Charlie Bartlett, Smart People, & Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Charlie Bartlett is directed by a guy who has an impressively bad collection of editing credits (note that I'm not including Cabin Boy as a bad movie in it, just pretty much every other editing job and honestly, the editing in Cabin Boy wasn't all that hot either), but it also has Robert Downey Jr. as an alcoholic principal. Basically that's his role now, isn't it? He just tries to find people with addictions and just be extremely awesome in those roles? Anton Yelchin and Kat Dennings (I'm not sure what to say about this head/chest shot) are charming enough, but pretty much everything that wasn't completely related to those three characters and their interpersonal relationships just didn't work well. The writer also wrote Youth in Revolt, which is coming out soon with Michael Cera being a badass. Or something to that effect.

Smart People got no reason, smart people got no reason, smart people got no reason to exist. And this film really, really makes that argument. I like Ellen Page, Thomas Haden Church, and Dennis Quaid, who've all done some good work occasionally, but Sarah Jessica Parker really is terrible. It's not particularly good, it's not horrible enough to laugh at, so it's just there. I guess having Ellen Page be an overachieving Young Republican is an interest choice, but that's about it. If I'm going to see one film about a misanthropic writer learning life lessons in Pennsylvania, I'm certainly just going to rewatch Wonder Boys.

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay starts with a fantasy sequence that is interrupted by a real-life White House staffer leaving a disgustingly loud poop. Which should give you an idea of the humor level of the movie. Disgustingly huge pubic hair on a dude? Yep (although that was in the middle of a many merkined bottomless party). Disgustingly stereotyped everyone in the movie? Yep. Disgustingly homophobic prison scenes? Yep. Disgustingly huge tits (on Tits Hemingway, who also likes the only Hemingway book that I think is remotely worth reading, A Moveable Feast)? Yep. All that said, I liked it, but it wasn't nearly as good as the first, since that one seemed to just be crazy pot humor, as opposed to some awkward political satire on top of pot humor. Neil Patrick Harris is great, in everything he does, and I now fully get the NPH on a unicorn in front of a rainbow reference I've seen online for the last couple years. Yay? It was fitfully funny, frequently stupid, and extremely disrespectful to Republicans and their ilk. One last thing, has anyone ever heard of anyone actually interrupting a wedding and having it end happily for anyone? It happens all the time in pop culture, but I have never once heard of it even happening in real life, let alone with a happy ending?

Hana, Maiko Haaaan!!!, The Eagle Shooting Heroes, & Ashes of Time Redux

Hana is a samurai film from Hirokazu Koreeda, who also made the amazingly good Afterlife. This one wasn't all that, but an interesting tale of a young man plotting revenge against his father's murderer. He falls for a woman with a young son and starts to teach writing and math to the local kids. And he has to decide what's more important to himself, revenge or living his own life. Of course, it's a subtle attack on the desire for revenge above all, and one of the things that I like: pointing out ridiculousness in history that generally gets ignored by most period movies. I liked it, but it's definitely not Koreeda's best, and not as good as Mabrosi, either.

Maiko Haaaan!!! is a slapstick comedy about a noodle bowl company worker who is obsessed with Geisha, to the point of ignoring his girlfriend and taking a job in Kyoto so he can meet Geisha. And then the girlfriend starts to become one, and he starts fighting in real life with someone flaming his Geisha website. And... well, it just gets far too ridiculous and stupid. The lead was distractingly over the top in a film with almost entirely real-seaming characters (some of the things they are able to do are silly, but they undeniably live in a real world, while the lead just doesn't exist in any reality remotely near ours), there are musical numbers, and the entire movie revolves around strip baseball, which I am pretty sure is just an extremely bad translation. There were no strip grand slams that I could figure out. Boo.

The Eagle Shooting Heroes is a slapstick wuxia film made at the same time as Ashes of Time (which, although I definitely watched when I had a blog, I never actually wrote up when I saw it in November of 2002, and was, in fact, my first ever movie from Netflix). This is horrible Hong Kong slapstick, full of mistaken identities, cross dressing, gay "humor", ridiculous wirework, fake sets, and just general crappiness. It's strange to see so many extremely talented actors (really, it's almost every famous Hong Kong star of the 90s except for Chow Yun-Fat) just horribly waste their talent in service of this crap. This was a perfect excuse to watch my Ashes of Time Redux DVD, though. As it has been about 7 years since I saw the original version of the movie, and it was a particularly crappy DVD, I can't quite say how much better this version was than the original. But I almost was able to follow the plot this time. Just kidding.

Outrage, Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl, & Monty Python Almost the Truth

Outrage is all about Gay Republicans being outed. As such, there wasn't all that much I didn't know about. Although I was heartened to see just how much there was about Charlie Crist being a big homo. Because he is. Seriously. He did have the best dirty trick against himself though: he leaked that he had an illegitimate child. Brilliant. No gay person could have ever had a child with his beard. Kirby Dick actually made a much less sensationalistic film than I was expecting, dialing back on the worst part of This Film Is Not Yet Rated (the PIs tracking the MPAA ratings board members). I also got to see one of the few local politicians I have ever voted for to win (didn't happen a lot in Cincinnati) in David Catania. That was nice. Basically everyone interviewed in it, short of Andrew Sullivan and Barney Frank came off as supportive of the outing, and it's more that Barney was a little ambivalent. After the Maine election being supported strongly by the Catholic church, however, he seems to have changed his tune.

Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl is not as good a collection of Python bits as And Now for Something Completely Different, and the shots of the crowd just reminded me of how much drugs were probably being consumed and were going through the bloodstreams of the audience. At only 77 minutes long, it also strangely felt padded with unfunny songs from the post-show career that just aren't nearly as good as anything done on the show. So pretty much frustrating, but full of funny bits. Just stick with watching the TV show.

Monty Python: Almost the Truth is the six part documentary about the history of the Monty Python troupe. It's funny, full of clips, interviews (can someone please tell me how Russell Brand is liked by anyone?), and behind the scenes tidbits. If you like Python, it's pretty interesting.

The Spirit of the Beehive, City of Men, & The Counterfeiters

The Spirit of the Beehive is the film that Pan's Labyrinth was clearly very influenced by. Except this one has a lot less Pan or Labyrinth, and much more Spanish Civil War is bad. I actually watched this... back last semester with Sally Albright, for her Spanish class. I seem to have not written up a review myself though. Because I own the DVD and didn't remember to list it when I was writing up stuff. Let's see... the main character is obsessed after watching the original Frankenstein, and seems to think that a deserter is actually Frankenstein's monster. Is this really all it's about? It's a metaphor for what happened in Spain during and after the Spanish Civil War, and yet it was still made under Franco's rule, it's a beautiful film about death, and most importantly, it's a masterful film. Even if it weren't amazing, that it inspired Guillermo del Toro to make Pan's Labyrinth, it would deserve a place in film history.

City of Men is the movie finale (maybe?) to the stories started in the absolutely brilliant City of God, and slightly less good City of Men tv show. This follows that trajectory. I'm not sure that we needed to spend more time with them, although the ending was quite a bit more Hollywood than I was expecting. It's weird to have seen this so soon after watching Rio be awarded the Olympic games and the high-profile anti-gang violence in the favelas that followed. Definitely seems like Rio and Brazil may have a struggle to stop things like this movie happening and possibly involving some Olympic athletes.

The Counterfeiters won the Oscar for best foreign language film. Up against a bunch of other films I haven't seen, I can't judge whether it deserved the award, but it covered a part of the Holocaust (and WWII) that I didn't know about: the German attempt to destabilize the English Pound and American Dollar by producing huge amounts of counterfeit money and dropping them over enemy lines. You'd think that with all of my knowledge of Jews and the Holocaust, I would have seen something about this, but nope. I am a sucker for a good Holocaust film, though, and this was really good, with a great performance from Karl Markovics as the slimy titular counterfeiter.

The Inglorious Bastards, Kiss of the Spider Woman, & Cars

The Inglorious Bastards is the correctly spelled original, not the Tarantino reusing of the title. Still haven't seen that. This is... a mess, has the least realistic five guys go around and kill everyone with just a few shots, never reload and never get hit gunfights outside of a John Woo film. But at least there, they're filmed well. It's a late 70s war film with stupid characters, unlikely plot twists, a love story that's completely unnecessary, Fred Williamson there almost entirely so that the Nazis would never believe them as Germans, people throwing themselves off a train, and just general silliness. It's racist, misogynistic, and all the things you'd expect from a cheesy 70s film. It reminded me of the movies I used to watch back when I would watch anything about war. And it reminded me of that one scene in Commando where they burst into the next room in the motel just so you can see some tits. But this time it's naked women firing machine guns, sure to get any red-blooded American male hard.

Kiss of the Spider Woman is really good, and it led to thic conversation:
me: watching kiss of the spider woman
Sally Albright: that sounds terrible.
me: imdb it
me: it's really good
Sally Albright: not what I was expecting from the title
Basically, William Hurt puts forward one of the most impressive roles of the 80s, as an imprisoned gay man, sharing a cell with a political prisoner played by Raul Julia (shortly after his triumphant role in Overdrawn at the Memory Bank), and their brief time sharing a cell. It's a very simple plot, except that there's many layers, with Hurt telling the story of a half-remembered Nazi movie that touchingly reflects upon the action of the film. Definitely see this film.

Cars is... amazingly bad for a Pixar film. I have loved every Pixar film I have seen (although when A Bug's Life and Antz came out, I preferred Antz, but now see one as a somewhat enjoyable film and another as great), and their non-Cars films have been better and better going through WALL-E, but this was just offensive. And not funny or good in any way. There's the hippy who sells organic fuel, the sassy black woman, the Italian who sells tires and is obsessed with Ferraris, the Hispanic who has a low-rider and a bodypainting place, Larry the Cable Guy is in it... I mean, how much more offensive do you need to go? But really, the worst thing is that it is a completely non-funny spin of Doc Hollywood (still one of my favorite PG-13 topless scenes, everyone!). And I made it about two minutes before I tried to figure out how the world worked, and realized that there were no humans at all, but somehow they're able to use phones with dialpads, cars have headsets, cars have tongues, and the thing that bothers me is that helicopters don't have pilots. Basically the movie was one long "Make CV really annoyed". I made it through about an hour of it before others were not interested in going on, and I realized I was only watching it to see if it could possibly either be much worse or somehow get better. But it didn't seem like it was going to change, and watching extremely disappointing films is nowhere near as fun as watching films I know are going to be remotely good. And... um... I couldn't stop wondering how more cars are made? Is there car sex in this reality?

Caseus Archivelox: Firelight, The Best Man, Exodus, Harvard Man, & Time of Favor

2002-11-02 - 12:05 a.m.
The first one was Firelight. A sort of Romance novel filmed. With a crappy female fantasy of finding a rich man who is willing to pay for her and then kill his wife for her. Yeah. Really predictable, and any skill shown by Sophie Marceau or the director is wasted in a completely by the book movie. Except for the nudity. There was no time at which I didn't know what was going to happen really. I sort of expected a slightly happier ending, but eh, sadder ending was not any better. Title (Won't bend down. Wig'll fall off.) is something their butler said a couple times, which, while funny, was certainly not something you'd expect from a traditional film, showing a little too much self-reflexive humor for the movie.

2002-11-03 - 12:27 a.m.
The Best Man, an Italian movie from 1998. It was boring as f---. That's really boring. I didn't like any of the characters, it was slow, the dialogue was bland, and it was probably the worst Italian film I have ever seen. That I can remember. And I've seen Italian lesbian vampire films. So you know it's gotta suck. Maybe the last film will be better. I'll let you know when I see it. Oh, and this one has the stupidest opening scrawl and it has the stupidest last line. I think it was the title. I honestly was bored out of my mind for most of the movie, so I can't really remember if it was it or not. But it was set on New Years Eve, 1900. It just sucked.

2002-11-03 - 10:36 p.m.
The movie was Exodus, a special 40th Anniversary remastered version. And for a remastered version of a film, it was in the worst shape I've ever seen. There were lots of scratches, bad sound (sometimes even unsynchronized with the video), and there were scenes edited out. And the film didn't end, it broke. Can't anyone get a good print of a movie? The movie was still pretty good, if long, and a little too 60s for a movie set in the 40s. The movie was at the local big nice theater, and it was full of Jews. At least they had an intermission. They did give out a nice ticket and booklet full of stories from the production of the movie. It was nice.

2002-11-06 - 10:31 p.m.
I watched Harvard Man this evening. One quick thing to mention, would someone explain to me why it says that Ray Allen died in 2000 on the IMDB? I want to point that out before I tell them it's wrong. But it does say that he died on September 15, 2000 in Milwaukee. What's up with that? (EDITOR'S NOTE: This has since been changed.) It was good, nothing too special, except for the absolutely hilarious cameo in the middle of the film. Honestly, it's funnier if you don't expect it, so if you don't want to be spoiled, don't read anymore of this paragraph. I mean it. It won't be as funny if you know. Ok, so Alan took lots of LSD and was running around campus, and he runs into Al Franken and his erstwhile Duke student daughter, Thomasin. It was funny because he really wanted her to go to Harvard, but she mentioned Duke. Which is funny because she went to Duke for a year and then transferred to Harvard. And I saw a naked picture of her. Which is what, I'm convinced, caused her to want to leave Duke. In the movie, he said that she gets too easily embarrassed.

2002-11-13 - 10:41 p.m.
I went to see Time of Favor tonight. It was probably the best Israeli film I've seen. I really highly recommend it. I didn't know enough Hebrew to pick up a lot of the lines, but there were subtitles, even if they were plain white ones, the movie was generally dark enough that I only didn't see one word, and then the camera angle changed, so it was all good. The actors in it were all really good as well, even if the main guy looked like Liev Schreiber, the main girl looked like Amber Benson, the other guy looked like Alan Cumming. And that wasn't all, but I'll let you try to figure them out. Well, except for one, Mookie looked like 1955 Biff from Back to the Future. That should be fun. I can just picture you seeing it now thinking: What is Tara doing going for Cotton Weary? She should be going for Willow. And isn't Alan Cumming gay?

Caseus Archivelox: Insomnia & Last Orders

2002-10-31 - 11:23 p.m.
I just realized that I had forgotten to mention what I did Sunday night to require the taping of Alias. I watched the remake of Insomnia. Now, it's too easy to say that the remake is weaker than the original, but it really was. The acting wasn't noticeably better, and the script left a lot less to the imagination. One of the strong points of the original film was that it was difficult to tell why and whether Dormer (or whatever his name was in the original) killed his partner. And the fact that it all occurs during the bright daytime makes the dark aspects work better. The remake explains too much and the lack of darkness isn't as important. Chris Nolan is an obviously talented director (see Memento), but, in this case, he is working from a lackluster script and he gets bogged down trying to do too much with his cast. And Pacino was coasting. He plays the tired cop too well. That's not to say it wasn't a good movie, but it definitely doesn't compare favorably with the original Norwegian film.

What reminded me of that was that we watched Last Orders tonight. That and Gosford Park basically had every single famous English actor currently working. This one had Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, Bob Hoskins, David Hemmings, Ray Winstone, and Helen Mirren (also in Gosford Park, and Caligula, which I haven't seen, because I haven't found it in a video store in the uncut version). It was weird to see David Hemmings as a large man with huge eyebrows, one week after seeing him as the young, dashing Thomas in Blow-Up. I'd say it was weird to see Tom Courtenay again, but I'd only seen two movies he was in: Doctor Zhivago (which was so long I can't remember his character) and Leonard Part 6, of which I thankfully can't remember any. Bob Hoskins, Michael Caine, and Ray Winstone all made movies more recently, and the only major problem I had with Helen Mirren was that she didn't look 70 (the age of her character). That's obviously a backhanded compliment, because she looked her age, which was 55 or 56 when it was made. She was good, just I think it was weird that she had a 50 year old daughter in the film, because it didn't seem physically possible. The movie was excellent, and it makes me want to read Graham Swift's novel. I loved Waterland very much when I read it in 12th grade, and it made me want to go see the fens of England. Here's a hint: think of the flattest land you've ever seen, and then picture it ten times flatter, and you'd get some idea of the fens. There was also a terrible traffic jam when my mom and bro and I were there. We did stop off and see Ely (pronounced EE-lee) Cathedral, which stuck out like a sore thumb. Cambridge is also near there, but there was literally no hills, no nothing for miles around. I have a picture of myself on the side of the road, and I gave it to my English teacher to show her what the fens were like, and she put it up on the wall in the classroom. I doubt it's still up there, but that area was totally flat. Back to the movie: the skipping back and forth in time would be Tarantinoesque if it hadn't been done before, or if it weren't how Swift writes. Another little problem with the film was that they were speaking in heavy working class accents, which made it hard to understand, so we turned on the subtitles. Score another point for DVDs.

The stuff about Last Orders was already posted here, but I figured I'd just repost everything.

Caseus Archivelox: The Piano Teacher, Blow-Up, The Magnificent Ambersons, Happy Together, Fallen Angels, Kissing Jessica Stein, & Tape

2002-10-27 - 10:11 p.m.
I then went off to Griffith to watch The Piano Teacher. What the f--- is it with the French and pretentiousness films about sex? Baise Moi, Romance, Fat Girl, and The Piano Teacher. I've only seen Romance and The Piano Teacher, and neither were worth my time. Although now I can say that I've seen an Italian porn star's penis. That's not really something that I am proud of though. I just don't see the point in a movie about a sado-masochistic pianist who lives with her mother. And it didn't have an ending that made much sense. I don't see why the French make pretentious sex movies. And then they get praise or notoriety because of said stuff. I guess we Americans aren't completely immune, as we make a hell of a lot of porn each year and percentages say that some has to be pretentious. Hell, some softcore porn I've seen would fit into that category. As in, it tries to have some deep meaning, but it's really just an excuse to see silicone on screen. But at least most wasn't being raised to some lofty height and being suggested that it said something deep about the human condition. The movie was about Schubert and S&M, nothing more.

I went with Blow-Up and The Magnificent Ambersons. Both excellent movies. Blow-Up would've been better had Antonioni used the Velvet Underground as originally planned, because all I could think of when I saw the Yardbirds was how much cooler it would have been with the VU. Mime tennis is also bizarre. Magnificent Ambersons had my new reply when someone asks me what I want to do with my life: a yachtsman. That sounds like a fun job. Neither movie was particularly happy (I choose to ignore the ending added without Welles's blessing).

I checked the online catalog and went with two Wong Kar-Wai films: Happy Together and Fallen Angels. I started with Happy Together, and it's a very gay movie. Lots of shots of the two main characters in tighty whiteys. It is full of wonderfully Wong Kar-Wai touches: fast-mo, slo-mo, freeze frames in the middle of shots, changing grains, going from black and white to color (much better than in the early version of 13 Days I saw), handheld shots, shakycam, very good use of music, lots of overexposure and very bright shots. I was just thinking that the major problem I had with The Piano Teacher was the masochism. I'm not a masochist, at least not a physical one, and I don't like pain, so I just felt incredibly uncomfortable, and I didn't like when she couldn't suppress her gag reflex. I do, however, seem to pick women who are likely to cause me pain. That's not really relevant to anything though. It was just a great movie. Wong Kar-Wai really knows what he's doing, and Chris Doyle is a perfect complement to his skills. I just checked and he also cinematographer for Liberty Heights (a beautiful movie) and for the as-yet unreleased The Quiet American. I really want to see that.

After that, I watched Fallen Angels, originally to be the 3rd part of Chungking Express. The DVD video quality was much worse than for Happy Together, with lots of obvious grain. The gunfights are staged to be as outlandishly over-the-top as John Woo's, but the plot is much more affecting. And the scene where He falls in love with Charlie is one very cool scene. And it hurts all the more afterwards. I mean, it was such a sad and beautiful movie. So if you're wondering what makes me cry: Fallen Angels. That is just a great movie.

I then went to see Kissing Jessica Stein at Griffith. I guess it was good but my friends and I all saw parts of our families on screen, but we also say almost every plot twist telegraphed. One reason is that we've seen too many movies, but more likely it's that the movie (with the exception of the lesbian angle and the occasionally unnecessary jump cuts and other weird editing and handheld camera choices) was a fairly run of the mill romantic comedy: two neurotic New Yorkers meet, have some immediate attraction, and then have a series of humorous misunderstandings leading to eventual relationship difficulties and an eventual happy ending for all concerned. The only reason this got so much press (mostly good) was that the two stars wrote it and instead of a male and female lead, it was two women, showing that lesbian chic (postmodernly referenced in the movie by the two boorish men before finally driving Jessica into Helena's arms showing beyond a reasonable doubt (as in beyond the clichéd bad date montage) that men are pigs and that's why many women are driven to lesbianism) is still popular. I'll check and see whether I've put my lesbian vs. gay theory here, but I haven't, so here's the short version: anal sex=dirty, oral sex=clean. Thus, gay men are dirty and lesbians are clean. That and the whole having sex with two women at once thing, but if it doesn't concern the man as a threat to his masculinity and male dominance to have a woman probably pleasuring the other woman more than he can, than they are either supremely gifted or supremely deluded. Anyway, that's part of my rant about gays and lesbians. Also, what was with the hardcore rap song when Jessica and Helena were going at it? That attempt to be edgy worked as well as the bickering gay couple (BGC). Although for different reasons: rap didn't fit the film at all, and the BGC is so clichéd that it has its own sitcom.

I saw he had Tape and wanted to see that more, so we watched the little DV film Linklater did while waiting on the long postproduction for Waking Life. Ethan Hawke was excellent, Robert Sean Leonard (whom I saw on Broadway with Billy Crudup in Arcadia, one of the best performances of a play I've ever seen) was also good, while Uma Thurman was the weak link, if mainly for the fact that her character is strangely distant. There were also a lot of shots of the soles of their shoes. It's not a good idea to drink, smoke pot, and snort cocaine, because it really messes with your judgment. And the DV looked very impressive, with only some problems tracking quick movements betraying the DV rather than film.

Caseus Archivelox: The Lion in Winter

2002-09-30 - 10:07 p.m.
I also watched The Lion in Winter this evening. It has so many, many, many good lines. And such a treat to watch it in letterboxed format. Sweet.

Henry II, King of England: The day those stout hearts band together is the day that pigs get wings.
Eleanor of Aquitaine: There'll be pork in the treetops come morning.

Prince John: Poor John. Who says poor John? Don't everybody sob at once! My God, if I went up in flames there's not a living soul who'd pee on me to put the fire out!
Prince Richard: Let's strike a flint and see.

Let's see Akiva "I hate to disappoint you but my rubber lips are immune to your charms" Goldsman write lines like that.

Caseus Archivelox: Pride and Prejudice

2002-09-29 - 10:51 p.m.
I watched Pride and Prejudice (Editor's note: 1940 version) this afternoon, and was surprised with how much I liked it, especially considering how much I generally despise movies that try to condense books into two hour long movies. However, this was great, although not as good as the 90s miniseries with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth (quite simply one of my favorite actors currently working), it was very good, not the least because of the acting of one of the greatest actors of all time, Laurence Olivier. Weird bit of trivia about the movie: screenplay partially by Aldous Huxley. And one line in the movie references the battle of Waterloo, which didn't take place until two years after the book was written. That is, not one, but two weird.

Caseus Archivelox: Anatomy & Maybe Baby

2002-09-21 - 11:44 p.m.
I also watched Anatomy this morning, and have I told anyone that Franka Potente is my favorite German actress since Marlene Dietrich? Well, she is. The movie was really disturbing, because of the large amount of partially dissected bodies on display. Then again, it was a sort of by-the-book slasher film. Still, it was a good by-the-book slasher film, so I recommend it to anyone who likes reading, slasher films, or anatomy.

This evening, we watched Maybe Baby. And I have to say that I fully disagree with what most people on the IMDB say, as it was a very funny movie about a completely inappropriate topic. Not a movie about an inappropriate topic. Rowan Atkinson was hilarious, but when he started to brandish the gynecological instruments, all I could think of was Jeremy Irons doing the same thing in Dead Ringers. Which is sooooo not what you want to think of in a comedy. But it was funny, and I recommend it to anyone who can handle a British comedy about a couple who can't conceive a baby.

Caseus Archivelox: About Adam

2002-09-20 - 10:44 p.m.
I watched About Adam tonight. Kate Hudson wasn't too good. Frances O'Connor was the girl I would have gone for. Stu Townsend not only can't spell Townshend, he picked Kate Hudson over Frances O'Connor. Which is bad. Who wouldn't go after some grad student who's writing a dissertation that probably has very little interest? The movie itself wasn't too bad, nothing too good, but enjoyable, I guess. Movie Addition was About Adam = Belle Epoque + Pulp Fiction, set in The Snapper's Dublin. Which proves that a movie can be much less than the sum of its parts. There was a somewhat short riff on Victorianism and Vampirism, something I touched on somewhat in my Lesbian Vampire paper. I appreciated that.

Cashback, The Last Winter, Winter Soldier, No End in Sight, Night and Fog, Tokyo-Ga, & Paper Dolls

Cashback is the extended feature length version of the short I saw a couple years ago. Now, I don't normally see the short film that longer films are based on first, but I have to say that the film works quite well as an extended version of the short, with added bits not detracting all that much. I thought some of them worked quite well, but really, it's just your typical boy loses girl, boy can't sleep, boy stops time, boy gets job at a supermarket on the night shift, boy falls for checkout girl, boy loses a soccer game 26-0, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy stops time, boy gets girl with creepy stalkery art exhibit, boy stops time with girl. You know, old school romance. But I still liked it. Of course, some of the more explicit shots of female genitalia are darkened in the feature length version, but if you want to see vaginas, the short is also on the DVD, but more importantly, there's this little thing called the internet. Which, as far as I can tell, is for porn.

The Last Winter moves toward the documentary theme that the rest of the movies I've seen in the last couple weeks fit in. It's not a documentary, but it's an environmental horror film, starring Ron Perlman. There are other people in the movie, but who really cares? Global warming has been thawing out permafrost releasing something that starts driving people crazy. Problem is that it takes forever to actually go anywhere. It's just not a particularly effective thriller or anything. Ron Perlman can't save it.

Winter Soldier just makes me more and more annoyed about Vietnam. Seriously, people, if we didn't have Vietnam, this country would be even more messed up, but that doesn't excuse, I don't know, cutting women open for no reason, skinning people, shooting people for no reason, and more atrocities. John Kerry was right, Republicans were wrong, blah blah blah. Look, Americans aren't perfect, hell, for many years, we've been horribly wrong on a lot of things, so stop acting like we're better than everyone else (except maybe at Football). Vietnam was a mess, but we learned valuable lessons that some people in the Bush administration didn't bother to remember when it came to Iraq.

No End in Sight, is of course, one of the best examples of how we didn't learn anything. Not listening to reasonable people, allowing for decisions to be made without any experience on the ground, supporting corrupt people... hmmm, sounds just like Vietnam, eh? It's frustrating to watch people be completely oblivious (or plain lying) about their decisions and how they have led to the current mess in Iraq (and Afghanistan, for that matter). It's even more frustrating to have been right about it ahead of time. As a civilian, I certainly was right about going into Iraq being a terrible thing (you're lucky I'm only reposting my movie reviews from my last blog, because I was full of great vengeance and furious anger throughout most of 2002 and 2003 and 2004 about Bush), but it must feel even worse to have been a member of the administration and not been able to tell your superiors that they're fraking stupid without them just ignoring you.

Night and Fog is a 30-minute-long look at Auschwitz (and other concentration camps) during the war and in 1955. As it's only 30 minutes long, it glosses over things, makes generalizations and the like, but it does have extremely powerful footage and narration about the actual structure of the death camps, and who was responsible. I had no idea it was that short (even after looking at the Netflix envelope), and was extremely confused when it just seemed to end. The lack of in-depth... anything, really, means that it would work perfectly for classroom viewing, but there have to be better ways to cover the Holocaust. Although the enormous amount of documentaries and movies may put the lie to that.

