titivillus' lit/film/music reviews

Broken Flowers not a broken film!

2005-08-17T14:52:00.000-07:00

so i saw the new jarmusch film, 'broken flowers' the other night. what a great film! it stars bill murray as don johnston, a rich retired computer guy, who plays his part with deadpan aplomb. throughout the film, murray creates a character style he seems to be building at this point in his career, exhibiting a comic reserve as he did in 'lost in translation' and 'the life aquatic'. you can't help but like this murray; he just floats through the adventure jarmusch and johnston's friend winston (played excellently by jeffrey wright) create for him, not seeming to care much for going on his road trip, but doing it anyway.

the story revolves around a pink letter johnston finds in his pile of mail; in it, someone claims to have a 19 yr old son fathered by johnston. so he goes on a well-planned-by-winston road trip to visit his 4 lovers at that time, introducing us to laura (sharon stone) and her nabokov-inspired daughter lolita (alexis dziena); Dora (frances conroy, in a departure from her reserved role on six feet under); carmen (jessica lange), and penny (a very goth/motorcycle babe tilda swinton. what fun!).

this is jarmusch back in full-length feature film mode, a nice return after his intriguing coffee and cigarettes vignettes. this film is wacky, funny, crazy and most importantly, hip and cool, and i invite you all to see it.

porco rosso

2005-06-25T23:47:00.000-07:00

i've just watched a very delightful early hayao miyazaki film, 'porco rosso'. this film portrays the title character as half-pig, half-man, with all the emotions a full human being has. he's a bounty hunter who works with and against air pilots, and his character, as in all miyazaki animes, is fully developed. though he looks like a pig, he certainly doesn't act like one, and one can only imagine how he got this way. well, ok, you learn in the film, but i don't want to give it away.

as usual in miyazaki films, a strong young female heroine emerges, this one called zio. she's a plucky 17 year old plane designer who convinces porco to let her take the challenge of remaking his destroyed plane. of course you know this will work out perfectly, but that's the only thing that really isn't surprising about the film.

what is most surprising is the simplistic intricacy of the plot, of which as usual i won't give too much away. suffice it to say that a love story, well actually two love stories, exist, as does a showdown between porco and big name pilot expected to win. it's a battle to the finish that flows like the water on which it takes place, just as the 93 minutes of the film fly by.

this might not be as strong as 'spirited away' or 'howl's moving castle' (which i haven't seen yet. i refuse to see a dubbed version!), but you can really see how miyazaki herein is developing characters and personalizing his style, a style that only improves with each film he makes.

i highly recommend this film!

layer cake

2005-06-10T17:51:00.000-07:00

so here i was, all excited to go see 'layer cake', having found the book of the same name interesting. plus i like british gangster/drug films. and, the author of the book, jj connolly, adapted the screenplay, and it's gotten good reviews, so i expected it to be very strong.

well, to say the least i was disappointed. while a decent adaptation, the movie is strung together a bit incoherently. jumps from groups of people to groups of people. i think that if i hadn't read the book, i would have surely been lost. maybe it was the acting too. the lead actor, the unnamed narrator, played by Daniel Craig, seemed a little stiff. the rest of the actors did a good job, i think.

but another problem were some plot changes that made the film a little cheesy. esp the ending. the narrator also manages to hook up with the girl he meets (tamar hassan). well ok, almost hooked up with. this was a big change from the novel to the book.

i think maybe 'layer cake' just shouldn't have been made a film. or else maybe i was looking too hard at it as a 'lock stock and two smoking barrels' which it definitely isn't, even if it is directed by that and 'snatch''s producer, matthew vaughn.

or maybe it's just that i've been in terrible pain for the last week and a half and couldn't appreciate it. i don't know. but i found myself a little bored in the middle of the film. not a good sign, eh? well maybe you'll go see it and find it as brilliant as some critics have. i hope you do. after all, it's not a total waste of time.

layer cake

2005-05-28T20:10:00.000-07:00

ok, i cannot wait for 'layer cake' to come out to the theatres. i've just read the book, and the film is adapted by the author. the book is incredible. sort of like a trainspotting without the accents, so it's easier to read. i really enjoyed it. the unnamed narrator is a kick, and many of the characters are total freaks that you end up loving. i don't really want to get into the intricacies of the book because i want you all to read it. but i will say, it is a strong effort from a first time author. ok so these last few posts have been boring. sorry. i'm not feeling well again!

ray

2005-05-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

what the hell was all the hullabaloo about 'ray?', i ask. i don't get it. yet another film about a herion addicted, strung out musician who later gets it and quits. sure the music was interesting and jamie foxx's performance very strong, but the film is way too long when all it is doing is showing concert after concert. we see him womanize, shoot up, shake from lack of heroin, cheat on his wife, ignore his kids... haven't we seen this before? i guess we 'needed' a biopic about him because he is legendary. but this one. eh. i'd rather not have wasted a netflix and 2 hrs 32 mins.... nothing original exists in this film.

tarnation

2005-05-28T20:04:00.000-07:00

so tarnation is a very strangely constructed documentary, offering barrages of images one minute and text-overs the next. the characters of course in real life are incredibly interesting, but there wasn't much i liked about the film. or rather, i might have liked the film had the crazy barrages of images not given me a massive migraine. didn't watch the whole thing, so i can't really give you any kind of recommendation -- except to stay away if you get migraines.....

hotel rwanda

2005-05-09T18:49:00.000-07:00

'hotel rwanda' is a well done film about the genocide between the hutus and the tutsis, as far as historical drama goes. thing is, i saw the hbo film 'sometimes in april' which i thought did a better job, so i'm a little biased. in fact many of the scenes seemed shot for both films.

anyway, the story is rather emotionally manipulative; of course we are meant to feel for the 'cockroaches' that are the tutsis who are living at what once was the posh upscale european hotel run by don cheadle's character. it was well done for what it was, but i hate the way it ended; a happy uplifting tale about the lead character's family. what about all those who didn't have happy endings? isn't there a film for them out there? granted, it's based on real life and the main family did have a 'happy ending', but to end a film of despair and disgust with such a trite and hollywood ending? come on. dig a little deeper. maybe a film like this has to end on a bad note to make us think. now i just feel like, 'oh big deal about the genocide in rwanda, don cheadle made it out ok and didn't everyone look nice and clean in the hotel even without running water?' films like this really seem to bring out the pessimist in me. and yet i rather enjoyed the film until it ended. perhaps i need to write my own rwandan film. who knows?

up and down

2005-05-07T10:46:00.000-07:00

so last night, being a slow movie weekend box office wise, at least around here, we decided to check out the czech film, 'up and down'. oh what a bizarre film this is. i'm still not sure if i liked it or not; perhaps writing about it will help me decide.

many plots sort-of twist in this film (the shape of the narrative is very bizarre to say the least, jumping from one plot to another rather inadeptly) exist. first, we see a truck carrying a bunch of emigrants who want to escape to germany exit, leaving a baby behind. this becomes plot one. then all of a sudden, there's a switch to a family laughing it up at dinner; a few scenes later, the father, a uni prof, has a seizure and all of a sudden he has a tumour on his brain. he asks to see his wife (apparently he was not divorced from her and is only living with the mother of his daughter) and his estranged son, who lives in australia.

anyway, another plot concerns a couple who want a baby desperately (you can see the threads trying to knit together already); the wife goes out and tries to walk off with a baby carriage, she is that desperate. well, somehow, unbeknownst to us, they get hooked up with the people who want to sell the baby off the truck. so the wife buys the baby.

meanwhile, we learn that her husband cannot adopt a child because he has a criminal record from getting into fights after football matches with his hard-core teammates, all of whom are about as racist as you can get. in fact, the film exudes racism; the wife of the uni prof goes off about how her neighbourhood is run over with immigrants, worthless immigrants. and when the 'commander' of the football fan club sees the baby of fanta, the poor ex-con new dad, he is disgusted by its being black and deletes franta from his mobile phone. meanwhile, the mom and daughter team work for an anti-racism/help for immigrants society, but even they show signs of being racist.

all of this racism came out of nowhere in the film, which started out really enjoyably. the football watching scenes were especially brutal in their racist shouts. by the end of the film, all we could think was that prague certainly didn't seem to be a good place to go, particularly for me, who is slovakian. strangely, australia seemed to be racial heaven, with the son married to a black woman and with a mulatto son. who knew?

overall, i guess i liked the film for all its bizarrity. i do wonder, though, if the racism in the film was exemplary of prague and the czech republic, or just something to tie the many plot threads together. scary if it's the former. which, i dare say, is probably the truth.

ashes of time and days of being wild

2005-05-06T11:10:00.000-07:00

being the wong kar wei fan that i am, i finally got a hold of two of his earlier works, the aforementioned ones in the title of this blog. overall, these are two strong films which show his progression into his later works such as 'chungking express' and 'in the mood for love'.

now, i must warn you: 'ashes of time,' if you don't pay strict attention to it, is very hard to follow. on first watching, tim and i declared it a piece of shit and complained that there was no plot, nothing to follow. i was dejected. here's one of my fav directors, whose only bad film is 'happy together' (BORING!). how could he have made another clunker? granted it was early in his career, but i just couldn't believe it. so i did an imdb search on the film and found many complaints of the same nature, each one urging me to rewatch and appreciate. so i did.

what's hard to follow about this film is that it isn't very linear, the characters for the most part have no names, and the violent/kung fu scenes are all stylized in slo mo and thus very repetitive. and yet, as i watched it, i found myself drawn into the plot. yes, there really is one! as the netflix blurb reports, 'the director lowers the volume on the action segments in favor of crafting a captivating and introspective character study.' well i would have to agree with that. the plot centers around swordsmen (and -women)-for-hire, with the narrator being the main speaker in a film that centers around their lost loves and lost lives. all realize their virtue is lost, and all wish to somehow retrieve it, knowing they cannot. 4 characters exist altogether, each one awash in sorrow and remorse. as i carefully watched the film, the 1 hr and 40 mins went by quickly. i definitely recommend this one, if you can pay attention well. it might take a couple of viewings, but it's definitely worth the trouble.

