Every Friday, a cold shiver ripples through the blogosphere: Whose turn is it to be screen tested? I’m talking about DVD Panache, of course, the award-winning blog where Adam Ross hosts an on-going series under the name Friday Screen Test. Each week, someone from the film blogging community is asked to answer ten questions. The resulting posts are always rewarding, either as a way get to know your favorite bloggers better or to discover online personalities you’ve never heard of before.

And yes, I’m afraid it’s my turn today.

Adam, being the sneaky bastard that he is, knows that it’s the most simple questions that are the hardest to answer. When I received his list of ten by email, I almost burned a hole in my computer screen mulling them over–instant writer’s block! Fortunately, it was just a phase…

So let’s get down to business: If you’re wondering how Peet outside his comfort zone sounds like, and if you’re not easily put-off by a few personal confessions, check out today’s Friday Screen Test.

This is my contribution to Damian Arlyn’s Film Music Blog-a-Thon at Windmills of My Mind. ___________________________________________________________

A catchy negative term can do a lot of damage. As far as film criticism is concerned, just consider the massive abuse of a phrase like “style over substance,” a knee-jerk “yeah, right” to instantly smother a filmmaker’s poetic license, or the buzzword of the moment: “torture porn.” In more or less the same category falls the catchphrase “Mickey Mousing.”

Mickey Mousing is the standard description for film music that directly mimics the action onscreen. You know, just like the old Disney shorts: Goofy falls flat on his face–TOOT!–a tuba honks. A classic example is the ending of the original King Kong, in which the music is crescendoed in such a way as to suit Kong’s motions in climbing the Empire State Building.

In criticial and educational circles, Mickey Mousing is often looked down upon. The general consensus is that it’s lazy, cheap and old-fashioned for a soundtrack to ape the visuals. And yet many Hollywood maestros frequently make use of the technique: Danny Elfman (Beetlejuice, The Simpsons), Hans Zimmer (Spirit, Pirates of the Caribbean) and the late Jerry Goldsmith (Gremlins, Total Recall).

The opposite of Mickey Mousing takes place when a piece of music complements the images to establish a general mood or theme. This is usually called “underscoring.” Contemporary underscorers are Cliff Martinez (Traffic, Solaris), Michael Nyman (The Piano, Gattaca), Gustavo Santaolalla (Brokeback Mountain, Babel), Thomas Newman (American Beauty, Little Children), Alexandre Desplat (Birth, Syriana) and Philip Glass (Candyman, The Hours). These guys rarely emphasize what’s already on the screen, and needless to say, I appreciate their work as much as the next cinephile.

The king of Mickey Mousing?

With no one questioning the merits of underscoring, why exactly deserves Mickey Mousing such a bad rap? What seems to bug people the most is that it wears its intentions on its sleeve. Mickey Mousing tells the audience explicitly what to look for, how to empathize, and when to laugh, cry or shiver. It takes the frontal assault, whereas most critical minds prefer a soundtrack to blend into the background and leave room for personal reflection. Frankly, some of us don’t like to be blatantly manipulated.

Even respectable directors like Sidney Lumet (in his excellent book Making Movies) and John Carpenter (in his director’s commentary on the Prince of Darkness DVD) have openly expressed their disdain for Mickey Mousing. The latter jokingly crowned John Williams the king of Mickey Mousing. In the same breath, Carpenter claimed that Bernard Hermann was the quintessential underscore composer, with Vertigo being an honorable example.

Fair enough. A bombastic music cue like The Imperial March (you know the one: “TAAA! TAAA! TAAA! TAA-TADAA! TAA-TADAA!”) leaves little room for ambiguity. It practically screams out to the audience: Beware! Something Sinister, Totalitarian and Oppressive has entered the room! And honestly, isn’t that exactly what makes the tune so irresistable to begin with? When a hard-breathing Darth Vader is about to wipe Rebellion ass, do we expect anything less than military drums and pumping brass? Of course not! A gentle woodwinds motif just wouldn’t cut it…

Click to hear a sample of The Imperial March

By the same token, what’s not to love about Hans Zimmer in prime fighting shape, or a rousing Danny Elfman score? And before you start to think that Mickey Mousing doesn’t leave room for subtlety: Take another look at the prom scene in Carrie, in which Pino Donaggio’s music Mickey-Mouses in perfect harmony with Brian De Palma’s visual orchestrations to bring you to the edge of your seat in anticipation for the bucket of blood to fall.

In fact, I’d even argue that Vertigo’s soundtrack, which Carpenter embraces as a full-blooded piece of underscoring, incorporates quite a bit of Mickey Mousing. There’s no doubt that Herrmann’s haunting score is layered and full of conflicting emotions, but it sounds fittingly lyrical when Scottie and Madeleine share a passionate kiss, and appropriately disturbing when Scottie’s fear of heights comes into play. And wasn’t it Hermann who wrote Mickey Mousing history by syncing shrieking strings to the fatal stabs of a killer’s knife in the world’s most famous shower scene? When a composer drums up a frenetic, percussive score to support a thrilling car chase, or lays an elegiac theme over a melancholic tableau, his or her technique isn’t that far removed from Mickey Mousing. The music still follows and punctuates the visuals–only the beats are longer.

