Porn v. Art v. How To Be Good

Well, I don't want to toot my own horn too much, but I scored a 10 out of 10 on this quiz. I recognized two of these pictures (two of the art ones, that is), so the other 8 were just good educated guesses, but yay me!

At some point I'll start to write up what I did over my break, but it was lots of movies and reading How To Be Good, which was not nearly as good as Hornby's other books. Some of that could be that I don't identify with the protagonist (a female doctor in her 30's in suburban England with two kids), but I think Hornby's much better when he's writing about football, music and men. His music criticism is always interesting, and High Fidelity and About a Boy are two of the best fiction books I've read in the past decade. Not the best, but near the best.

Movie stuff will be written when I have some free time, or at least time where there's stuff I'm less interested in doing.

Well, aren't the younguns all going to hell in a handbasket?

Because I haven't been watching movies this week and I'm going home for Thanksgiving, I leave you with this AIM conversation that occurred Friday afternoon. I don't know what the hell the world is coming to when a 10 year old uses this filthy language. I probably wouldn't post this if it weren't just amazing that someone could be this insane.

numba1stud1229 (5:02:54 PM): do you know who i am
numba1stud1229 (5:03:04 PM): hi
me (5:14:27 PM): what would give me any hint as to who you are?
numba1stud1229 (5:15:05 PM): i live in your neiborhood
me (5:15:26 PM): which is where?
numba1stud1229 (5:16:00 PM): reganmead
numba1stud1229 (5:16:44 PM): im..................................................harris
me (5:16:59 PM): where is reganmead and who is harris?
numba1stud1229 (5:17:01 PM): due
numba1stud1229 (5:17:14 PM): who is this
numba1stud1229 (5:17:19 PM): ??????
me (5:17:29 PM): you're the one who im'ed me
numba1stud1229 (5:17:50 PM): whats your name
me (5:18:08 PM): well, I'll give you a hint, and it's my screenname
numba1stud1229 (5:18:33 PM): [redacted] what neiborhood
numba1stud1229 (5:20:16 PM): yt
numba1stud1229 (5:20:30 PM): ???
numba1stud1229 (5:21:11 PM): ello
me (5:21:25 PM): considering I don't know who you are nor do I know where reganmead is, I don't feel comfortable continuing this conversation, plus I feel you could work a little on your spelling
numba1stud1229 (5:21:50 PM): ok bitch
numba1stud1229 (5:21:58 PM): ass hole
numba1stud1229 (5:22:53 PM): aaaaaaaaaawwwwwww are you scard
me (5:23:10 PM): why, exactly would I feel scared about someone who doesn't know who I am, nor where I live?
me (5:23:58 PM): plus, really, calling me a bitch shows a level of maturity far beyond your spelling skills
numba1stud1229 (5:24:08 PM): you are a mother fucker
numba1stud1229 (5:24:23 PM): :-D:-X
numba1stud1229 (5:24:39 PM): hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
me (5:25:24 PM): wow, I'm really, really, really impressed with your ability to curse
me (5:25:29 PM): and use emoticons
numba1stud1229 (5:25:36 PM): yea
numba1stud1229 (5:25:44 PM): you should
me (5:25:52 PM): maybe you should try elevating your discourse to an 8 year old level
numba1stud1229 (5:26:17 PM): how old are you im 10
numba1stud1229 (5:26:23 PM): ???
me (5:27:17 PM): see, that doesn't shock me at all
numba1stud1229 (5:27:43 PM): how old
numba1stud1229 (5:27:45 PM): 2
numba1stud1229 (5:27:53 PM): hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahaha ha
me (5:27:56 PM): I'd recommend just ending the conversation and backing away before you continue to embarrass yourself
numba1stud1229 (5:28:43 PM): ok bitch or are you scard
me (5:29:01 PM): I'd be a lot more scared if you could complete a sentence
numba1stud1229 (5:29:32 PM): i did dum ass
numba1stud1229 (5:30:14 PM): go suck your moms dick
me (5:30:28 PM): ooh, clever
numba1stud1229 (5:30:30 PM): hhahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahaha
numba1stud1229 (5:30:40 PM): i know
numba1stud1229 (5:30:48 PM): im good
numba1stud1229 (5:31:36 PM): you dont curs do you
numba1stud1229 (5:31:43 PM): ?????????????????????????????????????????????
me (5:31:55 PM): why don't you start saying things like my mom's so fat you rolled over twice and were still on top of her?
numba1stud1229 (5:32:36 PM): because thats gay like you
numba1stud1229 (5:32:46 PM): hahahahahahahhahaahhahahahahahahahahaha
numba1stud1229 (5:33:15 PM): ooooooooo i got you
me (5:33:16 PM): wow, homophobia can be added to the reasons why you're a top notch human being
numba1stud1229 (5:33:53 PM): im not smart i will ad ment that
numba1stud1229 (5:34:11 PM): im in 5th
numba1stud1229 (5:34:22 PM): grade
me (5:35:08 PM): I'd really suggest that you just sign off and go wash up for dinner
numba1stud1229 (5:36:23 PM): you go wash your dick so you can suck it...........oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooo
numba1stud1229 (5:36:46 PM): hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahhah ahah

