( continues...) many takes... But the truth is that for all his exacting attitude on the technical side of filmmaking, he was actually quite open and philosophical when it came to performance. It's true. When he sat down to do a scene he had no pre-determined idea what he was looking for with the actors, just that he was always looking for the most interesting way to possibly do the scene and convey new meanings. He wanted to find it. Hulk knows this sounds downright lynchian, but it's true. He did take after take after take not until an actor gave him exactly what he wanted, but until an actor surprised him. And that was usually when they did something unnerving, or something that could have two different interpretations, or something was exactly the opposite of how you might think that character would behave. And all the while he would be considering how that played with his lighting schemes and changed them to reflect how the subject was changing in performance. He wasn't being a perfectionist. He was searching. And he did all of this until the actor gave a performance that felt almost surreal but deeply-felt, like it was vomiting up from their bones. It's true of his entire run from dr. Strangelove on (a lot of that credit goes to sellers for the inspiration), but he was deeply interested in creating cinematic worlds that were soooooo unlike our own. Rigid, formal worlds that shook us deeply. He made diorama-like scenes of staged action. He filmed dead on center-points. He used wide angle lenses. He had characters look directly at the camera. But he knew what every single one of these actions did to change his subject matter and affect his audience. He used all these things to a very specific import. He was trying to put the audience off-kilter. He was trying to shake us out of moral and cinematic conventionality. He was directing his movies at us for the sole purpose of making us uncomfortable, but then using this crack in our exterior to load us with deep, textural information and codified language. The reason 2001 is such an off-beat film is that he understood it was the only way to make that film work. The way to make true transcendent cinematic art is to give an audience a visceral experience (which he always does) and crack us open with unnerving provocation (which he always does) and then provide deep symbols which make us want to engage the film on an intellectual level (which he always does and we almost always reciprocate). Which may sound confusing, but let hulk put it like this: he was essentially creating the best possible atmosphere for semiotic deductions. Like almost no other artist working in cinema, he understood the core dynamic of the art film and he managed to make it strike such a chord that it translated to mainstream america. It's downright brilliant. And it's barely scratching the surface of what kubrick was really up to. And like most cinema-inclined folks, tom hooper loves the effect that kubrick has on him. Almost all filmmakers revere him because it wasn't just a turn of phrase with him: kubrick was truly working on another level. So of course hooper loves him. But he clearly doesn't understand that love. Because right now he's doing that thing where he just takes all of kubrick's shots and style and drops them into his movies without knowing who, what, when, where, how or why to do them. The tracking shot with center focus as the king and queen mum talk in the hallway in the king's speech? Pure kubrick. And it has absolute no purpose in that scene. Literally none of the reasons kubrick used that kind of shot apply there. The disorientating hand-held wide-angle lenses all over les mis? Kubrick would shove those in sparingly after his stilted photography to suddenly dislodge the viewer on purpose (think the fist fight in barry lyndon). Hulk could go on with dozens and dozens of examples, but they're all similar. Kubrick used a character staring into the screen because he knew it would break the fourth wall and make you feel uncomfortable. Hooper uses it because he thinks it's a way of getting (continued...)

( continues...) closer to a person. Kubrick often used standard widescreen framing instead of anamorphic because he liked that it gave him more control in framing surreal perpendicular anomalies that look uncannily distinct from normal life. Hooper uses standard widescreen because that's what kubrick did and rattled it off as being "classic" or something. And don't for one second compare it to what de palma does with hitchcock photography because de palma actually understands what those shots do and uses them to construct his own interesting and viscerally succinct masterpieces. Meanwhile, hulk honestly thinks hooper has no idea why kubrick used any of the shots he did, nor does he have any idea how any of these shots actually affect a viewer. And thus it brings us squarely into one of the most vile and misused words in the intellectual canon: pretentious. When talking about movies, or art, or individuals people seem to use the word pretentious wrong all the time. Most of the time they mean esoteric. Sometimes they mean ostentatious. But when someone is pretentious it means they are reaching for merit that is undeserved. It is not when they are displaying apt intellect in a showy way. The intellect is truly not there. David foster wallace may have had an esoteric vocabulary that demanded a certain commitment, but he was undoubtedly brilliant and sought to use those words to truly communicate. And when you look at tom hooper, he might be that rare bird that truly does qualify as pretentious. Especially when you look at the kubrick dynamic, you see that he's missing that key understanding. And worse you look at hulk's section 4 and you can't help but think... He seems to be missing the freaking basics. It's really that bad, folks. He's like a toddler blindly pantomiming his dad. 10. Perhaps this is harsh. Perhaps there's a way we're putting a negative spin on all of this that is far too chastising. Maybe it would be more kind to characterize les mis as just a grand experiment that happened to fail. Maybe we should celebrate him, embracing the narrative that he is the daring one willing to be bold and discover new cinematic affectation... ... Maybe. In the world of molecular gastronomy, restaurants like to experiment and throw things out there and see what sticks. And, of course, they tend to get a lot of respect from critics because "hey, they're doing something tangibly interesting!" forget if they're actually good. To be fair, the gastronomy places that do it right are incredible, but that's only about a third of them. But it's the world of tangible details we live in. Make the issue more subtle and it becomes more complicated. Put nine great home cooks up against the world's best roaster and hulk can guarantee you that about one out of ten general food critics would be able to tell you what was made by the master roaster (michelin judges would get it though). That's just how these things go. In a world where you can do fuck-all and get celebrated for being good when you are simply being inventive (and actually good) is a thing that very much happens, fair or not. But there is the truth: there is understanding and there is understanding. And it is true of all disciplines. Cooking is cooking. And cinema is cinema. And when you truly understand cinema you can take that inventiveness to amazing new places. You can make a reflexive western slave revenge film in the south that's technically part of a series of italian films. You can do a docu-style epic with subtle commentary where the main character is a manhunt itself. You can shoot a film in 70mm not for the detail of a landscape but to find the emotion within two actors' eyes. You can even make a wholly- symbolic-yet-viscerally-compelling film about your haunted life viewed through the prism of performance itself. And all of these films understood the basics. When gordon willis filmed an assassination in the parallax view it is one of the most unconventional approaches to scene that hulk has ever seen. But what made it special was not just how blisteringly inventive it (continued...)

