The Girl With The Pixar Formula

How would Pixar do it?

They would first grab your attention by introducing intriguing characters. You would know little of their background, yet the prospect of learning more would keep you glued to your seat. The characters would have to be unique – say a toy cowboy with links to a dated television show, or a flying spaceman who does not realize he is a toy.

They would place these characters in situations conducive to growth. You would not only learn about them as you followed their adventures, you would sympathize with their plight, fear for their safety and yearn for their happiness. The characters would become real to you, transcending their computer-animated origin. They would come to life on the screen.

And then, to keep things interesting, they would introduce variety. The characters would be placed in shifting situations, and their storylines would follow different genres of the film and literary industries.

That is the formula Pixar used to make Toy Story (with apologies to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings) possibly the best big screen trilogy ever filmed.

The first film, Toy Story, belongs to the “Buddy” genre. Its focus on the developing relationship between Woody and Buzz Lightyear is reminiscent of Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise and Martin Brest’s Midnight Run.

Toy Story 2 is a “Rescue” film in the style of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, only without the Germans. Its focus is on the efforts by Andy’s toys (Buzz, Mr. Potato Head, Slinky Dog, etc.) to retrieve the stolen Woody from the Toy Collector’s would-be museum of classic toys.

Toy Story 3 is an “Escape” film. From the moment Woody and company begin to hatch their plan to flee the Day Care Center From Hell, the film joins the likes of Franklin J. Schaffner’s Papillon and John Sturges’ The Great Escape as a classic of the genre.

The formula that makes Toy Story great is used by the late Swedish writer Stieg Larsson to success with the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo literary trilogy. Larsson’s novels, while flawed, struck a chord with readers and made them an international sensation.

The first novel, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, introduces the two principal characters. Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist with the quasi-underground publication Millennium, is patterned after Larsson, himself a writer for an alternative magazine. However, it is the titular character, Lisbeth Salander, who elevates the series. She is a ninja in the body of a schoolgirl: small, brilliant, tattooed and pierced, with a tortured past that threatens her future. She is unique amongst literary heroines and is largely the reason for the series’ success.

Like Pixar, Larsson takes his principal characters through a wild, genre-bending ride, revealing something new about his protagonists with each book.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo begins as a classic locked-door mystery, Blomkvist and Salander joining forces to investigate the decades-old disappearance of a teen girl from a small village. As the novel (and the relationship between the protagonists) progresses, the story leaves the safety and predictability of the “Mystery” genre and enters the sphere of “Horror.” It is Agatha Christie meets Hannibal Lecter, with a climax that shocks and surprises.

Larsson’s follow-up, The Girl Who Played With Fire, belongs to the “Chase” genre, much like Robert Ludlum’s Bourne novels. It is the best of the trilogy because of its focus on Salander’s intriguing character. She dominates every scene in which she appears and makes the reader long for her return when she is absent.

The last of the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, is essentially a “Spy” novel, filled with back-door high jinks and political intrigue. It is Larsson’s most ambitious work, with a large array of characters fighting with conviction for what they believe. Yet it is also the weakest of the three because, for most of the novel, Salander is relegated to the background.

Larsson died before his first novel was published, and never witnessed the success of his series. The writing he left behind evokes a cinematic quality that has been noticed by film makers both in his native Sweden and the United States. His novels became a Swedish film trilogy, with Noomi Rapace delivering amazing performances as Salander – performances that caught the attention of Hollywood, which is wooing her with “mainstream” roles. A Hollywood version of Larssen’s first novel is also being adapted for the big screen by The Social Network director David Fincher. The film is due to be released this year, with young actress Rooney Mara assuming the role of Salander.

It remains to be seen whether the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo films ever approximate the success of the Toy Story trilogy. If they do, it will bear further proof that the Pixar formula works. Character and variety equal success – on both the screen and the printed page.

The Neglected Holiday

There was a time when the day after Thanksgiving was a universal “working day” in the United States. After a Thursday filled with turkey, family gatherings, turkey, football and turkey, we all got up the next morning, feeling tired and bloated from the prior day’s events, and staggered into our workplaces, where we feigned productivity.

This has changed over the past two decades. Today, employers routinely close their offices on Thanksgiving Friday, providing employees the opportunity to recover from the prior day’s fowl activities. Black Friday has unofficially become a “holiday,” the near mid-point of a four-day weekend that marks the beginning of the December holiday season.

We call the day “Black Friday” because it is when the holiday shopping season gains momentum. Retailers, who routinely struggle during the first eleven months of the year, rely on December sales to turn their year around. “Black Friday” marks the beginning of a period of surging sales that will hopefully bring retailers “into the black,” thus justifying the moniker.

