social networking.

Photographs were taken by paparazzi in LA DOLCE VITA (Dir: Federico Fellini, 1960) and NOTHING SACRED (Dir: William A. Wellman, 1937) and by a photographer trying to solve a murder (BLOW-UP, Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966) and (REAR WINDOW, Dir: Alfred Hitchcock, 1954), but that the images weren’t shared by them through their cinematic communities, save for their respective newspapers or magazine editors, they must sadly be disqualified from any inclusion herein.

Although there is an exuberance of energy and powerful imagery present in films such as MAGNOLIA (Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999), JFK (Dir: Oliver Stone, 1991), SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (Dirs: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1952) or ANNIE HALL (Dir: Woody Allen, 1977) - - all of which and more like them are featured in clips (or in their entirety) online - - their entertainment may leave a lasting effect on one’s memory and feature a film (or game show)-within-a-film or film-viewing aspect, but any tool for the sake of social networking is for the most part, intangible.

Just think, if these filmmakers had played their cards right and had access to the technology that is currently available at our fingertips, these contemporary devices could’ve been welded in the furnace of their creative minds and like many of (YouTube’s) Chad Hurley’s contemporaries, in their basement.

Twitter/texting (Jack Dorsey, 2007; www.twitter.com)

Twitter asks one question, "What are you doing?"/"What's happening?" Answers must be under 140 characters in length and can be sent via mobile texting, instant message or the web. Twitter's core technology is a device agnostic message routing system with rudimentary social networking features. By accepting messages from sms, web, mobile web, instant message, or from third party API projects, Twitter makes it easy for folks to stay connected.

DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (Dir: Stanley Kubrick, 1964) In this “culturally significant” dark comedy masterpiece, Sterling Hayden’s General Jack D. Ripper, orders a B-52 carrying nuclear warheads into Soviet airspace through an onboard CRM 114 device utilizing brief three-letter code prefixed messages between themselves. The results are disastrous and equally hilarious.

E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (Dir: Steven Spielberg, 1982) The beloved science fiction blockbuster featuring the relationship between a stranded alien botanist and his earthling friend, Elliott, as they employ a “Communicator” device to “phone home”. By utilizing the Speak & Spell console (one of the earliest electronic handheld devices complete with a visual display) in addition to various household appliances, a tree branch and a little imagination, Spielberg has concocted one of the most elaborate communications tools (exhibiting less than 140 characters, albeit, in an alien language) in cinema history with enough reception to reach E.T.’s home in deep space.

REAL GENIUS (Dir: Martha Coolidge, 1985) Val Kilmer’s Chris Knight attempts to loosen up his fellow “Pacific Tech” classmate Mitch by throwing him a party during their many failed attempts at creating a chemical laser for their professor. Unbeknownst to Mitch, Chris lures him (and scores of students in the process) across the university quad by way of a laser light show to a “Tanning Invitational” hosted by dozens of scantily clad beauticians. An alternative precursor to Evite / Socializr, Chris types a brief phrase “Tanning Invitational” by way of computer which is eventually “spelled out” by an elaborate series of laser beams and reflective mirrors set up across campus.

THE ABYSS (Dir: James Cameron, 1989) The science fiction underwater actioner features a team of oil workers and Navy SEALs in a mission to salvage nuclear warheads from a sunken Soviet submarine before they detonate and an approaching hurricane topside impedes their objective. When one of the warheads falls over the edge of an undersea trench, Ed Harris’ Bud is fitted with a special diving suit as well as a wrist pad touch-type device to apprise the team (in brief messages) of his advances into the abyss.

YouTube (Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, 2005; www.youtube.com)

YouTube is the leader in online video and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs and email.

JOHNNY MNEMONIC (Dir: Robert Longo, 1995) Keanu Reeve’s Johnny Mnemonic takes the idea of a ‘thumb drive’ a step further playing a data courier who delivers sensitive information to clients through a storage implant in his brain by connecting to and uploading data and imagery via a television or visual display. A similar idea is featured in TOTAL RECALL (Dir: Paul Verhoeven, 1990) based on sci-fi maestro Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Quaid is ‘uploaded’ with memories - - or in this case - - images for a vacation on Mars.

HACKERS (Dir: Iain Softley, 1995) Johnny Lee Miller’s Crash Override first connects with Angelina Jolie’s Acid Burn when Override tries to hack into a television station’s computer network in order to watch an episode of The Outer Limits. Burn then (like current copyright infringement) hacks into the server and kicks him off.

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (Dirs: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, 1999) The film takes YouTube’s tagline “broadcast yourself” a bit too far and although it is indirectly ‘broadcast’ by filmmakers other than those featured in the footage, it is nonetheless a forerunner in the idea of shooting oneself to become the subject of shared video and ‘viral’ programming for the masses to digest it.

JACKASS: THE MOVIE (Dir: Jeff Tremaine, 2002) The “feel-sick movie of the year” features MTV’s Jackass television performers (stars?) doing what they do best in front of the camera which has spread like ‘viral’ wildfire throughout the Web and become a pop-cultural phenomenon spawning imitations online, on television (MADtv and FAMILY GUY) and re-enacted most particularly by young boys aged 18-32.

