A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune) (1902) dir. Georges Méliès
Méliès didn’t consider this his best film (he was partial to his epic historical drama Humanity Through the Ages which has unfortunately been lost) but he couldn’t deny it became his most iconic. The rocket ship hitting the moon in the eye has shown up in many contexts; people of a certain age probably first encountered it in the Smashing Pumpkins video for “Tonight”. It’s but one of the many visual delights in this short but let’s take a moment to try and see its novelty anew.
First, there’s the whimsical construction of a literal Man in the Moon, a textured costume head with a live performer’s face poking through. The surface has a spongey quality – after all, we’re in the days when the moon was made of cheese for all we knew – and even spurts some goo when a rocket collides with it. Collides not just anywhere, but right in the Man’s friggin eye, the most visceral place for a viewer to relate to (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both this and fellow iconic silent short “Un Chein Andalou” contain famous eye trauma). Coming up with one of the most famous moving images when there’s not all that many floating around* is nice, but when that image lasts in the public consciousness over a century later, you’ve burrowed quite a deep crater in peoples’ heads.
My personal favorite effect in the film has always been the disappearances via jump cut and a puff of smoke. Again, Méliès works a step ahead, probably drawing on his live theatrical background, when he adds the extra detail of the smoke. The smoke distracts from the mismatched elements of the cut and more importantly frames the cut as part of a deliberate effect, not a mechanical error.
The biggest legacy of this short is its idea of film as its own kind of spectacle, rather than a literal recording of events captured before the lens. There’s been a few stops along the way, but the notion of special effects integrating into the story continues to thrive. Blockbusters as a species may be in a fallow period of creativity at the moment (why am I being corralled into Jurassic World 4?), but all it will take is another rocket to the audience’s eyeball to launch imaginations again.
* Actually, “A Trip to the Moon” fell into obscurity for a number of years before rediscovery, so it’s very possible more people are familiar with it today than even the cinephiles of the 1920s.
What did we watch?
M*A*S*H, Season Two, Episode Six, “Kim”
This is a rare episode that actually has Trapper be his own character, independent of Hawkeye, by playing off his fatherhood when he decides to adopt a seemingly lost Korean boy. He ends up envisioning this as the real reason he was here (“Maybe, but I wouldn’t underestimate your draft board.”). BJ would ultimately work much better as a character in this vein because it would separate his morality and actions from Hawkeye more effectively; this implies much of Trapper;’s behaviour is his way of dealing with a futile situation (whereas Hawkeye seems eternally, joyfully irresponsible outside work).
Biggest laugh: Hawkeye has been making out with a nurse while the kid is asleep. Father Mulcahey enters. “I really stopped by to see Trapper. Is he here?” / “Yeah, but I’m asleep.”
Close follow: “Mind if I come in?” / “You’re a little in to be asking that.”
The Practice, “Part Four” – Well, we’ve got the numbering fixed. The gang gets Big Tobacco to settle (not an impossible outcome by the late 90s), and after the guy who killed his girfriend was found not guilty by reason of insanity, the woman’s father kills him, with the endorsement of his rabbi! This is the episode that won me for good when Eugene reacts to the rabbi appearing on a talk show and defending revenge killing with “that’s not in the Torah.” (In fact, blood avengers are mentioned in the Torah, but never let such facts ruin a good line.) The rabbi is debating with the killer’s priest, the first instance of Kelley grappling with religion and faith on the show.
I assume The Practice is more serious and less funny/batshit crazy than Boston Legal?
Somewhat more serious. There are big issue cases and Kelley is not going to pull punches about the Catholic Church. But a lot of the cases are downright weird, and then we have Michael Emerson as a stalker for a full season (which is when I dropped the show way back when). And every so often Kelley’s mordant sense of humor goes from enlivening things to being at the center.
I saw this episode when it aired, and I believe at this point no one in real life had ever won or successfully settled a tobacco case. The state lawsuits that would result in the gigantic $250 billion Master Settlement in 1998 were already ongoing, and if you were following it you had reason to think it would eventually settle (but nobody expected it would be as big a deal as it actually eventually was). But at this point, tobacco still had a perfect record.
I looked it up, of course, and by the time The Practice aired, there had been a successful court case (the one that was part of The Insider). There is an oblique reference to the case, and a mention of 60 Minutes. This was one instance Kelley let real events lead him.
The X-Files, “Lazarus” and “Young at Heart”
Some good plotting in “Lazarus”–I liked the additional complication of the diabetes, and I liked that Scully changed tactics when talking to Dupre-in-Willis about it, switching from trying to draw out Willis (challenging) to humoring the paranormal conceit so she could focus on appealing to Dupre’s self-interest in order to try to save Willis–and some good Scully-Mulder interaction. There’s a particularly nice moment at the end where Mulder has the chance to press his point about the true nature of the case, and you can see that naturally occur to him … and then see him decide to give it up, prioritizing how Scully’s feeling, and what will help her, over any chance to insist, or even prove, that he was right: “It means whatever you want it to mean.”
