BrandG

The other day, as I lay in a papered bed in a darkened alcove, listening to busy people talk about heart attacks and hemmorages outside my rice-paper walled room, I watched the muted television’s paid advertising.

It was a half-hour long show about how you could make up to a hundred thousand dollars a week, using these websites that make money for you. No selling, no customer relations. You don’t even need to know much about computers!

As I sat there watching the tanned bikini-clad seniors talk about how they paid for their French villa with the extra retirement money, I suddenly felt the walls of my internal cynicism breaking down.

Now I’m thinking, I want government subsidies. I want easy term consolidation loans. I want to buy a house with no money down, and no payments ever.

I’m one of the good ones. I never made any bad deals. I never took a deal that looked too good to be true. I didn’t cheat anybody or lie to anybody. I saved my money when I could, and never spent extravagantly.

Now I’m tired, and I’m weak, worn down by being frugal and vigilant while watching robber-barons get paid off for being deceitful. I can’t beat them, I want to join them. I want to give in and hop on the credit train, buy what I need, give gifts to those who deserve them, and worry about the cost later . . .

Okay, sorry. Never mind. I’m all better now.

Recently, I had a chance to see the new Liam Neeson film “Taken”. The story isn’t too bad, the good guy is significantly brutal to be seen as a believable anti-hero (reminded me a lot of Mel Gibson in “Payback”). However, there was one element that really bugged me. The action sequences were crap.

It seems like this is a style that is taking over Hollywood. In much the same way that everyone after the Matrix had to know kung fu, now it seems like all action sequences work the same way. Violent cuts, extreme closeups, clips that are no longer than the length of a punch, unnecessary perspective jumps, and a jiggling camera that harkens to the film masterpiece “Blair Witch Project”.

I think I first noticed this new fighting film style in the Bourne Identity, where the fighting was so sporadic, brutal, short, and powerful that the camerawork fit well. But these days, the camerawork just makes me feel old. It takes me more than six frames (1/10th of a second) to figure out which black-suited person just kicked which other black-suited person in the grungy darkened warehouse. This means that, by the time I know who the players in a shot are, the shot is over. I think the director wants me to reflect lovingly on that tenth of a second, but I can’t be bothered, because a whole second has passed, and ten more of these unnecessary cuts have occurred. After five seconds of this type of action sequence, I’ve given up caring about who’s kicking the crap out of who. I just close my eyes and wait for the speed metal music to let up, so I can see who’s left standing.

I feel bad because I get the impression that, if I could keep up with what was going on, I would probably be impressed with their cool fight choreography. But honestly, if I can’t tell what’s happening on screen, I probably won’t be wowed by how well it happened.

And it’s not just hand-to-hand kung fu fighting, either. Even the movie “Transformers” had the same problem. The robots have all been ridiculously articulated to the point where, when two of them are fighting, they move too fast to know which one is which. Honestly, I had to go by their voices just so I could know which one was the good guy and which was bad.

I watched the movie “Desperado” yesterday, and I found myself appreciating it more and more as I watched. Here’s a movie with no violent jump cuts, no speed metal (I mean, the music is by Los Lobos, for crying out loud), no ninjas fighting in the dark of night, and people using guns as well as hand-to-hand combat. It felt more real, and because of that, I could appreciate the choreography of the fighting (which was pretty freaking cool).

By comparison, the new fight choreography just reminds me of the screens from “Farenheit 451″, full of sound and fury, but without any context, without any soul. Signifying nothing.