Still, if we put aside financial considerations, the day after Thanksgiving is principally a day of rest. Thanksgiving is a full-day event, with familial and clean-up activities often stretching late into the evening. Most of us need more than a few hours of sleep to recover, and not having to get up and drag ourselves into work the next day aids the recovery process.

I bring this up because last night, as the clock approached midnight and my wife and I completed the clean-up from our Super Bowl gathering, we both expressed regret that, in a few hours, we would be up and getting ready for work. This needs to change.

Super Bowl Sunday has, over the past several decades, become an unrecognized holiday, trailing only Thanksgiving and Christmas as a day of festivities. The day begins early, with ESPN’s Sportscenter leading things off at 9:00 A.M. Eastern – the first of the pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-game shows that will occupy our airwaves until the 6:30 P.M. kickoff. Most of the day is spent preparing for the Big Event, stealing glances at Terry Bradshaw and company while we cook and clean and make sure that everything is ready for the crowd that will begin gathering in front of our big-screen TV’s at about 5:00 P.M.

When the game begins, all extraneous activity ceases. We sit transfixed before our televisions, listening to the commentators and watching the action on the screen. It does not matter whether or not we follow the teams playing for the title (or whether we have watched even a single football game all season). Watching the Super Bowl has become part of an American tradition that rivals anything that occurs on “official” holidays. We root and we cheer, regardless of whether we know the reason why.

Having established this annual ritual, we need to recognize it for what it is: Super Bowl Sunday has become one of the most important “holidays” of the year, yet we stubbornly refuse to acknowledge it as such. The day after the Super Bowl should be a day of recovery, much the same as the day after Thanksgiving. After a day of gathering, munching and worshipping (football has surpassed baseball as our national past-time, and is often treated with the same deference we accord some of our deities), we need time to regroup and refocus our energies.

We should cease pretending that anything of value happens on Super Bowl Monday. The day is filled with water cooler conversations about the game, office employees dispersing only when the boss (himself tired from the prior day’s activities) is in view.

Let us end the charade. It is time to make Super Bowl Sunday an official holiday, part of the three-day weekend that officially kicks off our year.

All Is Not Bono

It is not easy rooting for the Florida Marlins. Sure, they have won as many World Series titles as anyone in baseball, except the New York Yankees, since they came into existence in 1993. And sure, they field competitive teams each year, despite payrolls that rank consistently near the bottom. And sure, they feature one of the great young pitchers in the game, fireballer Josh Johnson, and the most promising young slugger to reach the majors in many summers, 21-year old Mike Stanton, who last year belted 21 home runs in 51 minor league games before being promoted to The Show and swatting an additional 22 four-baggers for the major league team.

The Marlins are young, talented and fun to watch. Yet something happens each year to remind us that, until they inaugurate their new stadium in 2012, they will remain second-class citizens. Last year, the team moved several of its home games to Puerto Rico, depriving the loyal 5,000 fans who regularly attend games in South Florida of a three game home series against the New York Mets. This year they are again moving a home series, but the reason is different from last year’s efforts to tap the San Juan market.

Earlier today Major League Baseball announced that the weekend series scheduled in South Florida between the Marlins and the Mariners to commence June 24 is being displaced by a U2 concert. The games will be moved to Seattle where, despite facing what will assuredly be a pro-Mariners crowd, the Marlins will be the “home” team.

What In The Name Of Love is going on here? The Marlins will travel nearly 3400 miles to the farthest point of the continental United States to face a hostile crowd and will be considered the “home” team? Let us put this in perspective. The Marlins will be the “home” team in a city they seldom visit. They will undoubtedly be unfamiliar with the area surrounding Safeco Field. As far as the Marlins are concerned they will be playing Where The Streets Have No Name – at least no name they recognize.

One could understand the management of Sun Life Stadium, which the Marlins usually call home, agreeing to host a concert on a date when there will assuredly be no conflicts, say New Year’s Day - but in the middle of the baseball season? Clearly the Marlins are being disrespected. In their present stadium they will always play second fiddle to the Dolphins (Miami will always be primarily a football city) no matter how much they Desire something different.

I keep waiting for the day when things will change, when the Marlins franchise will get the local respect it deserves. Yet, after seventeen years of waiting, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.

Perhaps the change will come next year, when the team moves into its new, retractable-roof stadium in Little Havana. Until then, however, our roving band of wanderers will have to accept the baseball gods’ decision to send them packing to a “home” in enemy territory. And, if they are swept by the Mariners in what is likely to be the Marlins’ only home series ever in the state of Washington, and miss the playoffs by a single game, they may look back with regret to the final game of the series and wonder whether, if circumstances differed, they might have been able to avoid what may become their Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Scared Straight

His monsters are our monsters. They come not from myth but from the human psyche.