Amélie (Dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001) Amélie Poulain’s Audrey Tautou mysteriously surprises “the Glass Man” with videotapes she has edited (and uploaded) with whimsical, random and ‘viral’ imagery (e.g. a naked baby swimming in a pool, a horse intruding on a bicycling tournament, etc.).

Flickr (Stewart Butterfield, Caterina Fake, 2004; www.flickr.com)

By securely and privately uploading images and/or video from the Internet, mobile devices, users' home computers and from whatever software they are using to manage their content, Flickr shares this data on the Flickr website, in RSS feeds, on one’s blog, by email, by posting to outside blogs, etc. Flickr also organizes photos and video as metadata in order to search and disseminate to others with ease.

PECKER (Dir: John Waters, 1998) Edward Furlong’s Pecker, an avid photographer and sandwich shop employee, becomes an art sensation when the photos he takes of his family and Baltimore neighbors catch the interest of a New York art dealer and professional art collectors.

Amélie (Dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001) Through the help of Amélie’s friend, a stewardess, Amélie devises a plot to have her travel the world with her father’s garden gnome and take pictures of it amidst the backdrop of worldly landmarks (e.g. New York City and Russia). Additionally, Amélie’s love interest, Nino Quincampoix, travels throughout Montmarte lifting discarded photos from photo booths which he collects and keeps in an album.

PRECIOUS: Restricted Cinema For All, Pleasure for None

Claireece Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is a woman oppressed on multiple fronts: in the home; in the outside world and most unfortunately by herself. She struggles to live a hopeful existence in an otherwise hopeless environment afflicted by unending emotional anguish brought on by intense physical and verbal abuse. In short, Precious is living in her own personal Hell. This state of torment and perpetual misery is presided over by her mother, Mary (Mo’Nique*), an ironic moniker that conjures religious connotations of a woman living a sinless life and/or capable of mothering (a) God. Mo’Nique’s matriarch in the Jones household, however, is a gross portrait of motherhood of horrifying proportions whose welfare depends on the check of the same name (welfare) while flying under the radar of concerned Government and Educational caseworkers.

The setting is Harlem, New York, 1987 and the images captured therein are photographed in a handheld vérité style that often shakes until the point of emphasis on a particular action is revealed. After a while, trained viewers will no doubt become aware of this predictability and build an immunity to the filmmaker’s desired result and just watch for the sheer joy of watching. But therein lies the problem. There is nothing particularly pleasurable of the film’s visual and verbal dichotomy. PRECIOUS is a contemptible entertainment in which its heavy-handed approach to finding beauty amongst so much tragedy is almost too much to bare. To add insult to injury (no pun intended), Precious Jones’s fictionalized story upon which PRECIOUS is based (“PUSH: A Novel” by Sapphire), is not very much unlike many of the stories that girls, women or men who experience personal trauma like this on a daily basis (in Harlem, NY or Anywhere, U.S.A.) find themselves in whether it be in an abusive situation at home, school or office space.

It is a filmmaker’s responsibility to put their protagonist through the wringer (when a protagonist is actually featured as opposed to a general documented subject) and can be witnessed in every form of entertainment that has graced celluloid, video or other medium from DUCK AMUCK to THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA. But come the climax when the journey has ended, there is typically the satisfying pay-off with an amount of gratifying retribution that has been earned as is found in most mainstream entertainment separating the cinematic pleasures from the displeasures. For the amount of misery inflicted upon Precious Jones in her cinematic journey, there’s not much 35mm data contained therein that doesn’t equate PRECIOUS to the popularly disreputable horror film (as opposed to the artistically dignified horror of Hitchcock’s PSYCHO or Clouzot’s DIABOLIQUE). That there is a more representative normality i.e. “conformity to the dominant social norms” present in PRECIOUS, as per Robin Wood’s analysis of the American Horror Film, PRECIOUS wouldn’t necessarily be categorized as a film of the socially accepted horror genre - - but it comes arguably close as it is a nearly two hour collective nightmare: collective, in the sense that it is the fusion of the nightmare of Precious’ life captured on celluloid by the filmmaker and the collective nightmares of the audience that are created from watching such intensely loathsome subject matter.

Wood argues that the basic horror film formula consists of three variables: normality (Precious’ daily grind in Harlem, Manhattan, New York); the Monster (Precious’ mother, Mary; her father who raped Precious thereby giving her two unwanted children and the H.I.V. virus; Precious’ inability to believe in herself who is almost always at odds with her alter ego, a white girl with blonde hair who she sees in the looking glass) and the relationship between normality and the Monster (Precious is invisible to the world around her and leads an existence that is comfortably numb).

