Michael Mann directed this movie with a very free camera. Mostly handheld. And with a lot of emotionality to the editing. It felt very much like watching a Lars Von Trier movie. Though with action and with a lot less depression.
If you want to distill the essence of Michael Bay, you should not look any further than his Verizon Commercial. A 30 second long explosive fest of absolute Bayhem, directed by Michael Bay and starring Michael Bay. He knows that he is a meme. And he delivers on that meme.
The studio was full of people and the host was mentally preparing for the cameras to go live. The cameras started rolling which filled the room with tension. And the producers behind the cameras started counting the count-down. The host touched his tie in a nervous manner, to make sure that it sits nicely. The countdown went - "5 - 4 - 3 - ..." - from that point on, the producers counted only with their fingers, to avoid accidentally being heard counting on the broadcast itself. They showed 2, then 1 and then pointed to the host, which meant that it's the time to start.
If you look at 1941 today it feels like a Michael Bay movie. Explosions are everywhere. Gun shots fired at the sky for no reason ( which was the comedic punchline of the film ). Chase scenes crash through paint factories to add color to the spectacle. A fight scene happens in the middle of a huge dance number involving one bazillion extras. Everything is huge and you feel like it's way too huge.
"Oh... okay... okay... Let me see if I get it right..." - said Mendel putting his hands forward in a smart manner - "Anonymity is an end, privacy is a mean to get it.".
There are only a handful of actors in the movie. But all of the teenagers are very good. Those are played wonderfully by Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson and Anthony Michael Hall. There is also the school's principal played by Paul Gleason which looks suspiciously like Ben Mendelsohn. And there's the janitor with the most wholesome serial-killer smile ever, played by John Kapelos. All these actors know what they are doing very well. And the acting in the movie is pretty much, I think, what holds it together. Because there isn't much else to see, to be honest.
Sheiny: How about lying, or saying something without expertise? I don't think a strict language will stop you from composing a thought that you know to be untrue. Look at programming. Python is a strict language. The interpreter will interpret one string of code in the same exact manner every time you run it. But yet you can lie with python.
I did watch kids cartoons. But it seems like kids these days are watching only kids cartoons. And it's a little bit of a problem. I spoke to a woman who had a 10 yr old son that refused to watch Transformers since it was not a kids cartoon. It was way too complex for him. Transformers. You know, Michael Bay's explosions caused by big robots. This was too complex for a 10 year old.
Sheiny: There is this website called WikiLeaks which allows people to leak information about anything they see as worthy of publication. For example Edward Snowmen was helped by WikiLeaks to leak his revelations about the US government. And people like Chelsea Manning leaked there their Iraq files. Including a very gruesome video of US government bombing innocent civilians in Iraq. Anyway... The guy behind the website is this guy called Julian Assange. And he was arrested for the last couple of years without even being sentenced.
Mendel: There are still hotels that use an elevator operator. Even though today elevators are automatic. It looks more prestigious to have a human doing the job there. Or something like a restaurant waiter. A machine could do it. But rich people would like a human with good manners instead, I suppose.