Germaphobes and shut-ins, THIS is the cinematic validation you’ve been waiting for! (Bird — six months!)
Dozens of Oscar Winners lend B-movie a Slightly higher grade
There is one reason and one reason only that Contagion made as much money as it did last fall, and it’s staring at you, dying, on the bottom right side of that movie poster. Though hardly a spoiler alert when the trailer gives it away, SPOILER ALERT: GOOP founder and Emmy improviser Gwyneth Paltrow bites it in the first five minutes of the movie. The people want what they want! Why this strategy didn’t work for Jersey Girl I have no idea, but there you go — kill a loathed actress in the opening scene of your movie and the audience will come in droves to watch. Even if the rest of the movie has them grabbing for the nearest bottle of Purell and hoping to God no one in the theater coughs!
The press has gathered and the mics are humming, so now’s as good a time as any to make the big announcement. Nearly four years after launching our blog and Digital Playground ™, Lifting Fog, the time has come to finally close the door…
…turn off the lights…
…cut the cord…
…and every other ending metaphor available, because if you’ve keyed in to anything here in 300 posts it’s that we never say briefly what can’t be beaten into the ground, mercilessly. Terrible writing at value quantity is sort of our thing.
While it’s true that we’ve already had, like, twelve false deaths since May 2008 (consider them practice!) this one is definitely real. So long after ‘The Dark Knight’ premiered and Sarah Palin lost the Vice Presidency, we’re really, really calling it quits. Run-on sentences and all.
Lifting Fog is nearing retirement, but standing in the way of digital shuffleboard bliss are 9-10 stray posts I’ve been sitting on for at least a year (if not years plural), including the last batch of “Barfoed Does America” entries. Just HUMOR ME WHYDONTCHA.
I. Prologue
I was maybe 30 miles into Texas, just pass Beaumont, when a cop pulled me over for speeding. “Where you headed so fast?” Officer Packer asked. “California,” I replied, trying my hardest to sound like a Steinbeck character. He looked me over. Peered through the windows of my car. “You off to school?” “School?” “Yeah, school — all your stuff there packed up, dorm room stuff.”
He was right — I DID own a lot of things more appropriate for a college freshman than an adult! And in that moment, halfway across the country with nothing but my license plate tying me to my previous identity (except all the French New Wave DVDs in my car, shirts that said “Haddonfield Swimming & Diving,” and the fact that I was still terribly, terribly me), I thought what the hell — let’s have some fun with this.
The following may have happened over a month ago, but attention spans are a funny wait hold on…
Attention spans are a funny thing. They keep us from–shit, I’ll be right back.
Okay. Attention spans. We don’t have much of these things anymore! Whether the short-term consequence of too much iPhone time or some scarier rewriting of our fundamental biology triggered by a forever changed information landscape, it’s hard to argue that we’re not the…almost focused people we once were. Be honest: when you see a 5-minute YouTube video, you hesitate to click. It’s too damn long. Consider a 3-hour movie or many-more-hours-long book (fuck THAT), and there’s no point denying it: we’re cat video people now, and if you haven’t gotten our attention in about two minutes then you’re never going to get it.
Hence commercials as our storytelling medium du jour. In 18-20 fewer minutes than you’d spend watching the latest episode of ‘I Hate My Teenage Daughter,’ you can tell a complete story. And in all kinds of genres! “Boys will be boys” Budweiser commercials. American auto industry by way of ‘Friday Night Lights’ Chrysler spots. And sometimes ads that go deeper — videos that accomplish their default surface-level promotion while tapping into something of greater social relevance. The latest addition to the Change.org Commercial Hall of Fame? Chipotle.