'days of being wild' is a more what i would call 'standard' wong film. it traces characters from relationship to relationship and seems a precursor to 'chungking' or 'fallen angels', although not quite stylized. here we see some of our favourite actors looking so young: leslie cheung, maggie cheung (oh wow, i almost didn't recognize her), andy lau, and carine lau. basically this is a story of leslie cheung's character, yuddie, manipulating both maggie's and carine's characters after he finds out his mom isn't his birth mom, and he goes on a search for her. jackey cheung is along for the ride as a contestor for carine lau's love. while not super-stellar, this is another good effort by wong, showing his move up in his directing abilities.

if you are a wong kar wei fan, believe me, you need to see these two...

house of flying daggers and the aviator

2004-12-30T09:59:00.000-08:00

so i'm finally back writing. as if anyone cares.

anyway, though i've seen a lot of films that i haven't written about in my absence, i have just seen two that stick in my mind as worthy of comment.

the first is 'house of flying daggers', a brilliant, beautiful, soaring love story/martial arts film so amazing you must see it. done by zhang zimou and starring zhang ziyi, this one is just as wonderful as 'hero,' if not better. it's an amazing work that i can't really comment on as ... well, you just have to see it.

but where 'house' soars, 'the aviator,' to me anyway, fails to lift off the runway. 3 hours of a bland biopic. i mean, here's one of the most bizarre, interesting men of the 20th century, and i found myself without any new insight into him whatsoever. leo as hughes does an ok job, but he has no... bon vivance ... or something. the only thing i liked about the film was cate blanchett's performance as kate hepburn. damn cate is a great actress. also, bold errors of continuity exist, which as you know if you read my piece on spiderman 2 i just can't abide, esp in epic films such as these. but i can't even bother to go on about the film. don't waste 3 hours of your life on this; instead go see 'house' twice!

ju-on -- the grudge

2004-11-26T11:45:00.000-08:00

so i've got a grudge against 'the grudge.' heard a lot of good things about the new one with sarah michelle gellar based exactly on the original and also set in tokyo. by ... the same director who did the remake. i'm horrid with names and i have already put the film in the post for netflix. coma brain... it was so lame, i've got a grudge against it for wasting a film in my queue...

anyway, even my best friend luke said the film wasn't horrid. and i trust his opinion. well he must have been doing some serious drugs the night he saw it, or else the remake is far better than 'ju-on' because i found little to like in it. mostly it was a stupid plot with supposedly scary moments that were about as scary as my trip to the philadelphia edgar allen poe house. there, the park ranger told us to 'look in every cabinet' and they had plastic rats in some, and spiders in others. that's how thrilling this film was. the only good thing i can say about the film is the its lead character had good eyes for supposedly getting scared.

i thought that if i liked this one, i would go see the grudge. but tim and i both agreed it was a piece of shit, even if he liked it more than me. i even fell asleep at one point, it was that lame.

so don't see either!

comedic cookery

2004-11-24T13:32:00.000-08:00

so i watched 'the god of cookery,' a stephen chow comedy, last night. i know what you are all thinking: any stephen chow comedy must be terrific. well, i must tell you, this is perhaps his greatest masterpiece of all. it's crazy, more insane than his other films such as 'from beijing with love'.

it starts off rather bizarrely, and just goes on from there. from the get-go you are introduced to the said 'god of cookery', who is shown eating 'assorted noodles' at an outdoor market. he proclaims them 'unfit,' citing, for example, shit still left in the pig's colon that comprises part of the meal. cut to gods descending and bright lights, and then we see the 'god' smack dab in a strange cooking contest. there we meet the 'minister of taste', who will play a big part in the end. we also meet a young protege of stephen chow's, a big, bespectacled loaf ready to do his bidding no matter what. through no unseen circumstances, the 'god' is proclaimed winner, and his protege is hired after proving his loyal service by pulling down his pants to take a crap in the hallway, per stephen chow's dictate. sounds bizarre already, doesn't it?

well of course somehow this protege is linked with the triad/syndicate, and soon enough he gets our hapless hero disbanded as a fraud, and chow loses his fame, his restaurants and all his money.

cut back to the original scene, which i suppose is now present time. here, a band of thugs beat him up for stepping on their turf, and only 'turkey,' the woman who made the shitty noodles in the first place, steps up to save him. they soon form a partnership with a new dish, which is so bizarre i leave you to find out what it is for yourself.

the film gets wackier and wackier; at times you're not sure what's going on because the subtitles flash so quickly. but in fact it doesn't really matter, does it? you are whisked along this route of mayhem and mischief, until the finale where all loose ends become somehow neatly tied up.

oh, i haven't laughed this hard in a while. so naturally i highly recommend it! be ready for inanity, and you'll be set to enjoy this fine piece of hong kong brilliance....

the untold story

2004-11-22T19:21:00.000-08:00

so saturnight i was on a hot date and we ended up coming back here to watch a film. happily, of all my films, the guy chose 'the untold story', the weirdest, most depraved, violent film i've ever seen. it's a hong kong action film. the lead actor wears this goony big black glasses that enhance his ever-crazed eyes perfectly.

the film is based on a true story, as the dvd 'sadly' reports. it's hard for me to even write about this film, because you have to see it to believe it. i've seen it many times and it still amazes me. it's about this guy who kills a family so that he can take over the restaurant they own. only you don't know this at first. all you know is that a woman's remains have washed up on the shore and are really stinking up the joint. the remains are so old and washed out that when the female cop picks up the arm to take a finger print, the finger falls off into her hand... that's about as ungross as it gets. from there it is all downhill... blood. guts. butchery. the cool part about the film is that it's not just the restaurant guy who is evil; the police aren't so great themselves. the guy refuses to talk when they first arrest him, and so they throw him in jail, where the dead restaurant's bro happens to be. well of course the bro and his posse beat the shit out of our antihero. he still refuses to talk, tries to kill himself to get out of prison. in hospital he is abused even more. it's strange; the guy is so vile, you want to hate him, and yet when the police are beating the crap out of him, you almost feel sorry for the guy....

the film really digs deep into your marrow, making you squirm. it's not for everyone -- i've tried to show it to a few people but it just doesn't fly with them. so i was happy when my date loved the film. not bad for a first date....

sorry for the silence for so long. i'll try to write more. i just haven't seen anything worth writing about these days....

secret window should have stayed closed

2004-11-09T10:07:00.000-08:00

sorry for the silence, folks. i just haven't had time to write here. between school and participating in national novel writing month (www.nanowrimo.org) i just have had no time for writing on my blog, let alone watching films. well that's not true. i just haven't watched anything worth writing about.

and this one, 'secret window', isn't really, because it was really stupid. starring johnny depp and based on a stephen king novella, this story was utterly predictable (aren't all stephen king stories these days?) and utterly boring.

even johnny depp wasn't that nice to look at in this film, and i usually just can watch any piece of crap he is in (pirates of the carribean, anyone?) to see him. usually though he picks interesting roles and is very intelligent in the characters he plays.

but this film was so forced, no wonder he didn't do any good to it. it was about a writer (big surprise) who wrote a short story back in '95. called 'secret window' (although what the story was about was never told, except we saw the supposed secret window it was based on, which, obviously, if you can see it isn't that secret). anyway, one day this guy, played quite nicely i must admit by john turturro, shows up and claims that depp's character plagiarized the story.

well if you have every read a stephen king novel lately or seen a film based on his recent work, you can guess what happens. and to spare you all the torture of perhaps renting this dreck, i will tell you...

big surprise!!! the john turturro character is just a manifestation of a slowly going insane depp, and he starts doing things that show he's insane. of course we are supposed to believe he is still being stalked by turturro, who supposedly burns down his estranged wife's house and kills the one man who could have told the police that turturro exists. ah. what a piece of crap.

the ending just gets so ridiculous. i can't even talk about it, it is just too horrid. i might get nightmares just thinking about it...

all i will tell you is that you know the film is over when the camera pans over to the secret window and dollies in for a close up. please, close the blinds on this piece of shit!!!

i am in the process of trying to find time to watch baz luhrmann's version of 'la boheme,' and as soon as i do i will fill you in on it. i'm not much of an opera fan but i've heard such great things about this, and i am, as you all know, a big luhrmann fan. so until then, i close the window on my post...

outfoxed

2004-10-13T17:34:00.000-07:00

so i'm waiting for the last debate by watching 'outfoxed,' about the bias in fox new central. it's pretty interesting, showing how if someone says something pro=Democratic, bill o'reilly and others will just tell you to shut up. that segment was pretty funny. now it is showing how fox shows meaningless drivel about iraq, such as people driving cars crazily. and how big progress is being made in iraq... yeah right! it's pretty interesting, although it is dragging a bit. i think its running time of 77 minutes is a bit too long.. yeah, i get it already.

and yet, it is informative. esp that if 'you watched fox news you would have completely wrong information' regarding weapons of mass destruction. this is a trend for fox. 'the less you know about the story, the more you will support the government'... these are all quotes. now someone is saying how fox is the right hand of the republican party. well, duh, didn't anyone with any intelligence already figure this out?

well i am finding this a little boring, but i think for the average viewer, it has a lot of great clips showing how biased Fox news is. and i think that's important. an interesting and SHORT documentary that moves at an ok pace. a must see for naive viewers everywhere!

saved!

