A peaceful island is resting quietly off the Irish coast, congenially taking care of its daily business, relaxed and chill, content and thirsty, relatively unconcerned with the partitions of the mainland, enjoying what little they have with everything they've got.
But after an austere by-the-book officious smartypants arrives from Dublin for a two week shift, strange things begin to happen.
A pod of deceased whales washes up on shore.
Residents and fisherpersons disappear.
A bizarre unclassified squidlike creature is caught in a lobster trap.
Who has given birth to young seeking to feast on human blood.
This means local constable Ciarán O'Shea (Richard Coyle) must give up drinking in order to save the village when papa comes searching for his imprisoned mate, and his by-the-book superior must tie-one-on for the first time.
In fact, since the aliens can't digest blood infused with alcohol, the entire town is invited to a local tavern, where there is a piss-up of biblical proportions, mirthfully unrestrained, at first, on the house.
Celebrating the love of stiff pints while comedically and romantically illustrating how they can effectively fight off bloodsucking monsters, Jon Wright's Grabbers jovially and collectively serves up a round of experimentally crafted filmic fermentation, torrentially tapping a traditional reservoir, to insouciantly distribute an ironic distillation.
Brazenly brewed.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Roller Town (Fantasia Fest 2012)
Rollin' along; roller skatin' down that road.
Bringing disco, back to life.
Haligonian comedy troupe Picnicface insert their distinct brand of hypertense laissez-faire creepy yet ingratiating socio-cultural commentary into their first full-length film, Roller Town, overflowing with the same cerebral mix of nostalgic innocence and nauseous necromancy that nauticalized their television show, ironically transmitted through a vicarious fundamental frequency, which fetishistically elevates the construction of a permanent sense of psychological well-being, localized and qualified by an irresistibly naive belief in the eternal values of pop culture, avatarized with direct access to the divine, while criminally agitating its impending neuroses.
A lot of the jokes/situations have an immediate impact (are funny) while many of them seem like they were deliberately set up to just be as inane and I-don't-give-a-fuck as possible. But when you think about them afterwards it's these inane moments that lacked depth that make you laugh and want to see it again.
Which isn't that easy to do.
Bringing disco, back to life.
Haligonian comedy troupe Picnicface insert their distinct brand of hypertense laissez-faire creepy yet ingratiating socio-cultural commentary into their first full-length film, Roller Town, overflowing with the same cerebral mix of nostalgic innocence and nauseous necromancy that nauticalized their television show, ironically transmitted through a vicarious fundamental frequency, which fetishistically elevates the construction of a permanent sense of psychological well-being, localized and qualified by an irresistibly naive belief in the eternal values of pop culture, avatarized with direct access to the divine, while criminally agitating its impending neuroses.
A lot of the jokes/situations have an immediate impact (are funny) while many of them seem like they were deliberately set up to just be as inane and I-don't-give-a-fuck as possible. But when you think about them afterwards it's these inane moments that lacked depth that make you laugh and want to see it again.
Which isn't that easy to do.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Les Aventures de Chatran (Fantasia Fest 2012)
One day Chatran's living with her mother and siblings on the farm, the next, she's floating downriver in a wooden crate, timorously preparing herself for life's unexpected verisimilitudes.
Her friend Pousquet chases after her and is always there in her time of need.
As her hesitant curiosity cautiously explores her new environment's mysterious terrain, collecting eclectic sensory stimuli as she travels through the countryside, a steady approach is diversely enacted, aided by her instinctive elasticity.
Making friends while avoiding the overbearing.
And verdantly investing in deciduous synergies.
Her friend Pousquet chases after her and is always there in her time of need.
As her hesitant curiosity cautiously explores her new environment's mysterious terrain, collecting eclectic sensory stimuli as she travels through the countryside, a steady approach is diversely enacted, aided by her instinctive elasticity.
Making friends while avoiding the overbearing.
And verdantly investing in deciduous synergies.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Trishna
Aesthetics clash with socioeconomics after a brief period of romantic resignation in Michael Winterbottom's Trishna, where love is permitted to bloom if it knows its place.
Although, as it becomes increasingly clear that that place, due to the different circumstances into which the partners were born, will involve prolonged periods where the dependent lover, Trishna (Freida Pinto), must submit to whatever desire her wealthy benefactor adopts, immediately and without question, her thoughts and feelings being considered by him to have been forfeited in return for the employment and luxuries with which he provides her, said blooming soon morbidly decays.
There is no balance, no give and take, just a one-sided narcissistic vacuum taking full advantage of its power and privilege.
Trishna's father doesn't help much either being more concerned with honour and saving face than his daughter's trauma.
And a shy, modest, beautiful impoverished woman, who was only searching for things such as respect and a voice from her partner, wanders off into the desert alone, while school children sing a song celebrating equality (it's a powerful scene in terms of strengthening the left in India).
Having symbolically used her realistic imagination to ceremoniously slice through the imaginary real.
Although, as it becomes increasingly clear that that place, due to the different circumstances into which the partners were born, will involve prolonged periods where the dependent lover, Trishna (Freida Pinto), must submit to whatever desire her wealthy benefactor adopts, immediately and without question, her thoughts and feelings being considered by him to have been forfeited in return for the employment and luxuries with which he provides her, said blooming soon morbidly decays.
There is no balance, no give and take, just a one-sided narcissistic vacuum taking full advantage of its power and privilege.
Trishna's father doesn't help much either being more concerned with honour and saving face than his daughter's trauma.
And a shy, modest, beautiful impoverished woman, who was only searching for things such as respect and a voice from her partner, wanders off into the desert alone, while school children sing a song celebrating equality (it's a powerful scene in terms of strengthening the left in India).
Having symbolically used her realistic imagination to ceremoniously slice through the imaginary real.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
To Rome with Love
For a summer in Rome, an office clerk finds himself thrust into the spotlight, his routine reflections hyperbolically sensationalizing influence, as an architect revisits his youth to bring back to life/cross-examine his most serendipitous subject of desire, a young communist lawyer contends with a retired opera producer when it's discovered that his humble father can sing exceptionally well, and a married couple, in town for a potentially prosperous employment opportunity, find themselves accidentally embracing exotic extramarital affairs.
Felicitously framed by a traffic cop's dissolving point of view.
The conditions of which inculcate calisthenic creativity.
Romantically mingling the celebrated with the starstruck and the ordinary with the hyper-intensive, while evoking the nimble necessity to unearth metaphorical mirth within corresponding psychoanalytic observations, Woody Allen's To Rome with Love's palpable playful pluck picturesquely procures impressionable popularizations, and salaciously serenades atemporal condensations.
Fidelity strengthened through chance, temptation tethered to testimony, regret distinguished from revelation, and dreams evanescently alighted.
A virtuosic variation on a theme.
There's a lot more to it than that.
Felicitously framed by a traffic cop's dissolving point of view.
The conditions of which inculcate calisthenic creativity.
Romantically mingling the celebrated with the starstruck and the ordinary with the hyper-intensive, while evoking the nimble necessity to unearth metaphorical mirth within corresponding psychoanalytic observations, Woody Allen's To Rome with Love's palpable playful pluck picturesquely procures impressionable popularizations, and salaciously serenades atemporal condensations.
Fidelity strengthened through chance, temptation tethered to testimony, regret distinguished from revelation, and dreams evanescently alighted.
A virtuosic variation on a theme.
There's a lot more to it than that.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Sàidékè Balái (Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale) (Fantasia Fest 2012)
12 Indigenous tribes are living harmoniously amongst one another in the late-18th/early-19th century in the mountains of central Taiwan, when imperialist Japanese forces invade.
Their harmonious relations are highly aggressive inasmuch as manhood is achieved by cutting off the head of a member of a surrounding tribe.
The conquerors see things differently however and colonize said tribes in order to put them to work maximizing the economic potential of their natural resources.
Decades pass, and a once proud warrior culture is reduced to back breaking poorly paid labour, alcohol abuse, suffocating ethnocentric taunts, and the systematic depletion of their ancestral hunting grounds.
And respect for their traditions is anathema.
Yet the knowledge that rebellion is akin to mass suicide keeps them at bay, until the situation proves too belittling to be endured forever after (no treaties whereby they could maintain their way of life were negotiated and signed).
And a revolt is launched.
The ways in which director Te-Sheng Wei depicts the revolt incontrovertibly turn one's stomach, as the legendary Mona Rudao (Da-Ching, Lin Ching-Tai) and his Mahebu people express their revenge.
Obviously I was cheering for the downtrodden Mahebu but my support was structurally challenged as they massacred every Japanese person in their village.
The challenge being the result of the generation of an internally cathartic traumatic absolutist aesthetic, which chaotically yet rationally glorifies battle while championing the enslaved, accompanied by a feminine voice singing a haunting lugubrious lament, working within and celebrating the traditions of the vanquished, without hesitating to showcase their warlike being.
A being which I'm not used to inductively digesting.
The rest of Sàidékè Balái (Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale) practically answers Camus's cliché contention that the only properly philosophical problem is suicide.
Assuming that's a cliché by now anyways.
And its response heroically illustrates the fearless spiritual will of a fierce uncompromising people, forced to adopt extreme methods, dedicated to their way of life, refusing to passively perish.
As time goes by.
Their harmonious relations are highly aggressive inasmuch as manhood is achieved by cutting off the head of a member of a surrounding tribe.
The conquerors see things differently however and colonize said tribes in order to put them to work maximizing the economic potential of their natural resources.
Decades pass, and a once proud warrior culture is reduced to back breaking poorly paid labour, alcohol abuse, suffocating ethnocentric taunts, and the systematic depletion of their ancestral hunting grounds.
And respect for their traditions is anathema.
Yet the knowledge that rebellion is akin to mass suicide keeps them at bay, until the situation proves too belittling to be endured forever after (no treaties whereby they could maintain their way of life were negotiated and signed).
And a revolt is launched.
The ways in which director Te-Sheng Wei depicts the revolt incontrovertibly turn one's stomach, as the legendary Mona Rudao (Da-Ching, Lin Ching-Tai) and his Mahebu people express their revenge.
Obviously I was cheering for the downtrodden Mahebu but my support was structurally challenged as they massacred every Japanese person in their village.
The challenge being the result of the generation of an internally cathartic traumatic absolutist aesthetic, which chaotically yet rationally glorifies battle while championing the enslaved, accompanied by a feminine voice singing a haunting lugubrious lament, working within and celebrating the traditions of the vanquished, without hesitating to showcase their warlike being.
A being which I'm not used to inductively digesting.
The rest of Sàidékè Balái (Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale) practically answers Camus's cliché contention that the only properly philosophical problem is suicide.
Assuming that's a cliché by now anyways.
And its response heroically illustrates the fearless spiritual will of a fierce uncompromising people, forced to adopt extreme methods, dedicated to their way of life, refusing to passively perish.
