Ninja Assassin (Movie Review)

Well this sucks. Seeing as how I can't go two pages without finding a spoiler, opinion, or score for "Avatar" online, I guess I'll have to withdraw from the internet until I'm finally able to see it sometime next week. Unfortunately I've already read a few reviews (both positive and negative), and sadly I can't change that. "Avatar" has, by no means, been ruined for me, but I really don't want to chance some other jerk spoiling any surprises more thoroughly.

Hopefully I'll have something for Tuesday. In the mean time, here's a review of a god awful movie...

... Oh, and the Iron Man 2 trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/ironman/

Ninja Assassin

Every now and then, action movies like Crank and Shoot 'Em Up come along with the audacity to ignore all established genre conventions and attempt to blaze their own trail in the mainstream. Such movies seek to reinvent the genre, or at the very least leave a mark on its hallowed pantheon. Ninja Assassin, with its frenetic action and over-the-top violence and gore, may on the surface appear to be another such film, yet its lack of charm causes it to be immediately forgettable, while the absence of any filmmaking ability makes it nearly incomprehensible.

The plot of Ninja Assassin is your standard betrayal and revenge affair, the only unique aspect of which is that it's our hero, Raizo (Korean Pop-star "Rain"), who does the betraying while his former allies are the ones on revenge. A thousand year old clan responsible for the training of ninjas hits a bit of a rough patch when they decide to go co-ed and admit orphaned girls into the program, and romance flourishes between Raizo and a female character so clichéd and generic that I couldn't be bothered to remember her name. The father of the clan is a man who's as sagely and revered as he is aggressive and extreme, and his policy of ritually murdering those who try and escape the way of the ninja doesn't sit all too well with Raizo. After being forced to wield the ceremonial sword against one of his fleeing brethren, Raizo himself defects from the clan, and goes into hiding from his former allies, as well as international police agencies clamouring to eliminate the threat of the ninja from the world entirely.

Revenge plots aren't the most sophisticated fables in the world, and Ninja Assassin's hyperbolic tale of vengeance is no more complicated than that of any other film. Yet Ninja Assassin, for whatever reason, seems to feel ashamed of its own simplicity. There's a remarkable amount of needless exposition that causes the film to become irrevocably tedious, and it bludgeons the mind so much that the audience can no longer be receptive to even the most visually interesting bits, unintelligibility notwithstanding. There's no rhythm to the sequences, be them action of expository, and Ninja Assassin takes so long to check off the routine plot points that boredom or frustration (or both) becomes inevitable.

I suppose that the chief reason for the arduous pacing is that Ninja Assassin aspires to tell two different stories and have them intersect along the way. Raizo's mission is only one half of the overarching story and, being the most violent and climactic, is largely resigned to the second half of the film. Until then, we're forced to tag along with Mika and Ryan (Naomie Harris and Ben Miles), two Europol agents who are investigating high profile assassinations believed to be executed by ninjas. If I were naïve, I'd say that this half of the story exists to add additional context. But, in all seriousness, involving police agencies is probably the only way they could reasonably add guns, explosions, and car chases, and still maintain the façade of a sober film.

In building up to that, Ninja Assassin decides to break flow further by liberally using flashbacks to demonstrate how ninjas are trained to become that peculiar paradox of a merciless and honourable killing machine from a very young age. These are the points at which I often had to remove my glasses and massage the inside corners of my eyes. I can tolerate bad acting and bad dialogue up to a certain point, but these occasions are so extensive and pervasive that my patience snaps and I seriously contemplate walking out of the theatre. These moments aren't deliberately awful lampoons, nor are they overly necessary for the proceedings. These are examples of helplessly inept filmmaking that takes the good elements of other films of the genre and, largely through botched interpretation, misuses them entirely. It's as if the filmmakers understood the value of such sequences in other films, and dutifully shoehorned them in despite the fact it contributes absolutely nothing to theirs.

I'm not above a good and irreverent action film, and I don't need excessive wit, confidence, and panache, to have a decent experience with something as rudimentary and base as Ninja Assassin. What I do need is competence, and preferably colours other than black punctuated with some sort of gelatinous neon red. There are noble ideas in here, and a more competent filmmaking team probably would've been able to pull off a perfectly serviceable, if a bit bland, eastern action flick adjusted for western attitudes. But everything it attempts to do is immediately undercut either by filmmaking ineptitude or by a complete misunderstanding of what makes these sorts of films appealing. Sadly, Ninja Assassin is resigned to rest in that deep nadir between hyperbole and camp.

