Ken On Those Moving Picture Things

Can I let you in on a couple of peeves? (Sure, Ken: it is, after all, your blog.)

But first, because I suffer from literary bloat, some background.

A few weeks ago my wife's company had a big garage sale. There were probably fifteen or twenty of us set up in the company parking lot early Saturday morning. Of the lot, we had by far the least amount of stuff--just one table, whereas there were some people there who wouldn't have a house to go home to, it looked like.
Our collection included a couple of big boxes of books. It's hard for me to get rid of books, but eventually the question must be asked, am I ever going to read this again?, and answered uh, nope, so why not make room for stuff you will read?
We also had some Nintendo DS games that had failed to hold Eva's interest overmuch, a vacuum food sealer that we hadn't used in about three years, and a bunch of assorted bric-a-brac that just kind of floats into the Breadner household on the tides. It was decided that we'd drop off whatever didn't sell at Value Village.
That ended up being, for the most part, the books. Most everything else went, and even though I was the one getting rid of the damned things, I felt, perversely, insulted. Hey! I thought. I've toured all your tables, and all of you have crappy books. (I know this because in any given box of books, it's a fair bet I or Eva has read at least three.) We've got the best books! Buy our books! But no, out of all those books, I do believe The Da Vinci Code was the only one that went. Hardcover. For a buck. Geez, I thought everybody'd read that one by now.
This mass garage sale turned out to be almost as much a big swap meet, at least from our perspective. Some of our profit got invested into other people's castoffs: we got a beautiful standing picture frame, almost taller than I am, into which we will put pictures of each of our pets, with a family shot in the centre. I bet it retails for five or six times what we paid for it. Also a whole bunch of other stuff we'll actually use.
Next to us, some acquaintances of ours had one of the biggest spreads. There must have been unpwards of a hundred old cassettes, to which my eye was drawn almost in spite of itself. Sure enough, I'd owned quite a few of them at one point in my life, and oh my God, is that Tiffany?
It was. I closed my eyes for a second and a poster from my teenage bedroom sashayed into view, steaming slightly. Probably the only serious celebrity crush I ever had, back when I was too young to understand I'd never meet her and therefore any fantasy I had would be doomed before it even got off the ground. Even as a young man, I preferred my fantasies at least marginally plausible.
I mentioned to the guy manning the table that I had the hots for her, back in the day. "Ken," he said, "I still do." Thereafter it became a running joke, how badly I wanted that tape--and the hell of it was, I really didn't. I've got one operating cassette player in the house, never used, and if I really want to hear Tiffany, I can download her off Limewire. (Okay...I have.)
Down on the ground, my eye spied several boxes stuffed to overflowing with magazines...and zeroed in on a box containing at least five years worth of Entertainment Weekly. I'd had a subscription to that one for a short while, and still missed it. These issues appeared to be from 1995 to 2000 or so, and I considered the box a veritable gold mine of popular culture. Good blogging material. I'm always in search of good blogging material. Plus, I could delve into the reviews in search of new books to read. Oh what the hell, I might as well admit it: I was eager to read the reviews of things I'd read and seen, just to see if the critical response differed from mine at all. Yeah, I know how weird that sounds. That's me. I'll read reviews of books before, after, and even during the time I'm reading them.
"Five dollars the box," Perry told me, "and I'll throw in Tiffany for free."
"Keep the tape", I told him, "but I'll take the box."

Of course, I got into the car later and found that Tiffany tape had somehow come with me.

Anyway, the Entertainment Weeklys have proven interesting. There's an article from way back in 1995 advising people on whether or not they should buy a DVD player ("if you really like movies, you probably should--they're expensive, but should drop below $300 by Christmas"). Another article a couple of years later--concerning Titanic, actually, one of my favourite movies--discussed the merits of widescreen versus pan-and-scan. At the time, I learned, very few people were buying the widescreen edition of James Cameron's masterpiece, the usual reason why being given as "I hate letterboxing!"