Just as Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is unable to escape the wrath of an elderly gypsy (Lorna Raver) who has cursed her in Sam Raimi’s DRAG ME TO HELL, Precious Jones is equally tortured by the demons in her orbit, albeit under less supernatural circumstances. Mary throws objects at Precious from across the living room in their besieged apartment and drops a television set down a stairwell in the hopes of crushing Precious and her child who are resting a few stories below; Precious is taunted by her peers and pushed to the ground when she least expects it. It is generally agreed that horror films are not meant to be taken seriously. So, to classify PRECIOUS as strictly horror with the added weight of it being based on so many true human documents attempting to share a voice for social criticism against such abuse, would be disrespectful - - but after just thirty minutes into its gratuitous landscape of sympathy smashing and domestic warfare, enough is enough. Wood intimates a psychological point that many people regularly attend horror films to ridicule or to laugh unless the film in question is overtly intellectual. Anyone screening PRECIOUS will get what they pay for: something very close to a nightmare (with unsteady photography). Wood explains that the horror film is “restricted to aficionados and complemented by total rejection’ and ‘they are dismissed with contempt by the majority of reviewer critics”.

Come Oscar time, although both actors worked their hearts out, Mo’Nique’s Mary has a better chance at AMPAS Gold than Raver’s Sylvia Ganush for the sheer fact that the latter’s performance is widely considered in the movie-going subconscious, an amusingly slapstick caricature of the evil gypsy. Blame it on years of B-Horror schlock generated by American filmmakers for the pre-determined snub. Oscar campaigns tend to be expensive and studios can be correspondingly faithless in pushing such an actor for the coveted trophy. In confining an argument for the approaching Golden Globes race, particularly Mo’Nique’s nomination for “Best Performance by an Actress In A Supporting Role” compared with Christoph Waltz’s nomination for the oppositely gendered “Best Performance by an Actor In A Supporting Role” as Col. Hans Landa in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, the portrayal of violence by the former is far more insulting than the latter’s elegant handling of menace who succeeds in doing so without uttering an obscenity. Even as Landa succumbs to his first and only on-screen act of physical violence near the film’s conclusion as he strangles the neck of a pivotal character, the scene exudes a Hitchcockian quality of love-making that typified many a killing representative throughout his filmography in such works as STRANGERS ON A TRAIN to FRENZY (whereas Hitch’s scenes of love-making resembled a murderous act).

Littered throughout PRECIOUS’s abrasive architecture is the consistent presence of the color orange. Just as Precious has difficulty fitting in with her peers (she is an overweight, illiterate teenager pregnant with a second child), orange is linguistically one of many words in the English language that doesn’t rhyme with any other word. In the universal color spectrum, orange (representing courage, caution and fire in Hindu and other traditions) falls between red (symbolizing heat, anger, passion) and yellow (signifying cowardice, enlightenment, ripeness, happiness) and due to its highly visible contrast in brightness to other colors is typically used to signify danger(s) ahead: a fitting choice for such volatile subject matter.

PRECIOUS is not so much exemplary of incendiary filmmaking as it is merely manipulative “poverty porn” that buries uplifting platitudes of clichéd enlightenment into bottomless depths of despair for sophisticated audience members to till through and unearth for deeper reflection. Amidst the exhaustive torment that Precious experiences, she herself has a mantra:

I want to be on the cover of a magazine.

I wish I had a light-skinned boyfriend with real nice hair.

But first, I want to be on one of them B.E.T. music videos.

that transforms her into a superstar where she appears amongst uplifting visual motifs by contemporary standards (when dreamed up by less than privileged youth) of a dancer in the gaze of dozens of spotlights as she is smothered by a handsome partner; an actress walking the red carpet after a Gala film premiere and an overwhelmingly colorful photo session where she strikes multiple fierce poses. When daydreams are not enough, Precious’ saving grace is the tangible support she receives from an understanding yet radical schoolteacher, Ms. Blu Rain (Paula Patton) at an alternative transfer school who reminds Precious that “everybody’s good at something” and who asks, “what can you do?” In time, Precious finds the will to read and write. She pushes herself to learn the spoken word to wield its power for the benefit of giving a voice to her story that has long since been silenced. Living in a comatose state for as long as she can remember, it takes the help of her new classmates and the tutelage of Ms. Rain and her admitting her love for Precious as a human being to wake her up to a new state of consciously hopeful possibility.

Besides Precious’ growing interest in reading, writing and in bettering herself by strengthening her abilities and intercommunication skill sets, her often times disagreeable behavior isn’t entirely sent into oblivion. She continues to harass a young neighbor in her building who likewise tries to show an interest in Precious and her child; she steals a bucket of chicken from a restaurant and eats the evidence while running from the establishment and mocks her fellow female students in her classroom which tends to mimic a tame version of a “Women In Prison” film sans the bars and the bondage. With a film displaying so much misery, it’s not very difficult for the viewer to become just as numb as the titular character. The tag line to PRECIOUS is as follows: “Life is HARD; Life is SHORT; Life is PAINFUL; Life is RICH; Life is PRECIOUS”. That may be true, but Life is also entertaining and for all of the aforementioned reasons shared above, PRECIOUS is not.

*Coincidentally, Mo’Nique’s character’s name in Director Lee Daniels previous film, SHADOWBOXER, was Precious.