...31 blank lines sent by numba1stud1229...

me (5:39:38 PM): if only I could suck my own dick, I'd be a happy man
numba1stud1229 (5:40:08 PM): by bitch
numba1stud1229 signed off at 5:40:13 PM.

I win.

Pride & Prejudice, House of the Dead, Spanglish, & AD cancellation

Pride & Prejudice was unbelievably good. Can't quite tell whether it's just that I love the story and even a changed and simplified version can make me giddy. It's a different version of it than the previous feature length Hollywood version. Which did a terrible job with it. Really, the entire movie was so amazingly put together that the changes (including the entirely unneeded Sixteen Candles ending) didn't actually hurt my impression. The directing, especially during the dance scenes, actually blew the BBC version out of the water. Matthew MacFadyen is no Colin Firth, but at least Jane Bennet was hot in this version. And Brenda Blethyn was very good. Donald Sutherland did a fairly good job, but that's mainly because his lines are almost the best in the book. I don't like the smaller parts that the non-essential characters were cut back to. I got the impression that things were simplified, and that bothered me. But the parts that were still there was more than enough to make up for those changes.

House of the Dead may actually be the worst video game movie ever made. Which is saying a hell of a lot. Plus, why exactly did the Asian girl have to wear a stars and stripes leotard? But really the big question is why everyone was deadly accurate with weapons and their fighting style? And the gratuitous nudity? Crap. Uwe Boll needs to be banned from being near a camera.

Spanglish was a little simple. Plus, I just didn't care for it. Eh. Good enough, but nothing remotely special. Sandler was good, but that's becoming normal in his non-crap films.

The cancellation of Arrested Development sucks ass. Hard. I would have been happier had they actually treated the show with the respect that a multiple Emmy winner should have commanded, but no, Fox has lost any chance I would have to watch another show. They haven't given a low-rated but amazing show any support in a long time. Possibly not since the X-Files. At least we got two and a half seasons of the funniest show on TV. Fauxin' Fox.

Romper Stomper & Altered States

I'm not entirely sure why I had another crazy Nazi youth gang movie in my queue so soon after The Believer, but Romper Stomper was much worse than that one, as this just had a good performance from Russell Crowe and Daniel Pollock, who unfortunately killed himself before this was released. They were both good, although really, I prefer my Nazi youth gangs of today movies to be a little deeper than this. American History X and The Believer at least had some interesting ideas behind it. I'm not entirely sure this had anything behind it except that Nazis are bad, mmkay? And that you should never, ever mess with the Vietnamese, because they will keep coming and coming and coming until you wish you had never decided to support the French and then fake an attack on your ships in the Gulf of Tonkin and then bomb Cambodia. Really, just stop and think.

Altered States. "The purpose of our suffering is only more suffering." Unfortunately, that was also the purpose of the movie. Interesting, but ultimately crap. Nice visuals, but not for a story that makes any sense. But Blair Brown was hot, but the movie was crap. Too bad for her that the rest of the movie wasn't worth it, unless you want to see William Hurt morph into a strangely shaped blob. Or Bob Balaban with lots of hair, or Drew Barrymore in a tiny role, or John Larroquette and George Gaynes in small roles. So basically, don't see unless you are on drugs. I was not on drugs.

Dead or Alive 2, Avalon, Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, & those damn lying Republicans

Dead or Alive 2 was actually a much more sensitive movie than the first one, although the sprouting of wings was a little heavy handed, and put that together with the intertitles and you get a very obvious film. The hitmen working for vaccines for Africa was a nice touch, but it just built a weird sense of reality in what was otherwise a sort of messed-up morality tale. I actually thought that it was good, except for a few bits that were just unnecessarily gross, but those are to be expected in any Miike film. The DVD itself was somewhat crappy. So I'd actually recommend the first and second films in the trilogy to anyone who wants to see a couple somewhat crazy yakuza films, but the final one needs a little warning before jumping into it.

