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.