And thus I found out that I'm stuck in 1998. Because popular attitudes have done a 180...it's almost impossible to find a new video release in fullscreen any more, and I still loathe widescreen. Hate it with a passion.
Damn it, does everybody have huge rectangular televisions now? Everybody except me? I've got a 27" TV, and if I put in any widescreen video it turns into a 9" TV instantly. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but it really does seem like two thirds of my screen goes black. My brain knows that this approach is faithful to what is shown on movie screens, but my eyes insist there's all kinds of things happening in the yawning black portion of my screen and my mouth says that widescreen presentation should go back where it belongs...to the theatre. Thank heavens for my DVD's zoom feature. One or two clicks of that and the movie actually takes up most of my television screen.

While I'm on the topic of DVDs, let me give you yet another anecdote. Several years back, we were at the in-laws for Christmas. We'd bought my brother-in-law a DVD player, and we'd brought along Men In Black to make sure he had something to play on it.
We set everything up and inserted the disc, and my mother-in-law suddenly said "Stop the movie!"
We looked at her.
"Stop the movie, it's right in the middle of it!"
The menu had come up--pretty small print, as I recall--superimposed on a scene that was indeed from the middle of the movie. We laughed and explained that this was just the opening menu, where you could choose to play the movie or view extras."
"Extras? Who needs extras? I just want to watch the movie."
Oh, I found that hysterical then, but as the years have gone by I've found myself repeating her words several times. Just today there was a column in the Toronto Sun lamenting the ubiquitous practice of "double dipping", that is, releasing a movie on DVD as a bare-bones single disc and then, weeks or months later, following that up with a "special edition" loaded with all manner of bonus material. And I thought again, I just want to watch the movie!

As I said, Titanic is one of my favourite movies of all time. It's not the love story--I could do without that--it's the ship itself, and Cameron's very faithful recreation of it. I was just entranced the first time I saw it, and have remained so ever since.
Loving this movie as I do, I did buy, eventually, the three-disc Special Collector's Edition. I was appalled to discover that the movie was still split between two discs. I watched the deleted scenes and realized quickly they had been deleted for a reason. Ditto the alternate ending. As for commentaries--which are on practically every movie released, nowadays--how do you like it when people babble over the movie you're trying to watch?
Or consider this. Ever watched a magician perform? Sure you have, most of us have, right? Do you appreciate it when some wag sitting next to you says "he didn't really saw her in half, see, there's this trap door, you can't see it, but it's right back...there..."

SHUT UP!

Combine those things--someone babbling over the magic, simultaneously spoiling the magic--and you have the essence of a movie commentary. Amazing to think people will pay extra for something they'd be outraged at if it happened anywhere but in their own home.

Unless you're my friend Jen--who's in Film Studies and whose dream will someday land her somewhere far away from here, making movies--do you really need to dig down into the blood and guts of a movie, throttling it to release its secrets? I think not.

The only extra I ever watch is the blooper reel, which can be pretty funny. But even then, I'm grousing to myself. Because it often seems like actors screw up intentionally. Seven or eight takes to say a simple sentence and I'd be out finding myself another actor.

And that's all I've got today. Snark!

Stupid...Stupid....STUPID!

Wow, did the stupid stars align this past weekend or what?
At the box office, the epic movie, um, Epic Movie beat out the competition, raking in $19.2 million dollars. This despite not being pre-screened for reviewers. Don't people know by now that studios don't bother to pre-screen movies they know are absolute dreck? I'd hate to think that nearly ten million people are so ignorant as to go to a movie they know ahead of time is going to suck.
But then, given the level of stupidity about to be revealed, I shouldn't be surprised.

I used to toboggan as a kid. Yup: overprotected, sheltered, mollycoddled ol' me spent many a winter hour sledding down a hill. Actually, the preferred activity at my school was to slide down an icy incline standing up--which strikes me as perhaps even more dangerous. And yes, I took my fair share of spills. I've broken my nose three times, and I'm pretty sure one of those times was when I reached the bottom of the hill and just kept going.
I assure you, no self-respecting kid ever came out to slide equipped with a helmet. If he had, I'm pretty sure somebody would have ripped it off his head, thrown it on to the school roof, and beat him up, just on general principles.
And yet, a couple of Vaughan city councillors have teamed up with some doctors and recommended that the government pass legislation requiring all kids to wear helmets while sledding.
Somebody's got a brain injury, and I don't think it's the kids.
How many millions of children sled, slide, or skate down hills every winter? How many tens of millions of times do they do it? And how often is somebody seriously hurt?
Now, of those serious injuries, how many occur because the kid was dumb enough to pick a hill dotted with trees, or fences, or one that bottoms out onto a road?
God, it feels weird for me to be saying this...Ken Breadner, Jr., who never so much as attempted to climb a tree, knowing full well he'd fall out and break his neck....
There are risks in life. You take one just getting out of bed. Statistically, you take a big one every time you get in a bathtub, or descend a flight of stairs. Surely you shouldn't have to wear a helmet on those occasions?
If we slide much further down this hill, we'll all be living in bubbles. Nobody will ever do anything that might result in injury. We'll become a world o' wusses, ripe for the picking. Pathetic.

