SIMONF

News to me!

Reviews and blog comments have dwelled at length on the tears and sobs that Up inspires in its audiences, as if weeping were evidence of the film’s merits, but I didn’t think that Up earned my tears, and I didn’t shed any.

That’s writer, editor, animation historian, Michael Barrier on Pete Docter’s second directorial effort for Pixar (Up, obviously). He also wrote the screenplay, and also the screenplay for Wall•E. I don’t often find old published white men to be so curmudgeonly that in their own field of interest they fail to perceive the intent of a work, but in this case I have to argue with Barrier on his lack of consideration for the poetic construction propelling both films into a realm of perpetual sanguine release. On Wall•E:

Thomas Newman’s lush, yearning score in particular seems intended to shame us into suppressing the urge to dismiss the whole thing as ridiculous.

In the case of both films the “thing” he considers ridiculous is the elastic fantasy that, if over-contemplated, might leave a viewer asking “how?” Two old men, one around or over one hundred years old, climb the outside of an in-flight zeppelin after sword-fighting. This seems ridiculous, perhaps, because in the beginning of the film our protagonist can’t walk down his own stairs. Can’t, or chooses not to, or perhaps we could treat it as a visual representation of his ennui which is entirely dissipated by the climax. The antagonist is a centenarian, for crying out loud. There are like ten of those. What did you want, Mike?

These movies ask you to suspend your disbelief in the same way a doctor asks you to drink six pints of barium slop. It’s not going to work if you don’t do it, but the payoff is illumination (see what i did?). These films rely on a level of unity that supersedes pseudo-regulated magic realism dogma. They swell and burst in the heart, and I would argue our reaction to weep is the natural result of information flowing through those conduits; It’s not wrong to tell a story this way, and it’s as wrong to criticize it for lacking conventional logic as it is to criticize a painting for lacking moving parts.

1. La Roux - In for the Kill (kick it with a poppy beat out’ the gate)
2. Alphabeat - Digital Love (daft punk cover, down-hill flailing)
3. Phoenix - Lasso (comfortable endurance track)
4. Swan Lake - Paper Lace (don’t get too comfortable. get ready for the push)
5. Van She - Talkin’ (‘keep running!’ good-feeling motivation track)
6. Ludacris ft. Lil Wayne - Last of a Dying Breed (Run, boy, this is it!!)
7. Midlake - He Tried to Escape (slow it down. uphill climb)
8. Leonard Nimoy - Both Sides Now (dead in front of my door)

Lupe Fiasco - Outro (bonus never-ending extra juice track [“to all my teachas, all my fellow artists in the gayme”])

It doesn’t. What’s your problem?

Tumblarity

The users on my “following” list that don’t scan the internet for cakes of Chewbacca and taxidermal owls are finally cracking. Can’t take the pressure of this enigmatic algorithm gauging content preciousness like a real asshole. For some reason Karp gave the kangaroo boxing gloves and for some reason the mob is lining up to duke it out and get punched and it seems absurd to use a marsupial when we’re talking about numbers, but here’s the reality: you don’t need to box that fucking kangaroo. The main event is right over here, just the way you left it in 2008.

WHAT ANIMAL IS IN THE BARN?

I just wasted my daily audio upload on “Your Love”