Obviously people love both pigs AND twee sensibilities (an upcoming ‘New Girl’ storyline where Jess adopts an albino pig will probably unmake the universe), so the commercial’s aiming at a very calculated sweet spot. But DUH, that’s the definition of “commercial.” And this one hits nowhere near the levels of emotional manipulation found in the “Kony2012” video, instead opting for an almost minimalist approach to getting its message across. In 2 minutes and 20 seconds, you’ve got a visually arresting journey from farm to industrial hell and back to farm again, all done without words (minus Willie Nelson’s cover of “The Scientist”) or the sort of YOU NEED TO BE AWARE OF THIS PROBLEM guilt-making so prevalent in similar ads. It’s a socially conscious advertisement from a once-McDonald’s-owned corporation that doesn’t beat you over the head, but let’s you figure out for yourself a) how to feel and b) what to do. Could be nothing! At least you saw a cool stop-motion video with music by Willie Nelson.
“…it’s pretty remarkable to see such an eloquent-without-being-strident argument questioning the way our food system is set up being made, in prime time, by a big fast-food (or “fast casual”) company…I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a short film by any advocacy group that was as well-made, well-argued or emotionally on point.”
Google’s been doing it for a while now, but we can add Chipotle to the list of top-flight short-form storytellers doing something to entertain while making us question what’s going on around us. And maybe stop fast-forwarding through our pre-recorded TV shows?
With everybody all “#SOPA” this and “#PIPA” that and killing middle-schoolers’ history essays, no one seems to be paying attention to the day’s BIGGER story: that Burger King, quietly testing a new delivery service these past few months, has supposedly mastered the “proprietary thermal packaging technology” that has long stymied advocates of burger transportation reform. Once upon a time the ability to move a flame-grilled Whopper from the kitchens of BK to your dining room table was practically non-existent, the loss of condiment crispness and patty heat TOO MUCH to overcome. But no longer. Harnessing all the powers of modern science, BK is once more leading Americans of discriminating taste to the Promised Land of freshness. They told us this day would never come. Their shortsightedness will one day be written of alongside that of King George and the Hindenburg engineers.
The real question, of course, is HOW WILL IT WORK? No one really knows! As Megan Garber at The Atlantic points out,
It’d have to lock in enough moisture, microwave-style, to ensure that the food it contains doesn’t dry out; it’d have to release enough, though, to prevent those contents from steaming. It’d have to, ostensibly, include some kind of mechanism that prevents the “fresh” ingredients on the burger — the lettuce, the tomato — from cooking while the other ingredients are kept warm.
That’s a lot of masters to serve! The sheer number of variables at play — dry/wet dynamics, veggie moisture, bun integrity — makes cracking the code here at least a Calc 4-level problem. But if BK’s top scientists can make this work…I mean, what is there left to accomplish? We won.
But that’s beside the point. Succeed, fail, or fall woefully somewhere in-between, your efforts at changing the Game are admirable and worthy of recognition. So here’s to you, Burger King — the Hertz Rental of burgers, forever tryingharder. What did you do today, Carl’s Jr.?
December is one of those bipolar months. At the same time we’re gearing up for egg nog and repeat trips to the movie theater (Jewish or not!), the days are reaching their shortest length — light is at its minimal amount. We demonstrate how deeply we love one another in travel and gifts and begrudging church attendance, but we also can’t help but reflect on our own personal failings. We’re up and down, inside-out. Every year-in-review Top Ten list seems to have things so figured out at a time that’s otherwise beyond confusing for everyone else.
…But then Chinese explosion artist Cai Guo-Qiang sets off about a billion “daytime fireworks” in Doha, Qatar, and all your holiday frustrations take a backseat to the awesomeness of pyrotechnical impressionism repainting the sky. Things are good.
He played Magneto. Now? Poon hound who loves night runs. …It’s called range, people!
WARNING: this review may feature some saucy language. Proceed with a sailor’s tolerance.
If you’re anything like me, ‘Shame’ will be the first NC-17 movie you ever see in theaters. And, aware of this, you’re going to head into your showing with a checklist of totally high school expectations: Fassbender peen? Check. Mulligan carpeting? Threesomes, alley romps, and furious self-administration? You want it, ‘Shame”s got it; this is sexy Christmas come early, especially for people who really don’t care to see ‘The Muppets’. But for all its titillation, ‘Shame’ is about as far from sexy as a movie can be. Once the novelty of the lead actor’s (let’s just SAY it) sizable penis wears off, what you’re left with is maybe the true successor to ‘Precious’ — or, in so many words, a movie that’s by design the opposite of fun. But also excellent?