2004-10-09T14:58:00.000-07:00

so last night i took pizzapants' recommendation and watched the effervescent and mostly silly --- in a good way --- 'saved!'. the film resolves around a young lady (jena malone) who, in an attempt to save her boyfriend from being gay, has premarital sex with him to prove he does indeed like girls (he doesn't).

well i'm sure that would be all and good except for two things: jena's character is a born-again christian, and she winds up preggers. all this and the other quirky characters in the film really make for a fine comedy...

first, we have hilary fay, the ubermensch of born-againity. she goes on a campaign to have the rebellious (and jewish) cassandra become saved, designing ever so stupid activities she hopes will make cass deny satan and join the fold. which is the christian school they all attend, a real hoot. in the beginning of the school year, they have an assembly where the principal attempts to rap for christ -- 'jesus is in the house!' for example -- with extremely comic results. this is a joke of a school and it shows in everything that happens in it. the principal/pastor himself is quite a character, a hypocrite having an affair with jena's mom and breaking his marriage vows.

now, jena originally is in hilary fay's group, but when cassandra and roland (a handicapped boy, brother to hilary fay and NOT born-again) hook up and find out jena is preggers, they take her under their wings and help her hide the pregnancy, quite effectively. cass and jena get into many a snafu at school, and also suffer repurcusions at the hands of hilary fay towards the end of the film.

really this is quite funny, along the lines of 'mean girls' but in a little nicer venue. not as backstabbing and biting, but fun nevertheless. parts of it seemed unrealistic -- could she really pull off the pregnancy thing in real life? well, i guess people have, but that seemed far fetched, esp when she attends prom in all her preggers glory and has a very big tummy. so that was a little more than questionable. but it was all for fun, so who cares.

in all, this isn't the funniest film in the world, but it is definitely one of the funnier ones i've seen lately. i thank pizzapants for recommending it. if anyone has other recommendations, please let me know!

until next time, i remain your ever faithful titivillus...

coffee and cigarettes

2004-10-03T13:16:00.000-07:00

so last night, instead of going salsa dancing as was our plan, gretchen and erik and i just hung out at their place and watched jim jarmusch's latest, 'coffee and cigarettes'. like most of jarmusch's films, it was really about nothing, nothing but coffee and cigarettes. still, it was pretty entertaining.

little vignettes comprise the film, and each one features at least one actor you will know. for example, the first one consists of roberto begnini (it's nice to see him again... hasn't been around for a while) and stephen dorff, talking about coffee and cigarettes and a dentist appointment stephen doesn't want to go to. later on, gva and dva toy with bill murray, who is supposedly hiding out from someone/something, working at a coffee joint. some people play themselves; others such as cate blanchett (she's really a great actress, probably the best in her age group, i'd say) play characters. well blanchett plays two, in a dual role.

i won't tell you about any more of the vignettes; i've already given enough away. but i will recommend this to anyone wanted a film that requires little attention span. sometimes we all need something like this. i know i did last night -- i was totally manic. so if you want a light little film that still has a little cream in its coffee, check this one out.....

super size me? no thanks!

2004-10-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

hi all. boy it's been a while since i've blogged but quite frankly i've not only been very busy with school and haven't seen anything worth blogging about (god, films are shite these days!) but also, quite frankly, until right now i rather forgot about blogging, mostly because my desktop tower is down so i am using my laptop and wi-fi. thank the heavens for wi-fi!

but now i've remembered it's been too long and i am back...

so i watched 'super size me' finally last night. what an interesting look into the fast food hell that is mickey d's. of course i have read 'fast food nation', which is very similar to this film, but it was fascinating to see how sick and fat the supersizer got to be after his month on the food. personally, i was revolted watching him eat that first supersized meal, after which he himself was so revolted he vomited. there's gotta be an easier way to eat on the go than to stop at a fast food joint.

i mean, i rarely cook for myself but i haven't, in all my adult life, stooped so low as to eat a fast food meal. even the plain garden salads seem somehow suspect to me. i'd rather pay a few more dollars and get nice thai or vietnamese take out, which is always more healthy and you get two meals for the price of one. come to think of it, i don't think these places charge much more than a fast food place, once you average in your fries and your beverage and whatever other crap you might want to shovel into your face. of course, they don't give out free toys, like a happy smiling frog with a coin in his mouth or a big buddha with a meal. i wish they would. but hey, not only are you getting healthy 'nature food' (as my oriental nutrition prof says) but you are also helping to support local businesses. even more pricier indian and japanese food is worth the extra expense, even if you are counting your pennies. on thursnight for example, gretchen and erik and her brother visiting from out of town went to this cool place in nob hill called shogun sushi where boats are supposed to deliver your food to you. for $40 we all ate quite lavishly, and that included tax and tips, and as usual i had leftovers for last night's dinner.

but anyway, back to the film.... i was quite impressed with it. i liked how it educated without being too preachy, and i'm glad it was as commercially successful as it was (hell, it turned up in the $1 theatre here after a while. that's rare for an indie film). i would recommend it to anyone, esp those of you who do eat at mcdonald's or wherever. i wonder though -- do you get a toy prize when you buy the dvd???

the passionless christ

2004-09-11T09:06:00.000-07:00

so... i watched, or rather half-watched because i ended up fast forwarding through most of it, 'the passion of the christ.'

where to start to tell you what's wrong with it? hmm... i just don't know. well, maybe i'll tell you the only thing i did like about it: hearing the languages. even though two of them are dead, so there's no way to know how they really sounded, and the third i'm sure has changed in sound over the millions of years it's been spoken. so they weren't accurate, but as a Ph.D. in english who herself knows a few dead languages, i really liked that part...

but the rest of it... not so good. in fact, really shitty. first off, you know the story if you'ver ever been made to sit in front of the telly watching those ol' biblical epics. or been driven to church and sort-of paid attention. or again, if you have a Ph.D. in english with a concentration in medieval english lit, including drama. 99% of plays put on then were biblical in nature, you see. mostly they revolved around corpus christi, when they would put on what are now called 'cycle plays'. here, you went from station to station watching a different play based on biblical dogma, but with british influences, settings, humour, etc. for example, one play is the noah play, and in one version (the wakefield) noah's wife is a nagging bitch. the bulk of them dealt with jesus and his last day on earth, so you got the different stages of the passion. in a way, i liked the film because some of the scenes really seemed to be influenced by these plays, especially the more realistic york cycle. in one of these plays, jesus is realistically nailed to the cross, and the workers talk about tearing the sinews and watching the blood pour out as they each take a turn hammering in a nail. so the goriness of the play didn't astonish me (esp since the world made such a big stink about it). although i doubt, sincerely, that good ol' mel went back and read the cycle plays...

now while the excessiveness of blood didn't astonish me, and while i usually, as you all probably know by now, adore violence and gore in my films, here it was just excessive to the point of patent inanity. granted, it could be true (if any of the jesus stories are true) that he was beaten to a pulp, and i have no doubt that that's the way it was, but come on, we get it already, mel. plus, mel was trying far too hard to make it stylized violence, with funky camera angles and slo-mo. was he taking a page from a hong kong action film? who knows. but if he was, his film lacked the humour that goes along with the gore, and thus it was just too much. i mean, as i said, it didn't really bother me, but i could see how some reverent folk might be shaken up. i mean, this was supposed to be a tribute to christ, not some psuedo-artsy-fartsy trip down crucifixion lane!

another problem with the film is, as i slightly mentioned above, all the tricky camera angles and shots and effects. they made me laugh, roll my eyes, or just scream, 'oh god, not another shot of the ominous sky!' one scene just really cracked me up... judas, who was going mad with guilt over selling jesus to the high priests, was sitting against a tree. these two kids come up to him and start taunting him mercilessly. all of a sudden, mel cuts backs and forth from the kids to judas, and sometimes they've turned into hideously deformed kids, complete with only one eye on one of the boys and grimacy faces on the other. it reminded me of a cheesy halloween film or something.

and as i said, all the slo-mo, focus on the dropping rain shots showed up, which are really nice in a film like 'hero' where they enhance the beauty of the film, but here they just seemed like gimmicks to make the audience suffer with christ. and oh boy did i suffer!!! through all the hokiness!

also, the pacing was a little too slow for me, and again i know that's because of the aforementioned attempt by gibson to make the audience feel jesus' pain. but to me, it was just boring. that's why i ended up watching it at 5 and 20 times the speed after a while.

then came the end, which i won't tell you about in case you actually end up watching this film. oh boy! it's a whopper, effects-wise!

so i guess if you want to suffer through a bad film, do so with christ and watch 'the passion...'

by the way, i have been so absent these days as i am very busy with school. acupuncture college requires a lot from you! but i love it! i'll try to write more. one reason i haven't blogged is that i've not seen a film worthy of my attention and care. but once i get into a routine, i'll be able to blog more about whatever... i am reading the 'tale of genji' now, and while it may take me months to finish (it's about 1200 pages of very small typeface) i will LOVE to talk about that when i'm done....

bye!

hero

2004-09-04T10:57:00.000-07:00

so yesterday gretchen and i went to see 'hero' after class. oh what a film!
i rather knew what to expect, effects and action-wise, because back when i taught at UCR, one of my students gave me a copy of the film on VCD, but it has no subtitles. so i've watched it many times without knowing anything about the plot.

but seeing it on the big screen just blew me away. oh the cinematography is brilliant! even better, maybe (not quite sure yet!) than that of 'crouching tiger...' (and if you've been keeping up with my blog, you know i love that film and have a chapter in a book about it)...

actually, the film is very similar, martial-arts wise, to 'crouching...'. once again we see the characters with the ability to fly, something my brother (and many others) just couldn't tolerate. and yet, according to chinese thought (remember, i am learning chinese theory right now) and Ang Lee (director of 'crouching...'), this ability is called “vulge” kung fu, enabled by an “enlightened body” which “weighs less” than that of fighters with unenlightened souls. so it's not a fantastical device, but rather one based on taoism. still, i admit, you have to suspend your disbelief for that if you aren't as enlightened as the fighters are.

and once again we see plethoras of arrows coming at people, reminiscent of the great 'ran' by akria kurosawa (this is one of the best films of all times. if you've never seen it, DO!). but this one takes it a little further, putting viewers into the flight of the arrows and making us feel that flight. also we see water droplets as slo-mo comes in and we see the arrows split the water... well, ok, this gets a little cheesy. way too over the top. but it's still impressive to see. a lot of slo mo takes place, sometimes i think a little too much. but that to me seems to be its only flaw.

the scenery... god, 'tis breathtaking. the colours of sunsets are even more bold and have an even more impressive 'painted' feelings than the sunsets i see here in abq (which has amazing sunsets). the settings are so important, that as with 'crounching,' they almost become a character themselves.

the plot contains twists and turns i don't want to give away, but i will tell you that the main gist is that nameless, played by jet li, wants to kill the evil emperor of the qin province of what will become china one day. the emperor is apparently a warmongering tyrant who will stop at nothing in his quest to acquire all of the surrounding states. other critics have claimed that the plot is akin to that of kurosawa's 'roshomon' (another must see!) but i don't get that, as 'roshomon' gives 4 versions of one story while this film builds off each telling... and it is clear which version is correct...

maggie cheung as flying snow is simply exquisite in this film, as is zhang ziyi, who shows up as moon, servant to broken arrow (coma brain. i forget the actor's name right now!). broken arrow, meanwhile, plays his character with perfection. and jet li puts in the performance of his life as nameless. forget the drek you might have seen him in in american productions. here he is back in his element, and he proves why he is such an international star.

in all, i would say that if you liked 'crouching tiger' or never saw it, you should check out 'hero' because, while it wasn't, to me, as solid as the former, it was intriguing and intense and immaculate. if you hated 'crouching,' well... this is more of the same stuff so stay away....

happily, now i can watch my VCD knowing what's going on! it won't be as intense as the theatrical showing is, but hey... at least i own a copy.

crappy band at the outpost!

