Social Media

Social Media (and Why I #H8 It)

There was one reason why I got a Facebook. I can tell you the exact year I got one. It was in 2010. Some time in the Spring/Summer time. I had just seen The Social Network. If this were the review of what is tied for my 3rd favorite film of all time, I would say that it is a masterpiece that makes anyone who watches it 3% smarter just from the first scene alone. But, unfortunately, this is not a review of the amazing motion picture. These are my thoughts on the website the film is about and social media in general. 

I used to be a constant Facebook user. I would post regularly and I would look at it for hours upon hours on long, boring summer days. Flash forward to the present day and I loathe Facebook and social media in general. (I know it is the bandwagon idea to hate on Facebook. I know this. But the cliche, overused ideas are cliche and overused for a reason. Sometimes, it's just true.)

Facebook wasn't the most special thing back in it's heyday. You just look at your friends post about their day or their ideas or just boring, run of the mill, life stuff and it was all well and good. (Granted, I started my Facebook in middle school, and middleschoolers don't have many things going on other than "I just beat that level in Resident Evil 4!" or some mundane thing like that.) Now it's turned to nothing but people sharing posts of video recipes, generic political puff pieces, or "challenges" that get in your face in the hopes of you liking or sharing some poor sap's status. 

Many social media sites have their own flaws as well. Snapchat is nothing but filtered selfies and videos of either partying or doing absolutely nothing whatsoever. (Granted I am a college student who follows other college students so the content probably shouldn't be unexpected) Instagram is attempting to be the same thing as Snapchat (and it is sucking at it.) Twitter is my favorite of all social media sites because, if someone is going to say something incredibly stupid, it is at least 140 characters or less. 

I just don't know what happened. I don't even hate Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat or Instagram (okay, maybe Instagram), I just hate that, whenever I log on, I just scroll through nothing but unimportant or uninformed stuff for 30 minutes to an hour every day. I'm all for giving everyone a voice and allowing to be heard but did we really need to know that you were #feelinglikemyself when you got your #starbucks and that you are getting #whitegirlwasted tonight with you and your buddies all posed with a raging #nonoword ton of puppy dog, black and white sepia filters? (You don't look cute. You look like a domesticated animal....literally). Are your thoughts about the clickbaity title of an article (because you were "too busy" to read the actual article itself) really so important that you have to share it to everyone?

                         

One day, I wrote an article titled "How I Feel About Donald Trump and Today's America" on OdeysseyOnline and I shared it on my Facebook feed. The article was one of my most viewed articles I had written on the site. It wasn't even about Donald Trump (It was about my favorite TV show The Leftovers). I am aware that political news is what's "in" right now (shouldn't it always be? Why do I care about which celebrity might be secretly gay?) So I made a clickbaity title in the hopes that more people would read about my favorite tv show. And it worked! (and I got many angry messages.)

I understand the appeal to social media, but, if I didn't need it for my classes and distributing my written works, I wouldn't use a social media account. We are getting a little too nosy about other people's business and I think it should stop. I don't care about most people's lives on social media and I don't really care about the things they share (they can SOMETIMES be funny (but it usually isn't.))

Critiquing a Media Critic

Grace Randolph

I tend to dislike trying to "critique" a critic. Especially about film or television. With something like food, if you like the food, then it's whatever because you like it and it gives you energy, so it doesn't really matter. You tend to listen to video game reviews because video games are REALLY expensive and if you spend 50-60 bucks on a bad game, you just have to live with it. With movies and tv its harder. If a critic doesn't give an accurate representation of a film while giving their ideas about the film, then their audience may walk into a movie and 1) waste their money seeing the film, 2) fund something bad and basically telling Hollywood "Yes, more of THAT please!", or 3) don't get a movie that DESERVES people's butt's in seats but doesn't get the recognition it deserves. Film is subjective, however, so one can not blame a critic for not liking a movie you like. I accept this fact with most movie reviewers, so I tend to watch more than one to make up my own mind of whether or not I want to see a movie. The usual outlier is Grace Randolph.

Grace Randolph is a movie reviewer for the channel Beyond the Trailer, a channel I regret to have a link to. I don't know what it is about Grace...But I hate her. Actually, that's a lie.  I know exactly what my problems are. Firstly, she spends the first 3rd of her review on talking about a film's PR path and controversies behind the scenes before the review so that, when she rips on a movie, she can use it as an excuse for why the movie failed in certain spots. I really, REALLY did not want to watch any of her reviews in preparation for this blog post. I decided to pull up her review of Guardians of the Galaxy (currently my favorite movie of all time) and the review had me steaming. Keep in mind, I had not seen the review before. I already knew she wouldn't like it, however, because she seems to have the opposite reactions I do when it comes to film. I don't really want to talk more about what she thought about Guardians of the Galaxy because it just makes me mad. I will link a legit review here.

I also don't enjoy her bias. She is the biggest DC fanboy (fangirl?(fanperson)) I have ever run across on the internet. The DCEU (The name of the Warnar Bros./DC cinematic universe) has had a string of bad films the last year or so, and she really scratches at anything to make her review sound positive. I hate this because it is an inaccurate depiction of the films and, if people pay for it, studios don't know they did anything wrong (or pretend they don't know, at least.) She even went as far to accuse Disney/Marvel for paying off movie critics to say movies like Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad were bad movies! The most ridiculous thing I have ever heard! She also pissed a lot of people off.

