tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78730696877958456482024-02-02T21:18:08.359+11:00cinema of nobodyA dissection of that which attempts to shape who we arenobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-40490621773462585182009-07-27T16:33:00.026+10:002011-10-08T08:43:19.782+11:00Death ProofOne day post-modernism will be dead and Quentin Tarantino and I will both be out of a gig. Huzzah, huzzah, the world rejoices. Finally we'll have some art that doesn't disappear up its own arse! But let's not get too carried away. We're not there yet. Before we can tie a tag on the toe of post-modernism, first we'll have to descend into the inevitable hell of self-parody. And with Tarantino's fifth film, <i>Death Proof</i>, we're not far off!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9PV3NxfSSu-evrP2DHknE63xRs7Q6klIeDK4q92GTEewK-uDCTlKq0n4v5XYBUcdRr34nkFg1OdlxV9BSeU_thdpddRac2hYL_aPsP2EXYklHmAGnfMTpUiOmbaNtqurMb7Z7rh17TLe8/s1600-h/death_proof.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 275px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9PV3NxfSSu-evrP2DHknE63xRs7Q6klIeDK4q92GTEewK-uDCTlKq0n4v5XYBUcdRr34nkFg1OdlxV9BSeU_thdpddRac2hYL_aPsP2EXYklHmAGnfMTpUiOmbaNtqurMb7Z7rh17TLe8/s400/death_proof.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363027160122497842" /></a><br />Many years ago, when I was doing design in college, and post-modernism was at its height, one of my lecturers famously said (to a student who'd based his unfortunate design on something that was unfortunate to begin with), 'If you're going to rip off an idea, make sure it's a good one'. Tarantino took this to heart obviously but added a crucial caveat: '...and in order to appear original pick something obscure that nobody's seen before'. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Quentin Tarantino, the erstwhile insufferable know-it-all video-store clerk, became the great and original auteur who single-handedly re-created American cinema.<br /><br />In amongst the pastiche/homage (let's shorten it to 'pastage' ha ha), Tarantino can be relied upon to deliver his two trademark devices. These are his famous cooler-than-thou dialogue and his eclectic soundtracks comprised of obscure pop songs. Depending on what day of the week it is, these will either comprise the flesh that Tarantino adds to the skeletons he dug up in some out of the way Asian graveyard, or instead be the skeleton on which he hangs some other flesh of his choosing. Either way, the result is a jerky beast that excites in parts but never quite makes sense as an entire creature. It's like Bruce Lee's head with Uma Thurman's tits and Lucy Liu's arse, kind of thing.<br /><br />Soundtrack v score<br /><br />Let's deal with the music first. Any given piece in a soundtrack is primarily there to add a mood to a scene. Okay, in this regard we give Tarantino a tick. We could pick any number of scenes in <i>Reservoir Dogs</i>, <i>Pulp Fiction</i>, <i>Kill Bill</i>, and <i>Death Proof</i> that are maxed out by some song that no one ever thought much of until Tarantino laid it over some intense (and usually blood-spattered) images. Thus within the scene the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts. But the scene is merely a part within the whole that comprises the film. What of <span style="font-style:italic;">that</span> whole?<br /><br />In those terms, we need to consider the other aspect of the soundtrack, which becomes clearer if we were to call it a 'score'. A score, as written by a single composer, will fulfil the aforementioned brief of intensifying a given scene but will also perform another role - that of tying the movie together as a coherent whole. Sure enough: Tarantino. Doesn't. Do. Scores. If you want to see how this works, or more precisely <span style="font-style:italic;">doesn't work</span>, watch <i>Pulp Fiction</i>. I know everyone went completely nuts for Pulp Fiction, but don't think of it as this-scene-that-scene (each breathlessly following the other), instead think of it in its entirety. Did it have one? Really? What was it?<br /><br />Super cool dialogue<br /><br />Tarantino's preference of a tactical scene-by-scene soundtrack over a strategic film-as-a-whole score is perfectly replicated in all of his super cool dialogue. Take your pick: Mr Pink discussing Madonna's rejoicing over a huge dick; Jules and Vince discussing foot massages and cunnilingus; Ordell explaining to Louis about the joys of AK-47's - each only work viscerally in and of themselves and are completely meaningless within the larger context of the film as a whole. They're merely pet dialogues held together by what passes for a plot.<br /><br />Tarantino's dialogue's purposelessness in terms of plot is echoed in its purposelessness in terms of meaning. They're about nothing more than a cool variety of posturing. In a society where people would rather push popcorn up their nose than discuss anything even half way philosophical it's the perfect template for all who wish to be cool. Don't tell me that Hollywood has no effect on how we all talk. Just come to Australia and see how many teenage boys call each other 'bitch'.<br /><br />A totality of bits<br /><br />Both the soundtrack and the dialogue are typical of Tarantino's approach to film-making as a purely visceral exercise of 'in-the-moment'. With Tarantino, in-the-moment is all there is. I'll go out on a limb here and declare that our Quentin probably never walked out of a cinema impressed with any given film's big-picture message. Here's a rudely imagined conversation between Tarantino and yours truly as we sit in a cafe after having seen <i>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon</i> (say):<br /><br /><blockquote>QT- Man that was cool! Michelle Yeoh is a goddess! That fight where she works her way through every weapon on the rack completely rocked!<br />n- Yeah, it was wild.<br />QT- And Zhang Ziyi's fight in the tavern was a masterpiece! That bit where she flew up spinning through the air and landed on her feet while delivering that poem about Wudang Shan was awesome!<br />n- Yeah, pretty cool. And what did you think of the central theme of the impetuous self-impressed nature of youth encountering the boundless patience and forgiveness of the sage? I liked how Chow Yun Fat always offered redemption, and effectively gave his life for it, and that it was only through this sacrifice that Zhang Ziyi finally learnt the worthlessness of self-gratification.<br />QT- Man, what are you talking about? Forgiveness? Shee-it! Cheng Pei Pei's knife in the head!!! </blockquote><br />Never mind me imagining, the proof is in the pudding. Tarantino's films are only 'films' insofar as they're a collection of intense moments, one after the other until he's filled ninety minutes. In light of this, his exotic and 'innovative' narrative structures are not so much a Kurosawa-esque serving of the central message (à la <i>Rashomon</i> and <i>Ikiru</i>) but rather a desperate striving to tie a series of otherwise unconnected pet-scenes, pet-characters, pet-dialogues, and pet-pop tracks into something that vaguely resembles coherency.<br /><br />Inspiration<br /><br />Okay, dandy. But what of <i>Death Proof</i>? What with having exhausted Asian cinema with his mad lumbering <i>Kill Bill</i> opus (perversely stitched together from the bodies of Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers and Japanese chambara exploitation flicks), Tarantino has decided to plunder the graveyard of obscure early 70's muscle car chase flicks - to wit: <i>Vanishing Point</i>; <i>Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry</i>; and <i>Gone in Sixty Seconds</i> ("The real one, not that Angelina Jolie bullshit"). We know these are the films that are being referenced because the film's characters actually say so in one of Tarantino's cool dialogue scenes.<br /><br />In this scene, right before your eyes, you get to see cinema disappear up its own arse: the cool conversation involving the film's film-industry muscle-car movie-fan characters <span style="font-style:italic;">is</span> the conversation had by the film's film-industry muscle-car movie-fan director in the film's pre-production meetings. I'm thinking there's only a single line from the pre-pro conversation that failed appear in the script and that is 'And we can put this whole conversation in the script!' Anyone remember Steely Dan's line about 'Show business kids making movies 'bout themselves'? Now all we need is for the needle to skip and endlessly repeat the line 'making movies about themselves making movies about themselves making movies...' etc etc ad nauseam.<br /><br />The villain as structural skeleton<br /><br />So we've got the climactic car chase (which is good for twenty minutes), and the disappear-up-its-own-arse conversation establishing it (which is good for ten), but what of the other sixty minutes? Obviously we need more cinematic flesh. Not forgetting a skeleton to hold it all together. Since a car chase involves two parties, one being chased and one doing the chasing, surely there must be a bad guy? Did somebody mention 'disappearing' and 'arse' just now? Oh, it was me. Sure enough, in a film that is a homage to old-school Hollywood stuntmen, the villain is, wait for it, an old-school Hollywood stuntman. Just in case we might miss it, he's called Stuntman Mike. Should we all roll our eyes? Or just have a cool conversation about rolling our eyes, and put it in the script? Perhaps we'll even put the bit about putting it in the script, in the script. Ha, I out-Tarantino Tarantino! (Sorry, I'll stop there before we all go mad).<br /><br />Here the ever redoubtable Kurt Russell does the honours as villain. Whilst he might be a poor man's Clint Eastwood, that's still a pretty cool place to be and Russell is definitely good at it. What with this being a Tarantino movie, Russell's character is a pastage of himself as Snake Plissken from <i>Escape From New York</i> as well as himself as Jack Burton doing his John Wayne schtick from <i>Big Trouble In Little China</i>. Are we bored with this loop-tape self-reference yet? Don't blame me, blame Tarantino.<br /><br />All of that aside, Russell's Stuntman Mike villain represents the skeleton holding the film's two acts together. The two acts are mirror image dichotomies, each of which is its own mirror image dichotomy of car-driving victimiser and car-driving victims. The first act involves four cool chicks who are graphically slaughtered by Stuntman Mike, and the second features four cool chicks who aren't, and then go on to turn the tables and kill him instead.<br /><br />Best we not discuss the unexamined absurd nature of the villain. The only way he could make any sense at all is as a mind-control zombie à la <a href="http://churchofnobody.blogspot.com/2009/07/brice-taylor-thanks-for-memories.html">Susan Ford.</a> Hmm... keeping in mind the intense Hollywood connections detailed in <a href="http://www.box.net/shared/dx8i272e88">Ford's book,</a> not forgetting McGowan's <i>Programmed To Kill</i> and <i>Laurel Canyon</i> series, perhaps it should come as no surprise that Hollywood villains bear such a spooky resemblance to such otherwise unlikely creatures. Works for me. As is, Stuntman Mike doesn't make a lick of sense apart from one-who-must-kill-and-be-killed. Besides, if you stop and think about him the movie falls apart. Perish the thought!<br /><br />The flesh on the skeleton<br /><br />Most of the film's time is spent on the aforementioned 2x4 chicks. Ha ha ha, 2x4, nice one. They're possessed of a bit more charm than a piece of 2x4 but only barely. And like a stack of 2x4's there's no telling them apart. Each of the first four is pretty much interchangeable. As are the second lot from the first. With the first four meeting their perversely graphic <i>Hostel</i>-like ends, (followed by a go-nowhere interlude featuring two cops, one of whom explains that the killer is a madman who gets his jollies crashing into chicks), we meet the second lot of women and rub our eyes in amazement. These are the same chicks surely? Oh wait, one of them is a Kiwi. But that aside, it's a good thing there are no costume changes in this flick otherwise we'd have been in a world of confusion.<br /><br />Best I can make out, these women comprise eight versions of Tarantino in drag. They're either black or they want to be, sex-obsessed, and all of their conversations are cool to the point of vacuous. It's my opinion that with this flick, and whether he knows it or not, Tarantino is now just going through the motions and barely a heartbeat away from self-parody. The entire first half of the film is all super cool dialogue and tedious beyond imagining. Anyone who wants to fast forward through the first 45 minutes won't be missing anything. There are no characters as such, no relationships, no big picture, no action, no comedy, nor even any great explication of plot, not that there's much of that either. In looking for a contrast I settled upon Chow's <i>Kungfu Hustle</i>. There, not a single shot or word is wasted, and all to a big picture purpose. Here the big picture is, truth be known, twenty minutes long and it comes at the end. Tarantino declared he wanted to make the 'best damn chase movie ever'. Ha ha ha, hey Quentin, you nearly got there mate, shy by four words. Thus you earn an honorary nobody award for the best <span style="font-style:italic;">Damn, let's cut to the chase</span> movie ever!<br /><br />Post-modernism comes full circle<br /><br />With Tarantino, the means is the masturbatory end - one man, a room full of mirrors, and a perfectly realised circle jerk. Dressed in a stripey yellow go-go suit that is his homage to <i>Death Proof</i>'s Sydney Poitier's homage to <i>Kill Bill</i>'s Uma Thurman's homage to <i>Game Of Death</i>'s Bruce Lee's homage to Quentin Tarantino's homage to himself, he talks to the drag queen in the go-go suit, "Yeah, you like that bitch? I bet you do! C'mon, say it you whore! 'I'm a dirty bitch and I love it!' Ooh yeah!"nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-80427722408200668802009-03-16T14:39:00.018+11:002012-06-08T19:04:51.695+10:00CloverfieldCalling all young film-makers! Here's today's challenge - To come up with a film that contains neither plot, nor characters, nor themes, nor originality, nor even intelligibility, and still get major studio backing and worldwide release. Don't worry, it can be done. And you don't even need a tripod! All you need is fear. Not yours of course, just other people's. And if that fear plugs into some aspect of our current worldwide Sanctity of Banking Campaign™ then your $25,000,000 budget is a shoo-in.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4uPXt_T2-6GzCXTw_XyFXGPj86Knue21tYLIEhqXBYCqwAjmVa_cy1ofMTwEZc8iO_tjNfQEjj5MzpuPU2xPg7csdRtmSSyM8LdRlsmTIEN0H7X3xbfP_UcU1lJ7NrQsr5xze__YhuyPF/s1600-h/cloverfield.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313629827213686882" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4uPXt_T2-6GzCXTw_XyFXGPj86Knue21tYLIEhqXBYCqwAjmVa_cy1ofMTwEZc8iO_tjNfQEjj5MzpuPU2xPg7csdRtmSSyM8LdRlsmTIEN0H7X3xbfP_UcU1lJ7NrQsr5xze__YhuyPF/s400/cloverfield.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 270px;" /></a><br />
Fucking wobbly-cam!<br />
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But first an explanation of the differences between human vision and the camera. Camera technique has come a long way. If you look at the earliest silent films you'll notice that the camera never moves. Every shot was what we now call a lock-off. This was because the first tripods were the same as those used by stills photographers. And since stills didn't need to move (natch), what we now know as pans and tilts didn't exist. But gradually the early film-makers came up with innovations that attempted to replicate the human ability to look about. Sure enough the simplest moves, the aforementioned pans and tilts, were first, and then came dollies, zooms and the final triumph of steadicam.<br />
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But regardless of these advances, the cinematic experience of vision will never - never ever - match actual human vision. Here's an experiment you can try right now. Swing your head left to right. Repeatedly if you like. Was there any motion blur? Did your image of the world in front of you become some variety of unintelligible? Of course not. Our image of our world does not consist of it sliding about. If it did, we'd either lose our balance and fall over, or vomit, or both. Besides, if human vision fell to pieces every time we moved our head (particularly when we were being chased by predators, or were in turn chasing prey of our own) the human race would have died out long ago.<br />
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Fact of the matter is, as visual data is transferred from the eyes to the brain, the brain cleverly reduces what it receives into a series of near-stills that are then plugged in to our spatial sense. Thus, as we swing our head, the world stays still. Sure enough, watch any pan in any film and see how slow it is. It must be this way since even a simple thing like a pan is only the merest approximation of human vision. Try slowly panning your head right now. Notice how your eyes cannot smoothly slide across what you see. Instead they will have to make a series of small staccato flicks from object to object. Your brain only perceives what the eyes stop on. And the in-between visual data, which in a camera would be motion-blurred, is precisely ignored/rejected by your brain. The only time our vision truly goes to motion-blur hell is when we're drunk or in a car-crash. For the other 99.99% of the time we spend looking at things, there is no such thing as motion-blur. It's as unnatural as dogs and cats getting it on.<br />
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So whose brilliant fucking idea is this current rash of movies and TV-shows that feature nothing but hand-held wobbly cam? It's everywhere! Did anyone see The Bourne Ultimatum? I wasn't counting but it seemed like there were maybe three shots in the whole film where a tripod was employed. Every other goddamn shot drunkenly slid this way and that. This can be forgiven for action sequences, sure, but in the first scene of The Bourne Ultimatum, with our hero and his gal doing nothing more than sitting on a verandah watching the sunset, we're subjected to a perfectly idiotic, nausea-inducing wobble. On the small screen it's bearable, but on the big screen it's enough to make me walk out. I frankly view it as a display of contempt for the audience by the director and DOP.<br />
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And then there's Cloverfield! Jesus Christ! Cloverfield goes waaaaay beyond wobbly-cam and bravely heads right into the realm of complete unintelligibility. The camera madly swings this way and that as if operated by an eight-year-old on drugs. Whole swathes of the movie make no sense at all. On any number of occasions we can't even tell if we're upright. In Cloverfield, the answer to that famous drunk question, 'Am I standing up yet?', is - 'Hell if I know!'.<br />
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Clearly, we're in high-concept territory. "What we want to do is make a whole film that looks like it was shot on handicam. The picture will be full-rez okay, not grainy at all, but the camera will always be moving and swinging about and giving us a you-are-there feel." I just made that up but I expect that some bullshit variation of it was uttered at more than one production meeting.<br />
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And it's not only the audience that's being insulted here. As an ex-visual effects guy, I spent the whole time watching this film pitying the 3D animators who had to track in the various destroyed buildings, monsters, and jet fighters etc. Those poor suffering bastards. Okay, quick explanation - when a digital element is inserted into a background plate, the virtual camera in the 3D scene has to precisely match the move of the real world camera that shot the original footage. Otherwise the background and the foreground element won't match. This is easier said than done. Get it wrong and the inserted object slides about in the scene and looks like crap. Way back when, this camera-tracking had to be done by hand. In fact it was one of my specialities and I was the 'it' guy. Until they came up with software that did it for you. Ha! Overnight I went from being the indispensible wonder-boy, to just another 3D hack. Boo hoo. But software or no, this film would have had the animators spitting chips, wanting to kill somebody. If only they had! Never mind...<br />
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Overlooking sins<br />
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If, in totality, a film is possessed of - I don't know - let's just call it 'something good', all manner of sins will be forgiven. Searching for an example now, <a href="http://cinemaofnobody.blogspot.com/2008/01/blueberry.html">Blueberry</a> just popped into my head. With my doppelganger, that saucy Frenchman Vincent Cassel, in the lead role, there were obviously problems with his French accent. And so he was dubbed with an American one. And not well either. But never mind, it's still a great film and the poor dubbing can be overlooked. And likewise, even The Bourne Ultimatum had its good points. It had dialogue that made sense, appealing actors whom we cared about, and a plot with a beginning, middle, and end. Three cheers.<br />
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So what does Cloverfield have? Fucking Nothing! It's as if we took a real movie, clipped out a ten minute sequence from the middle and stretched it into an hour and a half. Subsequently nothing makes sense. At no point is anything explained. What is this monster? Where did it come from? How come 1000kg bombs that can level buildings have no effect on it? What are those little monsters? Why does one bite from them cause you to explode in blood? Who the fuck knows?<br />
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Actually, I expect we're in high-concept territory here again. "No man, this is a slice of real life. If you were actually there you wouldn't know what was going on either. What we want to replicate is this sense of confusion, of not understanding what's happening." Shit, like that's difficult! But it's hardly surprising really. This is a horror movie, which is to say a 'fear' movie. Scaring people is the easiest, most witless thing in the world. Even my favourite six year old niece knows how to say 'Boo!' At least with a six year old it's funny.<br />
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Anyway, if we're going to be witless, let's go the whole hog and dispense with narrative, explanation, hell, every goddamn thing. And then, when people wander out of the cinema shaking their heads saying, 'What the fuck was that all about?' we can cleverly congratulate ourselves for having perfectly achieved our 'high-concept'. Well we would if we were a bunch of pretentious, overpaid, lazy, smug Hollywood gits, that is.<br />
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How to score $25,000,000 without even trying<br />
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Ha! I have a mate who is a real film director. No really, she won at Cannes and everything. And boy, does she ever have a tough time funding her films. It's a goddamn nightmare. Track record? Who gives a shit. As I said to her, if only she'd find some way to insert an Arab villain into the script, the money would be a lock. (Hmm... Imagined Experiment #257 - Let's go through Hollywood's yay-or-nay funding decisions and compare the knockback percentages for all films compared to those specifically featuring Arab villains. That would be one savage statistic, don't you think? In a bar chart with two columns, there'd actually only be one column. The other would be so statistically negligible that it would barely stand out from the baseline.)<br />
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And okay, yes, there are no Arabs in this movie. Ha! Now that I think about it, in much the same way that horror movies are routinely described as a 'cathartic release', rather than a reinforcement of fear, this movie could be described as 911 albeit with Arabs being given a pass. Ha ha ha ha. Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised if someone, somewhere put this idea forward.<br />
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Make no mistake, this film is 911 - right down to a precise recreation of the asbestos-laden pyroclastic flow of concrete dust. If the brief was to recreate 911 without <span style="font-style: italic;">actually</span> doing 911 as such, this film would be the answer. Instead of Arabs we merely insert a non-denominational monster - a monster that can magically drop modern high-rise buildings neatly and vertically into their own basements. Buildings do that doncha know. They did on 911 anyway - three of 'em, no less. And forgetting controlled demolition now, only Arabs do this. And whilst it's true that superficially this monster doesn't resemble an Arab (ie. he's not wearing a kaffiyeh or yelling 'Allahu akbar') he certainly serves to remind us of the inner soul of Arabs who hate us for our freedom and otherwise want to neatly demolish our <s>obsolete and well-insured</s> iconic and treasured landmarks.<br />
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Cloverfield was bankrolled for one reason, and one reason only. With actual depictions of 911 being ho-hum now, it's necessary that we be reminded of what we're fighting for. And with an audience bored with the old 'New Pearl Harbour', this is the equivalent of a quick coat of lacquer to make a worn-out idea fresh again. It's a new 'New Pearl Harbour', dig it.<br />
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At long last, fellatio<br />
