Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie

Film: Action Movies / Body / Spirituality / Technology / Violence / To Read

Fri, 31 Aug 07 17:04:17 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies / Body / Spirituality / Technology / Violence / To Read
Text: Rikke Schubart identifies two themes in action films -- 'passion' and 'acceleration'
the 'passion' axis draws on Rene Girard's "sacrifice plot," "in which societies sacrifice scapegoats to avoid social crises" (Lichtenfeld's summary)
"a hero is marginalized, chosen to handle a crisis, sacrificed, and finally, resurrected" (30)
the 'acceleration' axis contains things like "kinetic energy ... explosions, pure speed, the hard body, invulnerability, invincibility, impenetrability"
Lichtenfeld expands this to include "the destruction visited upon cars, buildings, and other such objects"
Rikke Schubart regards The Terminator as a film in which the theme of "acceleration" separates from its traditional pair ("passion"): "It tore itself away and became a theme in its own right."
the Schubart article appears in Routledge's Violence and American Cinema (2001)
Date: 08/24/07
ID: 8614

Film: Action Movies / Timeline

Fri, 31 Aug 07 17:04:17 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies / Timeline
Text: 1967
Bonnie and Clyde
a "New Hollywood" milestone
featuring "staccato editing, slow motion, overbearing sound, and gore"
"[It] helped end the Production Code and ushered in the less restrictive Motion Picture Association of America"
see also 1971's Billy Jack, Shaft, and The French Connection
and (especially) Dirty Harry, "the action film's first true archetype"
Date: 08/24/07
ID: 8615

Film / Genre / To Read

Fri, 31 Aug 07 17:04:17 -0500

Keywords: Film / Genre / To Read
Text: Todd Berliner's "genre-breakers" and "genre-benders"
Lichtenfeld's summary: "genre-breakers ... use the [genre] conventions to attack the genre ideologically" and genre-benders "distend their genres just enough to mislead audiences who have been prepared for a familiar, generically proscribed outcome"
see Berliner's "Genre Film as Booby Trap" in Cinema Journal 40, no. 3 (2001)
Date: 08/24/07
ID: 8616

Film: Action Movies / Genre

Fri, 31 Aug 07 17:04:17 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies / Genre
Text: the action film "comprises different trends"; it is "a synthesis of other genres" (Lichtenfeld)
(the Western, the noir, the police procedural, combat film, science fiction)
"It is ... an extrapolation of the most essential narrative elements from *all* of the pre-existing action-oriented genres"
(Richard Slotkin, in Foreword)
Date: 08/24/07
ID: 8617

Film: Action Movies / Crime / Power / Violence

Fri, 31 Aug 07 17:04:17 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies / Crime / Power / Violence
Text: Eric Lichtenfeld's distinction between the action film and the police procedural:
"In the action film, investigative procedure is second to the genre's real concern: not the investigation of crime, but rather the obliteration of criminals."
Date: 08/24/07
ID: 8618

Film: Action Movie

Fri, 31 Aug 07 17:04:17 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movie
Text: Joel Silver 's "whammy theory" = one major sequence per reel
Date: 08/24/07
ID: 8619

Film: Action Movies / To See / To Do

Fri, 31 Aug 07 17:21:37 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies / To See / To Do
Text: the "home invasion" film
John Berry's He Ran All the Way (1951)
William Wyler's The Desperate Hours (1955)
influences on John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13?
see also: Panic Room? Straw Dogs? Funny Games? The new "Them"? You've got half the makings of a Facets film class here
Date: 08/24/07
ID: 8620

Film / Industrial Age / Architecture / Myth: Orpheus

Fri, 31 Aug 07 17:04:17 -0500

Keywords: Film / Industrial Age / Architecture / Myth: Orpheus
Text: Jackson DeGovia (production designer on Red Dawn, Die Hard, and Speed):
"Designers like industrial settings because they're massive, they're masculine, and they light well. Switch engines and steel presses; they're the ultimate toys for boys. [Industrial settings] have lots of places to hide, lots of levels. You can be very free there."
Also: "The industrial interior is not about human beings. These are the waste products of society. The [industrial setting] has the mystique of the lair, of abandonment. It is Orpheus-into-the-underworld, where evil comes from."
Date: 08/31/07
ID: 8613

Film: Action Movies / Ritual / Body / Technology

Sat, 01 Sep 07 16:40:24 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies / Ritual / Body / Technology
Text: Eric Lichtenfeld comments upon the "practically ceremonial" montages in Rambo, Cobra, and Commando
"What is ritualized is the body ... the body and weapons ... or weapons and actual rituals"
"The montage is in itself a ritual"
Date: 09/01/07
ID: 8649

Film: Action Films

Sat, 01 Sep 07 16:42:04 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Films
Text: villains, in the action film, are the figures that "take pleasure in transgression" (Lichtenfeld, 85)
see Commando's Matrix character, or Dirty Harry's Scorpio, or many others
Date: 09/01/07
ID: 8650