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Note: If you think that this is one of my poorer reviews, I can't say that I don't agree with you. Ninja Assassin is so bad that I wouldn't have even reviewed it if I weren't immensely bored. Truth be told, I'm surprised that I wrote this review at all.

Up in the Air (Movie Review)

Note: Last I checked, Up in the Air is still only playing at the Varsity/Varsity VIP, so your options are pretty limited for watching this film in Toronto.

And why yes, I do intend to review Avatar, though it'll probably take a bit longer than expected. I'm going for the full blown IMAX 3-D experience which is very exciting, but this means that there's only a handful of theaters in which I can enjoy Avatar in this manner. I'll hopefully be seeing it sometime during the week of the 21st to the 25th, since I work all opening weekend and I can only imagine that Friday's completely sold out everywhere.

Up in the Air

Having only directed three feature films so far in his career, Jason Reitman is a relatively new name in Hollywood. Most people likely know him as the director of Juno from 2007, and even still may not be all too aware of him since most of the accolades for that particular film went towards Diablo Cody's barbed hipster garbage writing. Rewind your memory by one year farther, and you may perhaps recognize him as both the camera and scribe behind the underappreciated Thank You For Smoking in 2006, in which he was able to make the world sympathize with a man whose company is responsible for deaths of tens of millions of people by cigarettes. If both of those movies are beyond you, though, then it's very likely that his third feature, Up in the Air, will be too. Only being released in limited theatres last Friday (December 4th), the public reception thus far has been quite small and it's difficult to say exactly what will happen with this film come the Oscar race. However given the calibre of the writing and acting, it's hard not to imagine this film receiving multiple Academy Awards nominations, perhaps even in the newly expanded Best Picture category.

To be unjustly brief, Up in the Air is a film about the peculiar job of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney). Bingham is a man with no traditional home, although he does own a largely unfurnished and nondescript studio apartment for the rare days when he isn't travelling around America on business. He is a man whose job requires him to be in the air perpetually, flying to companies that are in need of downsizing, but which lack managers with the confidence needed to terminate redundant employees. So Bingham is dispatched to offer severance packages and booklets full of career changing advice to the people he fires (though he often stresses that the gentler term is "let go"). While it might seem like it's the glamorous jet-setting lifestyle being weighed against a job which many might find ethically reprehensible, the dilemma here is not the work but whether a person can truly live lacking genuine human connections.

In many ways, one could see Up in the Air as the evolution of Thank You For Smoking (if one were familiar with it). There's the satiric edge of Bingham's character thriving off the destruction of other people's lives, much in the same way as how Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) made his living as a spin doctor. The only real difference here is that Bingham's charisma isn't terribly necessary for his profession. Naylor's job wasn't only charming the fictional public, but also charming the audience so that they could root for a character who built his career on the pain that families suffer from cigarettes and tobacco. Bingham is much more aloof and disaffected, fully aware that he will never see or hear from those he crushes (unless in the most extreme of circumstances). His job doesn't need any measure of persuasive prowess, and quite frankly he isn't even required to sell the manufactured opportunities of forceful termination. No matter what he says, no matter how the terminated contest, and no matter how eloquent either party is, the unlucky chap gets fired and Ryan hops on another plane to another city to do it all again. He is a trigger man, put into action to do what the people who summon him can't.

Drama comes into play when Bingham's superior, Craig Gregory (Jason Bateman), takes on an ambitious Cornell grad student with designs to revolutionise his industry. The young Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) has been working on developing a program that dramatically cuts company expenditure by grounding Bingham and his 22 peers and having them perform their jobs through webcams. Without the financial burden of keeping two dozen men in the air hopping around North America, Gregory eagerly moves forward with accepting the plan. While it can be safely assumed that Bingham's 22 contemporaries would be eager to stay on the ground with their lives and families, Bingham himself is immediately shaken: his life is in the air, and his family are the thousands of anonymous airport patrons around him.

