Magnum Force

I purchased recently (for cheap!) "Magnum Force" [Wiki, IMDB, TCM] and I want to add it to the list of sequels that are better than their originals.

It's not only much more watchable (it has the awesome plane hijack scene) but the politics are better than the original. Most people didn't get Dirty Harry - most notably Pauline Kael, who I've learned since my youth to completely distrust - she was not only wrong most of the time, but disastrously so - I actually think I've lost friends because I recommended movies on her suggestion, I've definitely lost some sanity following her advice on such stinkers like "The Warriors," "Deliverance" and "The Killer Elite" - she had a tin ear for action films, and I suffered.

Kael labeled the film "fascist" but she did not understand the deconstruction of Harry in the film itself. He's meant to be an unlikable character, he's called "Dirty" because he'll do the things others are too ashamed to do. Kael's criticism could be against those who didn't understand that Harry was to be questioned not lauded, but alas she was in the benighted category herself.

In any case, the writer of Magnum Force - the cro-magnon John Milius - says explicitly that he wrote the sequel as a response to the critics. He wanted to explain what real fascism would look like. And as a result the full character of Harry comes out - instead of being a fascist response to the Miranda ruling of the early 70s, Harry was just another cowboy. Which interpretation would be more interesting? Well, the full fascist would be the Stallone characters of the 80s - really stupid expressions of a man being above the law. In Harry, as seen in Magnum Force, we have a person who believes in the Constitution, just not how it was being interpreted at that time. Fascism believes that liberty should be sacrificed for unity of the people, while the American cowboy ethic is libertarian - have as much liberty as possible. Both seem to agree that when a person violates the code, they should be killed. But libertarians believe the only things which violate the code are extreme crimes, while fascists reduce all action against the Polity as crimes.

Also, it had the best main theme - although nothing beats Lalo Schifrin's music for Dirty Harry's school bus scene.

P.S. The latter Dirty Harry films don't get put into the mix; while "Sudden Impact" was decent (it was a rehash of Magnum Force's anti-vigilantism) the "Enforcer" was absolutely ridiculous. And I can't even muster enough memory to recall "The Dead Pool."

Moonraker (Two Thoughts)

Moonraker is now on. OK, I promised not to live-blog this, but just two thoughts: (1) for those making lists of necessities for evil overlords, need to make room on their rosters for The Countdown Guy ("twenty seconds and counting...")
(2) The ending is fine, it has the "big battle in the enemy strong-hold" that we loved in other films, even if it's a crazy cheezy space battle. But the part of the movie where Bond needs to shoot down the death-gas capsules with the space-shuttle laser is one of the best scenes in all Bond-dom. I must admit this, in sheer honesty.

And, because I can't let it rest, I must explain why the ending is so damn good: because it's necessary within logic and the plot. Most of Moonraker involves absolutely idiotic, near suicidal, behavior. Nobody does anything that makes a lick of sense; even though numerous action sequences occur, false tension is created, but no logical person would feel emotion since everyone is a cartoonish gasbag. But the ending is necessary, plausible, and tense. Honor due.

Nice line about movies

By Zack Handlen in the November 2, 2009 Onion AV Club review of The Seventh Seal:

"I’m coming to realize that the difference between a good movie and a great one are those moments of intense personal connection where it seems like the filmmaker is reaching out to you through the screen and whispering (or yelling, or cajoling, or demanding, or pleading) in your ear. As if there is no real distance between you and the director, time has changed nothing, and the moment remains as pure as it was on the day it was filmed."

Note, the same can be said for any of the narrative arts (books, theater, uh, tweets).

Backpost, finished on 11-20-2009.

Brief Movie Notes: The Dark Knight (2008)

I hated this movie on so many levels. I have much to say but it's taking a while to make it coherent. To substitute for me, read the 100% correct review by David Edelstein of New York Magazine. The original review, and his response to the drooling idiots who attacked his negative review.

Image nabbed from here.

Year of Flops: Where Rabin is Wrong

Nathan Rabin, the genius behind My Year of Flops, reviews of the Shadow (1994) and the Phantom (1996, I-W) are totally wrong; but even when he's wrong, he's still a great read.

