"The Town" or "I've already seen 'The Deaparted' and 'Heat'"

"The Town" is by no means a bad film. It's got some solid performances and directing. The only problem I have with Affleck's film is that I've seen this done before. Yes I know cinema is bound to repeat it's self but there is so little here that is fresh. Alot of reviewers have given this film 5 stars and hailed Affleck as a director to contend with in Hollywood and honestly I just don't see how.

Like the title says if you saw "Heat" so long ago or more recently "The Departed" then nothing in the "The Town" will come off as being clever or new. So it baffles me how so many critics are treating this like it's a masterpiece. It is by far the most overrated film this year, nothing has been as underwhelming as this crime drama. That said I still havnt seen "The Social Network".

I think what annoys me most about "The Town" is not what it gets wrong but the opportunities it misses to distance its self from other films in the genre.

Anyway the plot basically follows a crew of bank robbers that pull a bunch of "Point Break" style hiests. However on one job they take a hostage as collateral but release her soon after they getaway. Soon after they realise that the hostage lives a few blocks a way. This is apparently a problem because...I don't know she might run into one of them or something. So Ben Affleck must "take care" of her by seducing her...I dont know how this is supposed to help but...

Anyway there is some underplayed cat and mouse stuff and the group commits another robbery on an armored car leading to a fairly good getaway chase scene that ends on a hilarious moment. eventually the inevitable happens and Affleck's love interest finds out he was one of the robbers who took her hostage. There's one more robbery which goes badly but Affleck escapes to Florida. Oh and it's hinted that our hostage/love interest still has feelings for him even though he put her through the most traumatic experience in her life.

That's the briefest summary I can give it but inbetween there's the whole 'ghetto kids with no hope' story thread that gets used in every film with sympathetic criminal characters. Because all criminals are so because of their bad childhoods....wait maybe but still.

What annoys me most is that this is a paint by numbers crime drama that takes alot from previous films in the genre without adding anything new. Even more so it is incredibly easy and there are plenty of hints that this film could have diverged into Neo-Noir rather than the typical happy ending. There is alot here that makes you just wish they had done something a little more like Affleck's previous effort "Gone Baby, Gone".

Still there is alot of fun to be had it's just not the masterpiece of cinema some have made it out to be. A solid watch but it will fade so quickly into that massive mess of other crime drama films.

Academic Blog Mk Eight: So...this is it

Well we have come to end of this blog series to do with Digital Media Cultures...It goes by so fast. Anyway this blog series has been a great help in many ways with the subject I've been doing. It's allowed for a great deal of mulling over the subject material which is great...that and being able to go through some essay ideas and hopefully make a much more refined argument than normal. The only downside from this was the lack of response from fellow classmates, although I must say I didn't comment on anyone Else's blogs so I guess I can't complain about it. Overall I think have these blogs as an assessment is a great way of demonstrating online community, as is the class wiki.

The wiki was a good exercise too, however I don't know how effective it was in creating a back and forth editing system. Alot of the time I found myself not wanting to edit a page because I knew the person who had originally wrote it and didn't want to offend them. Whereas a real wiki has the anonymous factor the ability to see other members made things a little more difficult. Also it didn't really seem to take shape till about week 11 where people really started working on it (including me). However I still think the wiki was a great thing to work on and hope it gets to go online for everyone to see. Overall the wiki was actually the piece I enjoyed working on even though I was hesistant to begin with.

So with that we bid farewell to Academic Blogs and you will be returned to the regular scheduled posts with my review of "The Town" up soon...well after I finish my last essay.

Academic Blog Mk Seven: Some of the old Ultra Violence

Ok so the premise of "Gamer" has been done to death. That's a given, even "Surrogates" had the whole issues with avatars. However "Gamer" has the link with video games and online social gaming, really being an extremist technopohibic take on the whole situation. What "Gamer" plays on to work though is that you must believe that watching violent media makes you less prone to act "properly" to real violence as some do. This ascertation really in my view is a very closed minded take on the media, borrowing alot from the old passive audience theories of broadcast media. What it fails to even try to understand is the fact that humanity could already have an instinct for violence. Obviously violence happened before violent media did.

Films like "Gamer" try to argue that as a society we are totally desensitised, to the point that having real people in the game dying wouldn't even phase us. As a gamer and being well versed in the violent cinema I can say that I'm pretty damn sure I couldn't send people to their deaths as easily in "Gamer".

Here in lies the problem with the film's argument in the sense that while it is clearly marketed to video game players it also insults them. Along with the added irony that it is just another piece of violent cinema to further desensitise us. Clearly they are taking their own message seriously. Yes I know it's just an action film but still. Unlike the film I won't generalise and say "yes all gamers are normal and no one like to kill things" what I will say is that I don't want to. I don't think I know anybody who would. Maybe I'm just talking to the wrong people.

Academic Blog Mk Six: Determination vs Pre-determination

In the late 90's massive advances in genetic manipulation lead to the first sucsessful cloning experiment, Dolly the sheep. Oddly enough "Gattaca" also came out in the late 90's. huh. "Gattaca" perhaps presents the most terrifying outcome of gene manipulation seen in science fiction. Sure we all expect an army of genetic supermen to be used in some evil way to conquer the world, what we don't expect is that world would become more "perfect". However in the perfect world of the film there are no people who strive to reach their destiny, just those who have been pre-coded to become that. Those who are not genetically enhanced are pushed down as a sub-class to do menial work.

In the world of "Gattaca" free choice has been practically eliminated in the sense that those who are genetically enhanced are predetermined to become something someone else wants them to be. Control over a life is taken away from the individual and given basically to the parents. While those who are on the other side of the coin can do little to alter the circumstances before their birth that lead them to be considered inferior. Steven K. George puts it like this, "The only future available to them is unskilled labour, reguardless of their skills and intelligence".