In a meeting with Gregory, Bingham stresses that personality and immediacy are what allows him to be as successful at his job as he is, and that no colloquial flow chart and list of responses will be able to supplant the face to face meeting. Personally demonstrating Keener's inexperience to undermine Gregory's confidence in the plan, Gregory puts them both in the air so that Keener can better understand what exactly it is she's trying to revolutionise, and Bingham can stay at home for a little while longer.

The forced companionship of Bingham and Keener would at first seem like a logical setup for a typical romantic comedy, especially since the insertion of Keener into his peculiar no-strings attached affair with fellow jetsetter Alex (Vera Farmiga) would be exploited to no worthwhile merit by a lesser writer/director (the young ingénue falls for her sagely mentor who himself is hung up with his globetrotting call girl). Thankfully, the satire and romance never mix and become a muddy diluted mess. Reitman devotes equal time to each element, first satire and then romance, and ensures that the loose ends are tied off neatly before moving on. When Bingham and Keener are flying around the country performing their duties, we're only occasionally reminded that Alex still exists living her life more or less the same way that Bingham does. When Keener is dismissed, Bingham becomes free to pursue Alex and reconnect with the family from which he has been essentially estranged in time for his sister's wedding. The only instance where the three leads are together is during a stint in Miami. A recently devastated Keener is largely preoccupied with her own taste of Bingham's lifestyle, while Bingham and Alex continue their affair.

Eventually, however, that pesky predominant romantic comedy cliché of the male lead risking it all does rear its ugly head as Bingham decides to ruin a good thing with Alex by yearning for something more. Such a manoeuvre would typically be a deathblow severely undermining all the meticulous characterization that had come before it, but in one of the most inspired moments of writing/directing that I've witnessed, Reitman manages to have it work in the film's favour. "Why does Bingham suddenly long for Alex so strongly when he's been perfectly content to be in that strange limbo of living completely isolated yet surrounded on all sides?" is the question that needs to be asked. It's easy to forget that as Bingham and Keener trot around America jovially terminating 1/10th of its white collar workforce, Bingham himself is facing extinction. He knows that his livelihood is in danger and he dreads having to spend more than "43 miserable days a year at home" in his dreary and bland studio apartment. Should that come to pass, as seems inevitable thanks to Keener's meddling, what better person to fix such a predicament than a woman who describes herself as "[just think of me as] you, but with a vagina." And thus Up in the Air is, at its heart, the simple story of Bingham's own unique midlife crisis. Challenged by the sharp yet ineloquent Keener and Alex's own secrets, Bingham is potentially forced to adjust to life down on the ground.

Being a character driven drama, Up in the Air's success has very little that relies on it's technical merits. As long as the shots are competently framed and the dialogue is audible, not much else needs to be demanded. When Reitman opts to pace the movie with a sense of symmetry, however, he certainly is going above and beyond the call of duty. The opening and closing shots from the sky combined with testimonies from the soon-to-be and recently unemployed bit players create a comfortable balance between the film's introduction and conclusion, and the slick camera pans during movement coupled with the quick-cut condensation of trivial acts such as packing luggage add flourish without becoming distracting. Brief moments like a darkened room of worn office chairs and wide open floors dotted with boxes of trinkets and the occasional cubicle also remind the audience of the impact and destruction Bingham's job can create.

No, sharp writing and strong performances are what lets Up in the Air succeed. While for a normal film, the strength of either the writing or the acting would compensate for the deficiency of the other, Up in the Air needed Reitman to nail both elements for the sake of the satiric edge, lest a pretentious failure result. Make no mistake; the writing is nothing short of stellar. A well paced plot and deftly delivered natural dialogue define the three leads so well that their interplay never feels arbitrary and forced. Keener's naivety despite the Ivy League education isn't contradicted because she needs to keep up with Bingham; that's what Alex is for. Alex, meanwhile, has enough confidence and conviction to mirror Bingham, while Bingham's own philosophy never suffers even when he appears to be acting against it.