Sometimes film music is supposed to take a back seat or provide its own commentary on what happens in the picture. Sometimes film music needs to work in tandem with the visuals to help the viewer relate with the characters or a given situation. Both approaches are legitimate. You can spend the rest of your life arguing wether Thomas Newman (Finding Nemo) or Scott Bradley (Tom & Jerry) wrote the superior soundtrack, and I’ll say: Isn’t it great that we don’t have to make these either/or choices? We can have both to enjoy!

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“Our minds may focus on what there is to see, how we experience the view is often heard.”
Sound as Vision: Riding The Blind Giant

With the heated debate over the moral repercussions of Eli Roth’s latest blood fest currently dominating the blogosphere, it’s high time to switch over to a lighter and altogether more pleasant subject…

You’ve probably heard by now that they’re planning a Barbarella remake. Some are screaming blasphemy already, but I’m all for it. Apart from the shagadelic art direction and Jane Fonda’s impossibly sexy leading role, the original has lots to improve on.

Robert Rodriguez will be helming the project. Sounds like a groovy choice to me. The guy has a natural flair for superficial, glossy trash and Barbarella’s universe should be right up his alley. What’s more: this is the man who gave us Desperado’s Carolina and Sin City’s Gail, so I trust him to push the costume designs in the appropriate, sleazy direction.

There’s just one big question: How on Earth are they going to find an actress as INSANELY HOT as Jane Fonda in her prime? It’s impossible, right?

Well… almost impossible.

I present you: Katherine Heigl.

A spectacular blonde with dark brown Bambi eyes, a killer body and genuine acting chops. If this isn’t tomorrow’s It-Girl, I’ll eat my shoe before a rolling camera. Honestly, you don’t actually believe it’s the dorky Seth Rogen that’s responsible for drawing massive crowds to Judd Apatow’s sleeper hit comedy Knocked Up, do you? Of course not, it’s Izzie Stevens from Grey’s Anatomy!

Just watch this clip and nod in approval:

No need for a screentest: Katherine Heigl is the 5-star double-rated astro-navigatrix of the future!

Sure, I’ve heard the other names that have been tossed around. I love Salma Hayek and Scarlett Johansson, but they’re too short for the role. Uma Thurman or Cameron Diaz? Old hat. Drew Barrymore? Sorry, not up to standard. Angelina Jolie or Rose McGowan? Way too dominant. (Barbarella is submissive at heart, not a sexual predator!) Jessica Alba? Small potatoes. Kate Beckinsale? Hold on–that’s actually a pretty decent second choice, but surely no match for Heigl…

Just picture this girl in a transparent perpex top and plastic thigh-high boots… Mr. Rodriguez, are you paying attention? (And now we’re at it: for God’s sake, keep the title sequence, will ya?)

Is anyone with me on this? Am I leaving out any promising contenders? Let me know! Meanwhile, here’s one more pic:

After discovering Dennis Cozzalio’s blog entry on the hilarious Chuck Norris Facts website, I was reminded of the chart below that I had filed under “Nonsense” on my laptop.

Mr. Norris may come with a mean pack of one-liners (There is no chin under Chuck Norris’ Beard. There is only another fist), but mr. Seagal is armed with lethal acting skills. Lev Kuleshov would have a field day experimenting with this master of action cinema.

Sunshine, a sci-fi epic, directed by Danny Boyle, about a team of scientists sent on a mission to reignite a dying sun, is neither a mindless Michael Bay extravaganza nor a chin-strokey affair in the vein of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris. It’s the cinematic oxymoron many of us have been waiting for: the thinking man’s action movie. It also happens to be gobsmackingly stunning, ruthlessly intense, handsomely cast and blessed with a 100% INSANE last act that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but had yours truly grinning from ear to ear. Danny Boyle’s Sunshine is a spectacle quite impossible to put into words, and that’s exactly what makes it brilliant cinema–albeit the kind that’s difficult to defend on theoretical grounds.
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Read the rest of this (spoiler-free) article on The House Next Door. Yes, you heard me. Go on now!

God, this is truly embarrassing…

This is a promo I directed a few years back to introduce the new host of a Dutch cooking show. The first, creepy part was improvised in little over an hour’s time, in the vault cellar of what used to be an old bank, right in the centre of Amsterdam. It was just one of those locations that triggered one idea after the other.

And yes: that jerky head-movement was inspired by Jacob’s Ladder. Editing this was a lot of fun.