Tokyo-Ga is Wim Wenders (doing his best Werner Herzog impression (and they do sound exactly the same)) going to Tokyo to try to figure out what made Yasujiro Ozu tick but mainly just pointing out how odd Japan was in the 80s. Driving ranges, pachinko parlors, and Japanese people with feathered hair mix with Chishu Ryu talking about his experience with Ozu, Wenders filming kids playing baseball in a cemetary, and, in the strangest scene, a rockabily dance off on the streets. There's also bits where he meets Chris Marker (of La Jetee and Sans Soleil fame) and visits a wax food factory (which was wild). But ultimately, as with most Herzog documentaries, this is less about the ostensible subjects of the film and more about Wenders. I can't recommend it to anyone who isn't a fan of Wenders, Ozu, AND Japan in the 80s, so that really limits people's interest in this film.

Paper Dolls is about a group of people I never knew existed: transsexual Filipino(a?)s who came to Israel to fill jobs that Palestinians used to do before the Intifada caused Israel to close the borders. And they're as mistreated as guest workers in any other country are: if there are any problems or the patient that they're working as nurses dies, they get deported. It's sick. These transsexuals also spend time dancing and lip synching (horribly) in clubs, and part of the plot is that they're trying to put together a show. It would make a much more Hollywood movie if they were great and took the world by storm, but they kinda sucked. And this caused some problems for them, because it just made some of them depressed.

Caseus Archivelox: CQ

2002-09-15 - 5:26 p.m.
I watched CQ this morning, and I really liked it. Made me want to see Danger: Diabolik. However, since I had seen Barbarella, I was fine on the references to that. Jason Schwartzmann was hilarious, Élodie Bouchez was hot, Angela Lindvall was perfectly cast, and the movie-within-the-movie hit the right notes. And it had Billy f---in Zane. I've expressed my admiration for him before, but he was perfect in this. Billy Zane is the ultimate in self-mocking movie stars. I can't remember the last serious movie I saw him in. I guess it would be Titanic, but he was so over-the-top evil that I consider that another comedic role. Titanic sucked. Jeremy Davies wasn't too bad, but his original last name is Boring. He should have kept it. It would add a whole new level to the reviews of his movies: "Twister boring, not Boring". All in all, a fun light film, with a bunch of neat in-jokes. I do recommend watching Barbarella first though. As it makes Codename: Dragonfly more funny than it would be otherwise. Also a good selection of lesser known French New-Wave films would also probably help. Then the other film becomes more funny.

Caseus Archivelox: 24 Hour Party People & Romance

2002-09-14 - 10:20 p.m.
Last night I went to see 24 Hour Party People with two friends. I was really looking forward to it, because it was partially about the greatest and second best band to come out of Manchester (that would be Joy Division and New Order (different enough that they aren't the same band), not Herman's Hermits and the Happy Mondays).

I thought that the credits and style of movie weren't entirely what I wanted. The jumpy handheld and almost illegible credits and captions really kept me from enjoying it as much as I would have. The part about Joy Division was completely brilliant though. Great music, and the entire movie had a wicked sense of humor. The interspersed bits of Steve Coogan (I seriously need to spend some time trying to find I'm Alan Partridge) as Tony Wilson doing various silly TV bits for Granada TV is inspired. Any movie is better if you include a decapitation, a monkey, and/or a midget. Well, this one doesn't have a decapitation or a monkey (although some of the characters are very simian), but it has a midget washing an elephant. The problem occurs in that around halfway through the movie the main reason to watch the movie commits suicide (not a spoiler). When Ian Curtis hangs himself before going to America after watching a movie about a musician who goes to America and hangs himself, the movie loses a lot. The parts about the Happy Mondays, while still wickedly funny, seem almost pointless. I hated them, and there was a great band from the period to focus on, but New Order got a few mentions, and a brief cameo with the actors portraying Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner, and Stephen Morris (who was playing the keyboards, rather than Gillian Gilbert, for some strange reason, although it wasn't completely clear that I am correct in that, as there certainly didn't seem to be a drummer in the recording) performing a rough version of Blue Monday (which apparently lost 5 pence on every copy of the biggest selling 12" of all time). Weak. The best parts of the Happy Mondays sections were the part where they poison pigeons on the roof. That was really funny. Also, when they first showed New Order, it was from the back of a huge stadium playing World in Motion. That's funny to those in the know. New Order rarely if ever showed their faces, and World in Motion is one of the least loved New Order songs. Mainly because it was for the 1990 England World Cup team. Which placed fourth, with an excellent team. Gary Lineker's name may not mean much to you, but he is one of the, if not the, best players in England's history. The song went to #1, but is just not even close to being as good as so much of the stuff they released before or after.

The problem with the movie was the complete lack of interest in any characters introduced in the Happy Mondays section. The Joy Division part was great though, and it was funny all the way through, so I'll give it an 8, because it had parts of the Atmosphere video, and it also had this crazy guy who kept singing Louie, Louie. And when Martin Hannett died of a heart attack at a very large weight, and his coffin couldn't fit in the grave, Tony said: "Martin Hannett, too big for death." Funny. What wasn't funny was the guy who sat in the back and laughed loudly at everything. Hey, that guy's getting a blowjob. Guffaw. That guy committed suicide. Guffaw. That guy just got left by his wife. Guffaw. That guy does a line of blow. Guffaw. That guy just lost all his money. Guffaw. I just wanted to go beat the s--- out of him. The movie was funny, but it wasn't constantly funny. That guy needed to get a sense of humor. Stat.

I just watched Romance. Yes, that 1999 French basically porno. I'd say it was trying to say something, except that I couldn't get past the fact that it was a typical pretentious French film that is trying to say something really important. But it's not like that hasn't been done better in a better movie: In the Realm of the Senses. Or Last Tango in Paris. And I don't even like Last Tango in Paris that much. Romance was just way too long. And it wasn't even that good. The funny thing about it is that my dad rented it and then my mom, halfway through watching it, realized that they had already watched the edited version of it. Also, apparently there was some Italian porno star in it. Well, I think he's Italian, but Rocco Siffredi certainly is a porno star. Let's just say that he has a very large cock and leave it at that. Too bad the movie wasn't as impressive as the size of his penis. Did I just go too far? Probably, but that's never stopped me before.

Caseus Archivelox: Lady in the Lake

2002-09-08 - 11:28 p.m.
Then I watched Lady in the Lake. The first movie done almost entirely in first person. Sort of good, but mainly good dialogue, but the first person thing was sort of crappy. It's neat to see though, because it makes me not want to do that if I ever make a movie. Too disconcerting, and the mirror tricks and "hidden" cuts were sort of disconcerting. From the comment on the front of the IMDB page on the movie: "The lessons I learned from this movie were 1) Only men can handle guns. 2) Having four thumbs is bad. 3) Never, ever tell anyone the time. 4) If you try hard enough, you can drink whiskey through your eyes." Good to know that someone else has a good sense of humor. Montgomery also does a fairly bad Bogart impression throughout the movie, but that's sort of to be expected since it was made so close to The Big Sleep.

Caseus Archivelox: The Blue Dahlia

2002-09-03 - 9:03 p.m.
I taped The Blue Dahlia this afternoon, and I have to say that while I generally prefer darker hair, I'm certainly willing to make an exception for someone who looks like Veronica Lake. Or Grace Kelly. The Blue Dahlia is a Raymond Chandler penned film. So you know it's a twisty story. Too bad it's under the Hays Code. I want my twisty with a touch of trash. However, the dialogue is top-notch.
Alan Ladd: You oughta have more sense than to take chances with strangers like this.
Veronica Lake: It's funny, but practically all the people I know were strangers when I met them.
Really, the ability to write good hard-boiled dialogue and snappy witticisms has gone way downhill since the 40s.

The Bank Job, Never Forever, The Savages, Joy Division, Honeydripper, & The Fall of Fujimori

The Bank Job basically exists for one scene and one scene only: near the end, Jason Statham kicks ass. Sure, the parts before it are a pretty good based on a true story heist film. It's really not clear how much of it is remotely true, and my suspicion is that vast majorities are not remotely true. It's a slick film from a lot of people who have been in the industry for years, plus, huge amounts of gratuitous nudity. Yay?

Never Forever is a film about an American housewife who is married to a bigshot Korean lawyer, but they can't have kids, so she starts having sex with a Korean immigrant so they can have a kid. Of course, they fall in love and complications ensue. Also, Koreans+religion=crazy religious. Weirdly, abortion is portrayed as an acceptable alternative for the baby. Vera Farmiga is weirdly attractive and is topless in many scenes. Other than that, there's really very little to recommend the film to anyone. It's not a bad film, but it wasn't really worth my time. Should've just looked for the naked video clips online and watched Hiroshima Mon Amour. Which is the top of the five movies tagged with Asian Man White Woman Relationship on IMDB. I've seen three of the other four, but there have to be other movies that need this tag.

The Savages is a depressing film about a teacher and his writer sister whose father is suffering from dementia. Acting is good from everyone and really it's just a little too depressing to enjoy at all.

Joy Division is the documentary counterpart of Control. As such, I really knew so much of what was going to happen, recognized video, and few things were remotely new. Still, it's good to finally get the versions of the stories from the people who lived them. I don't think that I need to explain how much I love Joy Division. I'm happy that I don't have to wallow for another 90 minutes in depression for a little while though.

Honeydripper is John Sayles's latest film. Somehow he's gone two years without releasing a new film. Of course, Silver City wasn't all that good. This one wasn't all that good either, although the soundtrack was full of blues and early rock 'n' roll. It's disappointing to think of how he's such a great director, and to see him just make a not worth much film is worse than if it hadn't been a Sayles film.

The Fall of Fujimori is about the former president of Peru, an agrarian engineer son of Japanese immigrants who ended up serving as president for about ten years until he stepped down due to being horribly corrupt. Well, his family disagrees, but he did some good, taking down the Shining Path. He comes across as a guy who is completely disconnected from the reality of what he has done, using a loophole in Japanese law to hide there until after the release of the documentary. Of course, he's since been arrested in Chile and extradited to Peru where he's serving maybe 40ish years? He's had at least four trials, so I think that's right. He's also had to deal with running against his ex-wife in the 1995 presidential election, and his daughter is currently in congress, with his ex-wife a former member of congress (after she lost her title of First Lady (given by Fujimori to his daughter)). Seriously, just a weird story.

Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, Rebels of the Neon God, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, & Homicide

Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten is a great documentary about him. Starting with his early life, through the 101'ers, the Clash, on to the Mescaleros. Amazing soundtrack (beyond the Clash, there's the Ramones, MC5, Bob Dylan, and more, and I will never tire of hearing Johnny Appleseed), fascinating interviews with famous people (and... Flea... who blames the Clash for creating Red Hot Chili Peppers), and bits of history I never knew (he was dating the drummer from the Slits?), making for a really interesting film, the interviews filmed in front of a campfire, leading to beautifully shot scenes of people talking about how amazing Joe Strummer is. Which, really, if you've ever heard his music, you'd already know.

Rebels of the Neon God and I Don't Want to Sleep Alone are both Ming-liang Tsai films in two different stages in his career. Rebels is his first film, rougher than his much later I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, but honestly, the roughness made me actually enjoy the film much more. Too much of his later films are static shots where nothing much happens. IDWTSA was way too slow, full of shots of people washing dudes who are unable to wash themselves. Rebels, felt fresh, the story of two men rivals for a woman, with a good song played pretty often. It may not be as accomplished a film, but I certainly enjoyed it on a non-intellectual level more than most of his other films.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is probably Cassavetes trying to be somewhat conventional. He fails miserably. It's an odd film, far more concerned with scenes of Ben Gazzara being an awesome strip club owner. Seriously, the film is worth watching if only for the ridiculousness that is the strip club. The rest of it, the gangsters, the gambling, his "black lover", all combine to be a character study of a desperate man driven to extremes, with extra violence. I didn't see the cut version, just watching the original one, but Criterion has both versions in one set.

Homicide is another Criterion DVD, recently released. It's Mamet's third directorial effort, filled with his favorite people, Joe Mantegna, William H. Macy, Ricky Jay, J.J. Johnston, Jack Wallace, and Rebecca Pidgeon (in her first appearance in a Mamet film), along with Ving Rhames in a small role. Mantegna is an assimilated Jewish cop, in the midst of trying to capture a dangerous drug dealer and murderer, stumbles into a murder of an old Jewish woman who used to run guns in Israel during the War of Independence. He gets dragged into a secret Jewish underground which distracts from his job as a cop. As it's a David Mamet film, it's twisty and awesome. Really, everything he touches is either amazing or far better than it should be. This one suffers a bit (just a tiny bit) from me not knowing what the point of the Jewish underground was with Mantegna. But why complain when you have Mamet speak and Ricky Jay speaking Hebrew? Worth waiting for the Criterion DVD. Definitely see this film.

Star Wars and Census Geekery

Assume [sic] all over this post.

Ms. Albright: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/weird/Jedi-Claims-Discrimination-at-Grocery-Store-60020902.html
Ms. Albright: I love our ridiculous world.
me: i believe jedi is an accepted religion in england (Editor's note: There are no accepted religions in England, but it does have a census code.)
Ms. Albright: apparently, the 4th largest. (Editor's note: This is worth it for this press release alone.)
me: more reasonable than catholicism
me: well... neither of them supports pre-marital sex (jedi's don't support any sex, but that isn't something that jedi's would probably acknowledge)
Ms. Albright: no sex? That's terrible.
me: you didn't see the prequels... which is a good thing, but apparently jedi shouldn't form romantic attachments, which is a serious issue since the force is supposedly passed down genetically
me: this all presupposes that the prequels are canon, which I argue is not true
Ms. Albright: Seems pretty ridiculous.
me: describes the prequels perfectly

A few more things

Glee is an odd show. I'm enjoying the trashy high school melodrama bits, but the singing is so earnest that I cringe whenever they start. There's added pain due to the songs... I never needed to hear most of them ever again.

Community is promising, and I have high hopes that it fits in well with The Office and 30 Rock on Thursday nights.

True Blood looks like it's going to a darker place next year (plus, no more Eggs!) with Jessica. Which probably means more Hoyt. Yay!

Also, this is something I should have linked to in my Breakin' review: I am not sorry if you are going to end up singing "My name is Jean-Claude Van Damme. I will dance for you" for the rest of time.

Obsessed, Son of Rambow, Reign of Fire, & TV stuff

Obsessed is a horrendously badtacular movie. Redeeming value? Absolutely none. Cliches abound, bad acting is featured prominently in everyone (even Idris Elba isn't immune), the dialogue is predictable, the final fight scene is telegraphed (wait, what's more obvious than telegraphing... diagrammed) in the first scene. There's one interesting thing in it, Ali Larter roofies Idris, but this never comes up again, even though it would make total sense if she used this to try to prover her insane story. But that would have actually been a good plan, and clearly would have been out of place in this cinematic abortion.

Son of Rambow is about a couple of young kids who try to remake Rambo. There's a weird French exchange student. There's random Brethren action. Jessica Hynes shows up as the main character's mom. It's kinda sweet, but it's not all that good.

Reign of Fire is pretty trashy. It doesn't actually make any sense. Christian Bale is ok, but Matthew McConaughey's beard is terrifying. I like dragons. I don't like this.

The last two podcasts I listened to, This American Life and The Moth, actually have tie-ins to new pop culture events: TAL replayed their story which inspired The Informant! which I really need to see. The Moth played a story from Jonathan Ames, who created Bored To Death which just started on HBO after Curb Your Enthusiasm (which is still funny, but it always takes a bit to get into a new season), and was an odd combination of pot humor and film noir, and just odd enough to keep me interested. Plus, it ended with Halfway Home playing, so good taste.

Batman: Gotham Knight, The Machine Girl, & Rampo Noir

Batman: Gotham Knight is basically a series of short stories about Batman done in an anime style. The first one, Have I Got a Story for You, is a fine story, messing with the Batman mythos, but the animation style is just a very small step above Aeon Flux, distracting me and bugging me until it was over. Crossfire was creepy, and extremely effective. Much better visually, but still not very clear when it comes to plot. This trend is positive, and I liked the rest of them. They're not all particularly good, but they're an interesting twist. I think I'm going to stick with the Paul Dini series when it comes to my animated Batman. I like that this exists.

Rampo Noir is a series of four short films based on stories by Edogawa Rampo, who wrote the stories that Horrors of Malformed Men. These... are pretty much trash. The first one is complete trash, the second less so, the third less so, and the fourth less, but still, why the hell did I sit through the first one? The first story is all silent and has naked wrestling. Completely ridiculous. The second has naked bondage and melty wax sex. Ugh. The third one is about a woman who amputates her husbands arms and legs, puts them in jars, and then has sex with him. Ostensibly this is to keep him out of having to fight in a war. The entire thing somehow was stretched out to 134 minutes. Man, did I regret watching this.

The Machine Girl is a movie with special effects by the guy who did them on Tokyo Gore Police, Suicide Club, Noriko's Dinner Table, and Exte: Hair Extensions. That gives you an idea of how crazy this film is. It's just about halfway between the absolute insanity that is Tokyo Gore Police and Noriko's Dinner Table. Lots of spurting blood, cartoony villains (the main bad guy's wife is comically evil), a tempura arm, drill bra, decapitations, blood soup, a chainsaw foot, many gratuitous panty shots, and the titular Machine Girl who has an arm cut off and replaced with a machine gun. There's a sequel. I need to see it. Along with their new film, RoboGeisha.

Caseus Archivelox: Monster's Ball

2002-08-26 - 9:07 p.m.
I saw a movie that wasn't particularly good tonight. In fact, you might say that it sucked monster's balls. Well, I certainly would. Long, boring, with no characters I cared for. And the sex scene was typical overcutting, out-of or soft-focus crap. If you want an impressive sex scene, watch Bound, the Wachowski brothers' first directorial effort, with an incredible one-shot scene. Anyone can have too much cutting, it takes talent to do an impressive single take. But Billy Bob still sucks, Puff Daddy (oh no, he's going to come and find me and kill me because I used Puff Daddy) can act like I can hammer a six-inch spike through a board with my penis. Not right now, and it's not looking like it's going to happen anytime soon.

Caseus Archivelox: The Road Home

2002-08-11 - 12:00 a.m.
This evening I watched The Road Home directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Zhang Ziyi. Absolutely stunning. And the movie wasn't half bad either. Not a 10 because of having a very thinly stretched plot. At under 90 minutes it shouldn't feel like over two hours, but it did. There was very little action, and there are only so many times I can see Zhang Ziyi run through fields in pig tails. I can't believe I just typed that sentence. I mean, Zhang Ziyi. Pigtails. What the hell was I thinking? Oh well... Maybe it's just bitterness that I've never been the reason for anyone to almost kill themselves trying to see me because I've been taken away for some "political" reason. Maybe.

Caseus Archivelox: The Business of Strangers

2002-08-08 - 10:15 p.m.
I watched The Business of Strangers. Sort of like In the Company of Men after estrogen therapy. I figured out the "plot twists" right after they were set up. Not that they were that hard to figure out. Maybe if I hadn't seen In the Company of Men. One thing that I don't like is showing "porn" in movies that are not porn. It means that it just looks funny (because no porn movie just shows thrusting with no nudity) and is more aural than visual (which is funnier without the visual at all). I fully support the right of people to show more, but I think half-assed porn is silly. Unless it's like Log Jammin' in The Big Lebowski, where they just showed the pre-nudity part of the scene. And then had one of the funniest lines of the movie. "You can imagine where it goes from here." "He fixes the cable?" I need to see that movie again. Damn, that is probably the funniest Coen Brothers movie. I almost ordered a White Russian at the last bar I went to, but I realized I probably wouldn't like it much.

Caseus Archivelox: Signs

2002-08-04 - 11:14 p.m.
I saw (the) Signs. I can't say that I liked The Sixth Sense much, but that may be overhyping. Signs was interesting though. I love alien films, and this was an intelligent alien film. Not perfect, as part of the point of the movie was faith vs. coincidence, and I don't like movies like that much, but I liked the aliens. A little reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead, but with a little more cinematic flair, while NOTLD gets by purely on being perfect in every way. Anyone who has seen both will understand why I link the two, although people who hadn't seen NOTLD would probably need to just realize that people sitting around in a farmhouse waiting for things outside to get them while they watch things on TV happens in both movies.

Another thing is that watching it, I keep wishing that River Phoenix didn't die. He left us with the non-talented, hair-lipped Phoenix. Who I don't like. And he didn't look comfortable swinging that bat. Nor did he look like he could hit a ball 507 feet. And there were other problems with the movie (most of which were with the ending, which I don't want to spoil for anyone), but it was well done, and built tension well, which is why I liked it.

Editor's note: I have since seen Signs again, and it's really not very good.

Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong, John & Yoko's Year of Peace, & The Beatles: Rock Band

Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong is funny. Of course it is. It's Patton Oswalt. The censorship from Comedy Central was distracting, and the commercial breaks disrupted the rhythm. Still full of hilarious things.

John & Yoko's Year of Peace is a fairly brief look at John Lennon and Yoko Ono doing crazy things trying to bring peace to the world. Good for them. The movie itself never really gets too in depth, and thus is only of interest for those who need to know lots but little important about John Lennon trying to get some peace.

The Beatles: Rock Band is fun. As an enormous Beatles fan for many years. Most of my earliest memories of sitting and listening to music (LPs!) include things like my dad's folk music, various kids albums (including a certain Sesame Street album with Let It Be on it), and Rubber Soul and Revolver (the American versions because that's what my dad had). My first... well, I probably bought all the Beatles albums before I bought any other CDs, but certainly my first two were Beatles albums. I enjoy playing Rock Band. Therefore, this game was designed for me. Especially because most of the songs are easier than Rock Band itself, so I don't feel as incompetent playing it. It has 45 songs, and only one sucks (I Don't Want You, stupid 7 minute long boring-ass song). So it's 44 songs of awesome. I am looking forward to rebuying even more Beatles music. Because I didn't already do this once. Damnit. At least I could rip my CDs to mp3s so I wouldn't have to rebuy the music then (even if that were possible, which it still isn't). The unheard studio chatter is interesting, the dreamscapes are trippy, and I have more appreciation for some of the less famous Beatles tracks. Not I Want You, because that one still sucks.

The Deal, Persepolis, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, & Redbelt

The Deal is a fascinating look at the rise of New Labor through the pre-Prime Ministerial careers of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Michael Sheen and David Morrissey are outstanding and well worth watching the movie. Maybe not as good of a movie as The Queen, but it was pretty darn good anyway. And for someone who prefers movies about politicians rather than royalty, I gotta say, I know The Queen is a better film, but I would vastly rather rewatch this.

Persepolis is basically the comic in moving picture form. And not like Watchmen, which didn't get the heart of the book, this is true to the comic and is thus as worthwhile. I didn't mention this last year, for some reason, but I did read the comic. It's quite good, an interesting look at the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war from the point of view of a young-ish girl.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a depressing movie about an abortion, but, in this case at least, the abortion itself isn't dangerous. It's the conditions around it, put in place by Nicolae Ceausescu's banning of abortion. All this does is cause pain for the women involved and lead to more crime. Making abortion illegal in order to combat falling birth rates is ridiculous.

Redbelt is a little twisty thriller from David Mamet, but even with an amazing cast (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alice Braga, Emily Mortimer, Ricky Jay, Tim Allen, David Paymer, Joe Mantegna, Rebecca Pidgeon, Jennifer Grey, and basically a cameo from Ed O'Neill), it isn't nearly as good as most Mamet. Well, I'm a huge fan, but I don't think the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is all that good of a basis, compared to his normal crime milieu. Just a little disappointing. I think my problem may have been that it was not nearly as twisty as I like my Mamet (although The Winslow Boy wasn't particularly twisty, and I enjoyed that). And that it ended in a huge fight scene... ugh.

Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee, Noriko's Dinner Table, Heroes of the East

Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee is a nowhere near a good movie. Fitfully funny, more of a commentary on racism in Hollywood than Bruce Lee's death and the finishing of Game of Death. And brief and not really worth watching.

Noriko's Dinner Table is a semi-sequel, prequel, and concurrent to Suicide Club. Like that, it was not really that good. Unlike Sion Sono's later Exte, it wasn't ridiculous enough to enjoy. Their were clearly satirical aspects of the film that went over my head, but the movie just went on too long and I really didn't get the whole brainwashing parts of it. If anything, the film makes me like Suicide Club less. Grafting some sort of explanation on the film doesn't help it. Removing the mystery just makes it a mess of a film. Just like this.

Heroes of the East is a cross-cultural meeting of martial arts, but as it's made in Hong Kong, of course the Chinese beat the Japanese. And the man teaches the woman a lesson about listening to the husband and being meek. There's also the normal awkward and sophomoric humor and ridiculous fights, typical of Shaw Brothers films.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 1/2, & The Taming of the Shrew

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 1/2 are basically William Greaves messing with everyone involved in the film. The first one is filmed entirely in 1968, and features a couple breaking up, and the film crew filming them being filmed and everyone getting testy and confused with everything that's going on. Take 2.5 is about half put together from footage left over from 1968, and the other half in 2004ish. Basically, it's a big mindfreak of a film. It's honestly hard to figure out what the hell is remotely real and what is just Greaves messing with you. It reminds me a lot of F for Fake, although neither is as good, mainly because Welles is one of the masters of cinema. There's a lot of split-screening, watching things from multiple cameras, and multiple people play the same characters. The second one is even more about the artifice of filmmaking than the first, but the first works better. Steve Buscemi usually makes everything better, but in this case, the actual film parts (the scenes that are ostensibly being filmed) are much weaker.

The Taming of the Shrew is/was (depending on when you read this) being performed for free at the Sidney Harman hall in Chinatown. It's a modern-set version, but the problem is that it's an inherently retrograde version of women's role in marriage. I enjoyed the play anyway. Back when I lived in Cincinnati and was watching around six plays a year or more, my favorite game before the performance was to read the cast biographies and see how long it took to get to someone who had been in Law and Order. This time it took four actors. Three if you include the SVU or CI spinoffs. Being so close to Baltimore, though, we got three actors from the Wire (one even gets a bio page on the official Wire website!). Even with that talent, the play belonged to Ian Merrill Peakes (Petruchio) and Louis Butelli (Grumio). Butelli channeled the wacky Brad Pitt perfectly, and really knows how to wield a flower bouquet. Peakes was hilarious, able to make his lying ass abusive husband charming, but even more impressively look good in a wedding dress. Ms. Albright and I had arrived way early, since we had no idea how the whole get a free ticket worked if you had a voucher for a ticket. It turns out we were the first there and so they were kind enough to ask us where we wanted to sit. After first being offered the front row (something I'm loathe to take after my unfortunate closeup at Metamorphoses, let alone having to look up for the entire show), I said I'd prefer something like the fifth or sixth row. We were given the end of the fifth row, and I was actually kinda annoyed because we could have gotten a seat in the middle. The end seats were perfectly fine, though, and I got a little bit of audience participation there. During the first wedding (Act 3, scene 2), Petruchio and Grumio show up late, and in this version, in a wedding gown, matching Katharina's (less train, though). They dance down the aisles towards the front, and, since aisle five has lots of leg room, Petruchio moved right in front of me and continued to dance and flashed me. I was shocked and scandalized and I couldn't stop laughing. The first three acts are really not all that bad from a misogyny standpoint, but man, the taming itself and the final speech are pretty offensive. Even with that, Shakespeare, especially free, is extremely enjoyable.

Boarding Gate, I Live in Fear: Record of a Living Being, & The Ballad of Narayama

Boarding Gate is dreck. Asia Argento cannot act at all. Michael Madsen isn't all that good either. Kelly Lin is fine, but Kim Gordon is not at all an actor either. Just a miserable film. Olivier Assayas has done some good stuff (Clean, Demonlover (the greatest corporate espionage and hentai porn movie ever), Irma Vep, and convincing Maggie Cheung to marry him), but this one wasn't worth watching at all.

I Live in Fear: Record of a Living Being is a mid-50s Kurosawa movie about an old man who is trying to move his entirely family to Brazil to escape nuclear fallout. It's occasionally played for laughs, but it's also a depressing movie about how much some in Japan were affected by the bomb. Considering Kurosawa's later Rhapsody in August, he is one of those affected and horrified.

