A man is woken up by his alarm clock. After the audience gets a far, far too clear view of the man's armpit, the man gets up. He shuffles around, groaning, stretching and scratching himself as a man who hasn't gotten the proper amount of sleep is wont to do. The man goes over to a calendar, picks up a pen, and starts writing on the calendar. Now, often times when this happens in a movie, you might eventually expect to see a close-up shot of said calendar... you know, to be able to see what the guy's writing! Is he on the brink of finishing up a ten-year project or so? Is he x number of days sober? Is today the day when he stops by the prison to pick up his friend who gets out today? It just raises questions, that's all I'm saying. And nine times out of ten, sure! You'd get a close-up of the calendar to see what is being written... but this is not that movie.
Anyway, I'm going to have to postpone my in-depth preview of Amazon's big Christmas release for the Oscars. As you may know, Jeff Bezos does want to win that big prize, the Best Picture Oscar. A lot. Because somehow changing the prices at Whole Foods and attempting to put the Post Office out of business pretty much write themselves. Where's the statue for that? No statue. The Oscar's the thing. Oh, he's hotter to trot than even DreamWorks was in the late 90s... wonder whatever happened to them? Of course, when American Beauty won the big prize, you didn't see Spielberg, Geffen OR Katzenberg waltz up there to accept the award. Guess Bezos will have to find that out the hard way.
Anyway, Bezos has got an unusual candidate for Best Picture this year, to be sure. Maybe it's a sign of the times as Harry Styles tells us, but who knows? It could go all the way. Stranger things have indeed happened, and not just on Netflix. Anyway, Bezos' baby is a Will Ferrell co-production with Funny or Die, and it's called Will Ferrell Stands Uncomfortably Close to People. And not just Amy Adams and John C. Reilly either! Even though they're featured rather prominently in it. It's about 2 and a half hours long, which every Best Picture nominee should be, of course. And you'd think it'd be wall-to-wall laughs, but there's probably some poignant moments as well, like when he stands uncomfortably close to Obama AND Trump, or to some Eskimos who lost their homes because of global warming. Keep fighting the good fight, guys... (sniff, wipe away tear)
But we'll save that for a later date, as I've clearly got more pressing business to discuss. But for right now, a question... what is art? More specifically, what is a movie? We used to define it as a strip of celluloid passing through a projector at 24 frames a second, with the audio track lagging behind by about 30 odd frames or so... or maybe ahead. See? No one remembers! Stupid internet. But there's all this other stuff that's come along since, mind you. Now there's up to 60 frames a second, making film more like videotape or real life. But typically, the technical aspects are usually set aside in favor of the story a film is trying to tell. There are also audio and visual conventions that have been grandfathered in for years and years. Take the sound of Dirty Harry's gun, for example. You tend not to hear that one much anymore. However, when a gun is cocked... there's kind of a generic sound to that that, at least for me, has SO been done to death. For a non-gun example, there's this one dog barking sound that gets used on "The Simpsons" to death a lot, one time with an opening shot of the nuclear power plant, as well as an opening door sound effect that's also been used very close to death, also on "The Simpsons." We'll leave aside the discussion of the firing of Alf Clausen for now.
Why do I mention these conventions? These unspoken rules of movie making? These shorthand short cuts that many an average filmmaker relies heavily upon? Well, because, the older one gets, one tends to notice them more and more when they're not used. For me, anyway. When you're a kid, you're usually just happy to be awake that late, and tend not to nitpick as much; eventually you just get bored and look around for something to eat or steal. But as they say in art, there are no rules... but you break them at your peril. Which brings me to my review of a film called The Face in the Wall. I happened upon a DVD copy of it on Amazon... yes, that damn ubiquitous Amazon again. Sorry. So much for the little guys, I guess. But it is a pristine copy of the movie, and I think it's even a brand new 4k 1080p transfer from the original flammable nitrate stock and what not. Not terribly big on the extras, alas, unless there's some easter eggs I haven't found yet. But maybe we'll get a documentary or two on the Blu-Ray version. And if it becomes a big enough hit, cult or otherwise, there'll be the Super Deluxe Version with extras up the yin yang on a Disc Two, and a cover that makes it look like it's in a shipping crate, if the precedent set by Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Office Space are any indication. Meanwhile, Short Time is only available on VHS? What's up with that? Dabney Coleman, for God's sake!