Listen up, Negative Space travelers: I need to hear what you think. This week I’m posting three (!) new cartoons (Sparky Goes To Hollywood being the first), and I’ve got a few more in the sketching stage. If you like the sound of that, then this post is for you…

When I posted my first film-related cartoon on the 1st of January this year, I had no idea I’d still be drawing them four months later. These little doodles have turned out to be a very satisfying form of criticism for me. The response so far has been more than positive (both online and in private) and after encouraging words by the likes of Jim Emerson, Matt Seitz, Dennis Cozzalio, Andy Horbal, The Shamus alias That Little Round-Headed Boy and Girish Shambu, I’m seriously getting into the swing of it.

A while ago, 24Lies contributor Bob Cumbow half-jokingly remarked, “Once you have done enough of them, I expect you to publish these cartoons in a book, which I will happily buy for myself and several of my friends.” For someone with a background in graphics, this seemed a tantalizing prospect, albeit a little far-fetched. You just don’t publish and distribute a book that easily. Or do you?

Apparantly, one does. Not long after Bob’s email, I discovered the Print On Demand service Lulu.com, and it dawned on me: I could actually do this. The digital age has finally made it possible. With a little effort, I can self-publish a book – paperback, hardcover, glued or binded – sell it online and have it shipped automatically to anywhere in the world. I wouldn’t have to sell my soul for it, and I’d still own the copyrights. Better yet: publishing won’t cost me a penny–not even if nobody would buy it.

Can you tell I’m excited?

So there it is: my statement of purpose for 2007. I’m going to continue posting one cartoon a week in the image resolution you’ve grown accustomed to. By the end of the year I’ll have 52 of them. The cartoons will then be collected in bookform (Negative Space Year One?) and printed in their original high-res, full-color glory. I may even decide to include my celluloid fantasia Nighthawks, a 24LiesASecond essay not unlike a cartoon stretched to short story length. As an online publication, Nighthawks suffered from being too long and dense to read on a computer screen, but it might blossom as part of a book.

My questions for you are: Would you be interested in buying this book? If so, would you go for the hardcover coffeetable-version or the cheap pulpy pocket version? Would you want it to come out in time for Christmas? And now we’re at it: Is any of you interested in other publications of this kind? (An anthology of 24LiesASecond essays, for example.)

Perhaps it’s time for us bloggers to reach out beyond cyberspace. What do you think: Is print the final frontier, or an evolutionary step back? See you in the comment section (or drop me an email, if you’re shy)!

OK, you’ll have to allow me this little detour into teenage obsession. When I was about ten, my parents bought me a View-Master with a 3-reel set of Tarzan of the Apes. Being the dreamer that I was – and still am, I suppose – I just loved to get lost inside those stereoscopic images, and I’ve looked at them so often that they must have left a questionable imprint on my young brain. The lush, nightmarish tableaux struck a nerve in me. All that muscle, the big hairy apes, plus a Jane outfit so tight that I kept expecting it to burst open… Let’s be honest: This was nothing less than a sexual awakening.

Unfortunately, I lended my View-Master reels out to a friend, who lost them when he moved to another house. Since then, all I had left was my memory of them. Enter the Internet… More than twenty years later, I googled the words “Tarzan view master” and guess what? There they were: All 21 images collected on a single webpage, captions included! As soon as I discovered this link, a wide grin appeared on my face. Too bad the pictures looked a tad fuzzy, I thought. Then it occurred to me that they were perhaps fuzzy for a reason. I grabbed the red-and-green glasses that came with my son’s Spy Kids 3D DVD (no recommendation), and yes sir: Glorious 3D! A lot of detail, sense of depth and color information got lost in the translation to cyberspace, but this 36-year-old kid is grateful nonetheless.

There’s something about this artwork (a combination of miniatures, clay models and matte paintings?) that I still find incredibly appealing. It’s the sensuous mixture of realism and artifice, kitsch and craft, romance and savagery; the melodramatic poses; the chiaroscuro (some of the lighting is pure Caravaggio); the meticulous staging. This is what Ray Harryhausen’s wet dreams should look like.

Go get your 3D glasses (I know you saved them in a drawer somewhere) and have a look yourself. Do any of you recognize this View-Master set? Is there someone who can tell me more about who made it, and how? Which animation studio will have the guts to produce a CGI-feature that looks as awesome as this?

Goody, goody, goody! Today, Cartoon Brew’s Amid Amidi and Jerry Beck officially launched CartoonBrewFilms.com: making “the world’s finest animated shorts available for convenient download to your iPod and personal computer.”

If the first three shorts are any indication, we’re up for something really special here! Ever wondered how an independent, adult short from the guys at Disney and Pixar would look like? Just take a peek at the color board below. Boys Night Out by Teddy Newton and Bert Klein feels like sexual education with Gerald McBoing Boing.

Go check it out for yourself. The shorts cost $2,00 each–a pretty good deal if you ask me. This initiative deserves all the support it can get!