The Ballad of Narayama is Shohei Imamura's epic film of sex and a horrible way to treat old people. Let's just say that if there were actual Obama Death Panels proposed to replace what they do to old people here, it would get a lot of support. At least they'd have a chance. One thing I want to say: I never need to see another person slamming their own head into rocks in order to break teeth. Eesh. And the extremely weird sex stuff really freaked me out. As such, the movie is well-made, but I just couldn't get past how rough a time everyone had. Again, eesh.

The Nine Lives of Marion Barry, Control, & The Brave One

The Nine Lives of Marion Barry just makes me miss when our politicians weren't all crooks or sleazebags. Wait, that time didn't exist. Barry used to be a force to improve the lives of blacks in DC. Then he got power and ended up corrupt. This is the normal trend for politicians. He's an embarrassment to all those who don't think that working to break the white power structure in DC makes up for years of corruption, drug use, and various other lying things. The documentary is a little shallow, but it humanizes Barry. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing, though.

Control is about Joy Division. And Joy Division is awesome (I really need them to put some songs in Rock Band, specifically Transmission). Arty, fascinating, and well worth the time you put in. Better than the Joy Division segment of 24 Hour Party People. Great non-Joy Division soundtrack as well, and the Joy Division songs were actually performed by the cast. The Killers doing Shadowplay, though, was entirely unnecessary.

The Brave One is Hollywood slick. Sure, it accurately presents that rape and assault are extremely hard to return to normal afterwards. The movie, however, succumbs to Hollywood at the end. It's just too slick to be recommended. It's not all that bad, just eh, and from Neil Jordan, that's a disappointment.

The Last Hayride & random TV notes

The Last Hayride is a book about Edwin Edwards's 1983 campaign for governor in Louisiana. He had first been elected in 1971, re-elected in 75, and since he couldn't run in 79, he basically set everything up for his successor, a technocrat Republican named Dave Treen, to fail so he could win. Edwards was a liar, a womanizer (he is the origin of "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy."), and it's not entirely clear that he was all that good of a governor. However, he made for a fascinating book. John Maginnis does a fairly good job being in the right place at the right time, although towards the end of the campaign, he starts to complain about being there. But his history of Louisiana and the politics explain a good deal that I didn't really know about why they have the strange electoral structure they do (Edwards put it in place to try to kill off the Republican Party there, but, in effect, revitalized it). Quite an interesting book.

The Middleman DVD is great. Epitaph One, the unaired Dollhouse episode, really makes me wonder where the hell the show is going. Seriously, that is a terrifying future. Torchwood: Children of Earth also kinda leaves me wondering where the hell the show is going to go after that. The Doctor Who specials (the Christmas one and the Easter one) were really good. Hung is kind of a mess, but I haven't yet gotten too pissed at it (and it's one of those shows that kinda can't show the penis and I can't complain about the inequality of the nudity since the penis is all things to all women). True Blood is either more enjoyable this season, or my expectations are so low, that I've been enjoying it. Hard Knocks: The Cincinnati Bengals is pretty good, although I hate Mike Brown even more after watching it, and I like Chad Ochocinco more. Shaq Vs. really is about 25 minutes of filler, 20 minutes of commercials, and 15 minutes of Shaq being extremely personable. Should be enjoyable for the next few episodes. Nova Science Now is the most enjoyable and fascinating science show ever made. Neil deGrasse Tyson really needs to be on TV more often.

I'm Not There, Nanking, Breakin', & Fat Man and Little Boy

I'm Not There was a mess. Good ideas, lots of talent (Todd Haynes needs to make more movies), and I am a big Dylan fan, but the artifice just kept dragging me out of being involved in the movie. And Richard Gere's section was just a mess. Cate Blanchett was great though, and it's hard to hate too much on it, but I just should've rewatched No Direction Home.

Nanking is a depressing film about the Japanese raping and pillaging their way through what was a huge city in China in 1937. Hundreds of thousands were murdered (including some decapitations), tens of thousands of women raped, and children were bayonetted for no real reason. Seriously, fuck all those people who claim that Nanking didn't happen or that it was exaggerated. They're just as insane as Holocaust revisionists. Denying that massacres happened when there's photographic and firsthand evidence is just insane. Japanese nationalists are some of the worst, denying so many things that there's so much evidence for. The movie's use of famous actors was slightly distracting at first, but I quickly became more and more involved and fascinated by the story. If you aren't a Japanese fascist, you'll find this movie horrifying and a must watch.

Breakin' is terrible. The acting, directing, writing, and everything about it is bad. It also, frequently, suffers from the worst thing that a movie can do: quick cutting, hiding the actual talent of those on display. Also, why use a broom on a wire? Everything else is kinda possible. Joe Piscopo? Maybe you should get a suit that remotely fits you. Ugh. Here's the thing about this movie: big plot points are dependent upon being able to tell who won a dance-off, but I couldn't tell who was winning at any point, and the only way I knew the second one was over was because I was trying to pay attention to Ice-T rap talking in the background, narrating the fight. The movie is a horrible mess, about what you'd expect of a movie produced by the writer-director of The Apple. Still, I have to watch Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. It's on the DVR!

Fat Man and Little Boy has a great cast and tells an interesting story. Roland Joffe is one of those names I'm familiar with and respect the guy, but honestly, looking at his IMDB listing, I see: an uncredited turn on Super Mario Brothers, The Scarlet Letter, an episode of Undressed(?!?), the disappointing Vatel (which I saw less than a month before I restarted blogging), the unseen by me (but well-reviewed) The Mission, and the excellent The Killing Fields. So I get this feeling that I have a positive impression of him based entirely upon how good The Killing Fields is, and conveniently forget about how execrable The Scarlet Letter was. I liked it, but it kinda dragged on a little long.

Woman in the Dunes, Flash Point, Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, & Lost in Beijing

Woman in the Dunes is a metaphorical tale of a teacher who is tricked into living in a house surrounded by sand dunes. It's bizarre and touching, erotic and terrifying, and extremely well-made. Held up to my expectations.

Flash Point is ridiculous. Action scenes... man, I barely remember anything about it. I barely remembered anything about right after I saw it. I remember some of the fight scenes, the one in the driving range, the surprisingly brutal stabbing in the parking garage, and the pretty superb (although completely unbelievable) final fight scene. But the plot? Utterly nonsensical. Not helping: I couldn't tell the bad guys apart.

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan is not a porno film. It's a Shaw Brothers kung fu film, that just happens to have an evil lesbian who runs a brothel, kidnaps a young innocent girl, has many men rape her, and that woman then comes back and starts killing everyone involved, usually with sex. So, um, the fact that there's actually very little nudity, and most of it is played for laughs isn't going to make me seem any less dirty for adding this to my queue is it? I mean, it's not horrible, by any stretch of the imagination, and the English title just makes it seem much dirtier than it is. It's a fairly standard revenge film, but with kung fu. How can that not be watchable, at least?

Lost in Beijing is a look at how capitalism has destroyed the well-meaning Chinese working man. Basically, money corrupts people. Of course. Somehow, this movie got banned and the producers were banned from filmmaking for two years. Seriously, it's about the problems of capitalism. Reminded me of Blind Shaft, as there was also nudity here. No one in this movie comes out looking all that good. Tony Leung Ka Fei (the not as good Tony Leung) is suitably despicable as the owner of a massage parlor and rapist who starts all this corrupt stuff in motion. I, personally, though, hate the younger husband even more. Tony Leung was always a scumbag, but the husband was worse. The movie itself was very good, and does everything that I think the writers and directors wanted.

Blast of Silence, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Easy Living, & Wallander

Blast of Silence is a short little film noir, made in the early 60s, and released by Criterion. As a fan of film noir, and reading the mostly positive reviews back when Criterion released it, I wanted to know how it would be. The writer-director-star moved in the same circles as Peter Falk, and he was going to star in this had he not gotten a paying role. I kinda wish it had been made with Falk. The acting in this is amateurish and could have used a stronger central performance to bring a little bit of range to the film. It's a good plot, and certainly could have been better with a little more. Also, the narration was overbearing. Still, I kinda liked it.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead has talent in it and behind the camera (and Marisa Tomei naked), but it's just a depressing film and I never really liked it. I think I'm less willing to give any credit to films that have good people involved and disappoint than films that I never have any hopes for. Just an overall eh film.

Easy Living is an early Preston Sturges screwball comedy script, about a young office worker who gets hit by an expensive fur when a rich banker tosses it off a building. A series of comedic scenes follow, leading to silly scenes of mistaken identity and the like. It's pretty funny, but not up to Sturges's directorial efforts.

Wallander is based on a series of Swedish mystery novels, set in Ystad, southeast of Malmo. There have been a series of Swedish movies based on the books, but this was a new series of adaptations by the BBC with Kenneth Branagh as Wallander, the drunk detective. He is, as you would expect, excellent, and the movies just made me feel like I was watching Insomnia (but without the actual insomnia). I am really looking forward to see if they would make another series of it, but it all depends on whether Branagh can do Thor and still work on other stuff.

Los Campesinos! at 9:30 Club 8/5

I hadn't seen them before, and in fact, was introduced to them at around the same time I was introduced to the Wombats (who, I must admit, I still kinda prefer) by MBG and they were Quite Good and worth listening to. But I heard they were playing, and Ms. Albright bought me a ticket after her ticket was purchased by her friend). So I was going, and it was an early show on a weekday (YAY!). We skipped the openers, who may or may not have been good (one of the guitarists from The Farmers! was wearing a shirt from Girls. Anyway, we did the "hipster" thing and showed up about ten minutes before the main show started, but MBG just kept driving by parking spots, so we got in there about two minutes before Los Campesinos! went on.

We were pretty far back, which was nice, because they were very loud. Quite good, although their new couple of songs kinda dragged the middle of the set a little. And they didn't play Don't Tell Me To Do the Math(s), possibly my favorite of their songs. Still, when they started the big buildup and then broke into the one two punch of Box Elder (quite an excellent version of it, maybe even bettering Pavement's original) and You! Me! Dancing! (the song that competes with Math(s) for best Los Campesinos! track), the set finished out very well with a few more strong songs. As I'm not familiar with most of their stuff I can't say what else was played, but Sweet Dreams Sweet Cheeks, This Is How You Spell "HAHAHA, We Destroyed the Hopes & Dreams of a Generation of Faux-Romantics", My Year in Lists, and The International Tweexcore Underground were all very awesome. Gareth and one of the guitarists ended up in the crowd during the last couple songs and the encore, and just seemed to love playing. Stage banter was alternately hilarious and completely indecipherable (I enjoyed their joke about what an honor it was to open for Asher Roth). Basically, a great show.

But it's now time for the return of Douchebag(s) of the Concert! The four (or more, I never turned around to see all of them at once) people behind us. They wouldn't stop talking, sang out of tune and out of time to songs including starting singing well before the actual singing started multiple times, sang instrument parts like "beep beep beep", spilled a beer right behind us so my feet were sticking to the ground for most of the set, knocked into all of us multiple times, gave me a nasty look when I was saving a space for Ms. Albright and her friend and they tried to move into that space and I stopped them, made me write a run-on clause, and, most unforgivably, seemed genuinely excited when Gareth started making fun of the US for giving the world shit like Asher Roth and they thought that Asher Roth was going to come out and play his song or that Los Campesinos! would cover I Love College. So you win, Douchebags.

After the set, which went about 75 minutes long with a one song encore, we left and walked back to the car, and noticed a line. A long line. A line around the block. For Asher Roth. I am sorry for all those people at the 9:30 Club who had to deal with that crowd. In case, I'm not being clear enough, Asher Roth is a terrible, terrible person. And his fans are all bad people as well. The one good thing that he has ever done, from what I can tell, is for Los Campesinos! to be an early concert so I could be home by 10:20.

Run for Cover at Black Cat 8/1

Since none of these bands will ever play again in the forms that they did on this night, it's kinda hard to write a lot about their musicianship or anything like that. So just quick comments on the bands I saw.

The Cherry Bombs (The Runaways/Joan Jett/Lita Ford) had the best line in the night: after playing Cherry Bomb, the one Runaways song that anyone knows, "Lita Ford" said they were only going to play their hits, and then no one else in the band seemed to know what to play next so they had to pass it off to "Joan Jett" to play some of her songs. Fairly accurate representation, but nothing all too special.

Bad Medicine (Bon Jovi) was awesome. Extremely tight set, played the hits, and their Bon Jovi was outstanding. I was able to sing along to every single word of the set. Ms. Albright was disturbed (and possibly disgusted) by my ability to sing along. If I actually liked Bon Jovi, it might have been the set of the night, but the crowd was very into it.

Blonde on Blonde (Blondie) had a "Blondie" who couldn't sing the songs. Sorry. You almost were able to do Call Me, but nope.

Guided by Vices (Guided by Voices) was accurate to the actual band, but were just a drunken mess. Played some of the best GBV songs of the mid-period, but didn't play Kicker of Elves, for which I am (probably inordinately) naming them the worst band I saw, by far.

The Fly Bys (Top Gun) kinda broke the mold as it was more of a skit rather than music. And the music was shite. I hate Top Gun. It is a terrible film and the music is terrible. So screw you guys for getting Take My Breath Away in my head from now until I get something better in my head. Also, your "skits" weren't funny. And you took too long. But you get points for costuming.

Five Imaginary Boys (The Cure) went on too long. It was almost 1 am, and both Ms. Albright and I were exhausted. Also, Lovesong is just eh. You went on too long. And you brought nothing to the songs. Your lead singer did look slightly like Robert Smith, but that was it. Had it not been the Cure, you might have met Guided by Vices at the bottom.

And then finally, the band I went to see (although I knew someone in Bon Jovi as well): Geezer (Weezer as done by old people). My roommate was the lead singer (so I'm biased again). Look, maybe I just love Weezer more than the other bands, but they really were the best. Great costumes, the old people talking in place of the talky bits of Undone were funny, El Scorcho is a fun song to sing (too bad the music isn't all that fun, otherwise I'd do it Rock Band all the time), The Good Life was a perfect choice, and Surf-Wax America was a great set-ender.

Legend of the Black Scorpion, Zebraman, & Nightmare Detective

Nightmare Detective just reminded me of better films about people going into other people's dreams to solve crimes. Wait... honestly, there aren't any good live-action films about that (Paprika is the only one of which I can think). This doesn't break that trend. It should be an acceptable film, but it was filmed far too darkly and it just gets utterly ridiculous well before the end.

Zebraman is a goofy Miike film, ostensibly about a father who is obsessed with an old TV show, and he starts dressing up as the main character and save the world. And it's a family film. So the wife having an affair, the daughter having lots of sex, the son gets bullied at the school where he substitute teaches. Of course. It's utterly ridiculous that it's somehow viewed as a family film, but then again, most of the rest of the world isn't as prudish as we are.

Legend of the Black Scorpion is an adaptation of Hamlet. And pretty much all I could think was that it was pretty, but as an adaptation, it's a boring mess. Overlong and nowhere near as good as most adaptations (of either Hamlet, or from other East Asian Shakespeare adaptations, like Throne of Blood and Ran). Not all that much to say. Reviews were positive, from what I remember, but I need to stop just watching anything with Zhang Ziyi in it.

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, Kiltro, & Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With not only has a grammatically incorrect title, it isn't very funny, and is basically bad. I like Jeff Garlin, but I didn't enjoy watching it at all.

Kiltro is a trashy Chilean action film. Problem is the movie doesn't spend all that much time being an action film. And there's a midget. But mainly, it's full of too quick cuts, bad CGI blood spurts, and poorly choreographed fight scenes. I have to stop adding films just because someone on the internet says it's a cool action film. Barghle.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story feels like it was just ticking off the biographies of musicians and then trying to have the characters be naive and explaining everything. This leads to "humor". The only thing I found funny was the recurring joke with Tim Meadows and drugs. Other "jokes" ranged from unfunny to extremely stupid. But it just wasn't worth watching.

Charlie Wilson's War, Teeth, & National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Charlie Wilson's War depresses me, because it's basically making me root for the mujaheddin. Maybe if they hadn't frickin' pulled out the troops in 2002 and 2003 for Iraq, we wouldn't still have be there. Damnit. Of course, they did note the dangers of the war and the being unwilling to help build it back up afterward. Which, amazingly, we seem to like "fucking up the end game" as Charlie Wilson said. Mike Nichols and Aaron Sorkin do a fine job with the film. Really, it's a frustrating film, but for nothing except my political issues with it.

Teeth is utterly ridiculous. Basically, it's extremely unsubtle, but it's a film about explicit vagina dentata. You don't really see too many films that are explicit in it. There are quite a few severed penii. Well, three. And there's just so much I can take. But I gotta love any film that punishes people for having pre-marital sex for bad reasons. Raping, having sex for money, and being creepy are all more than enough reasons to cut off penii. The dog being named Mother, though, that may have been the crowning touch to the ridiculousness. Of course, the movie is not something that you can watch without cringing horribly, either for the newly depenistrated men or for Dawn's shocked reactions to having just cut off a penis (or fingers). The first couple times.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets is goofy. I enjoyed the first one quite a bit. This one is more ridiculous, and even less based in reality. But Nic Cage, Ed Harris, et al. were lots of fun. Not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoyed it.

Mansfield Park, The Barchester Chronicles, & The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear

Mansfield Park is the 1983 BBC miniseries version. As such, it luxuriates in the time period, and in an extended running time. And it has a bunch of actors who are extremely recognizable if you've seen enough British miniseries made around the same time. I didn't really like Sylvestra Le Touzel's performance of Fanny Price, and as a whole, I am not really that big a fan of Mansfield Park, but it is the most accurate version of it (plus it doesn't have frickin' Billie Piper in it or basically messing with everything in it like the 1999 version, which I really liked anyway). So, um, see it if you really want to see the most faithful version of Mansfield Park?

The Barchester Chronicles has an amazingly good cast: Donald Pleasence, Nigel Hawthorne, Alan Rickman, Phyllida Law, Geraldine McEwan, and Clive Swift, among many others, all give great performances. Alan Rickman, in particular, is perfect as the extremely slimy Rev. Obadiah Slope. Anything where he gets to be remotely slimy is extremely worth watching, and this has him at his slimiest. Really, he is pitch perfect. I've never read Anthony Trollope, but I don't feel like I ever will now. Even with the long running time, and far too easy of an ending, it's definitely worth it, especially if you don't mind the BBC video filming, which, along with the aforementioned Mansfield Park, suffers greatly from blurring whenever there's a camera move outside.

The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear is a 2004 documentary that's all about how the neocons and al Qaeda basically use the same tactics to get what they want. This, unfortunately for its arguments, makes the claim that al Qaeda was a made up organization that was created in 2001 by the US Government to prosecute terrorists under organized crime laws. This is insane. And pisses me off. Otherwise, it's an ok version of events important to current international relations, but it's also three hours long, and spaced over three DVDs. What the hell? It could have very easily fit on one DVD. Why on three? I don't know. Basically, it was frustrating because it could have been so much better.

The Cat Returns, Summer Palace, & Come Drink with Me

The Cat Returns is the second to last of the full length Studio Ghibli films that I haven't seen yet (My Neighbors the Yamadas is the last). As such, it was the one that I actually took out of my Netflix queue at least once, and didn't re-add for quite some time, due to my belief that it wasn't going to be all that good, not being directed by Hayao Miyazaki, and a sequel to the excellent Whisper of the Heart. Why I took it out? I didn't want to ruin my feelings for Whipser, maybe? Anyway, it was pretty good, but not nearly as strong as the better ones, as this wasn't as meaningful as the best, or as beautiful as them either. If you like cats, that helps. The voice cast for the English version (including Anne Hathaway, Cary Elwes, Kristen Bell, Andy Richter, Peter Boyle, Elliott Gould, Tim Curry, Rene Auberjonois, and Kristine "Joyce Summers" Southerland) were alternately too distracting ("Hey that's Andy Richter!" or "Who is that... Oh, it's Elliott Gould") and pretty on target. Basically, it's not a must-watch by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still good.

Summer Palace is a film that got the director banned from making films in China for five years. He also directed Purple Butterfly and Suzhou River, both of which are about the same quality as this one, although this one has many more nude scenes. Surprisingly, it wasn't the nudity that bothered the Chinese censors, it was the use of brief bits of Tiananmen Square footage, and probably the use of characters involved in the protest as heroes. And we can't have that. Back to the movie. Once the characters left the university, the movie strated to drag slightly and become less interesting. It could also have been the length of the film. I liked it, but could have stood some cutting near the end.

Come Drink with Me is King Hu's last film from Hong Kong, before he moved to Taiwan. It's about a brother who is kidnapped by bandits, so his sister (who is maybe disguised as a man for the first part? It's hard to tell) has to fight the bandits, with the help of a drunk. It's a seminal first wuxia film, clearly important to the genre, with some good fight scenes and impressive indoor sets. Of course, it strains credulity many times, but pretty much is notable for the use of a female protagonist (Cheng Pei-pei) who kicks ass (although her needing to be rescued by a drunk multiple times is less awesome). So good for that mostly feminist character.

The Darjeeling Limited, Hotel Chevalier, & Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The Darjeeling Limited & Hotel Chevalier should be taken together, although there really is no big point to Hotel Chevalier besides being an excuse for a naked Natalie Portman (not that there's anything wrong with that) and getting Peter Sarstedt's Where Do You Go To (My Lovely) stuck in my head whenever I think about this movie. But it's an effective enough mood piece, and completely unnecessary to the plot. Speaking of unnecessary, the main movie, The Darjeeling Limited, frustrates me to no end. Wes Anderson is a very talented guy, but maybe he really does need someone to rein him in with reasonable plots and remotely likable characters, of which there are fewer and fewer in his movies. And with the fewer likable characters, they become much harder with which to identify, and I like the movies less. It's basically been a downhill slide from Rushmore. It's frustrating because he's a talented guy, but he is just too busy distancing himself from reality. Maybe The Fantastic Mr. Fox will be better.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is the sixth movie in the series, and the second directed by David Yates (he of the awesome State of Play and the less awesome but still good The Girl in the Café). As a Harry Potter film, it was pretty good, up with The Prisoner of Azkaban as the best, and far, far better than the Chris Columbus abortions. Oh, man, maybe I should use a different word... Anyway, I really didn't like the ending they chose, as it really lessened the emotional impact, but I bet they move some of it to the next film. And I knew that jump scare was coming, and it still got me. Kudos to you, David Yates, for one of the best ever jump scares. The movie focused a lot on the relationships, which was nice, but it could have stood to have a little more plot with the actual Half-Blood Prince, as the reveal itself just felt extremely perfunctory.

Caseus Archivelox: Shiri & Donnie Darko

2002-07-30 - 10:52 p.m.
Ultra violent, somewhat convoluted plot, only two particularly bad subtitles, neither of which I can recall at this time. And of course, they stop the bomb with .05 seconds left. Sure. It's so easy to time it that way. Also, the movie was very easy to figure out where it was going and all. The convoluted plot was only somewhat explained, because I couldn't figure out how it was going to cause a war. Anyway, you don't watch the movie for the plot. It had surprisingly poor action choreography, and it was frequently difficult to figure out what was going on in the myriad shoot-outs. Too much American John Woo, not enough Hong Kong John Woo. And not enough two fisted gunplay, and way too much reloading. I want my gunfights fast, furious, and full barreled furious fast firing. Yes...

That's not to say I didn't like the movie, but it just wasn't as good as the hype. And believe me, the movie was overhyped. Not as much as Titanic which sucked behind its lots of money, Shiri was just eh.

2002-07-31 - 10:53 p.m.
You know what else is creepy? Donnie Darko. And you know what else? It was really good. Really good. A little too creepy to get a 10, but a 9 from me. Thought provoking, and it had one of my favorite songs in it, used perfectly. Love Will Tear Us Apart needs to get more respect for the awesomeness that it has.

The movie itself was just lots of stuff in it. I can't even figure some of it out right now, because my mind is still spinning. Good soundtrack, and I've always been a big fan of people going around in bunny costumes, but this may be too weird for that to continue. Weird similarities between the movie and The Day When People Flew Planes into Buildings. Why is it that I can't even look at dates in September without thinking, "That was two days before the 11th." Even though it was 1996 or something like that. Argh.

Jena Malone (the g-i-r-l-fren, as Jonathan Richman would speak-sing) was good in it, as was Gyllenhaal, but Malone gets more props because she was on the best cop show of all time: Homicide. Wow that was such a good show. Puts most of what is on TV now to shame. And would not be out of place on HBO Sunday Nights. Which is saying a lot, because that's where the good shows are now, not Friday nights on NBC where no one watches it, even if it is better than everything else on NBC except for Seinfeld. Damn you NBC, damn you all to hell.

Caseus Archivelox: Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Killer's Kiss, The Pirates of Penzance, & Jurassic Park III

2002-07-06 - 12:51 a.m.
Movies just were better in the 40s. Or maybe they're just better because they aren't the crap of today, or other remakes (EDIT: it's because I hadn't seen enough terrible movies of the time). Here Comes Mr. Jordan was a really good movie, and it had enough surprises to make it much better than I was expecting. That crappy remake with Warren Beatty (Heaven Can Wait (not to be confused with the excellent Gene Tierney movie of '43, also called Heaven Can Wait)) can't hold a candle to it, and I haven't seen Down to Earth (with Chris Rock (not to be confused with Here Comes Mr. Jordan's sequel (which I haven't seen) also called Down to Earth, with Rita Heyworth)).

Claude Rains is one of the best actors of all time, and I don't think I've seen a movie with him in it that I didn't really like (except for The Wolfman, which I already said was really disappointing, as it stuck to the '30s horror framework too much, without adding anything except for the voyeurism). But Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, Notorious, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Invisible Man, The Adventures of Robin Hood (the excellent version with Rains, Olivia De Havilland, and of course, Errol Flynn): all excellent movies.

"Flynn's offscreen life was, incredibly, even more colorful than his movies. An unabashed hedonist and insatiable womanizer, he was notorious for his nonstop drinking, wenching, and general highspirited bacchanalia. In 1942, at the height of his popularity, he was charged with (but later acquitted of) statutory rape." He is also the reason for the line "In Like Flynn", referenced in the sequel (not as good as the original, but still funny) to my favorite spy spoof of all time (Our Man Flint), In Like Flint.

2002-07-08 - 10:59 p.m.
I watched Killer's Kiss and The Pirates of Penzance. Killer's Kiss was Kubrick's second feature film, and at only 67 minutes long, that's debatable. However, it was really good. Nothing compared to his later movies, but an enjoyable film noir anyway. The Pirates of Penzance was one of those movies that I had been seeing in the library for a while and I thought I should watch. It was a v. v. silly musical, but that's to be expected from a Gilbert & Sullivan musical. I'm still more familiar with most of H.M.S. Pinafore, even though I just saw The Pirates of Penzance, and only know of H.M.S. Pinafore from The Simpsons. That's still how I'm most familiar with G&S. Even though my grandparents love them. I did like the songs where they had to sing very quickly. Because they all got very red faced. I think that I really need to stop referencing everything to the Simpsons, because the only song I recognized from TPOP was the Major General song (I am the very model of the modern major general) which Barney sang when doing acrobatics when Homer and Barney were trying to go into space (Woohoo! Default! The two sweetest words in the English language!). Anyway, that's weird. The movie had Kevin Kline, who was very good, and Linda Ronstadt, and when I saw her, all I could think of was her singing the Plow King jingle in Spanish. It also had Angela Lansbury. I once said, when asked by one of my friends what my ideal woman was like, "Angela Lansbury". Immediately. This wasn't something where I tried to find some old woman and it took me a while. This was immediate. I think it's more for her role in Bedknobs and Broomsticks than for Murder She Wrote. Or maybe for The Manchurian Candidate, but that one not as much as she's an evil Communist mother. I don't think she was ever on the Simpsons. Again, too much Simpsons. Although that's impossible, unless it's from the last few seasons. Then it's quite likely to be too much. I think that The Simpsons early references in two of the best episodes (Deep Space Homer and Cape Feare) to Gilbert and Sullivan are somewhat weird, but they do show why I love the show: they're actually referencing more obscure things than I do. Which is good.