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And so! Aspiring young film-makers, there you have it! Forget everything they taught you at film-school. Plot, characters, camera technique, you don't need any of it. Forget beginning, middle, and end. Your film need not make a lick of sense. The only thing your film needs is a high-concept take on the same old 'the-world-is-thus' of Hollywood's money men. And any old piece of shit will do. Hell! Dress it up right, talk the talk, and what would otherwise comprise an unremarkable ten minute sequence in a real movie can suddenly become a complete movie all of its very own. In Hollywood, it's as easy as copping a blow-job.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-1232366126502790162008-11-29T12:44:00.019+11:002010-07-23T15:19:34.182+10:00JFKThis movie has one line of exquisite truth by way of the David Ferrie character played by Joe Pesci -<br /><blockquote>"Shit, this is too fuckin' big for you, you know that? Who did the president, who killed Kennedy, fuck man! It's a mystery! It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The fuckin' shooters don't even know! Don't you get it?"</blockquote>You got that right buddy. And yeah, we get it. Welcome to JFK.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzZ2Y3PYj-5BSNonOyToGD3QUvv6f63KXvRU-j89SB3B7FuAgoyqx38dRkxc93pYwKtK8kJ5LiAc_IcyDW4YPNtPsjzR3s594Jv9BKGwtGcx8ZfQYmyJDvxXJMDnNh1aeOrh7bsP0-Mvfm/s1600-h/jfk.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 271px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzZ2Y3PYj-5BSNonOyToGD3QUvv6f63KXvRU-j89SB3B7FuAgoyqx38dRkxc93pYwKtK8kJ5LiAc_IcyDW4YPNtPsjzR3s594Jv9BKGwtGcx8ZfQYmyJDvxXJMDnNh1aeOrh7bsP0-Mvfm/s400/jfk.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5273889620132476162" /></a><br />Duality<br /><br />So. Is this a good movie, or is it bullshit? Says I - it's both. If nothing else, it's insanely watchable. Hell, I've seen it maybe ten times. The script is as tight as a drum. The dialogue is sharp and pithy. And the cast is spectacular - inspired by The Longest Day, Oliver Stone filled any number of minor roles with Hollywood heavies. Even the small scenes shimmer. A heavy like Walter Matthau signed on for a minute of screen time.<br /><br />Like The Longest Day, JFK's story would rightly be described as 'sprawling'. In spite of this, it effortlessly slides from its 1960's present to an infinite number of disparate flashbacks. If one hadn't seen the film and were to judge it from a complete list of each scene's location and date, the film would appear to be an unintelligible hodge-podge. But we've all seen it and it's no such thing. Instead it flows like a river. That's editing for you. A determined Stone overrode his regular cinema editors by bringing in Hank Corwin who was schooled in the cutting of thirty second commercials. Good move. The film is frame perfect and deserves its Oscar for editing.<br /><br />I have a tendency at this blog to look at what is never discussed in film reviews. We could loosely call this context. But I don't want anyone to confuse me with some soppy post-modernist who dismisses craft. For mine, intent is not enough. If one is going to employ a medium to express one's ideas, its absurd to imagine that whomever is on the receiving end won't pay equal attention to the medium. The medium, and a mastery of it, is not a fascist con to repress the unskilled but otherwise deserving masses. I get this view utterly having been at university and art-school when it was at its height, and I have no time for it. Between Botticelli's chick in a clamshell, and some clammy chick's used tampons rotting on a canvas, only one of them is worth anything. And film is no different. Subsequently, even execrable propaganda like Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down will get multiple viewings, if for no other reason than for having a nice colour grade. I groove on a nice grade and that's cool. As long as we know it for what it is and don't confuse technique with message. On this blog, I merely say it's not an either/or proposition.<br /><br />What's right with this picture<br /><br />One could never confuse JFK with pro-war <span style="font-style:italic;">Hoo-er!</span> bullshit like Black Hawk Down. If we were to distil JFK down to its essential message, it would be that we've all been lied to. And this is laudable - up to a point. Let's not forget that on its release JFK copped more shit than maybe any other film in history. The MSM attacked it like it was some kind of celluloid anti-christ. So it must have something going for it.<br /><br />Even today, right this minute, one can find any number of websites devoted entirely to denouncing JFK and to tearing it down point by point. They're interesting, these websites. If you leave your brain in neutral you'd almost come away thinking that yep, JFK is rubbish. But read them carefully. They're not what they seem. In spite of their <span style="font-style:italic;">'I too was convinced that Stone's movie was truthful until I looked into it...'</span> tone of regretful disenchantment, they're actually disinfo sites.<br /><br />My favourite line on one site pivoted on Stone's assertion that fifty-odd witnesses in Dealey Plaza had declared that they'd heard or seen a shooter on the grassy knoll. 'False!' declared the site's author. There were only twenty witnesses! So there! ...Pathetic. Does the fact that he thinks we're that stupid say more about us, or him? Anyway fuck you, mate.<br /><br />But let's concede that these sites do make some sensible points. Okay, so the chick who declared she was the 'Babushka Lady' was bullshit. But as David Ray Griffin wrote in his masterful piece (of limited hangout), A New Pearl Harbour, individual pieces of evidence do not comprise links in a chain but rather strands in a cable. The fact that Beverly Oliver isn't the Babushka lady doesn't mean that Lee Harvey Oswald's trip to Russia and back (not only unmolested but with his ticket paid for by the US government), somehow makes sense. It doesn't. Oswald was obviously a spook. That strand in the cable still ties one thing to another.<br /><br />And even if a hundred strands in the cable turn out to be rotten, there's still another thousand to connect the evidence to the truth. Frankly as few as three would do the job equally as well. Stone's pointing out that the bullshit nature of the government's story of Kennedy being killed by a lone nut, who was in turn killed by another lone nut, holds water. (BTW - Speaking of Jack Ruby, aka Jacob Rubenstein, it seems he worked as <a href="http://coverthistory.blogspot.com/2006/12/many-researchers-believe-that-document.html">a snitch for Richard Nixon</a> in the HUAC days. Interesting, huh?)<br /><br />JFK says that your government is as wicked and as corrupt as you can imagine. And he's right. But not quite right enough. And not in any useful fashion.<br /><br />What's wrong with this picture<br /><br />Here's a trick you can try at home. When watching any Hollywood film: if it smells bad; if it has a neocon whiff; if it's anti-Arab/Muslim; if it asserts an us-and-them mindset; if it posits an old testament rightness of merciless slaughter; if it's divisive and racist; if it teaches teenagers to be self-obsessed gits; if it glamorises drugs, prostitution, and crime; if it promotes perverse individualism and adds to the centrifugal, self-destructive nature of society, don't waste your time wondering at the director, nor even the producer. In the world of cinema context, these are the also-rans, the glorified step-and-fetchits. The names you want to read, as the titles or credits roll, are those of the executive-producers. These are the true money men. They decide what gets made and what doesn't. If you're watching that hateful movie and you wonder if you'll see the names of the usual suspects listed, as God is my witness, you'll never be disappointed. It's the same thing every fucking time.<br /><br />And so it is with this film. Two men are solely responsible for JFK's existence, they being Terry Semel and Arnon Milchan. Without them, Stone's dream of a JFK movie would have remained just that, a dream. These two are brave men who've never shied from making controversial films. But not too controversial. In some ways executive producers are less about what kinds of films do get made than they are about what kinds of films <span style="font-style:italic;">don't</span> get made. Subsequently, if the question is 'Why was Kennedy killed?' the answer will be, 'Because of the Vietnam war.' Thus the blame lies with the FBI, the CIA, the MIC, the Italian mafia and assorted Cubans. The answer is emphatically not, 'Because of Kennedy's attempt, by way of Executive Order 11110, to end the Rothschilds-owned Fed and its money-as-debt monopoly.' Heaven forfend!<br /><br />This control of the money supply is a tricky business. It's tricky because it carries no benefit at all for the 99.99% of the population who are subject to it. All it does is impoverish them. The only people to benefit from it are the immediate owners and the handful of corrupt minions who enable it. Subsequently it is absolutely crucial that no one knows what it is, how it works, or even that it exists. If they did there'd be neo-classical buildings in flames and bodies in expensive suits dangling from the lamp posts in front of them. Happily control of the money supply provides one with insane amounts of, well, money. Never mind those top 100 rich lists, the Rothschilds have more money than all of them put together. Hell, you could throw in everybody not on the list (and that's a lot of people) and the Rothschilds would still trump them.<br /><br />With that kind of throwing down money, ensuring that no one knows the truth about the Fed is not only do-able but a sine qua non. That the masses remain ignorant is the single imperative, the only thing that counts. What the Rothschilds require is not so much a marketing division but an anti-marketing division. Their product doesn't require advertising - they don't need to convince people to use it. They merely need to convince them that this is how it is and that there's nothing to be done about it. In fact this last thought would be a thought too far. Do people ask what's to be done about the sun coming up in the morning? Hardly. That is how those who control the money supply wish us to view their actions. They need people to view their money-as-debt villainy as an Act of God, a thing beyond question.<br /><br />And sure, they have to kill an upstart president every now and then. People exist who can't be bought and occasionally they make it to a position where they might interfere in the banker's business. But never mind, when you control the money supply, killing a president is just one of the those things you have to do. Sure enough. But underneath the man who can't be bought exists everyone else who can be. To wit - the FBI, the CIA, and sundry penny-ante Mafia and Cubans. Just throw the money out there and tell them to earn their pay. And their plans involve a patsy? Like the bankers give a shit about the details.<br /><br />Their only concern is that the business carries on and no one finds out about it. And that's when executive producers fulfil their roles in terms of the films that do get made and the films that don't. That's why Terry Semel and Arnon Milchen gave Oliver Stone $40,000,000. Happily Stone's film makes no mention of Executive Order 11110 and instead points the finger at everyone but those who had the most to lose. The film that mentions Executive Order 11110 doesn't exist and nor will it ever. The seal must be complete. All media must be controlled. Any medium that can be bought, will be. It's not like the Rothschilds have anything better to do with their money. And any medium that can't be bought will be shut down. The absence of the Rothschilds' business must be total, remember.<br /><br />And here I am, not under control. The net allows me to speak publicly without any executive producer being able to give me a thumbs down. Not for long, ha ha. This internet we know and love? Enjoy it while it lasts boys and girls because, in much the same way that Kennedy was a threat, so too is the net. As it stands it cannot be allowed to live. The Rothschilds have more money than God and nothing better to spend it on.<br /><br />But never mind, when the net is gone we'll still have cracking films like JFK to watch. Terrific cast! Marvellous editing!nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-16019412483130086232008-09-14T11:11:00.020+10:002012-05-20T08:37:08.671+10:00괴물 Gwoemul - The HostWhat a lot of horror movies there are. Was it always thus? Perhaps this is a topic for another review - Saw or Hostel, maybe. Let's not attack the central question of horror here, nor why there it so much of it now. We'll skip the 'why' of the genre, in favour of the 'how'. Let me just say, I view horror as a shit genre. But in amongst the shit, one occasionally comes across pearls. Apart from being pretty in and of themselves, such pearls can be instructive.<br /><br />In this regard, <i><i>The Host</i></i> is a salutary lesson. If you do happen to like movies that scare the pants off you, <i><i>The Host</i></i> succeeds admirably. But if that's all it had, I wouldn't give you tuppence for it. Scaring people is the easiest and most witless thing in the world. It's everything besides this instilling of fear that sets <i><i>The Host</i></i> apart. Sure enough, all the reviews of <i><i>The Host</i></i> concentrated on the scariness of it. God forbid anyone should dwell on the context in which it was surrounded. In the West context doesn't exist.<br /><br />Lessons aside, <i><i>The Host</i></i> is a cracker. It's gorgeously shot, edited, and has an inspired, um, 'whimsical' soundtrack that vaguely reminds me perhaps of Nino Rota of Fellini fame. It's simultaneously exciting, brave, sad, and nutty. The cast is spectacular, equally up to the task of the film's comedy and tragedy, both of which are intense. I don't know that there's a single Hollywood horror flick that has the emotional punch that this film does. Actually, let's scratch the word 'horror' there - this film has greater emotional depth than most Hollywood flicks, period. And sure enough, hats off to the director, Bong Joon-Ho. He's really something.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB9kIozrjTobo6STIdBX_ecMY_1AQJxT8nnnvpiubxw1FNe58senhqbfcb2BwbrQl1ElXKsC7n91t0wpVMEjfbVYNASCVW-_9VswGk06uAB3S2RGpom0rMeV_NhPaFNREy69jEhbFMJV8d/s1600-h/host.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB9kIozrjTobo6STIdBX_ecMY_1AQJxT8nnnvpiubxw1FNe58senhqbfcb2BwbrQl1ElXKsC7n91t0wpVMEjfbVYNASCVW-_9VswGk06uAB3S2RGpom0rMeV_NhPaFNREy69jEhbFMJV8d/s400/host.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245678882279154594" /></a><br />BTW - The 'Host' is a crummy title. It refers to a single reference in the film related to a red-herring subplot. I'm not spoiling anything if I say there is no host. Gwoemul (pronounced 'gway-mul') translates literally as 'monster' which in Korea would have been both catchy and succinct. I expect that the American distributors chose not to use this name because other films with this title exist already. I can imagine the meeting that would have discussed finding an English name - a roomful of suits displaying their creative genius. How eye-glazingly tedious it would have been. Me, I think a far better title would have been 'Saving Hyun-Seo'. My imagined suits would have declared this 'not scary enough and too foreign', I expect. What stupid people suits are.<br /><br />The Victims<br /><br />Ordinarily, in Hollywood horror, the victims are carefully chosen. Within each choice are subtle messages to shape our understandings. Priests should always die of course, along with those who are demonstrable in their faith. As should drug takers, those of a lascivious bent, those who are too straight-laced, and sure enough, anyone who asks questions or otherwise suggests some path other than killing and slaughter. God spare the latter, because Hollywood's killers never will. Mind you, I just throw these out loosely. I am no note-taking expert on horror. But others are, and documentaries (all self-serving, natch) exist that analyse what it all means. The key point here with <i><i>The Host</i></i> is that there are no such messages. The creature is not an avenging spirit. It has no agenda. It is nothing more than a dispassionate predator of nature. Run fast and zig-zag and perhaps you won't be eaten.<br /><br />To be honest there is only one victim who counts, and that is the aforementioned Hyun-Seo, the youngest member of the family that is the heart and soul of this film. Arguably the monster in this film is irrelevant. The script could have been rewritten with the girl having been: abducted by gangsters; taken by the government; or just plain lost, and the heartbreak story of the family would have differed barely at all. It is the intensity of the family's journey from grief, to hope, to mad desperation, and Pyrrhic sideways victory that makes this such a substantial movie.<br /><br />The Monster<br /><br />Certainly there have been many cinema monsters that were a commentary on scientific and/or military hubris. A recent example being the idiotic Deep Blue Sea. And so it is here, but with a very specific geo-political edge. South Korea, like Japan, is an occupied country. My sole experience of Korea (ha! pun!) is the three hours transit I spent in Seoul Airport on the way to Tokyo one time. I was astounded (not really) to see the staggering numbers of US servicemen there. And in Japan I heard many stories of people doing visa runs to Korea who were treated like shit there because it was assumed that they were soldiers in civvies. They weren't of course, but the Koreans are past caring. Keep in mind that during the Korean war the US military was every bit as happy to see South Koreans die as North Koreans. The more dead gooks, the better. No surprise then that the occupiers are not loved.<br /><br />Beyond this initial history, Korea, like Japan, has had many many high profile crimes committed by US servicemen, with the military perpetually refusing to surrender them to Korean justice. The Koreans groove on this in precisely the same way Americans would if they were occupied and gooks were raping the white women and getting away with it. Which is to say, they fucking hate it. Koreans were equally unimpressed when the US military dumped Formaldehyde and assorted industrial toxins in the Han River in 2000. Here, this front-page news event is re-imagined with a toothy aquatic mutant as the result. <br /><br />The director has declared that <i><i>The Host</i></i> is more than an anti-American film, and he's right of course. Still, what sets this film apart in terms of indictment is its vicious and undissipated nature. Western versions invariably couch their 'indictments' in uselessly vague terms, or otherwise make excuses that render whatever point they were trying to make worthless. Take The Deep Blue Sea. Please! Its super sharks (which madly seem to possess a post-doctoral understanding of architectural engineering) were the results of well-meaning Big Pharma scientists trying to make the world a better place. Ha ha ha, get fucked!<br /><br />The Environment<br /><br />I'm referring here to the cinematic environment. Think hard - how many horror films have you seen that were 'confined', which is to say, they ensured the isolation of the protagonists in some remote location? In film after film, there's no escape because everyone's stuck: on a boat; in a spaceship; in a house; on a planet; in a small town; in a shopping mall; on and on, ad infinitum. It's a standard cinematic horror convention.<br /><br />There's several reasons for this. Firstly it keeps down the costs because less sets are needed. Secondly it stops people escaping. If they could escape, there'd be no movie. Remember, in horror movies we don't actually give a shit about the survivors. They only occupy the last five minutes of the flick (sometimes less). It's the killing that counts - it doesn't take up 95% of the movie for nothing. Thirdly the confined environment allows the director to get away with cardboard cut-out characters. It's not easy making real, flesh and blood people that an audience might actually care about. Nor does it serve the purpose of horror. We the audience are actually meant to enjoy the killing, which is the point of the whole exercise. We are not meant to mourn the victims, so much as be impressed by the new and graphic means by which they were killed. 'Wow, that was pretty cool where the spike went through his arse and came out his mouth!'<br /><br />Believe it or not, this idea of the cast of cardboard cut-outs is invariably held up as some kind of achievement. "Well, the interesting thing about this script is how it takes a social dynamic of six complete strangers who are thrown together and examines how they might each behave when the 'insert-creature-here' is trying to kill them." Hmm... what an interesting philosophical question... Will they scream? Or will they say, 'Fuck you!' and die bravely? Or will they just gurgle and have blood come out their mouth? It's what passes for an intellectual discussion amongst fans of horror.<br /><br />Significantly, <i><i>The Host</i></i> completely blows this convention. The film's action takes place in a city full of people. At the monster's first rampaging appearance a cast of thousands flee. There are no 'confines' as such apart from the high walls in which Hyun-Seo is trapped. She thus becomes the centre of gravity drawing in the hitherto centrifugal family. The director chooses not only to have an expansive film environment, but astoundingly turns the tables and has the environment, in this case the government response to the monster, become the greatest threat to the family. To a certain extent, the monster is the least of the family's problems. Far more of the film's time is devoted to the family battling the government than the monster itself.<br /><br />The Government<br /><br />What kind of crazy government is this? Says I - a realistic one! Not one single representative of the government does anything of any use at any time. The entire government monster-inspired programme is an idiotic, mad charade. The government is not only uninterested in capturing or killing the monster, it is also perfectly unconcerned about what the survivors have to say about its behaviour. All of the government's energies are devoted to the 'virus'. Virus? What virus? Exactly - there isn't one.<br /><br />Is this an indictment of the US government and their bullshit War On Terror? Not quite. The government here did not cynically create this monster to implement a pre-planned fascist roll-out like the US is doing. The Koreans here merely abjectly went along with the US government's opportunistic pseudo-science diktat. Subsequently this film could more correctly be described as a criticism of all those US allies who've pathetically piled in on the US's bullshit War On Bottles Of Shampoo, if you can dig it. The film's message to the citizens of democracies in thrall to the US is crystal clear - your government is bullshit, and their US inspired message is bullshit too. If you hold to your belief that your government is there to help you, you're deluded. Did you notice how many 'you' and 'yours' there were in that last sentence? Quite right too. It's YOUR government.<br /><br />Now. Can anyone think of any US film with a message even half as damning as this? If this were a US film, the government (wicked rogue agents aside) would be depicted as a) helpful and concerned, b) the only people who will save you, and c) the enemy of wicked rogue agents, ha ha. Welcome to Hollywood, the government propaganda machine.<br /><br />The Horror<br /><br />Well, here's the irony. The horror is the least important aspect of this film. I declare the director a sneaky genius. He's taken the horror mantle and made a whole other movie. The monster of this film is the cousin of Hitchcock's McGuffin once removed. Believe it or not, this film is not so much a horror film as a family drama. Don't be dismayed by this description. Think Little Miss Sunshine with special effects.<br /><br />I fell in love with this family. They were such losers. The only thing they had going for them was their unquenchable spirit. The joy of it! You've never seen a scene quite like the family's reunification at the funeral. It's utterly absurd and utterly real. It's a heartbreaker and a comedy masterpiece. Only the deftest of directorial hands could pull this off.<br /><br /><i><i>The Host</i></i> is one of those films where the end leaves one broken-hearted at the thought of never seeing this family again. Sure enough the film's success (it was Korea's highest grossing film ever) means that there will be a sequel. But I'm not getting excited. In fact, I'll lay odds that the money men will take over and everything that's good about this film will be completely absent in the sequel. All it and the original will have in common is the monster. Typical. Unsurprisingly, the director has declared he's uninterested. Good on him. Bugger the sequel, just keep your eye on Bong Joon-Ho. He's a cracker.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-28288592624052912582008-09-01T11:13:00.010+10:002010-10-29T10:40:59.419+11:00The AristocratsThis is a film based on a single famous joke. It's the filthiest joke in existence. In this film we hear it over and over again, along with discussions of what it all means. <br /><br />I was actually slated to appear in this film, believe it or not. The director and crew turned up at my house, the camera rolled, and I told my version. Here it is -<br /><br /><blockquote>A man walks into a talent agent's office and says the agent should put him and his family on his books. 'Why? What do you do?' says the agent. 'Well, we all come out on stage...' says the man and he then goes on to describe how each member of the family performs the most perverse, violent, and appalling acts on each other. Nothing is left to the imagination - incest, pedophilia, bestiality, coprophagia, sadism, you name it. It's goes on and on. Everyone in the family, kids included, gets raped, brutalised and tortured - all rising to an unspeakable crescendo with blood, fecal matter and bodily fluids spraying in all directions.<br />'Bloody Hell!', says the agent, 'What the heck do you call that?'<br />'Jewish Comedy!' he says.</blockquote><br />Well, that was the end of my Hollywood career. Humourless gits. Never mind!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIL5eZUnkbwugb-_BPbSoqVBkGAlOSq4FJdHV5PrBoKPHm8GT1s4vU-O9pxUNUzEWsNHoqELyprQ66BPfKrLaTwwbS-kSIBRZo_2ojkXOm5X7FenhWYJAYsL8XYXnlRoCeFATQLoC7hjC8/s1600-h/The_Aristocrats.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIL5eZUnkbwugb-_BPbSoqVBkGAlOSq4FJdHV5PrBoKPHm8GT1s4vU-O9pxUNUzEWsNHoqELyprQ66BPfKrLaTwwbS-kSIBRZo_2ojkXOm5X7FenhWYJAYsL8XYXnlRoCeFATQLoC7hjC8/s400/The_Aristocrats.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245383250547018674" /></a><br />It's not easy being a comedian. It's all in the timing, sure, but it's also all about having a team of writers to come up with the gags. What to do without your writers? Thank God for this filthy chestnut! The only parts of it one needs to remember are the talent agent introduction, and the 'Aristocrats!' punch line. The in-between bits you can make up, limited only by your imagination. And all you have to do is come up with the most extreme combination of bodily functions, perverse sex, and violence.<br /><br />Gosh, that's weird... those three things are precisely the first three of the four gags that comprise the totality of <a href="http://cinemaofnobody.blogspot.com/2008/06/jewish-farce-4.html">Jewish farce.</a> The fourth was racism. Hmm... there doesn't seem to be any racism in this gag. Never mind, this joke is nothing if not versatile. With a flick of the wrist, one clever comedian appearing in this film turns the punch line into 'Nigger Cunts!' Bingo! Four from four.<br /><br />Might this be the most Jewish joke ever? I didn't count, but easily half of the hundred or so comedians appearing in this flick were Jewish. The rest just wish they were - like Robin Williams. Honestly, could he be any more Jewish? Otherwise, what's going on here? Why is it that the lowest of low-brow smut, violence and pornography invariably seems to come from Jewish sources? Unsurprisingly in this film's discussion of The Aristocrats and its implications, all is dissected except for this angle.<br /><br />Same same on wikipedia. Well, no surprises there. Wikipedia gives this joke an undeserved pedigree straight from the English canon, by way of Charles Dickens, no less. Here it is -<br /><br /><blockquote>'He has a very nice face and style, really,' said Mrs Kenwigs.<br />'He certainly has,' added Miss Petowker. 'There's something in his appearance quite—dear, dear, what's that word again?'<br />'What word?' inquired Mr. Lillyvick.<br />'Why—dear me, how stupid I am,' replied Miss Petowker, hesitating. 'What do you call it when Lords break off door-knockers and beat policemen, and play at coaches with other people's money, and all that sort of thing?'<br />'Aristocratic?' suggested the collector.</blockquote><br />Hmm... hands up who can spot the fundamental difference here? For mine, Dickens is commenting on the dichotomy of the behaviour of the ruling classes and how they would wish to represent themselves. The Aristocrats joke is utterly free of any such societal reflection. I doubt anyone hearing it would laugh and say, "It's funny because it's true. The aristocracy does like to like to eat fecal matter, ha ha ha!" Says I, the connection between The Aristocrats joke and the piece from Dickens is superficial, self-serving bullshit.<br /><br />The point of The Aristocrats joke is to most perfectly embrace extreme perversity. One 'succeeds' with The Aristocrats by plumbing the depths of human iniquity. Actually scraping the bottom of the barrel falls short. One must dig right through the bottom, find a sewer line, and then wallow in the excrement.<br /><br />Have we tapped into some fundamental human trait here? Do other people, particularly those without Jews redefining their culture for them, do this too? I scratch my head and fail to come up with anyone. Certainly other people are earthy. Straight away I think of the Japanese. Believe it or not, they are a tremendously earthy people. In shops you can buy 'unchi' hats shaped like an idealised spiralling turd (unchi = pooh). Pooh is part of life and they're cool with that. Granma might purse her lips, but that's about it.<br /><br />I have a feeling that Jews are on their own with this one. Certainly others are influenced to follow them. But Jewish culture leads the way. It's like a wellspring of shit. I imagine some arse-about version of Tom Joad's speech - "Wherever there's smut and pornography, we'll be there. Wherever there's a dildo being hammered up an arse for comedic effect, we'll be there. And when the people are eating shit and laughing about it, we'll be there too." Dig it, it's from <i>The Grapes Of Roth</i>, ha ha.<br /><br />I understand I might make people uncomfortable on account of the fact that they watched this film, and all those other Jewish farces, and laughed their heads off. Don't worry I did it too. And in small doses I don't know that there's much wrong with it. Even Shakespeare had his moments of coarseness. But a few decades ago there was precious little of this sort of thing and now we seem to be wallowing in it. Is there any purpose served by this? Unsurprisingly people have sought to justify it, indeed to hold it up as some kind of worthy societal campaign.<br /><br />Once more, wikipedia offers up the first appearance of The Aristocrats in print. It seems it was by way of another Jewish fellow, Gershon Legman, in his 1975 book, <i>Rationale of the Dirty Joke</i>. Legman is the fellow who '...more than any other, made research into erotic folklore and erotic verbal behavior academically respectable'. This was driven by his belief 'that American culture was permissive of graphic violence in proportion to, and as a consequence of, its repression of the erotic.' Okay, perhaps he's got a point. But in what way is Jewish humour's turning of incest, coprophagia, and bestiality (etc. etc. ad nauseam) into common coinage, helpful in dealing with the 'repression of the erotic'?<br /><br />Does embracing one extreme lessen the other opposite extreme? Or reinforce it? By what mad logic is a society that is shocked by a naked breast going to be cured by the media airing discussions about having children swallow semen mixed with shit? Honestly. What madness is this?<br /><br />It seems that we in the West are now given to vaguely agreeing that it is good to smash taboos and that somehow, once they've all been smashed, we will truly be free, or something. Really? Or is this just more bullshit? Does anyone remember the scene in <i>Groundhog Day</i> where Bill Murray is driving two local barfly buddies home? Murray - "It's the same things your whole life. 'Clean up your room', 'Stand up straight', 'Pick up your feet', 'Take it like a man', 'Be nice to your sister', 'Don't mix beer and wine, ever'. Oh yeah, 'Don't drive on the railroad track.'" Says the barfly as they drive into the path of an oncoming train, "Er, Phil. That's one I happen to agree with..."<br /><br />Three cheers for the voice of common sense. I know that this is a variation of modernist heresy, but perhaps there are sexual taboos worth having too? "Er, Phil. That one about not raping children is one I happen to agree with..." Would anyone say that that was an extremist view? Or would we say such views were fair enough? Okay, so why do we think so little of films like this that make light of it, that push it into the vernacular as a subject with no great opprobrium attached to it? How is it that Andy Richter can regale his own infant, whom he is holding in his arms, with a story about fucking the infant's mother up the arse and then eating shit, and no one bats an eyelid? What the fuck is wrong with him? What the fuck is wrong with us? And what do you have to do to be called a 'sick freak' in this joint? I shake my head.