Scott Pilgrim VS Speed Racer

Stacey and I watched Scott Pilgrim last weekend. It was a rather enjoyable film. Much like the recent Speed Racer movie, what was most enjoyable about it was its style of storytelling. Both films remind me somewhat of japanese game shows but I like that and I'm wondering if we're on the verge of seeing something like a surrealist movement in film.

Per the brainwashing in art history classes, the photograph really is what spurred the surrealist movement. Once anyone could take a photo, *what was the point in doing photo-realistic work? Film, I think is coming to a similar place with computer effects. Yes, we can make utterly lifelike models of anything and make them do anything now. We can warp our stories to fit into a tried and true model of success that will elicit the emotions we want at the times we want and bring in the biggest audiences. Okay so.... Now what?

And I think that's where films like Speed Racer and Scott Pilgrim are fitting in. Sort of a new Avante Garde style of telling a mainstream story. Taking digital editing to an extreme where it is no-longer 'realistic' but is is even MORE real than reality with editing that really cuts away everything else, leaving an emaciated distorted and yet psychologically hyper-realistic version of what is happening.

It's really neat and I'm quite enjoying it. These two films were wildly different in their editing styles but both are also definitely worth watching. I'm sure that if Scott Pilgrim is successful, we'll start seeing weak imitations and I'll probably tire of the format quickly but... There's always tomorrow and with any luck, something new and even more intriguing will come along.





*Grossly simplified, but you get the gist of it.

Depressive

I feel staid and stunted in my art. There's still a lot of things I need to work on and things I don't do well but more to the point, I don't feel like my art has any real focus or meaning. It's just all kind of practice for some theoretical time in the future when I'll be 'good' and can do 'meaningful' art.

I also feel broken in my social interactions. I'd like to have friends and be social and interact with people but I just don't know how. Sometimes I can fake it really well and seem competent at social interaction but honestly it's always horribly stressful for me to do it and I can only do it for little bits at a time and then I fall apart. The result is that I never managed to maintain friendships. I'm just a rotten friend I guess. :(