As time goes by.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Ai to Makoto (For Love's Sake) (Fantasia Fest 2012)
Presenting a comic romantic over-the-top ultraviolent musical, wherein bourgeois values resolutely seek to pacify a versatile tumultuous rogue, the undying and overpowering intensity of love unwaveringly guiding their reformative resolve, streetwise unconditional consistent combative tenacity governing his, Takashi Miike's Ai to Makoto (For Love's Sake) does not refrain from elaborately executing every consummate class cliché ever created, sensationally synthesizing quixotic and hardboiled extremes, relentlessly reproducing unerringly awkward amorously explosive motifs, in the implacable pursuit, of emancipated co-dependence.
Group dynamics repetitively insist that young Makoto Taiga (Satoshi Tsumabuki) obediently pay his respects, but as their challenges are uniformly discombobulated, his limitless disenfranchised individuality, and consequent unwittingly seductive magnetism, remain intact.
Attaching a monetary value to the ability to maintain specific ideological viewpoints, while catastrophically choreographing their constructive affects, Ai to Makoto pugnaciously parodies the domain of rehabilitative reckoning, while chaotically kitschifying the practice of revenge.
For love's sake.
Group dynamics repetitively insist that young Makoto Taiga (Satoshi Tsumabuki) obediently pay his respects, but as their challenges are uniformly discombobulated, his limitless disenfranchised individuality, and consequent unwittingly seductive magnetism, remain intact.
Attaching a monetary value to the ability to maintain specific ideological viewpoints, while catastrophically choreographing their constructive affects, Ai to Makoto pugnaciously parodies the domain of rehabilitative reckoning, while chaotically kitschifying the practice of revenge.
For love's sake.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Cosmopolis
A brilliant young billionaire, having maintained his fortune by grammatically applying the mathematical rhythms of nature to the metaphorical constructs of his social interactions, something like that, philosophically travels throughout New York in his cork-lined limo, calmly discussing various subjects with his astute personnel, occasionally stopping to chat with his literary wife, protests pulsating outside, historical echoes allusively gyrating, definitive risks annihilating his wealth, the pursuit of pleasure conjugally detected, security forces requiring guidance, meaning, substantially, trying to break its way through.
On his way to have his hair cut.
Operating within a conscious surrealistic intellectual structure spatially adorned with sudden startlingly ephemeral enactments (momentary dreamlike logical displacements), wherein questions of tangibility become remarkably fluid before alternatively reverting to their previous states, David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis examines an individual's steady response to a shockingly increasing barrage of multilayered financial, cultural, and, derivatively, psychological derailments, whose consequent disruptions cannot be experientially sublimated.
Mr. Packer's (Robert Pattinson) unaffected emancipated solution attaches a horrific qualification to the concept of freedom.
Even when Cronenberg zeroes in on the cerebral, he can still find other ways of exemplifying his roots.
On his way to have his hair cut.
Operating within a conscious surrealistic intellectual structure spatially adorned with sudden startlingly ephemeral enactments (momentary dreamlike logical displacements), wherein questions of tangibility become remarkably fluid before alternatively reverting to their previous states, David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis examines an individual's steady response to a shockingly increasing barrage of multilayered financial, cultural, and, derivatively, psychological derailments, whose consequent disruptions cannot be experientially sublimated.
Mr. Packer's (Robert Pattinson) unaffected emancipated solution attaches a horrific qualification to the concept of freedom.
Even when Cronenberg zeroes in on the cerebral, he can still find other ways of exemplifying his roots.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Et maintenant on va où? (Where Do We Go Now?)
A remote village in Lebanon remains technologically isolated from its surrounding politico-cultural environment which erupts in a religious war. Seeking to ensure that no more of their children are needlessly slaughtered, its Christian and Muslim female inhabitants unite to distract their masculine counterparts. However, regardless of the fact that they know nothing of the war, tensions between these men have been increasing due to sacrilegious activities that have inspired retribution.
Trying to covertly manage the vindictive violence proves challenging.
A challenge to which these heroic women stalwartly, respond.
Exercising a seductive mix of the expedient, the temperamental, and the divine, Nadine Labaki's Et maintenant on va où? (Where Do We Go Now?) fictionally verifies how destructive overtures can be pacified within pressurized time constraints.
Certain aspects of the solution they facilitate may have practical applications beyond said constraints, although reflecting upon whether or not their means justifies their ends pasteurizes acute ethical dilemmas.
Nevertheless, a powerful film with a progressive message, Et maintenant on va où suggests that a rural dynamic can play an influential role in the byzantine global mosaic, as a matter of perseverance as opposed to pride, or acceptance as the foundations of transcendence.
Trying to covertly manage the vindictive violence proves challenging.
A challenge to which these heroic women stalwartly, respond.
Exercising a seductive mix of the expedient, the temperamental, and the divine, Nadine Labaki's Et maintenant on va où? (Where Do We Go Now?) fictionally verifies how destructive overtures can be pacified within pressurized time constraints.
Certain aspects of the solution they facilitate may have practical applications beyond said constraints, although reflecting upon whether or not their means justifies their ends pasteurizes acute ethical dilemmas.
Nevertheless, a powerful film with a progressive message, Et maintenant on va où suggests that a rural dynamic can play an influential role in the byzantine global mosaic, as a matter of perseverance as opposed to pride, or acceptance as the foundations of transcendence.
Moonrise Kingdom
Stoic particular oddities are seamlessly intertwined with a general reconceptualization of a stilted romantic American summer vacation, framed through recourse to a revitalized instructional capacity, championing the ingenuity of two young outcasts, demanding that those who neglected them altruistically unite, with the aid of Bruce Willis, as the peculiar becomes the pertinent and vice versa, discussion engenders understanding, the resulting text overtly incarnates visceral dialectics, melodramatically idealized by the pursuit of love.
Regardless of the structural impediments firmly bulwarking a sustained historical social reverberation, Suzy (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman) courageously escape to the wilderness which created it, only to find their commitment to one another strengthened all the more, after having been discovered.
Underground authorities are then enlisted to creatively sanctify that which has been forbidden.
And as the heavens thunderously strike back, only s/he whose bravery eclipses his/her intellect can function as saviour.
And the Moonrise Kingdom shines forth.
Having been integrated into the system.
Regardless of the structural impediments firmly bulwarking a sustained historical social reverberation, Suzy (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman) courageously escape to the wilderness which created it, only to find their commitment to one another strengthened all the more, after having been discovered.
Underground authorities are then enlisted to creatively sanctify that which has been forbidden.
And as the heavens thunderously strike back, only s/he whose bravery eclipses his/her intellect can function as saviour.
And the Moonrise Kingdom shines forth.
Having been integrated into the system.
Intouchables
Improvised confident agile productivity meets frustrated restrained routine continuity in the heartwarming new odd couple film, Intouchables, the two dimensions elastically forging an incorporeal amicable trust.
Or friendship. Friendship is another way of describing that which they forge.
Philippe (François Cluzet) is a wealthy aristocratic quadriplegic who requires the aid of a live-in attendant. Driss (Omar Sy) comes from the projects and only applied for the position to demonstrate to social assistance that he's looking for work.
It quickly becomes apparent that Driss's honest, easy going, cheeky camaraderie is precisely that for which Philippe has been searching, having grown tired of fawning, hesitant, by-the-book cookie cutters.
And the result is mutually cathartic.
The mix of different attitudes regarding artistic modes of expression is invaluable.
Oddly enough, it seems that there are still a lot of people who don't mix the classical with the popular.
Which is just simply weird.
Illustrating the rewards of embracing alternative therapeutic methodologies in order to rediscover innocuously rebellious invigorating affects, Intouchables acrobatically and celestially displays its inclusive joie de vivre without losing its practical edge.
Worth checking out.
Or friendship. Friendship is another way of describing that which they forge.
Philippe (François Cluzet) is a wealthy aristocratic quadriplegic who requires the aid of a live-in attendant. Driss (Omar Sy) comes from the projects and only applied for the position to demonstrate to social assistance that he's looking for work.
It quickly becomes apparent that Driss's honest, easy going, cheeky camaraderie is precisely that for which Philippe has been searching, having grown tired of fawning, hesitant, by-the-book cookie cutters.
And the result is mutually cathartic.
The mix of different attitudes regarding artistic modes of expression is invaluable.
Oddly enough, it seems that there are still a lot of people who don't mix the classical with the popular.
Which is just simply weird.
Illustrating the rewards of embracing alternative therapeutic methodologies in order to rediscover innocuously rebellious invigorating affects, Intouchables acrobatically and celestially displays its inclusive joie de vivre without losing its practical edge.
Worth checking out.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Abraham Lincoln.
Vampire hunter.
His chosen weapon: an axe.
His cause: the abolition of slavery.
His purpose: just.
His approach: universal.
During his set of historical circumstances, piecemeal strategies simply don't cut it.
And alternative methods must be idealized.
Fighting an age-old evil whose tyrannical agenda is constantly seeking to revitalize its divisive malignant incredulity, Mr. Lincoln, with the help of an incredible woman who believes in the strength of common persons, and many other friends, including Christian Slater, decisively acts by any-means-necessary, his initial youthful personal vendetta evolving into a prolonged politico-cultural crusade.
Guided by wisdom.
And driven by faith.
Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is poignantly pulpy and genuinely clear.
Incisively laying a lucid altruistic track upon a dismantled phantasmagorical transcendence, he uses the tools prominent within his own set of historical circumstances to popularly reconstruct its influential engine.
Working within the system without preaching to the converted.
Or worrying about critical repercussions.
Great film.
Vampire hunter.
His chosen weapon: an axe.
His cause: the abolition of slavery.
His purpose: just.
His approach: universal.
During his set of historical circumstances, piecemeal strategies simply don't cut it.
And alternative methods must be idealized.
Fighting an age-old evil whose tyrannical agenda is constantly seeking to revitalize its divisive malignant incredulity, Mr. Lincoln, with the help of an incredible woman who believes in the strength of common persons, and many other friends, including Christian Slater, decisively acts by any-means-necessary, his initial youthful personal vendetta evolving into a prolonged politico-cultural crusade.
Guided by wisdom.
And driven by faith.
Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is poignantly pulpy and genuinely clear.
Incisively laying a lucid altruistic track upon a dismantled phantasmagorical transcendence, he uses the tools prominent within his own set of historical circumstances to popularly reconstruct its influential engine.
Working within the system without preaching to the converted.
Or worrying about critical repercussions.
Great film.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Ted
Magic and a child's dream of having a friend brings a cuddly teddy bear to life in Seth MacFarlane's Ted, thereby transforming little John Bennett's (Mark Wahlberg, Bretton Manley) existence from one dominated by loneliness to one permeated with joy.
With neither responsibility nor consequences.
And an inexhaustible supply of the kind.
But the introduction of John's steady love interest Lori Collins (Mila Kunis) and their 4 year relationship threatens to end John and Ted's (Seth MacFarlane) non-stop binge, and a hitherto unimaginable strain threatens their impregnable friendship.