<br /><br />Don't dismiss all this with, 'It's only a movie'. American kids are now perfectly familiar with perversities that I as a teenager had no idea existed. Hell, I expect they know of things that never even occurred to Caligula. But then again, neither I nor Caligula had films like this to shape our thoughts. But that's today's America for you - a culture that would make Caligula blush. And all courtesy of the Jews and their none-may-stand-against-it media machine.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Anyway, a man walks into a talent agents and says, "I've got a great new act." <br />Says the agent, "Does it have infantile gross-out humour, perverse sex, mindless brutality, and racism?"<br />"Does it ever! It represents a new nadir in human depravity."<br />"Boychik, welcome to Hollywood!"nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-1589308418665748442008-07-27T16:39:00.017+10:002011-04-30T07:16:41.969+10:00Bloody SundayDid somebody say U2? Not me - whatever it was they had got lost when they started hanging with Paul Wolfowitz and hawking credit cards. Forget them. Watch this film instead and see how there are some events that will never be done justice by any pop ditty regardless of how many people flick their bics.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD_Wv_sUWTxYu4-p41uNZJGQJrVQmv7Xww_ynE13bl7Y-X20heXZFgBd_0fnCRpXu0ht-ZVaHmmMDe5AyYjgoesq3kTPx4Te1bsFjG-eCH2Ajq-z4-vUAG3Vy3BiJtTNMH5C9c059eAlfa/s1600-h/Bloody_Sunday_movie_poster.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD_Wv_sUWTxYu4-p41uNZJGQJrVQmv7Xww_ynE13bl7Y-X20heXZFgBd_0fnCRpXu0ht-ZVaHmmMDe5AyYjgoesq3kTPx4Te1bsFjG-eCH2Ajq-z4-vUAG3Vy3BiJtTNMH5C9c059eAlfa/s400/Bloody_Sunday_movie_poster.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245383747132669138" /></a><br />Paul Greengrass's retelling of Bloody Sunday will do your head in. We're all sick of docudrama and wobbly-cam now, sure, but here it works to perfection. Everything in Bloody Sunday feels very, very real. And its unromanticised discussion of non-violence provides no pat answers, only ambiguity. No happy endings here. This is not Attenborough's Gandhi. In Bloody Sunday, non-violence does not win the day. The despair in the eyes of those in the film who'd held out hope for a non-violent resistance is crushing. The lead character's prediction that the IRA's numbers would be swelled all come true. The Catholics of Derry learned the truth of non-violence. It's not non-violent at all. It's extremely violent and the violence runs one way.<br /><br />Arguably the events of Bloody Sunday contributed to the peace that currently exists in Northern Ireland. It didn't do it on its own of course. There were many many bloody events on that particular centuries-long journey. We're familiar with a handful of them. We saw In the Name Of The Father, Michael Collins, and the more recent The Wind That Shakes The Barley. These events helped pave the road to peace.<br /><br />Go read that last sentence again because it's actually bullshit. The murderous events depicted in those movies didn't pave the road to peace at all. They achieved nothing beyond leaving more bodies in the bloody trail left by a brutal murderous occupation. This trail, in and of itself, leads to nowhere but to more of the same. The road to peace requires an about-face and a journey back over those bodies. What actually paves this road is the awareness, by those other than the oppressed, that the bodies exist. In a campaign of non-violence, it's this awareness that counts. This awareness leads to the crucial answer to the crucial problem - the oppressor's own view of what they're doing. And this requires the shaming of the oppressors in the eyes of others. Passively allowing oneself to be shot, in and of itself, achieves nothing.<br /><br />Without opposition and left to their own devices those who'd shoot women and children will carry on doing so without batting an eyelid. Unless their own mothers, wives, and daughters are sickened and appalled by what they've done, it's all good. Those with a mindset that they are amongst a lesser people actually get a thrill from shooting them down. When they go home to their families and friends and are met with approval, the mindset is reinforced. What other people think of you is a tremendously powerful stimulant. If everyone says it's good, it must be good.<br /><br />Reading the above, did the occupation of Palestine pop into your head? It was in mine as I wrote it. Indeed thoughts of Palestine floated through my head the whole time I watched this film. Interestingly, the Paras in Bloody Sunday (the most murderous of the English occupiers in Ireland at the time) wear a distinctive paratrooper's helmet that spookily resembles the helmets of Israeli troops. In fact it's arguable that Bloody Sunday is as close to a filmic depiction of the Israeli occupation of Palestine as we're ever going to get.<br /><br />It falls far short of course. The famous events in Derry on January 30, 1972, take place virtually every day in Palestine. Only thirteen people actually died in Bloody Sunday. I don't mean to belittle this, but the scenes of Derry Hospital's corridors stacked with corpses is standard stuff in Gaza. Bloody Sunday falls every week there. So where's the outrage? Where are the movies? Where's the U2 song? When will these murderous Ashkenazi motherfuckers, who make the English in Ireland look like hapless amateurs, be shamed in the eyes of the world?<br /><br />No time soon - certainly not if they have anything to do with it. And they do have something to do with it. The media is theirs. It's a bloc-media under their control. The point I'm making here, about non-violence only working by means of its airing and public shaming, is one the ethnic cleansing Ashkenazis of the world understand utterly. They wrote the book on human perception. No one understands better the schism between reality and misrepresentation and the inhuman shit one can get away with when armed with this knowledge.<br /><br />If you control the media, you control public perception. If you control public perception, you render non-violent opposition to yourself worthless. In fact it would pay you to promote non-violence since it's so much easier to kill people when they don't shoot back. Gee whiz, and how has non-violence been portrayed in the bloc-media? Think back now to all the discussions of the rightness of non-violence we've been party to, and try to think of any mention of the beyond-crucial aspect of its depiction and subsequent shaming of its perpetrators. Anything? No, me neither. There's been no such discussion because that would in no way suit the media and their support of Ashkenazi ethnic cleansing.<br /><br />Ireland is another story. Those who own the bloc-media have no stake in Ireland that will be harmed by our outrage at yesteryear's oppression. Thus we are permitted to shake our collective fist at the English of decades ago.<br /><br />In some ways I'm not so much reviewing this film as I am a film that doesn't exist. That it doesn't exist is no criticism of Bloody Sunday. It's a great film. But the past is history and what's happening today, right this very minute, is another story. And that story is a film that will never be made.<br /><br />---<br /><br />And soon enough we'll all have a taste of what the Irish copped and what the Palestinians still do. Will we choose violence or non-violence? Will we instil fear or shame? Like Bloody Sunday, I say there's a case to be made for both. But really there is no pat answer. But here's a thought to keep in mind (by way a bastardised zen koan) - If a monk burns in a plaza and no one sees, will it be of any use?nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-555567339441718782008-07-19T12:47:00.009+10:002011-11-05T12:17:09.211+11:00ShooterThe Oxford Dictionary says that subversion is the undermining of the power and authority of a government or institution. Ayah! He's started his essay with a dictionary definition. How sophomoric. But don't worry, I only quote it here so that I can tear it to pieces. And that bloody Oxford Dictionary - what the hell would they know?<br /><br />Better we dig down to the derivation. If we were to transliterate the Latin base of subversion we'd get 'to turn from below'. But if a government was of the people, by the people, for the people, how would it be subversive if it was directed not by the pointy end of the pyramid but by the broad base below? Don't the people decide the course of a democracy? Ha ha ha ha. Sorry, that was just me being comedic. Let's just say that this use of 'below' isn't very instructive. Best we take it to mean 'beneath the surface', which is to say 'not perceived', which is to say 'hidden'. Now we're getting somewhere.<br /><br />And why does the thing being subverted need to be a pyramid structure with 'power and authority' at the pointy end? Might not a culture be subverted? A culture isn't led. It evolves. And yet it too can be steered in a hidden fashion. Here I could go off on a long rant about television and advertising. But to hell with that, I've got a film to tear apart. I'll leap into it and then somehow cleverly tie it all up at the end.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcPMLar5TjOBIkYB7F-Ebqz6NTibWN-DMEivP0ezPvbuw_INADX68Tr7B1jCdfaXdLlJ6jC0HYWEfCZh6q2ttqe33yvCJEK5Vj5Z3iLxpqvULoEht97EzfvK30Zgv-im2IyzmiZzz_0xIc/s1600-h/Shooter_poster.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcPMLar5TjOBIkYB7F-Ebqz6NTibWN-DMEivP0ezPvbuw_INADX68Tr7B1jCdfaXdLlJ6jC0HYWEfCZh6q2ttqe33yvCJEK5Vj5Z3iLxpqvULoEht97EzfvK30Zgv-im2IyzmiZzz_0xIc/s400/Shooter_poster.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245384100003360450" /></a><br />Shooter's claim to fame was that it was 'subversive'. When it first came out the net was buzzing with chat about the film's subversive anti-government statements, themes and plot elements. Right there! On the big screen! Well I hate to tell you, but that's not how subversion works. Not in Hollywood. The 'subversion' on the big screen is a cover for the real subversion - the subversion of Western acuity.<br /><br />Our hero as loyal servant<br /><br />We meet our hero, the ever reliable swinging dick Mark Wahlberg, perched on a cliff top with a sniper rifle as he and his spotter partner shoot black people. Where are they? Who are they shooting? Why are they shooting them? Who cares? Our shooters aren't German. There will be no Nuremberg trial for them. In this American film, the fact that they blindly obeyed orders reflects well upon them. God forbid they should be condemned for it.<br /><br />Foolishly our hero's partner has fished out a photo of his girlfriend. We all roll our eyes - that's him fucked. In spite of the fact that, tactically, the extraction of our hero and his partner's body would have been the simplest thing in the world, those leading the operation shut it all down and leave Mr Wahlberg to his fate. And haven't we seen this plot device over and over again? Don't worry that it makes no sense. Cut to the next scene.<br /><br />Our hero as sceptic<br /><br />Wahlberg now lives as a pony-tailed rugged mountain man with only his dog for company. Can anyone guess the dog's fate? Never mind that, what's going on with the art direction? Red meat for conspiracy theorists! Inside his cabin, right there next to his internet computer, a prominently displayed copy of the 911 Commission Report! Wow. And what's that on his computer? Is that zmag.org? Wow again.<br /><br />But wait a minute. What do we really have here? The 911 report was a pathetic whitewash. If Wahlberg's character was really a conspiracy guy wouldn't he have a copy of, I don't know, David Ray Griffin's New Pearl Harbour? If I was to say that the 911 report here is merely product placement for the government cover-up would I be wrong? And then there's zmag.org. I briefly subscribed to zmag before I figured out it was a useless blind alley. Zmag is about as kosher as it gets - you could read everything on it and learn nothing at all. No surprise that the 'z' people are now spamming my email address. And then there's Wahlberg's line, 'Let's see what lies they're trying to sell us today'. What a curious thing to say. Why would a contrarian say this about what's ostensibly an alternative site? He sounds more like some kind of Rush Limbaugh fan.<br /><br />Why don't I rewrite the scene? Wahlberg sits down at his computer. Behind him is a poster of the twin towers with the words 'Inside Job' in big letters. On the computer screen we see a flashy corporate news website. 'Yeah, I've had my fill of bullshit already,' says Wahlberg as he clicks the tab and whatreallyhappened.com pops up. 'Now, let's have some truth,' he says. There, that wasn't too difficult was it? Ha! In my dreams! In a Hollywood movie, this scene is an abject impossibility.<br /><br />Our hero as patsy<br /><br />Despite his government having left him behind to become a naked corpse tied to a truck, our hero is still a patriot. Go figure. When some obvious bad-attitude spooks led by Danny Glover visit him (and menace him with guns no less) all it takes is Glover's Congressional Medal of Honour to make him all gooey. Glover has an important mission and Wahlberg is the only man for the job.<br /><br />Says Glover, 'The president is going to be shot and we want you, a pissed off loner with three names and a house full of guns, to scout out locations and otherwise behave like an assassin.'<br />Wahlberg, ever distrustful, hangs tough, 'Do you promise not to photograph me, set me up as the lone gunman and then shoot me?'<br />'Yep, scout's congressional medal of honour', says Glover. <br />'Hmm... that sounds pretty good,' says Wahlberg clearly impressed.<br /><br />Oh wait, that was me re-writing the script again. The actual script features some half-baked waffle about how if we don't stop the assassin, tyrants might run the country. Gosh! Anything but that!<br /><br />I'm going to be charitable (above and beyond the call of duty) and say that this film is not completely crap on account of its message (unintentional sure) that reading zmag obviously rots your brain. Well, that's the only reason I can come up with to explain Wahlberg climbing back into bed with such obvious bullshit artists. If only he'd spent time on wrh he'd have known better. Perhaps I should provide some other useful tips for any other brain-rotted zmag readers who might be here taking a break from their Noam Chomsky 'Conspiracy? What conspiracy?' Diet - <br />-When the cop comes into the interrogation room, puts a gun (or any other thing) on the table and tells you to check it out, you politely decline.<br />-When Peter Power from Visor Consultants calls you about a training exercise for London Transport and he wants you and your three buddies to play the role of 'backpackers', you politely decline.<br />-And when the government tells you that there are foreigners who 'hate us for our freedom' and that you should go overseas and kill them, you politely decline.<br />Or you can just tell them to go fuck themselves if you prefer. I'm good either way. <br /><br />Our hero as avenger<br /><br />Now it's time to kick arse. Or 'ass', in this case. (Sure enough, non-Americans think 'ass' sounds exactly as stupid as Americans think 'arse' sounds - funny that). Anyway, heads explode, limbs fly off and people are burned alive with napalm. All good clean fun and all thanks to our hero. It's a good thing we don't do body counts anymore because, assertions of mass graves aside, our hero maybe kills fifty times as many people as the bad guys. In fact now that I think about it, we see the bad guys in this film kill precisely one person.<br /><br />Perhaps I should mention the bad guys. According to this film, made by the co-religionists of the people who own the US Fed, it's the oil industry! It's a popular theme, this mad notion that the White House is full of oil men, isn't it? But it's bullshit. Neither Bush nor Cheney have anything much to do with oil. But the oil industry makes a good scapegoat doesn't it? And speaking of Dick Cheney...<br /><br />The film arrives at its crunch point. Our hero has the villainous oil man senator, Ned Beatty (cast for his resemblance to the aforementioned veep) right where he wants him. Wahlberg has shot all the senator's gunmen, freed his ex-partner's bosomy gal (now his), and holds in his hand a recording detailing the senator's wickedness and proving Wahlberg's innocence. And as the FBI arrive (that he himself called) he takes the precious recording and burns it. Go figure that one out. Whatever way you look at it, it doesn't make a lick of sense. In Hollywood films very little makes sense but this would have to be in the top ten list of stupidest things ever. <br /><br />Here's the actual dialogue -<br />'What are you doing?' says Wahlberg's FBI renegade buddy.<br />'Saving our lives.'<br />'But that proved you were innocent!'<br />'Nobody out here is innocent. This stuff's plutonium. Nobody can handle it without dying. You hand it over to the authorities, it's just going to disappear, along with us,' Wahlberg says, dropping to his knees so that the FBI can take him away for his death-penalty trial.<br /><br />Thanks Hollywood. Now we know that there's nothing to be done. Your only option is to hand things over to the authorities, and they're just going to kill you anyway. You may as well turn yourself in and cop the death penalty. Curses! Is there nothing we can do? If only we had some means of putting evidence into the public domain beyond the control of the government or the media. Imagine if we could connect our computers to each other and send incriminating files to lots of people and ask them to put the evidence on some kind of cyber page thing where thousands more could read it and in turn send it to others. Then it could never be taken back and everyone would know. We could call this mad invention the 'Digital Underground Headquarters', or as I like to say, 'Duh'!<br /><br />God forbid Hollywood would have anyone understand the power of the internet. Attention whistle-blowers - Get a clue! Whatever you've got, put it in public. Don't wait, and don't try to strike some kind of Deborah Jean Palfrey deal. Honestly what was she thinking? Speaking of which, what's Sibel Edmond's story? She has very very damning evidence but since none of the media will do her justice, she's not going to tell. God spare me, you'd think the internet had never been invented. Anyway, with all her dangerous information I expect the government will whack her too. Sooner or later. One of these days. Or maybe not. Maybe she's as real as this stupid movie.<br /><br />Never mind that. It seems Wahlberg was right to hand himself over to the FBI. They listen closely and are very impressed that the gun used to frame him didn't have a functioning firing pin. Not only do they free him but they tell the uber-connected spook Glover to go fuck himself. Ha ha ha ha. What fine comedy. Both Lt. Col. Philip Zack and Stephen J Hatfill laughed their heads off. Never mind that the former is untouchable and the latter had his life destroyed. Both of them get the gag.<br /><br />Subversion<br /><br />Here's how it works. If a democracy is what it says it is (ie. a rule of the people) then it follows that to openly lay bare falsehood and dispel ignorance amongst the people cannot be subversion. In truth it's a reinforcement, by way of knowledge, of the power and authority of those who rule. Us. Did you see the full stop (period) there? It's important.<br /><br />Most certainly there is subversion out there. You can see it every time you turn on the TV. The bloc-media is, perpetually and without exception, subverting our ability to rule ourselves by keeping us in a state of ignorance. Without knowledge, such as the fact that the Reserve Banks of the world are privately owned, how can we have any sensible discussion about what's best for the people? Hollywood and the media (same same) exist to keep us in a state of ignorance so that democracy may be subverted and a tiny hidden elite may steer us as suits them and them alone.<br /><br />---<br /><br />For the sake of posterity, why don't I also rewrite Wahlberg's idiot speech to the senator?<br /><br />'And you know what senator? This recording here that you were so keen to get your hands on? You're too late. I've already sent it to whatreallyhappened, uruknet, truthseeker and two hundred other websites. Hell, I even sent it to zmag! The whole thing took me five minutes and a buck fifty at an internet cafe. The mainstream media have it too, and with the push from the alternative sites, even they won't be able to ignore it. You're so fucked I ain't even going to bother shooting you.'<br /><br />Cinema of nobody - the stuff that dreams are made of!nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-60955191942809487842008-06-28T17:18:00.015+10:002008-09-13T16:13:31.359+10:00The Lord of the RingsLet me say right from the outset that I was the original Lord of the Rings fan. By the time I was fifteen I had already read it six times. In high school I hung with two other huge fans. One had read it fourteen times. The three of us were the Lord of the Rings guys. Believe it or not we weren't nerds, and the costume party we organised each year on September 22 (Bilbo and Frodo's common birthday) was the biggest, most anticipated party there was. I recall going as a nazgul, ha ha. It was all good fun.<br /><br />Unsophisticated self-made fun aside, back then, there was nothing beyond the books themselves. There were no DVD's, no collectibles, no nothing. There was just the trilogy and us sitting around in the quadrangle endlessly talking about them. And sure we all argued about what a movie would be like, who would play whom, and whether balrogs had actual wings, etc. Cut to thirty years later and the imagined movie was actually made. And it was fantastic. Hats off to the director Peter Jackson. Somehow everything looked and felt just as I'd imagined it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY7Ho9v6nX3JLPvNq3wi0jbtiQt6WbPQMxNeGRnSj6etAgPf9T_gXnPiWkqIQVXZNDim0da3jqQn5Ou3Ki_QafQpIanMFYTNdEfl8ttLb2SidKVJkg48GO2K1o3e-3T-rLyuR1Lm9g_BDn/s1600-h/EsdlaIII.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY7Ho9v6nX3JLPvNq3wi0jbtiQt6WbPQMxNeGRnSj6etAgPf9T_gXnPiWkqIQVXZNDim0da3jqQn5Ou3Ki_QafQpIanMFYTNdEfl8ttLb2SidKVJkg48GO2K1o3e-3T-rLyuR1Lm9g_BDn/s400/EsdlaIII.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245385101129141250" /></a><br />Symbolism v Universality<br /><br />What did it all mean? Was Grima Wormtongue this? Was Saruman that? What did Sauron represent? Says I, they can represent whatever you want. Weirdly enough, this whole conversation already took place following the book's release, with everyone perfectly convinced it was an allegory for WWII. The author emphatically denied it. Tolkien was the Oxford don, rapt with the mythos of Northern Europe. His obsession was with the relationship between language, myth and time. He was one of the key authorities on Beowulf, the earliest written expression of English ever. Coming from this depth of knowledge, and in a desire to further it, Tolkien created his own languages and myths. It was this depth that led him to succeed. And the proof is in the pudding. There is something complete, something right about LOTR.<br /><br />Here's a metaphor. Imagine that the original story from which a myth springs is a jagged unlovely rock. The retelling of a story over time acts as a river rolling and shaping this rock until a perfect smooth pebble is produced. And we as humans know, millennia later, that there is something right about this pebble, this story. This is what differentiates myths from, I don't know, Raymond Carver, ha ha. A myth speaks to us in a way that whatever humdrum story inspired it would have left us unmoved. This timeworn thing is possessed of a universality, a timeless rightness.<br /><br /> What Tolkien achieved was a complete template of universality. You can apply it this way, that way, and regardless of your view, it will describe what you see. And that's why I'm only interested in LOTR in terms of the big picture. Was that a pun? Hmm... not a very good one.<br /><br />The Big Picture<br /><br />And this was where I had a problem with The Lord of the Rings. It wasn't in the script and nor could it be laid at the feet of Peter Jackson. It was the timing. The first film was released in 2001, the second in 2002, and the third in 2003. This period was precisely the run-up from the 911 attacks through to the War in Iraq. It was also the run-up to my radicalisation, ha ha. You too? Sure. And as each film came out, the world was progressively closer to war, yours truly was that much more radical, and each episode left me in greater dismay.<br /><br />Let's not forget - The Lord of the Rings was absolutely the biggest thing going at the time. It monstered the box office and swept the academy awards. Everybody saw it. And lots of people saw it lots of times. Me, I say films have an effect, and what effect did this triple film epic have? When the punters walked out of the cinema how would they view the world?<br /><br />Said LOTR, one must view the world in a Manichean fashion. Which is to say, there is good and there is evil, and there is nothing in between. No common ground would ever be found with those who are Evil (with a capital E). Anyone who entertained the idea that one could reason with, or appease this obvious enemy-who-could-be-no-other-thing was a fool, a coward, or a traitor.<br /><br />For us as the audience, this was made perfectly clear. The enemy were some variation of sub-human. They were as beastly as it's possible to make a man, without him becoming an insect or an alien or somesuch. Each orc was the befanged, slavering Hun taken to the nth degree. Certainly these creatures could utter some variety of accented jibber-jabber but really there was no point talking to them. You don't talk to a thing that wants to eat you. You just kill it.<br /><br />Their leader of course was the perfect distillation of Evil. So great was the power of his evil that he could influence and summon non-humans from every corner of the world. Certainly we must kill as many non-humans as possible but primarily we must kill him. Otherwise we would never be free, nor would our babies remain uneaten.<br /><br />It's all in the timing<br /><br />The Lord of the Rings was part of a trio. In 2001 we had Michael Bay's Pearl Harbour. Just the ticket to set the stage for PNAC's 'new Pearl Harbour', otherwise known as 911. This was past as present. In 2002 Black Hawk Down turned up as an heroic towelhead slaughter-fest. This was present as future. And providing a counterpoint, rising to crescendo, was The Lord of the Rings, 2001, 2 and 3. It was the ring-cycle to bring them all - past, present and future - and in the cinema darkness bind them. With every other medium screaming the inevitability of war this universal template could speak of no other thing. It was the war film for people who didn't watch war films. Mum and Dad and all the kids could watch this together and know the eternal rightness of slaughtering swarthy non-humans.<br /><br />Such a wonderful film. Such wonderful timing. Such wonderful dreams of war.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-458267246112881082008-06-13T12:09:00.017+10:002012-05-28T07:05:09.808+10:00The IllusionistFor mine, a movie review that merely recounts the plot of a film is evidence that the writer is incapable of insight. Sure enough most reviews are like this. As is this one!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIyMjzQzGS9kLy7JXvV_oK63xmW73mbQcchBI3PWIH39-3PCzJDNV74j8aNoQtNKItBBxZ3DTB-xkhdmezNfnYsHu5XvPj3kLFy7A6RCfLxJH7vsrQjOTRWEzy1JlTclD0xL7_D7mXhG13/s1600-h/405px-The_Illusionist_Poster.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245385534739395298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIyMjzQzGS9kLy7JXvV_oK63xmW73mbQcchBI3PWIH39-3PCzJDNV74j8aNoQtNKItBBxZ3DTB-xkhdmezNfnYsHu5XvPj3kLFy7A6RCfLxJH7vsrQjOTRWEzy1JlTclD0xL7_D7mXhG13/s400/405px-The_Illusionist_Poster.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a><br />
In amongst some unnecessary flashbacks, we are introduced to our hero Edward Abramowitz, A Jewish magician in turn of the century Austria (that's the old turn of the century, not the recent one). The ever redoubtable Ed Norton does the honours here, cast due to his singular ability to stare into the camera. This is not a criticism. He's very good at it. His semi-strangled Austrian accent is less successful, but not as bad as David Wenham's horrible affectation in the appalling 300 (and Van Helsing and The Proposition). David, knock it off mate!<br />
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Where was I? Oh yes, thanks to a superior ability to balance an egg on a stick, the young Abramowitz captures the heart of a beautiful young duchess who shall grow up to be Jessica Biel. No one much cares for this episode of young love since our egg-balancer is not the right sort of fellow, which is to say he's a peasant. This is a curious description since he's no such thing. In fact he's the son of a cabinet maker, an artisan. Certainly this would be objectionable to royalty, but not nearly as objectionable as his being Jewish. For the audience this fact is unmissable and yet somehow our cinematic Austrians of 120 years ago never remark upon it. Um... okay.<br />