Rabin and I differ on a number of fundamental film issues - for example, he likes the whole genre of 'uncomfortable humor' (e.g. What About Bob, or the oeuvre of Albert Brooks); he's sanguine (har) about horror films, and he just doesn't seem to get the fun brilliance of action-spoofs. He gives doofus reviews for City Heat, Hudson Hawk & Mystery Men - because he just cannot understand what's going on. It's weird, but after 4 such reviews, it's clear that despite his erudition, eloquence and intelligence, he may not have the necessary subtlety to get parodies. I wonder what he feels about Evil Dead II/Army of Darkness. Likely, he ain't on board.

So while he hates the Phantom (which is as fun a movie, though not quite as good, as Mystery Men, Hudson Hawk etc), the film he does like, The Shadow, is pretty terrible. Yet here's Rabin: "Where The Phantom is a second-rate film about a third-rate superhero played by a C-list actor, The Shadow is an even more frustrating proposition: a second-rate film about a first-rate superhero played by a brilliant, perfectly cast actor."

Baldwin has gotten better in his old age - mainly because he's better at comedy, especially playing a rich dork, than he was at action. The Shadow is pretty terrible, the Phantom good, and Rabin is funny but wrong. Then again, I owe Nathan for clueing me into "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story." So maybe he only understands parodies if (a) the spoof is tattooed on the back of their necks, or (b) it's about music.

Backpost, finished on Nov 11, 2009.

25 Years: Never Say Never Again

Just a quick post with some love for the heilige Never Say Never Again.

The most recent bond, Casino Royale, was actually as good as I had hoped. We now have an adequate 'beginning' for Bond, the way the book should have been adapted. During the hiatus after the execrable Die Another Day, I had hoped that if they did scrap Brosnon (who was the third best Bond, after Connery and Connery - so good he gets the top two slots) that they should re-start the franchise.

And now that we have the well-crafted Bond beginning, can we finally take Never Say Never Again out of the Apocrypha and put it in the official canon? There the reasons of quality (it's based on the best plot of all Bonds, Thunderball, and is actually much better than the original movie - better villain, technology, women, etc), the reasons of overwhelming sentimentality (it's Connery for goodness sakes) but mainly because it's 'unofficial' nature becomes feature, not a bug.

Because while Casino Royale is the - out of sequence - beginning of Bond. Showing how our hero comes into being and hardens into the ruthless lothario we know... Never Say Never Again shows how Bond will retire. And it's wonderful: living in Ian Fleming's Jamaica, with a young Kim Basinger.

Enjoy the (lo-res) intro:

Pic from here. Backpost finished 2009-11-30. This was totally finished, by the way, but I've fixed a broken link.

He Was Still Alive?! (Arthur C. Clarke)

Arthur C. Clarke, Premier Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90...

2001 was great. Turns out it was mainly Kubrick. But I heard a speech from Clarke (on the 2001 DVD) and one line has stayed with me. I'm paraphrasing, but basically he asks what would happen if, in 1850, we had been given an image of the future, a jet airplane. To just know that the jet was possible would greatly clarify our thinking and enable a giant leap in technology and science. This is what he claimed would happen if we encountered alien intelligence (and what's the basis of the book/movie).

Note, this is the (unwritten?) basis for the great, underrated, Galaxy Quest.

Pic from here.

Billy Connolly Quotes

I just saw a well-recommended movie, The Boondock Saints (review anon, except to say [spoiler] that only an American director would cast a Scot as the father of two Irishmen) and it features a hiterto unknown (to me) comedian, Billy Connolly. Why he's significant for the movie is not only because he plays a crucial character but because the irresolute director decided to have him voice the entire commentary. Which is ludicrous on one side because he has maybe 10 minutes of screen time and he's a freakin' actor!

On the plus side, Connolly has a *great* Scottish accent and is a pleasure to listen to. And he appears to be funny, at least according to the IMDB quote page:

"In Scotland, there is no such thing as bad weather - only the wrong clothes."

"Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that who cares?... He's a mile away and you've got his shoes!"

{Backpost: the bulk of the message was here already, it was updated on Feb 23, 2009; pic from google-images, and the recommendation webpage needs further elaboration.}

Constantine (2005) & Half-Breeds (Spoiler Warning)

I like the movie Constantine (2005). Yes, I know Keaneu Reaves is in it and it's not as good as the comic book, blah blah blah. I've read some of the comic and it's badly drawn and the hero is supposed to look like Sting. The movie doesn't commit those sins, so it's a leg up.