2002-07-09 - 11:03 p.m.
I also watched Jurassic Park III. The movie just had no reason to exist. It wasn't bad, but it was boring.

Caseus Archivelox: Vanilla Sky & Tortilla Soup

2002-06-26 - 3:09 p.m.
So the two movies my dad rented from Saturday night. Just by looking at them you wouldn't expect them to be related, but they are in an unfortunate way: both are completely unnecessary remakes of good foreign movies. Vanilla Sky was by far the better movie, because while it did dumb down and add unneeded bells and whistles to a good plot, it was still well directed and acted (by everyone besides Penelope Cruz who continues to be absolutely terrible in English-language films, no, I'm not forgetting Blow, she was easily the worst thing in that movie, and don't get me started on Woman on Top or All the Pretty Horses for her bad acting). Penelope can act in Spanish films, but eesh, she was very bad in this. And it's not that she didn't know what she was talking about, it was a very similar plot to Abre Los Ojos which she had done much better in. But I liked Vanilla Sky.

Tortilla Soup on the other hand. Ok, let me try to recreate what the moviemakers were thinking when they decided to make the movie: Two very white men are sitting in the office of one. They are giggling constantly, have problems making coherent sentences [ed. note: I've made them slightly more sensible, because they really were giggling too much, and it would have taken longer had I included every "Oh wait... wait..." and breaking down in laughing, and their long digressive rant about how hot Velma was and that Shaggy was banging all the women on all the 70s TV Shows, and that he once walked in on a threesome of Ginger, Farrah Fawcett, and The Fonz... but I digress, and you don't care]. One is saying, "Ang Lee is really hot now. Look at Crouching Tiger, and I'm sure The Hulk will be big. But his earlier Hong Kong films are too inaccessible to American audiences. They're stupid. Let's remake one." Another says: "We haven't made a good Latino movie in years. That's a growing audience, and all the pot I've been smoking is giving me some serious munchies, so let's remake Eat Drink Man Woman as a Latino movie." The first: "That's the best idea I've heard since I was passed the script for Big Momma's House." The second: "But we need all the Mexican actors and actresses we can find for the movie." The first: "I don't know any." The second: "What about Hector Elizondo? I'm sure we can find lots of them. And they'll all be incredibly talented, and we can have another Oscar caliber film like Eat Drink Man Woman." Then they both took more hits from the prodigious bong lit with the scripts of people like John Sayles and Charlie Kaufman and started to giggle. 6 months later this piece of recycled claptrap was released and caused me to waste 100 minutes of my life. Every plot twist was obvious from the beginning, I only cared about the youngest daughter (because she looked fairly good) and the eldest daughter because it was Elizabeth Peña who was in one of my favorite movies (and has incredible relevance to my love of serious movies, not to mention my love of dark hair) Lone Star. I loved that movie when I saw it when I was 16 (which is one reason why I can forgive Matthew McConaughey for almost any number of bad films he's been in, although if Reign of Fire sucks because of him, any goodwill will be completely gone). I liked movies before then, but it was more as one of the uneducated masses like movies rather than the more cultured lover of non-s---ty movies I am now. Tortilla Soup was terrible. My dad who normally reads the New York Times reviews to figure out what movies to see listened to some friends (he declined to mention who they where when I asked) who said it was a great movie. Reading the review (which has lines like "There hasn't been this much forced wackiness since what some consider the golden days of sitcoms, and poor [Raquel] Welch doesn't have the acting skills to make her anything other than an embarrassment. She's important in an unforeseen way: she makes you focus on the other performers in any given scene. Martin and his grown children are missing something, besides a script. Even if you haven't seen "Eat Drink Man Woman," "Tortilla Soup" is still as predictable as a fast-food restaurant" in it) would not make me want to see the movie. The only good thing about it is the food preparation scenes. But there is too much crappiness between the food scenes to make it worthwhile. If you want good looking food, go for Like Water for Chocolate, Tampopo, Big Night, or the aforementioned Eat Drink Man Woman. Those are great movies with mouthwatering food. Tortilla Soup wasn't.

The Campaign of the Century & The Blind Side

The Campaign of the Century is all about the 1934 California Governor's election, which is both a turning point for political campaigns (in that this was the first campaign run by full-time political consultants rather than the candidate and this was the first campaign to make large use of televisual advertising (in this case, short trailers before movies)) and for California. Before then, Hollywood wasn't all that involved in political campaigns, but after this campaign where liberal and progressive Hollywood stars were moved to actually be more vocal in the political views, and was the last big hurrah of the political views of the studios being dominated by the studio heads. They were actually garnishing wages and blacklisting people for not supporting Merriam against Sinclair. As enjoyable as the dirty tricks stuff was, I really loved the sections about what was going on during the same time, like the capture of Bruno Hauptmann, killing of Pretty Boy Floyd, William Randolph Hearst visiting Hitler, and many, many more. Really just a fascinating book.

The Blind Side is a fascinating look at the importance of the left tackle in professional (and increasingly college) football. And an interesting inside view of the recruiting and creation of one of the best left tackle prospects in the last decade, Michael Oher. I really enjoyed the book, as Michael Lewis is a great author, who knows just what to include and to exclude, never writing too much when he's putting his stories together. The NCAA regulator interviews were what really made me find this fascinating, though. To me, it seemed like a clear case of where the NCAA should have declared him ineligible to go to Ole Miss based on the rules, but it's also one of those cases that is so ridiculous that it could have ever possibly been a violation that it just pisses me off. Then again, I had just read about what they had done for the kid, and the NCAA didn't have the book. Also, Lawrence Taylor is a beast, I lost a lot of respect for Paul Brown not hiring Bill Walsh when he could have in 1976, and I kinda liked Jonathan Ogden a little more. And I'm terrified about how good of an LT Oher's going to be for the Ravens.

Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes & Man on Wire

Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes is a documentary about Prairie Home Companion, but I didn't enjoy it as much as the fictionalized movie. Of course, that was designed to be extremely enjoyable, as opposed to an accurate representation of the radio show and the people involved. This one also doesn't have Kevin Kline as Guy Noir. So it works as a documentary but it isn't as good as actually watching a fictionalized version or listening to a show.

Man on Wire took me a while to figure out that the scenes of the young people on wires were not reenactments, and that they had actually filmed themselves so much talking about their plans and practicing. There are times in my life where I wish I had some point when I was 8 or so and had had an epiphany about what I had to do in my life. Would have made my life go in a slightly more direct fashion. It's a story that really is one of a kind, as wirewalking between the two towers will never be done again, and was only done for one day. Fascinating story though.

The Cell & Speed Racer

The Cell looks interesting, but JLo and Vince Vaughn are terrible actors. And so it's basically a somewhat interesting film, but anytime that they're not in someone's mind, it's a terrible at best manhunt film. And man, terrible is an accurate description of the film.

Speed Racer is all bright and shiny colors. It's basically a live action cartoon. Which it does very, very well. It's too bad that the film itself is not all that good. But it looks very pretty. And the cast is surprisingly good, although I wonder just how many of these people had actually seen the second or third Matrix films. Because after the second one, there was no way that they were actually anything other than visually interesting people who are incapable of putting anything on film that means much of anything.

Burn After Reading & My Blueberry Nights

Burn After Reading is a Coen brothers film in the ridiculous comedy vein of their recent "failures" Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, but it is both funnier and more substantial than both. It's a paranoid film for a paranoid age. I enjoyed basically all of the characters, especially J.K. Simmons as the CIA manager. And I felt so bad for Richard Jenkins. Such a good guy, and such an ignominious ending for him. It really felt like they were just having an immense amount of fun with this film, from the opening scene with Frances McDormand to the ending zoom out from the CIA mirror image of the first shot. And George Clooney's character is hilarious, with his sleaziness and ability to save money.

My Blueberry Nights would have been so much better had Norah Jones not been the star. She can't act all that well. So the thing that gets me is that it's quite possible that I had no idea how any of the stars of his Hong Kong films can act, and the difference in my view of this film is based entirely upon my knowledge of the language. Because it looks just like a Wong Kar-Wai film, from the slow-motion to the camera tricks to the soundtrack. I really hate the fact that I have this feeling after basically all the really good foreign directors move to the US. Because it makes me second guess their abilities. But man, even usually reliable actors like Frankie Faison, David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz, and Natalie Portman are terrible. It seems like it's just horrible miscasting, but man, that's just painful. Only Jude Law is somewhat acceptable, but that's small comfort in this film.

Margot at the Wedding & Rachel Getting Married

Margot at the Wedding is Noah Baumbach clearly having had a very bad experience with a wedding. I'm not all that sure that it's a remotely good film, but it was interesting. Jack Black is only acceptable in small doses, as otherwise he is overbearing. Acceptable in some cases, but here, he's so low key that he's not really doing all that much. And I just didn't like or care for any of the characters in it.

Rachel Getting Married is such a hipster wedding that it was painful. Hindu themed with belly dancers, two hipsters playing the wedding march and an interracial wedding? Yep, hipster. Anne Hathaway was very good, and she didn't even show her nipples this time, unlike when she was very good in Brokeback Mountain. But pretty much, I just wanted it to be a little less indie. It was so, so indie. And the wedding itself should have ended way sooner than it did. But hey, that dude from TV on the Radio isn't that bad of an actor. Hurray! And the dishwasher scene was funny. Although, seriously, I feel like I have to apologize for not hating this film. At least it isn't mumblecore.

I Shot Jesse James & The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

I Shot Jesse James is actually Samuel Fuller's first film. As such, it's of interest mainly as a curio, because it's certainly not a good film, and the clear change to the facts of his life (made even more explicit by watching The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford almost immediately after) made me appreciate it less. However, it's interesting to see how much of Fuller's style was already existent in his first film. The longer titled one is a pretty film and the acting was much better, but the earlier film still has a bit of charm, partially because it was so much shorter and focused. I bet the book was pretty good though. I like that Brad Pitt is willing to do films like this. Because I like Brad Pitt.

Poor But Sexy at Fort Reno 7/13

I had to look up the first two bands' names (Laura Zax and mittenfields, although I think Laura Zax was going by Laura Zax and the Alternative Rock Band at the show?). I wasn't all that impressed, and based on some of the overheard comments from other people, they also didn't really care for them. mittenfields was a good idea (I like people dressed up in a tiger suit and panda pajamas and I like indie rock), but the lead singer's screams were annoying. Laura Zax was just kinda quiet indie-rock type stuff. Just eh. EDIT: See comments below.

Poor But Sexy, however, I'm totally biased for. I am friends with the lead singer (who is also the brother of one of my roommates) and the guitarist is from one of the best bands I've ever seen live, The Dismemberment Plan. So I'm not an unbiased observer. And I'd heard and enjoyed their EP before. But they were a pretty fun show, with a lot of ridiculous lyrics and awesome stage presence. Basically, I highly recommend you go see them live. The crowd, too, seemed to enjoy it, with huge groups of highschoolers dancing up front. I chose to rock out while being nearly immobile near the back on a blanket, but it was just a good night for it, once the sun went down and you could see the stars above while listening to a dancy show that was kinda a mix of Prince and Steely Dan and Michael McDonald-y Yacht Rock. Or something, MBG and I were trying to decide on this. I say Prince mainly, but David needs to wear more purple, high heels, and do splits to get it just right. But he has the confidence and sense of humor just right, dedicating The Only Good Thing to the dogs in the audience.

Anyway, I also wanted to congratulate DC for having Fort Reno, a great place to spend an evening listening to a concert twice a week. As long as the bands aren't all that bad. But you can get fancy food at Whole Foods (how much do they have to love seeing a whole bunch of young people with disposable income coming in and spending $8 on salad bar fixings before the show?), then hang out and look at babies, dogs (there was a Great Dane there that had to weigh more than me), and hipster douchebags, gawk at Ian MacKaye (I laughed with him at a funny situation!) and other famous for DC music people (I got introduced to Joe Easley last night!). Yeah, um, I didn't geek out to them, but I did to others.

The X Files: I Want to Believe, Dedication, Romance & Cigarettes, Chess in Concert

The X Files: I Want to Believe was boring. Sally and I both fell asleep before the end. I missed the entire climax of the film, but I did see the kiss at the end. I read the X-Files wiki page on the movie though, so I really didn't feel like I missed anything by sleeping. It was so utterly boring. It would've been ok as a midseason non-sweeps episode of the show, but there was absolutely no tension in the film at all. I did wonder what the hell happened to Annabeth Gish and Robert Patrick's characters, but maybe Chris Carter had the sense to act like most of the last two seasons of the show didn't exist, like I have. Because they were not good. How can Fox have such a huge problem with running some shows into the ground and then cut so many others so short? Sigh. Anyway, I really feel like I should have more to say about the film, but the fact that I fell asleep watching a movie with David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, and Callum Keith Rennie says a lot. Also, thanks, Chris Carter for your very subtle point about religion with the whole stem-cell treatment. I knew that there was something missing from the movie, and inept moralizing about how religion can kill hit the spot! There were two priest characters: one was a pedophile and the other wanted to kill a sweet kid because it would have been expensive and against his morals to save him. Ugh. If you aren't able to do so well, all you do is make people who agree with you pissed off. PETA, I want to eat sea kittens even more than I want to eat fish. They will be delicious and adorable as I eat as many as I can. And then I will continue to complain about your frickin' tone-deaf attempts to be the biggest assholes on this planet. At which you are succeeding.

Dedication was the first in an unintentional Mandy Moore filmfest. I definitely didn't go through and add movies from Mandy Moore to my queue. This one is a romantic comedy with Billy Crudup being a children's book writer whose longtime collaborator and only friend Tom Wilkinson dies, and so Bob Balaban pays Mandy Moore to illustrate his contractually obligated book. Martin Freeman has a small role as an English author and competitor for Mandy Moore's love. Justin Theroux began his directing career with this. He didn't do badly at all, and he's still one of those guys that you don't know you know. This film is a romantic comedy, but the script is slightly more interesting than others, at least in the details, because the plot is extremely basic romantic comedy tropes.

Romance & Cigarettes has a great cast, and lots of talent. And is terrible. James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro, Christopher Walken, Elaine Stritch, Eddie Izzard, Amy Sedaris, and even Cady Huffman and John Turturro in small roles were not nearly enough to save this overblown mess. The musical aspects are just poorly done. I can understand wanting to get good actors, but their singing was usually terrible.

Chess in Concert is something I watched because I remembered watching this at Washington University in St. Louis back in... 1995? and hating it. I wondered if it was just the drama students or whether it was the musical itself. One Night in Bangkok is not a particularly good song, lending credence to the latter, so I was not entirely looking forward to this. But it's a musical by Tim Rice and the two male members of ABBA. Basically three people who are talented (seriously, once Tim Rice stopped working with Andrew Lloyd Webber, Andrew truly sucked) were behind it, but it's a musical about two chess matches and the cold war maneuvering behind them. But beh to this, and pretty much the musical as well. I did like seeing Clarke "Lester Freamon" Peters in it, even though he didn't really sing, but that was hardly worth the 2.5 hours of mediocre music.

Helvetica, Grey Gardens, Gone Baby Gone, & She's Gotta Have It

Helvetica is a documentary about a font (haha, typeface nerds, I said font, not typeface, so remember, there is a comment section so complain there). There were some interesting stories in it, but 80 minutes about it were at least 20 minutes too much. I get it, some people find Helvetica a nice clean typeface. Others object to its nice clean typeface look and prefer crazy grunge fonts. The best parts were when they talked to the English guy who had a great accent and good stories about the typeface. And when they went to the archives of the company that owns the rights to Helvetica and we met the dude with the blue bow tie and the plaid jacket. Most of the others were ok, but I just felt like it was a lot about the font.

Grey Gardens is the story of two of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' relatives, first told in a documentary in 1975 by Albert and David Maysles and was then filmed by HBO and aired earlier this year, starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange, along with Jeanne Tripplehorn. I felt so bad for the Beales and it was basically painful to watch. They're basically crazy cat ladies who have lived together for so long that it's clear that they've sniped at each other for years over the same issues. To watch them slowly attempt to clean and be more social just makes the arguments just worse. I watched both, and while the documentary is all the more painful due to the actual characters, the movie has great performances, even from Drew Barrymore. There are certainly some differences in scenes from both notable mainly due to watching them one right after the other.

Gone Baby Gone was pretty good, especially for a film from Gigli. Mainly due to great performances from actors like Ed Harris, Amy Ryan, and even Casey Affleck. And the cast was full of some other good actors, like John Ashton, Michael K. Williams, and Morgan Freeman (not playing a magic negro like normal!). Michelle Monaghan, however, was terrible. Other than that extremely weak link, it was a pretty good story, although I have no idea how much of it was due to Dennis Lehane's novel, as Mystic River was almost an amazingly good film, until the ending few minutes which were utter crap. Really, Amy Ryan was so much better than Laura Linney that it's almost enough to note how the female characters are extremely one-dimensional. Which may also be due to Dennis Lehane's book.

She's Gotta Have It is Spike Lee's first feature length film, a feminist look at sex and relationships in the 80s. The acting is... well, pretty weak from almost everyone besides Spike Lee. That was kinda surprising, but then again, he was given the best male role in the film. But it's really Nola's film, and it's a shame that Tracy Camilla Johns never really had much of a career after this film.

Pierrot le fou & Play Time

Pierrot le fou is the first Godard film chronologically that starts to be too political to actually be much of a movie. Except that it keeps insisting it is a movie. Which is one of the charms of Godard, but this felt like a warm up for Week End, a better film, as they're both about a couple who goes on a trip and the world around them devolves. That one at least had the amazing tracking shot of the car accident, still one of the best things ever to be put on film.

Play Time is a semi-sequel to M. Hulot's series of films that included Mon Oncle. This is another satire of modern society, with a higher budget, and apparently did very poorly at the box office. I understand. I felt the length more this time. There were still some funny bits, but it felt like it was a satire for the 60s and I just don't find it as enjoyable. Maybe I'm getting jaded. Need new movies please.

Telekinesis! at the Black Cat 6/17

Somehow, someway, I wasn't actually the first person among my friends to find this band. They put out an album on Merge in April. And I didn't hear about them until around then. But MBG came in to work one day and said, "My new favorite band is on Merge." So I got the album and he was right. It's the best thing I've heard this year. There isn't one single bad track, and therefore no real standouts, as "Tokyo", "Coast of Carolina", "Awkward Kisser", and "I Saw Lightning", among others have been stuck in my head for various amounts of time over the last week. That was helped by my usual listening to the entire discography of the band before the show, along with a Tiny Desk set webcast on NPR (apparently Michael is a huge fan of Bob Boilen, and it'll be posted here at some point). During that, they played a bit of the old ELO song, Can't Get It out of My Head, which luckily I can't get into my head. My favorite thing about the picture? The Beatles Anthology book bookended with the Beatles bobbleheads. I want those.

The show was part of a co-headlining tour. An Horse opened at the Black Cat, when Telekinesis! has opened for them the night before in Philly. I'd never heard of An Horse, although they had apparently opened for Death Cab for Cutie in Australia and for Tegan & Sara in the US. There were many people there just for them, as the crowd noticeably thinned after they played. I didn't love them, but they were enjoyable enough, even with the thin sound only a guitar and drums can make, and certainly got me in the mood for Telekinesis!'s set. There were also many underage people there. I guess both bands were kinda emo-y, but I felt very old fogey-y. During An Horse's set, all of the members of Telekinesis! were within a few feet of me at various times. I did not know what the other, non-Lerner, members looked like, but I was too shy to tell him how great his album was. But I was literally standing right next to the other members and I didn't know.

With only one album at only 31 minutes long, and with only a couple EPs and a single out (most of the tracks on those were rerecorded for the album), they certainly couldn't play for very long. So I wasn't expecting all that much when they came out around 10:40. They played for around 40 minutes, missing "Awkward Kisser", but whipping out a pretty good Kinks cover in "A House in the Country" to replace it, and doing every other song from the album (I think). Yes, Telekinesis!'s touring band features an Asian female bassist (who was tatted up). Michael Lerner looked quite a bit like a muppet (Animal in particular), once he took his glasses off and was flailing around but still kinda in one place. The two guitarists, hipster/pedophile/70s Swedish softcore porn actor and Jared Leto were pretty good. The in-between-song banter was slightly repetitive (they said they were very excited about being in DC a few times), but it seemed like it was due to being charged up rather than anything else.

After Michael got out from in front of the drums (to play his small guitar for Rust, he saw there was also a slight problem with the stuffed raccoon on top of Michael's drum kit, as an anti-fur person put an anti-fur sticker on it. And then had a shouted disagreement with Lerner (a vegetarian) over whether it was a real raccoon or not. Seriously? It's, very obviously, a stuffed raccoon. What the hell? I may agree with you guys that fur is evil, but I think you're just a huge bunch of douchebags. You and PETA.

iTunes Meme Takes the Fifth

Four years into this, and I've decided to add to the content by reposting my old blog. So I'm redoing the iTunes meme again again, and noting that I saw 216 films this year (total of 3838 films), meaning I saw 79 fewer films this past year than the previous year. Successfully dating is to blame. Wouldn't trade it though. My consumption of most media has decreased over the past year. I don't even get the shakes if I don't see a movie in a few days.

How many total songs?
24268, that's 61 days, 22 hours, 28 minutes, and 10 seconds or 108.72 GB. That's 1866 more songs than last year, although by when I added current iterations of tracks, there are 2725 more tracks.

Sort by Song Title - first and last?
A.B.C. by The Jackson 5 on the Hitsville USA box set
___ from Regina Spektor's Soviet Kitsch
Same as last year

Sort by Artist - first and last?
a-ha
+/-
Same as last year

Sort by Time - first and last?
We're a Couple from the Spaced Soundtrack
Symphony no. 9 from the BBC Philharmonic's Beethoven's Symphonies
That cuts about six tenths of a second off last year's shortest.

Sort by Album - first and last?
The A List by Wire
() by Sigur Rós
Same as last year

Top Five Played Songs:
Holland, 1945 from Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane over the Sea
Drill Me from Portastatic's The Summer of the Shark
Blue Bird from The Rosebuds' Birds Make Good Neighbors
Sex Is Personal from The Faint's Blank Wave Arcade
Temptation from New Order's Substance
Pretty similar, although my love for Temptation has finally entered.

Find "sex," how many songs show up? 166 (by track is 56, and Song against Sex at 7)
Find "death," how many songs show up? 161 (by track is 55, with 3 The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrolls)
Find "love," how many songs show up? 1307 (by track is 769, with 15 Love Will Tear Us Apart's winning)
Find "peace," how many songs show up? 27, (by track is 24, (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding? winning this one at 8)
Find "rain," how many songs show up? 352, with 190 by track, having Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head winning with 5
Find "sun," how many songs show up? 343, with 219 by track, and Island in the Sun winning with 5
Find "you," how many songs show up? 2837, with 1887 by track and 11 Don't You Evah (well, one is technically Don't You Ever)
Find "home," how many songs show up? 233, with 110 by track and Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) with 4
Find "boy," how many songs show up? 638, with 248 by track and Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone? with 12
Find "girl," how many songs show up? 600, with 284 by track and I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me with 9
Find "hate," how many songs show up? 105, with 61 by track and I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me with 9
Find "wish," how many songs show up? 67, with 46 by track and I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine and Blown a Wish tied at 4

XXY, The King of Kong, Food Party & The Yiddish Policeman's Union

XXY is an Argentinian film about a 15 year old hermaphrodite who is struggling to find out where she fits in society, and society trying to come to grips with him. I think him, as that is what the end of the movie would suggest is Alex's choice. It's a shortish film, but great acting, and about something that a lot of people don't think about very much: hermaphrodites, and whether to allow them to make their own choices about what gender to live as. Few hermaphrodites are given that choice, as it is customary to turn them into women soon after birth. In many cases, however, this leads to a gender identity crisis and later decision to undergo a sex change operation. I would like to think that this sort of issue is well-understood, but it really isn't. And until the day when we can stop having huge articles in major magazines about the sexuality of some pop singer, I doubt that we'll ever have an honest discussion about gender identity.

The King of Kong is the great documentary about the world record for Donkey Kong. Of course, it's horribly biased, but I don't entirely care about its accurateness as history (so I'm actually looking forward to the fictionalized version coming to theaters soon-ish). It tells a extraordinary story with a huge asshole of a villain and an all-American hero. I never actually played Donkey Kong or most other arcade games (I have fond memories of the X-Men arcade game and the Simpsons arcade game, but not much else), so the bit of history was interesting, although I knew about the kill screen before, probably from reading a review when this first came out.

Food Party is a show on IFC. Normally I would ignore a weird cooking/craft/bizarre show. But I actually am friends (it's true, Facebook friends and everything!) with one of the cast members of the show. So I felt I had to watch it. I wasn't able to make it through any of the episodes on the website, due to the screaming and crappy sound, but the show itself was slightly better quality filming, and I actually laughed a few times, recognized my friend easily in his multiple roles. Will watch again.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a Michael Chabon novel I'd been meaning to read for a couple of years. And I finally started earlier this year until I was so rudely interrupted by my habit of buying and then reading comics. As a huge fan of The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay and Wonder Boys, and to a lesser extent his other works, I somehow put off reading it myself. I did, however, buy a copy for my dad pretty soon after it came out. I loved the book, and highly recommend it for anyone with an interest in Yiddish, policemen, alternate history, and a great detective story. As the complicated history and plot of the book would be far too complicated for me to get into in any detail without just reading the wiki page, I recommend you just read the wiki page. At least the setting part, as the plot is twisty and kept me guessing.

The Naked Prey, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, 2 Days in Paris, & Elizabeth: The Golden Age

The Naked Prey has a monkey fighting a cheetah. Oh, and it's basically like The Most Dangerous Game, except in this case, it's far more racist because it's set in Africa in the 19th century and it has a white guide for a safari being the only survivor of a native massacre. But he only survives to be released naked and then hunted for sport. It was made in 1966. There's genuine footage of animal-on-animal and human-on-animal violence. And man-on-man violence. The story is based on the true story of a white man who was hunted by Black Foot Indians in 1807, and he survived after 11 days of running back to civilization (there's an awesome Paul Giamatti-read version of the story on the Criterion DVD). The movie itself is beautifully shot vistas in South Africa, but man, the racial implications of this film make Rush proud.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a much shorter film than I was expecting, even though it was only about a day in the life of a generally unpleasantly judgmental person. No, it wasn't about me. I have never been a maid. Or a social secretary. Frances McDormand was pretty enjoyable, I will never complain about Lee Pace getting work (the second to last episode of Pushing Daisies wasn't quite as good as the third to last episode, but still better than almost anything else on TV), Ciaran Hinds was enjoyable, as was Shirley Henderson and Amy Adams. Basically, an enjoyable film that doesn't really say anything or mean much of anything. But if you want an enjoyable fast-paced film, you could do far worse.

2 Days in Paris is clearly a personal story for Julie Delpy, writing, directing, starring, casting her parents as her parents (following Before Sunset), and her former boyfriend as her boyfriend. And I think it's mainly about the differences between the US and France. But it's also a belated let's make fun of Americans for being idiots and supporting Bush.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is the entirely unnecessary sequel to Elizabeth, which was excellent and a much better movie than Shakespeare in Love. I just found this movie boring. Sorry, Cate Blanchett and Clive Owen. I generally like you both, along with Geoffrey Rush and Samantha Morton. But it appears that Shekhar Kapur just couldn't do it again. The sense of watching something that never needed to be made was something I couldn't get rid of throughout the film. And now you've made me retroactively less happy with Elizabeth. Success, Mr. Kapur? I hardly think so.

Weirdly all of these films have non-sexual nudity. 2 Days in Paris has weird pictures with penii and balloons. The others were mainly asses, although The Naked Prey has naked native women breasts.