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So our young hero is dudded out of the girl, never to see her again. Or until the second reel, whichever comes first. In this second reel/second incarnation he is now Eisenheim the Illusionist, the sensation of Vienna. The duchess, hanging off the arm of the archduke (the son of the emperor) is his volunteer from the audience. This is absurdly fortuitous, sure, but cinematically unremarkable. And what of the archduke, our hero's rival? Is he a charming, erudite fellow admired by all? Of course not. He has our hero's gal and therefore things must be arranged such that we hate him. A flick of the wrist and voilà, he deserves whatever our hero inflicts upon him.<br />
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It's Eisenheim's lot throughout this film to be opposed by those insufficiently dazzled by his ability and who object to him taking what he rightfully deserves. Clearly he deserves the duchess. She is one of the dazzled. The archduke is not dazzled. Bafflingly he seems entirely uninterested in watching a magic show. The first trick is barely over before he madly leaps up looking for wires and mirrors. What a strange man. Do such creatures exist? They do here and just as well too. Without the archduke establishing himself as such a dreadful fellow, Eisenheim's leaping into bed with his fiancé within ten screen-minutes of having met her again would make the archduke an object of sympathy. Perish the thought.<br />
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In the face of such thusly imagined villainy-deserving-of-punishment it is perfectly proper that Eisenheim smashes the archduke. And since he's a genius with a god-like ability to subvert reality, he doesn't so much do it himself, as delude everyone else into acting in his interests. This follows two strands.<br />
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The first and most screen-time consuming is Eisenheim's new act, in which the dead are brought back to life. This has only the most tenuous effect on the plot. Nothing results from it that couldn't have been achieved half an hour earlier with a single shot of the chief of police picking up the important clue. Truth be known, this thread is inserted for other purposes. Firstly it takes up screen time and gives us a bit more magical FX illusion, a useful thing in a film called The Illusionist. Secondly it further establishes the archduke as villain by making clear he is hated by his people. Thirdly and most significantly, it is there so that we might better understand the greatness of our hero. His magic acts do not merely entertain. They make society a better place by moving the people to wish for the downfall of their rulers. Apparently this mini-revolution pivots on spirits and spirituality. Good luck deciphering the gibberish conversations setting this out. Best to just go with it. Astoundingly in a societal upheaval based on 'spirituality', the church is nowhere to be seen. This is curious. Surely the director could have arranged a three minute scene to cast the church in a bad light. Pick up your act Hollywood! <br />
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The second plot strand involves the murder of the duchess and is the immediate vehicle of the archduke's destruction. It's this besting of the royal by our Jewish magician that is the whole purpose of the exercise. We're led to believe the archduke killed the duchess. He didn't of course. It was all a sham. Astoundingly the archduke never once declares his innocence. If he did we might rightly view him as a victim. And we can't have that.<br />
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So, the duchess didn't die. She merely pretended she was dead in order to blame the archduke for a crime he didn't commit. But let's not look at it in that way. Best we go along with the film's single-line-of-dialogue insinuation that he would have killed her anyway. Thus everything that takes place is not an act of wickedness but rather a testament to our hero's virtue and brilliance: the duchess might conceivably have been killed and now she lives; and the archduke might have, had he done it, escaped punishment for the crime, but now her fictional death is avenged and he lies dead. Yay! Everybody lives happily ever after.<br />
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Not least amongst the happily ever after is the chief of police. Sure he was the means of bringing about the archduke's death, but let's not view him as Eisenheim's puppet. Really Eisenheim did him a favour by assisting him to cast off the yoke of a fellow who madly didn't like magic and was otherwise rude to him. Upon the chief of police finally arriving at the flashback-truth of the plot he had been involved in, he seems almost pleased to have been so used. Hats off to such an impossible riddle! Who wouldn't feel flattered to be granted a glimpse into the mind of such a genius and serve as his pawn. The thought that one might be appalled and aghast at having been tricked into killing a perfectly innocent man is nowhere to be seen. And quite right too.<br />
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One question remains. Why was this film set in Austria? Why not set it in London? Hell, why not New York? It would have worked just dandy and made no difference to the plot, characters, budgets, locations, sets, or any other thing. But it wasn't. It was deliberately set in Austria. Why might that have been? If you think it's for the ambience you don't understand Hollywood, ha ha.<br />
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Meanwhile, if any sub-editors responsible for filling in the copy of TV movie guides happen to be reading, I shall help them out. Merely cut and paste the following, and hey presto, the job is done.<br />
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The Illusionist 2006 (drama) PG - Ed Norton, Jessica Biel, Paul Giamatti. A Jewish magician in Austria who wishes to kill the archduke and end up with his fiancé tricks the chief of police into acting as his pawn, whilst also sowing dissent amongst the population.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-62378513128925177472008-06-03T16:19:00.009+10:002012-07-31T22:53:33.086+10:00Jewish Farce 4Oh all right, it's actually Scary Movie 4. But if I tear this Jewish farce apart, I tear them all apart. It's a simple enough exercise.<br /><br />We're all perfectly familiar with film description shorthand. If a film is described as a heist flick, or a road movie, or a romantic comedy we instantly arrive at a broad understanding. But for some reason the description Jewish farce barely exists anywhere. I've only seen it in the English Timeout Film Guide. The first time I saw it there, my eyebrows shot up and wondered at the category. But it's marvellously accurate. In two brief words we've perfectly described Mel Brooks, the Zucker Brothers, and anything starring Leslie Nielsen.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicA7Q_I1qXrmjFvuNJZHRiqUYXmXtH13f6lz19rYYnJHD0ydLOanOxR3qB6TSW2XO4-ZPMuMSreZCx-N4gP92IgnAOQq-F6bCH_yU0YLggmAuKjYzdl7aEikCvoHfQrvHBkjZwPGNr7kEa/s1600-h/Scary_movie_four_ver4.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicA7Q_I1qXrmjFvuNJZHRiqUYXmXtH13f6lz19rYYnJHD0ydLOanOxR3qB6TSW2XO4-ZPMuMSreZCx-N4gP92IgnAOQq-F6bCH_yU0YLggmAuKjYzdl7aEikCvoHfQrvHBkjZwPGNr7kEa/s400/Scary_movie_four_ver4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245386412650209794" /></a><br />Without an accurate description we just call these films comedy. But Scary Movie 4 is to comedy what <span style="font-style:italic;">dogs playing pool </span>is to art. Think of Life Of Brian, City Lights and A Midsummer Night's Dream. What do they have that Scary Movie 4 doesn't? I'm going to call it wit. Wit is an interesting word. It has two meanings and they're both expressions of intelligence. And what distinguishes Jewish farce is its witlessness.<br /><br />As such, there's not a lot to it. It does not have layers. It does not work on several levels. In fact, if you analyse it, Jewish farce has precisely four gags which are merely repeated ad nauseam. And here are the four gags -<br /><br />The Gross-Out<br /><br />This is the most juvenile of them all. Anything that involves an orifice, or what comes out of it, qualifies. In SM4 we have: copious snot and the ashes of dead people (seriously) coming out the nose, the latter covering a young girl; President Leslie Nielsen spits milk on kids who spit it back at him; the clouds look like an arse that shits lightning and smells like a turd; A blind girl shits loudly in public; and a paralysed old woman is washed in her own urine. Is there humour stupider than this? I can't think of any.<br /><br />Mindless Brutality<br /><br />Actually maybe this <span style="font-style:italic;">is</span> stupider than the gross-out. It's certainly nastier. Gross-out humour merely instils bad manners. Humour based on laughing at the pain and suffering of others instils something altogether different. It's a crucial ingredient of us-and-them. 'Them', of course are beasts, untermenschen for whom we feel no sympathy. Brutal motherfuckers since the dawn of time have laughed at what we laugh at in SM4.<br /><br />With but the slightest variations of script, art-direction and music, the depictions of children having their heads smashed in car doors, old women being beaten and thrown in the sewer, and innocents being shot and stabbed, would be something unspeakable. Here's an ugly thought - What if a bunch of goyim film-makers depicted these things being done to Jews, instead of vice versa?<br /><br />Let's not go that far. Let's just say that in my notes that list examples of each of the four gags in this Jewish farce, the number of jokes based on violent brutality was exceeded only by the next category.<br /><br />Smut<br /><br />As I said in the last review, kids are different today. Me, I reckon it's from watching films like SM4. There were no such films as this when I was a kid. I went through my whole youth without seeing graphic depictions of gay sex, paedophiles chasing kids, or, believe it or not, machines designed to hammer a dildo up a person's arse. All of these and much, much more can be seen in SM4.<br /><br />In a Jewish farce, ideally no opportunity should be passed up as a chance to insert a sexual reference. A village feast features two suckling pigs on a platter which are, of course, rooting each other. The alien probe from War of the Worlds humps a vacuum cleaner. Every other female character except the heroine is a slut who will fuck anyone, even aliens. When the black girl/uber slut talks in her sleep, of course she says 'Don't pee on me!' It's not enough to have sexual references every thirty seconds, the references have to be perverse to the nth degree. That this film didn't contain any bestiality, necrophilia, or coprophagia is less a testament to the director's sense of restraint than it is to a lack of opportunity by way of plot requirements.<br /><br />Racist Caricatures<br /><br />What would Jewish farce be without the opportunity to laugh at those who are different to us? Apparently it's okay for white people to laugh at black people for being stupid, jewellery obsessed sluts and homosexuals who speak unintelligibly, because black people are given equal opportunity to laugh at white people as uptight, stuck-up, perpetually uncool dickheads who can't dance. The fact that everyone gets spattered in shit somehow makes it okay. And Arabs of course cop special treatment. They are not only pointlessly murderous terrorists but stupid with it - quite right that they should be beaten by an angry mob. Magically there are no Jewish characters in this quintessentially Jewish film.<br /><br />The endless equal opportunity racism of Jewish farces, which could more accurately be called a sowing of discord, is the flip side of the brutality gag listed above. It's so much easier to kill wogs, gooks and gyppos when we view them as objects of scorn.<br /><br />The idea that this racism is some kind of light-hearted catharsis is bullshit. Laughing at niggers and crackers can have no good effect. None. It's merely another push on the centrifugal wheel that would have us all tumbling away from each other. A society where everyone laughs at each other is an anti-society, doomed to fly apart. A society where everyone laughs <i>with</i> each other is a place that draws people together, their differences neither here nor there.<br /><br />The Totality<br /><br />The secret to success with Jewish farce isn't that any of the gags are particularly funny. The secret is to not give anyone time to think. To this end no opportunity for brutality, smut and racism can be passed up. And ideally any given gag would be an expression of all three.<br /><br />I will concede that such witless humour has existed in every form of comedy ever. They will be found in the aforementioned Python, Chaplin and Shakespeare. Except perhaps for the racism. Do those three possess mindless racist caricatures? I'm struggling to think. I know for a fact that French people find the 'French Taunter' of Holy Grail hysterical. Arguably it's more a comment on English cluelessness (and the impossibility of translating idioms) than it is on the French. But it's a moot point. For each of these comedic geniuses the dim-witted elements of brutality, smut and (possible) racism represent the tiniest minority of their work. In Jewish farce, it's all there is.<br /><br />For mine it's a perfect statement of a singular racist mindset. If Jews truly viewed their neighbours as their brothers and sisters, no different to themselves, they'd marry them and cease to be 'other'. But that will never happen. Jewish people are nothing if they are not this 'other'. They don't have a problem with this particular race or that one. They have a problem with all of them. Every race threatens their otherness equally. And to maintain a separate identity, racism must be encouraged. Not overtly, of course. Overt racism could turn and bite them on the arse. The racism must be insidious. Don't confuse this with subtlety. No one could ever accuse Jewish farce of that. But it's definitely insidious. And it's definitely racist. Jews wouldn't be Jews if they weren't racist.<br /><br />Have I ruined Jewish farces for you now? Perhaps, perhaps not. But hopefully you'll better understand what it is you're watching.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-58630428166921043052008-05-26T13:23:00.012+10:002009-01-30T16:36:41.606+11:00となりのトトロ Tonari No Totoro - My Neighbour TotoroWere you brought up on Disney movies? I was. Apparently the first movie I ever saw was Bambi. Disney movies are ideal for little kids allegedly. They have a G rating. There's no foul language or drug use or sadistic torture scenes. But frankly, that's about all you can say for them. If you were to stop and think about it, you'd have to wonder if they're possessed of anything good at all. In spite of the perpetual come-from-nowhere happy ending, Disney films are, in truth, wall to wall bullshit. They're full of: kids demanding things of their parents; kids arguing with their parents and each other; kids being led astray; kids lying; kids running away - really, I could go on and on.<br /><br />If you wish to think that Disney movies are like this because kids are like this, it's my solemn duty to inform you that you have it arse-about. Your kids are like this because every thing they see at the movies and on TV is this way. So omnipresent and so perpetual are these lessons in self-centredness that most people can barely conceive of anything else. And so steeped are we in this lying-cheating-stealing mindset, that when we do encounter a film that lacks it, we're at a loss. We can barely comprehend what we're seeing.<br /><br />If you want to see a perfect example of an un-Disney movie look no further than Tonari no Totoro. Says I - this is the greatest movie for little kids ever made. I've lost count of how many times I've seen this movie. Mostly I've watched it with my favourite niece who, like me, has yet to tire of it. I expect one day she will, and I'll have to watch it on my own. Never mind. (Interestingly, this little girl and her brother have never watched TV at home. Occasionally they may watch one of a handful of carefully chosen DVD's. It's possible that their being the most well adjusted and charming kids I have ever met is unconnected with their viewing habits, but I don't think so. And hats off to their parents - yoroshiku, ne!)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrrknDjV3AqwH3XbD1lrAX4iXFSY7xtXs7lCamwwWv54gUQagaFRk6qXCImgp6UyFynaAGhb1cbDFafmAC4nDGq0HfND3uXVr6hkSm4oqA-WyarXCuE_ZuMo_JX_-5PI-aMvNEJUmyCCaU/s1600-h/My_Neighbor_Totoro_-_Tonari_no_Totoro_(Movie_Poster).jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrrknDjV3AqwH3XbD1lrAX4iXFSY7xtXs7lCamwwWv54gUQagaFRk6qXCImgp6UyFynaAGhb1cbDFafmAC4nDGq0HfND3uXVr6hkSm4oqA-WyarXCuE_ZuMo_JX_-5PI-aMvNEJUmyCCaU/s400/My_Neighbor_Totoro_-_Tonari_no_Totoro_(Movie_Poster).jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245385968797897698" /></a><br />The director of Totoro is Hayao Miyazaki. He is one half of Studio Ghibli. The other half is Isao Takahata. If I was forced to have only a dozen movies to watch for the rest of my life, these two would take every spot. All of their efforts are animation. For those of you who wish to pile in and tell me of other great animation - please don't, I'm the wrong guy. Animation is merely a medium. To fall in love with a medium is silly. I apologise if I hurt anyone's feelings in saying this. The reason I love these two directors is because their movies are 'right' in the buddhist sense. And nowhere in cinema will you find a more perfect synthesis of Buddhism and Shinto. But more on this later.<br /><br />But what of the film, ha ha? In short, a professorial father and his two daughters, Satsuki and Mei (8 and 4 respectively), arrive at their new house in the bucolic countryside. The mother is in a nearby hospital convalescing from an unstated illness. This absence of the mother is biographical on Miyazaki's part and is here (as perhaps with the director) the vehicle by which the two girls allow the natural world to more wholly occupy their imagination. Simple adventures follow.<br /><br />Human Relationships<br /><br />The first occasion we see Satsuki and Mei they're jammed in the back of some mad three-wheeled truck. Why aren't they complaining? Did they just share some candy without bickering? And did they give some to their father? How come their father didn't say something stupid so that they could roll their eyes at how stupid he is? When they arrive at their new house in the country, why don't they sulk? What's going on? <br /><br />Believe it or not, in Totoro, kids get on with each other and with their parents. There is no competition, rebellion, or bullshit mindgames. Throughout this film people are considerate of each other - the two girls take an umbrella to their father; Satsuki, unasked, makes lunch for everyone; Mei brings her father flowers. No one here is possessed of self-serving or ill will. No one desires anything which belongs with another - quite the opposite, everything is shared. Further, children, parents and grandparents talk to each in perfect equanimity with no sense of disconnect.<br /><br />Perhaps this is the reason that simple scenes where nothing significant happens (which in a Disney movie we'd merely endure) are, in Miyazaki's hands, moments of delight that we wish would go on forever.<br /><br />Fear<br /><br />Miyazaki understands fear. As a Buddhist how could he not? Fear is the source of all delusion. But let's not get ahead of ourselves - this is a movie for little kids. And Miyazaki would have them know that fear is merely that which they do not understand. To this end, in exploring their new house, Satsuki and Mei encounter the wonderful makurokurosuke. I say wonderful, but it doesn't appear that way at first. On first sighting of these curious creatures the two girls' hair stands on end, and any little kid watching will do the same. But only on the first viewing - on subsequent viewings they will bravely demonstrate that all one needs to do is boldly shout 'Makurokurosuke dete oite!' (black fluff off you go!) and the fuzzy sprites are banished. My niece likes to show me how brave she is by screaming this at full volume three inches from my face. Ha ha ha, sweetheart, how brave you are!<br /><br />Compare this to the kind of fear Disney thinks appropriate for young viewers. Have you ever noticed how Disney's manifestations of fear are truly nightmarish? Collectively they are malevolent, red-eyed supernatural impossibilities. They are to Miyazaki's simple apprehensions what a werewolf is to a puppy-dog. Disney's objects of fear are variations of the darkest mythology, things that no one will ever encounter in their whole life. What possible purpose is served by scaring kids in this fashion? That they will have nightmares is a certainty. And have you ever noticed how little kids watching a Disney movie will be scared every time they watch a given scene? Their fear is never dispelled - instead it's reinforced with each repetition. What sort of shit is that? Why would we do this to children? If I said that Disney trains kids to be fearful would I be wrong?<br /><br />Nature<br /><br />Buddhism is one thing and Shintoism is another. They're not incompatible of course, they're just different. Rather than me attempting to explain Shinto, just watch Tonari no Totoro and see if you might not be a little closer to understanding. In this film, Miyazaki has distilled a child's mesmerised intoxication with nature into the entity of Totoro. He is an avatar of Shintoistic nature expressed in a lexicon suitable for little kids. Indeed, upon Mei telling her father of having met Totoro he reacts not with incredulity or disbelief but merely states that Totoro is the spirit of the forest. He then takes the kids to the top of the hill and, by way of a communal prayer to the thousand year old tree that crowns it, instils in them a reverence for nature. Onya Dad!<br /><br />Don't confuse what you see here with Western models. Miyazaki's films are not mirrors but windows. Do not look for yourself. Lumping Totoro in with other anthropomorphised characters with which you are familiar will lead you in the wrong direction. Totoro is emphatically not Disneyfied. In the medium of human representation, hands are very important, second only to the face. Significantly Totoro has claws. At no time is he 'knowable'. He never speaks, or even acknowledges that he has understood what has been said to him. No nods, no winks, no meaningful looks.<br /><br />Indeed Totoro is not even his name. It's merely Mei mispronouncing 'troll' ('tororu' in the Japanese transliteration) from the book 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff' that she is reading. Never do we find out his true name, what he actually is, or what purpose he serves. But it doesn't matter. Free of any desire to command him, or even to figure him out, the girls are permitted to share in the joy of whatever it is he's doing. And in every Miyazaki movie, nature is always represented thus. The very unknowability of it is what makes it such a thing of wonder. To master Totoro would be to see him disappear from one's life. <br /><br />Says Miyazaki, nature is not ours. It is not here to serve us. It will always remain unknowable and we should consider ourselves fortunate to marvel at it.<br /><br />As a side note - I will happily acknowledge that the Japanese are not perfect. Not like us, ha ha. But go to Japan and be astounded at the ubiquity of Shinto shrines. The middle of big cities aside they seem to miraculously reveal themselves in every spot where nature is present. There is nothing quite like it in any other country I've ever been to. Before you start muttering counter-propositions about the Japanese, know that Miyazaki is not the single biggest film-maker in Japan for no reason. His films are not mistakenly popular. His world view strikes a deep chord in the hearts of the Japanese. This is for many reasons but not least because he gives voice to that which could otherwise only be expressed by pressing one's hands together and bowing one's head.<br /><br />Childhood<br /><br />What is childhood? As I've stated elsewhere, I like to view things through a lens of time. For what percentage of human existence have kids been wise-cracking, cooler-than-thou fashion plates filled with insatiable consumerist desires? When was the generation gap invented? Were teens always unintelligible, sulky, self-obsessed gits?<br /><br />I've lost count of how my times I've heard people say that kids today are different. Me, I don't buy it. Where did this difference come from? Did human DNA evolve in a single generation? Was there some pandemic that only affected the young? Think about it for more than three minutes and the answer is obvious - how could the difference be anything apart from inculcation by TV? And yet we all behave as if this was a force of nature, something beyond our control (or remote control, ha ha). It seems there's nothing to be done but shrug our shoulders and leave the kids in front of that flickering blue light in the loungeroom.<br /><br />Bullshit. There is a choice. Certainly the crap in the media is endless and the worthy choices are few and far between. Totoro is just one film and all of Miyazaki's other movies are but a drop in a cynical ocean. But it's proof nonetheless that something else is possible. There are other ways to view the world. Simple unaffected truths are ours to grasp if we wish it. Cynicism can be shed and joy can be rediscovered. Miyazaki's gift is that you, and your children, may borrow his eyes for an hour and a half. And if the television was then turned off with the kids running outside to poke acorns in the soil, nothing would make him happier. Nor me, nor you, nor the kids, ha ha.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-20575518828493645322008-05-10T16:10:00.020+10:002009-01-21T17:39:44.686+11:00Shattered GlassIn Mein Kampf, Hitler discussed the concept of the Big Lie. If a lie was big enough, he said, no one would disbelieve it. This is often talked about with the beg-the-question assumption that Hitler came up with the idea and was putting it forward as a means of advancing Nazi wickedness. This is arse-about. It's perfectly clear in Mein Kampf that Hitler was actually pointing out what he viewed as a Jewish trait. If you find this thought repellent - don't watch this movie without you banish it from your head. And by all means don't read this review. Says I, Shattered Glass is far more than a suspenseful drama in which truth battles falsehood and triumphs. It's also that impossible thing - a stunning dissection of Jewish lying. It's all here, laid bare in perfect microcosm.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRZTOgV3v_Hz-WfUdikaj49QBuiZCzUxeJZZ_E2z0vTyp8FG-7DXjCGZuLfGMJ8N_xnStF0ly5ELiZXxB7Qots5RPb8mUtJl20-RYFAAAIqazFA8DOXlfCVKOXpRhPtsOpQZ3pjz54h0qV/s1600-h/407px-Shattered_Glass_movie.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRZTOgV3v_Hz-WfUdikaj49QBuiZCzUxeJZZ_E2z0vTyp8FG-7DXjCGZuLfGMJ8N_xnStF0ly5ELiZXxB7Qots5RPb8mUtJl20-RYFAAAIqazFA8DOXlfCVKOXpRhPtsOpQZ3pjz54h0qV/s400/407px-Shattered_Glass_movie.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245387419915803122" /></a><br />Frankly I'm astounded that this film was allowed to be made at all. There is nothing quite like it. Not only does it tackle impossible themes but it does so with a marvellous narrative structure, word-perfect dialogue, and a series of flawless, underplayed performances from an ideal cast. Hats off to Peter Sarsgaard, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Zahn, and the coolest chick on the planet, Rosario Dawson. Let's not forget Hayden Christensen. His performance as Glass, the eponymous epitome of whining, pathological hatefulness is so spot-on that one begrudges handing him the praise he deserves. My wish to smash his teeth in is precisely a testament to how good he is, ha ha. Sorry Hayden, nothing personal mate!<br /><br />Briefly, Shattered Glass is the based-on-a-true-story of Stephen Glass, the journalist at The New Republic who was famously busted for having written fiction as fact. The purpose of the exercise here is less to discuss the film than it is to dissect the mindset of our archetype liar: how he views himself; how he views others; and his techniques of subversion. The flip-side of this is the arc of realisation of those who must come to terms with the enormity of his lies and the monstrousness of his character.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Ingratiation</span><br /><br />This ingratiation is the crucial foundation for the temple of lies that comprises Glass's mind. It's not in the opening voice-over for no reason. In the VO, Glass dismisses other journalists (who presumably produce well-researched factual stories) as show-offs, braggarts and jerks. Says he, it's easy to 'stand out' amongst this crowd by being self-effacing, remembering birthdays, and bringing a coworker lunch. Honestly, why bust your arse when you need merely ingratiate yourself with those around you? <br /><br />And it works obviously. When we first see him in the office he is everyone's sweetheart. But there is something not quite right with the picture. His self-effacement doesn't ring true. On two occasions his coworkers learn by accident that he is being wooed by other far more prestigious magazines. After each of these astounding revelations he issues the same demurral, 'It's probably nothing.' His coworkers rightly roll their eyes. Really, who would say such a thing?<br /><br />Notice that his coworkers do not learn of this otherwise extraordinary news from Glass himself. On both occasions a receptionist pops in with a phone message and gives the game away. Glass's self-effacing comments are not so much a down-playing of his success as they are an attempt to stamp out a leak of intelligence. Fact is, he'd prefer that no one knew anything about him, successes included. And it's unsurprising that Glass is not excited by the news. It is confirmation of his own self-imagined greatness. Now that I think about it, self-effacement is always misrepresentation. The only question that counts is - is it selfless or selfish? No prizes for guessing which one Glass is.