Avalon was... somewhat impressive visually, but the plot never really made any sense. Well, you sort of had to have seen the Matrix to get some idea of what was going on, which shouldn't be required for anything that isn't a sequel. Pretty crappy, and the English dubbing was terrible. Just let them speak in Polish and use subtitles. At least I didn't have to pay any money to see it. The sepia tones did give the movie a unique look, but there was nothing unique about the plot. Shame really.

And I finally want to discuss just how happy the two episodes of Arrested Development on Monday made me. Very happy. I thought that there were so many funny lines that it would be a waste to go through them all. Just the funniest show on TV. Although the Curb Your Enthusiasm about jackets and kidneys and the Playboy Mansion was the best episode of this season so far I think.

And politics sucks. All my clients lost. All of them.

Shopgirl, Dead or Alive, Dead or Alive: Final, Meet the Fockers, George Carlin: Life Is Worth Losing

Shopgirl was really good. I know that a couple of the other people who saw it didn't like it, but I did. Seems a little flip, but I completely agree with Roger Ebert's review of it, where he said "One of the things you cannot do in this life is impose conditions on love. Another impossibility is to expect another's heart to accommodate your own desires and needs." I'm actually finding that I agree with a lot of his reviews, making me feel bad for my vulgar references to him. Because he's 100% correct. The main complaint mentioned was that it was a middle-aged man's fantasy, which just doesn't make any sense if you've actually paid any attention to the movie. I think she was just bitter because of the cracks about Vermont. Which were hilarious.

Dead or Alive was, except for a scene with a small tub of excrement and the last scene of the movie, a fairly typical but very good yakuza film. It started out with an amazing sequence, one that just shows how good Miike can be, especially when he isn't so busy doing crazy, disgusting stuff. He's even talented when he's doing crazy things, but he sometimes lets the craziness overwhelm the talent. From the interview on the disc with Miike, he is very right with "Maybe a movie is worthwhile if it has a single incredible shot. I want the audience to feel that kind of possibility." Wong Kar-Wai fills his movies with incredible shots. Miike fills his movies with things you'd never expect to see. Oh, wait, I also didn't like the bestiality. Never like the bestiality. So the bestiality, excrement, and that last scene just really hurt the movie.

Such as in Dead or Alive: Final. What the hell is with the ending robot-monster thing? Plus, the gay stereotype was pretty over the top. Plus, the movie never seemed to go anywhere. At least the three movies aren't really linked in anything but a brief set of clips from all three movies before the end. Just bleh, because it could have been much better, but Miike clearly didn't spend anything to get a good movie. Plus, that one character who speaks English while everyone else speaks either Chinese or Japanese doesn't make any sense.

Meet the Fockers is actually less funny than the first one. Nothing funny at all in it. Not that I thought the first one really required a sequel, but at least that one had some funny bits. I didn't laugh at all at it. Oh, and Teri Polo is terrible.

George Carlin: Life Is Worth Losing has one of Carlin's hilarious poetic monologues at the beginning. Making the first five or so minutes better than most comics could dream of. Carlin's hilarious, and anyone who says different should be forced to watch a fourteen year old telling knock knock jokes in Inuit for two weeks.

The Falcon and the Snowman

The Falcon and the Snowman was prettty unexpected, as it wasn't some flashy spy movie, but one that actually seemed realistic in every aspect, probably due to the fact that it's a true story. And with my interest in everything spy, I think I may have been slightly biased towards it. Sean Penn was pretty good, but Timothy Hutton was outstanding. Completely unexpected. And that this movie was responsible for This Is Not America is another point for it. And Hercule Poirot being a Soviet spy was added fun.

Red River

Red River is pretty much Howard Hawks saying to Howard Hughes that if you're going to take my movie away from me, then I'm going to make the movie much better. Plus, putting John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in place of almost anyone will usually be an improvement. Especially in a Western. Clift is very good, while John Wayne just feels like he is being John Wayne. Maybe I should have seen this before The Searchers, because he plays basically the same character. And that one felt much less claustrophobic, John Ford directing and filming in Monument Valley and many more impressive long shots. Hawks focuses much more on the human interaction than Ford did, but he doesn't have enough in it, and the movie just never gets over the hump from being a good movie to being a great movie. Hawks can do screwball comedy very well, but his directing style is usually a little claustrophobic for a Western. It only works well in Rio Bravo, which is intentional, since it's set almost entirely in a jail.

Inside Deep Throat, The Basketball Diaries, and the rarity of the Firefly DVDs

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