The Wayward Cloud, Passing Fancy, & Exte: Hair Extensions

The Wayward Cloud is the final (?) film in Tsai Ming-liang's trilogy that includes What Time Is It There? and The Skywalk Is Gone. In this one, thet main male character is a porn star, and he meets up with the main female from the earlier films. There's a drought in Taiwan, so everyone is eating and drinking watermelons. It's extremely bizarre, slow-moving, there's not just a hint of necrophilia, and, oh yeah, it's a musical with very little dialogue. They sing old Taiwanese songs, almost all of which are terrible. Basically, there's a dude fingering a watermelon as a stand-in for a vagina, there's fake-looking sex (I mean, seriously, he wasn't even hard, how could he possibly have actual sex with a dead woman?), forced fellatio (at the climax of the film, pun intended), and man, I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the earlier two films.

Passing Fancy is an early Ozu film, and it was released in a pack of 3 from Eclipse (the budget Criterion line). As such, it doesn't get the same treatment as Criterion from a visual standpoint, as it looks like crap. And there are far too many intertitles. Hitchcock would have objected to that. I just objected to the boringness. I don't know if there's anything else I could possibly get out of watching more Ozu, considering how many I've seen, so I actually just took the others out of my Netflix queue.

Exte: Hair Extensions is a Japanese Horror film. About murderous hair extensions. Somehow this is not the most ridiculous Japanese horror film I've ever seen. It stars Chiaki Kuriyama (Kill Bill and Battle Royale) as the hero, and Ren Osugi (The Twilight Samurai, Dolls, and a huge bunch of awesome Takeshi Miike films) as the insane morgue attendant who sells hair extensions that start taking over the brains of those who wear them and then having them kill people. Evidently, there's some story about a woman who is kidnapped and her body parts are sold for transplants, or something, but who really cares? Hair kills people! And grows out of wounds and around tongues and over eyeballs and through fax machines and you get the idea. Sion Sono (who did the earlier (and not nearly as deliriously funny) Suicide Club) shifts tones like a wild man, but it just feels like it is supposed to be like that. And I didn't even mention my favorite part (besides the abusive mother and her boyfriend getting their comeuppance and why people would ever want to grow up to wear stupid hair like that): the movie introduced Chiaki's character by having her bike in to work late but narrate everything like she's a film noir heroine. Except that instead of doing it in her head, she does it out loud, explaining she saw someone do it in a terrible TV show and found it funny so she started to do it herself. Which is strange, but then she meets up with her best friend, who also does it, and it becomes another layer of hilariousness.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Syndromes and a Century, Mr. Arkadin, Get Smart, & The Jane Austen Book Club

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is a mid-70s Werner Herzog film. To give you an idea about the film, it is based almost entirely upon the extremely strong performance from Bruno S. And because it's Herzog, Bruno S. is crazy. Here's his biography from the IMDB: "The unwanted son of a prostitute, Bruno S. was beaten so severely by his mother at age 3 that he became temporarily deaf. This led to his placement in a mental institution; he spent the next 23 years in various institutions, often running afoul of the law. Despite this past, he a self-taught painter and musician; while these were his favorite occupations, he was also forced to take jobs in factories such as driving a fork lift. Director Werner Herzog saw him in the documentary Bruno der Schwarze - Es blies ein Jäger wohl in sein Horn (1970) and vowed to work with him, which led to his major roles in Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (1974) and Stroszek (1977). He was very difficult to work with, though, sometimes needing several hours of screaming before he could do a scene." It's absolutely insane, and it's based on a true story. A guy is found in Nuremburg in 1828, with a note, and saying that he had been kept in a dungeon for as long as he could remember. And he has problems adjusting to society. Kinda depressing film, and I'm not sure exactly how this fits in with my idea of every one of Herzog's films being about someone being obsessed, but it could work somewhat as an outsider, rather than being obsessed, as Nosferatu is more outsider than obsessed.

Syndromes and a Century is by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a Thai, whose parents were both doctors, and it's basically a fictionalized version of how they met and fell in love. I'm not sure I could do much better than A.O. Scott's opening paragraph of the review of this, "Ever since his films began to attract admiring attention from the international film festival crowd, the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul has encouraged his tongue-tied Western fans to call him Joe. That friendly, disarming gesture reflects the sensibility behind the movies, which are at once stubbornly difficult — resistant to summary, at times even to understanding — and surprisingly warm and gentle. Unabashed art films that demand patience and close, quizzical attention, they are also generous, unpretentious and funny, posing thorny formal questions in a relaxed, democratic spirit." It's a slightly meandering film, intentionally so, with a final couple of scenes that seem to have little to no relevance to the rest of the film. But if you allow its rhythms to flow over you, it's a very enjoyable time.

Mr. Arkadin is a film that may never be what it should have been. Orson Welles had the film taken away from him in the editing room. The film actually started out as three episodes of The Lives of Harry Lime, a radio show based on his character from The Third Man. Then he started to film it as a multi-European country production, refilming two scenes with Spanish actresses for the Spanish producers. And over the time in the editing room, there were at least five different versions of the film. Two Spanish ones (named for the fake names they've given to Robert Arden) and three versions in English, one for European audiences called Confidential Report, one for American audiences, both of which were butchered from the complicated flashback structure, and a version found by Peter Bogdanovich in the Corinth film vaults. There was also a novelization that was "written" by Orson Welles, but was actually written by Maurice Bessy. So Criterion used all five movie versions, and put together another version in attempting to conform as much as possible to what Welles probably would have done. Unlike with Touch of Evil, where he wrote a 58 page memo detailing the changes he wanted to make, the only way anyone has any idea about what he wanted were some remembered conversations and taking the earliest films as the best indications of Welles's vision. There were some major changes to the structure, including scenes that were put before scenes that clearly said they were after others. The final Criterion Comprehensive version is really the only one that is needed. The film itself is actually pretty good in every scene that doesn't include Guy Van Stratten (played by Robert Arden), and is also good in some scenes with him. When I watched the three versions on the Criterion collection DVD set, I figured he was a terrible actor, mispronouncing words. Now, after thinking about it more, I'm not as sure, thinking that, especially with Welles' tendency to overdub everyone in his films, maybe this was intentional. Maybe he was supposed to be the obnoxious and ignorant American idiot. But man, I was really rooting for him to die.

Get Smart is far too big of a movie for the plot. It's really just too much. The special effects were extremely distracting, and the big action bit at the end was studiously not funny. I like Terrence Stamp, and basically everyone in the cast, but it is never as funny as the original show, just jokes spaced too far apart for any humor to build throughout the film. Sorry film.

The Jane Austen Book Club has a Buffy conference as a punchline (and has a girl identified as only "Girl with a Dog Collar" played by Messy Stench, and that might actually be her name). I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be offended or not. And I'm not sure Grigg is not supposed to make me feel terrible for being a guy who likes Jane Austen, and also is a big fan of science fiction. It's a fairly cheesy romantic comedy, with the Jane Austen hook being the only thing to make it remotely interesting. I didn't regret watching it, but it certainly isn't anything special. Just an inoffensive movie, probably more enjoyable for those who have actually read Austen's books, because otherwise, the parallels will probably be missed. Not that it makes the film much better. Maybe the book is better? Wait, I mean, I'm sure the book is better.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910, Runaways, Preacher, Dollhouse, & Better off Ted

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910 is the first issue of a three-part third volume of Alan Moore's most detailed series. Basically, it's 1910, a new king is going to be crowned, and there's a vision of the future that suggests an apocalypse in downtown London. So the next version of the league has to stop it, meeting characters from the Threepenny Opera (who sing songs based on it), along with Jack the Ripper (along with a surprise answer to who it was, even if it's not a surprise for those who've seen The Ruling Class), a thinly veiled Aleister Crowley, and more (just take a look at this list of characters in the series). Of course, it has it's requisite sex and violence, along with a section at the end which references 2001: A Space Odyssey and then on the next page, The Story of O. Basically, it (and the earlier League books) may not be the most important comics of all time, but they're certainly near my favorite comics of all time. This was better than The Black Dossier, but not as good as the original two volumes. Yet.

Runaways was started by Brian K. Vaughn in 2003, and then restarted a couple of years later, and then taken over by Joss Whedon after Brian took over the Buffy Season 8 comics. So I wanted to read them, and I have. Not as good as I personally would have liked, but a generally enjoyable "Don't trust anyone over the age of 18 (later increased to 19)" story about six teens who see their parents sacrifice a teenage girl and realize their parents are all very, very evil. And then the series continues, adding in new characters to replace dead ones, having a psychically linked velociraptor from the future show up, magic, the 1900s, robots, and have cameos from much more famous comic book superheros (it's a Marvel comic, so it's Wolverine and Captain America (along with Kingpin and The Punisher) among others). Basically, I liked it, I'll continue to read it, but it just confirmed that I don't actually like superhero comics in general.

Preacher is gratuitously violent, gratuitously naked, and gratuitously profane (in both word and religious senses). I loved it. There were vampires, crazy ultra-religious types, horse thieves, inbred southerners, a sex-crazed Nazi Harvard-educated lawyer, a disgruntled astronaut (in one of my favorite bits), a war in Heaven, an orgy, a seriously misguided fan of Kurt Kobain who becomes a rock star, and more. Just a great series, and I'm a little disappointed I won't get to see an HBO miniseries based on this. Read it. I want to apologize for not having read this before the last month, as I read the first two collections years ago, but I wasn't buying comics then, and I never read past that, and then I tried one time after that, but I kept getting sidetracked, so I finally just started over.

Dollhouse and Better off Ted are two shows that are too good for network TV. And almost got cancelled as a result. I joined a save Dollhouse facebook group before the show had even started to air, because it was a Joss Whedon show on Fox airing on Friday night. After a rough (well, very rough) first five episodes, with only the previously mentioned Middleman episode particularly good, but once we got to Man on the Street (which Joss had promised would be the beginning of the show being awesome), the show became awesome, and by the end was as good as his earlier shows (Alan Tudyk was great). I didn't even mind Eliza Dushku. Better off Ted was a workplace sitcom. Boo, right? Non-boo. It's from Victor Fresco, who did Andy Richter Controls the Universe (which I purchased on DVD based on the remembering it was funny and my love of the "I'm building a temple to you, made out of shrimp, in my stomach" line, and did not regret that purchase one bit), and stars Jonathan Slavin (also from ARCTU) and Portia de Rossi. The two leads (Jay Harrington and Andrea Anders) are acceptable, but de Rossi, Slavin, and Malcolm Barrett are definitely worth watching the show for. Slavin and Barrett are Phil and Lem, two genius scientists who are like an old married couple, but with science! And de Rossi is the utterly insanely demanding boss. Basically, it's a little wacky, but very funny. I recommend watching both. But it just depresses me about how good ARCTU was, and how pissed I was it got cancelled. I didn't remember it lasting almost two seasons though. So, good on Fox?

Lust, Caution

Lust, Caution is strangely, a movie that would have gotten very little notice, save for the explicit sex scenes. Not that it didn't deserve some of the press, as it's actually a pretty good film, with very strong performances from the good Tony Leung (now matching the not as good Tony Leung as Good Actors Whose Penises (Or Balls) I've Seen (GAWPOBIS? nah, not going to add the tag)), Wei Tang, and Joan Chen, among others much less known. Sure, it's a little too long, and the sex scenes are almost completely gratuitous. Yes, seeing Wei Tang naked was gratuitous (but only in the idea that it does little to show how obsessed with each other they are sexually). I am, however, very proud of everyone who allowed those scenes to be left uncut in the final version. However, the length of the film, along with a fairly basic plot means that it isn't quite as enjoyable as Black Book, which was trashy fun with not as many sex scenes, another movie about a woman having lots of sex with an evil man during World War II. Speaking of sex, the most disturbing part of the film was the initial rape scene. Rape is always disturbing.

Also, for some terrible human people, read the IMDB message boards for the movie, and just wallow in the misogynistic (Wong is a slut for falling for Mr. Yee), homophobic (OMG, thank god I didn't see Tony Leung's penis), and racist (Asians are hairy and weird) postings. And then enjoy the occasional post that's actually intelligent and well-thought out.

Caseus Archivelox: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones & Persona

2002-05-16 - 11:19 p.m.
I also went to see Star Wars Episode 2, and it was neither as bad as some people were saying, or as good as others (admittedly many fewer were saying that). Lucas set himself up to be trashed with The Phantom Menace. No matter how good this movie was (maybe if he had another Empire, but that's so unlikely that I'll just ignore that possibility), it would be trashed by many, just because it was no Star Wars or Empire. The final battle scenes are really cool, and Yoda certainly does kick ass, as does Samuel L. Jackson. Too bad C3PO is the new terrible character. At first he was just a gay robot, now he's horribly bad comic relief, with just bad puns. Not that there are good puns, but it's like Lucas and Hales couldn't think of a way to add some levity to a serious battle, and thus put C3PO in the Jar-Jar role. Ignoring the fact that in the original trilogy the battle scenes rarely had comedy. There were funny things, but there was not one character that is there only for that. The Ewoks banging on the AT-STs, the tow cables causing the AT-STs to trip, and Porkins were all funny to a certain extent, but back then, they knew that comedy wasn't really for those scenes. When Han and Chewie chase the stormtroopers in Star Wars, that was funny, but it wasn't in the midst of many characters dying and mass mayhem, it was in the middle of comedic rescue attempt of the Princess. Sure, Jar-Jar Binks is the most evil character of all time, for his obvious racist stereotype, but now also because he just was responsible for the downfall of the republic. But that is just one of those things that we have to accept from Lucas. That he's a racist and won't admit it. Jar-Jar is so evilly bad. The dialogue and love scenes were also terrible, while, surprisingly, some of the CGI was also very fake. It's one thing for a movie like Young Sherlock Holmes to have below average CGI (at least compared to now, for the time, it was incredible, even if it was only around 12 polygons), but for a movie that cost $130 million or so and had the top of the line CGI group working on it is almost irredeemable. Lucas is so evil. So, I give the movie a 6 out of 10. Star Wars is a 10, Empire also is a 10, but would be an 11 if I bent the rules, Return is a 9 (I don't like Ewoks and Jabba's palace was terrible (mainly from the Special Edition)), and Phantom Menace is a 4, and that's almost entirely for Ewan McGregor, the pod race, and the final lightsaber duel. Those were good, the rest was bad. Another way to judge the movie is to say that you can pretty much ignore any scene with Anakin until the duel at the end of the movie, because he's just bad until then. Padme isn't much better. Yoda, Obi-Wan and the rest of the Jedi are cool, as is Dooku (Christopher Lee) and Jango and Boba Fett and the rest of the clones. But the movie is just disappointing, not as terrible as the Phantom Menace, nor as transcendentally great as the original trilogy.

2002-05-23 - 1:39 a.m.
Then I watched Persona. That is one weird movie. But v. v. good, and it would have made my lesbian vampire film paper v. v. interesting. The paper could have been better, had I had more time to work on it, and an unlimited amount of space to write about them. Like if I were writing a dissertation on it. That would be really funny if I were to graduate from Duke's F/V program and they list all the dissertations in the program, so you'd see "Lesbian Vampires: Empowered Female or Male Fantasy?" in there, next to all the useful ones. That would be good. Anyway, cool thing noticed while watching Persona: the somewhat jarring credits (and music) were reminiscent of Monty Python and the Holy Grail's opening credits. I am positive that they were spoofing not just Persona in particular but Bergman's films in general.

Caseus Archivelox: Salvador, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Point Blank, The Girl on the Bridge, & Y Tu Mama Tambien

2002-05-06 - 11:22 p.m.
Salvador is really good, even though Oliver Stone showed his biases against the American military. Not that they aren't well founded, but it's colored a couple of his movies to the detriment of them. James Woods is incredibly good in it. It's just a little long. And of course, the fact that it agrees with my politics, and views of Reagan, helps it. I felt like I needed to see it, because it's an Oliver Stone film, and he is a very skilled filmmaker, even if insanely paranoid.

2002-05-07 - 8:16 p.m.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller had most of what I like about Altman (with great overlapping dialogue and nice camerawork, which was muted somewhat by the pan-and-scan tape), except that I can't like Warren Beatty in anything. He wasn't that bad in it, but he's such a despicable character that I didn't care whether he lived or died. The whores in the movie were much better, because they at least wanted the men to be clean before they had sex with them. Every time I think Julie Christie, I start singing "Tom Courtenay". That isn't that bad, but just slightly annoying. The Leonard Cohen songs were nice. Still, even with Beatty, the film was good.

2002-05-09 - 12:19 a.m.
Point Blank was a really good gangster type movie from 1967 directed by John Boorman. He also directed some other very good films: Deliverance, Excalibur, and Hope & Glory, and some trash: Zardoz and Exorcist 2. This one had a lot of flashbacks and forwards, partially because it may or may not be the case that the main character died in the first scene. That isn't really spoiling it because I doubt any of you who read this will ever watch it, and it doesn't hurt the appreciation of the film to know that. The movie was really stylish and Lee Marvin was impressively stoic and cool. I highly recommend it. In fact, the knowledge of his possible death makes the film much better than it would have been otherwise.

2002-05-09 - 5:27 p.m.
I watched The Girl on the Bridge this afternoon, and damn if that isn't one of the better love stories I've seen in a long time. It was made for the romantic film fan, with so many things to take a viewer out of the "real" world within the film, that had it been much longer, I would have found it frustrating. But it was so well made that it knew when to stop, when to push the viewer to suspend their disbelief fully, and be the incredibly romantic film that it set out to be. Very good film.

2002-05-13 - 5:56 p.m.
Then I saw Y Tu Mama Tambien, which was really good. I knew I had seen the main woman before, and it was because she was in Belle époque. And Emilio Echevarría from Amores Perros was also in it. But the movie was just good, with long takes, good acting, and excellent camerawork. The historical signifigance of the entire movie was not lost upon me either.

Caseus Archivelox: Spider-Man

2002-05-05 - 2:21 a.m.
I went to see Spider-Man tonight. Pretty darn good. Much better than most movies from last summer. I think the only movie I spent money on last summer was Planet of the Apes. I of course regret that. Bad movie. Bad. Spider-Man had some cheezy lines, and was pretty predictable. The scene where the New Yorkers attack the Green Goblin wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Lucy Lawless had a brief scene in it, even though she was not mentioned on the IMDB. [Ed. note: This has since been fixed.] Which is weird, because she was credited in the film. The special effects were, as advertised, very touch and go, with some impressive parts, but most were obviously fake. But then again, CGI is pretty easy to spot for someone who has seen a lot of it. And for someone who has written a paper about it, it's even easier. Oh, sure, the paper was pretty bad, but I did write one. About three and a half years ago. I wish I had been able to wait until The Phantom Menace had come out, so I could have trashed that in my paper, but I just had to trash Titanic instead. Oh well.

Back to Spider-Man. Tobey Maguire was really good in it. Kirsten Dunst's nipples are perky. Willem Dafoe continues to be one of my favorite actors currently working. The scene where he does both Osborn and the Green Goblin into the mirror is great. James Franco continues to look just like James Dean. It's freaky, but at least he was really good in that movie about Dean. Even when he's not playing Dean, he just channels him. He's good. J.K. Simmons as Jameson chewed the scenery well. Ted Raimi was fun. Macy Gray sucks.

For some disturbing Sam Raimi trivia, apparently he has seen Kevin Costner fully frontally nude, when filming for For Love of the Game, in a scene that was cut out. Because his penis was hideous. Or they just need to have a PG-13 film. Costner is one of those actors that I hate with a vengeance, even if I like some of his work. The Postman was one of the worst films I have seen in a long time as well. I mean, it wasn't as bad as Battlefield Earth (not much is), and I haven't seen Glitter, but it was still pretty darn bad. He was good in Silverado, JFK, Bull Durham, and Field of Dreams. Not much else. And The Untouchables is so overrated. He has sucked in most of his films. I couldn't make it through 3000 Miles to Graceland, because it was just terrible. Or maybe it was because I was bored and playing computer games at the same time. That could be more of the reason, but the parts I saw were bad.

Caseus Archivelox: The Goodbye Girl, Silverado, The Gathering Storm, & The Gorgon

2002-04-28 - 3:00 p.m.
I also had three movies on in the background when attempting to write the paper. The Goodbye Girl, Silverado, and The Gathering Storm. The first was a sort of dissappointing Neil Simon-penned film, with a good performance from Richard Dreyfuss (especially as an extremely fey Richard III). Silverado was a really good revisionist western with an incredibly good cast (Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, Kevin Costner (in a good performance outside of a baseball film or JFK, who knew?), John Cleese, Brian Dennehy, Roseanna Arquette, Linda Hunt, and Jeff Goldblum). Very fun film. The Gathering Storm was based upon the part of Winston Churchill's unfinished 3-part autobiography set from 1936-1940. Incredibly good. I'm a big fan of Churchill, and this was good. Albert Finney and Vanessa Redgrave were excellent as Mr. and Mrs. Churchill.

After that I decided to watch the movie I had taped last night, Hammer film's 1964 classic The Gorgon. Combining Greek mythology with great acting from Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee is great. Sure Megara doesn't look good at all, but it has a lot of atmosphere to make up for that failure.

Caseus Archivelox: The Man Who Wasn't There

2002-04-21 - 1:27 a.m.
I went to see The Man Who Wasn't There, which is one of the funniest films of last year. The Coen brothers really know exactly how to make an incredibly funny film where the characters in the film have no idea that what they are doing is funny.

I was laughing out loud for so much of the movie. The only problem with it was the slightly messed up print that they sent us, with some scratches and other things messed up, but the movie was absolutely brilliant. Better than most Coen brothers movies, although not as good as Miller's Crossing or Fargo. The Big Lebowski is the funniest of their films, but it doesn't have the deeper meaning (if you can say that their films have any meaning, which is debatable) of the previous three movies. But the problem when attempting to rate their movies (as the same occurs when rating any brilliant director (or in this case, directing team)) is that I think of why I like the other movies a lot. So this will probably change the next time I see any of their movies. Like the next time I feel like watching The Big Lebowski. About the only thing that is clear is that The Hudsucker Proxy is their least good. But I like lots of things in it. Maybe Raising Arizona is not as good as that. I'm not sure, stupid mind.

Caseus Archivelox: Mifune & All about Eve

2002-04-17 - 10:16 p.m.
When I came back to my room, I finished off the first thing I taped yesterday, Mifune. AKA Dogme 3. Iben Hjelje (High Fidelity) was really good in it, but the movie suffers from the Dogme filmmaking style. And from an almost unrelentingly sad script full of many unsympathetic characters. At least until the main character gets attacked by prostitutes and dressed up in woman's clothes. That was useful. I haven't enjoyed anything I've seen from any Dogme film. Or anything directed by anyone who has done a Dogme film besides Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark. At least of which I can think.

Then All About Eve again. One of the most brilliant showbusiness movies of all time. Maybe even the best. I can't think of any movies about plays or movies that are better. Few movies are almost perfect. Fewer are perfect. This is one of the few. Even with an annoying rear projection of Anne Baxter and George Sanders walking down the street. But the acting, the script, the directing. George Sanders is one of the great actors of the 40s and 50s. He was great in Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Ivanhoe. The movie was just incredibly good. And I of course recommend it to all lovers of cinema. I also have to eat my words about Marilyn Monroe. She has her talents as an actress. I don't think she is the most beautiful woman of all time, but she has comedic talent.

Caseus Archivelox: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer & Metropolis

2002-04-16 - 11:22 p.m.
Then we watched Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Michael Rooker, he of Mallrats, JFK, and Eight Men Out fame (among others) was incredibly good in it. The movie itself was pretty disturbing, but mainly because it focuses entirely upon a homicidal maniac who never feels regret. However, I tend to agree with Roger Ebert, who decried the film's release as unrated, and I support his proposal for a new A rating for adult, for films that are not pornographic, but too far from mainstream for the MPAA to give it an R. Kids and Requiem for a Dream would have been two other films to get the rating in my opinion. The film wasn't scary, but it was definitely disturbing.

Then I went off to Griffith to watch Metropolis. It was a really crappy VHS copy of the movie. Watching VHS movies on the big screen is bad, because the colors bleed way too much. Also, again, the movie took a somewhat muddled plot full of incredible visuals (Metropolis 1926) and made it into an anime movie (i.e. completely incomprehensible plot with nice visuals). Anime just makes no sense. [Ed. note: my opinion has changed slightly since then.]

2002-04-16
After the previous few movies (since Peeping Tom) disappointing to some extent (although The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was bad mainly for its length and the fact that I was not watching it on the big screen like I did last Halloween), Henry was a slap in the face. Here is a serial killer movie that does not bother with the normal clichés of the genre, with a pair of mismatched detectives triumphing over all odds and making huge leaps of judgment to catch the wily (but ultimately insane) serial killer. For Henry, it really is a Portrait of a Serial Killer, as it focuses entirely upon the serial killer, his motives (or lack thereof) and his sick sense of quid pro quo. After he seemingly recants his life when running away with Becky in the line “I guess I love you too”, he brutally murders her off screen. My guess would be that he used his razor to do that, but the main clue to the brutality is that she ends up in a suitcase on the side of the road. There will be no happy ending for this killer and no redemption for the audience. Although the audience despises Otis for his incestuous, homosexual, and drug dealing ways, Henry is a mass murderer, and clearly has some serious mental issues, and cannot be a fully sympathetic character, and thus when Becky is hacked up, the audience is symbolically as well, with parts wishing that she had been able to change him into a functioning member of society, parts wishing that she had killed him, and parts wishing she had turned him in to the police. However, the movie is unsure exactly what it really wanted to say about Henry’s deeper conflict. The little that is there in an attempt to explain why he is a killer are told with so many contradictions (baseball bat, knife, gun) that we are left wondering whether there is nothing inside him, and that is shown when he looks into the mirror shaving before the last scene. There is nothing that can save him, and nothing that can save the audience from having to face the reality that there are people out there who kill because they can.

Except for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (where the meaning is somewhere in the film, but is completely irrelevant to anything remotely linked to the semblance of a plot), every film we have seen has had a killer of some sort that had a reason to kill, but for this, we have no real reason for the killing. Few films are as mindlessly brutal as Henry, and few films as completely disturbing. Is it as scary as Halloween or Psycho or the Shining? Not really, but it is much more disturbing than most movies I have ever seen.

Baby Mama, The Ten, Paprika, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, & The Long Kiss Goodnight

Baby Mama is basically like the worst of 30 Rock this season, the generally silly adoption subplot (but still funny), except, you know, without it being remotely funny. Good thing: using Be My Baby over the credits. Bad thing: sitting through the rest of the film.

The Ten is a bad sketch comedy movie about the ten commandments. Done by most of the State, you'd think it would be funny. Especially with Paul Rudd, Adam Brody, John Hamm, Winona Ryder, Ron Silver, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, Jason Sudeikis, Justin Theroux, Liev Schreiber, Jessica Alba, Oliver Platt, Janeane Garofalo, Rob Corddry, Rashida Jones, and Bobby Cannavale in the cast, but pretty much everyone of them does some of their worst work. And anal rape jokes are... not funny. Basically, extremely disappointing. Sometimes I really should just listen to the reviews.

Paprika is a great movie, twisty and turny, an anime that actually works. Probably because it's by Satoshi Kon, who also did Millenium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers. He's really a very talented guy, and he does a pretty good job with a very complicated story of a group of scientists who have invented a machine that allows people to watch and get involved in other people's dreams. This leads to crazy dream sequences and excellent weirdness. Strange and awesome.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is basically worth watching for three things: the constant mocking of CSI: Miami's David Caruso's ability to be a terrible actor with sunglasses, Jason Segel's comfortableness with showing his penis, and his Dracula puppet musical. Other than that, it's a semi-enjoyable romantic comedy, but I don't quite understand why Russell Brand is a famous comedian. He was kind of enjoyable, but all the stand up of his I've seen has been just vulgar and not actually funny. But man, I would so see that Dracula puppet musical many times. I can't wait for Segel's new muppet film. Him singing the Muppet Show theme song was fun.

The Long Kiss Goodnight is overwritten crap. When every single line is acting like it's the greatest line ever written, and characters are stupid but somehow able to stop time so they can run away from an explosion, then it's crap. There were some good lines, but not nearly enough to carry a film, especially one that basically killed Geena Davis's career. Also it was weird to see Craig Bierko play a badass. He's a musical comedy star.