<br /><br />Glass's attempt to quash discussion about himself is a pattern we'll see throughout the movie. Never does he share anything personal with anyone that isn't self-serving. All enquiries by coworkers into his personal life are resented. Of course a pathological liar would resent such inquiries. He is incapable of taking part in an honest and open discussion. Throughout this film not a single word trips from his lips that isn't self-serving or evasive. Not one.<br /><br />Further to Glass's bullshit self-effacement is his extraordinary ability to notice and remember others' personal trivia. When a coworker at a party he gives, asks about a bottle of soft-drink with a label bearing her name on it, we learn that Glass did this on account of something she'd said years earlier. The coworker, at first perplexed, shakes her head and dismisses it. She ought not to have. This is clearly beyond the realm of normality and is actually a significant clue as to his pathology. It pays to wonder at such things.<br /><br />Further, Glass's familiarity and friendliness are a one-way street. He mistrusts reciprocation. When a male coworker brings him a drink late at night he cops hostility from Glass. And sure enough, Glass quickly minimises the window on his computer. But might this also be a demonstration of projection? When Glass wanders into somebody's office it's part of an agenda, so might not this fellow have one too? Of course not - it's just Glass. His self-deprecation and ingratiation are all of a piece. Everything he does, bar none, is an act of self-serving, a means to an end. It's unsurprising he views reciprocation with suspicion. True selflessness is an alien concept to him.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The tangled web</span><br /><br />Glass's ingratiation is a misrepresentation sure, but it's a good one. One might distrust it, but only by way of intuition. Ingratiation is intangible, a slippery thing. His magazine articles on the other hand were something else. They were studded with names and places. Oops. Honestly what was Glass thinking? That no one would follow up? May we view this as further testament to his hubris? Sure, why not.<br /><br />Watch the marvellous scenes with Steve Zahn and Rosario Dawson as they track down lie after lie. It's the beginning of the end of our self-impressed liar. Glass's stories don't have a lazy error or two. They are completely and utterly bogus, entirely the product of his imagination. This film makes nothing of what these telling fabrications say about him. It's enough that they bedazzle people and are big hits. But make no mistake, they speak of the author. I haven't read the articles themselves. I've merely seen what the film shows of them. But even from this narrow sample a pattern can be discerned.<br /><br />The juvenile wet-dream hero of 'Hack Heaven' is a self-impressed smart-arse who rightfully deserves the indulgent rewards lamely conceded to him by a bunch of suits he's outsmarted. And all to the applause of his peers. It's not accidental that Glass's relating of this story to his fellow writers in the boardroom mirrors the story itself. The telling of the story is the story. Next, Glass is his own hero in his story about the Tyson/Holyfield ear chomp. Apparently he rang up a mid-West radio station and posited himself as an 'expert on human-to-human biting'. He did no such thing of course. He merely imagined others as stupid and himself as clever enough to fool them. And then there's 'Spring Breakdown'. It's right-wing pigs are self-confessed directionless losers who want to humiliate fat chicks. Of course Glass paints his enemies falsely. And sure enough, he is smarter than they are. The stories are all of a piece. Others are stupid and Glass is clever. Those 'not him' deserve ridicule whilst he deserves glittering prizes and adulation.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Defence mechanisms</span><br /><br />Glass has a hair-trigger sense for others doubting him. Upon the first occasion of one of his stories being questioned, with his editor asking for his notes, the first words out of his mouth are, 'Did I do something wrong?'. It's an interesting response. Glass's coworkers, unaware of the breadth and depth of his falsity, assume it speaks of his good nature and complete lack of desire to wrong others. But it's precisely the opposite. Glass has no such nature or lack of desire. The question is actually designed to gain intelligence on how much is known by those who might oppose him, which is to say, everyone. It is the nature of Glass's us-and-them mindset that everyone is viewed as an enemy, even his allies. The question is also a nascent formulation of his chief weapon - false victimhood. Otherwise, of course Glass did something wrong. Wrong is all he's got.<br /><br />It's worth noting that never does Glass stand up for himself. Never does he argue the rightness of what he did. He cannot. Nothing he does is right. Right behaviour is an absurdity to him, a thing to be taken advantage of. So, rather than stand up for himself, Glass gets others to do it for him. If this involves setting up factions, trashing harmony, and creating a poisonous office atmosphere, no problems. He would gladly smash all if he can walk away unscathed. It's the Samson option writ small. The Samson option is the most perfect expression of the most perfect self-obsession - if not me, none.<br /><br />To this end, he alternates between his two character modes - sycophancy and character assassination. He has no honest opinions on others. If they believe him and are useful, he likes them. If they doubt him, or are inured to his false charm and praise him in a less than fulsome manner, he will declare they hate him and attempt to set others against them. This defines every relationship he has with every single person in this film.<br /><br />The previously established ingratiation serves two purposes. Initially it is a means of establishing a variation of trustworthiness and credibility. Keep in mind that ingratiation has nothing to do with either of these things. But it achieves them nonetheless. The 'logic' is - 'He has brought me a coffee, therefore he is a good person, therefore I can trust him'. But it's a false logic. No such trust has been established, merely a misguided sympathy. It's this sympathy that later allows Glass to employ what is the only 'defensive' weapon available to a person who misrepresents everything - false victimhood. Effectively this is Glass's best and only weapon. Watch him perpetually ramp it up to ever more sickening degrees. Even at the ultimate point, with his editor perfectly aware that every single word Glass utters is a self-serving lie, Glass still attempts to gain sympathy for his plight as one who's no longer believed. God spare us! Can you see why I wanted to smash his teeth in? Anything to shut the fucker up. What a sorry excuse for a Buddhist I am, ha ha.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The arc of realisation</span><br /><br />Several arcs take place in this movie. One is a rising arc of Glass's ever more desperate lying. Another is a falling arc of Glass's success. Satisfyingly they mirror each other. However both of these are driven by the key parabolic arc of those around Glass uncovering the truth. Zahn's exposé is the catalyst for this process but the chief protagonist is Sarsgaard as Glass's editor Chuck Lane. And what a battle he's in for!<br /><br />Lane's initial problem is that he doesn't even know it's a battle. Glass knows and has already set the battlefield - not for Lane, sure, merely for whomever. But for Glass everyone is a potential 'whomever'. Indeed so unsuspecting is Lane that he initially goes into bat for Glass. Whenever he wishes to talk to Glass about problems with his articles he is considerate and grants him privacy. Well, you would wouldn't you? Sure enough Glass takes advantage of this to run to his duped allies and misrepresent what took place. Defending a fellow and granting him privacy are laudable actions until they are corrupted by a misanthropist like Glass.<br /><br />Lane humanely gives Glass the benefit of the doubt because it is inconceivable to him that a human could be so utterly false. And this mindset is perhaps Glass's greatest weapon. This is the beauty of the Big Lie. So staggering is the totality of the falsehood that it cannot even be contemplated. Sure enough, in the office where Glass is able to define reality, Lane cannot make the leap. Unable to reconcile his suspicions with the impossibility of the Big Lie, Lane must shift his perspective. He physically takes Glass to the location of the alleged hacker conference. Here Glass's misrepresentations come crashing up against the undeniability of the real world. The metaphor is unmissable. Lane has made a journey to a place of realisation. Only in a new environment can Lane find fresh eyes to see what his own intuition/common sense had hitherto only suspected. Watching Sarsgaard's Lane shedding confusion and hardening into clarity, and Glass's concomitant collapse into ever more worthless lies, is a delight.<br /><br />Lane seeing with eyes anew is a crucial step but it is not the end. Now he must lead others to his new understanding. The second beauty of the Big Lie is that it must be smashed over and over. The doubt of a single person diminishes its strength barely at all. As an angry, red-eyed Sevigny says, 'What you're telling me is impossible!'. Yep, that's how it works. The Big Lie parasitically attaches itself to one's understanding of the self. To conquer it one must deconstruct one's definition of human behaviour. How could this definition not include the self? Sevigny is not upset for no reason. Ponder Sevigny's reconsidering of 'her friend Glass'. It's not just her concept of 'Glass' that's at stake. It's also her concept of 'friend'. And, believe it or not , it's also her concept of 'her'. Sevigny must undergo a variation of nervous breakdown. Since it pivots around a single person it's a small one, sure, but small or large, smashing the Big Lie is an ugly business.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Meaning</span><br /><br />The movie finishes on an upbeat note. The applause that had been Glass's is now Lane's. We end with Lane and his lawyers on one side of a table with Glass and his, on the other. The Big Lie is shattered. Sympathy for the false victim is absent. Any falsehood will fall on the stoniest of barren ground. What does Glass have to say? Nothing. If Glass cannot lie, he cannot speak. He sits there mutely as his litany of lies is read out in detail. It's beautiful.<br /><br />But is that all there is to it? Is it all over, with everyone going back to how they were before? Not so fast. Glass's pathological behaviour perpetually took advantage of what would otherwise be laudable - human fellow-feeling. Admirable things such as: sympathy for another's plight; the consideration of privacy; the granting of the benefit of the doubt, and a host of other worthy societal traits that perhaps we can call 'trust', have been trashed. Who can trust these feelings again?<br /><br />What to do? Should trust be abandoned? Should we treat everyone as a potential motherfucker? Who wants to live in a society that operates on such a hateful non-basis? And how far would we be from going one step further and pre-empting the motherfuckers by adopting lying, cheating and stealing as our own SOP? If there are people like Glass out there perhaps the only answer is that we all become Glass?*<br /><br />Bullshit. We must reject Glass. We must reject us-and-them as a defining mindset. The famous saying, 'If I am not for myself, who will be for me?', is crap. How about this - If you are for all, all will be for you. Or this - If you are only for yourself, who would be for you? Or, hell, even this - If you are only for yourself, who wouldn't be against you? It was this last one that bit our archetype in the arse.<br /><br />The truth is there are only two types of people in the world. Those who divide the world into two types of people and those who don't. Ha! Sure I get it, to utter this is to be tarred with it. It's idiotic. But it also embodies an inside-out truth. We must reject us-and-them and yet acknowledge it. For us, 'them' is to be those who define themselves as us-and-them. Ha ha ha, I love it - twisted irony runs rampant.<br /><br />Can you dig it, or did I stop making sense? Really I can only speak for myself. I will trust. I will grant the benefit of the doubt. I will consider other's privacy. But I'm also aware. I'm aware that people exist who are hollow shells made of nothing but self-serving delusion. Says I, this awareness is enough. Glass actually gave plenty of clues as to what sort of person he was. But nobody knew what to look for. If you know, it's easy. The Big Lie only succeeds if you are unaware of how it works. Sure enough, the us-and-them tribe must never let this awareness take hold. In the face of this, Shattered Glass is an impossibly rare treasure. If you haven't seen it, do so. I've you've seen it already, watch it again. It's brilliant.<br /><br />-------------<br /><br />*Ha ha ha, the irony that Glass was anything but clear and was in fact perfectly opaque just struck me. Even his name is a misrepresentation. How perfect he is!nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-57389345134504974562008-04-30T11:07:00.007+10:002012-03-25T06:52:06.189+11:00The Ground TruthHas there ever been an anti-war movie? No really, it's a fair question. <i>Apocalypse Now</i> apparently was one of the 'greatest anti-war movies ever made'. So what were all those marines in <i>Jarhead</i> doing cheering <i>Apocalypse Now</i>'s Ride of the Valkyries helicopter assault? They were cheering because it rocks. But there's nothing special about <i>Apocalypse Now</i>. They could have been cheering <i>Full Metal Jacket</i>, or <i>Platoon</i>, or even <i>The Deer Hunter</i> - anti-war movies all. I'm prepared to bet that everyone in the US military saw every anti-war movie ever made and guess what? It didn't make any difference. Not a single one of those films had what it took to dissuade them from joining up, heading overseas and doing all that shit all over again.<br /><br />How about non-fiction like <i>The Ground Truth</i>? The critics all agree, <i>The Ground Truth</i> is wrenching, provocative, searing, impossible-to-ignore, disturbing, etc, etc. Even the stridently pro-war NYT was moved. "The Ground Truth stands out as an especially pointed indictment of the American military's treatment of its own people on and off the battlefield." Ha ha ha ha, onya NYT! It's not the war, it's just the way it's being run. God forbid the NYT would print anything anti-war. Newsweek was similar, "The Ground Truth... is a powerful, polemical, probing examination of the devastation the war has taken on returning soldiers." Um... is that anti-war? Kinda, I guess. Seriously, <i>The Ground Truth</i> is another in a long line of 'anti-war' films that will have virtually zero effect on the propensity of white people to go abroad and kill foreigners for bullshit reasons.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLoEQKSE0wsnFjMfHR6lWQApO_U9AHySSGScKl13UXTR15ImKdeyK77Br3LU1Wxo-AiLlKD61KnIPQwx4uNoRwdyGMVgfvXIEk_-uA7ymkqaaNXph8AMfpEIFG7MpKS6M8jSR1-FH3KldT/s1600-h/Ground_truth_post.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLoEQKSE0wsnFjMfHR6lWQApO_U9AHySSGScKl13UXTR15ImKdeyK77Br3LU1Wxo-AiLlKD61KnIPQwx4uNoRwdyGMVgfvXIEk_-uA7ymkqaaNXph8AMfpEIFG7MpKS6M8jSR1-FH3KldT/s400/Ground_truth_post.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245387714717198786" /></a><br />Broadly <i>The Ground Truth</i> has four main themes.<br /><br />The cruelty of the military<br /><br />Yawn, seen it all before. The military inculcates people. It reduces them to killing machines who think wogs deserve death. And what? The people in this film detailing their dehumanisation didn't know this? Didn't they see <i>Full Metal Jacket</i> and every other goddamn movie? Watch the people in this film as they earnestly tell of what they went through in basic training as if those who haven't done it would have no idea. It's the first hint of a disconnect that pervades the whole movie.<br /><br />Experiences in Iraq<br /><br />Likewise everything these veterans describe as having taken part in, in Iraq, has been graphically depicted in anti-war movies beyond counting. Violence against innocents, shooting women, variations of torture - we've seen it all. Certainly the people recounting their experiences in this film saw horror with a reality way beyond 1024 x 576 pixels with 5.1 sound. Being in a place with the smell of burning flesh in your nostrils is infinitely more real than watching it on TV. But we're watching this film on TV aren't we? For us as viewers it's just more of the same.<br /><br />The return home/ mistreatment by the military<br /><br />These are the other two themes. But I'll just lump them in together because they're related and because the movies that have already dealt with these themes did likewise. There's been plenty of movies about coming home. Like <i>Coming Home</i>. And like <i>Born on the Fourth of July</i>. The people in this film showing us their shattered bodies and describing their mistreatment by the government seem surprised. <i>How could the government have treated us this way?</i> It's almost like all those anti-war Vietnam movies had never been made. Or they made no goddamn difference. Pick one.<br /><br />Bullshit anti-war movies<br /><br />Every still and every bit of footage in this movie from back-lit heroic troops to out-and-out war-crimes won't stop anyone from piling in to do their bit for the next ginned up bullshit war. We even get to see that famous night-scope machine-gunning of three men in a field. I originally saw this in an office with half a dozen otherwise right-thinking guys, all of whom cheered. They didn't care for it when I declared they'd just cheered a war crime. And here it is featured in this anti-war film. Wooh! Man, that rocks!<br /><br />Everything in this film has been seen before. And all of it was seen by the very people in this film. Can you dig the irony? The people in this film intent on telling us about the wickedness of the military, the hell of combat, and how they came back from war all fucked up, had already seen all the films intent on telling them the wickedness of the military, the hell of combat, blah, blah, blah. It seems they imagine that this film will affect us in a way that all those other films didn't affect them. Or something.<br /><br />Truth is, none of the people in this film get it. None of them have figured out that they were the villains. Says one fellow, 'I'd rather have somebody say welcome home, than thank you.' Huh? What are we thanking him for? Does he still think he was defending America? Or that he was doing something good? Says another fellow, 'Waiting 120 days for healthcare is bullshit. It's a good thing that when I was called up, I didn't say I'll get back to you in a 120 days.' Mate, you're wrong - you should have told them precisely that. Or some variation of it beginning with a capital F.<br /><br />All of the people in this flick were variations of self-obsessed. The Iraq war is wicked because they suffered. The victims of their invasion and occupation are given very little consideration. Even those upset by killing innocents have failed to make the crucial leap to realising that everyone in Iraq is innocent - innocent of attacking America, innocent of threatening America, innocent of doing anything other than defending their country from a most perfectly vicious foreign invader. None of them seem capable of flipping the situation and imagining themselves as the invaded and how they'd view foreign invaders who behaved as they did. Is this difficult? Seems so.<br /><br />A real anti-war movie<br /><br />Here's how to make a real anti-war film - tell people that they're being lied to. Tell them that they're pawns being used by cynical motherfuckers to kill people who never threatened them. Tell them about Hawaii and the sugar growers. Tell them about the slaughter in the Philippines. Tell them about the con of the Lusitania. Tell them about the bullshit WWI human soap stories designed to whip up hysteria against the Germans. Tell them about the US Fed funding the Bolsheviks. Tell them communism and the Cold War was a scam. Tell them about the treaty of Versailles being run by the bankers to bleed Germany dry. Tell them about Roosevelt starting the war with the Japanese with the utterly foreseen Pearl Harbour dog and pony show. Tell them about the Gulf of Tonkin. Tell them about the USS Liberty. Tell them about Oded Yinon and his plan for the Middle East. Tell them about 9/11, PNAC, the OSP, and the Pentagon under the command of dual-passport Israelis. Tell them Al Qaeda is a myth.Tell them that Iran has no nukes.<br /><br />All of it was a pack of lies with Hollywood as complicit as any. And the unspeakable truth is, yes, their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers died for nothing - nothing except lies. The way to make people truly anti-war is to tell them that they've been bullshitted into making the ultimate sacrifice. Anything other than this is just more bullshit. And bullshit is all we'll ever get from the Hollywood marketing wing of the international banking war-machine.<br /><br />--------<br /><br />Sorry, I should give an honourable mention to Camilo Mejia. Of all the people here, he was the guy who actually put his arse on the line. He stood up for himself, held on to the truth, and sure enough, did jail time. His words at the end of the film are perfectly beautiful.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-10521043208305334852008-04-17T10:36:00.011+10:002012-09-28T06:37:12.793+10:00RenditionThis is a masterpiece. It's a cri de cœur against an America gone astray. For those out there who know that something is very, very wrong with the US this is the movie for you. Everything that's stinks with the War On Terror, particularly its uncaring failure to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent, is distilled here into the story of a single individual's suffering under a mad machine run amuck. <i>Rendition</i> re-establishes Hollywood's credentials as a humanist force-for-good.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg16ijWmxomQVUyBmTMPdDOuSnLtzs_Tdltcevocc43a-AyJdFEzqKO2xkF00Se1Dy8PfxOemU_cmzjQHGsNewUzRlx3A3_9D8H5_uj7by_qRmJEIYDT3z1MESGHPcirLg7BvM6LjFsWnAE/s1600-h/405px-Renditionposter.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg16ijWmxomQVUyBmTMPdDOuSnLtzs_Tdltcevocc43a-AyJdFEzqKO2xkF00Se1Dy8PfxOemU_cmzjQHGsNewUzRlx3A3_9D8H5_uj7by_qRmJEIYDT3z1MESGHPcirLg7BvM6LjFsWnAE/s400/405px-Renditionposter.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245388133124047858" /></a><br />Or that's what they'd have you believe. Of all the above statements, only one sentence is true - this <span style="font-style:italic;">is</span> a masterpiece. It's a couldn't-be-bettered, word-perfect example of how to harness right-thinking discontent, subtly colour it with pre-established racist precepts, and dissolve it into little more than minor quibbles with the bureaucratic failures of an otherwise necessary war on Arabs.<br />
<br />The Good Arabs<br /><br />Right-thinking people know that there must be some good Arabs. And here we see one. We know he's good because he's shed almost every aspect of his Arab heritage and is the living embodiment of the American Dream. He gives successful 'presentations' and people congratulate him in Americanese - Good Job! His wife is the suitably blonde Reese Witherspoon who completes the picture of the perfect American couple. Admittedly the un-Arab's Mother looks a bit ethnic, what with a scarf over her head, but only momentarily so (and even then, is vaguely Whistler's Mother-ish). This scarf is the single visual clue that our good Arab is still a little bit foreign, albeit by way of his mother - perfectly forgivable. However, as the movie progresses and it becomes necessary to reinforce his American-ness the head scarf becomes superfluous and we never see the mother as anything other than bare-headed, which is to say 'normal'. As everybody knows, those who put anything on their head, apart from a baseball cap or a stetson, are to be feared.<br /><br />The other good Arab is the poor duped daughter of the Police Chief. We know that she is good because she goes against her stern traditional father and sleeps with a boy. In Jewish Hollywood it is right that children not listen to their parents and behave wilfully. Somehow this is admirable. It's even taught to little kids in Disney movies like <i>The Little Mermaid</i> and <a href="http://churchofnobody.blogspot.com/2007/12/blog-post.html"><i>The Lion King</i></a>. The constant message - You are smarter than your parents and right to disobey them. According to Hollywood any culture that is not permissive and frowns on pre-marital sex is obviously backwards and wrong. Steeped as we are in Jewish culture, when <i>Rendition</i> shows us an Arab girl rejecting a tenet of her culture and jumping into bed with a fellow her family will certainly (and rightly) disapprove of we think 'Good for her!'<br />
<br />The Bad Arabs<br /><br />Apart from the two above, they're all bad Arabs. The opening scene sets the tone with the people on the street shown as madly gesticulating jibber-jabberers. Durka Durka! (Ha, didn't we love <i>Team America</i>? Dick Cheney's favourite movie!)<br />
<br />Otherwise a plurality of the Arabs in <i>Rendition</i> are terrorists, which is to say Those Who Hate Us For Our Freedom. And being so refreshingly free of logic or common sense, it stands to reason that they are idiotically incompetent. In attempting to assassinate the daughter's Police Chief father, rather than walk up to his table at the outdoor cafe and put a revolver to the back of his head, they send a bomber to kill everyone in the square. As proof of their wickedness they have a rifleman in position to shoot the 'suicide' bomber in case he gets cold feet. Um okay, but since we have a rifleman there why not get him to shoot the Chief of Police? D'oh! He can't shoot straight. Bloody Arabs! They can't get anything right.<br /><br />Meanwhile back at the madrassa, the evil blank-eyed leaders tell their soon-to-be-evil blank-eyed followers (featuring the daughter's boyfriend) that Zionism is very wicked and therefore they should attack Americans and their agents, ie. the Chief of Police. In this regard, our Hollywood-imagined terrorists precisely resemble our media-imagined Al Qaeda. The talk is anti-Zionist but the action is anti-everyone-but.<br />
<br />The feature Arab villain is the girl's father/Chief of Police played by Yigal Naor. He's a hell of an actor and has a golden future playing Arab villains. He's an Israeli, you know. In <i>Rendition</i>, he's shown as a good family man and loving with his youngest child. But! He's a torturer! It just goes to show - you can't trust an Arab. Thanks Yigal! And lest we be confused, his cruelty is made perfectly clear to us by having the film's conscience, Jake Gyllenhaal, sit in as our innocent American un-Arab gets tortured. Gyllenhaal's character is squeamish and wonders at the victim's guilt. The torturer has no such second thoughts. It seems he took the Americans, who delivered the victim to him precisely for this purpose, at their word. The movie of course makes no such suggestion - that's just me. However, through <i>Rendition</i>'s camera, and Yigal's performance, it's clear that Arabs are cruel and pitiless. Not like us. <br />