Though while free will is almost eliminated in those enhanced members of society, we see in the protagonist "Vincent" that what one could call the human spirit can overcome the genetic inferiorities. The film perscribes to us that vision and determination to achieve are what make us human and that technology and science can perhapse take that away from us. Meaning that the flaws of what we are can make us stronger. This is exhibited in the scene where by "Vincent" races his brother in the sea, overcoming him even though he is weaker. "Vincent" opens up a new future for himself and shows that not all are doomed to be but into a hopeless future. The human spirit triumphs in the end.

While this is only very little on the subject that "Gattaca" deals with, it is an absolutely massive topic that can't be dealt with in one post. However one thing seems to be quite striking with both "Blade Runner" and "Gattaca", both lead to a society where technology has created a raceless and genderless sub-class. Next post I will be looking at "Gamer" to see if this is always the case.

Academic Blog Mk Five: Do Humans Dream of Sheep?

ok so in class there had been a whole mention of Ridley Scott's masterpiece 'Blade Runner' so I thought that seeing as this was primarily a film blog before (and will be again) that I could do a little analysis of the film. Now I sorta talked in an earlier blog about technophobia in film and how especially in the genre of science fiction, we get very different views on how technology will affect humanity. Not just how it will affect us in our everyday function but how it will change what it means to be human. Or not change it, there's varying situations put forth in many different films.

'Blade Runner' though stands quite clear on the side of the argument that 'yes, technology will change humanity'. This is quite clear as the narrative constantly throws the out the question of "what is human and what is technology". In fact the title of Dick's book is that very question. Do androids dream of electric sheep? If they do what does this inherently mean? Does the ability to dream make us human or is the soul something that can be replicated in a computer.

Sean Redman puts forth an argument in the book "The Blade Runner Experience" that the film purposefully creates a binomial opposition between nature and technology or in more specific terms, Humans and Replicants. Stating that nature is banished from the visual style giving only the dark foggy streets of the city as an indicator of this. This style clearly indicates a dystopia that would seem to be a product of the technology that has been implicated in society.

But at the same time the film sits on the fence by constantly addressing that technology can be the same as nature, therefore adding a little bit of technophilia to the narrative. The sparkling lights and intoxicating feel of the same dark city show that it clearly is not all so gloomy.

It could be argued that the film warns of both the dangers and benefits of technology but ultimately does not show which is the greater. This is probably best seen in the ambiguity and heated debate over "Deckard's" true nature. The fact that this one key fact can still put in ambiguity plays to the ultimately ambiguous answer the film gives to the question. By the end we still don't know what is "human" and what is technology.

Though "Blade Runner" is not the only film to deal with these issues and in the next blog ill be tackling "Gattaca".

Academic Blog Mk 4: One Second Photo

Here on the interblag we tend to (as producers of content) create very important online identities. I think anyone who has ever been on a chat room or forum can clearly see the alter egos some people portray on the web. Anyone can say they are...well anyone. This is why so many celebritiy twitter accounts seek some sort of vaildation. I remember in the glory days of myspace, high school students would make up fake profiles of teachers to slander them (and im sure people still do that on facebook). But that said, it is easy to pretend to be someone else on the internet but how do you communicate who you are in the real world?

Just signing up to a facebook account we asked to basically define who we are in a short amount of space and in most cases that definition comes via a profile picture.

However this "Definition" of ourselves is usually altered or at least manipulated in some way to present the most attractive view possible. BBC News reported a study contducted on Facebook porfile pictures and found some very interesting results you can read on the link. One being that men were 50% more likely than women to have their profile photo retouched. I can't be the only one who finds that suprising?

When I look at my own choices though at what I choose to display on public profiles, I can't pretend they are not carefully chosen to present me in a good light. I'm fairly certain most people would find the same. But is the carefully selected photo of ourselves really who we are or just what we think other people would like to see?

Academic Blog Mk Three: High 'Tech' Anxiety

Technophobia is just another one of those topics that draws my attention especially in film. When you think about how many times science fiction uses technology as a catalyst to destruction or the very antagonist its self, you tend to see that technology will ultimately destroy us. Or it will be our Savior. This is a classic dichotomy in the science fiction genre, technology (and science) will either doom us or create the needs to save us. If you look back at the golden age of science fiction film there is a clear reflection of the anxiety in society over nuclear science and technology. One example of this would be "Them!" (1954) which featured a nest of radioactive ants caused by atomic fallout. In the height of atomic testing it's clear to see why there was an anxiety over the effects atomic testing was having at the time. A counter to this though would be "The beast from 20,000 fathoms"(1953) where nuclear science saves the world from a giant dinosaur.

Personal computers, video games, the Internet and many others have been used as plot devices in cinema to play off the inherent anxiety we have over technology. The more our lives become dependent on something the more nervous we become that it will fail us or worse, actively turn against us. We see this in films like "The Terminator"(1984) and "The Matrix"(1999) where advanced technology has destroyed all human civilisation. Though the impact of online social media hasn't really been explored in science fiction...at least not to the point where the world is a post apocalyptia because of it. Digital media in science fiction always seems to serve as a background device, just an extra problem in dystopian world that pacifies the populous. "Gamer"(2009) is a good example of this where the concept of "Second life" is taken to an absolute extreme.

So basically what I'm trying to get at with this is that if we look at the reflection of technology in science fiction we kinda get a glimpse into out collective fears. This is nothing new because...well...all art is a reflection of some feeling we have as a society.

Anyway that's all I got for this week, I think there was just too much running through my head to fit into a post without it being an essay. anyhow till next time.

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