This movie is part of a genre I particularly like - vampire hunting movies, something I wrote about in the older blog. "Vampire hunting" is not exclusive to vampires but to any bad thing hunted by People With The Knowledge. So Constantine joins movies like Blade II, Hellboy, Vampires, Aliens and Ghostbusters. What separates the Vampire Hunter genre from the pissant Horror Film is the amount of power and know-how given to humanity. In a horror film, the villain is so monstrous that people are overpowered, outmatched, and one talented person is little more than prey (and/or lunch).

Vampire Hunting movies are where the Villain of the horror movie is hunted by people who have learned how to kill 'em. It's a satisfying, even uplifting, genre. Horror makes you feel bad to be human; VH makes you proud.

Often, the VH movies are mostly supernatural (e.g. Blade, Ghostbusters), the rest are sci-fi (Aliens). The supernatural ones often use some mishmash of Catholicism and cheap Kabbalah, especially when they involve Demons and Angels. Constantine is no exception, but even with sci-fi they make up their rules when they need to.

Constantine has as it's central plot-point a major league invention which, alas, the movie does not adequately explain (when it's not contradicting itself). Every review online mentions that psychics (like our eponymous hero) can see "half-breeds" and that the hero's self-appointed job is to deport transgressing half-breeds back to hell.

What are the half-breeds (hereafter "HB") and how do they compare to demons and angels? Dunno. The movie is filled with satisfying mumbo jumbo about The Rules (a genre defining characteristic - all Vampire Hunting movies require the establishment of the rules, not only to give the movie an understructure, but to prove that humanity's great gift of reason can be used to kick keister). But the status of the Half Breed is left murky... which is a problem because the whole plot depends on this question.

The best thing I can do is analyze the facts given in the movie and to search online (especially for the question "What is a half-breed")

Facts from the Movie

1. The good HB are shown by having blue eyes, bad HB with red. This may be in addition to when - using the special psychic sight - they are shown as having wings or demonic faces (cf. the liquor store aftermath).
   
2. In Midnite's bar, we see bad-HB eating what looks like a person, and a good HB making water into wine, and a good HB snogging a bad HB. This stuff could just be what it means to be on neutral territory.
   
3. Balthazar is established as a HB. He has red-eyes, he's shown as demon face.
   
4. Balthazar says "fire?! I was born of this!" when hit by dragons-breath.
   
5. In that same scene, Bal seems to consider Hell is home.
   
6. Constantine, Angela, Hennesy & Midnite are all psychics and not considered HB
   
7. Constantine 'deports' demons either through exorcisms (which could be how bad HB are created), or through destroying them with his cool weapons.
   
8. Chaz says that HB's will have their outer shell damaged by holy-water
   
9. the Scavenger finds the spear of destiny and is possessed by it - not a freewill action - yet he leads all the bad HB. Unclear, here, of the distinction.
   
10. The bad HB speak 'hellspeak' - another proof they're demonic.
    
11. Gabriel is called a half-breed, yet has the powers we associate with an Angel and seems to know Lucifer personally (and professionally) as one of the Host. Being called a half-breed may just refer to the fact that Gabriel's mission is on earth.
    
12. The big rule is 'The Balance' - that heaven and hell cannot interfere directly in human affairs. A second big rule is that demons can't cross over into our 'plane' (but they do a bunch of times in the movie; suggesting either that the rule is wrong or that the rule is part of the Balance).

Conclusion: A Half-Breed may just be a specific type of demon that hides in a human shell so it can do hell's work... just as a half-breed angel is a real Angel just in human form. They aren't real people. The term is not about their parentage (as some have suggested, e.g. calling them Nephilim as in Gen. 6); Constantine says "I call them Half-Breeds" but it's a confusing term (like he cares). The rules state that neither side can interfere, but they WANT to interfere, so they do so by inhabiting a human form and 'whisper' in the ears of humanity. But demons, being evil, constantlyt break the rules. Simple rule breaking (e.g. directly interfering with humanity, like when Balzathar KILLS somebody) will get you deported. If a demon is on our plane, then that's a major rule break. As we see from the end of the film, Lucifer honors the agreement (by not letting his son take over). How did the full demons get to romp around all through the film? They were being protected by an Angel: Gabriel.

Backpost, from March.