Oh, but I blather on and on. Let's get right to the review, shall we?
CREDITS SEQUENCES
...did I forget to mention spoiler alerts? Well, just in case I did... SPOILER ALERTS. Okay, let's get back to it. Now first of all... for those of you like me, scary thought I know, who've made a habit of converting your DVDs into small files suitable for a portable player... and ON YOUR OWN, no less, thereby screwing YouTube out of much needed baseline revenue... you'll notice right away that there's an FBI warning included at the beginning of the main feature. This will happen if you're turning a VHS tape into, say, an .mp4 file. Not so much with a pro DVD, and they don't have the FBI warnings on cable. They keep those things separate, even though the stakes couldn't be higher these days. Remember, kids! Piracy is not a victimless crime. Take Big Idea's The Pirates who Don't Do Anything, for example! YAWWWWNNNN! So much suffering... why, someone oughta be taken out and shot for that. Hopefully that bastard Tom Tomato for starters. Oh well. But notice that the FBI warning here is a little bit different: at the bottom, it says something about a prohibition on "institutional public performance." Dang! So much for Scorsese's kids teaching this at NYU Film School, I guess. Their loss.
Next, the vanity logo. There's too many to keep track of these days, so just remember Bad Robot. You might have seen it in the 2015 Star Wars movie. That's the big one. As for The Face in the Wall, well... I think it says 360 Sound and Vision Entertainment. I couldn't tell because of this bright white light in the center. The vanity logo fades, and then we get the web site address a few seconds later. You tend not to see a web address for a vanity logo these days. But don't worry, you can usually find their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds pretty easily.
Then we finally get to the title of the film. The title sometimes doesn't appear at the beginning anymore for whatever reason (arty-farty reasons mostly), but here it's at the beginning. It's also at the beginning of the END credits, AND at the END of the end credits. Overkill much? At least give me the CHANCE to forget! And I thought Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai was bad! Also, the title credits for The Face in the Wall look like they were whipped up in Final Cut Pro or something. Alas, we all can't rely on the services of Balsmeyer & Everett, Dan Perri or Pablo Ferro, unfortunately. And Saul Bass is downright dead! But just as Cathy Danneberg has settled in on Century Gothic, Mr. Buckle has settled on... let's say Swiss921 BT for this cinematic journey and beyond. A nice, fat, downright obese and ultra-manly sans serif font, as opposed to, and thereby flying in the face of, Hollywood's current obsession with thin, curvy, downright anorexic sans serif fonts. I guess they're good for testing the pixel quality of your HDTVs or something.
ACT ONE
Returning to the calendar for a bit, there's also a sound aspect to address. I think the dude who writes on the calendar mumbles something about "Twelve down, five to go." Now I'm not familiar with mumblecore, but you can usually HEAR the mumbling in mumblecore, right? It's a little difficult here, but I guess it's ultimately not an important detail.
I did like the glimpse into showbiz we get at first. See, everyone thinks showbiz is just one big party, that everyone knows everyone and all that... but for those who toil in the sulphur mines of the Hollywood beast, they know. It's more like high school, where everyone normally stays in their own cliques. The geeks tend not to socialize with the nerds, the nerds tend not to socialize with the football players or the cheerleaders, etc. Only in the movies. Actually, it's probably worse than high school. At least in high school, there's still a chance to make eye contact with someone without getting sued or tazed.
And then the director throws you for a curve, saying "No pan, no zoom... just one take." All that setting up of shots and laying of dolly track for two hours in the A.M. for nothing. Nothing, I tells ya!!! Wotta waste of coffee.
Now, I hate to be too critical of the movie within the movie, but what am I left to work with? The actress in sunglasses gives us a line reading... I think it's something from Shakespeare, but it probably also foreshadows the plot to come. Much like the play within the movie in Cassandra's Dream. Something about the shattering of illusions. Personally, I think the speech moves a little too fast. I'm getting older, no question, and I need more time to absorb my mind-bending contradictions contained within a single speech.