Two of the best horror films of the new millennium are devoid of extraterrestrials, creatures lurking in the shadows and knife-wielding boogeymen chasing unfortunate teens. They are unconventional in that they avoid most of the familiar trappings of the genre, choosing instead to focus on human fallacy as the ultimate source of terror. The two films have one other thing in common: director Darren Aronofsky, one of the best and most creative filmmakers of our era.

Requiem for a Dream (2000) deals with the horrors of drug addiction. It depicts the deteriorating lives of four people who become increasingly dependent on both legal and illegal drugs. The horror is concentrated on the impact that drugs have on those lives, and the drugs themselves become characters in the film, enticing, seducing and ultimately destroying all. It is a powerful, disturbing film, whose images haunt the viewer long after the credits roll. It is, in many ways, the quintessential anti-drug film, one which should perhaps be shown to every teen contemplating experimenting with narcotics.

The film effectively depicts the impact of drugs on a very personal level. Aronofsky makes us care for his flawed protagonists. We feel their longing for better, happier lives, their surrender to drugs as a means of attaining those lives, and the ultimate destruction that follows surrender. The viewer is both engaged (Aronovsky’s films have always contained elements of voyeurism) and horrified by what he sees. The closing sequence, which cuts from scene to scene with increasing speed, depicting the destruction of each character, leaves the viewer gasping for breath, trying to fathom the meaning and impact of the images on the screen.

Aronofsky’s most recent film, Black Swan (2010), takes a different approach. Here, horror comes not from without (drugs) but from within (the mind). The film depicts the descent into madness of a young ballet dancer (memorably played by Natalie Portman, who is certain to earn an Oscar nomination). By the devastating conclusion of the film, when the descent is complete, and the screen fades to black to the deafening music of Swan Lake, we realize that Aronofsky has been toying with our emotions, employing cinematic tricks to stir in us feelings of paranoia, confusion, dread and regret. Yet we do not care because his use of those tricks is seamless and effective. We know we are being manipulated by a cinematic master.

At the conclusion of the film, I turned to my daughter and mouthed the word: “Wow.” It accurately described my reaction to what I had just witnessed. Black Swan may or may not be the best American film of 2010 (David Fincher’s The Social Network, for example, has been given that title by many) but, with apologies to Christopher Nolan’s enigmatic Inception, it may well be the most memorable.

Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan have, in many ways, redefined the “horror” genre. Their appearance at the beginning of the new millennium bodes well for the future of American film, whose path over the coming decades will be shaped, in large part, by the intelligence and creativity of gifted filmmakers such as Aronofsky.

A Pause in Time

As the year winds down and we reflect on all that has transpired over the past twelve months, one thing is certain: time does not stand still. The continuous ticking of the clock helps connect our past to our future. Perhaps we are not where we hoped to be, but the persistent movement of the clock’s hands offers hope for days yet to come.

Because we are aware of our limitations as living beings, and because those limitations are framed by time constraints (we only have a certain amount of time on this earth), we often associate and even define personal achievement by the length of time it takes us to attain our goals. Our interweaving of success and time is unfortunate, in that it limits what can be labeled success: goals that are not readily quantifiable are often overlooked. We place greater emphasis on what we hold in our hands and less on what we keep in our hearts.

In the end, we are all subject to the same time limitations. Yet we would be better served by measuring success in something other than dollars per minute. Love and friendship are timeless, but what better way is there to define our lives than through those we leave behind? Our impact on those around us, while often unquantifiable, will continue to be felt as the clock continues to tick.

The connection between life and time is highlighted in My Grandfather’s Clock, a song composed in 1876 by the American songwriter Henry Clay Work. It is a song that my wife sang to our children when they were babies, and it is filled with melancholy, love and promise. As 2010 comes to a close, it offers perspective on the passing of time and the impact of a life on those left behind.

Happy holidays to all.

My Grandfather’s Clock

Henry Clay Work

My grandfather's clock
Was too large for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor;
It was taller by half
Than the old man himself,
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was bought on the morn
Of the day that he was born,
And was always his treasure and pride;
But it stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.

CHORUS:
Ninety years without slumbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.

In watching its pendulum
Swing to and fro,
Many hours had he spent while a boy;
And in childhood and manhood
The clock seemed to know,
And to share both his grief and his joy.
For it struck twenty-four
When he entered at the door,
With a blooming and beautiful bride;
But it stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.
CHORUS

My grandfather said
That of those he could hire,
Not a servant so faithful he found;
For it wasted no time,
And had but one desire,
At the close of each week to be wound.
And it kept in its place,
Not a frown upon its face,
And its hand never hung by its side.
But it stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.
CHORUS

It rang an alarm
In the dead of the night,
An alarm that for years had been dumb;
And we knew that his spirit
Was pluming for flight,
That his hour of departure had come.
Still the clock kept the time,
With a soft and muffled chime,
As we silently stood by his side.
But it stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.
CHORUS

Under the Boardwalk

It begins with a countdown towards prohibition. It is late evening, January 15, 1920, and revelers abound as the clock’s hands inch steadily towards midnight. When the two hands meet at the number twelve, corks are popped and glasses raised in mock celebration of a law that all know none will obey.