Bounce Ko Gals, Drunken Angel, In Between Days, The Prisoner of Zenda, Midnight Madness, & The Apple

Bounce Ko Gals is basically a Japanese version of Kids (down to the scenes of characters expounding upon the debasing of Japanese society like they were all cultural studies professors). Just as exploitative (no nudity though, just lots of talk about sex and blowjobs and periods, and abortions (and the woman who gets one is severely punished for it, so screw you Masato Harada for feeding into that stereotype)), although slightly less amateurish from a filmmaking perspective. In that it isn't the directors first film. And we have the reason why I had Gunhed in my Netflix queue. This was directed by the same guy. It's really a terrible, terrible film. I mean, every single character is basically there to be a terrible stereotype. I get the exact same feeling of ickiness watching this as I did with Kids. Except really, this is far too stupid to be remotely enjoyable. It wears its cynicism proudly, degrading every person in it. And me, the viewer, for sitting through it. Especially the ending. Ugh. Deus ex machina sucks, people.

Drunken Angel is about a yakuza in post-war Tokyo who gets tukberculosis and the alcoholic doctor who tries to get him to live right. Of course, he fails, because you don't make a movie like this with a happy ending. It's the earliest Akira Kurosawa film I've seen. It does star Toshirô Mifune as the gangster and Takashi Shimura as the doctor, so there's good acting.

In Between Days is about a Korean immigrant in Toronto who is in love with her best friend who doesn't love her back. She does many stupid things throughout the movie, mostly related to money and trying to get the guy's attention. Yeah, it's basically three straight movies about Asians doing stupid things. Somehow, this wasn't intentional. This was made in Canada though, so there was far more English spoken.

The Prisoner of Zenda is the 1937 version, and I saw the 1952 version some time ago. 37 is better, with Ronald Colman in the dual role, Madeleine Carroll as the Princess, Mary Astor as the femme fatale type, David Niven as the young captain, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as the criminally underused Rupert of Hentzau. A fun swashbuckling film, and very enjoyable.

Midnight Madness is a movie I'm positive was in my queue for three reasons: Michael J. Fox in a very early role, David Naughton, and the fact that this movie inspired an actual game that in turn inspired The Game, a David Fincher film I enjoyed quite a bit. It's quite an interesting slobs v. freaks v. football v. sorority girls (from a dorky sorority) v. nerds film. Of course, there are plot holes big enough to drive the van with flames and a magic computer that can solve the clues immediately through. And the Disney name at the beginning is kinda weird for a film that has a kid spying on an undressing woman. It also has Paul Reubens in a small role, a clear Star Wars videogame ripoff, and a visit to the Pabst Blue Ribbon factory. It's a very weird combination of stuff, and it's certainly not a great movie, but I didn't hate myself after watching it. Or in the middle, like I did with the next film.

The Apple is batshit insane. About twenty-fivish minutes in, I couldn't take it any more and almost turned it off. It's that bad. Amazingly, many of the actors actually had careers after making the film. Some of them, even good careers (Joss Ackland, Miriam Margolyes, Catherine Mary Stewart, and Finola Hughes). Ok, the last two mainly did soaps, but still, they had careers! Menahem Golan, on the other hand, went on to make The Delta Force and Over the Top, so it's debatable as to whether he did or not. Somehow the latter wasn't the name of this film. The music was almost non-stop, and horrendously bad, ranging from disco to 70s singer-songwriter crap to 50s pop... well, crap (but how about that single entendre!). Utter, utter crap. I do wish I was able to find a version of Universal Melody. Why would I watch this? This. "THE POWER OF ROCK... IN 1994"? Seriously? I unfortunately have to say that it wasn't as enjoyable as the last time I watched a film based on their recommendation: The Wicker Man was less eye-gougingly bad. Ok, really, how can you read a paragraph like "The peculiar genius of The Apple is that every time it appears that the film cannot get any crazier, it ratchets up the weirdness to almost indescribable levels. It belongs to the curious subset of movies so all-consumingly druggy and surreal that they make audiences feel baked out of their minds even when they're stone-cold sober. The Apple is both the perfect mind-fuck to see while high (on life of course, this column in no way wishes to promote the disgusting, disgusting practice of consuming drugs) and a movie that makes drugs seem redundant and unnecessary." and not think that it's at least somewhat interesting. I... have no words to describe what watching this movie was like. I will never, ever, ever watch it again sober. So painful. Even watching the trailer brings back memories I had hoped to bury forever. Like Speed. I'm not sure you really need to rent it when you can get the idea of how bad it is just from the youtube clips. Man, it's hypnotic in its badness (my natural, natural, natural desire is not to meet an actual, actual, actual vampire, by the way). And for those wondering, yes, you have to sit through the entire film to see God's space car.

Lilya 4-Ever, The Quiet Family, Time, Gunhed, & Real Life

Lilya 4-Ever was not a depressing Russian film, no matter what I thought. It was, in fact, a depressing Swedish film, mostly in Estonian, about a teenage girl whose mom leaves her in Estonia to fend for herself when she goes to the US to marry some dude. And, of course, she starts having to do things for money (or candy!) to make ends meet. A younger boy falls in love with her and tries to get her to see that others are using her, but of course she doesn't listen and it just becomes this huge shame spiral that only ends when she kills herself. Just a very depressing film, made worse by the fact that it was based on a true story. People, we suck. Not this movie, though, it's just a horrible downer, but quite good otherwise.

The Quiet Family was remade a few years later. Normally, I would be all aghast, but Takashi Miike remade it into The Happiness of the Katakuris. This film was the original Korean film, and a much more subdued, although still with a wicked comedic streak, look a family who buys a remote hotel and whose guests all start dying. Although it isn't as crazy, it's an actual good film, ratcheting up the tension, and being just kooky enough to keep you guessing. I can certainly see why Miike was so tempted to remake it in his own image.

Time is another Kim Ki-Duk film, about a very messed up relationship. Are there any of his films that aren't about a crazy relationship? I can't think of any. Some better than others, but almost all are about obsessions and how they can destroy even possibly happy people. This movie is about a jealous girl who thinks her boyfriend is cheating on her, so she disappears for a long time and gets extensive plastic surgery to test his love for her. And then comes back and tries to get him to fall for her in some weird ass proof that he was going to cheat all along. And then he does the exact same thing. That's just cracked. Also, there's apparently a sculpture park on an island somewhere in South Korea with a nude reclining with a book over his face and his hand on his hard penis. No actual point, really, just saying.

Gunhed was utter crap. So bad that there needed to be around five minutes of introduction, and the movie still made no sense. There was both an opening crawl, along with an introductory narration. And then it devolves into badly dubbed crap, so bad that the director actually took his name off the American version of the film. I can't blame him. I can't imagine that any film was intentionally that bad. Why the hell was that in my Netflix queue? I honestly can't figure it out at all. It's a terrible live-action anime thing about a fighting giant robot. It was supposed to be a Godzilla movie, but Godzilla was taken out early on in the process. Why was that in my Netflix queue?

Real Life is Albert Brooks's satire of what reality TV does to both the people on the show as well as those filming it. Of course, it wasn't made in the last decade. Yep, it comes from 1979. Somehow, he saw that reality TV is a degrading and terrifying new view into the American psyche, as well as giving him some great lines (and a truly demented final scene). Enjoyable, although your own feelings on the "respectableness" of reality TV and the watchability of it may affect your enjoyment of this. I still haven't found one single reality TV show that isn't a horribly fake, clearly staged, and remarkably self-centered, so this satire was right in my wheelhouse. For those who can get past the "reality" of reality tv and actually watch the crap, it might not be what you want to see.

Caseus Archivelox: Forgotten Silver, The Devil's Backbone, & Cronos

2002-04-13 - 1:55 p.m.
It was Peter Jackson Film Day. First was one I hadn't seen before Forgotten Silver, it was a mockumentary about the first filmmaker to use sound film and color film, and tried to make a 4 hour long biblical epic with the help of the communists and some corrupt American producers. It was really funny. Next was Bad Taste, which I skipped about ten minutes in the middle of because it was somewhat boring seeing those ten minutes again. It was definitely a low budget film. Then I watched all of the Frighteners, because I hadn't seen it in a while. It was good. Sort of silly serial killer at the end, but most movies have that. Well, most movies that have serial killers in them have that. Coolest thing about the movie is that Dammers tries to drown out Lynskey's screaming with Sonic Youth's version of the Carpenter's classic "Superstar". Then I watched almost an hour of Dead Alive. I decided that I only wanted to watch the Kung Fu priest scene, and the entire zombie massacre at the end. If I need to watch them again, it's not like I really have a problem.

After that I went back to coordinate the 9:30 showing of The Devil's Backbone. The movie was a really really good ghost story. Very atmospheric and had some good scares, at least according to a girl in the audience who screamed a lot. The movie only had a couple jump scenes, most were shots where the camera panned, tilted, or tracked away from a character to the disturbing thing, fully anticipating a sort of scary shot. Not really screaming quality scares. But the movie was incredibly well made. I think that Blade 2 is probably a better film than Blade. I really want to see that. Especially because of the midnight film Cronos. That was a great reimagination of the vampire mythos. Too bad there weren't any lesbians in the movie. Guillermo Del Toro is a really talented director, and even Mimic (easily his worst film, no matter how bad Blade 2 may or may not be) shows flashes of brilliance.

Caseus Archivelox: Seven, Halloween, & This Gun for Hire

2002-04-11
When rewatching Seven in class, I was struck by how long and boring the movie is when you already know what is going to happen. The movie gives the audience no pleasure from rewatching it, and thus, I question how this movie has entered the pantheon as one of the greatest films of the 1990s. Although the directing and acting are spectacular, the writing is frustratingly preachy and there is too much depressing worldview to make me watch the movie over again. Another problem with the film is that there are too few tense scenes in the film. Because of the preachy-ness of the script, it became very clear very early on that John Doe would eventually win, and the only tension would occur would be which sin would be next. There are also no scares at all in the movie, and all (any?) of the suspense is released in the last scene, giving the audience no feeling after leaving the film besides being disturbed by some of the imagery, but no feelings that any of this could happen to them. Unless the audience is deeply religious, they would not be disturbed by the seeming threat of eternal damnation for their sins, and thus would have nothing to fear from the film as they would already by scared by reading the bible and some of the (in my opinion) more disturbing religious imagery only referenced in the movie. More disturbing to me than the movie is reading Dante’s Inferno while looking at Hieronymous Bosch artwork. Seven just borrows some disturbing imagery and adds a dark layer of grime to create an ultimately boring parable to catholic values.

Halloween on the other hand, has an incredible opening tracking shot, adequate to good acting (for a slasher film), and a genuinely tense atmosphere throughout, created partially by the great score, but also by the almost constant subjective camera angles that put the viewer into the film completely. Carpenter uses the urban legend of the boogeyman to great effect here, with Laurie and Tommy constantly discussing whether either of them saw a shape or whether it exists. After Laurie stabs Michael with the knitting needles, she says that she killed him, but Tommy correctly states that you can’t kill the boogeyman, and after Dr. Loomis shot him six times, he confirms that it was the boogeyman, also in a way confirming that he will rise again, along with the closing shots of where his body was when it fell out of the second story window, and the shots of where Michael had been previously.

The creation of the slasher genre can be shown in Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but few of those films caused the huge number of copycat films that Halloween did. The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train, and Halloween 2 all followed within the next few years, and those are just the ones with Jamie Lee Curtis. The problem is that few (if any) of the films were created with the style that Halloween was. The later slasher series (Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street) borrowed heavily from Halloween’s sense of moral retribution for sex, the indestructibility of the killer, while adding the twist that the audience begins to root for the killer to win and remove the stupid teens from the earth. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the film to start that, as Franklin is one of the most annoying characters in slasher history until that fat kid with the afro in Friday the 13th Part 3-D who gives the audience headaches until he is so kind as to give Jason the now trademark hockey mask. Thanks, I think.

2002-04-12 - 12:31 a.m.
I went to horror, which was boring, because we just watched Se7en. I don't remember it being as boring before, nor as preachy. Well directed, stylish, well acted. Wayyyyyy too preachy. Andrew Kevin Walker is not that good of a writer. 8mm anyone? Sleepy Hollow anyone?

Then I struggled through a meal at the Dillo before going to see This Gun for Hire. It was based upon a Graham Greene novel. For those who aren't familiar with him, he's an incredibly good writer of lots of things including spy novels and similar things, but also is just a great writer. If you don't like reading, watch The End of the Affair or The Third Man. The only problem with This Gun For Hire (and since I haven't read the book, I'm not sure whether it is Hollywood or Greene) was that I was able to figure out the ending from the first scene. Stupid Hays Code making it so obvious when a character kills someone, they have to be punished. Then again, the fact that it would have caused some weird sexual tension for him to have survived could have also lead to that.

Caseus Archivelox: Calendar & Ah! My Goddess

2002-04-10 - 1:24 a.m.
Then I went to go watch Calendar for Sexualities. Pretty good, if a little slow, look at how a videographer has problems associating himself with his wife who is falling in love with their guide through Armenia taking pictures of churches. He is more comfortable behind the camera, and it's sort of weird. At least it was short.

Then I went downstairs to watch Ah! My Goddess. When someone finds an anime movie that is not just internally consistent, but makes sense to anyone who hasn't read the manga or watched the show, please let me know because this one didn't. Why are there goddesses that can be summoned by misdialing for a pizza? The movie made no sense. Maybe next week's movie will make more sense. And maybe monkey's will fly out of my bum.

Caseus Archivelox: Novocaine & Little Shop of Horrors

2002-04-06 - 11:04 a.m.
Then at 9ish I went to Griffith to watch Novocaine. The movie was a pretty bland film noir, with the first half an hour or so bucking the trend of most movies by being boring. After Kevin Bacon showed up, it got better, even if it was really obvious what was going to happen at the end. It was just not that good.

I stuck around for the midnight showing of Little Shop of Horrors, which I hadn't seen in forever (and it wasn't even listed on my seen movie list), but remembered the musical version vividly which scared me greatly when I was about five or six or so (and saw in the theatre). The best part of the movie, besides Steve Martin as the semi-sadist dentist and Bill Murray as his masochistic patient, was that Tisha Campbell, aka Gina from Martin, was one of the chorus. Also for some added fun, your porn movie cannot be titled Little Shop of Whores, because that's already been taken. I wasn't going to stay, but [female friend] came by looking for [other female friend], and I stuck around to watch it again. I greatly preferred the musical ending to the movie ending. Just a little too convenient. It was neat seeing Christopher Guest as the first customer though. Even if I didn't realize it was him.

Caseus Archivelox: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

2002-04-04
It’s not every 85 minute long movie that can be said to be both the most influential slasher film of all time and one of the longest 85 minute long movies of all time. This movie of course is both influential and too long. There is too much time spent with the group of teens, as the audience begins to hate them and roots for them to be killed, as they are annoying, especially Franklin, who figures out a way to be the most annoying character in all slasher films that I have seen. Which is interesting, because in most films a guy in a wheelchair would gain the audiences sympathy, but in this one, the audience becomes quickly tired of his whining and complaining. Thus, the more shocking thing about his death is what it does to Sally who is one of the many shocked heroines that do not run away from the man with the chainsaw or knife or axe in so many later films.

Also, there are so many shots that are too long, as we do not need to see so many random canted shots of Sally’s face or the random bone structures around the house. Tobe Hooper has always been a somewhat messy director, not knowing how to make a tightly directed film that has no extraneous shots. Poltergeist is as close as he was to making a competent film, with more of that related to the influence of Steven Spielberg than Hooper’s own style. Few movies are as famous with as little plot or technical competence as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Caseus Archivelox: Psycho, Peeping Tom, Kids, & Jin-Roh

2002-04-02
Psycho is one of the best low budget horror films of all time. The main reason for it is that Alfred Hitchcock, a decidedly high budget director, decided to bring his talent to a low budget film. The black and white camerawork is impeccable, with the camera angles, especially during the police stop scene and, of course, the shower scene, being very well chosen.

Mothers play an important role, as Marion refuses to continue to see Sam until they are able to see each other in public and in front of the picture of her mother. The need to have societal acceptance of their relationship leads to the crime that introduces the more important mother to the story, Mrs. Bates. “Her” disapproval for the imagined relationship between Normal and Marion leads to her murder.

The famous shower scene gives the viewer the sexual thrill of watching her shower before giving us the visceral murder, and when we see Norman come into the bathroom with the knife raised high, we want to stop the murder. But as we cannot do anything about it, we are part of the reason for her death, and are implicated as a voyeur in the murder.

Peeping Tom on the other hand implicates the audience as the complicit voyeur of the murders even more. By filming the murders, we are able (except for Mark’s suicide) to watch the murders from the voyeur’s perspective, and then from the camera’s (and murderer’s) perspective. And the second murder scene goes on so long, and the audience knows exactly how it is going to end (with her death, and subsequent fall into the blue trunk that he has placed in the way of where she will die), that the audience begins to want Mark to kill her quickly and get the overbearing sense of dread to stop. Few movies at the time got the audience to identify so clearly with a serial killer.

Scopophilia is the inherent reason for people to go see movies, as they can spend a couple of hours to watch other people live (or in the case of horror films, die). In this way, it is sort of a mixture between Psycho and Rear Window, as it has the story revolving around the voyeurism of Rear Window with the depraved murder plot of Psycho. The interesting thing is that Psycho was beloved (even if it did scare many of its viewers), while Peeping Tom was reviled, and that is a direct result of the distance from movie-making that Psycho allows, as it has no characters morbidly discussing filming the deaths of the characters.

Another difference between the two movies is that Psycho is filmed in black and white, while Peeping Tom is filmed in bright colors. The black and white Psycho allows the audience to distance themselves from the plot because it is not in color like real life, and it contrasts with the obviously current Peeping Tom’s use of bright colors.

However, both movies use their murderer’s houses as symbols of their inner psyche, with the Bates house’s fruit cellar as the place where Norman hides his mother in an attempt to keep the others from finding her, while Mark uses the huge darkroom as the place where he works over his many inner demons from his childhood. These dark places are where the characters hide their dark secrets.

2002-04-03 - 12:24 a.m.
So I was late to Horror, and the lecture part of the class was shorter than normal, as we had to watch Peeping Tom, which was actually fairly good, if it did make me really uncomfortable to watch it. Mainly because the room was too f---ing cold. Why the f--- does the room need to be 55 degrees? That is completely f---ing unnecessary. The movie itself is a freaky movie about scopophilia and big phallic knives on camera tripods.

Then I came back to West to watch Kids. I ate a piece of matza for dinner before the movie. The movie itself (I had seen it six years ago) is really a bad movie. The acting is pretty bad for the most part (Chloë Sevigny is good, and that's about it for consistently good work), some actors look directly at the camera in crowd scenes, the handheld work is annoying, the characters are on the whole despicable, and it's a depressing look at teenagers. I would be remiss in not blasting Larry Clark for his voyeuristic zeal in filming teens in various states of undress as I had done for Brian De Palma. The only thing I can say about that is that Clark at least has some restraint, as some sex scenes are filmed with no nudity, but I can only assume that is mainly because the actresses were underage. The movie is complete trash. Except for the really good soundtrack by Lou Barlow and John Davis as Folk Implosion.

Then I tried to call some people from my game theory class to get them to explain the homework to me, but they couldn't get it at that point, so I just went to watch Jin-Roh. It was actually pretty good. Nice plotline (only occasionally confusing in a bad way) and well-animated.

Caseus Archivelox: Gosford Park & Lesbian Vampire Paper

2002-04-02 - 12:29 a.m.
I then went to see Gosford Park. I cannot tell you how much I recommend that movie. It's my third favorite film of last year. Behind only The Fellowship of the Ring and Amelie. Those who don't like Gosford Park do not like good movies. It's just that simple. The same can be said for the last two as well. Well, maybe not for FOTR, because those who don't like it hate movies that are literary adaptions of some of the greatest books of all time, that just happen to be an incredibly well made, casted, written, and everything else movie.

Altman is a sort of acquired taste, but the movie is so well constructed, even when it gets into its plot, that you cannot help but love it. Also, Bob Balaban is a god. Even if the movie is terrible, he is excellent.

So I then wrote my Lesbian Vampire paper for the next four hours or so. It turned out very well, as I got to use biting, cunnilingus and fellatio in the same sentence. I'm proud of myself. Here's the sentences I'm most proud of in this paper: Biting can be seen as a sexual act in and of itself, and the similarities to cunnilingus and fellatio are made even more explicit in later vampire films. The vampire's bites are occasionally even seen as kisses by both the viewer and the victim until it is too late for both: the viewer is sexually excited and the victim is dead, or, worse, undead. I almost used "the viewer is erect", but I realized that that would be a little much.

Tokyo Gore Police

Tokyo Gore Police stars the lead of Audition. That movie freaked me the hell out. Apparently I saw it before I started to write my blog, so you don't get my fancy thoughts at the time. But that movie was freaky as hell.

This one... Well, I wish I had watched it alone so I could justify trying to catalogue everything that was in the film, like I did with The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers (although this blog comes close (and adds some more pics here). You could read this or this, but I'll try to give you some idea of the film. It starts with an exploding head. There's also many decapitations, delimbinations, and a depenistration during a blow job (result here). There's an alligator-like vagina dentata, a quadruple amputee gimp (who gets both swords and machine guns attached), a golden shower from a flower vagina chair creature, sewn up by teeth breasts (along with a snail girl and a penis nose), a guy who loses his legs and uses the resultant sprays of blood to fly around, a rocket jump done outside of a video game, a broken glass bottle used to cut some dude's face off (result here), a serial killer whose methodology is to stick hollow metal poles through a woman to drain out the blood and then cutting her up to stick in a box (a box in a box, as long as the box was actually in the box...), a missed phone call because of a vibrator, a woman quartered by cars, the doctor has a gatling gun that shoots severed arms, and more. Oh, and I certainly can't forget the fact that the impetus of the film is that there is a very bad guy who turns people he meets into "engineers" who are able to grow weapons from wounds on their bodies. Like the alligator vagina dentata, a penis gun from the depenistrated guy, the woman who was shot in the chest and grew acid-dispensing nipple spouts, the chainsaw wielding maniac who gets his arm shot off and then grows a new arm with a chainsaw attached (end result is this), the main bad guy who rips the top of his head off and grows brain guns (and explains his backstory with a puppet show), and the lead who eventually grows an infrared eye and an alligator-like arm. But the best thing about it are the commercials interspersed (that recall the social satire of Starship Troopers) for designer wrist-cutters and anti-harakiri PSAs.

The movie is completely ridiculous, the pacing is off, but man, there are few things more enjoyable than a film that crossed the line into ridiculous within a minute of starting and just gets weirder and weirder. Some more pics are here of the all that stuff and more, along with clips. I'm not sure, but I think that site will either make you extremely jealous or extremely squikked. Also, um, all of those links are not safe for work, in case you were wondering for some reason.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, King Lear, Be Kind Rewind, Spider-Man 3, & Hostel: Part II

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is a French spy spoof, done very straight up, but with many ridiculous touches, like the main spy is completely oblivious. I'm not sure exactly why I thought that I would like it, as it's a very goofy film, but never as funny as it probably should be.

King Lear was the theatre production shown on PBS, and so little Ian was edited out, which was a little disappointing. Otherwise, the cast was amazing, it's my favorite Shakespeare play, and it was overall a fun time. As fun a time as King Lear could possibly be. Thanks, PBS for at least broadcasting almost all of it.

Be Kind Rewind was a little bit of a good movie in a whole bunch of silliness. Gondry can't just slide on his visual talent, which is most evident in the insanely awesome Swede-ing of the movies. Other than that, though, there are some nice visual jokes, but most of it is just silly. Mos Def is the best thing in the film, and Jack Black just got on my nerves.

Spider-Man 3 is stupid. The dancing Parker? No. No to basically everything in this film. I like the idea of Venom, but the Sandman was worthless, the second Green Goblin was worse, and I am a masochistic idiot for watching this. I couldn't turn away.

Hostel: Part II is just ugh. The first one was fun. This one goes too far. Did I need to see this? No, but this just follows in my mini-fest of "stupid sequels that are actually crap and not worth the time it takes to watch them". Hostel didn't go too far, but this one is utterly ridiculous. Although I appreciate the scene of the cat eating the neck of a body, the killing of Lorna in Bathory-esque fashion was gratuitous. The point is not to get to that point. But it never gets scary or anything other than unnecessary (yes, even the decapitated Eli Roth was little more than a giggle for me).

Doctor Who, Torchwood, 28 Weeks Later, La Chinoise, Dead Like Me: Life after Death, You Kill Me, & From Hell

So back in February, I started to watch all of Doctor Who (the new series), along with Torchwood. And, finally, in early April I finished. There were some delays (I watched the excellent State of Play and Let the Right One In from Netflix to break up the slightly cheeky (in the case of Doctor Who) and entirely cheeky (in the case of Torchwood) Britishness). But basically, I'm here to tell you that Doctor Who was actually fairly enjoyable, especially once Billie Piper left the show (somehow not for good... damnit), while Torchwood was not as good. I didn't watch them in broadcast order, so I already knew some plot twists at the end of the two seasons of Torchwood (sigh...), but I'm not sure even watching them slightly unspoiled would have made me enjoy it more. It just felt like it was trying far too hard to be "adult". Doctor Who was light and fluffy, slipped in funny references (the Shakespeare episode blows away Shakespeare in Love for pure nerdity), and was frequently quite good. Certainly there was some unnecessary returns (why keep bringing back the Daleks after you keep destroying them for the last time? along with each return of Billie Piper), but I enjoyed the show quite a bit, and have added it (along with Torchwood) to my DVR in the hopes that they will broadcast the next seasons at some point this year (in the US, I'm aware that the first Doctor Who special has already aired in the UK).

28 Weeks Later would have been better as a stand alone zombie movie. But comparing it to 28 Days Later just was ugh. The anti-militarism and nihilistic ending was just basically Return of the Living Dead 3 over again. Also, why, exactly was the mother left alone in the hospital complex with no one watching her at all? Seriously, U.S. Military? You aren't that stupid. Stringer Bell would never do anything that stupid. And the genetic immunity made no sense at all. Just a mess of a film that was more successful than it deserved. Danny Boyle would have rocked it. Hard.

La Chinoise is Godard at his most Godardian. I probably could have made more sense of it if I knew French, as some of the intertitles and graffiti were not subtitled. I feel like it suffers from being a little too radicalized, although there are touches of playfulness that made his earlier films so great, but the preachiness that ruined Godard is in full effect.

Dead Like Me: Life after Death sucked. Pure and simple. Especially with my complaints about the show not finishing the first time, to have it extended in this fashion, with a new Daisy and Mandy Patinkin not back (replaced with Desmond from Lost, but in a horrendously bad subplot), is actually worse than not bringing it back. So yeah, I complained about not seeing an ending back in 2007, but I still kinda wish it didn't have an ending. Or that they had splurged and brought back Laura Harris (who, even though Canadian, did a much better Southern accent than the Australian Sarah Wynter, who didn't even bother with the accent) and Mandy Patinkin and thought for a second about whether it would help to bring it back. Because we just got another character disappearing without much of a goodbye and a movie that at under 90 minutes long still felt like it was channeling the extended edition of Return of the King when it came to endings. Avoid unless you're a masochistic Dead Like Me fan.

You Kill Me is... why the hell did I add this to my Netflix queue?

From Hell is something I knew why I added it, although I definitely have added and removed it at least once before. It certainly isn't a particularly good movie, and I'm not going to go into the historical inaccuracies. Maybe I should try reading it again. About the only thing notable about From Hell is that Alan Moore hadn't yet gotten pissed enough with Hollywood to take his name off the film. I'm pretty sure that he didn't have a better impression of Hollywood after this. Eeesh. His feelings are well deserved.

Crooked Fingers & Neko Case at 9:30 Club 4/8

Again, the 9:30 Club conspires to mess with me about seeing the first or second nights of shows by announcing a second night after I've purchased tickets to the first night. Damn them. Neko sells out here in DC (mainly for putting on an amazing show, just like she did in 2007), so just acknowledge that there will be two shows and plan accordingly. This would have bothered me a lot more, had Crooked Fingers not been scheduled to play a show at Iota the next night, so they were only going to open for Neko on Wednesday, not Thursday (although man, bringing in Will Sheff to open instead is not a bad thing...). I got to see them, so I didn't care, but had I really wanted to see them, bought tickets to the second night, and found out they weren't playing, I would have been pissed.