2004-08-31T06:54:00.000-07:00

so the outpost's last summer jazz offering was very disappointing. i only stayed for part of the first band's set because i found it so loud (pointlessly loud. hell, i love loud... you should hear my listening to my crazy japanese freakout music!) and annoying. the band started off by playing a tribute song to they might be giants called 'but they aren't' which i didn't really get because it didn't have anything to do with that band's music. and they called they might... punk rockers! imagine that! then they played an ornette coleman (one of my fav jazzers) tune but even that was flat and without... the exuberance coleman creates. finally, before i left with a migraine from the way too loud drums, they played their version of 'over the rainbow', which was just long and cheesy and filled with a bunch of crap. needless to say, could i remember the name of the band, i certainly wouldn't recommend it to you... but i can't.

sorry, outpost, you let me down. oh well, at least i got in free!

"Is there no room in this world for the man with the 105 IQ?" -- Homer

dogville

2004-08-30T06:48:00.000-07:00

so i don't know how long this post can be, i am rather pressed for time to get to school.

but i watched such an incredible film over the weekend, 'dogville'. this is a lars von trier film, and as such it totally abides to his dogme 95 rules -- no music, minimal sets. very brechtian in his theory. if you've ever seen the '90s classic, 'the celebration,' then you know all about dogme 95. but here von trier goes a little further -- this is set on a stage about as minimalist as possible. all you know of the town of dogville is drawn in chalk (except for some set pieces, such as frontispieces for houses in some cases, and some stuff in the store, etc). all the people respect the boundaries of the chalk however, and soon you can imagine the fictional town of dogville in all its glory. it's kinda like that thornton wilder play, 'our town' in this way. but in no other way!

the plot revolves around grace, played with grace (just like maria!) by nicole kidman. she winds up in dogville when a mobster car shows up in town and kicks her out, with little but the clothes she is wearing. the townspeople, who don't like intruders, are hesitant to let her 'hide out', as she requests, but eventually, innocent and hurt as she looks, they agree. as long as she does her share of work and keeps herself busy. they even start to become friendly to her.... you think they accept her. or do they?

well a lot's going on here, and i don't want to give anything away, except she does have a beau in the town, tom, played by philip micheal hall -- remember him from all those 80s films like 'breakfast club'? well happily he sure has matured and does a fine job in his role. all the other people -- chloe sevigny, james caan, etc. -- also perform extremely well, and you really get the idea of a close-minded loyal community here. just what von trier was trying to create.

when you do watch it, give yourselves lots of time because it runs 177 minutes. but it never drags or anything!

so check this out... soon. i've already ordered it from amazon, that's how much i liked it...

"Is there no room in this world for a man with the 105 IQ?" - Homer

so this is a REAL post!

2004-08-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

so hello everyone.

i am finally done moving my old posts from blogging. oh what an ordeal! i didn't realize i was such a blabbermouth. or maybe a blabberwriter...

i haven't really had a chance to scrutinize many films lately. i am in the midst of watching 'dogville,' which will be my first post on this new blog. but i have started acupuncture college, and it is fascinating. i have learned so much already, it's really rather overwhelming. and my sleep schedule is all fucked up and all week i have been dragging my ass around in a haze. 2-4 hours sleep per night. i have to be up by about 7 and i am used to staying up til 4 or 5 and then getting up at 2. so you can see, it is a monolithic change. i'm such an insomniac too. but i'll reckon it all out.

meanwhile one of my faithful readers said it would be interesting if i talked about things in acu. school. what do you think? i kind of want this to remain my getaway from school, as i have lots of work to do already. so i think i will likely keep going the way i've been going. hopefully i can post more, esp when i am drinking my morning coffee. we'll see.

in the meantime, look for more to come and please, if you want to know more about acupuncture school, just email me...

"Is there no room in this world for the man with the 105 IQ?" - Homer

woman in the dunes

2004-08-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

so yesterday jaden and i planned to go see 'blind swordsman: zatoichi' which i cannot wait to see although dumbfuck me got the theatres wrong and so we ended up missing the last matinee. well next friday will be perfect.

anyway, jaden came over here then and we watched one of the most bizarre films around, hiroshi teshigahara's 'woman in the dunes'. this is a 1964 film that was nominated for best director and best film (foreign, of course) by the academy, and it deserved to win. touted as 'haunting. erotic. unforgettable,' the film surely is. it's about this woman who lives in a community underneath these sand dunes which keep falling on her house. she's all alone, as her husband and daughter were buried in a sand slide years ago. so this guy shows up, and the people who live above the dunes somehow get him to go down this rope ladder to visit the lady, and they take away the rope so he is stuck there. indeed there is a lot of erotic tension, although it lacked the sexual shenanigans i expected it to have. still, the tension was there and it kept building up.

meanwhile, the guy and the woman have to keep shoveling the sand every night for 12 hours to keep the house safe. 'why don't you leave?' he keeps asking her (and "why can't i leave?' is another query) and she never really answers him. she's always asking about tokyo though, making you think that she is scared to leave this strange, closed off community for it's all she's known all her life.

additionally, the cinematography is just amazing. the scenes of the sand falling remind you of a surf video when it focuses on the height of a wave and it crashing down. just amazing. and the film itself, as promised, is haunting and unforgettable. still has me thinking about it.

so next time you are at the video store or lining up your queue for netflix, check this one out. it's really good.

after the film, 'rabbit-proof fence' was on cable, so we watched that. i really like that film. i didn't really dig it when i saw it in the theatre, but the small screen made it have more impact. it's such an intimate film, this journey of 3 runaways. i recommend that one too.

oh, i also watched 'millenium mambo,' a strange little taiwanese film that amused me greatly. yes, it was a film filled day for me. but what day isn't? check out all these films. they're all good in their own ways....

"Is there no room in this world for the man with the 105 IQ?" -- Homer

nutrition and hot jazz boys

2004-08-29T11:10:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, August 17th, 2004, 1:16 pm

boys so last night at the outpost i saw two bands again. the first was called 'nutrition' with arnaldo acosta, and they were ok. nothing major. i liked them but not as much as i LOVED the second band, the jeff brown/zach lane/brandon draper trio. these are 3 young men with major talent who played a lot of lively, noisy jazz, just the way i likes it. they were probably the best band i've seen of the summer series, and that's not only because all three of them are quite attractive! no, their music is most in line with the type of jazz i like: marion brown, cecil taylor, steve lacy (who recently died! so sad!). you could even compare them with nels clines when he's playing in combos. (nels by the way was apparently on letterman a while ago with wilco, of all people. they let him play a very controlled solo. letterman should just have him on by himself!). anyway, i can't wait to see this trio play again.

also, i gave my phone number to jeff brown after he asked for it. maybe this time he'll actually call! and not just to videotape them as he first suggested! turns out i actually met him months ago at the outpost when i was talking with tom about videotaping shows there and he heard me and asked for my number then. well it's a good thing i saw him again because a) i reminded him i exist and b) i have a new phone number now. will he call? well i'll keep you posted.

meanwhile if you are in abq, look for them to play. apparently they play sometimes at pearl's dive, and also in bernalillio, which is only about 15 mins away. kewl!

time for me to get ready for my haircut...adieu, loyal fans!

p.s. update to this old post -- no, jeff hasn't called!!!!

"Is there no room in this world for the man with the 105 IQ?" - Homer

maria full of grace (and heroin!) and christy love

2004-08-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

Saturday, August 14th, 2004, 2:18 pm

so this film is really intense, really stark, really realistic. it's quite painful to watch the women swallow the heroin packets that are the size of large green grapes, without water, all 62 of them at one time. made the whole glamour of the drug scene really as vile and disgusting as is it (unlike most 'anti-drug, realistic films' that just make it so fun. when i saw 'trainspotting' the first time, i wanted to go live that lifestyle for weeks!).

the woman who plays maria does so with grace (as in the title) and with determination, a young lady who looks too young to even be caught in the situations that make her become a mole for javier, a repulsive user who gave us all the creeps. the other people in the film were equally convincing. you can really see how family money problems, personal problems, and the need to get somewhere in life could entice such a young, beautiful woman as maria and her cousin, who's even younger. wow.

this is jumbled, but i'm sure you've all guessed how the plot goes. but there are intricasies i want to leave alone for you to discover. for this is a beautiful film, and if you've been reading my reviews to date you know that i am a harsh critic. i would have to say that so far this summer, it is the best film out there! so see it while you can!

meanwhile, last night i was lucky enough to watch the present my brother picked up for me at walgreens -- the original pilot for 'get christie love!' remember that show, anyone? sort of a pam grier for tv cop flick, full of christie kicking ass with her martial arts and wits. oh it is a fun thing to have on dvd, really brought back memories of my childhood. it was fetch!

ta ta for now. i've got hair to colour blue!

"Is there no room in this world for the man with 105 IQ?" -- Homer

good bye, lenin!

2004-08-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

Friday, August 13th, 2004, 10:59 am

so hi all. happy friday the 13th. it is already bad for me because i couldn't sleep at all last night and i was up at the ungodly hour of 8.30. read for a while and gave up on sleep at 9.30. oh the humanity! but in a way it's good... starting in a week and a half i have to be at school every day at 9. oh truly this will kill me!but that's beside the point.

so i finally have watched something decent about which to report... i watched 'good bye, lenin' last night. it's about this guy whose mom has a heart attack, and the doctor tells him that anything that could upset her must be kept from her. she was in a coma 9 months, and by the time she woke up, the Berlin Wall had fallen and the border between East and West Germany was gone. She, a staunch communist, devoted to the East German government, would have been heartbroken and crazed to know this had happened, so her son, his sister, and his girlfriend decide to do everything possible to avoid telling her or letting her find out this happens. this includes telling comers to her birthday party that they must dress like they are still under communist rule and must act the part; hiring kids to come sing communist songs to her; even making his friend who works with him at a cable installation place create fake newscasts that cover up things she questions....overall this is a very engaging film, and it amused me. but i don't think it deserves ALL the kudos it got in the press and at the oscars (as if they mean anything anyway!). sure, it was an original story, but it wasn't nearly as quirky and funny as i expected. this is not a laugh out loud comedy, that's certain. but it had its charms. the cinematography was decent; the most memorable scene is the one that you've all seen on the trailers: his mom out in the street, seeing the big statue of lenin being airlifted out of east berlin. what does the son do about that? well, see the film and find out. it's a charming little bugger...

today i am going to see 'maria full of grace' so i will have a review for you shortly. until then, LATES!