Obviously things need to change, and Lori is exceptionally relaxed and understanding, but after Ted moves out and John continues to haplessly disregard his social and economic obligations, things fall apart, and he finds himself back on his own.
Struggling to get by.
Mr. MacFarlane's undeniable gift for packing his scripts full of nostalgic pop cultural references does not struggle, however, and Ted's narrative is jam packed with witty intertextual memorabilia (also written by Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild).
Johnny Quest is mentioned.
Ted Danson makes light of his more successful Cheers co-star Woody Harrelson in a bit of playful bad taste.
And Ted's answer to The Wedding Singer's use of Billy Idol impresses at first.
A lot of the jokes are funny, but the consistent barrage of cheap shots loses its appeal as the film unreels.
While some movies use repetitive jokes effectively (Paul's three boobs for instance), the devices Ted borrows from Office Space grow tiresome and the second half doesn't hold together well.
The subplot involving Donny (Giovanni Ribisi) is taken way too far.
As is the use of Ted's Billy Idol.
And the nauseating Rex (Joel McHale).
Too much reliance on knee-jerk reactions and not enough on strong character development, Ted flounders where it could have flourished and applies the brakes when requiring acceleration.
I've seen Adam Sandler movies that were better.
Seriously.
With neither responsibility nor consequences.
And an inexhaustible supply of the kind.
But the introduction of John's steady love interest Lori Collins (Mila Kunis) and their 4 year relationship threatens to end John and Ted's (Seth MacFarlane) non-stop binge, and a hitherto unimaginable strain threatens their impregnable friendship.
Obviously things need to change, and Lori is exceptionally relaxed and understanding, but after Ted moves out and John continues to haplessly disregard his social and economic obligations, things fall apart, and he finds himself back on his own.
Struggling to get by.
Mr. MacFarlane's undeniable gift for packing his scripts full of nostalgic pop cultural references does not struggle, however, and Ted's narrative is jam packed with witty intertextual memorabilia (also written by Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild).
Johnny Quest is mentioned.
Ted Danson makes light of his more successful Cheers co-star Woody Harrelson in a bit of playful bad taste.
And Ted's answer to The Wedding Singer's use of Billy Idol impresses at first.
A lot of the jokes are funny, but the consistent barrage of cheap shots loses its appeal as the film unreels.
While some movies use repetitive jokes effectively (Paul's three boobs for instance), the devices Ted borrows from Office Space grow tiresome and the second half doesn't hold together well.
The subplot involving Donny (Giovanni Ribisi) is taken way too far.
As is the use of Ted's Billy Idol.
And the nauseating Rex (Joel McHale).
Too much reliance on knee-jerk reactions and not enough on strong character development, Ted flounders where it could have flourished and applies the brakes when requiring acceleration.
I've seen Adam Sandler movies that were better.
Seriously.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Brave
Traditional gender roles are set ablaze in Disney Pixar's Brave, the magical tale of young Princess Merida's (Kelly MacDonald) coming of age.
Disillusioned by her culture's tradition of demanding that a mate be selected from a tiny prestigious feudal stock, and the rather strict regimen of feminine codes of conduct to which she must adhere, while the men train for battle, the feisty Princess shelves her mother's (Emma Thompson as Queen Elinor) strategic plans and rides off into a forested nexus.
Wherein resides her destiny.
And a witch who provides her with a treacherous tasty treat which turns her mother into a bear upon her return home.
August insurmountable accumulative wisdom having been startlingly transformed into the wild unknown, little Merida must find a way to relax the resulting tensions and restore order throughout the land.
As a product of adrenaline.
The film's piecemeal approach to socio-cultural structural modifications presents a practical framework within which transfigurations can be cunningly concocted, considering the myriad factors which need to be balanced when tempering historic-ideological architectures.
Wasn't impressed by its top-down approach however.
The bears are pretty cool though.
Not the ferocious bear.
Suppose the other bears aren't really bears either.
There are moments of playful grumpy bearness nevertheless.
Bears.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Rock of Ages
Well, without digging too deeply into the ideologic-socio-political dimensions of Rock of Ages, here's a brief snapshot of what happens.
A beautiful young girl (Julianne Hough as Sherrie Christian) travels from Oklahoma to Los Angeles in the hopes of becoming a singer. It becomes clear early on that the odds are stacked against her but she's fortunate enough to catch the eye of a barback (Diego Boneta as Drew Boley) with similar dreams who finds her a job at the prominent nightclub (The Bourbon Club) where he works.
In less than a week they've developed a strong emotional bond.
Known, as love.
Legendary demonic alcoholic singer Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) and his band Arsenal are scheduled to play their last collective performance at the Bourbon Club, and the sultry studious astute Constance Stack (Malin Akerman) of Rolling Stone hopes to ask Mr. Jaxx some sharp related critical questions beforehand.
After three or four minutes she's prancing around in her underwear.
She does still publish a vitriolic article later on.
But by the end of the film she's carrying his baby.
Meanwhile, the clueless adulterous Mayor Mike Whitmore's (Bryan Cranston) religious wife Patricia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) hopes to put an end to the Bourbon Club's cult and is crusading against Mr. Jaxx as well.
The only man who ever made her feel like a real woman.
By the end of the film she's back in the audience, hoping Stacee will notice her once again.
Sherrie and Drew break up and she finds a job stripping while he gets stuck in a boy band.
And another monster rock ballad is sung.
I'm not really looking to complicate this film or anything, but it does present politics and feminism as hypocritical meaningless endeavours whose initiatives crumble beneath the seductive gaze of the established subterranean patriarch.
In this case, the political initiatives are invasive and counterproductive but if they function as a foil for such initiatives generally they can be considered belittling and grossly disproportionate (there is no alternative political option presented).
I prefer grassroots music to that manufactured by market based research but it's not as if classic rock isn't alive and well.
It's nice to see gay characters given a strong masculine structural role within, not in terms of encouraging anti-feminist apolitical activities, but in regards to taking risks in order to establish an integral celebrated entrepreneurial identity.
I can't think of any other things to say besides the fact that the film's soundtrack contains some songs that I like.
Rock of Ages.
Rollin' along.
A beautiful young girl (Julianne Hough as Sherrie Christian) travels from Oklahoma to Los Angeles in the hopes of becoming a singer. It becomes clear early on that the odds are stacked against her but she's fortunate enough to catch the eye of a barback (Diego Boneta as Drew Boley) with similar dreams who finds her a job at the prominent nightclub (The Bourbon Club) where he works.
In less than a week they've developed a strong emotional bond.
Known, as love.
Legendary demonic alcoholic singer Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) and his band Arsenal are scheduled to play their last collective performance at the Bourbon Club, and the sultry studious astute Constance Stack (Malin Akerman) of Rolling Stone hopes to ask Mr. Jaxx some sharp related critical questions beforehand.
After three or four minutes she's prancing around in her underwear.
She does still publish a vitriolic article later on.
But by the end of the film she's carrying his baby.
Meanwhile, the clueless adulterous Mayor Mike Whitmore's (Bryan Cranston) religious wife Patricia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) hopes to put an end to the Bourbon Club's cult and is crusading against Mr. Jaxx as well.
The only man who ever made her feel like a real woman.
By the end of the film she's back in the audience, hoping Stacee will notice her once again.
Sherrie and Drew break up and she finds a job stripping while he gets stuck in a boy band.
And another monster rock ballad is sung.
I'm not really looking to complicate this film or anything, but it does present politics and feminism as hypocritical meaningless endeavours whose initiatives crumble beneath the seductive gaze of the established subterranean patriarch.
In this case, the political initiatives are invasive and counterproductive but if they function as a foil for such initiatives generally they can be considered belittling and grossly disproportionate (there is no alternative political option presented).
I prefer grassroots music to that manufactured by market based research but it's not as if classic rock isn't alive and well.
It's nice to see gay characters given a strong masculine structural role within, not in terms of encouraging anti-feminist apolitical activities, but in regards to taking risks in order to establish an integral celebrated entrepreneurial identity.
I can't think of any other things to say besides the fact that the film's soundtrack contains some songs that I like.
Rock of Ages.
Rollin' along.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
Well, I haven't seen the first two Madagascar films, but Europe's Most Wanted makes it clear that at some point the loveable animal stars spent time in a zoo in New York City.
And are hoping to return.
Their penguin and chimpanzee acquaintances ditch them at the beginning to fly to Monte Carlo and make a fortune gambling.
Frightened of having to spend the rest of their lives in Africa, they follow.
How they travel to Monte Carlo remains a mystery (it's possible that they swam).
After they discover their whereabouts, they accidentally fall through a glass ceiling, thereby simultaneously reuniting while interrupting a lavish spending spree of Europe's elite.
Which engenders a confrontation with the law.
As represented by a rather determined feminine figure.
From which they escape by posing as circus animals and finding refuge in a hostile yet hospitable train.
The penguins then buy the circus from owners who are eager to sell only to discover that it suffers from a serious lack of talent.
And that things need to be competently restructured in order to impress an American promoter who may finance a tour of the United States.
Starting in New York City.
Even though our heroes have no circus experience, they have lived in an American zoo where they acquired transferable do-it-yourself-know-how, easily applicable to any situation.
And the characters from Africa, who prefer life in a zoo to their homeland, teach the struggling Europeans how to dazzlingly manage their showcase, thereby enabling a tour of the U.S.A.
The revitalized Russian tiger is heard to utter 'bolshevik' instead of 'bullshit.'
Labour laws in France apparently only require two weeks of work a year, a subtle indirect (annoying) elevation of the 50 week work year.
A Platonic mode of political production is partially at work insofar as the wise penguins use the spirit of their inspirational lion, zebra, hippopotamus, and giraffe to reconstitute the European appetites, even after said appetites find out that they've been convincingly lied to.
In the interests of entertainment.
Can't say I'm disappointed that I missed its predecessors, nor that I find the title Europe's Most Wanted amusing.
Suppose a kid's film about the state of the American economy wouldn't be commercially feasible.
"God only knows it's not what we would choose to do (Roger Waters, Rick Wright)."
And are hoping to return.
Their penguin and chimpanzee acquaintances ditch them at the beginning to fly to Monte Carlo and make a fortune gambling.
Frightened of having to spend the rest of their lives in Africa, they follow.
How they travel to Monte Carlo remains a mystery (it's possible that they swam).
After they discover their whereabouts, they accidentally fall through a glass ceiling, thereby simultaneously reuniting while interrupting a lavish spending spree of Europe's elite.
Which engenders a confrontation with the law.
As represented by a rather determined feminine figure.
From which they escape by posing as circus animals and finding refuge in a hostile yet hospitable train.
The penguins then buy the circus from owners who are eager to sell only to discover that it suffers from a serious lack of talent.