Flops Update: Schnitzie Pretzelpants

Seriously, Nathan Rabin's blog "My Year in Flops" is one of the best things on the internet. It's so good that even the comments section is readable. Anyway, his review of Exorcist II by my man John 'Zardoz' Boorman has this awesome paragraph:

Perhaps the film’s central miscalculation, beyond not making much sense and being crazier than 2Pac in that flick called Juice, is expecting audiences to fear a villain named 'Pazuzu'. Now Pazuzu is an actual figure from Assyrian and Babylonian mythology and figures prominently in Blatty’s novel, but that doesn’t make his name any less ridiculous. No matter how scary the film makes him out to be, 'Pazuzu' still sounds like a zany sound effect a slide whistle might make or a baggy-pants vaudevillian’s catchphrase. How frightening would Silence of the Lambs be if Hannibal Lector’s name was changed to Schnitzie Pretzelpants? "

And then there's this from his review of Harvard Man:

28-year-old philosophy professor Joey Lauren Adams, who lectures hilariously about Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard in a bored, flat, disconnected baby-doll high-pitched monotone that suggests she learned the script phonetically.

Wa-hoo. Its especially funny when you know who she is.

And, to emphasize how good the comments are, one dude wrote in about another bad movie:

Fellini's Satyricon is like a bad acid trip. You go from, "this is kinda cool" to "is this ever gonna stop?" to "My God, this IS never going to stop, and I'm going to die like this."

Oscar Predictions 2007

As many of you avid readers know, my Oscar predictions have been getting so unreliable that I'm statistically less likely to be correct than a monkey on crack. And cheap crack, too. But I am compelled to keep predicting - even though my methods have not changed from previous years; there's no reason to change because even though I know what knowledge I lack to make accurate decisions, I have no access to the correct knowledge. I'm flying blind with no clue, no good data, and no monkeys to help me.

Given that, the big question this year is whether Martin Scorsese will finally win the Best Director award. Working against him is an obvious enduring hatred by many people for him (why, I don't know). Another strike against Marty is that this year's movie, "The Departed" is a remake (of a recent Hong-Kong flick) and is clearly not his best work. Does it matter? Does the fact that the art is not up to snuff have *any* regard to the legion of unknown morons who get to vote on the awards?

Giving backing to my 'unknown moron' comment is Stanley Kaufmann, movie reviewer for the New Republic. He was asked by some yacko why he hasn't entered into the discussion on TNR's temporary Oscar's blog. Here's his quoted response:

I'm sorry to disappoint, but I simply can't take seriously an affair that is presented as an artistic evaluation of the past year but is principally a commercial enterprise which deliberately disregards films, however good, that are not exploitable. Besides, who are the judges who make the selections? And who are the voters other than every Tom, Dick and Harriet who happens to have a job in the movie business? (The National Book Awards, though hardly faultless, are much more sensible.)

Oh, I always watch the Oscar broadcast. I wouldn't want to miss the irritation--or the laughs. I'll never forget the year that Marisa Tomei beat out Vanessa Redgrave as best supporting actress.

Oooh, that's a good slapdown.

Anyway. I have long hoped that Scorsese would be recognized for his skill, even if it means recognizing a cruddy film. But the Academy keeps defying my expectation (see the 'Aviator' vs. 'Million Dollar Whatever' and 'Gangs of New York' vs. 'Chicago'). So, my brain tells me that just as they snubbed him before - even when he made good films - they'll keep doing that. BUT. I'm generally wrong on these things. So while I'm saying he won't get it, that means he will.

I'm blogging from this ballot, for ease of use.

BEST PICTURE
Aw cripes. It's crazy hard this year. Babel could win because of the political sympathies of Hollywood liberals (exhibit A - Clooney winning for an anti-Administration movie last year; Best Picture going to a hack movie about racism in LA). Babel is about how we all can't get along and it stars Brad Pitt. It's also increasingly hip to support non-American movies (when was it not hip to do that)

The Departed is part of the Scorsese backlash or not question. If no then yes, if yes then no.

Letters from Iwo Jima If there's a backlash against Scorsese, then Eastwood may receive the numbers. However, he can have his own backlash (he won Best 2 years ago). But he made *two* movies of grand scope last year (at age 75!) and this one is also pretty foreign/hip: trying to understand war from the enemy's perspective.

While I've heard excellent things about The Queen (so much so that besides Sunshine, it's the only of the 5 that I can imagine watching to enjoy). But besides the acting caliber (see below) and the residual Diana hunger, what makes this movie tick?

