What ever happened to Michael Keaton’s career? Seriously folks, I’m asking you, the guy was Batman for cris’sake! I can only assume that his latest film, White Noise, is a very loud and extremely painful cry for help from a guy who looks to be about one year away from doing gay porn. I personally do not believe in EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon), contacting dead people through the static in your television, and I have to say the movie only made me sorry for those that do, which I sincerely doubt if that was the director’s objective.
White Noise
1/2 Star
What ever happened to Michael Keaton’s career? Seriously folks, I’m asking you, the guy was Batman for cris’sake! I can only assume that his latest film, White Noise, is a very loud and extremely painful cry for help from a guy who looks to be about one year away from doing gay porn. I personally do not believe in EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon), contacting dead people through the static in your television, and I have to say the movie only made me sorry for those that do, which I sincerely doubt if that was the director’s objective.
Jonathon Rivers (Keaton) is a successful architect with a young son and a hot new second wife (Chandra West) who mysteriously disappears one night on her way home. Paranormal expert Raymond Price (Ian McNeice) approaches Rivers and explains his wife is dead and trying to contact him through his television set. At first Rivers is skeptical, but after his wife turns up dead, rather than going to the police, he buys into the guy’s rather flimsy story with ridiculous speed, never looking back. He joins with Price and Sarah Tate (Deborah Kara Unger), a young woman who is trying to reach her dead fiance, into discovering what messages his wife is trying to send him from beyond the grave.
Rivers becomes increasingly obsessed after hearing his wife on a tape Price plays for him; he buys thousands of dollars of computer equipment, recording equipment, television monitors, and VCRs to spend 20 hours a day recording looking for messages from his wife. He totally ignores his job and his son, sending him off to live with his ex-wife. After several attempts he discovers his wife always comes to contact him through the white noise at exactly 2:30 (am or pm seems to not matter to ghosts). In her message she seems to warn him against some danger.
Along with seeing his wife he also finds images of people in danger which he later discovers are people still alive that he has a chance to save if he follows the clues his wife has given him (I can’t believe I watched this whole movie!). Also in the static are three mysterious strangers that have some stake or control in all of this very odd tale. I won’t tell you anymore about them, not because there’s any kind of plot twist, but simply because that’s as far as these guys were developed. Even from watching the director’s commentary I was unable to learn anything of interest about them, except that the director thought they were “really cool.”
The extras include 3 documentaries about EVP presented by the experts in the field. As laughable as the movie is it looks sullen compared to these people walking around hotel rooms with microphones asking ghosts to talk to them. One of the extras even shows you how you to can record voices from white noise, giving you lists of the equipment you will need and a nice step by step how to guide on how to record. After watching moments of these extras I seriously wondered whether the makers of this DVD think EVP is complete crap and used this opportunity to let these people show how laughable their “science” is.
Also included are a commentary track with director Geoffrey Sax and Keaton which gives some nice shooting and production stories, but does nothing to explain this stupid, stupid script. Of course a DVD wouldn’t be complete with out some useless deleted scenes with optional commentary by the director on why they weren’t worthy to be included in this gem of a movie. Also included are some previews to movies you could be watching rather than this one.
As for the sound and picture quality they are what you would expect from a major studio DVD, with the optional different languages and subtitles.
The problems in the movie are too numerous to go into much detail, but here are a few. The movie never explains how people still alive are contacting Keaton’s character through the white noise that only the dead can use (let alone how the dead are doing it). The three odd gentlemen/creatures are never developed nor explained, nor is the reason why all contact happens at exactly 2:30. Rivers never once stops to consider he is being hustled, part of an elaborate hoax, or is going insane, all much better explanations for what happens than any given in the movie. The police never think it’s suspicious when Keaton keeps ending up finding dead bodies, or when the people helping him turn up dead or injured.
The documentaries are unintentionally laugh out loud funny if you can manage to sit through them. The seriousness that these people take to finding sounds in radio waves or television signals is just so bizarre you can only chuckle.
I can’t really recommend this to anyone; if you believe in EVP you won’t after watching this, and if you don’t you will just see this experience as a terrible waste of time.
One final note, the movie begins with a quote from Thomas Edison, who I honestly believe would have electrocuted himself on his first light bulb if he knew his name would ever be associated to such…….noise.
The most original show ever made, and perhaps the best art form ever shown on television, The Prisoner is simply a masterpiece. Hailed as the first television classic, Patrick McGoohan’s allegory of an individual being trapped in a modern society that wants nothing more or less than to break him down into meaningless number is gripping television. More art than television, the show has been compared to Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Lewis Carroll, Aldous Huxley, G.K. Chesterton, Jonathan Swift, Gustav Meyrink, Alfred Kubin and the surrealist painters such as Rene Magritte. The show created awe, hysteria, and finally a profound appreciation for McGoohan’s masterpiece that stands alone as a shining example of what television can, and for at least one year strove, to be. It raises as many questions as answers, but does both with style. The show certainly wasn’t made for the casual viewer, or in an attempt to create a huge hit for the BBC. In McGoohan’s own words, It’s “not to everyone’s taste. It was never intended to be. I wasn’t making Coca-Cola.” No, it was in fact something much, much sweeter.