And that things need to be competently restructured in order to impress an American promoter who may finance a tour of the United States.
Starting in New York City.
Even though our heroes have no circus experience, they have lived in an American zoo where they acquired transferable do-it-yourself-know-how, easily applicable to any situation.
And the characters from Africa, who prefer life in a zoo to their homeland, teach the struggling Europeans how to dazzlingly manage their showcase, thereby enabling a tour of the U.S.A.
The revitalized Russian tiger is heard to utter 'bolshevik' instead of 'bullshit.'
Labour laws in France apparently only require two weeks of work a year, a subtle indirect (annoying) elevation of the 50 week work year.
A Platonic mode of political production is partially at work insofar as the wise penguins use the spirit of their inspirational lion, zebra, hippopotamus, and giraffe to reconstitute the European appetites, even after said appetites find out that they've been convincingly lied to.
In the interests of entertainment.
Can't say I'm disappointed that I missed its predecessors, nor that I find the title Europe's Most Wanted amusing.
Suppose a kid's film about the state of the American economy wouldn't be commercially feasible.
"God only knows it's not what we would choose to do (Roger Waters, Rick Wright)."
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Prometheus
And a group of scientific diplomats and their escort departs on a trillion dollar mission financed by Weyland Corporation towards a planetary alignment discovered by a team of archaeologists upon several ancient culturally isolated works of art.
In search of those who brought life to their home world.
But their investigative proclivities awake volcanic slumbering behemoths whom are intent upon annihilating their planet.
Which has functioned as their laboratory for millennia.
In the end, only a devoted non-denominational Christian (whose faith still burns) who at one point initiates a self-inflicted abortion and a brilliant amoral android who was responsible for infecting her husband with the fertile extraterrestrial virus, remain.
Still determined to make contact.
Still driven, to carry on.
Ridley Scott's Prometheus has its moments but on the whole functions like an amorphous geyser, patiently stratifying different levels of neuroses before startlingly expelling their searing undulations.
Several approaches to handling the unknown are precipitated, each exemplifying differing degrees of prohibition.
Thereby carnally creating within a paranoid social constellation.
And intergalactically quarantining exploratory consonance.
In search of those who brought life to their home world.
But their investigative proclivities awake volcanic slumbering behemoths whom are intent upon annihilating their planet.
Which has functioned as their laboratory for millennia.
In the end, only a devoted non-denominational Christian (whose faith still burns) who at one point initiates a self-inflicted abortion and a brilliant amoral android who was responsible for infecting her husband with the fertile extraterrestrial virus, remain.
Still determined to make contact.
Still driven, to carry on.
Ridley Scott's Prometheus has its moments but on the whole functions like an amorphous geyser, patiently stratifying different levels of neuroses before startlingly expelling their searing undulations.
Several approaches to handling the unknown are precipitated, each exemplifying differing degrees of prohibition.
Thereby carnally creating within a paranoid social constellation.
And intergalactically quarantining exploratory consonance.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Snow White and the Huntsman
A wicked Queen who loathes men kills her husband due to her blind fear that he will cast her off when her beauty fades and then takes psychotic steps to insure that it will remain forever.
But when his daughter whom she has kept prisoner comes of age and it becomes clear that she is even more beautiful, she immediately seeks to put her to death.
But Snow White (Kristen Stewart) escapes and her purity and innocence help her to make her way back to the forces who fought for her father and will still nobly battle for his seed.
A Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth), seven dwarves, and many others assist her during her journey.
Her innocence would likely have not been so pure had she not spent her entire youth locked inside a cell.
Unfortunately, unlike the creators of Mirror Mirror, those responsible for Snow White and the Huntsman seem to have never escaped from the cell in which they were nurtured, and are still struggling to develop genuine tension, emotion, and plot.
At no point throughout this film does it seem probable that Snow will not succeed. Her young curious yet cautious inner light intuitively and instructively guides her steady improvised actions.
As if she was born to lead.
But the film sets up another tired opposition between naturalistic and fabricated extremes with the King's only heir exuding divine rights with every instinctive calibration.
Snow's rallying cry when she's reunited with the resistance lacks depth, character and ferocity.
I really wanted to like Muir's (Bob Hoskins) omniscient observations but they were just too much.
The Huntsman predictably abandons Snow but only for two to three minutes.
And William (Sam Claflin) doesn't hide his feelings at all upon being reuniting with her, going so far as to actually display them.
It just doesn't make sense.
The Huntsman and William do form a pseudo-Jacob/Edward dichotomy for Kristen Stewart which brings in a little Twilight.
But this really only makes things worse, although in the end it seems that she desires Jacob, which is, of course, the correct preference.
However forbidden.
But when his daughter whom she has kept prisoner comes of age and it becomes clear that she is even more beautiful, she immediately seeks to put her to death.
But Snow White (Kristen Stewart) escapes and her purity and innocence help her to make her way back to the forces who fought for her father and will still nobly battle for his seed.
A Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth), seven dwarves, and many others assist her during her journey.
Her innocence would likely have not been so pure had she not spent her entire youth locked inside a cell.
Unfortunately, unlike the creators of Mirror Mirror, those responsible for Snow White and the Huntsman seem to have never escaped from the cell in which they were nurtured, and are still struggling to develop genuine tension, emotion, and plot.
At no point throughout this film does it seem probable that Snow will not succeed. Her young curious yet cautious inner light intuitively and instructively guides her steady improvised actions.
As if she was born to lead.
But the film sets up another tired opposition between naturalistic and fabricated extremes with the King's only heir exuding divine rights with every instinctive calibration.
Snow's rallying cry when she's reunited with the resistance lacks depth, character and ferocity.
I really wanted to like Muir's (Bob Hoskins) omniscient observations but they were just too much.
The Huntsman predictably abandons Snow but only for two to three minutes.
And William (Sam Claflin) doesn't hide his feelings at all upon being reuniting with her, going so far as to actually display them.
It just doesn't make sense.
The Huntsman and William do form a pseudo-Jacob/Edward dichotomy for Kristen Stewart which brings in a little Twilight.
But this really only makes things worse, although in the end it seems that she desires Jacob, which is, of course, the correct preference.
However forbidden.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
John Carter
Was surprised by the internal dynamics of Andrew Stanton's John Carter.
Within, one finds a disengaged despondent protagonist, John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), refusing to take part in any unnecessary interpersonal relations because his family was murdered by the North during the American Civil War.
He's searching for gold in the Arizona Territory.
After escaping from regional military authorities, he finds himself in a cave where he is accidentally transported to Barsoom (Mars).
On Barsoom, he winds up in a typical scenario where one side of a bloodthirsty jingoistic 'might is right' community (Zodanga) is using a weapon of unlimited power, given to them by godlike beings (the Therns) who want them to rule the planet, to defeat their ancient enlightened enemies (the citizens of Helium) who are on the brink of discovering a method of harnessing an infinite source of energy (the Ninth Ray) whose secrets have been manipulated by the Therns for millennia.
A third party, whose political structure and cultural activities are somewhat Romanesque (the Tharks), are avoiding the conflict.
Helium can end the war if Tardos Mors (Ciarán Hinds) marries his daughter Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) to Zodanga's leader, Sab Than (Dominic West).
However, the resourceful, fierce, and brilliant Dejah refuses and escapes with the serendipitous assistance of Mr. Carter.
The Tharks provide them with sanctuary until their curiosity proves sacrilegious.
If one thinks of Zodanga's aggressive warlike colonialist activities as representing an ideology far to the right, Helium's feudal yet scientifically and socially progressive practices (women can be just as strong, intelligent, and successful as men and science isn't being used exclusively in the manufacture of weapons) as one that is left of centre, the Tharks as having adopted a neutral approach whose internal ideological dimensions are still far to the right (the non-voting uncritical receptors of Republican pop culture?), the Therns as a powerful interventional technologically advanced group seeking to maintain their immemorial monopoly, and John Carter as a jaded nihilistic entrepreneur only seeking to return home, then the altruistic effects of the following denouement could possibly play out.
Sab plans to murder Dejah after their wedding thereby uniting the cities while eliminating the feminine scientific element. Carter overcomes his individualism, decides to fight for Helium, and uses his influence with the Tharks to secure their aid. Together they out maneouvre the Therns and Zodangans leaving the door open for the people of Helium to develop constructive means of utilizing the energy of the Ninth Ray to bring about a more sustainable perennial planetary infrastructure whose enduring surplus could break down the dominant feudal structures preventing the Tharks, Zodangans, and citizens of Helium from forging a united front capable of shielding themselves against the Therns's meddling.
And their preference for brute force.
And general smugness.
Within, one finds a disengaged despondent protagonist, John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), refusing to take part in any unnecessary interpersonal relations because his family was murdered by the North during the American Civil War.
He's searching for gold in the Arizona Territory.
After escaping from regional military authorities, he finds himself in a cave where he is accidentally transported to Barsoom (Mars).
On Barsoom, he winds up in a typical scenario where one side of a bloodthirsty jingoistic 'might is right' community (Zodanga) is using a weapon of unlimited power, given to them by godlike beings (the Therns) who want them to rule the planet, to defeat their ancient enlightened enemies (the citizens of Helium) who are on the brink of discovering a method of harnessing an infinite source of energy (the Ninth Ray) whose secrets have been manipulated by the Therns for millennia.
A third party, whose political structure and cultural activities are somewhat Romanesque (the Tharks), are avoiding the conflict.
Helium can end the war if Tardos Mors (Ciarán Hinds) marries his daughter Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) to Zodanga's leader, Sab Than (Dominic West).
However, the resourceful, fierce, and brilliant Dejah refuses and escapes with the serendipitous assistance of Mr. Carter.
The Tharks provide them with sanctuary until their curiosity proves sacrilegious.
If one thinks of Zodanga's aggressive warlike colonialist activities as representing an ideology far to the right, Helium's feudal yet scientifically and socially progressive practices (women can be just as strong, intelligent, and successful as men and science isn't being used exclusively in the manufacture of weapons) as one that is left of centre, the Tharks as having adopted a neutral approach whose internal ideological dimensions are still far to the right (the non-voting uncritical receptors of Republican pop culture?), the Therns as a powerful interventional technologically advanced group seeking to maintain their immemorial monopoly, and John Carter as a jaded nihilistic entrepreneur only seeking to return home, then the altruistic effects of the following denouement could possibly play out.
Sab plans to murder Dejah after their wedding thereby uniting the cities while eliminating the feminine scientific element. Carter overcomes his individualism, decides to fight for Helium, and uses his influence with the Tharks to secure their aid. Together they out maneouvre the Therns and Zodangans leaving the door open for the people of Helium to develop constructive means of utilizing the energy of the Ninth Ray to bring about a more sustainable perennial planetary infrastructure whose enduring surplus could break down the dominant feudal structures preventing the Tharks, Zodangans, and citizens of Helium from forging a united front capable of shielding themselves against the Therns's meddling.