"Is there no room in this world for the man with 105 IQ?" -- Homer

jazz y mas

2004-08-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, August 11th, 2004, 5:20 pm

so i've been to a few events worth mentioning. first off, i volunteered at the outpost on monnight and saw an pretty crappy band, the chris potter quartet. at times it seemed a little herbie hancock '70s style jazz, and otherwise the people were most narcissistic and managed to play only 3 songs in set one as they all just kept soloing. ok, we get the idea that you are talented. now play the whole damn song! as usual i sold cds but the bastard didn't even give me free one! i always get one, and i sold 20 of his crappy cds. i was rather pissed!

then i came home and watched 'welcome to the dollhouse' for about the billionth time. you can't go wrong with that film. made me happy. what a nice day!

yesterday was my new mother in law's birthday so we all went to the isotopes AAA baseball game. unfortunately it was a little boring as one isotope scored in the first inning and that was it. but we had fun. it's nice to have a second family!

i also watched this film called 'joan the mad' which was really quite good. it was about this chick in the 1400s who was deemed mad because of her actions (actions we'd find normal today). she was stuck in a marriage in which her hubby cheated on her left and right. she was queen of castile, and moved up the ranks to take over more kingdoms, but no one trusted her because she was supposedly mad. i won't go into what happens next, 'cause you should rent it.

the next film i want to see in the theatre is 'maria full of grace'. has anyone seen it yet?

oh i also saw 'the butterfly effect' and enjoyed that one. an interesting premise, and while the acting wasn't the greatest (ashton who?) the film moved quickly and kept me entertained....

meanwhile, it's official: i broke my ankle again and am in a walking cast. third time this summer that my left ankle has either broken or caused my fifth metatarsal to break. lucky me! i can't even wear all my cute sandals! well i must go put my ankle up. remember, check out 'joan the mad'....

"Is there no room in this world for the man with 105 IQ?" -- Homer

a broken ankle and a crappy film!!

2004-08-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 8th, 2004, 1:42 pm

so, it seems almost official that i've broken my ankle AGAIN!!!! oh fuck. this is no good. all summer i've been in and out of casts and it is driving me mad! but i have been watching some films as a result. however, most have been so shitty i can't even remember the titles of any of them. i wish i could, then i could forewarn you from renting them...

last night, however, i watched one of the lamest films of the year, ABCD. this is about an Indian family who i think live in Canada, although i could have fallen asleep during that part (oh those painkillers!). anyway, this family consists of a mother and her son and daughter. the daughter is supposed to be 'highly promiscuous' and providing shame to the family, but she didn't seem any worse than your average 20something in any film. (oh well, i guess Indians have higher standards).of course, the son is the good one of the family, always coming between the mom and daughter when they fight, saving the daughter's ass when she gets into trouble, etc. the mother, meanwhile, is quite a nagging bitch, one of the worst i've ever seen in a film. who could blame the daughter for rebelling!

anyway, of course you can imagine the plot. the mom wants the daughter to marry some ugly Indian about whom the daughter could care less, and the son acts as a mediator between the two. oh boy was it predicatable and boring. i kept dozing off, and usually if i do that, i back it up to where i left off. but this time, there was no point. i easily predicted what happened while i catnapped. oh what a piece of junk!!!!

so learn your ABCs and avoid ABCD!!!

films and whatnot

2004-08-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

Thursday, July 29th, 2004, 10:02 am

so i am attempting to write a semi coherent summary/criticism of the films i've watched the past few days.first off, i saw an israel film called 'broken wings' which was very well acted and had a few plot twists that made it a little less predictable. the story is that this dysfunctional family has problems with mom always working, loafing arounf themselves, and resenting mom for having to work so much. many 'i hate you, mom' statements arise. maya, the main character, has a dream to be a singer, but then she has her big chance at a recording studio (yeah, right. there's realism for you!) she has to stop singing because her brother ido is in a coma. oh please! meanwhile, ido pours water onto the bed of the littlest child, bahr. she always thinks, therefore that she has a problem there. the other brother, feir (sp?) is just an all around loony brat who doesn't go to school because he would rather dress up like a mouse and pass out flyers on the metro.ok, this doesn't sound like the best review, but it's really a nice film, esp when you keep falling asleep in it because you are sick. i liked it ok.
meanwhile, all i have been doing is trying to catch up on the extras of many dvds. so i've watched all the extras on 'moulin rouge,' which were quite good and informative. baz luhrnamnn is truly a cinematic genius. then i watched (or started to) the extras on the new 'definitive edition' of 'trainspotting'. please, people, don't waste your money on this dvd. it is all a bunch of shite; danny boyle is commenting in his living room in his lounge around scummy clothes, and really doesn't add much. nor does my true love ewan mcgregor, or any other of the commenters. some other features exist, but if you ask me, you are better off just buying the cheapo version (i have a copy if anyone is interested). also the film is supposed to be the director's cut, but the running time is the same as for the american version, and the only real differences are the slang used by begbie and the other cast mates. please... save your money! i am a 'trainspotting' freak, and i was sooo disappointed.

lastly i have been watching the extras of 'fight club'. so far i have gotten through the commentary by chuck palahuinik and james ohr, the author of the book and the screenwriter. they have a lot of insight into how the book turned into the film and it's really fascinating. i just started watching the danny boyle commentary as i couldn't sleep at all last night. too mcuh on my mind -- the wedding, the 'rents coming to visit, you know the deal. argh!

well i suppose that's it for now. my interview is in an hour and i have to drink way more coffee to make a good, awake impression!cheers!

'"Is there no room in this world for the man with 105 IQ?" -- Homer

my book!

2004-08-27T06:59:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, July 28th, 2004

one cool thing... the book in which i wrote an article about 'crouching tiger, hidden dragon' is out now. it's called 'medieval representations of heroes: from beowulf to buffy' and is just terrific, my essay especially (ha ha). check it out on amazon!

versus versus charlie's angels

2004-08-27T06:54:00.000-07:00

Saturday, July 24th, 2004, 2:45 pm
so yesterday was a horrid health day for me. i fear i have bronchitis again, and that's the last thing i need considering my bro's and pizzapants' wedding is next weekend. thus, all i did yesterday was lie on the sofa and watch films (with a dinner party thrown in in between).first i saw a cute, innocuous film called 'ginger and cinnamon', a nice little italian romantic comedy that was quite well done. very predicatable, but the characters were quirky enough to keep me interested. what cracked me up the most was that the subtitler kept translating 'fuck' into 'boink,' so the teenager in the film was just trying to boink this older guy and kept asking him, 'wanna boink?' it was hysterical!

that over, i popped in this japanese karate film called 'versus'. now, i don't know it's based on a video game or something, but it certainly seemed to be as it was high-flying, over-the-top action blood and gore, about as realistic as... nothing. just the way i like my cheesy asian films to be! the plot of course was absurd... there was some portal -- number 444 out of 666 on earth -- that was the 'forest of resurrection,' so that once you killed someone, he would almost instantly resurrect. even people buried were coming back to life because this one guy was apparently the key to the portal. oh how stupid! but it doesn't matter in films like these, does it? the cheesier the story the better! they know this isn't serious stuff (which is what separates it from hollywood films like 'spiderman' and 'men in black'). so they camp it up and make it crazy. oh the gore! the gore! and the fighting was fierce! i highly recommend this film if you are into karate/kung fu. you won't feel disappointed!

which you might feel if you watch 'charlie's angels: full throttle'. now i had heard really good things about this film, so since it was on hbo i decided to check it out. i did like a lot about it, but it too took itself a little too seriously at times. and there wasn't nearly enough blood and gore. was there any, even? i can't remember. but what i liked about the film is that it was very campy. for example, cameron diaz's character was a flaky bimbo in disguise, doing all sorts of crazy stunts to try to show off her pseudo-dumb blondeness. at one point, she's riding a mechanical yak in mongolia, and she is just all smiles, her pony tails sticking out pippi longstocking style. and, to my surprise, the fighting scenes, which were mostly kung fu, were quite well done for a hollywood film. a lot of special effects, which usually i don't like, added to the campiness of the kung fu. i do admit it did drag a bit, while the plot was being contrived. but hey, john cleese was in it as lucy lui's dad, so you can't go wrong with that. in all, i was pleasantly surprised by the film. i won't say i'd watch it again, which i'd gladly do with 'versus', but it's an enjoyable hollywood film. go angels!

by the way, the japanese would kick the hell out of the angels! and it'd be fun to watch!
well i can't think of much else to write. time for more coffee!

'"Is there no room in this world for the man with 105 IQ?" -- Homer

amy and jordan

2004-08-27T06:51:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 23rd, 2004
today i am enthralling you not only with caps (a rarity) but also a book review i just wrote. why not? here goes:

Mark Beyer’s Amy and Jordan (Panteheon, $21, 2004) comix anthology collects all the strips that appeared in various alternative weeklies from 1988-1996. Supposedly lauded as an important comix guy, he’s also released a book called Agony in the late ‘80s. Well, maybe you have to still be in the ‘80s or ‘90s to appreciate his comix, because I find Amy and Jordan repetitive, unimaginative and downright boring, at least in its anthologized form. Maybe if I was seeing them serialized, they wouldn’t seem so utterly repetitive. And the artwork is nothing to note, really. I could draw this comic, and probably make it funnier. And I know comics. My brother, Ted, has been in the comics game for years now. In fact, he is now drawing the classic strip 'Annie' which you can check out at http://www.comicspage.com/ (he doesn't write the story, he just draws. it's beautiful work! you can also check out his own comic, a 1920s mystery themed one set in boston at http://www.jazzagecomics.com/. he writes and draws that one, and i'm damned proud of him!)