The opening scenes to HBO’s compelling series, Boardwalk Empire, tell us much of what will follow. The Eighteenth Amendment’s outlawing of the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcohol throughout the United States will open doors to organized crime, always quick to fill societal gaps. With the national banning of alcohol, mob-related violence will rise, as ambitious criminals fight to best position themselves for the inevitable resulting underground market.

Nowhere will the adverse effects of prohibition be more evident than in Atlantic City, where payoffs are the norm and laws are merely suggestions – enforced only when convenient. The rules are certainly different on the boardwalk by the Jersey shore.

At the center of the corrupt world that is Atlantic City in 1920 is Enoch “Nucky” Thompson (based on the historical Enoch L. Johnson), the political “boss” who makes every decision and to whom all others defer. When someone questions the rationale of a forced political resignation, he is quickly silenced with the words: “It’s what Nucky wants.” When Thompson wants an abusive husband to disappear, he soon washes in with the tide, entangled in fishing nets.

Thompson is the uncrowned king of Atlantic City, but his kingdom is threatened by outside forces, most notably Arnold Rothstein, the New York mobster who fixed the 1919 World Series, and Lucky Luciano, his enforcer. Rothstein and Luciano wage war against Thompson and his Atlantic City crew, striving to control the flow of alcohol throughout the northeast. By the end of the series’ first season (the final episode was broadcast Sunday, December 5, 2010) the war between these two criminal factions leaves a trail of blood and broken bottles that foreshadows later events in the violent decade.

Boardwalk Empire, created By Terence Winters, the man responsible for The Sopranos, and co-produced by Martin Scorsese, who also directed the series’ pilot episode, is everything one would expect from two of the best and most creative minds in today’s entertainment industry. The series is filled with sex, violence, intrigue and memorable characters, both real and fictional. Al Capone, then a young thug commencing his rise in Chicago, has a key role in the drama, as does Warren G. Harding, whose presidential election in November, 1920, a result of the support of Thompson and other key political bosses, brings the series’ first season to an end.

The acting is stellar. Kelly McDonald, a Scottish actress previously best known for her roles as a promiscuous teen in director Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996) and the innocent and tragic Carla Jean Moss in the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men (2007) is wonderful as Margaret Schroeder, Thompson’s love interest and the person best able to reach the vulnerability that lies beneath his steel façade. Michael Pitt, the New Jersey-born actor who plays Jimmy Darmody, former college student, wounded war veteran and Thompson protégé, is equally good and could easily be confused for Leonardo DiCaprio’s younger brother.

But it is Steve Buscemi, in the lead role of Thompson, who rises above all others. Buscemi first came into our consciousness as Mr. Pink in director Quentin Tarantino’s debut film Reservoir Dogs (1992). Since then, he has consistently appeared on the big screen in often quirky roles, befitting his unorthodox (some would say bug-eyed) look, that led several characters in the Coen brother’s equally quirky Fargo (1996) to describe him as “funny looking” (more than most people, even). Buscemi, whose small screen resume includes a season working with Terence Winters on The Sopranos, is cold-hearted, calculating and ruthless as Thompson, while maintaining an air of hidden vulnerability that makes his character likeable. He is both the moral and amoral center of the series, the person around whom all revolves. His portrayal of the Atlantic City boss is one of the finest and most memorable small screen performances in recent memory.

At the conclusion of the series’ first season, hints are dropped about a conspiracy against Thompson from within, which will likely be the lead storyline in season two. Like most HBO series, the timing for the second season is somewhat uncertain, but the series has indeed been renewed, with new episodes to air some time in 2012. Until then, HBO will undoubtedly rerun the debut season, in an effort to garner even more interest in what many will rightfully consider the best new American television series of 2010.

Death of a Showman

It is a haunting little poem by the man who abhorred punctuation. The voice is that of a child, or a teen girl, lamenting the passing of showman Buffalo Bill Cody. The voice is internal, thoughts portrayed as they appear: first focusing on Bill, no longer there, the whimsical vision of what he was, words running together reflecting the mind’s image. And finally the ultimate realization of what Bill’s passing really means, a moment of reflection on the meaning of life and the impact of death. The author never capitalizes his own name, but honors Bill with the upper case in a poem where the only other capitalizations involve Jesus and Death itself. This nameless poem (usually called Buffalo Bill or Portrait) immortalizes Bill and elevates him to a spot alongside the deities.

Buffalo Bill or Portrait

e. e. cummings

Buffalo Bill’s

defunct

who used to

ride a watersmooth-silver

stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

Jesus

he was a handsome man

and what i want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death