Imagine for a second that you’re an inappropriately sensitive 20-something whose musical taste has not advanced much in over a decade. (I know it’s a stretch, but keep imagining!) You try out “now” bands, like Vampire Weekend, and genres, like dubstep, but nothing can replace that middle-school-fresh sound you grew up with; nothing can come close to piercing your heart, your SOUL, like the group that essentially defined 7th and 8th grade.
Now imagine that not once in those formative years but several times did you miss out on the chance to see these guys live. Your friends who had older sisters caught them. Even people who didn’t like them all that much so WHY SHOULD THEY GET TO GO? managed to snag tickets. Meanwhile you sat at home, listening to their teenage anthems on a battery-powered Discman. You sobbed and stewed and life just sucked.
Twelve years later you’re a man, sort of, with disposable income — when you apply credit card logic — and an adult’s right to do whatever he wants whenever he wants. Your friend Ashley has landed tickets to your group’s TOUR ENDING show. The stars have finally aligned.
Everyone can take off their imagination caps because it’s time for the BIG REVEAL: the musical group is Blink-182. And that sensitive 20-something, stuck in some 1999 time loop that thankfully does not include JNCO jeans? He’s ME. I KNOW.
The holiday shopping season (as distinct from the shopping-less “holiday season,” which is about stupid things like “family”) has two faces. One is the wacky, Schwarzenegger-punching-a-reindeer side:
And then there’s this:
Across the country last Friday, competitive shoppers of all stripes braved cold, sleep deprivation, and any sense of personal pride to bust down the doors of big box commerce. In this case “bust down” can be used literally, as Friday was BLACK Friday: the one day a year where doors are obstacles, shopping carts weapons, and your only allegiance to an Old Testament, dual-core processor God. It’s a fun party!
…That is until an older man dies of a heart attack and a crazy lady pepper-sprays 20 people in the face. At most parties you dread the moment the cops arrive, but on Black Friday you keep asking when they’ll show up. You’re down on Wall Street and on college campuses roughing up peaceful activists? We could REALLY USE YOU IN ALL THE WAL-MARTS.
BLACK FRIDAY BLACK FRIDAY BLACK FRIDAY means it is now officially Christmas Time (or Hanukkah Time, or…) marking not only the true start of the holiday shopping season but, for a certain part of the population, the green light for an equally affirming activity: grumbling about our 24/7 consumer culture. After all, the only thing comfortably-living people like more than Criterion Collection Blu-rays is talking about how disgusted they are with buying Criterion Collection Blu-rays! Raise your hand if in the past two weeks you’ve heard:
“Christmas decorations already? It’s not even Thanksgiving!”
“I find it sad that we value brand names over quality. Does anyone even like the sweaters at Abercrombie & Fitch?”
“I don’t want anything for the holidays this year, not when kids in Botswana are murdering each other.”
Extravagant purchases – self-awareness + reusable grocery bags + Twitter. WELCOME TO THE 99%, Y’ALL!
LIFTING FOG is the digital home/dumping ground of aspiring writer Henning and actual DJ DJ Steve, two friends who still consider 6th grade a worthy topic of discussion. Unsure three years ago where to share our many and varying thoughts, we accidentally settled here.
We get it, trust us -- the Internet isn't lacking for navel-gazing pop culture blogs disguised as records of burgeoning maturity. But in this complicated and scary world -- one fraught with economic strife, terrorism, and Ed Hardy cologne -- we all need somewhere we can find sweet, ignorant relief. LIFTING FOG is probably not that place, but we're all making compromises these days. Read on!
Dozens of Oscar
The press has gathered and the mics are humming, so now’s as good a time as any to make the big announcement. Nearly four years after launching our blog and Digital Playground ™, Lifting Fog, the time has come to finally close the door…
Henning
DJ Steve
