49th Parallel, Where the Buffalo Roam, Vice Guide to Travel, & Virtua Fighter 5

49th Parallel is another Archers production, this one a propagandist piece trying to stir up anti-Nazi feelings in both America and among the dirty, dirty Québécois. Those dirty, dirty Québécois were pro-German because they hated the English. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend, apparently. Plus, who doesn't love the Vichy government? Anyway, it has Laurence Olivier playing a French trapper with a bad accent. Were they just trying to piss off the Québécois? Because that would have done it for me. The story is that a German U-boat gets sunk off of Canada and the six German survivors have to get home somehow, fighting through Olivier's accent, Glynis Johns's naivete, Leslie Howard's smugness, and Raymond Massey's desertion. Or something like that. It's quite impressive, but ultimately, it's just a well-done propaganda piece that runs a little too long. Really, that's about all you would expect from it. Powell and Pressburger were consummate professionals, and they did a fine job.

Where the Buffalo Roam was a sometimes worthwhile, but mostly worthless "adaptation" of Hunter S. Thompson's writings. Really, it just didn't work. Fear and Loathing worked, because it actually felt like it was a story and was trying to keep (internally) consistent, but this was just far too episodic, and far too slapdash, to be anything but Bill Murray's Thompson impression for 90 minutes. Plus, the soundtrack on the DVD wasn't the same as the original, which always pisses me off. Stupid recording artist organizations don't understand just how much better something is when it's allowed to be how it was originally planned. Just like Tour of Duty had Paint It Black taken off the opening credits to the show on DVD, it messes with how the film feels. I bet it worked much better with the original music. The Neil Young musical parts were at least effective.

Vice Guide to Travel is a trainwreck. The few shorts that were interesting (Pakistan, Bulgaria, Beirut, and Paraguay) were more than outweighed by the terrible choices that ruined what could have been worthwhile ones (China, Rio, Congo, Chernobyl, and the extra of the crazy guy rambling on about nothing). Well, that last one never could have been worthwhile. I do wonder why Spike Jonze was even included on the DVD. He added nothing except as a sort of audience that could have been done by actually having the correspondent address the issues in an articulate manner. That would pretty much have improved all of the shorts, actually. And I liked the Bulgarian one in the booklet about running from gangsters after winning money in a casino rather than going over just how easy it is to purchase a nuclear warhead, which really is disturbingly easy, and that could be why so many films since the fall of the Soviet Union have dealt with that. Chernobyl was ruined by their inability to do anything other than be very very drunk and look at a Geiger counter. Thanks, that was... boring. Maybe if you had actually found any of the mutated animals you were obsessed with, then it would have been better. Rio was terrible due to "Trace Crutchfield" and his asshole persona he put on. Basically, the ones that actually tried to deal with issues were better than the ones that just had people get trashed and try to look at crazy things. What a surprise: getting drunk does actually change your performance. I felt dirty almost the entire time I was watching, and it actually made me feel dirtier than any other time I've been exposed to Vice and their media empire. They have managed to put out some good music on their record label, but there is not that much else to recommend them.

Also, the lack of movie watching was due to three things: 1) I held off on watching a movie for much longer than normal from Netflix (it's all good though), 2) I have almost finished watching Dead Like Me (look for my half-assed comments on that when I finish it later this week) and 3) I bought Virtua Fighter 5, and have been trying to unlock lots and lots of stuff. It's a fighting game, and I have at least two characters I'm acceptably good at, so that makes me happy.