Then there's the comedy, Little Miss Sunshine. I honestly couldn't imagine that it even got nominated - it's so random! - but that it is should cause consternation. It's an ensemble movie - which have done well recently (Crash, Sideways) but I just don't see it having the gravitas to win. The buzz is heavy and in the first draft of this blog entry I had said Sunshine would win - but the director wasn't nominated for Best Director! I see that putting this movie under the bar

I'm going to go for "Babel." Because of the politics (and because of last year's "Crash"). Given the Scorsese losing streak, the unnecessary-ness of honoring Eastwood and despite the rise of musicals and ensemble comedies in the past 10 years which would propel Sunshine.

BEST ACTOR

I've felt Forest Whitaker [for The Last King of Scotland] has been overlooked for years. Even before the nominations were announced, I thought he'd win.

BEST ACTRESS

Most people are hawking about Helen Mirren, so I'm not even going to protest.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

A lot of buzz is about Eddie Murphy for this... but how can they vote for him after he just made Norbit?! I've also heard many actors don't like working with him. And he's been so celebrated in other media that why would they give him an Oscar for sentimentality's sake? Mark Wahlberg also has a lot of buzz and I've liked him in many movies, but I'm banking on a Scorsese backlash. My feeling that it's going to be Alan Arkin (for Sunshine). If he wins that, then it's an earlier indicator for the Best Picture. Arkin has been nominated only three times but he is an awesome, and funny, character actor. Just think: "Serpentine! Serpentine!"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Crazy buzz about Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) and that's likely what it will be. If the munchkin Breslin wins this then "Sunshine" is in the bag for Best Pic.

BEST DIRECTOR

Again, the whole Marty backlash theory. And while Eastwood probably deserves this - because of the monumental achievement of two massive war pics - he has won recently. There's a statistic that no director won Best Director if his movie wasn't nominated for Best Pic, so Greengrass is out. As I said above for Best Picture, I think the Babel director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, will get this. If Scorsese wins this - which I'd like to see - then maybe the Best Pic is back up for grabs.

Well, that's all I have strength for. I'm going to a professional conference tomorrow and will miss seeing the Oscars (or having email/Internet access). Let's see how I do now that I'm making the predictions nearly a day early.

Sith

I've looked but I can't remember if I've written about "Revenge of the Sith." In short: it was the worst of the six. Note, this did not stop me from buying it (5 bucks, why not). It arrived yesterday. I put it in my computer to test it out. And, to show you how much I hated it, I have a Pavlovian resistance against pressing play - the movie hurt too much! [Sound of booting]

When my stomach settles, I will explain more.

{2009 Update: great pic from here.}

Little Voice (1998)

We saw Little Voice (1998) last night. Please heed my warning, do not see this movie.

It combines these two genres:

1. Quirky British Natives (it's made by the same bloke who gave us "Brassed Off")
   
2. Plays converted into Movies.
   

Because its British, the dialogue is incomprehensible; and because it was a play:

1. Everyone is an exaggerated caricature,
2. The characters do horrible, inexplicable things to each other,
3. The movie has A MESSAGE
4. and what could have been a fun movie with a happy ending is a tragic play with catastrophic results.
   

You have been warned. If you want to see quirky British caricatures behaving comedically with a happy ending, rent "Wallace & Gromit."

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (2006)

We're celebrating our anniversary; so we saw an actual movie in an actual theater. Since it's summer, we saw a Bustblocker: Pirates of the Caribbean 2: The Shameless Sequel

There were some great lines, by Depp. There were some great, well-thought-out action sequences. In fact, there was a good movie lurking under all the massive piles of donkey-doo. But the donkey-doo won out.

An apt review comes from Michael Atkinson of the Village Voice:

Of course it's only a summertime sequel, an overinflated, plot-contrivance-by-committee, cheap-shot leviathan, big and graceless as a rusting luxury liner, referencing its hit source movie as if it were a holy gospel, distending gag routines that flopped like a snapper on the dock the first time around. But you were expecting . . . ? The good news, in a season of dire portents, is that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is even more of a party-hearty-Marty potlatch of silliness than its predecessor. The franchise having been established, Verbinski, Bruckheimer, and Co. have been liberated to indulge in absurdities, pile on the so-old-they're-new-again clichés, and make jokes at their own expense.