Anyway, based on that review from two years ago, I was expecting a great show, and I got it. Crooked Fingers could play songs I don't really like as long as they play New Drink for the Old Drunk, and I will stupidly sing along at the top of my voice and love the show. I may not be a fair observer, but that is really all I need to love seeing Crooked Fingers. They haven't disappointed me yet.

Neko, on the other hand, just has to sing. That voice is so outstanding that the fact that the songs are quite good is just an added bonus. This time, she had a huge screen behind her band, with an owl overlooking the stage, and projected various images and videos behind it, including the video for People Got a Lotta Nerve.

One of the highlights of a Neko Case show is the banter, and it was again funny. But boo to her for going to both, and boo to Becca for the same. Kelly Hogan makes any concert more enjoyable, as she can talk while Neko spends time (an inordinate amount of time, not long periods, just almost between every song) switching guitars.

Also, Arne Duncan was kind of goofy. I mean, I appreciate the desire to reach out to those who might not listen to other arguments, but having the Secretary of Education request that people at a Neko Case show consider working in Education is a little weird. It's not like Neko is not political (far from it), but it's that her causes are much more geared towards animals. But if Neko gave it her blessing, I guess that's ok, even if I find it a strange.

With any complaints you may think I had about the show, you are missing my high praise. I will definitely go see both bands the next time they come through DC, especially if they continue this awesome trend of coming through together.

Setlists:

Crooked Fingers

Broken Man
Bad Man Coming (something like this version, but imagine the drums even more insistent and awesome)
You Can Never Leave
Let's Not Pretend To Be New Men
Luisa's Bones
Phony Revolutions
Your Control (for some reason, not with Neko, who performs on the album track)
Angelina
New Drink for the Old Drunk
So Long Savannah

Neko Case

Maybe Sparrow
People Got a Lotta Nerve
Fever
Hold on, Hold On
The Pharaohs
Middle Cyclone
Deep Red Bells
I Wish I Was the Moon
I'm an Animal
Prison Girls
The Tigers Have Spoken
Margaret vs. Pauline
Red Tide
Don't Forget Me
That Teenage Feeling
This Tornado Loves You
-------------
Vengeance Is Sleeping
Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth
Knock Loud

National Arboretum

It's not really a museum, per se, but it does have a museum on grounds (the awesome National Bonsai and Penjing Museum), so I'm going to review it anyway. Especially the Bonsai museum, which had stuff like this. It also had a Moon Gate where a couple were having their picture taken (one of many Asian couples there, along with just about everyone besides my family and Ms. Albright at The Dancing Crab later that night, which was the most Asians I've ever seen (percentage wise) at a non-Asian restaurant). Anyway, I really liked the ones that had little model people in them, and the ones that looked like the top of hills. Unfortunately, the Tropical section was closed. After that, we headed to the National Capital Columns (kind of incongruously placed on top of a hill, and there was a very pregnant woman taking pregnancy pictures in black short shorts and a halter top, which provided something extremely disturbing to look at), then drove around the Azaleas section (which wasn't blooming yet), past the closed for renovation fern valley, and headed to the Magnolia and Holly area. It was absolutely gorgeous, and Ms. Albright had to restrain herself from running from one Magnolia to the next and smelling the all the flowers. I tried to restrain myself from climbing a Magnolia that was perfect for climbing (and failed to stop, but I did only go a little way up it). The last thing we saw was the Asian Collection, which had a pagoda and some Chinese Redbud, which are not worth going off the path to smell, no matter what you may think they smell like. So basically, I really enjoyed my day, although I got a little sunburned (not as bad as last Memorial Day), but would definitely do again, in a few weeks when the azaleas and some other flowers are out.

Asobi Seksu at Rock 'n' Roll Hotel 3/28

Honestly, I don't have a lot to say about this concert. Hush isn't nearly as good an album as Citrus, which I consider to be almost as good as My Bloody Valentine's albums, but I still like all three of their albums. But I just couldn't get into the show all that much. And a set list would be utterly worthless. This guy has a lot to say about the concert (I did not notice Yuki taking her jacket off, but I am pretty sure I would not have needed to "change my shorts", at least partially because I was wearing jeans), although I disagree on the merits of Tyvek.

To give you an idea of the Tyvek lead singer see this. Also, imagine a huge douchebag who talks loudly in the back of the crowd during the headliner. So loud that you can hear him even with the wall of noise that is Asobi Seksu. So loud that you can hear him and he bothers you when you are wearing ear plugs because Asobi Seksu is so loud. Seriously, Asobi Seksu was the loudest concert I have ever been at, and I specifically remembered to bring my ear plugs because I knew they would be loud.

I did end up eating at Granville Morris with Ms. Albright ahead of the concert, which was very good, if the curry mayo was disappointing, as was the two-hour wait. So long to wait for mussels and frites (although I did get to watch the first half of the Pitt-Nova game). Food was better than Bistro Du Coin though.

Let the Right One In

Let the Right One In is the best vampire film since... well, I honestly can't remember the last vampire film I enjoyed this much. Certainly not since I started this blog in June of 2005, and according to Netflix's vampire section, none. That can't really be right, but I am struggling to think of one. Nosferatu is great, but that's honestly the only one that's at the same level. Considering all the vampire films I've seen over the years, it's amazing that I don't hold more of them in higher regard, but so few films are as enjoyable as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, and fewer still are anything other than unintentionally campy (or, more annoyingly, intentionally campy) retellings of Dracula or some other silly story.

It's the touching story of a young bullied boy with divorced parents in a suburb of Stockholm, and how his life is changed when he falls in love with the girl next door. Who just happens to be a vampire, a more feral vampire than from traditional vampire movies. It's not so much the story that elevates this film above other vampire films, but it's the visuals and tone: the suburb is consistently covered in snow, and short of a couple of scenes during the day, filmed at night, giving the apartment complex's playground a foreboding look that adds to the tension. Everything about the atmosphere of the film is perfect. I cannot recommend this film enough. Although see if you can find a screener copy.

(Don't read either of the next two links unless you have already seen the movie. Or hell, don't even read the second paragraph because it's a big spoiler for both the movie and the book.)

Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with the DVD, not the fault of the movie at all, but of the DVD producers. The subtitles have been changed and for the worse. The DVD actually defaults to the English dub, which was horrendous, so I quickly switched to the Swedish and English subtitles, but had I known it was going to be this simplified version, I would have just found a copy of the screener. Weirdly, I saw this blog post linked from Slashfilm yesterday, and it was then posted to Monkey See, A.V. Club, io9, and Metafilter today. I am not the only person bothered by this. Good. It is unconscionable for DVD producers to do this to films. You can mess with bad dubbing, but the subtitles should be as close to accurate translations of what's going on on screen as possible.

Less bothersome, especially due to the adaptation by the original author are the changes that were made to the story from the novel. SPOILERS: I never once got the impression that Eli was supposed to be a eunuch from the movie, and the one shot of Eli naked from the waist down to me was just her vagina sewn up due to either torture or to avoid being raped by Håkan. Not that Eli was actually a castrated boy. The book may have spelled that out, but the movie allowed it to be much more ambiguous and that worked better, I think. I got that Håkan was a possible molester and clearly what Oskar was going to end up being like in many years. The changes to Oskar to make him a more appealing lead were nice, although the use of Pig as a slur doesn't work with the actor who portrayed him. Anyway, all of these changes just make me think that Ebert wasn't wrong to refer to Eli as a he. Well, Ebert refers to Eli as both in the review.

Caseus Archivelox: Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary edition & Dawn of the Dead

2002-03-28 - 9:41 p.m.
We watched the 30th Anniversary edition of "Night of the Living Dead". That was quite simply the worst rereleased film of all time. The added scenes had the worst acting in the movie. This is a zombie movie, where the worst acting isn't the zombies. That sort of tells you how bad the acting was. The added scenes where a priest doesn't become a zombie by prayer and splashing holy water upon the zombie bite also goes against the entire idea of the movie. The new scenes were also edited in horribly.

2002-03-28
You already know how much I absolutely detested the added scenes and new soundtrack for Night of the Living Dead. The desire of some people to ruin films in the name of supposed profits makes me sick and supremely disappointed.

I will not dwell upon the completely unnecessary scenes, or the horrendous acting, or the fact that the added scenes actually detract from the impact of the scenes. The original film is one of the most perfect horror films, as it works as both a gruesome and gore-filled shocker and also as a multi-layered allegory for civil rights, Vietnam, communism, or even the over-reliance upon television. The dominant white male society almost destroys the strong black male, and when it fails at first, it finally succeeds at the hands of the suggestively racist sheriff’s posse. A small amount of Americans is constantly attacked by a much faster growing and relentless enemy and is slowly destroyed. Americans, instead of actually escaping, sit around waiting for the TV to tell them what to do. The original ending, although ultimately destroying the occupants of the house, ultimately confirms the status of society, suggesting that the society needs to work harder to make it better.

In contrast with the low budget masterpiece of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead had a much larger budget and was in color. And, although Dawn of the Dead was a sequel made by the same director, they show what the larger budget can do for a filmmaker’s vision. Romero’s use of black actors as the take-charge (and most sensible, along with Dawn of the Dead’s Francine) characters goes against the Hollywood stereotype where the black character always dies and is supporting cast to the white actors. Also, Dawn of the Dead is the first of the zombie movies that has zombies that obviously have some memory of their past life, and thus, it allows Romero to touch upon the consumerism that was so prevalent in the 70s (and still to this day), by having the zombies wander around the mall.

The gore effects in both are great, and help to make the movies less obviously deeper meaning than some other pretentious horror films. That is always a bonus, because pretentious movies almost always fail miserably because they cannot be good movies. Message films need to have a sense of humor about themselves, or at least be good films, or else they will end up being respected but not watched, something that Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead certainly do not deserve.

Caseus Archivelox: Return of the Living Dead III, Rosemary's Baby, & Spriggan

2002-03-26
Having seen both the first and second part of the series (which were basically the same movie), and having heard that the third part was much better than the first two, and a zombie movie about teen angst, I was hoping for a great movie. I was not disappointed. The movie, while unfortunately structured within the schoolboy nihilistic Return of the Living Dead movie framework, almost breaks out from it by turning one of the rules of the movie on its head: zombies that are in love can now remember that they were in love, and have no real desire to eat their loved one’s brains. This goes against the first movie, as a guy dies in his lover’s arms, immediately attempts to eat her brains. This is not a bad thing however, as it allows for the disaffected teen within us to empathize with the female zombie who is trying to find her new place in the world, after waking up with a hunger for brains. In previous movies, zombies were just something that needed to be destroyed.

One problem I have with the ROTLD movies is that they have unnecessarily nihilistic endings that do not normally fit with the sequels. After the first one, in which Louisville is destroyed by a nuclear weapon and the zombie contagion spreads, how can the next two movies be made, as the first one proved that the military could not destroy the zombies, yet they somehow have contained them enough to keep the general public from understanding that there are a large amount of indestructible zombies running rampant? I find it silly to think of that. At least the sequels to the Universal horror films attempted to explain this, while these movies just move on, reference the earlier movies occasionally, but refuse to explain how they can happen. Part three’s ending is unnecessary, as they decide to turn the biofilter off to destroy mankind because they are trying to turn zombies into weapons? Should the fact that the people who tried to do that died due to their own creations have anything to do with a reassessment of the military’s policy? And one last complaint about these movies is the fact that dead bodies suffer from rigor mortis and have problems being bent, but here once they turn into zombies they move quickly, have almost superhuman strength, and cannot be destroyed, which goes against all the rules of zombie movies.

Rosemary’s Baby
I find that of the sort-of-scary, psychological thrillers that are now classified as the new classics of the horror genre, I like Rosemary’s Baby the most, as seems like it is more realistic than the others, with less reliance upon the supernatural for its effectiveness as a movie. Until the ending scenes, the supernatural is just suggested, and could be explained as the doctor does towards the end when he says that it could be a result of normal pregnancy hysteria. The ending itself is sort of anti-climactic, however it follows from the intense love of a mother for her child that she would care for it, even if it were a badly deformed, demon baby. The reason I like the movie so much is that Roman Polanski does such an effective job in building suspense and horror throughout the movie that it makes one uncomfortably scared throughout the last hour of the movie and long afterwards, because it seems real. It broaches the idea of Satanism, cannibalism, witchcraft, and selling your soul to the devil so well, that while looking back at it, it is clear that they are fantastic ideas, when watching it, you believe that all of this could happen. Mia Farrow is excellent in this role, as the audience sees everything from her perspective and eventually identifies with her view of her baby as her own, and it does not seem like she is crazy for caring for her offspring, even if it is the Anti-Christ.

2002-03-27 - 12:04 a.m.
At least it was Return of the Living Dead III, not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but better than the first and second, and somewhat interesting. I don't like the Return movies as they all have nihilistic endings that are just silly, and I am sure it's just because they work from the Romero blueprint, even though they fail miserably as Romero did it first and best, and the Return movies are just too silly to be anything more than pitifully inept social commentary. Ooooh, military makes zombies, military lets zombies loose, zombies eat lots of people, military bad. Duh.

I went to go watch Spriggan, some silly dubbed anime on 35mm. Our showing was listed on the official Spriggan web site. Too bad the movie never explained how spriggans got the name spriggan. And there was some stupid stuff about Noah's Ark being responsible for controlling the weather and evolution. I don't think it made any more sense when watching it. Apparently, it was a movie from the middle of an anime series or something, and thus, if I were willing to read the manga, I'd be able to understand it. About the only good thing about the movie was that it was well animated.

Caseus Archivelox: Carrie

2002-03-21
The more times I watch this movie the more upset I become. The book is a good if not great novel about a teenage girl’s struggle to come to terms with her newfound powers of attractiveness to the opposite sex, while the movie is trash that emphasizes that Carrie receives her power through emotional distress rather than through womanhood. And he just had to make the shower scene in slow motion with lots of very young women fully nude, did he not?

Brian De Palma's Carrie is a shy girl who barely changes and is then destroyed by her own power. She is a girl who attempted to control her emotions, and by De Palma's extension, her telekinetic power. After the shower scene, and her suggested masturbation, a release of her sexual tension, the onset of her period caused her to lose control of her emotions, and show her power. Carrie began to experience the spiraling emotions that occur in the stress of puberty and prom. When the bucket of blood fell, so soon after the dizzying high of dancing with Tommy, she lost control again. Her emotions and telekinetic power finally destroyed her, as she became suicidal after being so embarrassed at prom and after the huge emotional stress of crucifying her mother.

The two Carries have different uses for their telekinesis. King uses telekinesis as a metaphor for the growth of Carrie into a woman, while De Palma uses it as an outlet for a frustrated teenager. De Palma needed to have a universal teenager with whom men can lust after, and all women and men who were harassed in high school can identify. Part of that is that the audience that the movie was trying to attract was teenage boys, as they are a large portion of the movie going population that Carrie would attract (Clover 4-5). Stephen King's shower scene was not erotic at all, yet the eroticism is overpowering in the slow-motion scene in De Palma's movie. Because of De Palma's constraint of having to make a profit on the movie, he was forced to make characters that are different from the original intent of King's version. He has conventionalized the conflicts and Carrie's rage so that more people can directly identify with Carrie. King could stretch more for his characters, making them deeper, and delve into the supernatural, as he was not gambling with other people's careers: he was simply writing a novel.

I believe that with a couple years of distance from when I wrote the previous two paragraphs (from a paper on the differences between the book and the movie, and it is an seven page paper, and not particularly good), I am less willing to accept De Palma’s version as strictly an attempt to make the movie make more money by adding nudity, but it is his fetishistic desire to see young women naked (including his future wife) that caused him to add the completely gratuitous nude scenes.

Caseus Archivelox: Porn Week, In the Realm of the Senses, & Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

2002-03-19 - 12:36 a.m.
I went to print out some papers for class. I started to look through them. PORN!!!!!!! I love this class. Actually the chapters were from a book on pornography, and the pictures were all grainy, although I am told that there was a large amount of sexual acts that were portrayed. Apparently in the original version of the book from 1989 the author said that she would not include any pictures, then changed her mind in the next ten years, and included the chapter with the aforementioned graphic pictures of sexual acts. As I said, the pictures aren't really clear, but the library almost didn't put this thing up on e-reserves. I think that's bull because I can watch "Salo" at the library, but they have a problem with really small grainy pictures on a random e-reserve link that can only be accessed by Duke IPs. Ummm, yeah.

Then I went to the class. Porn week is weird. Hey, we're watching porn, but ohh, we're not watching the sex parts, we're watching the acting parts, and we're watching it in a class of around 18 students, around 3/4 of whom are female, and I just keep wondering why I'm even watching this crap. So yeah, porn week sucks. Pun intended.

We started out watching part of Russ Meyer's first film, "The Immoral Mr. Teas". It was this thing that Benny Hill wishes he could have made if he could have shown nude women. This repressed guy who starts to see naked women all over the place, but he's just insane. Funny scenes: he sees naked women on a rubber tire swing and the narrator (because there's no diegetic sound at all in the movie) talks about the use of rubber in history, then he sees naked women asleep, then he sees naked women bathing and he takes off his shoes and wiggles his toes around in the water. Read Freud, then you'll appreciate the last one a little more. It was really tame for the opener for porn week. Russ Meyer's films are actually usually pretty funny. And softcore, lots of ass, little tit, and no bush, and certainly no male nudity, although see my earlier comment for fun Freudian implications of feet.

The next film was "Deep Throat". I'd already seen it. But we watched the scene were Linda's mom talks her into seeing the doctor, and then most of the next scene, before the actual deep throating actually begins. So no male nudity, but there were some long shots of Linda's vagina. They couldn't go to a close-up because if they did, it would have shown her clitoris and the entire movie would have been ruined. But the acting was still bad, with some really bad puns. The doctor is using a bubble maker and they pop on Linda Lovelace. She then asks him to stop getting her wet. Stop for giggling... and on with the entry. At the end of the part of the scene that we watched (i.e. right before the fellatio), one girl asked, "So did they actually show that (i.e. oral sex)?" I almost laughed out loud. Porn movies are full of worse stuff than that movie (although I don't remember any other movie with a Coke douche...). The movie was also this bootlegged copy of it.

The last movie, and one that [gay grad student teacher] didn't have time to talk about was this gay porn movie called "Technically Virtual" or something. We watched that because [gay grad student teacher] was told that gay porn was much better than current straight porn. If it was, I'd hope that there are straight porn movies that are just sex, because the acting was really, really horrible. The funniest thing [gay grad student teacher] said today was, "Czech gay porn. I was told Czech gay porn is the best." Is Hungarian gay porn different? What makes Czech gay porn better? I was confused, and I just want to say that we didn't see any real nudity from this movie, although in skipping ahead through chapters on the DVD, we saw some thrusting. [Gay grad student teacher] also expressed surprise that a movie on DVD wasn't good. I didn't want to tell him that the porn industry has been incredibly adoptive of new technologies well before mainstream Hollywood.

2002-03-20 - 5:08 p.m.
After that class, I ran back to West to watch "In the Realm of the Senses". I was lead to believe hard-core. I was completely correct in that belief. Penetration, fellatio, a facial, a bird-shaped dildo, an orgy, an egg stuck inside a woman, lots of shots of the same penis, rape, a drunk guy getting hit in his penis with snowballs by small kids, handjobs, strangulation for sexual purposes, a 68-year old woman being killed by having sex with the main man, and a fairly graphic castration scene of a fully erect penis. And I watched this in a dark classroom with about 10 other people, evenly split between men and women. Almost two hours of porn is a lot. Oh, and the movie gradually went from something of a plot to almost no plot at all. The director was trying to say something about the censor board of Japan who are so strict that he was forced to film it in Japan, and then send it to France to edit it, and I believe it's still banned from Japan. So all in all, I found it somewhat tedious. You never realize how boring it is to watch two people have sex for almost an hour straight until you do that. (ed note: I've since rewatched the movie and have a much higher opinion of the film.)

So I then went to Griffith to watch the Revolutionary Girl Utena movie. I went and was absolutely completely confused by the first bits. Nothing made sense, even though I kept asking [female friend] what the hell was going on. She said it was one of her favorite movies, and she couldn't explain most of it. Nothing made sense. There were a large amount of Freudian bits of the movie, but it didn't seem like it was internally consistent.

Caseus Archivelox: Cat People

2002-03-19
About two minutes after they were married, I immediately thought, “Irena and Oliver are not having sex.” It was really obvious. The fun of the movie is that Irena is completely uncomfortable being intimate with Oliver, and yet he still does not understand why she feels uncomfortable with him. The fact that we never see the transformation increases the sense of Irena not really turning into a panther, even as Tourneur includes slight references to “The Wolf Man” with the following of the dirty footprints leading to the conclusion that Irena (or in “The Wolf Man”, Larry Talbot) turned into the cat (wolf) and killed the sheep (the gravedigger) and almost killed Alice (Gwen). Since the movie was made just one year later than “The Wolf Man”, it is unlikely that this was just a coincidence, especially as they both deal with characters that allow their inner instincts or fears to manifest themselves in changes in appearance.

In “Cat People”, the desire to cure themselves from their monstrous condition is just continued from earlier films, like “Dracula’s Daughter”, but in this case, the interesting thing is that the “other” woman and her husband conspire to send her to a psychiatrist who falls in love with her and eventually leads to his and her downfall. As a result of her fear of sexual contact with her husband, a conjugal right, he feels the need to separate himself from her and find a woman more conductive to his masculine desire in Alice, but he does not understand that Irena loves him and becomes jealous as it becomes more and more blatant that he is sleeping with Alice (even as the Hays code would not allow adultery on screen, film viewers have to imagine the adultery that is clearly occurring as Alice and Oliver sit in dark rooms alone all night).

The movie itself is hardly a horror film, as it is a more interesting psychoanalytical look into female frigidity and jealousy. But the entire movie is about that, as there are few wasted lines or unnecessary scenes (except for that dream sequence with the animated cats) and it is very well structured for a short movie. Very few films today are as well put together, even if they are ultimately better, as some of the earlier horror-type films that are very short (something from which bloated Hollywood blockbusters such as “Titanic” or “Pearl Harbor” could learn).

The Broken West & A.C. Newman at the Black Cat 3/18

I was in the front row for the concert. My ears were ringing for quite some time after The Broken West's set. Here's the songs that I remembered... Sigh... I just didn't take anything down.

Down in the Valley
On the Bubble
Ambuscade
Auctioneer
Gwen, Now and Then
House of Lies
Got It Bad
Back in Your Head (Tegan & Sara cover)

The only other problem with being up front was that vocals were kind of hard to hear, so with The Broken West's similarity in songs, I had problems telling the difference. That said, I really enjoyed the set, and apparently, they've been playing that Tegan and Sara cover all during the tour. I did not recognize it. I'm not sure anyone else from my friends at the concert enjoyed the set as much as I did.

I got a setlist for A.C. Well, I took a picture and then gave it to someone else, because what am I going to do with a setlist? I have to say that knowing I was going to get the first three tracks from The Slow Wonder sprinkled in the set before worrying throughout whether I'd get to hear them was nice. Secretarial and The Town Halo, among pretty much all the tracks from the new album, were better live than in recorded versions. Well, maybe more accurately, seeing Carl live playing these tracks made me appreciate him more. Rockin' setlist action follows:

There Are Maybe Ten or Twelve
Miracle Drug
Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer
Prophets
Secretarial
The Heartbreak Rides
The Cloud Prayer
The Palace at 4 AM
All of My Days & All of My Days Off
Young Atlantis
Drink to Me, Babe, Then
The Collected Works
The Changeling (Get Guilty)
Submarines of Stockholm
On the Table
-------------
Come Crash
The Town Halo

Really, quite a good set, and very similar to their set the next night at The Cradle that my friend Alicia was at. And I'm getting recordings of that one and the Broken West set. Actually, they were the same sets. Unfortunately, I won't get Carl talking about how much he loves D.C. and his encouraging of people to do glow-in-the-dark shooters. Yeah, someone requested Drink to Me, Babe, Then early, and he said wait ten minutes and then told them to do some shooters, but they held off, and so others did some non-glow-in-the-dark shooters. He was disappointed. As was I.

Caseus Archivelox: The Exorcist

2002-03-19
When I was younger, I remember my dad telling me that when he saw this movie during a summer when he was living alone in New York he was afraid of walking home that night. When I first saw this movie about five years ago, I was not scared by it, but could see how it could be scary. When I saw it last year, I found it boring. Seeing it again last week has not helped the movie at all.

The beginning of the movie has little bearing at all upon the rest of it, and could be skipped entirely with no detriment to the rest of the movie. The fear of a child being possessed would have been more effective had it not been played out over such a long time. I am not normally a person who likes short movies over long movies due only to length, but it this case, it could have stood to be much shorter.

The priest who is having a crisis of confidence in God is a time honored and old tradition, and this movie just uses it as another trite way to get the audience who normally would not believe in the idea of a character being possessed believing. The problem occurs in the fact that most people do not believe in demonic possession and thus when the inevitable, from the standpoint that the good guys do have something of a victory at the end, happy conclusion occurs, viewers are happy. Many other viewers will have gone to get some much-needed sleep.

In short, the movie was too long.

Caseus Archivelox: The Wolf Man

2002-03-14
In this incredibly short and flimsy movie, I was immediately turned off by the introduction of Lon Chaney, Jr. as “The Wolf Man”, removing any doubt as to who would be inflicted with lycanthropy. I hate when movies are ruined by trailers or poor decisions by the movie studio. Even if that had not been mentioned at the beginning of the movie, the movie is not scary. The makeup was fairly weak, and the transformations were nothing special, and no advance over Dr. Jekyll’s ten years earlier. Even for a Universal Horror film, it was below par.

The shots of the fog going through the Welsh countryside were nice, but the rest of the movie was disappointing when including those scenes. Talbot’s love interest was horrible. She was obviously there because she looked nice, rather than for any acting talent, which was obviously completely absent.

Werewolf movies are about man’s baser instincts taking over, as vampire movies are about repressed sex, and as a movie under the Hays production code will ultimately fail to be about a man succumbing to his animal instincts because a movie cannot show what would be necessary in order to show that fall from grace fully.

Caseus Archivelox: Poltergeist

2002-03-05
I remember watching this movie many times when I was a kid, and consequently having an intense fear of clowns. That one short scene caused me to hate clowns for as long as I can remember. It is not that I fear a clown attacking me; it is that I dislike people with their faces painted white, big orange hair, and shiny costumes. It was nice for the fact that it told me how to tell whether the storm was moving closer or farther to where I was.

Beyond that however, it is an incredibly effective (at least until an unnecessarily silly ending scene) ghost story. Almost nothing supernatural happens on screen, depending almost entirely upon somewhat strange occurrences that happen when characters look away. That is an interesting bit of the movie, as with the exception of the scene when the tree attacks Robbie, the scenes without the supernatural aspects are more effective than the ones with the special effected supernatural.

Throughout the movie, there is no character that we see the entire movie through, and we identify with most of the characters at one point or another, even with Tangina, the psychic who has never done in what she is supposedly an expert. As a young boy when I first saw the movie, I ultimately identified with Robbie, and when watching it this time, I realized how little of it really was about him, and saw it as identifying with everyone in the family at certain times, taking me out of the movie to a certain extent, because I was not as involved with one character as if it had focused on one character.

Caseus Archivelox: The Haunting

2002-02-28
This was an ultimately disappointing film, as you hyped it up too much. It was effective, and the camera angles and sound design were good, but it was just a simple haunted house tale. Not that it was not incredibly influential upon later haunted house films, but I never really identified with any of the characters. I am not an insane, possibly matricidal spinster like Nell, or a psychic like Theodora, or a psychic investigator like Dr. Markway, or a money-grabbing youth like Luke. I never was enough into the movie to care what happens to them. And when the house manipulated Markway’s wife into just happening to show up at the two times she does after her disappearance, it rings hollow from a plot standpoint.