Also, I’ve long been an avid reader of other comix. What I like about the alternative genre is that it dares to go where others never dare, leaping off the fringes of reality and really making noise.But Beyer’s comic really doesn’t do that. He has about 4 themes that keep appearing, with similar artwork going with each one. For example, in one strip, Jordan realizes his “good luck gland is damaged, and only the bad luck gland is working.” Ok, that’s relevant to all of us at sometime in our lives. But Beyer goes nowhere with it. The strip ends, and who cares?Basically, the 4 different themes in the strips end with no punchline, no concrete point, nothing. They revolve around seeing maggots and snakes and other creepy crawlies and wanting to make friends with them, having a limb come off, finding other people in the apartment and not really knowing what to do with them, and people dying and going to heaven. Not that these are horrid, but again, I reiterate, Beyers just doesn’t do much with any of them. You read one strip of each theme, you’ve read them all.
Which is a shame, as the book itself is nicely bound and makes comix look more acceptable to the non-informed crowd.

Still, another problem I have with the book is that the strips aren’t anthologized chronologically, and by doing so you don’t see any development within his strips. Maybe if it were in timely format you could see how the strip has changed. And maybe figure out what the point of it is. However, I just can’t.

Thus, ultimately, I cannot recommend this book, sad to say. I do, however, recommend go picking up a different comix anthology. Find one that looks to your liking. You can’t go wrong with a good comic novel, anthology, or even just a nice little comic book.

in other news, becca, emilie and i went to goth night again last night. it wasn't as good as the last two times, and the cute boy seemed to be on coke and definitely drinks too much. oh well! i did meet another hottie who was fun to talk with!ok, i am not very enthused about writing any more, so i'm outta here... go get yourself a good comic and enjoy it!

"Is there no room in this world for the man with 105 IQ?" -- Homer

afro-jazz at the outpost

2004-08-27T06:46:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, July 20th, 2004, 3:02 pm
so last night, as usual every monnight, i volunteered at the outpost performance space, which hosts jazz y mas, as its bumper sticker proudly proclaims...and i saw two trios, the jon bailey trio and the damian disanto trio.both bands were very good, but the first one was afro-jazz fusion and was incredibly experimental and sexy. the entire crowd went mad over them and made them do an encore, something that rarely happens there (it's so laid back, and the audience so polite, that usually if performers decide they are done, then they are done and no one dare ask them for more!). luckily the band readily did so. i wished they were selling cds, as i usually get one free for selling them for them.

but only disanto had cds last night.and while the trio was excellent, and the drummer totally hot, disanto's cd was just him, and he wasn't all that exciting a guitar player to want a whole cd of him. to be honest, he came off as a bit pretentious and didn't even offer me a free cd for selling his stuff (faux pas! said patti, the volunteer coordinator!). they were just juiced up jazz, nothing very experimental or anything. i really prefer some improv and craziness, and i just didn't get that from the disanto trio.

in the summer, all the performers are local abq/santa fe or elsewhere in nm performers so i hate to say it, but i'm not sure you can even catch the bailey trio anywhere outside of my confines. but if you see them advertised, GO!!!!! you will definitely enjoy yourself and maybe by that time they'll be selling cds!

who knows who is playing next week .. no one i ever heard of ... but i will be there to hopefully enjoy what i hear and let you know all about it...

music at the tiki ti

2004-08-27T06:42:00.000-07:00

Sunday, July 18th, 2004, 1:18 pm

so today's entry is the first in the music category. i hope you like it as much as my film and book reviews!

last night becca, emily and i went to the tiki ti (better known as burt's tiki lounge, but i like to call it the tiki ti. holdover from living in so cal for 8 years!) where we saw two bands, of god and science, a local albuquerque one, and the prids, from portland. i am as harsh a music critic as i am a film and lit one, so i expected both bands to suck and for me to be bored to tears wishing i'd brought my discman with me...but boy was i pleasantly surprised. i don't know how long of god and science have been together, but i've never heard of them or seen their name in the alibi that they were playing elsewhere. but they were really tight, very animated powerpop, which i am usually not into, but these guys are good! they played for about 30 mins, and they rocked the whole time. i guess you could say they sound like... hmm... i'm not sure. i'll have to think about that for a while... sorry... is it my coma brain that's blocking my ability to connect bands together? also, the bassist, jeremy, is totally hot and he gave me his email (he doesn't have a phone!?) to write him and hopefully go out sometime! i'm so excited! although all i need in my life is another bassist... argh!

anyway, back to the music. the prids came on next and wowee zowee, as the pavement album states! talk about tight and fast and hard! powerpop to the max. the two bands complimented each other very well, which rarely happens in albuquerque (bookers really don't connect bands at all. you might see an electronica band followed by punk rockers one night... not that that's necessarily bad, but it kinda makes you have to run around downtown from venue to venue to see the bands you want to see.... so this was really terrif and fetch, having two similar bands). these guys have been around for a few years, but i'd never heard of them. apparently abq is one of their fav places to play, so they'll be back. anyway, these guys, to quote the great late wesley willis, really rocked it to russia. no simulation here... this was great music at a great price (free! burt's never has a cover!).

i didn't really get a chance to talk to them at the show, but brett and his brother had an afterparty and after a while, they showed up. three guys and a girl rocking hard. they turned out to be really nice and unaffected by their popularity here. i liked that. very laid back and fun to speak with. i plan to write a review of the show and the bands for brett's zine, and when i do, i'll copy it herein because it will definitely be more comprehensive and informative than the above, which i admit isn't my best entry. still, if you see the prids playing or their albums in a store, check them out! you'll really like them! i mean, i'm not too big on powerpop, and i enjoyed them thoroughly.... was a good night in all.

but as usual i didn't sleep well last night. no wonder i am so tired and coma-brained all the time! anyway, bye bye for now!

velvet ro-may-o?

2004-08-24T12:51:00.000-07:00

Saturday, July 17th, 2004, 2:29 pm

so last night was a homebody night. becca came over, we got some yummy vietnamese food, and settled in to watch two of my fav films: 'velvet goldmine' and 'william shakespeare's romeo and juliet'...surprisingly, beccs had never seen velevt, so it was my pleasure to introduce it to her. which of course she loved -- how can you not? three hot guys, amazing clothes and settings, great music, and an interesting, surprising plot. if you've never seen it but are into glam rock, you simply must. even if you have seen it, it's worth seeing again! and again! the above statement pretty much sums up what's awesome about the film. and toni collette plays a fun character as brian slade's wife. and the delish ewen mcgregor and jonathan rhys meyers sing all their own songs and... well, it's fetch. and fabulous!

now of course some of you are going to wonder how i can love lurhmann's r&j when i disliked spidey so much. well that's easy. this film is one of the most misunderstood in film history, one that critics mocked and sloshed to death. 'it's MTV shakespeare, it is!' was the prevalent claim.well, anyone with half a brain and knowledge of cinema history AND shakespeare should be able to see past all the glitz that made the film so infamous. as usual with lurhmann, so much is going on onscreen that you are bombarded with imagery that you need to take time to decode. the film is filled with homages to cinema and theatre history, shakespeare's other, BETTER works, and lurhmann's signature 'l'amour' coke-inspired insignia. it's also a testament to the lack of devotion to the catholic/christian faiths, as empty images of jesus, the virgin mary and other insignia stand in contrast to the gun-toting, fighting capulets and montagues who wear these images as readily as they wear their hawaiian shirts and gang-type garb.

i mean, to notice the film's greatness, you only need to look at the first main sequence, the big blow-out at the phoenix (add more fuel to your fire!) gas station. here the montagues show up in a hot little yellow retro roadster, only to come face to face with the capulets. now, this scene is not just a full-blown hot action scene, but rather that and more. it contains homages to spaghetti and regular westerns as well as hong kong action cinema á la john woo back in the day. we see, for example, a slo-mo shot of abra and tybalt stomping on their cigarette butts with their cowboy boots, and we are taken back to the old shoot-em out westerns. in fact, the gunfight that soon ensues is all based on these previous genres, only rendered new, fresh and exciting. i could go on, but i might be boring you all...

another interesting image is the burnt out theatre on venice beach itself. it signals the death of the theatre, a detrimental trend all over thanks to the proliferation of film and video. why not symbolize it?

and that's not all that's going on in the film. yes, i will admit, the acting pretty much sucks, except for mercutio, tybalt, and friar lawrence (you can't go wrong with harold perrineau, john leguizamo, or pete postlethwaite, can you?). but that's part of the point of the film. i mean, we have all been bombarded with 'r&j' since the 1968 film version by zefferelli, better known for his operas and his mel gibson atrocious 'hamlet' forced us to learn the play in the 5th grade and watch the damn thing 10,000 times in the classroom. i know i saw the film in 7th, 8th, 9th, 11th and 12th grade. and everywhere you turn, you are bombarded with stupid versions of the play, esp on teenaged dramas. 'oh let's put on a play!' 'ok, let's put on romeo and juliet! it's so romantic!' and most shakespearian academians (who usually get the film! but may not love it as much as i do, shakespearean though i am) agree it is one of his worst plays, written early in his career. look how it is mocked in 'shakespeare in love,' even!in other words, just like the saturated images of christianity mean nothing in the film, neither does the plot. it's just there as a background for all the visual and aural brilliance that the film contains.

instead,look at all the imagery of shakespeare's other works: prospero's mattresses, guildenstern and rosencrantz hot dogs, the merchant of venice beach, to name just a few. these are clever, and lurhmann's way of showing his knowledge of shakespeare and all his stronger works.

now to the main 'problem' of the film: the speed at which the narrative progresses. 'MTV shakespeare,' as i said. i see no problem with it. it actually ushered in this style, now simply accepted as the norm. it's a stylistic innovation, in fact. and more importantly, it exposed teens and young adults to shakespeare, and also ushered in all the subsequent shakespeare-based teen films such as '10 things i hate about you' and ethan hawke's 'hamlet'. what's bad about that? of course, to keep in theme with my last post on 'england, england', that the film starts and ends as a newscast shows you are just watching a simulacrae of the play and lived existence as we know it today...

i have shared my views about the play to students, grad students and other academians at a few conferences, and they inspire all to take a fresh look at the film. very often they will then email me and tell me they 'get' it now. of course, if i could show you clips of the film as i wrote it would help, but hopefully you will all take a new look at an important, revolutionary film decried by critics who just have no clue. i hope you will. let me know what you think!

until next time...