There's not a self-serious bone in the movie's body. It's an assembly-line truffle, but someone was determined to break the genre bank. The stew includes a cannibal tribe, a voodoo queen, a ship-consuming monster cephalopod, the Flying Dutchman, Davy Jones's locker, the infamous East India Company (as the ultimate corporate villain), and a cannon-blasting sea battle, and in the process fulfills, in a goofy-face-contest kind of way, the promise of all pirate movies going back to 1917's Betty and the Buccaneers. It's pure matinee make-believe, high-spirited and outlandish and pleasantly grotesque, if, unfortunately, too long and too Dolby-atomic groady for the little kids who might appreciate it the most.

The story that holds this gibbering nonsense afloat involves a magical compass, the ambitions of British colonials, and a tangle of supernatural curses, rules, and debts centering around the rather spectacular presence of Jones (an all but unrecognizable Bill Nighy), the undead captain of the Dutchman's crew of barnacled crustacean zombies, and himself a Scottish-accented squid-head demagogue with a giant lobster claw and a penchant for playing his Nemo-like organ with face tentacles. The series protagonists cannot compete with Nighy's briny godling and Naomie Harris's rasping swamp witch; Johnny Depp's Keith Richards routine, seemingly even rummier now, is still thin shtick, but he's merely the comic relief who finds himself, to his annoyance, standing inappropriately at center stage. Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom remain line-reading Sleep-Eze, less functional or effective than Kevin McNally as the Black Pearl's put-upon first mate and official
POTC empathy point.

Naturally, the filmmakers have no idea where or when to stop; in the more forgiving theatrical marketplaces of yore, this could have, and would have, been two or more smaller movies. But if the many octopod Kraken attacks are one deafening digital crash-up too many, they're still a merchant-ship-era folklore iconÂ?here there be monstersÂ?come to fantastic life. The ingredients for a movie-movie tropical vacation are all here, including the boozy highs, the chintz, the wandering waste of time, and the hangover.

I am The Styx and I approved that message.

Movie Review: Solaris (2002)

The great team of Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney made a thoughtful, excellent remake of Solaris back in 2002. This is an underrated and misunderstood film. I can't even remember what specifically enthused me about it - it's been an uninterrupted 18 months since I've seen it - but I remember thinking that it was one of the finest examples of how to translate sci-fi into film.

In general, Soderbergh and Clooney make serious, good, films.

Backpost finished 4/10/08. I just had the link. I suspect I had just seen the movie and wanted to talk about it.

Cinderella Man

The new movie Cinderella Man, besides being the type of drab treacle Oscar-bait that I avoid both on principle and on the finest medical advice, presents an All-American vision of good and evil that should make Jews shudder.

The titular hero, a nice Christian family-man, is the underdog White Knight in this most recent WHITEwashing of fact to come from Ron Howard. After he simplified "A Beautiful Mind" he did the same erasing with James J. Braddock and in his opponent Max Baer.

Because the "Cinderella Man" is the hero, his life is blocked off into a puritanical dreamvision of rectitude. As such, whomever his opponent would be would be presented in a similar simplistic way. History put Braddock against Max Baer, so Ron Howard had to depict Baer as a stone killer.

As this Slate article points out (Fight Snub - How Cinderella Man sucker punches the Jewish boxer Max Baer. By David Fellerath) and confirmed by the all-knowing Wiki, Baer was nowhere near a villainous type. In fact, Baer publicly flaunted his Jewishness in response to the rise of Hitler (as seen in the photo below) by putting a huge Jewish star on his trunks.

The opposition to Baer's Jewish was explicit in the news stories of the time. Personally - while I cannot bring myself to actually praise a person whose job entailed committing savage violence for money - I can still give Baer a modicum of respect and I can feel it an affront against a significant symbol of American Jewry.

This is yet another proof for my ongoing thesis that movies which deal with historical subjects should be held accountable for their lies. It is NOT benign when they change facts to fit Movie Magic. People get hurt.

Bond Marathon

We have an extensive film collection here at the Casa de Styx, and I have enjoyed showing them to my wife who was rightfully ignorant of much of the pop-culture ditchwater that I had immersed in for years.

She's a trained classical musician and successful academic acolyte, so how would she have encountered "Ghost Busters" or "Big Trouble in Little China" (especially since she was a wee child when these movies came out, if that). Alas, we have covered every movie in my collection that she would enjoy without my making a hard hard sell. "The French Connection" and "Chinatown," for example, are great films but they are also violent and shocking and who really wants to see that stuff when you want to relax; a logical point - even if I don't follow it. I mean, I often force myself to watch films that I "should" see - just to increase my education. My free time to watch is quite limited, and my desire to be entertained is such, that I am now failing in my education and feeling more like my wife's point of view.