Now the original draft of the script by one Semyon White was a little more equitable about the unfolding of the plot, but Mr. Bigshot Director slash Sound Man Dwayne Buckle had to redraft the script and make it all about the sound guy. The tortured, soulful sound guy gets to notice first that there's trouble in Green Screen paradise. Some interference is interfering with the sound recording. Could it be a small New York radio station bleeding into the proceedings somehow? Or maybe just some really loud New York downstairs neighbours? Whatever the source, the take is clearly ruined, and the director tells everyone to take five, on top of everything else. O, the forces in the world that conspire against the struggling filmmaker(s).
Eventually, a perfect take is gotten, and the work day's over. But because there's such a small crew, the sound guy and the camera guy have to "strike the set." Basically, get all their equipment the hell out of there, and roll up the green screen. One nice thing about ubiquitous green screens! Striking the set is so much easier now.
And so, we get to the conceit of the film. It all starts innocently enough. The sound guy shows the camera guy an exotic, expensive microphone he got overseas. The camera guy shows the sound guy his "baby," his "pride and joy." What could it be? One of those new douchebaggy Red cameras? A really kick-ass Canon EOS with a $14,000 zoom lens? No, it seems to be a Panasonic camcorder. I think I used to have one of those! But whatever. Maybe the camera guy's just ultra-nostalgic about it or something. Still, I can't help but feel a little let down.
AND THEN... the camera guy... let's call him Calvin Jessup, as that is his character's name... anyway, Calvin looks through the camera at the wall where the green screen was, and BOOM! He sees something. Something unusual. Something one doesn't usually see when looking through a camera at a given wall. Maybe it's chubby rain. But judging from Calvin's reaction, it's definitely unusual. Speaking of reactions, I couldn't help but think of an obscure scene, as a movie fanatic is wont to do in such situations, perhaps in a vain attempt to ignore the proceedings right in front of them. I'll try to explain: on the first season of Da Ali G Show on HBO, Ali(stair) G(raham) was trying to pitch a show idea to some TV executives. Actually, I think he was pitching to one guy. It was basically two scenes: an overly long sex scene, and another scene where he's trying to disarm a bomb. The way Ali G. acted when he was trying to disarm the bomb is what I thought of. Hey, maybe it's on YouTube! I gotta do everything for you people... nope, can't find that scene. They've got the sex scene, of course!
Meanwhile, in the midst of this freakout, the big-shot director comes back and says "I thought I told you guys to strike this set!" ...something like that. Good way to add tension to an already tense scene. Someone's probably going to steal that. I was further reminded of Cheech's big freakout at the beginning of Up in Smoke. For those of you with the DVD or Blu-Ray, it starts at 14:09 and technically goes on for about a minute, or until Chong snaps him out of it (sorry, SPOILER ALERT). Oh, I should probably show a picture of the face in question that everyone... and by everyone, I mean the two guys and one chick (SPOILER ALERT)... freaks out about.
No, that's from Doctor Strange.
Sorry, I'm having a little trouble finding it... but you know what? Maybe it's ultimately for the best. Now it's your turn to suffer! Share the wealth of psychological torture, that's my motto. But there are no small parts, and I think my favorite actor is Mark Fullardt as the gruff, no-nonsense film director. He only has three scenes, but there's some nice touches. First, after he says "That's a wrap" and the work day is over, he gets on a cell phone to someone and quietly says "Yeah, I'm walking off the set now." The second one is when he's talking to Jimmy and he talks about movie locations. "I've used my dad's boat TWICE!" he says. Well, we can't all be like Burn After Reading and get to work with Jess Gonchor, I suppose. But it sounds like someone's been hanging around Hollywood bigshots for far too long, needed to screenplay about it.
ACT TWO - FIVE YEARS LATER
Alas, I'm still a jaded sophisticate, and I've seen my share of bad sit-coms to know that, when one character says, as strongly as they can, in no uncertain terms, "No way" over and over again, well... yes way is what's actually in store. And even though it's been five years, and Cal now has a wife, a kid, and more importantly, an Oscar... he's probably going to be looking through his baby Panasonic at that damn ghostly face in the wall behind the green screen in that upstairs studio room once again.