'england, england'

2004-08-24T12:48:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 16th, 2004, 3:07 pm

so i just finished reading julian barnes' 'england, england'. wow. i've really liked all of his other books (metroland, talking it over,love, etc., a history of the world in 10 1/2 chapters, etc) except 'flaubert's parrot' (i found it boring and rather pretentious. which i suppose was the point but i couldn't get into it) so i expected to like this one.but i was blown away!

basically, the plot is thus: this billionaire, sir jack pitman, who decides tourism in england is shite, you have to travel all over the bloody country to visit everything and it takes too long and costs too much. so he assembles an affable group of characters and decides to take over the isle of wight and build 'england, england' on it, a simulacrae of england itself complete with replicas of everything. and actors who act like everyone famous. pretty soon even the king and queen (or are they really the king and queen?) are living on 'the island' as it is called and the place seems to be without problems. meanwhile some kinky shit is going on with sir jack and his 'auntie may' which adds to the fun.

oh it's just a real statement of what the new millenium (and actually starting what, 30 odd years ago) brings out in us, as the famous french postmodernist philosopher jean baudrillard tells us. we don't care anymore if we see the original of anything. we are perfectly happy seeing replicas, and feel as though we have seen the real thing. as martha in the book points out, 'they took away the statue of David and replaced it with a replica, and no one cared.' we live in a world of what baudrillard calls simulacra, or simulations. i mean, look at vegas! you can go to new york, venice, paris without leaving the confines of the strip and you really think you are in another city. will seeing the simulacrae make you want to go to paris or venice? who knows. baudrillard would say no. i would like to think people will want to see the real city, but i am too pessimistic to think many will. as pitman has realized in 'england, england,' it's easier and more profitable to have everything you want to see right in one spot, completely controlled by security and made to incite you into a spending frenzy.

in a way, i suppose it would be nice -- no more long car rides with your brothers arguing over who has to sit on the backseat middle hump, making goofy faces at other car drivers and arguing until your parents are ready to murder you. then again, where's the fun in missing out on all that?

we also in a sense live a simulated life anyway, given the proliferance of telly and computer news bombarded at us at every moment. did we need to be in nyc on 11 sept 2001? hell no, because everyone in the world experienced the towers falling in intense detail, over and over and over again that day and for years to come. do we need to be in iraq to see what the fuck is going wrong there? thank god no (poor soldiers! bring 'em home, please!). we live it all through simulacra.

my point is not to throw baudrillard down your throats, but rather to point out how dead on plausible the plot of "england, england" is, so you might want to read it. it's also witty and sarcastic as hell, cutting up the characters and the ideality of 'the island' with precision. really, i think you'll enjoy it, and want to read some of his other works!

'mean girls' are funny girls!

2004-08-24T12:45:00.000-07:00

Thursday, July 15th, 2004, 1:46 pm

oh joy of joys! i finally spent a whopping $1.50 on a film i quite enjoyed, 'mean girls'. believe it or not, this film is downright funny. not in a stupid funny way (until the schmaltzy ending! which was deplorably vapid, just like the mean girls themselves). but in a genuinely, laugh out loud funny way i find so hard to find these days in cinema.

so the mean girls are these three chicks, two blonde, one brunette, who cavort around school like the belles of the ball and are nicknamed by everyone else as 'the plastics'. they enjoy their nickname and flaunt it. of course, the new girl comes to school. she's named cady (that's pronounced 'katie') and she's been homeschooled in africa until this year (11th grade). much to her chagrin, the plastics invite her to join them one day at lunch, and BOOM -- overnight success. soon everyone wants to be like cady as much as they do the other girls.

now, cady, being the sweetie she is, really doesn't like being plastic, but she goes on 'pretending' so that she can cause havoc and break the trio up, with help from her artsy friends, whose names i forget. actually i forget everyone's name today, except for cady's and her hottie boy she's after, aaron. i'm having a coma day, what can i say?

well, of course you can imagine the plot from here so i need not bother you with it. i would just like to point out that the while the story is predicatable and downright absurd at the end, it is nevertheless well written, and the actresses really make the most of their 'plastiqueness.' not that i think they are all that mean. all they really do is bag on other people and each other, and i ask you, who doesn't? be honest. even if you don't do it often, you have. and i guess that's supposed to be the point of the film.

i'd have liked it better if cady became totally plastic and the film descended into a whirl of all out meanness. but that would be too un-hollywood, too non-saturday night live (it was written by one of them, whose name, yes indeed folks, i also forget. i really was in a coma once and it makes me forget things like names and faces very easily. and today thanks to a budding migraine, 'coma brain' trauma is in full force...but.. if you want to see a silly film that's consistently silly and mean-spirited (for 3/4th of it anyway), go to your local $1.50 theatre and check out the plastics.

oh, becca, jaden and i are so into the plastics that we've decided to become the plastics of the albuquerque scene! look out!

time for some imitrex... this headache's a killer...

signs of intelligence in hollywood?

2004-08-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, July 13th, 2004, 2:37 pm

ok, so yesterday i told you i started watching 'signs' the night before. well, sadly, i finished it last night. holy crap! i cannot believe what a piece of shit that was. it was way worse than spidey 2. i think m. night shamalamalan should be flogged for writing and directing such dreck. it started out slow moving, as i reported. but it got a little better. at least things were happening. they were idiotic, nonsensical things, but at least they were something.

in case you haven't seen it, i will gladly ruin it for you so you won't waste your time or money on it....what happens is that mel gibson, joaquim phoenix and mel's two kids wake up one day to find crop circles in their farm field. ok, mel is a little freaked and calls the cops, but the sheriff says it's probably just some drunken assholes playing games. enough said. if only it revolved around the drunken sots and made fun of them and turned the film into a comedy (or at least an INTENDED comedy). but no, it had to get all sci-fi..

anyway, the kids get this book on crop circles and aliens, and start wearing tin foil hats to keep the aliens from reading their minds. meanwhile, joaquim starts watching telly 24/7 as apparently all over the world these crop circles are appearing, and then lights in the sky that seem to create invisible barriers that kill birds that fly by (so did planes still go through? that was not even broached). the kids read that there are two kinds of aliens who come to earth -- the peaceful ones and the antagonistic ones. they all hope these are the peaceful kind. but alas, mel soon finds out that they aren't as he goes to the house of the guy who killed his wife by falling asleep at the wheel 6 months earlier (oh that was a stupid plot twist shamalamalan should have left out. i guess it was to explain mel's loss of faith and his leaving his ministry. but it was just schmaltzy!. and i hate schmaltzy! and it wasn't really blended into the plot very well. out of the blue we'd learn more about it).

but back to the guy's house. sadly, the guy was played by shamalamalan himself, and well let's just say i hope his hollywood career ends soon. he is leaving to go to a lake where he thinks he'd be safe there (what lake is never mentioned, and i was curious as it took place in bucks county, pa, where i grew up). and he tells mel he caught one in his pantry.so mel goes to check it out, and finds the alien vicious, trying to attack him from under the door of the pantry. mel chops off the alien's toes. big deal! what a wimp! couldn't he have opened the door and had a fight with the alien? maybe that would have spiced things up...

anyway, reports of the crop circles start pouring in from everywhere -- everywhere except bucks county. i don't understand that. surely a plane would have flown by to see the one in mel's field, but no. they are left alone by the press and by everyone as they hole themselves up in the house to see what's going to happen...

well, to make a long story shorter, the aliens turn out to be nasty creatures who start attacking people. ohh, scary scary. none of these attacks are ever shown, which again might have made it more interesting. so mel boards up the house and they wait.

soon enough, the toeless alien FINALLY shows up, finds his way into the basement where they are hiding and gives the boy an asthma attack (more on asthma attacks, hollywood style, in a moment). then, he grabs the kid and secretes some sort of supposed poison into his nostrils (even though he's not really breathing from his asthma attack).THEN THE ALIEN LEAVES!!! APPARENTLY ALL THEY CAME FOR WAS TO ALIEN INSECTICIDE EVERYONE!!! HOW RETARDED IS THAT? WHAT A COP OUT!by the time the 'ordeal' is over, everyone is fine, mel has regained his faith, happy happy joy joy. big fucking deal, right?

so now for the criticism... which you know was coming!!! the good stuff!first of all, the aliens looked like bad halloween costumes. i don't know if they were CGI or people (person) dressed up, but they looked like the latter. and they completely contradicted the boy's alien book, as they were tall as mel when they should, in fact, be tiny with big brains. other than that, they looked like the aliens we all expect, the roswellian type. WHY CAN'T SOMEONE COME UP WITH A NEW TYPE OF ALIEN??? i mean, there have been attempts, i suppose, in all the sci fi alien blockbusters (men in black, anyone?). but to see the usual alien is just becoming too boring.

secondly, and this is my biggest problem with this film and hollywood in general: people who have asthma attacks are not convincing! i think i've seen one film in which someone had an authentic looking attack, and that was 'trapped' with charlize theron and (ugh) courtney love. but usually, it's just someone breathing hard until s/he gets an asthma inhaler, which the character then uses wrong. i know all about asthma -- fuck, i've been in an asthmatic coma -- so i know what i'm talking about.here, the boy had an attack while the alien was in the basement with him, supposedly a near death attack. breathing a little heavily. that's about it. the inhaler is upstairs (oh silly boy, carry it with you in your pocket! you manage to have the baby monitor which can catch the aliens talking in your pocket. why not the inhaler?). so how does he survive? mel grabs him and tells him to breath in tune with him. i suppose that could work for a mild attack, as any way to slow the breathing would be good. however, this really stops the attack, except that mel has to carry the boy upstairs and outside, because of the poison from the alien.

so what does mel do then? he uses an epi-pen (a device filled with epinephrine that you shoot into your leg AS SOON AS YOU ARE HAVING AN ATTACK. ANY TIME LATER, IT'S ABSOLUTELY USELESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). and sure enough, even though much too much time has passed for it to have any effect whatsoever on the boy, it nevertheless revives him. and all is well. hoorah!

now i ask you... don't a lot of people have asthma, even if it's only mild? people on film sets even? i would imagine that at least one person, even down to the lowest PA, has it on the set of any film. were i that PA, i would strongly suggest how to film the scene right, how to make changes to the plot to offset the hilarity i'm sure all asthmatics note when seeing a 'sufferer'. it just really galls me when i see such carelessness. it's even worse than chocolate vanilla cake!well i could go on, but you get the point.

i will say that i saved myself from a fitfull sleep full of ire at hollywood by next watching 'lost in translation,' a simple but inventive and well-acted film by all means. murray deserved the oscar for his role, not sean penn in 'mystic river'. what a bore that film was!

but such an entry is for another day. all this asthma talk is making me wheezy...