For example, I rented The Rules of the Game (1939) by Jean Renoir because it was the top rated foreign film of all time by nearly every film critic. It's unwatchable muck. Oh, I tried - black and white doesn't bother me and normally subtitles are fine - except that I usually sort piles of my papers while watching films and I can't do that in a heavy dialogue film. But here's the thing - it's not entertaining, interesting, or broadening. Compare it with other films from that year: The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights and Gunga Din.

I tried to watch the second highest rated foreign film: The Battleship Potemkin". For this stinkeroo there's not much year comparison (1925 was not a banner year) except for "The Gold Rush," by Chaplin (which I own). For those who don't know about the "Battleship" thingy - it's a communist propaganda film that has the intellectual and emotional depth of a political smear.

All that is to explain that I am not so high and mighty (much). But we still need to find something to watch while we're half-dead on the couch, watching our son tear his way through the furniture. That's when I decided to initiate the Bond Marathon.

As an earlier post explained, I have pain-stakingly sought and individually accumulated all 22 Bond special-edition DVDs. Twenty Bond films, plus Never Say Never Again, and Casino Royale. I have showed them all to my wife, but out of order. Now we get to see them from the beginning. Considering our pace, we should finish by the time the next Bond comes out.

P.S. The best thing about the marathon is that we recognize how much of a debonair superman my son is becoming. I have begun calling him "Doodle-O 7"

{2009 update: image from here}

Movie Review: Shaun of the Dead

Call it karma, but I saw Shaun of the Dead (2004) soon before I contracted this asinine illness and was forced to relive the basic premise of the movie over and over again. The movie is really, really good - a "rom com zom" (as it's called) - a romantic comedy with zombies.

What makes it good is that not only is it funny, smart, and quick-moving, but it's shot with a stunning verisimilitude. It feels so real; like a documentary; or just a detail-rich description of how a horrible event can happen on the periphery of your normal life.

After living through a few world shattering events, I know how that feels, and while I think I would behave better than Shaun and his pals, their behavior is all very realistic and convincing. For days after seeing the film, I had to actively remind myself that it did not happen.

The reason why the movie overlaps with the flu so well is that people infected by the Zombies would develop flu-like symptoms before they would turn into the walking dead. In the movie, a zombie is a metaphor for the brainless modern existence people consign themselves to (especially in modern Britain... a complaint that's been around for a while as seen in the Punk movement or Pink Floyd or "Synchronicity"). But being a zombie is also a good metaphor for the flu. You stomp around, the walking-dead, groaning, needing Tylenol, cursing your fate. Cannibalism is where the comparison stops, however.

A note about cannibalism: for some reason, all the supernatural monster movies seem to require the antagonists to be cannibals. It's the worst part about their attack; what we find the most disturbing. A zombie is just disquieting if all it did was walk about and moan. Even vampires (my preferred supernatural enemy) aren’t frightening except for the biting fetish. I guess it's the very worst thing in the human imagination - it's not enough to be evil, the desecrated walking dead, or flying bats - the depths of evil are only reached when you eat another person. (See "Sin City" as well, but that's another topic altogether)

Movie Review: Shark Tale (2004)

Rented and saw Dreamworks' Shark Tale (2004). It reminds me of "Matrix Reloaded." Actually, it reminds me of the movie review I wrote for Reloaded (see below) - the critics savaged "Shark Tale" for reasons that I cannot understand.

What's wrong with these people? Have all journalists been taking stupid pills with their whiskey? The older I get, the more I realize how much I need other people to help understand the world yet the more I realize most other people have the minds of dumpsters.

Check out this review from the once reliable Onion A.V. Club:

"the real, uncredited architects are a bunch of kids in the mall: Every single joke, character detail, music montage, and pop-culture reference looks extensively market-tested, whether via screenings, focus groups, or other box-office successes. With dollar signs in its eyes and nothing in its heart, Shark Tale calculates each moment for the broadest appeal, but its impact couldn't be more impersonal. The filmmakers are convinced people will like it because the spreadsheets and pie charts tell them so, not because they've invested it with originality or passion. "

What on earth is he saying? The movie was very smart - the amount of detail that went into the Fish World and the fast, frequent inside jokes that NO kid would understand show that this movie wasn't a cheap knockoff of "Finding Nemo" (a claim almost every review made), e.g. from the Onion: "Shark Tale steals shamelessly from Finding Nemo"