<br />In the Police Chief's favour it should be said that he merely had the wrong Arab. He should have spent more time torturing the local Durka Durka Arabs and less time torturing the American un-Arab. This is made clear to us with the second torture victim, the madrassa buddy of the daughter's boyfriend. His torture was definitely worthwhile. The spot-on information gleaned leads the Chief precisely to the terrorist house where his daughter was. But he's too late. If only the father had followed Kiefer Sutherland's dictum of 'Torture Early, Torture Often' he'd have been in time to save his daughter from becoming red mist. Says this film - Torture works. It just depends on whom you do it to. Torturing innocent Americans - Bad. Torturing guilty Arabs - Good.<br /><br />The Bad Americans<br /><br />Sorry, that was a typo. There's actually only one. It's Merryl Streep and curiously, as the villain of the piece, she's defined in a cinematically ambiguous fashion. In cinema, to establish the precise 'here's who to hate' mindset in the audience, purpose-written scenes will be inserted. As a for-instance, think back to the original <i>Star Wars</i>. Remember the torture scene - Darth, Leia, and a hypodermic robot thing? That sequence served no purpose by way of the plot and was merely there so that we might understand exactly how wicked the bad guys were. Ha! Those were the days! No longer. Hollywood now spits out shit like <i>24</i> to convince us of the rightness of that which used to be the hallmark of evil.<br /><br />That Streep has no such establishing scene is not an accident. Indeed upon being confronted by the ever brilliant Peter Sarsgaard (see <i>Shattered Glass</i>, coming soon), who's helping Witherspoon find her husband, Streep is given the opportunity to spout some utter bullshit about 7000 British being alive today thanks to citizens being denied their rights, or tortured, or something. And nobody calls her on it, nobody says bullshit, nothing. Hmm... maybe she's right. Maybe torture is good. Yeah? Get fucked!<br /><br />The Good Americans<br /><br />I include here a senator, Alan Arkin, and his aide, the aforementioned Sarsgaard. They're sort of helpful, until they wimp out that is. This too is dealt with ambiguously. It's intended that we view their actions as, if not forgivable, certainly understandable. Perhaps they have a mortgage, so who can blame them? Holiday homes in the Hamptons don't come cheap, you know. Either way, cinematically, they get off very lightly. They did their best and really it was none of their business anyway. And maybe the Government is right and the un-Arab is a terrorist?<br /><br />Um... what's missing here? Let's put it this way - If this film (which pivots on the veracity of the War On Terror) can't find the thirty seconds to bring up the rampant lies regarding Iraq's WMD's, then no Hollywood film ever will. Perhaps there weren't any lies about WMD's? Perhaps we dreamt it.<br /><br />Actually, there's only one good American, the ever redoubtable Jake Gyllenhaal. In this film he is us. We see events unfold through his eyes and he/we react accordingly. His disillusion charts our own. When he's had enough and throws away his career by freeing the un-Arab and alerting the Washington Post (ha ha ha ha, no really!) we sigh in relief knowing we've done the right thing. If we were in a movie that's what we'd do too. With his actions our imagined moral rightness is confirmed. We are white people and, between white people and a sea of wicked coloured people, we know who'll stand up and do the right thing. Us.<br /><br />Really?<br /><br />Tear your eyes away from the screen for a minute and ask yourself - Where is this phoenix? This fabled creature of legend? This virtuous white man? Nowhere - just like the simple and obvious truths that could redeem the United States of America as it lumbers down the road to hell. It's not easy keeping these truths obscured. An iron grip must be maintained. The propaganda must have a single voice, even that spun for those who would oppose it. Especially for them.<br /><br />And there you have <i>Rendition</i>. A reinforcement of all the racist, war-mongering neocon propaganda dressed up as its very opposite. You can't help but be impressed. <i>Rendition</i> is a bloody masterpiece.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-89563782289015230752008-04-11T14:46:00.002+10:002008-09-13T16:50:58.506+10:00Fearless Reporters, James Bond, and Tail-Gunner JoeNo need for lengthy deconstruction here. I just want to make three quick points about three films.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">All The President's Men</span><br /><br />Ah, the seventies. I have a soft spot for American cinema from that period. And this film is about as good as it gets. Despite a complete absence of gun fights, car crashes and slaughtered innocents, the suspense is total. The closest thing to this lately is Fincher's Zodiac which might just be the ultimate seventies film ever made, ha ha.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDy_zbyUzLV-jtlJUmXtuOzwDmEIDsSa7Kilk07CbGKSsOe6L0BMqR770EPE5MIaNASd0M8uW_sZ-IFzpJnzDX1o6BeBmkkdWLxQlCxLuCRBYx6kIgniygsigNM79RaRoxLzqjafORuLLP/s1600-h/200px-12734GF4.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDy_zbyUzLV-jtlJUmXtuOzwDmEIDsSa7Kilk07CbGKSsOe6L0BMqR770EPE5MIaNASd0M8uW_sZ-IFzpJnzDX1o6BeBmkkdWLxQlCxLuCRBYx6kIgniygsigNM79RaRoxLzqjafORuLLP/s400/200px-12734GF4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245393631173709170" /></a><br />All The President's Men perhaps did more to establish the myth of the press as tenacious truth-seekers than any other film. And three cheers for the concept. But can anyone imagine the process we see in this flick taking place today? Ha ha ha ha. Fat chance. He we are in amongst crimes and misdemeanours that make whatever CREEP was up to look like a Country Women's Association lamington drive (there's an Australian reference for you). The media of today would no more uncover these crimes than they would cut their own heads off. Because that's what they'd have to do, so complicit are they. The publisher of the Washington Post, heroized in this film, was a founding member of WHIG, the White-House Iraq Group. This war is their war.<br /><br />Thus we're forced to look back at the good old days when the media was honest and true. Or were they? A handful of years before Watergate, Israel had attempted to sink the USS Liberty with all hands. The purpose of the effort was for the US to nuke Cairo. The Israelis were forced to come up with excuses that were such complete bullshit that an investigation only a fraction the size of this movie's would have seen angry crowds throwing molotov cocktails at the Israeli embassy. But it never happened. The media was as perfectly corrupt then as it is now. And so the question is - Whom did it suit to have Nixon deposed? Had he, like JFK, decided to go against the wishes of the Fed? Who knows? But rest assured that Nixon's media assassination only happened because it was sanctioned from above.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Tomorrow Never Dies</span><br /><br />Does anyone remember the plot of this flick? I'd forgotten it too. But there it was on the telly and before I could change the channel, my jaw had hit the floor. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHWjizH_Cfw-mr4GM4YY1GA1DaEBbEuv4KgAMxYRFvGnoSlXJUg6ow438OGePy36BhYg0aYUrZgfz3M1jar5H3i5sjkopWfn_L7TknoFh84Cb_3e5QwHbvRtyfFqPRzzEtFDtXY_4NiKYt/s1600-h/225px-007TNDposter.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHWjizH_Cfw-mr4GM4YY1GA1DaEBbEuv4KgAMxYRFvGnoSlXJUg6ow438OGePy36BhYg0aYUrZgfz3M1jar5H3i5sjkopWfn_L7TknoFh84Cb_3e5QwHbvRtyfFqPRzzEtFDtXY_4NiKYt/s400/225px-007TNDposter.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245393807166936226" /></a><br />Did somebody say USS Liberty just now? Believe it or not, this plot pivots precisely on the Liberty story. The opening scene involves nothing less than the false-flag sinking of a British Destroyer with the loss of all hands. Of course the Israelis of the Liberty affair are re-imagined here as masterful blonde ubermenschen rather than as hapless keystone cops who failed at sinking the most lightly armed ship in the US Navy. Even the Israeli's abysmal machine-gunning of the Liberty's lifeboats is here reproduced as a successful coup de grace slaughter of all survivors.<br /><br />And thank God for that! No need for a corrupt President and Secretary of Defence to step in and shut down a counter-attack. No need for a senior admiral (and father of a later presidential candidate) to threaten the survivor/witnesses with death. No need for the US Navy to subvert two hundred years of tradition and fail to hold a Congressional inquiry. 'Rogue elements' aside, government in cinema is corruption-free.<br /><br />And the villain? It's Rupert Murdoch! Here imagined as a non-Jewish Englishman by name of Carver. Mind you, the crypto part of Murdoch's crypto-Jewish nature is nearly airtight, so no biggie. Apparently 'Carver' has undertaken this false-flag in order to, a) sell more newspapers and, b) gain satellite rights to China. Ha ha ha ha. The cart goes before the horse. Fuckers like Murdoch don't start wars to gain media control. They use their media control to start wars. And God forbid we should ask for whom.<br /><br />Speaking of which, does anyone remember Spectre, the villainous super-organisation of the earlier Bond films? They were a supra-national criminal collective with seemingly limitless resources hell-bent on the subversion of nation-states. Who could they possibly have been, apart from international banking? Seriously. Perhaps even this depiction was too close to the bone. Best we disappear them utterly and replace them with an unlikely arse-about, nonsensical media villain. Pay no attention to the organ grinder! Look at the funny monkey!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Good Night And Good Luck</span><br /><br />What's to be done about the abjectly partisan Jewish media? There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the concept of a media per se. The potential of the media to be a force for good and to enlighten the populace is inarguable. The problem with the media is that it (provided it's under complete control) gives those who control it a god-like ability to misrepresent reality. Mass-murderers become plucky under-dogs. Their innocent victims are villainous non-humans who deserve whatever they get. And we send bazillions of dollars to the self-same murderous sons-of-bitches. Hell, my PM just congratulated them on sixty years of 'success'. Sure enough, the power of the media is such that none may stand against it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgktTER6wyNSB-ou5hprZCsnE8Cl5ETartoAx3-qQIsMq7aDKl53TlnKMpxDJcf6L2EwiHJgqhP422bOBm2lyiGfYx4EqSvNGu7cTEfttAlrhYJpeG7Ik0YnYUSTKl5lOEpbzWx-wXR5_Zg/s1600-h/200px-Goodnight_poster.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgktTER6wyNSB-ou5hprZCsnE8Cl5ETartoAx3-qQIsMq7aDKl53TlnKMpxDJcf6L2EwiHJgqhP422bOBm2lyiGfYx4EqSvNGu7cTEfttAlrhYJpeG7Ik0YnYUSTKl5lOEpbzWx-wXR5_Zg/s400/200px-Goodnight_poster.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245393980536159474" /></a><br />What's to be done? How might one decapitate this evil apparatus? Is that even possible? Way back when, wikipedia used to have at the bottom of each page - in amongst such categories as '1957 births', 'Irish Americans', and 'left-handed people' - another similar category of 'Jewish directors'. This list was a complete mindfuck. No wonder it's gone now. On reading the list one had to ask if there was anyone in Hollywood who wasn't Jewish. And as I've said before, the news is no different. So impossibly frequent are Jewish commentators telling me how to view the topic-du-jour (usually Muslims) that it's perfectly unsurprising to find a Jewish reporter interviewing the Jewish subject of the story, with comments from various experts, all Jewish. Wow.<br /><br />Does anyone imagine a purge of Jewish control of the Hollywood/ media combine would ever succeed if titled as such? Not in a million years. Sure enough, if one had the cojones to attempt such a thing, subterfuge would be the weapon of first resort. What if, in the hysterical climate of the fifties, one was to dress such a campaign in a mantle of 'anti-communism'? Communism in America, just like communism in Russia, was pretty much a Jewish affair. An anti-communist campaign in Hollywood would almost precisely target Jews. If you wanted to do something about Jewish domination, it'd be that or nothing.<br /><br />With this in mind, how are we to view Tail-Gunner Joe? If I was to posit him as being less about communist control of Hollywood than about Jewish control, would the argument fall at the first hurdle? If it held up, might we wonder at the horns that have been painted on him by the Hollywood/media combine over the decades? It's a thought, sure. But such thoughts may not be countenanced. There is only one way to think. And the 'subversive' Good Night And Good Luck fits the bill nicely, thanks very much.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-77501465367683931402008-04-04T16:08:00.002+11:002008-12-01T16:20:41.710+11:00Gone Baby GoneHollywood is a shitfight. It's quintessentially American. It's quintessentially Jewish. What would American culture look like without Jewish influence? Where does one begin and the other end? It's a question, sure.<br /><br />Perhaps it's another continuum? If we put Seinfeld, The Royal Tannenbaums, Dexter and The Usual Suspects at one end, what might be at the other? How about Gone Baby Gone? <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj73LoFbrccUxC4XPFR63EZ3rJath5MfeEKswF3SjQurnr3hekLXEtD-uLOZlPPmBtBa8J1oT0jpb2VT_t2AFdmUEbfuMr6gFXOyecnG6tWenc4GDcIhk77dexuwShGBCIpaLGeWkYaQA1g/s1600-h/Gone_baby_gone_poster.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj73LoFbrccUxC4XPFR63EZ3rJath5MfeEKswF3SjQurnr3hekLXEtD-uLOZlPPmBtBa8J1oT0jpb2VT_t2AFdmUEbfuMr6gFXOyecnG6tWenc4GDcIhk77dexuwShGBCIpaLGeWkYaQA1g/s400/Gone_baby_gone_poster.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245388633329661490" /></a><br />Why is crime so intrinsic to American culture? There's a thesis in that. Gone Baby Gone is part of the tradition - Raymond Chandler, James M Cain, and here Dennis LeHane. LeHane can't write like Chandler (say) but his heart is in the right place. So too it seems is Ben Affleck's, who has mercifully stepped behind the camera and astounds us all with with a very fine directorial debut. In front of the camera is his brother Casey Affleck, a far better actor. Having only previously seen frere Affleck in those light-as-a-feather Oceans flicks, here he's a revelation.<br /><br />But never mind that. The treasure of this film is that it possesses a true moral dilemma. It's simple and it's complex. For the purpose of this blog, it's all I shall discuss.<br /><br />The set-up<br /><br />A child is abducted. Enter Affleck and his winsome girlfriend as blue-collar private-eyes hired by the family to find her. From the beginning, these two are us. We learn as they learn. Sure enough, nothing is what it seems. Is the coke-slut mother guilty? The local low-rent drug lord? The uncle? The police?<br /><br />Ambiguity reigns. Sure enough the director has to tread a fine line to avoid blowing the gag. But it's deftly done. We weave this way and that. Clues planted earlier come to fruit. All comes clear. Everything we've seen was an orchestrated sham. The girl wasn't so much abducted as rescued. It was all for her benefit. Those who committed the 'crime' were doing 'good'.<br /><br />The dilemma<br /><br />Finally we arrive at the crunch moment. The perfectly low-key Affleck faces down the perfectly low-key Morgan Freeman. Freeman has the girl. In cahoots with the uncle and two other cops he has 'adopted' her. Everyone in the loop did this out of concern for her.<br /><br />Affleck confronts Freeman and says he's turning him in. Let's let Freeman do the talking - 'You know it doesn't matter what the rules say. When the lights go out and you ask yourself, "Is she better off here or better off there?" you know the answer. And you always will. You... you could do a right thing here. A good thing. Men live their whole lives without getting this chance. You walk away from it, you may not regret it when you get home. You may not regret it for a whole year, but when you get to where I am, I promise you, you will. I'll be dead. You'll be old. But she... she'll be dragging around a couple of tattered, damaged children of her own, and she'll be the one to tell them you're sorry.'<br /><br />He's right of course. The girl is infinitely better off with Freeman than with her worthless mother. But Affleck astounds us with a slightly different take - 'You know what? Maybe that'll happen. I'll tell them I'm sorry and I'll live with it. But what's never gonna happen and what I'm not gonna do is have to apologise to a grown woman who comes to me and says, "I was kidnapped when I was a little girl, and my aunt hired you to find me. And you did, you found me with some strange family. But you broke your promise and you left me there. Why? Why didn't you bring me home? Because all the snacks and the outfits and the family trips don't matter. They stole me. It wasn't my family and you knew about it and you knew better and you did nothing." And maybe that grown woman will forgive me, but I'll never forgive myself.' Good stuff.<br /><br />Finding the answer.<br /><br />Simplistic moral commandments fail here. Under the law, everything that's taken place is illegal. But both men are rightly uninterested in quoting the law or basing their decisions on it. Affleck's use of it is merely remedial.<br /><br />Is my continuum, at the top of the page, any use here? Of course, but we're there already. The conversation on both sides is already couched in terms of selflessness. There is now no shortcut or quick fix. We're in the messy middle ground and all that can be done is to puzzle out the optimum benefit for the girl.<br /><br />Freeman's character does this by positing the future. But it's a false argument. The only certainty is change. Freeman imagines he knows how things will go. Sure, if you were a gambling man you'd lay odds he was right. That is until Affleck posits his other all-too-likely possibility. Perhaps that, perhaps this - who knows? Affleck has effectively trumped Freeman's argument. It's a stalemate and all things being equal the girl should stay with her mother.<br /><br />The movie ends in fine hard-boiled style with Affleck wandering the streets alone, his girlfriend having dumped him for making the wrong choice. The last shot has him and the little girl vacantly watching TV, the uncaring mother on a bullshit date. Aargh! Was Freeman right? It certainly seems that Affleck is now doomed to a future of baby-sitting.<br /><br />Exactly. Whether Director Affleck meant it or not, this scene represents the crucial truth in a discussion of selflessness. Had Freeman truly been acting out of a spirit of selflessness he'd have helped the mother. But between that unappealing prospect and having a sweetheart kid to cherish as his own he chose the latter. Well you would wouldn't you? Being selfish is so much easier. Affleck didn't choose his selflessness. It was thrust upon him. And his reward? Living a life other than he would wish it, ha ha. But never mind. I've already imagined the sequel. Scene one - Afflecks's winsome gal comes back.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-65332365807368498632008-02-16T16:41:00.003+11:002011-09-20T05:10:29.507+10:00功夫 Gōngfu- Kung Fu HustleI have decided to create a film genre. It's called 'The Redemption Flick'. Imdb have never heard of it. It exists nowhere except in my head. It's just me searching for films that qualify and claiming them. Hollywood of course hates the concept of redemption and produces very few examples of it, and then mostly in a twisted self-serving fashion. Really one has to turn to Asia and directors like Stephen Chow and his immaculate Kung Fu Hustle.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9wwJF-FrKfA-B4IVhdGKZNORn_iCpz0KshYNMkYD9CA7MQIxD92p6hzIBAbLWpuFtyVMu8nGDMEwv42wRp8WCzz3dHbr3TIo0XXiM3x-T8etSqOT5v4Ld1emhdmv5ZMh7cHsxuU6fooYm/s1600-h/KungFuHustleHKposter.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9wwJF-FrKfA-B4IVhdGKZNORn_iCpz0KshYNMkYD9CA7MQIxD92p6hzIBAbLWpuFtyVMu8nGDMEwv42wRp8WCzz3dHbr3TIo0XXiM3x-T8etSqOT5v4Ld1emhdmv5ZMh7cHsxuU6fooYm/s400/KungFuHustleHKposter.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245389070428302546" /></a><br />I rave deliriously about this movie. Not only is its heart in the right place but it's a dazzling technical achievement. I declare Chow a cinematic genius. Every single aspect of this flick is carefully considered to maximise the comedy, the action, the pathos, the heartbreak, the joy. Every shot delivers emotion. Every scene is a twofer that seamlessly slides us into the next. The casting is extraordinary. Never have we seen a character like the landlady whom Chow happily let's steal the movie. But really it's a true ensemble piece and scene-stealers abound. Not forgetting the soundtrack. It broadly lends the film a Quincy Jones-esque feeling of menace and mystery, and mostly in an Asian scale. Believe it or not, this tone of menace enhances the comedy (nope, I don't get it either). The love theme breaks my heart. On top of this is a perfectly paced progressive structure that is a contemplation of the philosophies that underlie Asian martial arts and the inverse relationship between skill and the use of violence. It also tips its hat to filial piety, powerlessness, thwarted bravery, and forgiveness. Wonderful though all these things are, they're just bits and pieces. The director's genius is the ability to tie it all together and make the whole greater than the sum of the parts. Welcome to Kung Fu Hustle. But first, me, Stephen Chow and that git Tarantino<br /><br />Minor Notes<br /><br />I've been watching Hong Kong cinema for twenty years odd. I lived in Sydney's Chinatown and frequented a video rental store there and immersed myself in Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh and the mighty Amy Yip, ha ha. And then there was the Chinatown Cinema. It was a trip into another world that's tragically gone now. Amongst other things, I learnt that the movies I'd already seen on video, and found mildly amusing, would reduce the Chinese cinema audience to puddles of laughter. The subtitles completely failed to convey the double-entendre humour. I later learnt that this goes for all subtitles in all languages (and dubbing is worse - me, I'd rather eat my own earwax than watch a dubbed movie). And Stephen Chow is an acknowledged master of Cantonese wordplay. In fact he's considered the genius behind a particular style called 'mo lei tau', the nature of which (in spite of much patient explanation) I have failed to grasp. As funny as this movie is for round-eyes, fellow subtitle readers should know that Cantonese speakers watching it (like my nutty mate Lulu with whom I first saw it) can barely sit upright for laughter.<br /><br />Never mind the Cantonese, Stephen Chow is the king of Asia. Kung Fu Hustle when it was released was the monster hit from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur. I haven't met an Asian who hasn't seen it. In the West it did well enough, but really, almost no one got it. Reviewers seemed barely able to get past a single scene's resemblance to a Road Runner cartoon. Big deal. Of course they'd obsess over the least meaningful scene in the movie. But this is no mindless cartoon. It's laden with intent and is a showcase for everything that's right with Chinese culture. Westerners were, as ever, too busy looking for their own reflection, ha ha.<br /><br />In this vein, if I was to find any fault with this film it's in Chow's two episodes of 'homage' to Western cinema. One is Kubrick's 'blood elevator' from The Shining and the other is an unintelligible quote from De Palma's The Untouchables. The blood elevator serves a purpose and is the build-up for a gag. But The Untouchables? Why? Chinese people laugh at it, but only because they think he's speaking gibberish. Of all people, Chow really doesn't need it. Nobody says - fuck post-modernist pastiche. It's witless and best left to unoriginal gits like Tarantino. But really these are minor quibbles and comprise no more than a few seconds of screen time.<br /><br />I previously haven't bothered warning of spoilers. Half the flicks here don't deserve it, ha ha. But this one does. The trajectory of the plot is carefully hidden and is a series of surprises. Funnily enough, a lot of it is hidden in plain sight. Planting clues to explain what's coming is the nuts and bolts of cinema narrative. Chow hides these mechanics by turning them into show-stoppers. Each step is a delight that is never greater than with the initial viewing. Believe it or not, whole swathes of the film go undiscussed here - I've attempted to stick solely to thematic apects (as I see them, natch). But next para I more or less give the game away. Says I - If you haven't seen Kung Fu Hustle and you're up for the total effect, stop reading.<br /><br />The Plot Trajectory<br /><br />At first glance, it's a simple progression. Each hero and villain we encounter is impossibly succeeded by a more powerful one. But this rising arc of power is mirrored by a declining one that we might label 'desire to fight' or even 'self-opinion'. Those with the least ability are the most likely to bring violence. And the most powerful subject themselves to the greatest indignities to avoid it.<br /><br />I did a martial art for a couple of years. The Sifu of my school, which is to say master, looked like someone's nice uncle and wore a cardigan. The Si Goong, which is to say grandmaster, looked like someone's nice grampa and he wore an even crummier cardigan, ha ha. Either one of them could eat me alive, if they chose to. (Not that I was much good, you understand) Those at the top levels of my school possessed ability in inverse proportion to their appearance, self-opinion, and desire to impress. And so it is here. As we climb from lowly farmer to Number One Killer, Chow asserts the wrongness of violence for the self and the reluctant rightness of it in defence of the innocent. Here, those who use violence for self-serving cop a lesson from those with least self-regard. <br /><br />The Redemption Trajectory<br /><br />The redemption is of Chow, whom - since it's his movie - we know is the hero. But clearly he has fallen. But in 'deed' he hasn't fallen far. No Macbeth stepped in blood he. It's merely his dreams that are corrupt. He enters the movie's world, Pig Sty Alley, as a villain, but of the would-be variety. He and his offsider pretend to be members of the dreaded Axe Gang so they might extort a few pennies from the barber (who perversely seems unable to pull his trousers up, ha ha). But Chow's pretence at villainy is quickly laid bare by him copping a thrashing at the hands of women. One of the women is Yuen Qiu, the aforementioned landlady. So fabulous is she, that was she to beat me with one of her flip-flops, I would never wash the footprint from my face. God bless every hair-roller on her head.<br /><br />In a flashback, Chow explains to his pal his desire to be bad. In his childhood he encountered a sage who precisely (says I) saw the boy's heroic potential. Fired by the sage, his head full of dreams of greatness, he would rescue a damsel - which is to say, a deaf girl from whom bullies are stealing a lollipop. But perhaps his attempt to rescue the girl was less about her than it was about him? Perhaps he's grasped the wrong end of he stick - selfishness dressed up in a selfless raiment? The lead bully fetches the young Chow a corker and the gang soaks him in urine. The would-be hero runs off, spurning the girl. But is his shame alloyed with a lack of concern for her? Certainly they never exchange a glance and at no time does he ever acknowledge her except in his 'let-go-of-the-girl' challenge to the bullies. Either way, his thrashing taught him a lesson and sadly it's the wrong one. Respect, riches and women go not to the virtuous but to the wicked.<br /><br />The hero's following attempts to turn theoretical villainy into actuality are unfailingly comedic. His sidekick is perfect as the least likely villain ever. Humiliation follows humiliation for our pair until the hero's desperation brings him, and us, to the film's pivotal moment. He holds a knife to the throat of the ice-cream-cart girl and demands her money. And who might she be? Sure enough, her tears give pause to our hero's good heart, but it's her sign language that stops him dead. The transfixed Chow is perfect here, as is the girl. As she tearfully holds out the lollipop - kept for twenty years in memory of his heroism - the music swells and Chow (baulking at this challenge to the nature of his memory and self-image) smashes the cherished token of affection. He runs off with a handful of coins, his first crime complete, but his heart shattered. His turning on his sidekick completes his desolation, but is consolidated-confused-tempered by his friend's act of charity in the form of a proffered lemonade. A really wonderful moment made from nothing.<br /><br />And at this precise moment, Chow is offered a gig by the Axe Gang. Post breakdown, will he succumb to villainy or come good at the last moment? Ha! An adventurous distraction or two later, he makes the right choice but doesn't get off lightly. The Number One Killer smashes every bone in his body. But fear not, it's merely the final event in a series of kung fu genre clues that leads to the 'unblocking of his chi' and his rebirth as beatific kung fu bodhisattva. The landlady and her equally fabulous husband Yuen Wah (Bruce Lee's original stunt-double and never better than here) play midwife and become the rightful objects of his Confucian filial piety. And bodhisattva or no, the Yuen Wo Ping flying chop-socky climax must take place. The fans cannot be denied. But chow's hero is no longer selfish, he now fights for others, his face without attitude. Crucially he is the opposite of the Number One Killer who battles in a spirit of self-obsession. <br /><br />With the villain's final treachery having come to nought, and the hero triumphant, Chow delivers his final impossible act of forgiveness. 'What kind of move was that?', asks the hitherto incorrigible Killer. 'If you want to learn, I shall teach you', says the hero. Huh!? The Killer, tears in his eyes, falls to his knees crying, 'Si Goong!' If Western audiences had been paying attention their jaws would have hit the floor. They just witnessed an American cinematic impossibility. Not only did Chow not kill the villain (never mind Hollywood's requisite 'twice'), he now offers to admit him to further knowledge. The implicit crux is that the only thing that counts is the spirit of selflessness. This is what Chow's hero has learnt and will now teach to his student. The offering of redemption, even for the worst of the worst, is not only possible but the inevitable ultimate step on the path to letting go of the self.