Too saccharine, too ponderous - Movie Mogul feels films are capable of more

"Snyder is capable of more. Maybe he’ll gets a sequel to work out what that actually is." - Robert McKay

NVDL: I opened The Times this morning and found two movies in the centre sweep I've been dying to watch - Slumdog Millionaire and Watchmen. McKay trashes both in two small, not very well researched articles.

I haven't seen the flick Slumdog Millionaire. It's been called the feel-good film of the decade, and I have a grudge against the flick purely on the basis that it nudged Dark Knight out of so many awards. But this film did haul away all the Oscars. And it is about a subject that will be creeping into our consciousness this year especially, and going beyond - poverty. Not having enough money. For such a big flick it's a shame the Movie Mogul dedicates less print space than you could fit under the palm of your one hand. This, which the Mogul dismisses as 'silly escapism' , for probably the most important movie of the year, written by a guy based in South Africa.

Right next door is a column titled QUICK REVIEW. Bizarrely, it appears even longer than McKay's treatise on Slumdog. McKay's been off before, for example his assessment on Dark Knight was generally not shared by the Academy or by the masses. Dark Knight he says "...doesn’t make for very good storytelling." He wants Batman to be more camp, more fun.
http://www.thetimes.co.za/Entertainment/Article.aspx?id=808507

One of the reasons not all films are fun, is that art reflects life, and life reflects the diversity of ideas that comprise our universal experience. For example, death is a part of life, and heartbreak, and crime and corruption. You have your bull markets and your bears. Ups and downs. A little bit of research on WIRED.com [they have about half a dozen articles on WATCHMEN today] and WIKI gives an idea that the darkness of these stories is done on purpose, to communicate an urgent message, a serious message, to a world that is perhaps too distracted by fun and infotainment. Also, the zeitgeist is growing darker - the same factors that predicated comic characters in the first place are back - Depression era economics.

As it happens, most of the world agrees with these storytellers beause they are reflecting the reigning zeitgeist. Our angst. Explaining to us our debacle. We need less campy escapism not more. We need to start thinking about some of the real problems of this world, and movies about a parallel reality are a start. Why then do these efforts have to be dismissed by a reviewer who doesn't want to think about the films he's watching, he just wants to have fun (but don't make it too silly, or too sweet either). Is this a good attitude for the rest of us?

It makes me wonder who shares his opinion beyond his editor.

clipped from www.thetimes.co.za SUPERHERO movies are no fun anymore. And the explanation seems to be that they are no longer based on comic books. Instead they plunder the world of the “graphic novel”, which is like a comic book only it’s for grown-ups — at least, ostensibly. So instead of cheap thrills, we get existential brooding. Director Zack Snyder takes this new dark and gritty approach to its extreme with Watchmen, adapted from the celebrated graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The result is one of the most violent and unexpectedly raunchy superhero movies in Hollywood history. But it’s also one of the most ponderous. Whether this is evidence of the same slavish devotion to the original work he exhibited with 300, I can’t say as I haven’t read the graphic novel. Maybe he’ll gets a sequel to work out what that actually is.