And their preference for brute force.
And general smugness.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie
Enjoyed Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie.
Some of the jokes aren't the greatest and one situation almost made me retch, but these guys are undeniably flexible in terms of producing sustained awkward oblivious carefree traumatically endearing comedy, nostalgically nuanced with a 1980s commercial naivety, and overflowing with nimble bad judgment.
In search of a billion dollars.
Chef Goldblum's (Jeff Goldblum) transitional introduction sets the stage.
The hysterically fruitful job interview where Damien Weebs (Will Ferrell) devotedly demands that Top Gun be played a second time keeps things flowing.
Taquito's (John C. Reilly) epic battle with the mall wolf invokes tragedy.
And Katie's (Twink Caplan) indiscretion cannot tear Tim and Eric apart.
They've been taught what to expect from life and how to approach it from television and the movies, and, as a consequence, haplessly proceed with limitless confidence.
No matter what situation they face.
Ignoring the ways in which everything around them is crumbling and decaying, they manage to not let a little financial instability get them down.
While forging a strategic plan.
And unerringly living the dream.
Some of the jokes aren't the greatest and one situation almost made me retch, but these guys are undeniably flexible in terms of producing sustained awkward oblivious carefree traumatically endearing comedy, nostalgically nuanced with a 1980s commercial naivety, and overflowing with nimble bad judgment.
In search of a billion dollars.
Chef Goldblum's (Jeff Goldblum) transitional introduction sets the stage.
The hysterically fruitful job interview where Damien Weebs (Will Ferrell) devotedly demands that Top Gun be played a second time keeps things flowing.
Taquito's (John C. Reilly) epic battle with the mall wolf invokes tragedy.
And Katie's (Twink Caplan) indiscretion cannot tear Tim and Eric apart.
They've been taught what to expect from life and how to approach it from television and the movies, and, as a consequence, haplessly proceed with limitless confidence.
No matter what situation they face.
Ignoring the ways in which everything around them is crumbling and decaying, they manage to not let a little financial instability get them down.
While forging a strategic plan.
And unerringly living the dream.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Men in Black III
The clandestine Men in Black security force is back to monitor Earth's alien activity in the franchise's third instalment, Men in Black III, fully loaded with neuralyzers, inexhaustible technological and knowledge resources, a law enforcing odd couple, and monumental temporal distortions.
The Men in Black films do directly acknowledge and imaginatively fictionalize the existence of well funded secretive agencies designed to prevent the public from learning, but don't seem to recognize that this is problematic, since they're made to look fun and hip yet rigid and combative.
Like a euphemistic police state.
Just in time for Summer.
If the darkness is literally thought of as a nocturnal limiting force within which means of generating light must be creatively produced in order to enable vision (fire, candles, electrical lights), and this literal example is then metaphorically transferred to the domain of patriarchal construction (Men in Black), then perhaps this film is saying that one of the ways in which the male traditionally tends to visualize attempts to quarantine the unknown (the feminine, difference, egalitarianism) is by interminably equipping solid and steady agents of cultural homogeneity with flashy gadgets and binary intergenerational banter which provides the elder with a stubborn and taciturn way of expressing himself (he's seen everything before and seeks to waste no time discussing things) and the younger with an endless supply of frustrated curiosity.
In Men in Black III we find Agent J (Will Smith) and Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones/Josh Brolin) at work preventing the public from preserving extraterrestrial information. Traditional heteronormative difference is supported while gender bending is not. Of the two most prominent female characters, one is motherly (she has a prominent position in the present but doesn't directly take part in the action), the other, a criminal (who dies early on). Agent K, who reads the entire menu every time before ordering the same thing, is the more elderly of the two (while the options have multiplied, he remains resistant to change). After Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) heads back in time and kills him, Agent J's present turns into a war zone as aliens invade to destroy the Earth. After travelling to the past to save his partner, Agent J is pulled over because police officers are stopping every African American driving a nice car. Agent J has stolen the car and is African American. Now, he has stolen the car to save the perseverance of an unyielding content permanency in order to prevent the Earth's destruction. Meaning that if the side effects of this permanency had been successful in the past they would have resulted in their own annihilation (Agent J escapes). Yet those very same side effects are indirectly legitimized by Agent J's actions. Which also include monitoring difference to ensure that its multidimensional presence doesn't have a disruptive effect.
The Men in Black films do directly acknowledge and imaginatively fictionalize the existence of well funded secretive agencies designed to prevent the public from learning, but don't seem to recognize that this is problematic, since they're made to look fun and hip yet rigid and combative.
Like a euphemistic police state.
Which isn't very bright.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
What to Expect When You're Expecting
It's not the multiple storylines in Kirk Jones's What to Expect When You're Expecting aren't cleverly woven together or some of the observations presented within transferable.
It's just, well, I've never seen a film before that more closely resembles a 110 minute Hallmark card.
My apologies if you like Hallmark cards. They're not really for me but it's not like I turn my nose up if I receive one.
Like the best feature of What to Expect When You're Expecting, the group of fathers who get together to privately discuss the challenges of parenting, I'm not judging.
But this style of film is simply one that I have trouble relating to.
I was going to make an extended comparison to John Carpenter's They Live but think I'll just leave it at that.
It's just, well, I've never seen a film before that more closely resembles a 110 minute Hallmark card.
My apologies if you like Hallmark cards. They're not really for me but it's not like I turn my nose up if I receive one.
Like the best feature of What to Expect When You're Expecting, the group of fathers who get together to privately discuss the challenges of parenting, I'm not judging.
But this style of film is simply one that I have trouble relating to.
I was going to make an extended comparison to John Carpenter's They Live but think I'll just leave it at that.
Monday, May 28, 2012
The Dictator
Okay, let's take a big piece of autocratic shit, give him plenty of time to express himself, strip him of his privilege, place him within a formulaic situation which usually exemplifies redemption, and use his despotic voice to ambiguously promote substantial social democratic initiatives.
While satirically making light of reprehensible realities in order to suggest that disengaged nihilism can make one actively receptive to anything.
In an unrestrained salute to decadence.
Equating the structural socio-economic realities of dictatorships with those found in democratic countries makes a powerful point, representative of the Occupy Movement, perhaps attempting to speak to some who ignored it by encouraging their revulsion not only to Aladeen (Sacha Baron Cohen) but also to the formula creatively used to try and generate knee-jerk sympathy for him.
Without the revulsion, however, a socialist/fascist dialectic presents itself wherein socialist initiatives (multiculturalism, universal healthcare, public education, freedom of speech, . . .), which progressively attempt to provide workers with agency so that their voice can play a meaningful role in the ways in which an entity (a business, corporation, parliament, school) conducts its affairs, are sadistically separated from their collective foundations by acts which attempt to convince them that since they have this agency, this voice, this individuality, they are therefore no different from your average plutocrat/monarch, and should consequently regard collective actions as being beneath them, seeing as monarchs often have more important things to concern themselves with than the impoverished concerns of their subjects (which are pervertedly generalized as being the result of morally corrupt characters).
The relationship between Aladeen and Zoey (Anna Faris) in The Dictator examines this dialectic by having a tyrant work at a collective organic grocery (Free Earth Collective). While working, Aladeen demonstrates his complete lack of social understanding (monarchs are not like workers) and Zoey is so naive she ignores the multiple signs indicating Aladeen's sadistic tendencies.
And after Aladeen employs a stiff upper lip to improve her business's efficiency she marries him and helps to introduce a number of ineffectual political reforms within his home country.
Hence, The Dictator rashly sanctifies a maniacal potentate to level out the Western/Middle Eastern political playing field while indicating the need for change by wickedly evidencing how disengaged things have become.
There's a lot of corruption out there but for every Stalin there's a Tommy Douglas.
Greece is not Norway, Sweden or Finland.
Your vote does matter.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Battleship
Wasn't expecting to find a social democratic aesthetic at work in the latest alien invasion flick, Peter Berg's Battleship, but it's there, disguised in a maritime cloak, paying respect to multicultural nautical subjects, and demonstrating how an inclusive team excels.
As if the spirit of Battleship Potemkin is alive and well and theorizing what the Soviet Union's navy would have looked like after a century of reforms inspired by the courageous mutiny, distancing itself from its revolutionary heritage by codifying and transferring its content to 21st century American propaganda.
To battle a plutocratic blitzkrieg.
Can the aliens in Battleship be legitimately thought of as plutocrats?
Well, as environmental laws are repealed or gutted and scientific research is ignored in favour of religio-economic fanaticism (the misguided belief that the free market can do no wrong), the planet (or Canada at least) becomes more and more polluted. The 1% have the means through which to 'purify' their resources by purchasing expensive speciality ethically produced items without using credit excessively. If fracking ruins their neighbourhood/district/region's water supply, they can move, easily, potentially beforehand after setting up the extraction. Keeping abreast with technological advances, they can purchase or commission devices that can decontaminate their water even if they do stay while mitigating additional toxic effects.
The aliens who land in Battleship are technologically advanced, possess suits that shield them from that to which they cannot acclimatize (while protecting them from critical repercussions), are uninterested in the concerns of the citizens whom their policies disturb, and are using the military to pursue interplanetary colonialism.
Sounds like fundamental plutocratic behaviour to me.
The international sailors who confront them however represent different ethnicities, socio-economic contingencies, genders, historical periods, and physical disabilities.
It's a well rounded group.
They have no armour to protect them from the polluted Earth and must collegially improvise a strategic plan.
Not to naively present this social aesthetic as being ideally fine and dandy.
Before the invasion takes place egos collide and disorder persists.
Yet after a reason to work towards a collective goal presents itself, unity is restored.
The hierarchy within is troublesome yet look at how inclusive it is. Everyone has a voice regardless of rank whose logic is taken into consideration. When Lieutenant Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) suddenly finds himself in command and must make an immediate decision, his subordinate isn't afraid to challenge him in the pursuit of an alternative objective. Hopper even relinquishes command when it becomes clear that Japanese Captain Yugi Nagata (Tadanobu Asano) is a more suited candidate.
The fact that the confrontation takes place within a force field which separates the combatants from the world at large suggests that Battleship does indeed present a popularized plutocratic/social democratic dialectic insofar as these elements have been isolated and subjectified within an impenetrable ideological vacuum (let's find a way to represent these opposing approaches by creating a fictional polemical context within which they can aggressively interact), one which removes the concealments everyday life often necessitates.
The plutocrats through their blind ambition accidentally create a space within which their adversaries are capable of launching a constructive protest.
Because no matter how polluted things are, their adversaries are still capable of absorbing the sun.
As if the spirit of Battleship Potemkin is alive and well and theorizing what the Soviet Union's navy would have looked like after a century of reforms inspired by the courageous mutiny, distancing itself from its revolutionary heritage by codifying and transferring its content to 21st century American propaganda.
To battle a plutocratic blitzkrieg.
