{"id":17599,"date":"2022-03-23T00:36:08","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T00:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=17599"},"modified":"2022-03-22T19:39:26","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T19:39:26","slug":"out-of-touch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/23\/out-of-touch\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Out Of Touch\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Eric Valentine<\/em><\/p>\n

Fifteen years ago at the Oscars, Best Supporting Actor winner George Clooney and star of the film \u201cSyriana\u201d used part of his acceptance speech to make a political statement. Sensing the annual backlash against the Hollywood elites from some collective societal grouping of like minds (usually a conservative collective, but not always), Clooney went pre-emptive. He said Hollywood is often accused of being \u201cout of touch\u201d and then went on to note a few instances of when filmmakers broached important subjects no one was talking about. He said, firmly, \u201cI\u2019m proud to be out of touch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, with the early spring award show fast approaching like a reliable garden of irises, along comes a film that won\u2019t be winning any Oscars\u2014most likely\u2014but is proof that some Hollywood filmmakers are not out of touch.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Adam Project\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Who needs Marvel, DC and Indiana Jones when you have movies like \u2018The Adam Project\u2019? OK, before I lose you, let me categorically declare all modern action flicks need Indiana Jones.<\/p>\n

A lesser known film\u2014notice how I lean toward \u2018movie,\u2019 not \u2018film,\u2019 to describe TAP\u2014called \u2018About Time\u2019 is the only time-travel script to seamlessly blend the suspension of disbelief into its plot. That\u2019s not because it avoids science\u2014although less is more when it comes to time-travel movies. Rather, it\u2019s due to tripling down on emotion, specifically love and how family and time always complicate it.<\/p>\n

But Ryan Reynolds\u2019 and Jennifer Garner\u2019s new movie comes close, and in the same way, although it doesn\u2019t entirely avoid the complication of explaining both little and big time-travel-dilemma questions, like … Never mind, since none of us can know our future, I\u2019m not going to SPOILER ALERT this for you. <–And that\u2019s sort of a spoiler alert dad joke you\u2019ll come back and applaud me for after you see TAP.<\/p>\n

If I didn\u2019t have you at Ryan Rrre\u2014then just know Mark Ruffalo has a supporting role. Other than a Marvel movie here and there (by the way, they are sometimes good movies, they just don\u2019t make me suspend disbelief much), Ruffalo in a supporting role is almost a guaranteed excellent film. It\u2019s hard to think of an actor who can play both an Olympic heavyweight wrestler (Foxcatcher) and a down-and-out music producer (Begin Again) within the same 12-month span. But Ruffalo did.<\/p>\n

So, who needs Marvel and DC films? Not indie filmmakers as far as I\u2019m concerned. If I had a few bitcoin for every futuristic zombie apocalypse witchcraft karate short I\u2019ve seen made by indie filmmakers, I\u2019d be able to fund an indie feature film. Even when you do it well, you do it well (for an indie film). And that\u2019s not good enough if your dream is to one day quit your day job.<\/p>\n

Why do I bother penning my opinion here? Because a lot of aspiring filmmakers and existing ones will be coming to the Valley soon\u2014happy film festival week!\u2014and audiences need more than superheroes to\u2014once they suspend enough disbelief\u2014aspire to. They need to see real heroes, ones that make you enroll enough emotion into a film to do what the greatest stories make us do\u2014live life more empathetically. Emotional story\u2014it\u2019s literally what dreams are made of. And it\u2019s also what makes us real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Eric Valentine Fifteen years ago at the Oscars, Best Supporting Actor winner George Clooney and star of the film \u201cSyriana\u201d used part of his acceptance speech to make a political statement. Sensing the annual backlash against the Hollywood elites from some collective societal grouping of like minds (usually a conservative collective, but not always), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17601,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17599\/revisions\/17601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}