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So last night we saw Ocean's Twelve, a sequel to a Hollywood remake of an old foreign heist movie, and it wasn't bad. I won't go into a full blown review here and you can check out rottentomatoes.com if you are desperately inclined to further investigate said film, but I'm actually going to make a point here that has nothing to do with the ho-hum of "impossible" thievery or the daring escapades of Brad Pitt.

At one point during Ocean's Twelve, the character Tess, who is played by the gargantuan mouth of Julia Roberts, is compelled by superstar kid genius Matt Damon to masquerade as someone famous for the purpose of getting close to some magical egg thing in a museum and - what else - stealing it. Apparently, incredibly, Tess looks a lot like some actress named Julia Roberts! What are the odds. At this point things became bizarre and eventually Julia Roberts was on screen as Tess, pretending to be Julia Roberts in front of Bruce Willis (playing Bruce Willis) and talking to the real REAL Julia Roberts on a cell phone. The lines between character and actor were blurred, leading to some funny moments: "No, no. Julia Roberts doesn't talk like that at all! She's got that Southern drawl!" and a lot of general wackiness.

But I got to thinking, and this new trend in media "self awareness" - turning Hollywood into the spectacle itself, combining producers of imagery with the imagery itself, is some fucked up shit. In fact, it's downright Brechtian, and when Sra told me today that every single Fringe script she's read includes a character revelation about how they're actually in a PLAY! (gasp), I cringed. Because, you see, this means that it's no longer cool to expose the medium. It's not cutting edge anymore. It's now cliche, and Ocean's Twelve drives the point home by unabashedly fingering the the star culture that dominates the movies.

Postmodernism needs a new angle.

Posted by Chris at 02:57 PM >> Commentations (3)