August 2004

Message from the President...

Diving and sharks are getting a lot of media attention lately. The new movie Open Water is due to open on August 20th. http://www.openwatermovie.com/ Synopsis of the movie:

Review of the movie:
Open Water
Rated R
Reviewed Jeremy C. Fox

Don’t be fooled by the marketing. Open Water isn’t a new Jaws; it’s closer to The Blair Witch Project at sea, though it’s less scary and makes fewer emotional connections with the audience. The central couple, Daniel and Susan (the actors’ real names), aren’t written as characters; they’re just types. He’s the solid, all-American good guy, and she’s the bitchy work-obsessed career woman. Their relationship has grown stale, and we’re given to assume it’s largely because Susan’s energies all go into her work, but there’s no hint of who they really are or why they got together. The opening scenes feel perfunctory; they exist only to get these two people into the ocean so they can be left behind.

Once that has happened, the overwhelming issue isn’t the danger; it’s the tedium, the waiting to see what will happen next. Hour after hour, the couple deals with minor injuries and threats, trying to marshal their resolve to survive until help arrives. They attempt to keep their spirits up, but it becomes more and more difficult over time, and they fluctuate between bitter arguments and declarations of their love. In these scenes, the actors are able to establish some essential humanity in these vague characters, and the audience finally comes to feel some stake in their survival, though Susan’s shrill complaining and constant scowl do at times make one wish the sharks would hurry and finish her off.

The filmmakers, husband-and-wife team Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, do their level best to keep the film visually interesting, but there are only so many ways you can film two heads bobbing in the middle of the ocean. It doesn’t help that Open Water is shot on digital video, giving the images a grainy texture that doesn’t capture either the beauty or the menace of all that water.

When a film has a single ambition, it has to really achieve that goal or fail entirely. Kentis and Lau are so intent on giving us the scary bits that they don’t properly set them up so that the impact is felt. In the end, the film is a cheat. The scares don’t work and well, really, there’s nothing else there to work. I walked out of the theatre feeling depressed in the same way that I might after reading a newspaper headline about an unfortunate event. It’s really awful that these things happen, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with me, and before long I won’t even remember what I’d read or that I briefly cared.

Open Water is receiving some laudatory reviews from critics who call it things like "A startlingly intense thriller!" "Bone chilling!" and "One of the scariest movies I have ever seen!" But what they’re reacting to isn’t really what’s in the movie; it’s memories the movie triggers. Having seen Jaws and other shark movies or nature programs on television, many people are now wired to jump out of their skin at the very sight of a shark. If that’s how your brain works, Open Water may well work on you, but it’s not due to anything the filmmakers have accomplished. They have only capitalized on existing fears in a certain segment of the audience. While recognizing and exploiting those fears is something, it’s not the same as competent filmmaking. If, like me, you see sharks as just big, toothy fish that generally present you no particular threat, you’ll find you remain stuck firmly inside your skin, waiting, waiting, waiting, for it all to be over.

Below is a statement that DEMA issued about the movie Open Water:

DIVE INDUSTRY TAKES BITE OUT OF THE MOVIE ‘OPEN WATER’
-Industry Counters With Fact-vs-Fiction -
New York, New York – (August 4, 2004) – DEMA (Diving Equipment & Marketing Association), the trade association representing dive retailers, equipment manufacturers, resorts, media and training agencies responds to the new movie “Open Water.”

According to Tom Ingram, Executive Director of DEMA, “We rarely have the opportunity to respond to events portrayed in a movie in advance of its release and support the Industry by dispelling myths created by cinematic fiction. In reality, diving is a safe and enjoyable sport. While the movie is a heart-pounding thriller, it is a fictionalized account of what could have happened in the most extreme confluence of unlikely events.”

Now we have to decide whether or not to spend the money to go see this movie or not.
Perhaps we should just wait for the release on dvd.

The Discovery Channel is running 12 Days of Terror. Unfortunately it will have aired by the time this reaches everyone, but they do seem to repeat shows on The Discovery Channel, so look for it. Below are the plot outline and a recap of the original book.

Plot Outline: For 12 days in July, 1916, a shark patrolled the waterways of northern New Jersey. This docudrama is based on Richard Fernicola's account of those days. Other accounts of those 12 days led Peter Benchley to write _Jaws_.

Book Recap:

In July 1916, a time of record-setting heat and a raging polio epidemic, beachgoers along the New Jersey shore confronted a greater terror still: lurking in the water swam a shark, or perhaps several sharks, that had apparently developed a taste for human flesh. Within less than two weeks, the offending fish killed four swimmers and badly injured another, setting off a wave of panic that kept visitors well out of the water and threatened the state's thriving tourist economy.

Officials were quick to react. President Woodrow Wilson, himself from New Jersey, sought and received $5,000 from Congress to eradicate the villain. Unsure of which species was to blame, commercial fishermen and state police alike destroyed every shark they encountered, while some conspiracy-minded journalists hinted that the attacks had somehow been triggered by German U-boats plying the waters off New Jersey.

Those strange events of 1916 are not much remembered today, except, perhaps, by fans of Peter Benchley's novel Jaws, whose origin lies in the attacks. Richard Fernicola revives the incident with this thoroughgoing investigation, which offers solid information on the natural history and behavior of the many shark species that populate the Atlantic, and which hazards educated guesses as to which kind of shark did the fatal mischief--and why.

See everyone on Tuesday at Elsa’s

Barb