OK, first of all, these animated movies are so long in pre-production that there's really no way they stole from Finding Nemo. Second of all, "Nemo" had almost nothing in common with "Shark" except that they were under water. The movie industry has this weird tendency to put out two movies from two studios on the same theme (e.g. "Volcano" and "Dante's Peak"; "Armaggeddon" and "Deep Impact"; and most relevant for this discussion, "Antz" and "A Bugs Life")

The comparison to Antz/Bugs Life is apt because "Antz" was from Dreamworks and "Bugs" from Disney-Pixar and it was seen as the first stage of the battle of animated giants (which sounds like another good movie idea, by the way). Critics of all brain-capacities have weighed in on which movie was better (or "won") but they are very different films. They are both remakes, "Bugs" of "Magnificent Seven" and "Antz" of "Love and Death" (roughly). But Bugs was G, Antz PG - and that's just the beginning. Antz was adult oriented and had a A-list celebrities parodying their personas in a knowing, mature way. Woody Allen, Anne Bancroft, Danny Glover, Gene Hackman, Jennifer Lopez, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, Christopher Walken in a plot about betrayal, government genocide, and headless bugs. Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin playing WASPs was funny for me but would fly over the head of a 16 year old. "Bugs" was a cute movie about believing in yourself.

"Finding Nemo" vs. "Shark's Tale" is the same story. Nemo has all B-listers and the protagonist is the irritating Albert Brooks. The theme? Finding yourself (and your son). Actually it has the adult theme of not being as uptight as Brooks and more uptight than the fish Dory. I liked the movie, no doubt, but it's not in the league of "Shark's Tale" for references and easy humor.

How would 'focus group kids' get the trivia? e.g. "When Lenny coughs up the objects on the table, one of them is a license plate with the registration "007 981." This is the same plate found inside the tiger shark in Jaws" or that the fish voiced by Renee Zellwegger responded well when Will Smith's fish nonsensically said "You had me at hello"

Now, if you want to trash focus-group trash, take out "Shrek 2." Yeeeeeeeeugh.

More Passion

[This is a draft post from sometime in early March 2004 - I didn't post it because it was unfinished, as you can see from the Roman Numerals at the end of the post... I don't have time to finish it now, either, but I gotta make this blog less drafty!]

Hopefully, the end of this topic

Some last points about the "Passion."

First of all, I want to rationalize why we are spending so much time on it. I happen to believe that it is a significant point in early 21st Century. Yeah, this is just a film; yeah, its a pet project of a lowbrow religious punk - a punk who has been able to manipulate the entire Western World into paying attention to his personal demonology.

The 20th century saw the transformation of Western Culture from Industrial to post-Industrial to Information. We are in the "information age" (for those who're keeping track) and when you recognize that information is all in the mind, you will recognize that anything which directly impacts the mind is both powerful and significant.

In a land that holds free speech as an inalienable right, we have understood even back in the 18th Century that ideas are powerful and significant. However, over those hundreds of years, we've learned that speech can liberate as well as obliterate.

"Hate speech" is a difficult and nebulous substance that has only been seriously thought out in the late 20th Century. We have the Supreme Court cases that relate to dangerous speech (shouting fire in a crowded room) to hate speech. A watershed moment, I believe, was the Clarence Thomas - Anita Hill case which alerted America that sexual harassment is harmful and is accomplished in the intangible realm of verbal and non-verbal language. The fact that the culprit of the harassment is one of the most powerful people on earth is ironic but understandable when you see him as an antediluvian vestige and an accident of history.

Speech is a weapon; images are weapons. The cultural-conservatives who demand prayer in schools (speech), Ten Commandments in stone in the courthouse (images), no smut on television and radio (both), understand this.

In fact, were you to ask a cultural-conservative and a cultural-liberal what the greatest threat to American society is in 2004, the liberal would say "the near-fascist thuggery of our rapacious and illegally elected government." A conservative would say "Hollywood."

The reason why "The Passion" is so important is because it wages a war of images and ideas using the enormous power of Hollywood and Big Business. It's message - about religion and violence - has been the public discourse for the past 20 years and ever-so-much-more-so in the past 3 years.

That's why I think we need to still discuss it.

II. Why you do not need to see it
III. Christianity is anti-Semitic by definition