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).