Next entry: the Pickton trial. I'm not going to write about it--I'll save that for its conclusion, which should be in about a year. No, what I want to concentrate on is the media coverage, or rather, the ridiculous (but oh-so-predictable) reaction to same.

For those few of you who may not know, Robert "Willy" Pickton stands accused in the deaths of six Vancouver prostitutes. They only went to trial with six because it was felt the twenty-one other known victims--there may have been many more--made the case too complex. Pickton has pled not guilty, which means an endless parade of horror must be mounted for the edification of a jury; the manner of at least some of the deaths is unspeakably obscene, making Paul Bernardo look gentle by comparison.

Herewith, a sample letter to the editor, in this case, of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. I've seen substantially identical letters in four other papers; I'm pretty sure by now that every paper in the country has published at least one letter like this:

I thought The Sun arrived in my mailbox January 23 -- but no, it was The Record. It must have been the sensationalist headline: "I Was Gonna Do One More -- Make It An Even Fifty" that made me think I had the other paper by mistake.
I do not need to know about the "gruesome revelations" or "shocking public details".
My being informed about the trial of an individual charged in connection with multiple slayings over 4,000 kilometres away is of little importance. So I refused to read that article and will continue to avoid any other sensationalist articles thrust at me by The Record.
Sheila Brown
Waterloo

I'll give Sheila some credit: her letter is milder in tone that most. Moreover, she notes she "refused to read" that article (making me wonder how she knew it contained "gruesome revelations" and "shocking public details", but anyway...)
I'd like to correct Sheila on one minor point before I head on to the meat of her letter: the Toronto Sun would never have printed that headline. Too much ink.
Sheila asserts that her "being informed about [the Pickton trial] is of little importance."
To her.
That's perfectly okay: it's up to each of us to determine what's important. Me, I'm not so sure I need to know about every last spatter of gore, either.
But it happened. All of it. There appears to still be some doubt in at least one person (Pickton) 's mind who did it, but it all happened. If a tree doesn't fall to chronicle a murder, does that somehow make it didn't happen? I don't think so.
Most of the letter writers in some way question the need for coverage of such a horrible event. Sheila, above, bases her objection on the distance of the event from her home, an attitude I find ridiculously provincial (and, might I add, very common in this city which thinks it's a village). You know, next year we might uncover a serial killer in Waterloo Region. If that were to (heaven forbid) happen, would we have exclusive rights to the story? I don't think so.

Does someone's assertion that he killed 49 women qualify as news? I hope so! How many would he have to kill before it could make the papers, as far as these letter-writers are concerned? A hundred? A thousand? Hell, I believe a confession to one murder is news, especially if the confessor then turns around and pleads not guilty. Where do these people get off, telling the newspaper what they can and can not print?

The simple solution to news you don't want to read: don't read it. I'm an avid reader of the Toronto Sun, the tabloid Sheila impugns in the above letter. Rarely, however, will you catch me reading the reportage, which is often sloppy and yes, sensationalistic. I simply leaf past all that in search of the editorials, the entertainment, and the sports sections, all of which are second to none. Never would I for one second suggest the Sun shouldn't print lurid headlines. They appear to sell papers, after all.

Freedom of the press means the freedom to print things you might not like.
Freedom of movement means--or it ought to--the freedom to rocket down a hill...and maybe, just maybe, to hurt yourself.
Freedom of assembly means the right to assemble at a cineplex and watch Epic Movie. Though I can't imagine why you'd want to.