( continues...) was, it was how it went about conveying the information to a very precise emotional purpose. Every shot was about making you feel a very specific emotion in build-up to a gut shot and it was the exact way you were intended to feel. And that's when you realize that it was the way the basic meanings were all brought together that was actually so remarkable. Simple addition and subtraction leading to so much more. Cinematography matters and there is an age-old understanding of the basics that applies to how we construct our visions and meanings. When hulk gets mad at found footage because it breaks the rules constantly by trying to go half-way between docu-style and cheating when it needs it, hulk gets mad because hulk has no idea how hulk is supposed to interpret any of it. And what found footage gains in immediacy and cheap visceral tactics, it ultimately loses in its inability to compel and bring you in by opting for a style that will ultimately push you away. There's a reason so few of them have actually worked, folks. And likewise, when hulk rails about digital cinematography it's not the choice of some luddite saying "oh, no everything's different!" it's because it makes it more difficult to use the language of cinematic affectation. With digital photography you can imbue films with a "cool" and "sheen" look, but it's so much harder to make them sumptuous, or find the same color range to capture the glory of the sun, or even get that soft glow off a tungsten bulb. Hulk doesn't like digital because it's suddenly so much harder to do half the things in cinema that we've been doing for years. And the best things too. Sure, we can still make "cool" films, but hulk genuinely argues we've lost the ability to shoot romantic affectation these last few years. And that's because basics matter and affect us on the most visceral, unaware level. And as we head into the awards season, a lot of people don't understand why artists and critics get so bent out of shape about this stuff. Sometimes they chalk it up to jealousy. Which might be a small part of it for some, but hulk would argue that it is more about the fact that awards season is meant to be about upholding a standard. More of a value, really. We are trying to say that cinema values art and theme and resonance and everything that we hold dear as a society; a society that is propagated on the backs of storytelling, myth and our ability to intellectually process all we see. And when something comes out that seems to undermine those grand concepts - and not in the manner of useful rebellion, but out of something as fucking lame as a pretentious lack of understanding, and then when that pretentiousness is dressed up and amalgamated and it causes people to actually mistake it for the genuine article - well... It makes the people who value cinema kind of upset. It shouldn't be the kind of upset where we begrudge anyone or throw hissy-fits or pretend they are anything other than a person trying to do their best, but we still have to uphold the value of cinema. We have to say what we feel is right. When hulk first started doing all this it was about creating a space for learning. Hulk isn't trying to be a teacher, but hopefully someone who can make a few points and foster a good conversation. And who knows, maybe that is what makes a good teacher. The point is this is a place where we are meant to value knowledge and application. And that sometimes means speaking out when one feels the wrong thing is being held up as an example of how to do things. And when awards season values the work of and will likely nominate and award someone who hulk, and just about every single professional person hulk knows, thinks literally has no idea what to do with a camera... Well... Make of that what you will. But the emperor has no clothes.

That is...not much better.

Is too much. Hulk sum up? Although I think I got the drift.

Pick camera angles to best tell the story. . . don't be sucked in by a style that won't serve the story.

Also, caring about cinematography not make Hulk snob.

Okay, not much easier without paragraphs. Sorry.

Sorry, I don't mean to sound ungrateful! I have some respiratory/sinus thing that makes my head feel like someone's stuffed it with chloroform-soaked cotton balls, so thinking is not happening.

That review reminds me -- I haven't see Les Miz yet, but we saw a commercial for it last night (I assume the first commercial after the Oscar nominations), and the first shot of Jackman made me yell "Wolverine!"

Tim told me if I'm going to be yelling "Wolverine!" through the whole movie, I'm not allowed to go. I told him I would mix it up by yelling "Catwoman!" and "Gladiator!" as well.

Frankly, I'm amazed he ever goes to movies with me.

On a less smart-assed note, at a family party I was talking with Tim's 21-year-old nephew about Les Miz, and it turns out we have the same favorite cast recording of it (and feel equally strongly about the fact that it is the One True Recording). And he's also a HUGE fan of Dr. Horrible and Avengers (well, mostly Loki). It was a highly geeky evening.