Film: Action Movies

Sat, 01 Sep 07 16:47:08 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies
Text: Lethal Weapon (and 48 Hrs) are partaking in the "mismatched buddy tradition that dates back to early sound comedies"
"In action movie partnerships, a hero will be assigned his opposite: if one is older or reserved, the other is young or brase (the Lethal Weapon series, the two Stakeout films, Tango & Cash, The Rookie, Bad Boys, The Rock); if one is a battle-hardened cop, the other is a starry-eyed tagalong (The Hard Way, Last Action Hero, Showtime); if one is black, the other is white (Magnum Force, the Lethal Weapons, Off Limits, The Last Boy Scout, Die Hard with a Vengeance, the two 48 Hrs. films, the 1986 Running Scared); if one is American, the other is Chinese (the Rush Hour films) or a Soviet (Red Heat); if one is human, the other is a machine (the Robocop series), an extra-terrestria (Alien Nation), or the undead (Dead Heat)."
Date: 09/01/07
ID: 8651

Film: Action Movies / War / Other

Wed, 12 Sep 07 22:01:52 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies / War / Other
Text: Many action movies (Rambo and Predator, most notably) appropriate the successful skills of the Viet Cong and attribute them to "American" heroes
scholars like Michael Comber and Michael o'Brien hace noted that "Rambo resembles the Viet Cong in both his fighting strategies and in his opposition to American authority"
Date: 09/12/07
ID: 9295

Sexuality / Spirituality / Control

Wed, 12 Sep 07 22:04:33 -0500

Keywords: Sexuality / Spirituality / Control
Text: Eric Lichtenfeld quotes this intriguing passage from Susan Sontag (on Leni Riefenstahl):
"[T]he fascist ideal ... is to transform sexual energy into a 'spiritual' force, for the benefit of the community."
Date: 09/12/07
ID: 9307

Film: Action Movies

Wed, 12 Sep 07 22:07:02 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies
Text: Die Hard clones or progeny--
Toy Soldiers, The Taking of Beverly Hills, Passenger 57, Under Siege and Under Siege 2, Speed and Speed 2, Cliffhanger, Sudden Death, The Rock, Executive Decision, Con Air, Air Force One
Date: 09/12/07
ID: 9319

Film: Action Movies / Film: Westerns

Wed, 12 Sep 07 22:11:54 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies / Film: Westerns
Text: Lichtenfeld compares Die Hard against High Noon-- not just in the emphasis on the final showdown, but also because "McTiernan [often] pushes McClane to the margins of the frame -- usually the left margin, as Fred Zinneman had framed Gary Cooper in High Noon ... McClane does not control the frame; it controls him." (164)
Date: 09/12/07
ID: 9331

Film: Action Film / Narrative

Wed, 12 Sep 07 22:14:57 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Film / Narrative
Text: Larry Wachowski:
"American filmmakers have gotten to the point where they just create their fights in the editing room. Those types of sequences are just designed for a visceral, flash-cut impact. Hong Kong action directors actually bring narrative arcs into the fights, and tell a little story within the fighting."
Date: 09/12/07
ID: 9343

Film: Action Movies / Violence / Editing

Thu, 13 Sep 07 09:55:28 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies / Violence / Editing
Text: "As filmmakers top one another, and as the viewer's tolerance increases, filmmakers try to approximate physical sensation with technique that in the digital age, has become increasingly expressionistic. This technique may seem to make the action more intense, but really, it only widens the gulf between seeing an act depicted and sensing it on one's actual flesh."
-Lichtenfeld, 277
Date: 09/13/07
ID: 9377

Film / Narrative / Media / Corporations / Sport

Thu, 13 Sep 07 10:00:47 -0500

Keywords: Film / Narrative / Media / Corporations / Sport
Text: cross-media / cross-platform promotions re Van Helsing:
-- Universal launches "The Monster Legacy Collection" on DVD and a "Monster Legacy" clothing line [!]
--monster-related attractions at Universal Studios Hollywood
--monster-related attractions at Madame Toussaud's wax museum
--a Van Helsing video game
--a straight-to-DVD animated prequel
--promotional partnerships with Carl's Jr., Toys R Us, and the American Red Cross [!]
--promotional partnerships with TNT (a division of Time-Warner, and associated with the NBA [!] -- attempting to unify "the theme of the movie with the themes of our playoff coverage," according to Turner Entertainment drone Chris Eames)
Not sure how much of this constitutes "storytelling" in any meaningful sense
Date: 09/13/07
ID: 9400

Film: Action Movies / Virus / Other

Thu, 13 Sep 07 10:03:38 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies / Virus / Other
Text: Lichtenfeld posits that the outfits in action-movie cinema "[insulate] their wearers from all that is pathological in a world obsessed with purity."
Cobra, Commando, Blade
Date: 09/13/07
ID: 9412

Film: Action Movies / Violence

Thu, 13 Sep 07 10:06:54 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies / Violence
Text: the action film's most basic tropes, according to Lichtenfeld:
"sadism, masochism, martyrdom, vigilantism, vengeance, violent salvation, rescuing innocents, and the clash of the subhuman and the superhuman"
these are distilled in Sin City
Date: 09/13/07
ID: 9424

Boredom / Attention

Thu, 13 Sep 07 10:07:43 -0500

Keywords: Boredom / Attention
Text: Anthony Lane, on Con Air:
"There is nothing so boring in life, let alone in cinema, as the boredom of being excited all the time."
Date: 09/13/07
ID: 9436

Film: Action Movies / Ethics / Narrative

Thu, 13 Sep 07 10:09:25 -0500

Keywords: Film: Action Movies / Ethics / Narrative
Text: Lichtenfeld: "We can find an action film's conscience, or lack thereof, in how it treats [its] noncombatants, because here is how the filmmakers choose to present life and death as an abstract or pure value -- that is, as a value uncomplicated by considerations of story."
Date: 09/13/07
ID: 9459