Can the aliens in Battleship be legitimately thought of as plutocrats?
Well, as environmental laws are repealed or gutted and scientific research is ignored in favour of religio-economic fanaticism (the misguided belief that the free market can do no wrong), the planet (or Canada at least) becomes more and more polluted. The 1% have the means through which to 'purify' their resources by purchasing expensive speciality ethically produced items without using credit excessively. If fracking ruins their neighbourhood/district/region's water supply, they can move, easily, potentially beforehand after setting up the extraction. Keeping abreast with technological advances, they can purchase or commission devices that can decontaminate their water even if they do stay while mitigating additional toxic effects.
The aliens who land in Battleship are technologically advanced, possess suits that shield them from that to which they cannot acclimatize (while protecting them from critical repercussions), are uninterested in the concerns of the citizens whom their policies disturb, and are using the military to pursue interplanetary colonialism.
Sounds like fundamental plutocratic behaviour to me.
The international sailors who confront them however represent different ethnicities, socio-economic contingencies, genders, historical periods, and physical disabilities.
It's a well rounded group.
They have no armour to protect them from the polluted Earth and must collegially improvise a strategic plan.
Not to naively present this social aesthetic as being ideally fine and dandy.
Before the invasion takes place egos collide and disorder persists.
Yet after a reason to work towards a collective goal presents itself, unity is restored.
The hierarchy within is troublesome yet look at how inclusive it is. Everyone has a voice regardless of rank whose logic is taken into consideration. When Lieutenant Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) suddenly finds himself in command and must make an immediate decision, his subordinate isn't afraid to challenge him in the pursuit of an alternative objective. Hopper even relinquishes command when it becomes clear that Japanese Captain Yugi Nagata (Tadanobu Asano) is a more suited candidate.
The fact that the confrontation takes place within a force field which separates the combatants from the world at large suggests that Battleship does indeed present a popularized plutocratic/social democratic dialectic insofar as these elements have been isolated and subjectified within an impenetrable ideological vacuum (let's find a way to represent these opposing approaches by creating a fictional polemical context within which they can aggressively interact), one which removes the concealments everyday life often necessitates.
The plutocrats through their blind ambition accidentally create a space within which their adversaries are capable of launching a constructive protest.
Because no matter how polluted things are, their adversaries are still capable of absorbing the sun.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Dark Shadows
Tim Burton's Dark Shadows revisits an American gothic soap opera that ran from 1966 to 1971 and is therefore supposed to be superfluously tactless.
Not that the emancipated 18th century vampire Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) is lacking in sensitivity, it's just that he rigidly abides by a strict moral code through which he hopes to reconfigure his family's fortunes and reanimate its pseudo-aristocratic position within the town of Collinsport.
Okay, he is lacking in sensitivity, and a bit of a prick, and bloodthirsty and unforgiving and functionally clueless.
But he also embodies a raw nocturnal decisive magnetism which sanguinely yet solipsistically cultivates the melodrama (the film focuses too intently on him to the detriment of the supporting cast).
In the 1760s, his family sailed to the New World and established a successful fishery, for all intents and purposes administrating the town thereafter. While growing up, Barnabas caught the eye of many a local maiden including one his servants, Angelique (Eva Green). Unbeknownst to him, Angelique was a witch who proceeds to curse his family after he scorns her. She eventually turns him into a vampire and has him chained and buried deep below ground, proceeding to use her witchcraft to incant a fishing business of her own afterwards. When Barnabas is accidentally unearthed in 1972, her business has expanded significantly and the Collins family is in a state of practical ruin.
And she still desires him.
Barnabas remains uninterested however although he does reflexively entertain. His actions engender her fury in the aftermath when she discovers that he has once again fallen for another.
Another who is the spitting image of she whom Barnabas left Angelique for all those centuries ago.
Dark Shadows could have been good had its writers nonchalantly taken their uninspired subject matter more seriously (in order to concoct something terrible yet fun). Having Johnny Depp in your film, giving him the majority of the lines, and having him hypnotize characters within does not spontaneously conjure happy returns.
Further, working uncritically within kitschy commercially feudal fantastic frames serves to romanticize patriarchal socio-economic representations (which is probably the point).
Thus, noble Barnabas feasts on construction workers and itinerants and the only successful female characters used spells to achieve their goals or are punished severely for their transgressions.
There are flamboyant moments but their affects are localized and therefore don't pervasively instil the narrative's underground with a recurring thematic foil (and the film isn't much fun).
There may not be a foil, but one over-the-top scene where Angelique briefs her best and brightest, all of whom are men, seems to cast doubt on the fact that higher corporate echelons were almost uniformly masculine in the seventies, through the use of excessive exaggeration, which sinisterly places the film's manifested patriarchal focus within its subterranean realm by suggesting that male dominated boards of directors were perhaps not as permeated with testosterone as progressives would have you believe, thereby hyperbolically challenging the 21st century ideological playing field by conservatively deconstructing historical reality.
Dark shadows to be sure.
Not that the emancipated 18th century vampire Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) is lacking in sensitivity, it's just that he rigidly abides by a strict moral code through which he hopes to reconfigure his family's fortunes and reanimate its pseudo-aristocratic position within the town of Collinsport.
Okay, he is lacking in sensitivity, and a bit of a prick, and bloodthirsty and unforgiving and functionally clueless.
But he also embodies a raw nocturnal decisive magnetism which sanguinely yet solipsistically cultivates the melodrama (the film focuses too intently on him to the detriment of the supporting cast).
In the 1760s, his family sailed to the New World and established a successful fishery, for all intents and purposes administrating the town thereafter. While growing up, Barnabas caught the eye of many a local maiden including one his servants, Angelique (Eva Green). Unbeknownst to him, Angelique was a witch who proceeds to curse his family after he scorns her. She eventually turns him into a vampire and has him chained and buried deep below ground, proceeding to use her witchcraft to incant a fishing business of her own afterwards. When Barnabas is accidentally unearthed in 1972, her business has expanded significantly and the Collins family is in a state of practical ruin.
And she still desires him.
Barnabas remains uninterested however although he does reflexively entertain. His actions engender her fury in the aftermath when she discovers that he has once again fallen for another.
Another who is the spitting image of she whom Barnabas left Angelique for all those centuries ago.
Dark Shadows could have been good had its writers nonchalantly taken their uninspired subject matter more seriously (in order to concoct something terrible yet fun). Having Johnny Depp in your film, giving him the majority of the lines, and having him hypnotize characters within does not spontaneously conjure happy returns.
Further, working uncritically within kitschy commercially feudal fantastic frames serves to romanticize patriarchal socio-economic representations (which is probably the point).
Thus, noble Barnabas feasts on construction workers and itinerants and the only successful female characters used spells to achieve their goals or are punished severely for their transgressions.
There are flamboyant moments but their affects are localized and therefore don't pervasively instil the narrative's underground with a recurring thematic foil (and the film isn't much fun).
There may not be a foil, but one over-the-top scene where Angelique briefs her best and brightest, all of whom are men, seems to cast doubt on the fact that higher corporate echelons were almost uniformly masculine in the seventies, through the use of excessive exaggeration, which sinisterly places the film's manifested patriarchal focus within its subterranean realm by suggesting that male dominated boards of directors were perhaps not as permeated with testosterone as progressives would have you believe, thereby hyperbolically challenging the 21st century ideological playing field by conservatively deconstructing historical reality.
Dark shadows to be sure.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
The Five-Year Engagement
A couple is in love.
Their first meeting is adorable. They are living in San Francisco. One of them finds a job in small-town Michigan. They move. The other's career is resultantly set back but this is sacrificially taken in stride. Attempts to acclimatize to small-town life are heroically made but an undeniable despondency cannot be persuasively concealed.
A break-up is imminent, the couple goes their separate ways, and new partners are found. But a kernel of love remains which new arrangements cannot disintegrate and it's possible that the two lovers will restructure their efficient and profitable means of production. With the future and age pressing in and standards of compatibility becoming less and less idealistic, a decision must be definitively made.
According to what I know about romantic comedies anyways.
The Five-Year Engagement has some funny scenes and introduces a broad range of distracting characters. Bill's (Chris Parnell) sweaters and Vaneetha's (Mindy Kaling) toast stand out and I enjoyed listening to the ideas of both Ming (Randall Park) and Tarquin (Brian Posehn).
Individuals working in intellectual and culinary markets are juxtaposed and members from both groups are made to appear ridiculously profound.
Rather than consistently sentimentalizing the romantic love that often results in marriage, the film introduces argumentative points of combative relational diversification during the engagement, thereby instructively applying quasi-conjugal conflicts to prenuptial amicable operations while installing a degree of collaborative critical conditionals as well.
Sweet but trashy, mildly melodramatic, and pretentiously inclusive, The Five-Year Engagement offered more insightful observations and humorous interjections than I was expecting (after the film shifts to Michigan), which helped me get over the snickering directed in my direction as I entered the theatre on my own.
And if donuts have yet to be eaten, why purchase new ones? That's wasteful.
Rather than consistently sentimentalizing the romantic love that often results in marriage, the film introduces argumentative points of combative relational diversification during the engagement, thereby instructively applying quasi-conjugal conflicts to prenuptial amicable operations while installing a degree of collaborative critical conditionals as well.
Sweet but trashy, mildly melodramatic, and pretentiously inclusive, The Five-Year Engagement offered more insightful observations and humorous interjections than I was expecting (after the film shifts to Michigan), which helped me get over the snickering directed in my direction as I entered the theatre on my own.
And if donuts have yet to be eaten, why purchase new ones? That's wasteful.
Monday, May 14, 2012
The Avengers
Prominent Marvel characters begrudgingly unite in Joss Whedon's The Avengers to battle the tyrannical intentions of the recently freed Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Loki travels to Earth in order to commandeer the Tesseract from S.H.I.E.L.D for the Other (Alexis Denisof) who promises him an army of Chitauri warriors in return (with whom he can launch an invasion).
The Tesseract is an extremely powerful and seemingly limitless source of energy.
The overt film's explosive enough, as superegos convincingly clash and physically exhibit their prowess. Their introduction's are concise and pinpointed, their initial meeting contentious and energetic, their conversation's confident, inquisitive and challenging, their commitment during battle self-sacrificing and unwavering, and so on.
Approaches and tactics are intently scrutinized before the necessity to act demands a united counter assault.
Much like any given Sunday.
This business of naming the overarching villain The Other is quite troublesome, however, insofar as this can be viewed as external difference financing and supplying Loki's imperialistic ambition.
Which is xenophobic.
And sucks.
After a nation engages in imperialistic activities a degree of underlying cultural paranoia is retroactively generated which can be thought of as manufacturing a subjugating unspoken psychological incision, an example of this incision's profusion being even more excessively manifested in A Song of Ice of Fire.
The Avengers themselves are exceptions overflowing with otherness as is S.H.I.E.L.D and the film's final confrontation takes place in New York.