Next scene: persistence pays off, even after a five-year hiatus. For no sooner does Calvin think he's done persuading Jimmy the Sound Guy to let go of the face than... Jimmy is right there! At Calvin's doorstep, no less! Calvin's a little shook up, especially after Jimmy says "Hey! Lucky you still live in the same place!" But Calvin's old lady is pretty cool about it... hmm! According to the IMDb, Calvin's old lady doesn't have a name. Now, you might be thinking that her role is a token, thankless one...
SPOILER ALERT: even though this is an independent film, in the tradition of Jean-Luc Godard and Amos Poe, among others, there are some pretensions towards Hollywood greatness. In his desperation, Jimmy, sensing opportunity, tries to steal Calvin's camera while Calvin is on the phone. Jimmy makes it outside... but he didn't count on Cal being a hell of a fast runner! Dang. Cal is upset, but he still gingerly forces Jimmy to the ground. They have to be gentle about it, because they're dealing with unsanitary New York City sidewalks. No safety mats for a soft landing here.
Most of the action in this film centers around the building that Cal lives in. Dare I give out the address? 41-26 Crescent St Long Island City, NY 11101... oops! But I DEFINITELY won't give out the code to get into the building, because it might be where one of the cast or crew ACTUALLY LIVES... okay, it's the address of "The Baroness" next door. Hey, look at it this way: you gotta be prepared for these invasions of privacy, guys! You're big-time celebrities now, as Letterman always says! Plus, you probably owe him a million (damn) dollars. Him and Trump... damn. Can't seem to do a review without saying that thing's name these days.
...I'll confess, I'm actually a little fuzzy myself on the difference between Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. Like the difference between morals and ethics... no one can explain it. Okay, Tracy Flick can, but otherwise, not. But this I do know: they give out an Oscar for each discipline now. Started in 2004; you know, so The Return of the King could steal another trophy... bastards. Anyway, hard to say which craft is the alpha; I'm thinking mixing, as there's probably editing involved in mixing. Now with most movies, the untrained ear could and would probably swear that there's no difference between the two, that they both are part of one cohesive whole... but The Face in the Wall is not that movie. For one thing, there are a lot of shots on some of the busiest New York streets that there are. Lots of fast car traffic, even though Woody Allen never drives anywhere. You can hear the traffic just fine... maybe too well, in fact, and the actor's lines don't always come through. Um... traffic shouldn't be that loud, guys! Sometimes you gotta swallow your pride and just redub all the actor's lines. Countless New York movies before you have done it gladly, and as a matter of course. Even Buster Keaton did it in The Cameraman... oops, my bad. That wasn't a talkie. Or, get the actors some of those tiny mikes they wear on talk shows! Traffic shouldn't drown out the audience's thoughts, guys. Or the actor's lines.
As for the editing of the non-sound stuff... you know, the pictures, well... the visual schema here is like Stranger Than Paradise, of all things! For those of you who don't know, Stranger Than Paradise is a Jim Jarmusch movie from 1984, one of his first, and the big scenes are separated by, like, five or so seconds of pitch black. Clearly, this visual schema is not copied enough. But who knows? Maybe Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will find reason to use it as well.
I will say that I did enjoy the film's music. And judging from my brief browsing around 360 Sound and Vision's web site, they seem to prefer music production as well. And music sales! The music, of course, doesn't always correspond well to the scene, and the music seems to take precedence over the film's dialogue. Normally in a film, the music will fade out before the actors' lines start, or the music will be quiet enough so that one can ACTUALLY HEAR the actors. The Face in the Wall is not that movie.
But there are at least four different themes to the music here. The first we get is used later on to underscore horror, but we hear it first when we see Calvin waking up from his deep sleep. O, the horror of going to a job you hate. The second is for Calvin's taxi ride into the city, and it's kind of peppy, hopeful, a positive spin on things.
The third is a slow jam for the high school slow dance, and it's a little bit overused, Frank Lee. For example, just before the big seance (spoiler alert), it's time to go SHOPPING!!!! We see Cal and Jim buying seance supplies, like extra chairs and what not. Lol.
