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Movies and Such
Oct. 16th, 2010 10:59 amLast night some friends and I went to see the new comedy Red, starring Helen Mirren (and assorted others, but you can guess why I went /g/). It was silly in the extreme, which of course I expected. I mean, it's action/caper comedy of the sort that features a huge number of explosions and a great deal of shooting and virtually no blood -- the sort of film where a crack crew of ten CIA assassins armed with enormous assault weapons can literally shoot the walls out of a house and fail to kill their target. The plot holes cannot even reasonably be called "holes" unless the words "massive, building-swallowing, sink-" are attached.
It's theoretically possible, of course, to do a sophisticated, subtle caper comedy with a bit of depth mixed into the explosions and miraculous escapes. This picture, however, is not that film.
But it was fun, and I enjoyed it, and Helen was the best of them. (Seriously. It's not just my unobjective love of her. Honest.) And Ernest Borgnine was in it! He's a robust-looking 93.
We also ate Italian food beforehand, with a nice Chianti (but no fava beans).
And in the sappy-romance department, my partner and child went to see the film in NYC at the same time, so that we could have a virtual date.
All this has led me to ruminate about the recent phenomenon of nearly-geriatric genre pictures. There was that Clint Eastwood movie of a year or so ago, where the 80-something "Make My Day" vet takes out a swarm of punks who are terrorizing his neighborhood. (I did not see this film, but I saw the trailers, which told us everything we need to know: not only old folks fighting off the encroachments of youth, but white guys taking out vicious Asian kids. It plays in to all those middle-class, conservative white fears of immigrants and otherness in general.)
Clearly the Baby Boomers are still an economic force -- if not to be reckoned with, then at least to be exploited. So as the first Boomers begin to turn 65 next year, I predict we'll see many more of these sorts of films/books/TV shows: older people who've still "got it," can still do the things they did in the youth that they never really gave up and now refuse to define in actual years. We're going to see more 50-to-70-year-old tough guys besting the young whippersnappers, more over-50 romance, more shots of Helen Mirren in an evening gown with an AK-47 (metaphorically speaking. And probably literally, too.) Perhaps eventually, these scenarios won't all be played in that sort of patronizing "look at the cute old folks, they're in love, ain't that sweet?" way that is all too popular now.
So you see, dear flist, we have been in the vanguard with our old-woman and old-man smut. Now we just have to write marketable formula fiction along these lines and MAKE MONEY.
It's theoretically possible, of course, to do a sophisticated, subtle caper comedy with a bit of depth mixed into the explosions and miraculous escapes. This picture, however, is not that film.
But it was fun, and I enjoyed it, and Helen was the best of them. (Seriously. It's not just my unobjective love of her. Honest.) And Ernest Borgnine was in it! He's a robust-looking 93.
We also ate Italian food beforehand, with a nice Chianti (but no fava beans).
And in the sappy-romance department, my partner and child went to see the film in NYC at the same time, so that we could have a virtual date.
All this has led me to ruminate about the recent phenomenon of nearly-geriatric genre pictures. There was that Clint Eastwood movie of a year or so ago, where the 80-something "Make My Day" vet takes out a swarm of punks who are terrorizing his neighborhood. (I did not see this film, but I saw the trailers, which told us everything we need to know: not only old folks fighting off the encroachments of youth, but white guys taking out vicious Asian kids. It plays in to all those middle-class, conservative white fears of immigrants and otherness in general.)
Clearly the Baby Boomers are still an economic force -- if not to be reckoned with, then at least to be exploited. So as the first Boomers begin to turn 65 next year, I predict we'll see many more of these sorts of films/books/TV shows: older people who've still "got it," can still do the things they did in the youth that they never really gave up and now refuse to define in actual years. We're going to see more 50-to-70-year-old tough guys besting the young whippersnappers, more over-50 romance, more shots of Helen Mirren in an evening gown with an AK-47 (metaphorically speaking. And probably literally, too.) Perhaps eventually, these scenarios won't all be played in that sort of patronizing "look at the cute old folks, they're in love, ain't that sweet?" way that is all too popular now.
So you see, dear flist, we have been in the vanguard with our old-woman and old-man smut. Now we just have to write marketable formula fiction along these lines and MAKE MONEY.