Up in the Air is a fantastic film, and I'm not using that phrase lightly. All of 2009 has been largely underwhelming so far, thanks to the inability of any blockbuster to measure up to either the hype surrounding it or my personal expectations. Most of the surprises came from the lower budget films which were able to wring higher production values from such modest means, notably The Hurt Locker and Moon, offering tense and memorable experiences that films with ten times their budget failed miserably to achieve. Up in the Air continues in that same vein, offering far superior experiences at a meagre fraction of traditionally expected production costs. Everything about Up in the Air is fresh, airplane sealed or otherwise.

Article #9: "Bench dedication marks 20 years since Montreal Massacre" + Previous two crosswords

Note: I asked my editor if I could just use this article to talk about the benches exclusively and say absolutely nothing about the Montreal Massacre. Sadly, no. While we all agree that benches are far more important than violence against women, we weren't entirely sure that everyone else would too.

Additionally, "The National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women" is the worst title for anything ever. I cannot believe that when they established this thing on a national level, no one thought that the title was a bit on the lengthy side and in fact quite dreadful.

On Friday December 4^th, 2009, U of T will be holding ceremonies across all three campuses to commemorate the 20^th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre. The National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women was established to mark the tragedy, when Marc Lepine slaughtered 14 women at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal on December 6^th, 1989.

While U of T holds ceremonies every year to mark the incident, this year the university will dedicate two benches adorned with commemorative plaques at Hart House. One bench will display a plaque about remembrance, while the other will feature a plaque about the importance of action in making change.

“Hart House is proud to support the U of T Status of Women Office in leading the December 6^th memorial and bench dedication ceremony in the Great Hall,” says Tara Bassett, Senior Communications Officer at Hart House. “This commemorative service is in line with Hart House’s dedication to educating and empowering the community to overcome issues related to diversity and social justice.”

The significance of the plaques lies in the importance of establishing a continuing context and dialogue about what can be done to make a difference.

"In the coming years, the Ecole Polytechnique Massacre in Montreal will be older than many undergraduate students at U of T,” says Connie Guberman, Officer from the Status of Women Office. “For this reason, the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women is becoming less about merely remembering the incident and more about illustrating how issues of violence against women are still relevant, both locally and internationally. It’s about how each and every one of us, both individually and collectively, can work towards change.”

Unfortunately, this year’s events fall on a difficult day. Academic pressure due to the exams and final classes of the semester may lead many people who are passionate about the cause to overlook the ceremony. Being aware of this, the Status of Women Office has placed brief tips and suggestions for those interested in the events and raising awareness about violence against women on their website at www.status-women.utoronto.ca.

The ceremonies commence on Friday, December 4^th at 12:15 p.m. in the Great Hall at Hart House, and at 12:00 p.m. in AA303 at UTSC and the Student Centre Presentation Room at UTM.

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Crossword #9

Crossword #10

(The site I use to host images is down at the moment, so I'll throw up the links sometime tomorrow. As for answer keys, I just can't be bothered anymore.)

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Today was the last day of classes for the term, which means I can now get back to my vegetative lifestyle of doing bugger all for about a month. Although I do have four exams, unfortunately spread rather evenly throughout the exam period, for which I’ll still have to study. Thankfully, at least, I no longer have to leave the house to do so.

Two of my courses were really quite awful this term, so I reckon I’ll be writing a bit about them shortly to let off some steam. Come to think of it, the two excellent courses when weighed with the two terrible courses balance out to be yet another session of bland adequacy. Next term should most definitely be better, however, what with the continuation of intermediate Latin and Greek and a Roman Republic course I’m eagerly anticipating. The only potential poor decision would be Classical Literature in Translation since it’s not a subject I’m terribly crazy about. But it is a 300-level course which goes towards a Classical Civilizations Major and I do know the guy who’s doing it, so it should be alright.

I’ll only be getting four credits over the course of the fall/winter session, which is one less than I had planned. This is because I’ve regressed to my belief that it’s better to do four credits well than five credits poorly. But since I still want to be done with my undergrad in four years, I’ve already planned ahead for an additional two credits over the summer to put me back on track. Furthermore, it looks as if I’ll be doing four credits over the fall/winter and one credit over the summer for the last two years as well.

Why do I bring this up? Because at this rate I’ll have been at summer school every single year from 2004 to 2012. This is not a reality with which I’m particularly comfortable, and is in fact quite indicative of my inaptitude to actually get things done.