Wise is an obviously talented director, and it causes me to question whether I am jaded or whether the movie has not aged well. I think that it is a combination of the two, and thus I blame the remake for ruining this movie. The understated lesbianism in the movie is much better than the more obvious version in the remake. In some ways, the more obvious lesbianism detracts from the struggle for Nell between the humans and the house as it makes it more of a sexual attraction than when that is there but not emphasized.

Another problem with the movie is that the house turned bad because of what occurred on the house grounds as much as it did for what occurred within the house. I think that haunted house movies work better when the moviemakers acknowledge the silliness and make the house built over an old Indian burial ground. The lack of a real supernatural reason for the hauntings make me more likely to think that it is all within their heads and less scary for a (more) sane viewer.

Caseus Archivelox: Black Sunday, Lust for a Vampire, & Brides of Dracula

2002-03-14 - 12:16 a.m.
I spent today watching vampire films. Well, actually the first one doesn't really count, as it was "Black Sunday" the Mario Bava Italian horror flick, not the crappy movie based on the crappy Thomas Harris novel. It's a witch that was killed in the 1600s, and in the 1800s was revived and needs the blood of her descendant who looks just like her to complete her resurrection. So it was sort of a lesbian vampire film. Not as much as I had hoped though.
So I then watched the end of "Dracula's Daughter" again, and then saw "The Wolf Man". Disappointing.
I went off to Visart to look for lesbian vampire films. I failed miserably, because the selection was horrid. I couldn't find anything for a while, but finally found the second, and supposedly the worst, of the Carmilla Karnstein trilogy of Hammer Horror films, "Lust for a Vampire". It was hidden in the Samurai section, even though it said file in horror on the box. It's just basic softcore from the early 1970s. Bah. Damn lesbian vampire films. Too much nudity, not enough vampire. I doubt I'd be able to find any of the hardcore lesbian movies, as I'm not going off to Railroad Video any time soon, even if there are a few hardcore lesbian films out there.
The question I have for this movie is why a supposedly lesbian vampire would fall in love with a male writer. It makes little sense, and the film itself looks more like it was filmed on video. Problem is that the vampires can walk around during the day with no apparent ill effects, and day and night switch back and forth a lot in the midst of scenes. Of course, the women are beautiful, and look nice naked. That's unfortunately a very poor reason to watch the entire movie. If you don't have the balls to rent hardcore porn, then you shouldn't rent softcore because the acting and other qualities are similar.
The problem with these films is that they are weak on meaning, and strong on sucking. And sucky-ness.
An interesting similarity in the two actual lesbian vampire movies that I've seen is that when the women either fall in love with a man or need a man to protect them, they are well on their way to death. Society and male heterosexual love and its gaze destroys the strong lesbians. The nudity itself is, of course, there for no reason other than to titillate the male audience who is watching the movie. And the strong female characters who reject the patriarchal society are very different from most other softcore porn with females there more to excite the male viewers. The lesbian vampire turns the patriarchal society on its head, and this is why I am writing my long paper on lesbian vampire films.
But before I watched the movie, I watched "Brides of Dracula" which was a good Hammer vampire film (with no real lesbian content, even as it had some small female-to-female attraction). Peter Cushing is a great fun actor. The movie is nice and colorful, and has a great ending.

State of Play, Watchmen, Planet Man, Cruel Story of Youth, The Order of Myths, & Tulia, Texas

State of Play is a star-studded six-hour long BBC miniseries. Basically, everyone in it who has any kind of role is a great actor and does an amazing job. My only complaint was that at six hours, I just wanted to know what would happen next immediately. I couldn't watch it all in one sitting, which sucked. Definitely worth watching as it's a great twisty political thriller, with more than enough Britishisms to make my heart soar. Meat and Tweaks along with various family members recommended it to me for quite some time, and I finally saw it. They were very right.

Watchmen is gratuitous. Violence that wasn't in the book is added, the characterization of the violence is changed, and the squid is gone. I can understand some changes are needed: cutting the Tales of the Black Freighter is fine, and simplifying the backstories is as well, but some of the coolest stuff was changed for no good reason at all: Rorshach's line to the prisoners with Big Figure isn't nearly as effective in the movie, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre's reactions to the plot removes another level of Moore's work. Which is amazing on a great amount of levels, but by dumbing it down and ramping up the violence ignores the point. Also, since when were any of these characters besides Dr. Manhattan superhuman? Moore's point was that they're all messed up mentally to think that fighting crime in a costume is a good idea. Ozymandias is not a crazy psychopath, but a sane man driven to extremes by the horrors of modern society and a really bad hashish trip. But Matthew Goode cannot possibly portray anything remotely complicated. Neither can Malin Akerman. She can portray "I look good naked", but not "I have emotions." Also, can we just agree never to have a sex scene to Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah ever again? Actually, can we agree never to cover Hallelujah ever again? Leonard's version is quite good, and Jeff Buckley's is perfect. STOP COVERING IT, YOU MORONS! Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jackie Earle Haley are the only people in the whole movie who are consistently good. So here's what it comes down to: the movie is good due to its source material, and I imagine that the extra scenes, along with adding the Black Freighter back in to make more connections with normal people. That lack of connection hurts the movie. It's occasionally slavishly faithful to the book, but there's absolutely nothing added to make the movie worthwhile. Read the comic. You could see the movie, if you don't mind a fetishization of violence and slow-motion excess. And if you see it in the theater, you can also cringe when the entire audience cheers for the most psychotic activities of the most psychotic people.

Planet Man is a New Zealand short, starring Timothy Balme, aka Lionel from Dead Alive. It's the opposite of Y: The Last Man, as all the women on the planet disappear and the men tend to gayosity. Balme's a sort of film noir-style hero, doomed by meeting possibly the only living female left on earth. It's a pretty interesting short, very low budget, but it's available online and pretty good.

Cruel Story of Youth is a Nagisa Oshima film, seen at the National Gallery of Art as part of a big Oshima festival. It's a little story of a couple who meet when the woman hitchhikes and the driver tries to rape her. The symbolism isn't really much hidden. It suffers from a serious problem in just having a text. It's always difficult to judge acting in foreign films, especially when the language is as different as Japanese, but they were not particularly strong. The main characters are basically just there to comment upon the aimlessness of youngsters in post-war Japan. As such, they're blank slates to complain about how they're making the same mistakes but worse. Eh.

The Order of Myths is a documentary about Mobile's Mardis Gras celebrations, one white and one black. Ugh to racism and the whites who try to argue that this all is fine. Not ugh to the documentary. Really interesting, but man, just the amount of segregation that is not even commented upon by most of the people. It's extremely disconcerting. All the white people saying that there were no problems with racism because the whites and blacks knew their places pissed me off immensely. But those costumes are very fun. And the young kings and queens were inspiring. I was definitely weepy when they visited each others' balls.

Tulia, Texas is a documentary about the Tulia drug bust in 1999, where a white sheriff and undercover cop were big racists and arrested a bunch of blacks. And man, was it messed up. The war on drugs is pants. And with the economy in such bad shape, we should just legalize and heavily regulate pot, and, you know, stop going after the drug users so much and go after the drug dealers. Actual dealers, not made up ones.

TV shows & museums

Reasons for no entry in a while: Doctor Who and Torchwood. Well, a few other things (like basketball (Go Duke!) and social life (hi, friends!)) as well. I'm midway through both season 4 of Doctor Who and 1 of Torchwood. Doctor Who is much better, especially after Billie Piper leaves the show. Eesh to her. Torchwood is still sort of cheesy, but the entire thing doesn't work nearly as well. The goofiness is out of place in a more adult show. Maybe they find their feet? Speaking of TV needing to find its feet, Dollhouse is getting better, but it's still easily the worst thing Whedon has done. It took a while for Buffy to start working after a good pilot, but it certainly did by the end of the first season. Dollhouse's actual pilot (the episode with the Middleman) certainly had a lot of promise and was quite good, even if basically every other one wasn't up to snuff. They've been improving, but I hope Fox allows Whedon the chance to show the episodes. Castle's pilot was fun, but I'm not sure how long that show can last, even though I'm thoroughly enjoying Nathan Fillion having a place to be awesome. Battlestar Galactica has been mindblowing, sometimes in its cheesyness, but I'm still upset that it's basically over so soon. Like, this week. Sigh to the ending of good shows.

The National Museum of American History was recently renovated, and I went there with Ms. Albright, along with an aunt and uncle. I remembered the vague shape of it from when I was there four years ago. There were some problems with crowded areas (it was a nice weekend day, and yet, for some reason, many people were inside). The First Lady's dresses exhibit was way too packed, with lines going all over the place. I did get to see the Colbert portrait, which was nice, as was the pop culture area, with most of my favorite stuff. The war area was also neat, although a little screwed up in design, as the World War I section couldn't be visited in chronological order, and the smell section of the Revolutionary War area was kinda gross. The Punch-esque tea diorama was a highlight. I still like the museum, but I don't need to go back anytime soon, unless there's an interesting exhibit.

The National Museum of Health and Medicine is hidden away at Walter Reed Hospital. Back on Valentine's Day, they had a free lecture on syphilis history in the US. By the way, don't scroll down too far on that page, unless you want to feel as disgusted as I was when I saw the model of a syphilitic penis after the lecture. The lecture itself, however, was a terrible powerpoint presentation. 87 slides, and John Parascandola (author of Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphillis in America) just read them. Ugh. The information was interesting, but if you really want to ruin interesting, just read slides. And again, Americans really treat the sick like crap. And mercury poisoning is certainly much less bad than dying of syphilis, right? The history of syphilis treatments was fascinating. The museum less so, although there were some neat things, like a painting on plastic strips of a vivisected body. I'm not sure if it's really a great museum for those who haven't been in DC that long, unless you're interested in the subject, but for those looking for something most don't see, definitely check it out.

Caseus Archivelox: The Black Cat

2002-02-26
Few films before or since have confused me as much as this one. This is entirely because of Bela Lugosi’s incredibly thick accent. It is like Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker being combined into one person, who talks with marbles in his mouth, in pig Latin, backwards, and expects the audience to be able to follow it when he reads some Judith Butler film theory. It was so distractingly hard to follow that I think I missed some of the back-story of the movie. I am not sure whether that is a bad thing or a good thing, though. Karloff was excellent, and Lugosi may have been as well, if I had been able to understand most of what he said. The major problem for the movie occurs in that, as well as with most Hollywood films, the main romantic leads are bland and the secondary characters, who are rarely given enough screen time, are much more interesting.

Also, the title “suggested by the Edgar Allen Poe story” is one of the grossest lies I have seen performed upon the American public. There was a black cat in the movie. There were no women being buried with a live cat. I was upset. I like Poe, and that movie was no Poe.

The movie was really short, but included some of the most disturbing things I have seen in a movie, let alone one that was made under the Hayes production code. Necrophilia, Satanism, a character being flayed alive, a cat being killed, incest, revenge, murder, and possibly pedophilia are all included, even if not shown on screen.

The sets were very interesting, as the art deco sets are very different from the other horror films that normally have gothic styles, with lots of stone work, although the scenes from the tunnels under the house were reminiscent of the gothic style of architecture.

The use of chess as a metaphor for the struggle between good (Lugosi) and evil (Karloff) was repeated, in my opinion more successfully, in “The Seventh Seal” so it does have an interesting place in film history beyond the first time that Karloff and Lugosi were in the same movie. However, the director, Edgar G. Ulmer, seems to have forgotten to use close-ups to break up the medium-shots that seem to dominate the film. Had he broken up the chess game for the young couple’s life, the movie would have added some much needed tension; as it is, the movie is full of great ideas, but ultimately falls short due to execution.

2002-02-26 - 9:49 p.m.
I did see "The Black Cat", and unfortunately only one cat was killed. And it was offscreen. I'm all about animals being killed on-screen. That was a major problem with "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", the cat didn't kill the bird on screen. Anyway, I found it silly, and I had problems understanding Bela Lugosi. Karloff would have been better in that role, because I could understand him. It's like Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker being combined into one person, who talks with marbles in his mouth, in pig latin, backwards, and expects the audience to be able to follow it when he reads some Judith Butler film theory. To those who don't know what I'm talking about, he was very hard to understand through his thick accent.

Caseus Archivelox: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Fly, & Paris Is Burning

2002-02-25
First off, there is one too many pronunciations of Jekyll. People need to pronounce it correctly. It bothers me when I hear it pronounced correctly (as in the movie) and I cringe because of being misled and not corrected for so many years.

Also, the special effects of the dissolves for the transformations are sometimes perfect, and very impressive for the time. Although occasionally the dissolves are noticeable, I am not sure whether it was because I knew to look for them; they were nicely concealed, and subtler than most computer graphic work today.

I also appreciated the very sexual nature of the film, which, had it been released three years later, with the implementation of the Hays production code, would have been taken out and the film would have been less interesting from our standpoint. Sex is very important in the film, from the obvious lasciviousness of Mr. Hyde and semi-nude Ivy Pearson to the subtler hairy hands of Mr. Hyde (suggesting the “hairy palms” of masturbators) and the nude pictures in Ivy’s bedroom. Jekyll is an obviously sexually frustrated man, and when he is denied marriage with Muriel (and it’s accompanying conjugal rights), he “creates” the sexual predator Mr. Hyde (a play on the hidden sexual desires that he thinks are in all men) in order to fulfill his sexual appetites. With further transformations, the makeup becomes more pronounced and Hyde more disfigured. His sexual desires ultimately turn him into “one of the living dead” and destroy him.

The use of the first person camera help to force the viewer not only to see the world from Jekyll’s perspective, but also to identify with his feelings of sexual frustration and desire. When he is cornered in his lab at the end of the film, instead of using a medium or far shot of Dr. Lanyon pointing Jekyll out as Hyde, Mamoulian uses the first person shot, implicating the audience as a partner in Hyde’s crimes as well, suggesting that since the audience (presumably) took pleasure in the story, they have also turned into Hyde-like sexual deviants.

Having seen many Cronenberg films in my life (Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, M. Butterfly, Crash, and eXistenZ), I am constantly amazed at how uncomfortable they make me feel, although M. Butterfly and Crash made me feel uncomfortable due to their not-as-good-ness, not creepy organic materials showing up in the weirdest places or head exploding. In The Fly, Cronenberg creates an organic monster that eventually becomes fused with inorganic materials (and thus must die, in Cronenberg’s organic-focused worldview). Even without the now famous “Help me” lines from the original film, Seth Brundle’s transformation into a fly is more disturbing and much more graphic than the original, and his use of his own vomit to eat and eventually as a weapon makes the audience even more disgusted than when the baboon is turned inside out. Although the plot holes occasionally get in the way of the audience (without a large amount of suspension of their disbelief), it is more enjoyable than some of Cronenberg’s later films.

The Fly is a painful story about the disintegration of a loved one in front of your eyes, which mirrors the decline of humans into old age, although it has some fun leprosy similarities, as parts of Brundle’s body fall off, and it could almost be seen as a metaphor for AIDS, but that would require some selective readings and ignorance of some of the facts of the movie. But the fears of seeing someone you love fall apart mirror the fears of other horror films of the 1980s like The Hunger, which also revolves around the fear of aging in the consumer and youth dominated culture of the 1980s.

2002-02-25 - 11:05 p.m.
So this morning, I went off to East Campus to watch two movies: "Paris is Burning" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". Paris was a documentary about NYC drag queens in the late 1980s and their balls (note: not referring to their testicles) wherein they dance and strut trying to be things they're not, like being straight. It was funny (catty gay people are inherently funny (note: deadpanned to see who is paying attention)) and informative (I now know that Madonna stole voguing from the balls where it is a sort of way to insult other people by dancing rather than fighting) and eventually sad (one of the transsexuals was beaten to death and left for four days under a motel bed before his/hers/its body was found (remind me not to stay at that motel)). I waited around for [female friend] to watch "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", and enjoyed it. Neat special effects, and lots of sexual innuendo. Although I did manage to embarrass myself when I was mocking Hyde's ridiculous overbite, and [classmate] from my Sexualities class walked by. She had just enjoyed "Paris is Burning" as well. Whoops.

Caseus Archivelox: We Were Soldiers

2002-02-24 - 3:01 p.m.
When I got to the theater around 6:05, there were already a lot of people in line for "We Were Soldiers". It was the typical sneak preview Freewater people running around with our heads cut off trying to figure everything out. That was compounded by the fact that the basketball team's managers didn't show up early enough to get good seats. But it worked out fine, as they got seats. I got to rip Coach K's ticket, and I think [girlfriend] still has his stub. We almost completely filled up Griffith, which is nice, because it only took an extra half an hour before we got started.
The movie itself was fairly good. Nothing incredibly new, but it wasn't as bad as "The Patriot" or most other recent war movies. It was an interesting take on early Vietnam, with not as much crappy John Wayne style heroics (like in "The Green Berets") and more about the fighting in Vietnam rather than emotional head games (like in "The Deerhunter", "Apocalypse Now", "Full Metal Jacket", and "Platoon"). Sam Elliott was good as the cranky Sgt. Major, although his (and most other) dialogue in the movie was mixed way too low. The sound effects and music were loud enough. [Girlfriend] was made really uncomfortable by the violence (and especially by the scene where the reporter (Barry Pepper, making up somewhat for his performance in "Battlefield Earth") tries to pick up the wounded mortar guy, but ends up ripping the charred flesh from his legs, which I found disturbing as well). The movie was sort of full of Randy Wallace pounding some things into the audience's heads. But the battle scenes were well done.
After hanging around to hear Randy defend the movie fairly well, and also "The Man in the Iron Mask", which I probably should rewatch at some point, and again ramming my thigh into the armrests in Griffith (in front of one of the co-producers of the film, who nicely asked if I was ok), and also walking by Marc "Riley" Blucas, but not being willing to talk to him (because I hate Riley), [girlfriend] and I went off to the Purim party.

Caseus Archivelox: Bride of Frankenstein

2002-02-11
This is easily the best movie we have seen so far this semester, and it is probably the best of the Universal horror films. The opening scene of Mary and Percy Bysse Shelley and Lord Byron is just the perfect opening for the movie, as it sets the tone of the rest of the film as a camp version of the monster movies that had been the vogue. It spoofs the very movies that it tops in quality. There’s the screaming annoying maid, the staid butler who in unperturbed by the strangest experiences, the sinister mad doctor, the virginal bride, the doctor who does not want to create the monster, but is forced to, and the monster who learns to speak.

The bride of the monster herself is an interesting character, as in about three minutes of screen time, she manages to make an indelible impression upon the audience, and cause observant viewers to applaud Whale’s sense of humor. He has the bride recoil from the monster’s touch into Frankenstein’s arms, a small oedipal twist, with the daughter being afraid of the new man in her life, and retreating to the comfort of her father.

But before that is the best character in the Universal horror films: Dr. Pretorius. He is the best evil doctor in movie history, with a hidden homosexual coded, blatantly devilish character, who moves between Frankenstein and his fiancée again. The devil-ness of Pretorius is made explicit when he compares the mini-devil to himself (predating Mini-me in the Austin Powers movies by over 60 years). The homosexual coding, which is all that was possible during the days of the Hays Code, extends to his drawing Henry from Elizabeth every time they are alone, and when Pretorius and Frankenstein are alone creating the bride for the monster, they are shot in a series of canted angles, but mirrored, linking them together even more.

I have not even mentioned the incredible scenes of the monster and the hermit and the Christ-like capture of the monster by the mob in the forest. The movie is just filled with incredible scenes, inventive camera angles (which must have been incredibly influential on Sam Raimi, amongst other directors), and memorable characters.

Caseus Archivelox: Poison & Frankenstein

2002-02-06 - 12:02 a.m.
I went off to watch Poison. Really weird gay movie. It was for my Sexualities in Film class, so at least that fits. Weird thing is that it was the first of two movies I watched today that included disfigured characters seeing themselves in reflective surfaces with no disfigured features (the other was Abre Los Ojos). Weird.
So I saw five movies the past two days: "The Seventh Seal", "The Magician", "Poison", "Frankenstein", and "Abre Los Ojos". That's too many movies.

2002-02-07
Why is it that the movies that are based upon the original source texts in the Universal horror genres are usually not as good as the later sequels (with the exception of “The Invisible Man” which had no sequels, and was excellent in its own right)? Probably some of that is due to the limitations of the source materials, but I think that most of it is due to the problem that Hollywood has had with most sequels: they are afraid to do anything special with the first movie, in the hope that it can spawn an equally conservative sequel due to high box office receipts. Both “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” do not challenge the audience at all, with simple characters, poor special effects, and laughable dialogue. Although later sequels would succumb to the Hollywood-ization of the stories by making them only for money, both “Dracula’s Daughter” and “Bride of Frankenstein” take the original stories further than before and add in lesbianism and psychiatry, along with dry wit, to make the stories more attractive than the relatively bland first entries in the series. Another point to make is that they waited for five and four years before making the sequels, which allowed for a good script to be written and imaginative ideas to be included. Most sequels today rarely wait more than a couple years, and do nothing special with the story.

I was upset to notice that it was not Fritz in “Frankenstein” and that it was a later movie that introduced Ygor to the audience. I love “Young Frankenstein” and could have sworn that Ygor was in this one, but it was fun to see so many other scenes that had been spoofed so well in “Young Frankenstein”. And “Bride of Frankenstein” has some scenes as well that are famous and incredible.

James Whale is really the reason why “Frankenstein” has any interest to modern audiences today, besides the obvious historical interest.

Caseus Archivelox: The Magician

2002-02-05
An Ingmar Bergman thinking man’s horror film. At least that is one description of it I have read. In the movie, a “magician” (Volger) who studied under Mesmer enters 1846 Stockholm with his wife, his grandmother, a drunk and dying actor, and his handler. He and his wife (Amanda) are disguised (and he has acted mute) in order to throw off the police who want them for undisclosed crimes, but likely related to the fact that they are frauds and do all their healing with mirrors and the like. They are lead to the house of a city council member, who is waiting with a doctor (Vergérus) and the chief of police who want to expose the magician as a fraud. That night, Vergérus tells Volger he wants the magician to make him feel something. During one of their tricks the next morning, one of the servants of the house “kills” the magician. I want to write about one of the later (9 min. long) scenes that is the only scary scene in the movie. The doctor takes what he believes to be the body of the magician up into the attic and performs an autopsy on it. The magician’s wife locks the doctor in the attic at the bequest of a muffled voice and a hand, and after he finishes writing the autopsy’s findings down, the doctor begins to hear and see strange things. First, he hears an extra chime on the clock, and when he tries to start writing more, he sees an eye in his inkstand. Then his papers are knocked off the desk, and when he attempts to organize them, a hand is put on the papers. He stands up, insinuates that it is the heat that is causing him to see and experience these weird incidents and tries to leave, only to find that he has been locked in the room. When the doctor tries to find some tools to break the lock on the door, he looks into a mirror and sees the disembodied head of the magician. An interesting cut to the face of the doctor is used to show that the head is not there for the uninvolved audience, but for the doctor alone, as only after the cut to the doctor’s face do we see the head in the background of the mirror. He tries to confirm that the head is not on the body that he has just autopsied, but something rips his glasses off right before he can do so, and then steps on them to break them. Assuming that he is dreaming, the doctor then sits down to wait until he wakes up, but hears the clock chime again, unnaturally. Right beyond the clock is a mirror, and the doctor sees the magician in it, standing right behind him. As a short bass drum roll is the first music in the scene builds, the mirror cracks, the music stops, and the doctor gets up and runs to the other side of the attic to check the mirror. He backs up against a slotted wall and is choked by a hand that comes through the wall as the drums begin again, and quiet down only to build slowly except for certain startling scenes. Escaping, he stumbles to the other side of the room, and falls into a dirty hole in the floor that could be construed as a coffin. Standing up again, the doctor begins to follow the magician through the slotted wall, until the magician sticks his hand out to stop him. The magician (in the rags of the now-dead actor) then begins to walk slowly towards the sitting doctor who flees, still sitting down. The drums build again, and a tambourine joins in giving the proceedings an eerie rattle, until he falls down the stairs and starts to scream. The magician is stopped from attacking the doctor by the timely intervention of his wife. The doctor says that all he got was a slight fear of death, when it is obvious that he was more than a little afraid for his life.

The scene is genuinely frightening, as the audience is not sure whether the magician is actually dead or not. Vergérus is the pinnacle of science and the fear in his eyes at the supernatural experience that he has (with the magician coming back from the dead to exact his revenge upon the doctor, in classic gothic fashion) is an interesting look at the tendency of all people to believe what they see rather than what makes rational sense when they are threatened. As for music, there is only a small amount of disjointed pizzicato string music at the very beginning as the hand tells Amanda to lock the attic, but for most of the scene there is little dialogue or music, and so the audience focuses upon the strange goings on onscreen. Whenever something strange occurs, the drums stop.

Caseus Archivelox: The Conversation & Training Day

2002-02-03 - 12:04 a.m.
I also saw "The Conversation". I can't believe I hadn't seen that before, it was great. Gene Hackman is such a good actor. The only thing was it sort of freaked me out, because I don't need more reasons to be paranoid.
I saw "Training Day" and it was horrible. Denzel was even bad in it. Fuqua can fuqu-off. Haha, I'm clever.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, The Terror of Tiny Town, Death Note, Death Note: The Last Name, & more

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is extremely disappointing. There was some good music (Bishop Allen cameo), and the basic plot was somewhat enjoyable. And how many PG-13 films climax with a handjob? But the amount of disgusting places gum is put and then put back into mouths is just terrible. I had such high hopes, and it never came close to meeting them. Actually, the best things about the film were the posters in Nick's room. Lots of awesome indie rock posters and album covers. The best thing about the DVD was the puppet performance by Kat Dennings. The movie could have used that bear.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains has a naked 15 year old Diane Lane (in one of her first movie roles). And it was shown on TCM. I'm not sure if I feel dirty or not. But a 15 year old Diane Lane, along with many, many other young women in see-through red tops should be enough to get anyone to want to watch this film. It's a Lou Adler film, who's famous for doing many music related things, like produce Rocky Horror Picture Show, Tapestry, and directed Cheech & Chong Up in Smoke. He's famous, you see. Oh, and it also is one of Laura Dern's first films. And it has Ray Winstone fronting a band made up of Paul Cook, Steve Jones, and Paul Simonon. It's a music industry and consumerism satire, and works well due to the strong performances from Ray and Diane. She's not given that much to do, but she does it well.

The Terror of Tiny Town is horrible. And is is both the best all-midget, all-singing, all-Western movie of all time, and the worst. Seriously, it kind of needs to be seen, but I'm not sure the little over an hour is worth it to most people.

Death Note and Death Note: The Last Name are the two part live-action adaptation of the manga about a student who finds a notebook that, when you write a name in it, kills people within 40 seconds by a heart attack. Of course, the kid is a law student, so he kills bad people, but the police want to find out how he's able to kill virtually anyone. There's a secret police officer who is wacky and awesome, and is pretty much the best thing in both movies by far. Unfortunately, the second movie is not particularly good, but the first one is enjoyable. The second focuses too much on a second death note and a character I didn't like very much. It follows the manga's visual style quite closely, but the added girlfriend character isn't really needed. The CGI'd Angels of Death were crappy, even if they again matched the manga, but really, just not that impressive.

And for those of you who were wondering what was up with my lack of updates, I've been kind of busy with a variety of things, including my social life and embracing my Englishness with watching Doctor Who. It's cheesy and silly and stupid and all, but I still kind of like it. Once I've caught up with that I have Torchwood to go as well. Oh, I've also finished watching Foyle's War, which was a strong detective series and working quite well with my Britishness. It also clears out more stuff recorded last summer. Plus, Masterpiece Mystery has Edward Gorey (who was a fan of The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer?!?) introductory drawings, one of the things I remember vividly from watching them when I was a youngster with my parents. That's all well and good, but it's mainly an excuse to post a link to The Recently Deflowered Girl, a sadly out-of-print etiquette book. If you didn't see this in January, do so. Seance and Chinese Detective are my two favorite.