These are local irreplaceable others, however, produced on planet Earth, apart from Thor (Chris Hemsworth).
As these special local others combat the 'extraterrestrial' forces of the Other in a metropolitan other the military's solution (the closest possible [ludicrous] representation of the people's voice in this film) is to send in a nuke and unabashedly obliterate all forms of difference.
But the narcissistic techno-other who cannot be somnambulistically subdued by Loki's sceptre catches that nuke and directs it into space, thereby using his 'idyllic' individualistic entrepreneurial ingenuity to simultaneously crush the threat of colonization and prevent a government sponsored homeland nuclear disaster.
He is then saved by brute force as he helplessly falls back to Earth (there's a disturbing image for labour relations [corporate fiefdoms anyone?]).
Thus, not so pleased with what's going on behind the scenes in The Avengers.
Thor does chastise Loki for considering himself to be above his potential subjects.
Thor who is from another planet.
Nice to see Harry Dean Stanton nevertheless.
The Tesseract is an extremely powerful and seemingly limitless source of energy.
The overt film's explosive enough, as superegos convincingly clash and physically exhibit their prowess. Their introduction's are concise and pinpointed, their initial meeting contentious and energetic, their conversation's confident, inquisitive and challenging, their commitment during battle self-sacrificing and unwavering, and so on.
Approaches and tactics are intently scrutinized before the necessity to act demands a united counter assault.
Much like any given Sunday.
This business of naming the overarching villain The Other is quite troublesome, however, insofar as this can be viewed as external difference financing and supplying Loki's imperialistic ambition.
Which is xenophobic.
And sucks.
After a nation engages in imperialistic activities a degree of underlying cultural paranoia is retroactively generated which can be thought of as manufacturing a subjugating unspoken psychological incision, an example of this incision's profusion being even more excessively manifested in A Song of Ice of Fire.
The Avengers themselves are exceptions overflowing with otherness as is S.H.I.E.L.D and the film's final confrontation takes place in New York.
These are local irreplaceable others, however, produced on planet Earth, apart from Thor (Chris Hemsworth).
As these special local others combat the 'extraterrestrial' forces of the Other in a metropolitan other the military's solution (the closest possible [ludicrous] representation of the people's voice in this film) is to send in a nuke and unabashedly obliterate all forms of difference.
But the narcissistic techno-other who cannot be somnambulistically subdued by Loki's sceptre catches that nuke and directs it into space, thereby using his 'idyllic' individualistic entrepreneurial ingenuity to simultaneously crush the threat of colonization and prevent a government sponsored homeland nuclear disaster.
He is then saved by brute force as he helplessly falls back to Earth (there's a disturbing image for labour relations [corporate fiefdoms anyone?]).
Thus, not so pleased with what's going on behind the scenes in The Avengers.
Thor does chastise Loki for considering himself to be above his potential subjects.
Thor who is from another planet.
Nice to see Harry Dean Stanton nevertheless.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
The Lucky One
Don't really know what to say about The Lucky One.
Lead character Logan (Zac Effron) certainly is lucky.
While fighting in Iraq, he discovers the picture of an enticing woman lying in the wreckage and keeps it close to his heart thereafter. Having safely returned to Colorado, he then decides to find her and sets out on foot, showing her picture to people he meets. He eventually finds her (Taylor Schilling as Beth Clayton) in a small town in Louisiana and she gives him a job working in her kennel.
Against her better judgement.
Her jealous manipulative ex-husband (Jay R. Ferguson as Keith Clayton) is a smug policeperson, the son of a wealthy mayoral candidate, and a secure member of the local petty bourgeoise.
He takes none to kindly to Logan.
But Logan isn't afraid, and boldly refuses to play ball, trusting instead in the power of love and the genuine incorruptibility of his good intentions.
And the fact that lonely Beth starts wanting a piece.
The film would have been stronger had Logan encountered other labourers who had run afoul of Mr. Clayton's coercive tendencies and formed a resistance of sorts to counteract his abusive privilege.
Old Testament justice is thunderously administered, but a different solution, one galvanizing the resolve of mistreated workers, would have provided The Lucky One with a collective edge, thereby intensifying the fluidity of its amour.
Lead character Logan (Zac Effron) certainly is lucky.
While fighting in Iraq, he discovers the picture of an enticing woman lying in the wreckage and keeps it close to his heart thereafter. Having safely returned to Colorado, he then decides to find her and sets out on foot, showing her picture to people he meets. He eventually finds her (Taylor Schilling as Beth Clayton) in a small town in Louisiana and she gives him a job working in her kennel.
Against her better judgement.
Her jealous manipulative ex-husband (Jay R. Ferguson as Keith Clayton) is a smug policeperson, the son of a wealthy mayoral candidate, and a secure member of the local petty bourgeoise.
He takes none to kindly to Logan.
But Logan isn't afraid, and boldly refuses to play ball, trusting instead in the power of love and the genuine incorruptibility of his good intentions.
And the fact that lonely Beth starts wanting a piece.
The film would have been stronger had Logan encountered other labourers who had run afoul of Mr. Clayton's coercive tendencies and formed a resistance of sorts to counteract his abusive privilege.
Old Testament justice is thunderously administered, but a different solution, one galvanizing the resolve of mistreated workers, would have provided The Lucky One with a collective edge, thereby intensifying the fluidity of its amour.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
The Raven
A mildly entertaining inconsistent romantic horror, James McTeigue's The Raven situates Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) within a demented psychotic murderous tribute to his work and demands that he creates within. As a madperson kidnaps his love interest (Alice Eve as Emily Hamilton) and uses materials from his texts in a homicidal homage, Poe assists Detective Fields (Luke Evans) in his desperate corresponding investigation. Anticipation leads to discovery but they vexingly remain one step behind the sought after killer and his or her realistic portrait of the literary dead. The time required to psychologically digest the enormity of its impact is vindictively denied as the narrative quickly shuffles from one grizzly chapter to the next.
And the unacknowledged trauma sinks in.
Lying within this structure lies a hidden master/slave dichotomy. If you find yourself working within a environment in which your labour is continuous, giving you little time to think about anything else, and your efforts fail to result in better working conditions, as this pattern is reproduced, and your debt load continues to climb and your forbidden subject of desire becomes increasingly unattainable, an underlying current of motivated pointlessness emerges when the shape-shifting face of capital presents itself, exalting a moribund elixir.
This could explain why The Raven's dialogue possesses a timeless quality which utilizes both 19th and 21st century forms of expression. By quasi-atemporally refusing to abide by a linear conception of verbal predictability, it subtly manifests this motivated pointlessness while elevating an unconscious ethos which revels in the disruption of contemplative leisure (the 60 hour work week).
And the unacknowledged trauma sinks in.
Lying within this structure lies a hidden master/slave dichotomy. If you find yourself working within a environment in which your labour is continuous, giving you little time to think about anything else, and your efforts fail to result in better working conditions, as this pattern is reproduced, and your debt load continues to climb and your forbidden subject of desire becomes increasingly unattainable, an underlying current of motivated pointlessness emerges when the shape-shifting face of capital presents itself, exalting a moribund elixir.
This could explain why The Raven's dialogue possesses a timeless quality which utilizes both 19th and 21st century forms of expression. By quasi-atemporally refusing to abide by a linear conception of verbal predictability, it subtly manifests this motivated pointlessness while elevating an unconscious ethos which revels in the disruption of contemplative leisure (the 60 hour work week).
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Tezz
Two men on different sides of the law intellectually and physically face off in Priyadarshan's sensational Tezz, one seeking personal justice for having been deported to India and separated from his family, the other coming out of retirement after having spent his life foiling terrorist plots for the British government.
With a perfect record.
A bomb is attached to a passenger train travelling to Glasgow which will explode if the train's speed decreases below 60 mph. If 10 million euros are given to Aakash Rana (Ajay Devgn), the disaster will be averted. Railway Control Specialist Sanjay Raina's (Boman Irani) daughter is on the train, adding to the melodrama. Counter Terrorism Agent Arjun Khanna (Anil Kapoor) is intent on catching Rana before he has time to explain how to dispose of the bomb.
And egos explode.
Within headstrong passionate personalities definitively express their emotionally charged strategic points of view, having been forced into a rationalized chaotic peculiarity. Extremes and modes of transportation abound as controversial decisions are rapidly made.
When ambiguity seems as if it may gain a foothold within the narrative's denouement, the law moves in and shuts thing down (thereby accentuating the predicament of the disenfranchised).
You would think there would have been other ways for Aakash to be reunited with his family.
But when taking into account the terms of Tezz's stark portrayal of the law's callous non-negotiable dismissal of Aakash's respectability, a sort of absurd understanding can be applied to his over-the-top benign all-or-nothing approach, since the rational framework to which he had devoted his productive life suddenly and unconditionally collapsed, leaving him with no constructive alternatives within the existing legal framework.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Lockout
Never thought I'd see Guy Pearce playing a John McClanesque trash talking tough guy, but this is precisely what he does in the new science-fiction action flick Lockout, and he does it rather well.
An excessively violent turbulent purveyor of mitigated anxiety, Lockout's carefree kinetic hyperactive machismo doesn't fail to impress as it consistently delivers cheesy stubborn sarcastic lines with a heightened awareness of their formulaic frivolity.
It knows it's ridiculous and doesn't stray far from its commercial purpose while refusing to take itself seriously and seeming as if it's delivering its product reluctantly, thereby overflowing with the same rash confidence Snow (Pearce) needs to break into a maximum security prison located in space and save the president's daughter (Maggie Grace) from the recently escaped inmates.
The same daughter who was trying to improve their quality of life.
Not exactly the most socially progressive film, as many of its characters are seconds away from meeting their death or losing a loved one as they try and carve out a place for themselves within their culture's coercive climate (by taking extreme risks), but in terms of its own internal chemistry it works well as a blunt form of unabashed entertainment which willingly provides that which you would hope to expect with neither pretension nor a lack of effort.
In outer space.
An excessively violent turbulent purveyor of mitigated anxiety, Lockout's carefree kinetic hyperactive machismo doesn't fail to impress as it consistently delivers cheesy stubborn sarcastic lines with a heightened awareness of their formulaic frivolity.
It knows it's ridiculous and doesn't stray far from its commercial purpose while refusing to take itself seriously and seeming as if it's delivering its product reluctantly, thereby overflowing with the same rash confidence Snow (Pearce) needs to break into a maximum security prison located in space and save the president's daughter (Maggie Grace) from the recently escaped inmates.
The same daughter who was trying to improve their quality of life.
Not exactly the most socially progressive film, as many of its characters are seconds away from meeting their death or losing a loved one as they try and carve out a place for themselves within their culture's coercive climate (by taking extreme risks), but in terms of its own internal chemistry it works well as a blunt form of unabashed entertainment which willingly provides that which you would hope to expect with neither pretension nor a lack of effort.