Well, that music is hard to come up with, after all. It doesn't just fall out of the trees, so show a little respect. I showed my respect by making an audio CD of the movie. Alas, it's a tad too long to completely fit onto an 80-minute CD. But that's the state of car CD players. Find other means. For me, it would mean putting on headphones and listening to the film on my portable device... somehow that doesn't seem like a good idea. Will the cops pull you over if they see you driving with a big pair of headphones on? Also, I need to give my ears a rest.
So the music of The Face in the Wall is fine and dandy. But I did have a little problem with the sound at about, let's say the 42:01 mark of the proceedings, spoiler alert. We see Cal and Jim waiting in line at the ninja store... I'm assuming it's a ninja store, as we see an employee on the left with a t-shirt that says "Shh! Ninjas are everywhere." OH MY GOD! STEVEN SEAGAL WAS RIGHT! Anyway, they're waiting in line, we're listening to the slow jam with a slight Italian flavor to it, and then BOOM! Cut to black, and cut all sound. No music, no ambient background noise, nothing. Anyone else find that a little jarring? Or a lot? Anyone at all? I guess it's all part of that new editing I'm still not a fan of. I think symbolically it's meant to represent how, during principal photography, the cast and crew were suddenly accosted by the store's security, who weren't informed that a major motion picture would be filming there. Just spitballing, but I'm sticking by that theory.
ACT THREE
And so, Calvin and Jimmy put their heads together, but they only make an ass of themselves. They do some Ghostbusters-style research of the building in question, the building with the infamous face, and they find that, like most old New York buildings, that yes indeed, it has a colorful history. It probably also has black mold growing inside of it that could tell you some interesting stories, but we'll defer that discussion to architectural blogs instead. They don't go so far as to get architectural plans of the building, however.
So that's going nowhere. Jimmy decides that it's time to bring in a third character to this mess. Fortunately, his ex-girlfriend lived next door to a psychic, so that's who we're going to get. Let's just say the film, at this critical, crucial juncture, veers towards the territory of Mindwalk.
Scene: the New York movie set where this whole thing started.
Martina shows off some of her psychic chops with insightful observations about Cal, and some other pleasantries ensue. Then, the Panavision Panasonic camera comes out. Martina starts shaking. Even Jimmy seems a little freaked out! "SHOW ME!!" screams Martina in her, um... accent. I'll hold off judgment on her reaction to the face, and just say this. The VERY NEXT SCENE, they're all out on the street drinking coffee, maybe brought to you by Dunkin' Donuts. Martina is perfectly fine now, gives Jesse a hug, and she helpfully explains "I'm sorry, I don't usually have reactions like that." Is it me? Am I asking for too much realism? A shred of plausibility? Are these all foreign concepts now? And by the way, where's Calvin's hug? I guess the married guys are off limits or something. To be fair, later on, Martina's not answering her phone. The normal thing to do would be to not have her answering her phone in the next scene... but this is not that movie.
SPOILER ALERT: As a possible explanation of the face, we're treated to a brief discussion of the Multiverse, and a slightly bigger lesson in nine-dimensional space. You know, some red meat for the critics. However, even though it's based in New York, I'm guessing we're probably not talking about Kabbalistic cosmology. Wonder if Neil deGrasse Tyson addressed this at all on the new Cosmos? Surprisingly, Wikipedia's page on nine dimensional space is no help; it's more for the real hardcore mathematicians out there. You know, guys who know from polytopes and Coxeter groups. There was one site I stumbled across a while ago that talked about the nine dimensions. So, dimensions 1 thru 3 are for people, of course, and the fourth is time. But they said that dimensions 7 through 9 are ALSO reserved for 3-dimensional movement! You know, for all those nine-dimensional beings that haunt your nightmares, like Klingons or the Koch brothers. I personally was disappointed by this, and I lost a little bit of respect for our 9-D brothers from another mother. Seems to me all you need is just ONE of the upper dimensions to move around in. If you need three like mere people, well... why not just use the lower three then? Of course, that FACE seems to be having trouble with the three dimensions! You're an inter-dimensional being and you get stuck in a mere Earth wall? Am I supposed to be impressed by that?