If “Eve” is the episode everyone likes that I was lukewarm on, “Young at Heart” is the one I like that everyone is lukewarm (or worse) on. It’s not a great or even good episode, but I enjoyed it, especially thanks to a good guest performance from Robin Mossley (chilly but compelling), some creepy sequences, and a satisfyingly disgusting salamander-human hand. Does it feel a little bit like a grown-up Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode? Yes. Do I mind? Not too much. And there’s a great, tiny-but-effective use of the Cigarette-Smoking Man.
A lot of X-Files has a grown up Are You Afraid of the Dark energy and I’m okay with that!
I’m waiting for Mulder to go up against a terrifying clown.
There is a freak show carnival episode but I don’t think there’s a clown…
One thing I notice is that even at its most dogshit, the show always uses Smoking Man to brilliant effect. You haven’t even gotten to the parts of of the show where William Davis suggests, entirely through performance, that SM is a coward performing strength.
Oh, I’m excited to keep an eye out for that. (And excited for more of him in general, since even the smallest glimpse of him here was an excellent addition.)
His main episode is probably my favorite of the ones I watched, felt like Ellroy was ghostwriting the series for a second. (More likely someone on staff had read American Tabloid.)
BTAS, “House and Garden” and “Baby Doll” – Both are written by Paul Dini about women creating family on their own terms and creating simulacra’s of the heteronormative experience outside reproduction. The Rehearsal, eat your heart out! I enjoy the Brood-style horror of the former, with it’s implication that Ivy’s plant-based forms are in part created from the doc’s semen (something the censors missed), but the latter has less blocky dialogue and builds to this gut punch of a climax. (One great animation detail is how Dahl’s face, once she shifts back into adult mode, drops the cherubic smile and reveals crows feet.) Baby Doll is less sinister and more deeply sad, as implied by Batman pleading with her to get help then silently hugging her, another lost soul in Gotham.
What BTAS does better than any other version, as much as I love and often prefer them, is sell that Batman genuinely cares about offering the villains any way out of their problems specifically because he had one bad day too and knows how they feel.
One thing I like about The Batman, flawed as it is, is Bats going on the path towards the BTAS version of the character.
Hell yeah Georges Méliès! There’s such a playful spirit to his films, I love it. This one takes a while to get going, every time I revisit it I find the opening couple of scenes to really drag, but once it gets up to speed it’s magnificent. The Impossible Voyage from a couple of years later feels like he’s sorted out the pacing and is also so much fun, even if it lacks that killer iconic image.
Agreed, I remember that he was a stage magician and that sense of trickery is always a delight in his movies.
The way this kind of delight continues all this time later makes me wonder why practical effects are at such a low point – they don’t even have to look “good,” they’re fun in and of themselves!
This, a thousand times. And even when they don’t come with the great dazzle of Méliès’s work, there’s still a joy to seeing something with an obvious sense of craftsmanship: a puppet or animatronic, a painted backdrop, a model. Humans like seeing stuff recognizably made/done by other humans. Someone doing a cool trick with a yoyo will always be more immediately attention-grabbing than CGI.
I’ll always remember my daughter’s reaction to a scene in Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland – a big extravagant CGI effects journey into an alternate dimension that she sat stone-faced through, then she almost lost her mind when the main character appears to drink an entire bottle of Coke in a few seconds. Kids know the score! We enjoy cartoons, but we’re not impressed by them.
The nephews loved The Blues Brothers and a huge part of that is its cartoonish sensibility with very real effects – not just the god-level car destruction but Carrie Fisher blowing up their apartment. Lot of dust and rubble!
“Someone doing a cool trick with a yoyo will always be more immediately attention-grabbing than CGI.”
New profile pic for Lauren:
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/simpsons/images/6/6a/Sparkle.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20220327003925
Well, that link didn’t work for me.
One thing I did read is they’re more expensive than CGI which, whatever, gimme the practical anyway.
I honestly think the biggest thing is that the suits can’t make you change things for fucking ever with practical effects.
Programming Note! As announced on the Magpies discord, starting next week Thursday mornings will host The Captain’s Log, Nath’s weekly TV recap! Open threads will continue as always with the added bonus of multiple TV discussion prompts and recommendations on Thursdays.
I’ve loved being the Thursday morning daily writer but with a new job coming up in the fall I just won’t be able to commit to a weekly schedule. I will still be around and contributing!
Very glad you’ll still be around, even if you have to scale back the articles a little to–*checks notes*–create a more educated future or something.
The one bonus is that this will give me time to make my way through my accumulated backlog of Deep Dive Doc and Lunch Link recommendations. Always such a pleasure to be pointed towards stuff I would rarely have found on my own.
It’d be funny if it didn’t create immediate pressure on me that this is happening right as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Digman! are returning with new seasons on Wednesday nights.