I also just don't like her view on films. She trash talks directors and actors with unfounded evidence. She doesn't know what makes a good film. She doesn't appreciate the things I, or many movie critics for that matter, appreciate in film as an art. She recently did a trailer reaction to Baby Driver, which I thought was amazing, and talked about it like it was nothing! Nothing! I don't respect this critic and I wish I had written a blog about someone I liked because now I'm going to be in a grumpy mood the rest of the afternoon.Don't see a film based on Grace's reviews. Visit Chris Stuckmann, Jeremy Jahns, John Flickster, Schomoes Know, or Pretty Much It if you want accurate depictions of film. Also, don't take any of their words for it, take what they say, draw your own conclusions, and see a film for yourself to see what you think about it.

Movie Review

Swiss Army Man

I’ve learned recently that I am into “magical realism.” A phrase which here means that everything is realistic except for a select few instances, and those few instances aren’t seen as super out of the ordinary except for when they are. If that seems like a mouthful, just think “everything but THAT thing” or if that awkward “elephant in the room” was not so much awkward but more “just there”. Anyways, whether it's The Leftovers or ,this film, Swiss Army Man, magical realism is a rich source for understanding how to explain complex feelings and emotions while also delivering an interesting story with interesting characters.

I first heard of Swiss Army Man on the nerdist podcast with Daniel Radcliffe. He talked about this small film he’d been working on that was going through the festival circuit and he really hoped someone would pick it up and distributed. The second time I heard of the film was when it went to the Sundance Film Festival and large amounts of people walked out of the film due to a corpse farting, non stop, in the film (the corpse being played by Harry Potter himself.) After hearing this news, I decided I would check out the trailer, and I was very much intrigued.

Let me start off by saying that I like seeing divisive films. Sometimes I end up on the side that doesn’t care for a certain film all that much, but I know that I tried and that makes all the difference. In the case of Swiss Army Man, however, I feel bad for the people that decided to not give the film a chance. I feel bad for them because it was their type of thinking that the film was trying to abolish in some way. (To be explained further in the blog.) Instead of breaking the film up into cast, set design, music, etc, I have elected to break it into 2 parts: Technical and Thematic. There is rich territory for both and trying to delve into everything is a much longer blog.

TECHNICAL

Technically, this film looks amazing. There have been many movies about people trapped on islands, and you can tell that the filmmakers rely on the beauty of the island to make a good looking shot. The Daniels (the two directors named Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan) didn’t just rely on the beautiful scenery. The way the colors react to each other and how light moves through spaces is pure candy to look at. It also makes the film look like a dream, but a dream that you didn’t know was a dream until you wake up (making the film look as magically realistic as the story.)

There are a number of “gags” (tricks to make something impossible look real) in the film and it truly makes you scratch your head and think, “How did they do that?” The budget of this film is only 3 million dollars, which is far from that of a blockbuster. That being said, it’s not like I can’t see how they could do it with “only” 3 million dollars, but I definitely don’t understand how they did the things they did (like snapping a giant log with Radcliffe’s arm or having Paul Dano ride Radcliffe like a jet ski in the middle of the ocean) and making it look real. You definitely can’t tell what tricks they used to make everything seem in camera.

The music is another beast entirely. The music (by Andy Hull and Robert McDowell) is amazing and often uses the voices of the main stars to make up the score. This is used to explain what the characters are thinking in the moment without having to tell the audience outright while also not having the actors have to act it out. While I can see another person calling it “lazy” I see it as a good way to introduce dramatic irony, allowing us to know what’s going on in a character’s head and what that character does to contradict what he thinks.

THEMATIC

What I like best about this film is it’s themes. It takes the concept of farting and uses it as a metaphor for emotions. I understand how that kind of sounds dumb, but it is actually quite brilliant. The film also begs the question “How would you explain life to a dead guy?” This is what is most interesting to me. In the film, Radcliffe asks just about a million questions about sex, love, feelings, and why you can’t do certain things around other people. Radcliffe’s character is even named Manny, as if to symbolize man (which sounds really pretentious.)

Hank (Paul Dano) is seen attempting to kill himself in the beginning of the film and it is only with Manny that he learns to appreciate the things he has and what he is able to do with the life that he once saw as worthless and led him to run away and get lost on an island in the first place. By explaining life to a dead person, you can truly understand all the things you get to do that is great. And in the link above you also get the side of a dead person who, since the worst has already happened to them, doesn’t see the point of going into a society without a 100% guarantee that you get to be happy living life the way you want it.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

This is definitely a movie that everyone who ever wondered “What’s the point” should see. I can watch it 1000 times and still find something new or some other appreciation for life. The director’s intent with this film is to make you laugh at the first fart and cry for the last one. For me, it worked with flying colors. I will link below to more explanations for the film, some reviews, some more music excerpts because I think they are also worth checking out.

Music: Intro, Cotton Eye Joe, Montage, Cave Ballad

Reviews and Analysis: PrettyMuchIt, Swiss Army Man Explained