Speaking of red meat for the critics, I would be derelict in my duty at the very least, and downright criminally negligent at the most, if I failed to mention Calvin's big soliloquoy. He has a brief moment alone with the face in the wall, and ... yup, he starts talking to it. Now, sure, you could be negative and say, Oh, but The Movie Hooligan! Isn't this just like a similar scene with Jeff Bridges and a nearly comatose Robin Williams in The Fisher King? Or with George Clooney and a nearly comatose ... whoever in The Descendants? I better look up her name. Patricia Hastie, that's it! Well, don't worry, because the scene in our instant case isn't going to get too emotional. Actors do tend to go over the top sometimes. What's that about? And besides... the examples I just cited? Yeah, that's what the fast forward button is for. Bore-ring! No one wants to re-see that. Once is quite enough, TYVM.
But Jimmy does happen to catch what Cal is doing, but at least he has the decency to knock on the door first. "You were talking to the face, weren't you?" "No, I wasn't talking to the face." Awk-ward!
EPILOGUE
So what's the big lesson here? Something about procrastination? My life's already littered with such examples! But when you procrastinate with another person, they might inconvenience you at some point later on, especially when the nightmares come. NEVER procrastinate in groups, ever.
What about finding supernatural phenomena at your workplace? Maybe there's a new type of harassment law in the offing, for starters. Or maybe work's just not exciting enough. You hear people say that from time to time about their job slash passion. They say "The day it stops being fun is the day I quit." But you know me, and I always try to make lemonade; how about a tell-all book about that day it stopped being fun?
Now, the film's end credits are very short, which means there's no credit for special effects. You know why? BECAUSE THERE WERE NONE! IT WAS ALL REAL! All practically shot on digital videom thereby conforming to the rules of Lars von Trier's Dogme 95, or whatever the hell it is. You know, all natural light, no special effects... probably no plot or script either. So what's left, besides gross family secrets? So, there's no special effects in The Face in the Wall... still, I can't help but sense the invisible hand of Adobe After Effects in the big semi-explosive finale.
As for Calvin's long suffering wife, well... she's on the phone with someone. He's not credited, but judging from the voice, I'm thinking... Denzel? She needs someone to talk to about all these strange goings-on ever since Jimmy came back into Calvin's life. She's tired of being left out of the boring seances and what not, and she's going to get to the bottom of this whole wall face thing. She starts at the bottom of the laundry basket in the tiny New York apartment kitchen. She finds... a homemade DVD, of all things. Ah, filmmakers. Well, at least it was in a jewel case. She puts the DVD in the DVD player, and gets her first eyeful of that ghostly white, puffy, gout-afflicted face on the wall, and... well, her reaction is decidedly different from Martina's... and from Cal and Jimmy. Maybe she just wasn't in the proper frame of mind or something to properly appreciate it... but, The Movie Hooligan, what do you think it is? I'm not talking about your fancy book learning, or something you read online, or some smart-ass comment you want to make in another vain attempt to be humorous. I'm talking about you. What do you think of the face? Hmm? Is it a 9D being? Is it a ghost from 200 years ago? Or maybe someone who got crushed by a Marshall stack when that place was a disco? Well, I've thought a lot about it... and I think the face is supposed to be Mike Pence. It's part of some Republican plan to support individuals' rights and states rights. You know, by watching everyone all the time. A chicken in every pot, and a face in every wall. They're beta-testing what appears to be Mike Pence, but without the nose job.
The Face in the Wall appears to be a small project between big projects for writer-director Dwayne Buckle. You know, like how Keanu Reeves did Sweet November and Hardball (the motion picture, not the Chris Matthews show on MSNBC) and a couple others in between the Matrix sequels of 2003. The more director-centric example is of course Coppola's The Conversation in between Godfather 1 and 2. Buckle's big projects, of course, are Cybornetics 1 and Cybornetics 2: The Return of McGregor. No rest for the weary in that ol' Showbiz, folks!... hmm. This is probably a dumb question, but I notice that there's 2012's Cybornetics, and there's 2013's Cybornetics: Urban Cyborg. So shouldn't Cybornetics 2 actually be Cybornetics 3? Or is Cybornetics: Urban Cyborg a prequel, or just Cybornetics 1.5? Clearly I haven't done my homework on this one here. But the door to a The Face in the Wall sequel is clearly open...
So I've settled on a rating of 2.5 stars for some reason, but still... WTF, FTW!
**1/2
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan
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