<br /><br />The Totality<br /><br />Chow explicitly acknowledges the slings and arrows of the world. The gangs and corrupt police rule all. The community of Pig Sty Alley only enjoyed immunity from them because they were too poor to be of interest. Is it a coincidence that the place harboured so many kung fu masters? Arguably not. Chow asserts that with mastery comes diminution of one's self. Desire for things and for regard fall away. Pig Sty Alley is the right, and possibly only, place for them. Those who've chosen simplicity and obscurity are the heroes, says Chow. Even his own final lollipop shop 'reward' is modest and less about himself than the girl whose heart he broke. It is Chow's gift to her. The shop, like everything else in this film, exists because it contributes to the overall message of redemption. This perhaps is Chow's genius - a dozen stars of yore allowed to shine, a silent ingenue in the role of her life, a tapestry of comedy, action and heartbreak and all to a single focused purpose. That Chow can pull all this off and look good without a shirt, is in defiance of the laws of nature. There's only one option, apart from killing this impossible, chiselled, arse-kicking renaissance-man, and that's to put him in the Redemption Flick Hall of Fame. Si Goong!nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-36944606653534241492008-02-11T12:25:00.006+11:002009-04-30T11:37:53.034+10:00Children of MenThis is a dazzling film. I was dazzled. It's those long camera takes. The are no cuts, no breaks to our concentration giving us an excuse to go to the toilet. Watch the camera work and editing here and be amazed. The beauty of it is that it's almost imperceptible. (Hats off to the Flame operators). This film is as natural as a child's gaze.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaPRkbWQwrvewHkxE0-C_f0XO3ZfvHaj5aPY_WgyU1_flbg9VeC27vV1KXVxDKhPA41oVe43j9HbaPJT6exeJyiC5Dit3dXWKkGq5mU9D1AKEmePSeK8XTaKGa2rn4oruTjckjvLfYBvTP/s1600-h/children_of_men_poster.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaPRkbWQwrvewHkxE0-C_f0XO3ZfvHaj5aPY_WgyU1_flbg9VeC27vV1KXVxDKhPA41oVe43j9HbaPJT6exeJyiC5Dit3dXWKkGq5mU9D1AKEmePSeK8XTaKGa2rn4oruTjckjvLfYBvTP/s400/children_of_men_poster.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245391093931421714" /></a><br />Technical achievements aside, this film has something to say. Says the director - what if every child was viewed as the only child in the world? Imagine people viewing each baby as they might the infant Christ. Imagine if battles stopped on account of this miraculous presence of innocent life. It's a thought, sure. And yes, of dubious real world utility, but who cares? Watch the scene where this climax occurs and have your heart broken. The flood of conflicting powerful emotions it creates hits like a tidal wave.<br /><br />But powerful or no, it's a single notion in a very busy movie. What of the world that it posits? What of its protagonists? What of people's motives? And their responses? This movie certainly resembles a guide to the revolution. What clues can we take from it?<br /><br />The World<br /><br />This is a dystopian future defined by its lack of children. Inexplicably, women the world over ceased to be fertile eighteen years earlier. Never mind that society and technology clearly continue, somehow this scientific question is beyond the powers that be. Best the audience not ask the question, otherwise there wouldn't be a movie. We just take it as read. Fair enough.<br /><br />But is this a metaphor? For what? We know the Bilderbergers have said the world population should be 500 million and posited beyond mass-murder means of achieving their ends. Is this film for them? Or the dozen families above them? Or is it merely a dopey science-fiction what-if vehicle for a series of adventures and lesser messages? <br /><br />Certainly it leads to action sequences and art direction. It's like a crummy Blade Runner without the Ginza vibe. Were the women in Blade Runner infertile? Certainly there were no kids. Both films posit a depopulated world falling apart. Blade Runner was a narrow-focus, existentialist, cops and robbers flick. This movie has a wider eye. It concerns itself with how a society that's falling apart will be run. Shades of V for Vendetta. And as in V, British society is a variation of fascist, albeit less snappily dressed. In amongst this are armed opposition, foreign refugees, religious nutbars and assorted bit-players. And our hero.<br /><br />The Hero<br /><br />Will we ever grow tired of Clive Owen? It's those eyes. Mind you, it's a pity he didn't will them to look elsewhere when Frank Miller pitched his sadistic comic-book gore-fest to him. But never mind. Owen here plays a blank everyman and never were his eyes put to better use.<br /><br />The opening scene defines Owen, and the world, by way of a terrorist bombing. Shockingly, which is to say, without cinematic hint, the cafe he just walked out of, explodes. A woman staggers out carrying her own severed arm. Cut to titles. The surprise absence of chaotic sound and the sudden appearance of the stark graphics is tremendously effective. Not least at separating us from pondering the terror attack and Owen's lack of a response. Later we're told the government was responsible. But so what? It warrants a single line of dialogue and is then forgotten. Apart from a brief whinge about the ringing in his ears, Owen seems entirely unaffected by the carnage. At work immediately afterwards, he asks for time off but incredibly uses the unrelated death of a celebrity as his excuse. The bombing is not in the news and nor does anyone mention it. Is this a daily event? Or rare? We have no idea. And the woman carrying her severed arm? Nothing. It's like she never existed.<br /><br />The film and its hero seem far more preoccupied with the celebrity death of Baby Diego, the youngest person in the world. Baby Diego has a catchy tabloid-ready name, ala Britney or Paris. And like them he occupies the discourse in inverse proportion to his relevance. Admittedly this lack of young people defines the movie but Owen doesn't give a shit about that either. Baby Diego was a wanker, says he. A strange sentiment for man who hours earlier witnessed a woman blown to pieces.<br /><br />Apparently Owen once believed in something. We don't know what. He was some variety of merry prankster who put ketamine in an official's coffee. Whatever it was he thought before, he no longer thinks it now. He seems not to have a life. He has a job that can be defined as computers and partitions. Who cares as to what variation of meaningless it is? Not him, not us. Fair enough.<br /><br />To rope him into the story, his ex-partner (and the mother of his child, now dead), returns to seek his help in an anti-government plot. The memory of his child is intended to be meaningful but isn't. I guess it serves to tie him to the film's defining lack of children but really it's small potatoes. Michael Caine, the hero's stoner friend, discusses Owen's loss in pseudo-philosophical terms, but really it's just gibberish. (Not to mention a damnable slur on the many fine conversations undertaken by stoner philosophers. I take this personally since the first scene of Owen sharing a joint with Caine is a spookily precise snapshot of Me and my buddy Ledge respectively).<br /><br />But forget that. Crucially, Owen has no opinion about anything. The only opinion he ever offers is that the miraculously pregnant woman, who is the Maguffin/Madonna of this film, should be handed over to the media or the government. Brilliant. Otherwise every plan or initiative that Owen follows is someone else's. His delivery of the Madonna at the end of the flick arguably represents a triumphantly dogged lack of imagination. Says wikipedia - Children of Men is a road movie charting Owen's 'heroic journey'. Um, okay. If you say so.<br /><br />The Government<br /><br />Bloody Fascists! We hate them because, um... they round up illegal immigrants and, um... what does this government do apart from this? Not much. Apart from black-armoured para-military rounding up or guarding immigrants the PTB are entirely unobtrusive. But we should know that they are wicked because they mistreat foreigners. Sure enough, regular Britons seem entirely unconcerned. Like our hero, they walk past cages of illegal aliens that absurdly sit on train platforms and next to bus-stops. Who is this a comment on? The government or the citizens? What are we to make of it? That foreigners are very important and hard done by? That we should know fascists by how they mistreat foreigners? Really, it's vague to the point of useless. I have it pegged as a dopey quasi-left excuse for art-direction.<br /><br />We do see the enforcers of the law responding to a feral attack (that we later find is a variation of false-flag). But this scene may as well be from The Bill. The police are well within their rights. The two police who, not unreasonably, pursue our gallant band are shot in cold blood. Sure enough the shooter is later revealed to be a duplicitious bloodthirsty terrorist.<br /><br />And to the strains of Court of the Crimson King we meet Danny Huston, of whom I am a big fan. Anyone not seen The Proposition yet? It's brilliant and so is Huston. He's the son of John Huston, doncha know. And Huston is the Minister of rescuing great art from the mad hammer-wielding masses and furnishing his apartment with it. Nice. And he's nice too. Really charming. And he helps the hero get the travel documents, the precise purpose of which, our hero does not understand. It was someone else's idea. Anyway his very nice friend in the government helps him out. Bloody Fascists! Oh. At no point does he seem to need or use these documents. What was that all about?<br /><br />The Opposition<br /><br />It is the people who oppose the government that comprise the villains in this movie. Julianne Moore, Owen's aforementioned ex, is the leader of the 'Fishes' (don't ask me, maybe it made sense in the book - if it's a hint as to christianity, it's a lonely one) who initially kidnap Owen so that Moore may explain to him what he is to do. Moore aside, the lesser Fishes are surly and drone on in an eye-glazing doctrinaire style. Moore doesn't last long. Her killer is her 2IC who organised the false-flag killing and intends to use the Christ child for a nefarious plot of anti-government mayhem and bloodshed. The other members of the Fishes' committee are not only dupes but a worthless variety of the Judean People's Front. No Castro, Ho Chi Minh or Chavez here. The Fishes, like the film, are merely concerned with the mistreatment of refugees. Perhaps that was the only Python topic left after they'd conceded the Roman's brilliant contributions of sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health. Idiocy aside, the Fishes are the most perfectly useless and repellent opposition ever. Don't look here for inspiration for what to do under fascism. Why is it that no one ever thinks to attack the media? That's what I'd do. Oh wait, this is the media. D'oh!<br /><br />Otherwise, throughout the entire second half of the movie the Fishes are those from whom we flee in terror. Those who do not flee, like Michael Caine, are shot in cold blood. The Gaza/Fallujah battle scenes, which our Joseph, Mary and Jesus miraculously walk through, are due to Fishes' provocative actions. The government's overwhelming military response featuring hundreds of troops, heavy armour and airstrikes is less a criticism of them than of the Fishes. The troops are not only clean and well-dressed, but they seem to have nice manners too. Not like those grotty feral Fishes. We cheer when Fishes are shot by the military. It's unambiguous - Fascists Good, Anti-Fascist Terrorists Bad.<br /><br />The Fishes aside, there is the fabled Human Project. We never quite get to see the Human Project or find out what they are. No one really knows. No one can contact them apart from Julianne Moore. And she's dead. Apparently they live on an Island in the Azores or somesuch. Apparently they're scientists who want to cure infertility. Apparently they want to want to make a 'new world'.<br /><br />Er... okay. That's not scary. Did somebody say Bilderbergers just now? How about the twelve families? (What is he on about?)<br /><br />But forget the nutty ravings. In this film, we're given not a single clue as to the veracity of the Human Project. Was I to suggest that they could well be a bunch of racist, self-impressed, wealthy motherfuckers who viewed the rest of humanity as cattle, or that they wanted the Madonna's child as fodder for pedophiles, there's nothing in this movie to say otherwise. We should know that they're good by way of the reverent hushed tones of the clueless members of the People's Front of Judea. Said the director, post movie, 'They are a metaphor for the possibility of the evolution of the human spirit.' Ha ha ha ha. What the fuck does that mean? Meanwhile back in the real world of Children of Men, our hero has handed over a mother and her miraculous baby to complete strangers. We know nothing of them apart from the fact that they've chosen to turn their backs on the rest of humanity - and that we should place all our trust and hope in them. Whoever they are.<br /><br />Foreigners<br /><br />There's certainly no shortage of them. Curiously there's no uniformity to what we're meant to think of various people. Gypsies get a guernsey here. Who apart from Tony Gatlif ever touches gypsies? The old gypsy woman is brave and true and I groove on her. We also see white Russians. They too are hospitable and honest, and not vilified. Um, aren't we meant to hate them? Likewise, a Pole is treated neutrally. We see Muslims. They are sporting Arabic-Samurai headbands, waving kalashnikovs and shouting Allah u Akbar. Are they bad or good? Or merely visual reinforcement of those crazy TV Muslims who hate us for our freedom? Sure why not. But it is a lonely reference, and pales in the face of white wickedness. And there are black people here. Indeed our Madonna is black. Apparently the director wanted to allude to humanity having come from Africa. Sounds fair to me. But our head Fish is black, and vicious, duplicitous and murderous with it. This is a comment on black people? No, says I. It's merely Chiwetel Ejiofor's ability to flip between nice guy and villain. And no, his name doesn't mean anything if you read it backwards.<br /><br />And there are Jewish references. In the descent into Gaza/Fallujah we are given obscure, blink-and-you-miss-it Arbeit Macht Frei references. Huh? Surely this open-air prison is Gaza? Such confusion - every visual is Gaza but the music is Auschwitz. Is this the director throwing a sop to the producers? Has he won, by reminding us of Gaza? Or have they won, by reminding us Jews are victims? Perhaps it's a tie. Perhaps it's just a clueless hodge-podge. Either way it leads us nowhere.<br /><br />The Totality<br /><br />I don't know that this is quite as cynical and wicked an enterprise as is so commonly offered up by Hollywood. I wonder at the Spanish director. If he's wicked, he's unfocused. If he's good, he's misleading. Perhaps he's just dim? Perhaps he really was dazzled by his dizzy message of the sanctity of the life of the innocent? Perhaps the anti-government forces are villainous because the director wanted a surprising switch half way through the movie? Perhaps he really does believe his own blatherings about hope and inserted the Human Project into the film for altruistic reasons? It's entirely possible he means well. Having not seen his other significant flick Y Tu Mama Tambien I'm in no position to discuss this work in reference to others. It's poor of me I know, but I have no idea what's in the director's head. But really this movie should stand on its own. And as such, how do we judge it? A noble failure with moments of greatness? A subtle but directionless piece of misdirection? Both? Neither? Sorry folks, I have no answers.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-40127411750639747942008-02-07T13:51:00.007+11:002012-06-16T17:01:08.287+10:00Ocean's 13This is as hateful a film as exists. But gee, it looks good doesn't it? Hollywood's shiniest actors, in the most expensive clothes, in the most opulent surroundings, mouthing the coolest dialogue. And a good thing too. Otherwise how would we know that sins are virtues?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3KHdNnGoSg9CJH1uZHgn_koPHRe1v2SkJzhkq8Q72o6KxZdZvB0nS-ltPLwc6jNR_vHv4-I25VWzXB2wwH2nI_s4Qk_mEeRgenEPb-3v7rnlGEW8U3zX_f5oS1a4TRxfhEvRTJ4myNE8b/s1600-h/oceans-thirteen-poster-c.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3KHdNnGoSg9CJH1uZHgn_koPHRe1v2SkJzhkq8Q72o6KxZdZvB0nS-ltPLwc6jNR_vHv4-I25VWzXB2wwH2nI_s4Qk_mEeRgenEPb-3v7rnlGEW8U3zX_f5oS1a4TRxfhEvRTJ4myNE8b/s400/oceans-thirteen-poster-c.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245390664424655154" /></a><br />This was the third in the franchise of glamorous heist flicks. I recall the first as pleasant enough - a clever heist with an appealing gang of underdogs. The second was one of those really detestable films that reveals at the last minute that everything you'd just watched was complete bullshit - shades of The Usual Suspects. Julia Roberts playing a chick playing Julia Roberts was a nadir of post-modern cleverness. Ocean's 13 is something else altogether. It's an exercise in humiliation, cynicism and viciousness. These are the parts that comprise the whole and the whole is hubris.<br /><br />The Villain<br /><br />Sure, it's Al Pacino who perpetually plays himself now. And quite right - hero or villain, he's always fun to watch, even though he plays them both the same. The villain is NOT Elliot Gould. The director would have it that Gould is our (and every other character's) object of sympathy. Which is to say, sycophantic veneration. If you're familiar with the speeches given by American congressmen and women to AIPAC you'll have an idea of the kind of crawl-up-your-arse adoration we're in amongst here. It's sickening. <br /><br />One wonders where this veneration of Gould came from. I don't recall any such thing in either of the first two films. And I certainly don't recall it from Oliver Twist. And that's who Gould is - he is Fagan rehabilitated. For those who thought Fagan was hard done by in Twist, here is the movie for you. Gould's Fagan is not a grasping villain teaching thievery to impressionable youths, with Newgate Gaol as his well-deserved punishment. The rightness of Gould having made a living from fraud, grifting and gambling is evident in the perfectly exquisite opulence in which he is embalmed. That he taught these skills to others is not a point of condemnation, but proof of the bigness of his heart. In a film such as this, Fagan's comeuppance at the hands of Pacino is no such thing. Instead it is an outrage - a sin against the greatest man who ever lived. That Gould wimped out and signed the dotted line at the mere hint of violence is nothing at all. Al Pacino must be punished and death is not good enough. How would a mere killing flatter our heroes' egos? Our heroes think big. The punishment inflicted upon the villain must at least be a twofer minimum. It is not enough to ruin and humiliate Pacino - our clothes-horse avengers must walk away with all his loot. Anything else would be to dishonour Fagan.<br /><br />Pacino possesses a super-computer intelligence. It is god-like and unbeatable. But he worships a false idol. He flails around, flapping his arms, not understanding why his God has forsaken him. Fool! He should have worshipped our heroes. Only they possess the truth and the way. They shatter his God with a single electric thunderclap. How Old Testament - as always.<br /><br />The Heroes<br /><br />There is no point differentiating them. They are interchangeable caricatures. Here we see: a stuttering nerd; a Chinese acrobat; an old thespian; a black cockney; a Brad Pitt; a George Clooney. But really they are a swarm. That a dozen people impossibly play a hundred is cinematic proof of their greatness and of Fagan's genius. The secret of their success is to attack from a thousand fronts. And by way of deception thou shalt do war. And this is not just war - it's total war. Pacino's humiliation is to be utter. His punishment is biblical in proportion, complete with a plague of boils. It's as accurate a description of hubris as has ever existed in ninety minutes. Might the answer to a problem be an earthquake? No problem - Acts of God 'r' Us. No less than both the Channel Tunnel digging machines are employed to achieve this. Sure enough, a single of Fagan's graduates does with these machines what would ordinarily be done by 'teams' of lesser men. Best not to say 'hundreds' because no one would quite buy that - cut to the next scene!<br /><br />So great is the ambition of these thieves that it is almost beyond human comprehension. No aspect of the plan is too small that it doesn't warrant a gargantuan monstering. If the question is loaded dice, the answer is to lead a strike by the underpaid Mexicans at the dice factory and hand out the molotov cocktails. This is to lay hands on some dice, you understand. It is unsurprising that the cinematic Mexicans are appreciative. But their appreciation is misplaced. Their increased pay was due solely to Fagan's money-men realising the pennies involved and coughing it up themselves. Why didn't they just do this to begin with? Who gives a shit. Don't tell the Mexicans that they were merely pawns in a sickening venal charade and won nothing but a legacy of ill-will and hatefulness that, we are left to presume, will scar their community for years. But forget that, our heroes needed a pair of dice.<br /><br />What might our heroes do in regard to the question of denying Pacino his hotel's five-star rating? This is important apparently. How about they employ biological weapons? No, really! We are graphically shown the dreaded six-pointed bio-hazard symbol on the various bacteria, insects, and viruses that the innocent hotel judge will be subjected to. It's not enough that he has lice in his bed. Every part of his room is infected: his air-con is laced; his towels are smeared; his food is poisoned. Jesus Christ! What's wrong with these fucking people? This might just be the most pointlessly vicious act of rat-bastardry ever seen in cinema. A turd-smeared toilet would have sufficed to scotch the five-star rating. But these fuckers are the collective God of the Old Testament. If they say the judge is Job, his suffering is to be infinite. At the end of the film, on account of his being a good sport, ha ha, he is tossed some pennies. Our heroes are now richer than God. What do they care?<br /><br />Let's not forget Ellen Barkin, Hollywood's asymmetrical sexpot. Her job is to be sexually humiliated. Fagan's trickster rightly reduces her to an idiot moaning creature in oestrus. As an Ellen Barkin fan, I publicly applaud the director for not having our Ellen actually get down on all fours and raise her arse in the air screaming, 'COME HITHER NOW!' (Or words to that effect beginning with F, M and NOW!) It's nice to know that he has a sense of restraint. No one is surprised our heroes are sexual uber-men. This is a Hollywood card game and 'sex' trumps 'love, honour and cherish'. There is no love in this film apart from that of our con-men for their Fagan. Filial piety is momentarily in the offing but - ha! - this is America and parents deserve nothing more than bickering and backbiting. Did they ever shower their offspring with wealth? No - only Fagan did that.<br /><br />Otherwise, on the subject of 'heroes', what might be made of their assorted ethnicities? Very little per se. Every audience member belonging to the ethnicities displayed in this film can walk out of the cinema pleased that their guy looked good, got to utter some cool lines, and win. Best not to think about their adoration of Fagan or of their being a dozen in number. That Fagan is the patriarch and that they represent the twelve tribes is a step too far. A thought such as this would only occur to the aforementioned self-obsessed and me. And I dismiss it, ha!<br /><br />The Gods<br /><br />Finally in a slow sideways camera track we see a parade of our heroes and their patriarch as they watch the fireworks that perfectly sum up their post-coital languor. Any resemblance to Israelis on the New Jersey shore watching the towers come down is purely coincidental. No one dances or high-fives here. They're too exhausted. Fucking someone like they just did is hard work, doncha know.<br /><br />The fireworks of course are in their honour. They are Gods amongst men. Throughout the film they were omniscient and omnipresent. The size of their ambition has rendered them untouchable. Their crime was not just huge, it was inconceivable to mere mortals. So great were their falsehoods, and so great the number of them, that only they will ever possess the truth. All others will be consigned to scurrying about trying to figure out the impossible riddle. Why even bother? Best we merely attend church and worship their greatness. The church has a high ceiling, appropriately dim lighting and the requisite hushed audience. They look to the altar and are pleased to find that it is absent and replaced by a flickering light. Forget Jesus, forget humanity - Here we worship the liars who possess the truth.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-92068562996856809882008-02-01T11:57:00.005+11:002011-12-07T07:22:34.006+11:00HimalayaBreak my heart. A movie full of humans. A movie without artifice. A movie of simple people involved with survival. If you want to know what these people are, look at their faces - they're filthy. These are people of the earth: clever words don't trip from their lips; they strike no poses and they are not cool; fashion, make-up and looking good are alien concepts here.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhphb48supxtDdyhIzQM-T2fDObGz_3r10DLMb9XwpikVwBokP0iqU_QnhHPN_kOqaQRegaoVNaY0fR2zMzl6Cp3p_HONFLMAj8X0VHMUEZQsnLK5yIxaWbVks22BMDhNOj8SCpeK0yi6jq/s1600-h/Himalaya_film.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhphb48supxtDdyhIzQM-T2fDObGz_3r10DLMb9XwpikVwBokP0iqU_QnhHPN_kOqaQRegaoVNaY0fR2zMzl6Cp3p_HONFLMAj8X0VHMUEZQsnLK5yIxaWbVks22BMDhNOj8SCpeK0yi6jq/s400/Himalaya_film.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245389704290195458" /></a><br />What is there here for clever Westerners to latch on to? If one has an ear with an attention span greater than two and half minutes there is a soundtrack to give you goosebumps. There is the most spectacular cinematography. The light is extraordinary: not the lighting - there isn't any. Texture reigns supreme - there is barely a single straight line in this film. And yes, there's a plot. Of sorts. The protagonists must get from one place to another. <br /><br />Aha! It's a road-movie, says us. Yes and no, like the road movie as we understand it, the journey is a metaphor for leaving oneself behind and finding oneself anew. But the limited context of however many people can fit in a car is blown apart here. With the exception of the old women and little children, virtually the whole village makes the journey. Or journeys. It is this split that really breaks the road-movie model. The individual is not redefined by his/her relationship with another but with all. The all here includes the environment - the place in which they live is a protagonist. The acknowledging of this is crucial to the arrival at the realisation of who one is. The movie is a contemplation of the self and of selflessness, a selflessness that acknowledges that beyond humans.<br /><br />In this spirit the director Eric Valli seems almost absent. His touch is as light as falling snow. Cinematic clues are present but imperceptible. Never does he show away.<br /><br />And here I break with the previous headings of hero, villain etc. The paradigm is non-existent in this film. Feel free to wonder if such descriptions are really necessary. Why is it we feel we need these dichotomies? We view everything through such a lens. An alternative is obviously possible and this film is proof of it. Why are we unable to think outside these limits? And was it always so?<br /><br />Death<br /><br />Death opens the film. Our first understanding of the people who inhabit this mountain village is defined by their reactions to death. Be amazed at the lack of hysteria, or even dialogue. If one is given to viewing things in terms of selflessness how should one view the death of a beloved? What does it say of the self? It's a thing to contemplate. Welcome to Himalaya. Everything that takes place in this film has the inevitably of death as its underpinning.<br /><br />Desire<br /><br />Never in this film do we lay eyes on, or even hear anyone speak of money, glittering prizes, or any other thing of desire. The two protagonists in this film seek nothing for themselves, neither objects, nor power, nor people. Both of the lead characters seek what they think is best for the village. What's best for the village is the most modest thing imaginable - survival. There will be no ribbons for anyone's hair, no gewgaws, no baubles. The closest we come to desire is that of the young boy who marvels that such things as trees exist. 'Will I see one?', he says, wide-eyed with hope and wonder.<br /><br />Fear<br /><br />When I mentioned survival before, did you have a momentary twinkling of fear in your head, your stomach? I did as I wrote it. It's that sort of word. But the sense of it as such is absent in this film. Survival is merely that which must be done. But fear is addressed. This task falls to the lama, the second son of the chief. Despite having spent his entire life in a monastery he is presented with the mad demand that he lead the life or death journey through the mountains. It is the choice of Siddhartha Gautama arse-about with a guilt trip laid on. Does one choose to join the world or to leave it? Can a person cast off fear if they never face that which inspires it?<br /><br />Conflict<br /><br />The film is driven by the conflict between the ageing chief Tinle and his dead son's best friend Karma. Tinle is old and rigid in his thinking. Karma is younger and still possessed of impetuousness. Neither of them are wrong. Neither of them is ultimately right either. Absent is any sense of 'good' or 'bad'. Both men fail due to their sense of self-regard. Tinle considers his objections to Karma (whom the village wants as leader now that Tinle's son is dead) greater than the needs of the village. Karma, in reacting to this, also reacts to Tinle's faith in tradition and geomancy. To hell with the lamas, says Karma. The geomancy here, even for this confirmed nihilist, makes sense. Watch it and wonder.