'calendar girls' and a bunch of shite

2004-08-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

ok, so last night was a stay at home, watch a few films and some hbo night. i was beat from the weekend so i needed a night of rest. of course the first thing i watched was 'six feet under,' which remains a brilliant show. it's getting wackier each episode. i love it!

then i watched 'calendar girls,' with helen merrin and a bunch of veteran brit actresses, none of whose names i know off-hand (so sue me!). at first i thought, 'oh boy. what a bore! just a 'full monty' with older women instead of unattractive men.' but i soon settled into it, and found it to be ok. not exactly your most exciting film, but cute and nice in a happy little puppy kind of way. normally i would puke at such niceness, but as usual with the brits they pulled it off ok. apparently it is based on a true story and the calendar has raised over 500,000 pounds internationally. that's a lot of money for a bunch of old biddies. of course, when one of them is helen merrin, you can imagine it would sell.

my biggest complaint with the film, however, is that the piccies on the calendar were never really shown, so we are left with no idea how 'sexy' and 'provocative' the thing is that it caused such an uproar in their little hamlet and then an international sensation. i think the point was that it sells because no one looks at older women's bodies as pin-up material, but i wanted to see the photos myself. that's the least they could have done for making me sit through 1 hour and 40 minutes. maybe i'll just have to buy the calendar. nah, i got the point. i don't need to look at older women and remind me of what i'll become anyways...

after 'calendar girls,' 'the medallion' -- jackie chan's latest american flop -- came on. i was so excited as i am big chan fan and can't get enough of his hong kong masterpieces. but oh boy is this one a waste of film! i watched about 40 mins. of it and not one fight scene ensued, except some hollywood type gunfights with chan karate chopping a few guns out of hands. he even was shooting at the villains, something he would never do in a hong kong flick. oh it was so hollywood, it almost made me cry! i couldn't take it anymore. so much to my surprise, i actually -- for the first time in my life -- turned off a chan film!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! oh the horror! the sadness! the humanity! i can't wait for hong kong to be back in the big time film game (which is happening soon, says 'variety') so people like him, john woo, and ringo lam can get back to their roots and make something decent!

having seen parts of one shitty film, i decided to try another one, m. knight shamalamalan's (or however you spell it. who cares!) 'signs'. i taped it off the mystery channel for my mum because i always make film tapes for her. now i've heard horrid things about the film. and i didn't like any of his other films -- i knew bruce willis was already dead from day one, for example. well, ok, i sort of was amused by 'unbreakable' only because i thought the story was kinda cute (sometimes, as i said, i can stomach cute) and a bit original.however, all that said, i only managed to get through about 30 mins of 'signs.' it looks to be quite boring and contrived and uninteresting. but it may be good for a laugh and so i must finish watching it tonight.

the best advice i can offer today is PLEASE SAVE YOURSELF FROM THE HORROR OF THE MEDALLION!!!!

spidey vs. arthur continued

2004-08-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

ok, i think i've said enough about spiderman. you get the point, and if you don't, you're some kind of dolt.

now, while i have a LOT of problems with 'king arthur,' i must admit that i did enjoy it much more than spidey. it was hysterically funny, with all its inaccuracies and made up 'history'. the film begins by claiming that new historical evidence shows who arthur really was, and this is his story. well, as a medievalist, i know no agreement exists; rather about 4 or 5 different theories attempt to prove who arthur was and where his camelot was. i mean, come on. i'd know if something this important exists.

basically, it disses thomas mallory's 'complete works,' a chronicle written by mallory in prison lamenting the end of chivalry and the loss of cohesion the arthur realm commanded. it's a lament of a history not really understood or agreed upon, and mallory recognizes it. i mean, stories of arthur existed in england and france dating back to the 600s bce, all fantastical and yet with some same ideas. for example, the story of excalibur. the mentorship of merlin over arthur. and, most importantly, the fact that arthur, no matter which arthur he may turn out to be, was of celtic origin. and decidedly against the romans.

but the film ignores all this historical evidence, instead deciding to make up a Disneyfied version of an arthur who battled many, mostly the saxons who lived over hadrian's wall. it's basically a fight film with cheesy dialogue and a lame love story that makes little sense. it has a lot of plot problems. but, the good thing about it is that if you do know the history behind the tales, you can find lots to laugh at in the film. i was howling with laughter and telling becca and ja den exactly where the film went wrong and why and what the truth was. of course, we laughed at the dialogue and the contrived nature of the plot. and the fight scenes, which were not imaginative at all. in other words, whereas 'spiderman 2' is just bad, 'king arthur' is hysterically bad, something so awful you can laugh at it. some people, like my brother, don't understand my ability to enjoy a film or novel or play so dreadful you can't help but laugh. but others can. and we had so much fun laughing. i don't know how anyone couldn't!

now let me give you some examples. well, first off king arthur's men all come from some place called sarmatia, and leave as children and grow up on the 15 year trip to england. lancelot, bors, tristam, galahad (never mind that he's lancelot's son. they're the same age!) and a few others we've all heard about are bound by servitude to roman soldiers to go fight to secure england for rome's expansion plans there. arthur, meanwhile, is a british convert to roman doctrine, a christian who is always praying and mumbling about god and free will (a concept which really didn't exist until philosophers in the 1700s or so started talking about it).

the only thing consistent with the tales we all know and hopefully love is the round table. which is quite pretty -- i'd like one for my kitchen. but there the similarities end.the plot forces arthur and his knights into one final mission, to save a roman destined to be pope one day, up and over hadrian's wall to the north. although the men really don't have to go -- they do have free will after all -- they are so honour bound to arthur that they agree to go. and they head off.

when they finally arrive at the roman camp where the boy to be pope is living, they discover so much roman atrocities, in particular a walled up dungeon where everyone but a young woman and a little boy are dead. they rescue the two. of course the woman turns out to be guinevere. who else? played by kiera knightly, she goes from frail, broken fingered malnurished pathetic creature to perfect oxford english speaking, strong warrior within hours. when the saxons start attacking the first time, the frail little thing takes up a bow and arrows and joins in with the 7 knights. now how is this possible? she hasn't eaten for who knows how long. and the best part is that, after arthur resets her broken fingers, she says she can live with the pain and then says, 'i'm guinevere'.... oh it is soooo silly!

later in the film, when the fighting gets really tough, guinie dons this ridiculous leather outfit, made to show off her awesome body (which should look completely malnurished and anorexic, but certainly doesn't). this outfit consists of three bands across her chest, tied in the back, with some leather pants. it's so silly i plan to replicate the costume for halloween. she paints herself in green and puts blue tattoo like marks on her face and body, i guess to help conceal her from the romans. and she takes charges of the woads (the tribe she belongs to and, well, i don't know where they came up with that one!). she shoots fire arrows with her 'army' at the saxons and causes tons of damage. all the while trying way too hard to look sexy, just as she did in 'pirates of the carribean' (another crap film, despite johnny depp's presence). oh she is a terrific character to laugh at, someone i really identified with with humour and hysterics. we all laughed at her. granted, we were the only people in the theatre laughing, but still.... oh, and as usual she tries too hard to look sexy. pouting, sticking out her non-existent chest, etc. of course arthur falls for her. but lancelot doesn't get to interfere.

meanwhile, merlin is sort of a nemesis to arthur, which again completely contradicts traditional stories. why? who knows. who knows how they came up with this revisionist history...overall, this is shite, but it's fun shite. especailly if you know the magic that are the romance tales that comprise the body of literature about arthur.

this film is so much better than spidey 2, even though it really was pathetic. don't waste your money on either, unless you want to laugh at bad filmmaking and absurd revisionist "history." and if you know your medieval stories. or even the tennyson stories. or the monty python version... forget john boorman's 'excalibur' too because it is laughably lame too. oh. one character is worth seeing: bors. he's a funny, fully developed character, as is tristam, who takes the dungeon boy under his wing. i won't spoil the end of it for you. but i guarantee you'll be laughing.overall, 'king arthur' is the winner of the two. if you go see spidey, watch for the cake. if you go see king arthur, remember that it is the stupidest film based on the stories, or rather not based on them.and that is all i really have to say on the subject. spidey bad, king arthur bad but good.... i think arthur would kick spidey's ass if he had the chance!

spidey vs. arthur: and the winner is...

2004-08-24T12:28:00.000-07:00

ok. so this week i saw two summer blockbusters. i'm not big on seeing blockbusters because i know they are almost inevitably going to suck. but somehow i, ja den, and becca saw fit to go see 'king arthur' and 'spiderman 2'. inevitably, as expected, we wasted $12. well, maybe just $6, because as a medieval scholar i enjoyed ripping 'king arthur' to shreds. oh both are incredibly ridiculous. one, spidey 2, is getting rave reviews. the other, horrid ones (check out slate.com's one, for example).

well all professional film reviewers need some sort of brain wave adjustment, because truly spidey was the lamest piece of dreck i've seen in a long while -- and i get netflix and watch a lot of bad films... but come on. why the praise for spidey? slow moving, cheesy CGI, lame dialogue (mj to spidey: 'oh you're so mysterious'. peter to mj: 'oh boy, yeah!'). and that's only for starters.didn't any reviewer notice how long and repetitive and slow moving it was? didn't anyone notice the lack of continuity? i think that what cemented my hatred for the film came in a brief scene where the daughter of peter's landlord asks him to come in for CHOCOLATE cake. but when she serves it to him, it is VANILLA with chocolate icing. i mean, come on. how much did the film cost to make? and no one caught that in editing or final viewing to clear that up?

kirsten dunst looked horrid in it. her hair was all straggly and her eyebrows were weird. and i usually like her. after all, she was in the GREAT film, 'dick,' one of my favourites of the 1990s.

i'll finish this later -- i have errands to run and writing this is making me too manic....

my first blog

2004-08-24T06:52:00.000-07:00

hi all.

i'm switching my blog from blogging.com so look for my backlog. i'll get to it as soon as i can! faithful readers of blogging.com, know that i switched because blogging is all kids, and my criticisms of lit and film and music fall on blind eyes. so please, check me out again soon!