<br /><br />Critical voices in the village are common. But perhaps 'critical' is the wrong word. Absent are cheap shots, point-scoring, or cleverness. No one tries to 'win' an argument. Harmony is sought and if rebuffed, further words are left unsaid. Nor are there factions, plots, or dissembling - everything is in the open. Us and Them is an alien concept here. All do what they think is best for the village, and Tinle and Karma aside, every criticism is a seeking of harmony.<br /><br />Harmony<br /><br />Finally the separately led caravans join and the village is united. Certainly plot devices are used to bring this about, but it's all in a good cause, ha ha. Tinle has softened and realises the foolishness of objecting to Karma, whilst Karma understands the rightness of Tinle's traditional knowledge. As Tinle lays dying, Karma declares he'd dreamt that Tinle was his father. 'You are too much like me to be my son,' says Tinle. 'The gods are triumphant!' cry all. It's a cry fraught with meaning. And yet we see no gods. We see only the people united, with each other, and with the world. Their cries express their joy at the possible achieved.<br /><br />The film closes, rightly, with the boy marvelling at a tree. Says the director - no greater reward exists than the opportunity to be filled with wonder.<br /><br />Me<br /><br />How tiresome. It's all about me isn't it? But if a movie screened in a cinema and nobody came, would we know the sound of one hand clapping? Ha ha ha - don't worry I don't get it either. But a film doesn't exist in isolation. It has to be watched or it makes no sense.<br /><br />It was tremendously difficult to order my thoughts about this film. It took days of countless rewrites, believe it or not. That idiot Ghost Rider thing took minutes. The Old Testament / us and them / good and evil paradigm is the sea in which my thoughts have always swum. Blueberry took this paradigm template and turned it on its head. Himalaya lacks it utterly. Films like this challenge one's understandings. It's enough to make one's mind untethered. But can a journey be begun without doing precisely this? And a journey to where? To a tree perhaps, to marvel? It's an answer as true as any other.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-34135070114302011332008-01-24T11:25:00.012+11:002011-10-02T10:36:28.068+11:00BlueberryThe critics were unanimous. This film was crap - a bullshit non-western and an overcooked CG-laden homage to Jodorowsky's El Topo. But funnily enough, whenever these reviews had a comments section the freaks loved it. I'm with them. As ever. Some unhappiness was expressed that it departed too greatly from the comic. Me, I never read Blueberry, but believe it or not, I read every other thing Moebius ever did - just not Blueberry. There's no particular reason why. From this curious position, I'm of the opinion that this flick is very Moebius.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmv1sU-SFTWTRXdFjPOsip95omMLCO4DKlOU3u4wTkejUgOdreOKAk7B2kDQS5GmUlQShEnq3MWxXSELvyHilQTVR62_XWU1ZiKF5SWb7pJ3L9QEb1i4HTDPASZTPDmydRfq_frSLFGXaR/s1600-h/Blueberryposter.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmv1sU-SFTWTRXdFjPOsip95omMLCO4DKlOU3u4wTkejUgOdreOKAk7B2kDQS5GmUlQShEnq3MWxXSELvyHilQTVR62_XWU1ZiKF5SWb7pJ3L9QEb1i4HTDPASZTPDmydRfq_frSLFGXaR/s400/Blueberryposter.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245391576218350146" /></a><br />He's an extraordinary fellow, Moebius. He became a Buddhist and decided he didn't want to do stories of conflict that pivoted on good and evil. A tough gig. Sure enough, you end up with stories like this one. Is 'story' even the right word? All the standard elements are arse-about. Nothing follows your expectations. Not the hero, not the villain, not the showdown, not nothing. How unsatisfying! So completely wrong is this movie that one reviewer had a meltdown and insisted that the <i>Raspberry Awards</i> be renamed the <i>Blueberries</i>. Ha ha ha. Suffer in your jocks, mate!<br /><br />I should say I don't own this movie and have only seen it once. Ordinarily I watch films that are worth it many times. Like I said before, there's a lot to look for. On the inevitable subsequent viewings of this flick I may arrive at a different understanding of it. And quite right too. A man who cannot change his mind is worthless.<br /><br />The Hero<br /><br />What a crap hero. He doesn't wisecrack. He doesn't save the girl. He doesn't rescue the family in the nick of time. And on every occasion he dukes it out with the villain he gets done over. He's not even what you'd call handsome. He's Vincent Cassel and he is exactly that kind of cinematic French ugly, ha ha ha.<br /><br />After he cops his first hiding from the villain he is brought back to life by Indians. They save him - but don't expect any touching scenes, lingering native glances, or pat five-lines-of-dialogue bonding. Things are not there for Blueberry's understanding. Instead Blueberry wonders at the world. He stares, merely watching. And the cinematographer does likewise. This picture is spectacularly beautiful. But the beauty does not serve the plot. It serves to show the unknowability of the world and Blueberry's personification of this. Blueberry is perpetually the student.<br /><br />Suddenly it's ten years later and and an older Blueberry is now the sheriff in an unimpressive town. It's exactly as unimpressive as the wilderness is beautiful. It's peopled by a motley bunch, none of whom are quite the thing. There is a perpetual tension to them that the Indians do not possess. They make various plots that neither we nor Blueberry ever figure out exactly. In this film, self-serving and desire come to nothing. And never is Blueberry the master of any scene. He is not shrewd. It seems his chief virtue is his honesty and unwillingness to put up with bullshit-artists. The unknowability of things aside, he acts resolutely. He is a laconic Chihiro from a borderless Spirited Away. A remarkably similar spirit inhabits both these films.<br /><br />Otherwise, the figure of Blueberry might reasonably be posited as us. Certainly he is me. No anecdote of my life has ever resembled a pat Hollywood scene. The cinematic clues that explain what's what were always absent. I never bested the villain. I never got the girl. I never rode into the sunset. Okay, I have done - for all of ten seconds. Everything then rolled into the next thing and what had gone before became something else. And more crucially, I have never had a complete understanding of what happened in any given 'scene' I was in. Many I could make no clear sense of at all. The action rolled on, completely unconcerned that the audience was befuddled. Welcome to Blueberry, the personification of the certain unknowability of the world.<br /><br />The Villain<br /><br />Interesting villain. I've always liked Michael Madsen. You too? Sure, he's an agreeable presence. In this flick, he is that which inspires fear - but more actual than real. I struggle now to recall his victims. Did we ever see him shoot anyone? Curiously, he is as sinned against as sinning. He possesses certain admirable traits, all unemphasised. He never dissembles. This is left to his grasping German offsider who represents craven selfishness. Our German renders himself as a false victim in an attempt to have the round-eyes kill the Indians so that he may steal their shit. I make no comment. Our Madsen villain is emphatically not that. <br /><br />When the too-clever German betrays him (a vicious taboo killing of the horse) Madsen holds no grudge and attaches no personal significance to this beyond offering a prayer for the spirit of the horse. On encountering the German for the final time, he says and does nothing. No chest-thumping, no clever self-serving lines, no punishment or revenge. The German, fixated on his false idol, is swallowed by the Earth. Our villain doesn't give him a second thought. He lacks more cinematic 'villain' clues than he possesses. And when his wickedness does resemble cinematic shorthand it's arguably mere coincidence. Perhaps he's villainous because his shedding of the self is incomplete and he has failed to embrace selflessness? He is not fearful and yet is willing to inspire it in others. A false Bodhisattva - Nietzschean and compassionless.<br /><br />The final truth of him is that, whilst he does not seek material gain, he is possessed of desire. His desire (again, almost admirably) is for insight. But he will not wait for it to be given. He will take it. He imagines insight as something other than what it is. This is his ultimate failure. His ending is not a comeuppance. He merely passes from the movie. Not a single second is spent showing us what happened to him.<br /><br />The Big Showdown<br /><br />Ha! The joke's on you. There isn't one. What sort of Western doesn't have a showdown? What sort of joke doesn't have a punchline? An existentialist American Western one born of the mind of a French Buddhist, ha ha.<br /><br />The circle finally closes as our hero meets the villain in the hidden holy grotto. He doesn't meet him so much as observe his prone comatose body. The villain won the race and has rudely helped himself to the sacred ayahuasca. Happily the ever-great Temuera Morrison is there as Shaman and tells our hero that it is right he be initiated. Blueberry lies down next to the interloper. The Shaman joins the hero as guide. A five minute CG drug-trip ensues. Boy, did the critics hate this! I marvelled. Banish your short attention span. Let the images wash over you. If you want to get off a trip it will do you no good. The same applies here. If you could cope with Kubrick's star-gate you can cope with this. Just go with it. A question - Are these animations here to remind us of chaos-theory fractals and their truth of unknowability? Further viewings required...<br /><br />Amongst the CG, our hero goes through a series of realisations. It was he that killed the girl. The villain's crime was his. His hitherto troubled spirit was due to his inability to dispel this fixation. Rightly he realises that the girl loved him for his innocence and loves him for it still. The knot in his psyche is dispelled. He awakens to find the Shaman who mirrors his joy at a life-changing experience shared. No one pats their hip to make sure they still have a gun. This world is not a place of fear. The us-and-them paradigm - a thing of smoke, dissipated to nothing.<br /><br />The final scene is the antithesis of finality. No hero's back and horse's arse sloping towards a dying sun here. Blueberry is refreshed, awake. The ending is a beginning. Blueberry swims naked in the water of life with a laughing Juliet Lewis. No closing, just the joy of being here, now. Those calcified in the Hollywood language of Old Testament fear best look elsewhere.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com43tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-66714332874706962372008-01-21T13:28:00.009+11:002011-11-27T11:28:45.511+11:00V for VendettaWow. Now we're in amongst it. When I saw this movie I was astounded. It's intense. It's also laden with metaphor, references, and symbolism. Alan Moore, who wrote the original comic and is a spectacularly original thinker, arguably too good for his medium, built his story with symbolism as the foundation stone, the bricks and mortar, and the roof, ha ha. The use of V in the title is just the beginning of a deep attention to symbols, some profound, some less so. But I don't want to get too hung up on the arcana. I'll stick with the bigger picture of the moving picture. The comic was an attack on Thatcher's Britain. The movie twenty years later is an entirely different kettle of fish. It's about terror, false terror, fascism, torture and resistance. But what's it telling us? First, who's who.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNkyTnbvSckii6uqbHqxlhWfa-bFkqjynjowBmAlvDZ5HFeEih6iOp0EKDkG2pjYpA0jzkKp8jeIIDiUwj7pyzIlO6igFetd6cjbkUQcmA6uAYURuBmh6eilMK6KOycdPj-E5CJa32yxCK/s1600-h/v_for_vendetta.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNkyTnbvSckii6uqbHqxlhWfa-bFkqjynjowBmAlvDZ5HFeEih6iOp0EKDkG2pjYpA0jzkKp8jeIIDiUwj7pyzIlO6igFetd6cjbkUQcmA6uAYURuBmh6eilMK6KOycdPj-E5CJa32yxCK/s400/v_for_vendetta.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245392260427751458" /></a><br />The Villain<br /><br />The villain is the unmistakably fascist government of a future England. I prefer Mussolini's definition of fascism to the dictionary. He declared it was the merging of corporations with the state. In V, it's clear that the fascist coalition comprises wealthy corporationists, the military, the church, and politicians obviously. This is a movie and its fascism must have an art-directed look. The look chosen is clearly a variety of Mussolini's 1920's militarism, with a bit of Franco thrown in. <br /><br />The question arises, why would any modern fascist state choose such a give-away as to their true nature? Sure, this is a movie, and for the audience to be able to say 'We've seen all this before' is a plus. It's a visual shortcut to save us wondering what's what. And that's precisely why no modern fascist state would ever look like that. They'd look like anything but. With most of the 'first' world already a corporate/state conglomerate lurching its way to full-blown totalitarianism, how is the popcorn-eating masses served by a film that says, 'Fascism looks like this'? They aren't, obviously.<br /><br />Know that the state spends staggering sums of money on market-research, and other such black arts, so that they may be exactly as warm-and-fuzzy, brave-and-true, and Jimmy-and-Stewart as any consumer could possibly want. If Hollywood hadn't made a pleasantly diverting flick saying, 'THIS is how you will know fascism', any crypto-fascist government keen to confuse, would have had to have done it themselves.<br /><br />Gosh, there's a crazy idea. Hollywood as some unwitting false-flag marketing tool of a crypto-fascist government! Ha ha ha ha... 'unwitting'. I crack myself up.<br /><br />But this is nothing compared to the film's conceptual bombshell. The fascist government of Britain grabbed power by a terrorist attack it committed on its own people. Holy Shit! 911! <i>'If our own government was responsible for the deaths of almost a hundred thousand people... would you really want to know?'</i> Kapow! The big question! Just roll it around in your head for a bit. A bunch of Englishmen killing their fellow countrymen (with whom they hold no them-and-us grudge) in the tens of thousands! Surely it's not possible. Foreigners certainly. Anyone can kill a foreigner. And a foreigner, us. It stands to reason. But for a fellow to kill his own... it's just seems so unlikely. Bravely <i>V for Vendetta</i> posits just such an impossible thought.<br /><br />Waitaminute. Did somebody say false-flag just now? Oh, it was me, ha ha. You know what false-flag is, surely. It's when a first party pretends to be a third party to trick the second party. There's plenty of historical examples. In the Lavon Affair, of 1954, the Israelis had Egyptian Jews blow up Americans in Cairo in order to trick America into attacking Egypt. And in 1967 when the Israelis tried to sink the USS Liberty and kill everyone on board they wanted the Americans to blame Egypt (again) and nuke them. They didn't need to convince LBJ of course. He'd launched the nuke-carrying skyhawks before he was even meant to have known whodunnit. Such spooky prescience. Gee whiz, what busy false-flaggers the Israelis have been.<br /><br />Funnily enough, no one ever thought to consider a false-flag attack as a possibility in 911. This in spite of the fact that all the Israelis normally in the WTC were all absent that day. This in spite of the fact that Israelis made spectacles of themselves high-fiving and celebrating exactly as if they'd pulled off the coup of the century. This in spite of the fact that the first words out of Israeli PM Netanyahu's mouth on the subject of 911 were, 'It's very good'. He couldn't help himself could he? Sure enough the historically obvious possibility was never considered by the Jewish media. <br /><br />And so it is in <i>V for Vendetta</i>. Fuzzily cynical types like me, convinced that the official 911 story was bullshit, would be impressed that here was the film that understood us. Our doubts were confirmed. Vagueness was sharpened. Little of it's cinema terrorism actually resembled 911 apart from the heroic demolition of Westminster. But in this film we could finally know whodunnit. Says <i>V for Vendetta</i> - The mass murderers of 911 were our own. Evilly this 'we' attacked our own children, wives, husbands, mothers and fathers. Don't think about the perfect unlikelihood of this. Just know that within ourselves live impossible monsters. Rightly, those of us smart enough to know that fighting Israel's Arab enemies is bullshit, should according to this movie, spend our time tearing apart what's left of our society in a righteous search for these mythic terrifying heffalumps. Thank God <i>V for Vendetta</i> came along to harness this contrarian force and put it to good use.<br /><br />The Hero<br /><br />Really the hero here is secondary. It's less important that we know whom to emulate, than whom to attack. But still, don't imagine the film-makers just slapped him together. In film, everything is considered. Man-hours would have been devoted merely to the choice of V's shoes. I kid you not. <br /><br />The most significant thing about V is that he is super-powered. Sadly he offers no clues for the non super-powered. We, as a bunch of listless, ill-equipped mug-punters, are offered nothing here apart from waiting in hope for some stylish uber-man to send us a mask so we may commit petty crime. But perhaps there is some nervy daredevil who might take his cue from super-V. Says V, 'Symbols are very important'. Or somesuch. Did anyone really understand what he was on about? Or were you like me? Um... symbols mean something, um... bad, and... we should blow them up! Yay, blow that shit up! Oooh, aaah, fireworks pretty.<br /><br />Our ancient cultural symbols, nominally about liberty, freedom and rule of law are a sham and we should smash them. V solemnly intones that it is right. The sad-faced policeman (who is actually us, searching for answers and reluctant to embrace the truth) in awe of V's classically educated rightness, finally concedes to the inevitable violence. <br /><br />The policeman/us realises that V is not a masked Travis Bickle - hell bent on not-sure-what. He is Gandhi and Rambo's star-child: a blood-spattered, knife-wielding guru possessed of the ancient Guy Fawkes wisdom of how to blow shit up for the good of all. The rightness of turning an 800 year old architectural marvel to rubble as an answer to fascism is never questioned. How will this work exactly? Um, the bad guys all give up, or something. Fingers crossed! Never mind sensible targets like the media - the collective taking of which could bring down every fucker going - just smash your own history instead. Look to the Red Guards perhaps. The rightness of their mad smashing campaign is evident in the architectural wasteland that is modern China. Either way - aspire to ill thought out destruction.<br /><br />The Heroine<br /><br />In this movie our heroine achieves a great thing. She casts off fear. It's a pity it required her to be tortured, starved, and frozen. By the hero. But good guys do that now, don't you know? And then there's the art direction - does our heroine become a Buddhist nun or a holocaust survivor? And is there a purpose in the latter? I guess it can't hurt to remind us who the real victims are.<br /><br />Regardless, shedding fear is an unpleasant process best avoided by all. And upon having the requisite breakdown and arrival at fearlessness what does our heroine do? Nothing. At all. Wait, does shopping count? Otherwise she sits around watching the telly waiting for V. One wonders what purpose the whole thing served - apart from ensuring she didn't dob in V that is.<br /><br />And what with V knowing best let's not argue the rightness of torture. As the uber-man, V may commit whatever nastiness he sees fit to preserve himself. Or to put it another way, torture works. Finally with her torture forgiven our sexy victim/hero pops up again to ensure that V gets the girl, albeit by way of a slow dance. I guess that when you have no willy that's the best you can hope for. But willy or no, the hero gets the girl and what's a bit of torture between friends?<br /><br />The Totality<br /><br />This film is as good as it gets folks. It's a masterpiece of co-option of the people smart enough to know that the government is full of shit. This movie wants you to be impressed that you know that your leaders are lying. This is the final arcane trick of the people who've raised lying to a god-like art. It fooled me. After seeing this movie I phoned my friends saying I couldn't believe Hollywood had released such a subversive movie. Was I the only one to think this? Exactly. But we fell for it again: Hollywood didn't release a subversive movie, they released a thrill-packed enjoyable <i>di</i>-version. Real (and impossible) subversion would feature Egyptian Jews planting bombs, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunning lifeboats, and white Ashkenazis high-fiving as the towers come down. THAT'S subversion.<br /><br />And guess what? I expect that no one but the Wachowski brothers and their financial backers got the gag. Not the director, not the stars, and certainly not the audience.nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7873069687795845648.post-25573634294023321402008-01-20T12:06:00.002+11:002009-01-05T15:47:20.580+11:00Ghost RiderWhat a crummy movie to start things off with. But really it's perfect. The Jewish paradigm that defines Hollywood is all here.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx19U2-KKdf96Ewnpp-6BREtdlxassEAPdETZFLxfY_5MKeLRXsrXNTvMM_NWpSi95sHq62iy-m-Dmh0kY6DYkNTHfUrHK8Tj790YNdzhEjg9nlZLY7hCv4p3xvYOK9-6kZJ6r_cQIX4o8/s1600-h/GhostRiderBigPoster.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx19U2-KKdf96Ewnpp-6BREtdlxassEAPdETZFLxfY_5MKeLRXsrXNTvMM_NWpSi95sHq62iy-m-Dmh0kY6DYkNTHfUrHK8Tj790YNdzhEjg9nlZLY7hCv4p3xvYOK9-6kZJ6r_cQIX4o8/s400/GhostRiderBigPoster.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245392602350123762" /></a><br />The Villain<br /><br />It's the devil! By way of Peter Fonda and his special effects eyes. And right from the get-go he makes no sense. Best not to think about the idiocy of why the devil exists or what the hell he's on about, ha ha ha. Let's just say, at an existential level, that he likes to make people suffer. Don't ask me why. It makes no sense why any creature would want this. Apparently we should understand, as a foundational basis, that a powerful individual would want to rule over as many people as possible even though they don't serve him, or provide any utility, as such. They exist only to suffer. As best as I can make out, the devil seems to spend all his time enlisting more people to suffer under him and in inflicting that suffering. You'd wonder why he bothers. Anyway we should all just take this for granted.<br /><br />As we'd expect from Hollywood - whose villains are always impossibly and idiotically villainous - the devil kills our hero's father the split-second he cures his lung cancer. What possible purpose is there to this? Imagining for a minute there's some point to the Devil's enlisting of our hero to begin with, why would he instantly get him offside by killing his father for no reason? Because that's how villainous, Hollywood villains are! And oh yeah, in his second appearance the devil is dressed in what is almost precisely the garb of the Catholic hierarchy. No surprises there. This is acceptable in the same way that the devil dressing as a rabbi is unacceptable.<br /><br />And then there's the devil's son. He's even more idiotic. He has his own joke - A man walks into a bar... and kills everyone for no reason at all! Ha ha ha. Get it? Um... me neither. Why did he do that? Because he's evil! And when you're that evil, logic flies out the window. And apparently we should accept, without too much thought, that the son should want to throw down his father and install his own rule based on the imposition of even greater suffering. The devil's son has three buddies who hiss a lot and are, like all Hollywood villains, beyond reason, beyond finding a common ground and waaaaaay beyond redemption. As ever. Hollywood villains are always like this because that's how they want us to view those who oppose us. Death is the only solution for dealing with them, but really, even that's too good for them.<br /><br />The Heroine<br /><br />The heroine is, on her face, a sexy Latina chick with great legs and a spectacular décolletage. I wonder if her 'foreignness' is acceptable here because she overcomes her skepticism of the hero and eventually falls into line with everything he puts forward as being so. Never mind that she's given no choice by way of the plot. Of course it's that way. At no point does she offer any opinion or philosophy or anything of a similar free-thinking nature. She merely proves her worth by helping our hero kill the villain. All things, booty included, goes to he who most fully embraces a Manichean world-view.<br /><br />But really our heroine is us. She represents the voice of skepticism. She tells our hero, after his unintelligible explanation of his deviltry, that he's either mad or lying. We of course, having seen his flaming skull, mentally yell to her, 'Believe him! You'll die otherwise!'. But she is us and we are yelling at ourselves. It's a reinforcement loop. Eventually she, which is to say us, believes and we sigh in relief. All is as it should be and now we can get on with the killing.<br /><br />The Hero<br /><br />Our Nick Cage hero is a perfect example of what Jewish culture does best - a pastiche. He's part Elvis, part Evel Knievel, part new-age jibber-jabberer. His jabber is some useless nonsense about fear. I dare you to make sense of it. But forget that. Our hero is a success. He is bigger, faster, better and lives a purposeless life dedicated to pandering to the desire of the masses for bigger, faster, better. Never does he really consider others. When he does rescue a damsel in distress he is more intent on inflicting a hellish death on the mini-villain. Really the mini-villain is there so that we may know that our hero can 'see' evil and fry the evil-doer as an appropriate response. Were we to stop and think about it, the mini-villain represents a clearly human opportunity for redemption. And that's precisely why this scene warrants less than five minutes. Don't think folks! Don't ponder at the unknowability of things. Don't ponder at how this fellow came to be a robber. Don't wonder at what we might do to actually help him. We KNOW he is evil and must be killed. The short shrift the damsel receives is explicable by the fact that she is so obviously fat and stupid. Unless of course, she was cast because of the high regard in which Hollywood film-makers hold fat and stupid people. Who knows? But don't doubt that she was deliberately cast on account of her unattractiveness and her ability to be convincingly stupid. Now that I think about it, she is fat and stupid so that our heroine may give her short shrift later. Perfectly forgivable. The fat and stupid deserve nothing less.<br /><br />Finally, our hero fulfils his side of the bargain and the devil is about to remove the curse. But! Our hero tells him to piss off. He's keeping his infernal power. It's his turn to laugh at the devil. Peter Fonda - stumped! I have no time for phrases like 'synagogue of satan' but - Jesus Christ! This film elicits our admiration for a fellow who enters into a deal with the devil, cheats him, and uses his power to further his self-serving purposeless 'success' and to kill people whom he alone 'knows' are evil. He knows that they are 'evil' because he is 'evil', which is to say 'good'. His desire to inflict such punishment is portrayed as a kind of selflessness in a speech he gives before he rides off into the hellish sunset. Believe it or not, it's a variation of Tom Joad's 'Where there's injustice I'll be there' speech. John Steinbeck rolls over in his grave. Gone is Tom Joad's compassion, heartbreak and offering of succour. Our hero, whom we must admire, wants to live a long life of imposing a hellish death on bag-snatchers. Thus are sins made into virtues.<br /><br />The Totality<br /><br />Never mind that America (and this is quintessentially an American film) is Christian. In spite of the fact that this movie pivots on a religious model, there is no Christ here. No compassion, no redemption, no beatitudes or anything even close. It's like the New Testament had never been written. Catholic churches feature, sure, but only in an idiotic apocryphal context. No one may ever expect any help by entering a church. They are false sanctuaries and powerless in the face of the devil. Always. We should know that they can offer nothing to those facing the cinematically real problems of Old Testament truth. And apart from evangelical old-testament hallelujah-halls, Christian churches are facing a chronic decline in membership. Ha ha ha ha. Of course! Like they're any match for a bazillion-dollar Hollywood propaganda machine.<br /><br />So, a big two-thumbs up for Ghost Rider! The world is thus, says they. Now. Go off and kill those declared villains, boys and girls. Forget common ground. Forget redemption. Forget your humanity.<br /><br />"Whose your favourite super-hero? Mine's Ghost Rider! He's cool. He's better than Spider-man because his power is from the Devil! He could even beat Superman. Brrrrm, brrrrm, kapow! Take that, evil guy!"nobodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13067422372087431256noreply@blogger.com4