In outer space.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
We Need to Talk about Kevin
Demon spawn is birthed in Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk about Kevin and provided with access to a vindictive bow. Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton) isn't the most outwardly loving mother/person and Kevin (Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell, Rock Duer) is by no means a happy responsive son. Seen through the lens of Eva's guilt ridden memories, being alive and eventually having to contribute to the continuing development of a community seems to have caused Kevin no end of pain. As he ages, this pain transforms into wickedness as he finds ways to disruptively take part. Possessing a bleak miserable cynical outlook, he flagitiously predicts the outcomes of various interactions with mom and does his best to ensure they flourish repeatedly.
All the while getting along well with his father (John C. Reilly) and enjoying the comforts of a suburban lifestyle.
The film itself is cunning, cutting, and challenging, generating pathos and humour within its sardonically stark yet traumatically playful frames. It juxtaposes parenting methodologies with communal judgments while stoically capturing a subject's helpless resolve as she formulaically attempts to domestically enact a traditional characterization of a mother's role while remaining unable to convincingly fake the requisite emotion. Kevin seemingly makes her pay for her dispassion by doing everything he can to provoke her rage. After one significant miscue, she retreats into an apathetic posture with the intent of never displaying her reckless anger again. Little Kevin becomes increasingly sinister, his dad maintains that boys will be boys, and dread tempered with disbelief crystallizes deep within her psyche.
We Need to Talk about Kevin uses the opposition established between demon spawn and reluctant mother to comic effect while making you feel guilty for finding parts of it funny. The bits of dark humour are intermittently interjected between the aftershocks of Kevin's calculated psychotic rampage which display Eva's unfortunate neighbourly predicament from multiple interpersonal angles. Hence, the mood shifts frequently and is orchestrated with a subtle expertise which disables one-dimensional attachments while still managing to sustain an appealing fluid uniformity (the mood creatively changes but as each scene takes on a life of its own they become united through the act of continuous non-chaotic formal diversification), these mood shifts reflecting the internal psychological dilemmas publicly banished from Eva's complacent demeanour.
It's well done.
All the while getting along well with his father (John C. Reilly) and enjoying the comforts of a suburban lifestyle.
The film itself is cunning, cutting, and challenging, generating pathos and humour within its sardonically stark yet traumatically playful frames. It juxtaposes parenting methodologies with communal judgments while stoically capturing a subject's helpless resolve as she formulaically attempts to domestically enact a traditional characterization of a mother's role while remaining unable to convincingly fake the requisite emotion. Kevin seemingly makes her pay for her dispassion by doing everything he can to provoke her rage. After one significant miscue, she retreats into an apathetic posture with the intent of never displaying her reckless anger again. Little Kevin becomes increasingly sinister, his dad maintains that boys will be boys, and dread tempered with disbelief crystallizes deep within her psyche.
We Need to Talk about Kevin uses the opposition established between demon spawn and reluctant mother to comic effect while making you feel guilty for finding parts of it funny. The bits of dark humour are intermittently interjected between the aftershocks of Kevin's calculated psychotic rampage which display Eva's unfortunate neighbourly predicament from multiple interpersonal angles. Hence, the mood shifts frequently and is orchestrated with a subtle expertise which disables one-dimensional attachments while still managing to sustain an appealing fluid uniformity (the mood creatively changes but as each scene takes on a life of its own they become united through the act of continuous non-chaotic formal diversification), these mood shifts reflecting the internal psychological dilemmas publicly banished from Eva's complacent demeanour.
It's well done.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Water for Elephants
Romance/youth contends with fidelity/age in Francis Lawrence's Water for Elephants as the young penniless Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson) falls in love with his boss's wife. Jacob is lucky to have a job, having fortuitously jumped on a train in the middle of the night carrying a travelling circus to its next destination. His veterinary skills soon prove useful although one of his diagnoses humanely disrupts the circus's most prominent act. Taking matters into his own hands against the protests of the volatile master of ceremonies (Christolph Waltz as August) almost leads to his dismissal, but August respects his firm convictions, even though they frustrate his fiery ego.
Thus we have a self-made person whose successfully made their living for decades in a fluctuating market willing to make sacrifices to accommodate a naive intelligent capable worker. Unfortunately the brutal manner in which he conducts his affairs leave his protégé with little to aspire to. An economic depression complicates matters as predictable revenues dry up and paranoia unleashes its maniacal tendrils. The introduction of a forbidden subject of desire does little to destabilize the frenetic tension.
When theories put into practice are validated by longevity their proponents undoubtably feel a sense of accomplishment. But if this sense of accomplishment leads both to an unyielding desire for order and vicious attempts to authoritatively manage the chaotic, its heralded methodology will likely engender internal miscalculations. If the alternatives which present themselves are met with the sword, its manufactured stability may lose its sustained truth-value and blindly obscure the forward thinking focus of its integrative synergies.
As that which they love most flutters away.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Wrath of the Titans
Didn't find many redeeming qualities in Wrath of the Titans.
It's one of the worst sequels I've ever seen.
Counting on the manufactured pop-cultural codes disinterestedly built into its tired formula to lethargically generate knee-jerk approvals and instantaneous wonder, it proceeds from one predictable banal scene to another while relying on constant fighting and trite dialogue to move things rapidly along.
There is a five minute interval where the film seems to recognize its stench at which point things become somewhat more appealing.
But this interval passes swiftly and then it's back to taking itself and its ancient subject matter far too seriously for another 45 minutes.
At which point it ends, thankfully after only a little more than an hour and a half.
It's one of the worst sequels I've ever seen.
Counting on the manufactured pop-cultural codes disinterestedly built into its tired formula to lethargically generate knee-jerk approvals and instantaneous wonder, it proceeds from one predictable banal scene to another while relying on constant fighting and trite dialogue to move things rapidly along.
There is a five minute interval where the film seems to recognize its stench at which point things become somewhat more appealing.
But this interval passes swiftly and then it's back to taking itself and its ancient subject matter far too seriously for another 45 minutes.
At which point it ends, thankfully after only a little more than an hour and a half.
Mirror Mirror
Possessing a self-aware mischievous aloofly focused reflexivity which takes interpretive postures narratively to heart, Tarsem Singh's Mirror Mirror playfully reimagines Snow White and infuses it with lighthearted billowing charm. The Queen (Julia Roberts) is certainly wicked, the princess (Lily Collins), beautiful. Prince Alcott (Armie Hammer) bumbles along unwittingly thrust between the two and the seven dwarves provide voyeuristic commentary and transformative benignity which constructively pluralizes the action by creating an audience within an audience.
It's totally web 2.0.
Economic matters haunt the film as the Queen brutally taxes her subjects to pay for her ostentatious whims. The dwarves have taken to robbing those who pass through their section of the forest due to the fact that they were expelled from the village because the Queen found them ugly. The villagers didn't stand up for the dwarves which has lead to resentment. When they rob a royal coach carrying funds obtained through taxation they therefore have no desire to return them. But Snow White sees things differently and returns the levies and gives the dwarves the credit.
Thus we have a situation where a capricious exception was made which divided the struggling populace. Feeling helpless and seeing no way of securing a lasting productive solution on their own, this exception lapsed into criminal activity. Then, after taking into their care a royal outcast, a solution presents itself necessitated by the underhanded activities they were forced to engage in.
Unfortunately, this solution was brokered by the outcasted royal rather than the people themselves. Had they remained united, perhaps they could have taken steps to frustrate the villainous Queen and would not have had to rely upon accidental august interventions.
It's totally web 2.0.
Economic matters haunt the film as the Queen brutally taxes her subjects to pay for her ostentatious whims. The dwarves have taken to robbing those who pass through their section of the forest due to the fact that they were expelled from the village because the Queen found them ugly. The villagers didn't stand up for the dwarves which has lead to resentment. When they rob a royal coach carrying funds obtained through taxation they therefore have no desire to return them. But Snow White sees things differently and returns the levies and gives the dwarves the credit.
Thus we have a situation where a capricious exception was made which divided the struggling populace. Feeling helpless and seeing no way of securing a lasting productive solution on their own, this exception lapsed into criminal activity. Then, after taking into their care a royal outcast, a solution presents itself necessitated by the underhanded activities they were forced to engage in.
Unfortunately, this solution was brokered by the outcasted royal rather than the people themselves. Had they remained united, perhaps they could have taken steps to frustrate the villainous Queen and would not have had to rely upon accidental august interventions.
Friday, April 6, 2012
A Dangerous Method
Usually I'm a big fan of David Cronenberg's films but A Dangerous Method didn't work for me. Which is surprising considering that if someone had suggested that I could go see a movie that blends Sense and Sensibility with Blue Velvet I would have responded with glee and eagerly anticipated an upcoming screening.
Oh well.
While Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) become acquainted with one another their dialogues are sound enough. Both are working within a traditional framework and trying to modify its rigidity in order to make room for modern theories. Freud's disciplined innovative approach is contrasted with Jung's emphasis on the hyper-experimental and both confidently support their differing yet supportive points of view (they're working within a new theoretical paradigm which calls into question various institutional bulwarks but coming at it from different practical angles). Their analytic proclivities and formidable egos squander the potential of a prolonged working relationship, however, and eventually their productive bond is ruptured.
The main problem with the film comes from the interactions between the two and patient/student/love interest/colleague Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). As her and Jung start having an affair, the dialogue becomes increasingly maudlin and precludes any chance of a sharp unifying disruptive climax. When it suddenly jumps to scenes displaying their raucous lovemaking, the movie takes on a comedic aspect whose carnally cerebral concupiscent dexterity playfully problematizes/extends its focus on professionalism.
Classic Cronenberg.
But while the rigorous carnivalesque dreamlike fortitude radiates Method's formal elements, the melodramatic sentimental tedious exchanges surficially complicate things.
Perhaps Cronenberg is simply trying to say that it's the dreamwork that's more important?
Who knows.
Oh well.
While Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) become acquainted with one another their dialogues are sound enough. Both are working within a traditional framework and trying to modify its rigidity in order to make room for modern theories. Freud's disciplined innovative approach is contrasted with Jung's emphasis on the hyper-experimental and both confidently support their differing yet supportive points of view (they're working within a new theoretical paradigm which calls into question various institutional bulwarks but coming at it from different practical angles). Their analytic proclivities and formidable egos squander the potential of a prolonged working relationship, however, and eventually their productive bond is ruptured.
The main problem with the film comes from the interactions between the two and patient/student/love interest/colleague Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). As her and Jung start having an affair, the dialogue becomes increasingly maudlin and precludes any chance of a sharp unifying disruptive climax. When it suddenly jumps to scenes displaying their raucous lovemaking, the movie takes on a comedic aspect whose carnally cerebral concupiscent dexterity playfully problematizes/extends its focus on professionalism.
Classic Cronenberg.
But while the rigorous carnivalesque dreamlike fortitude radiates Method's formal elements, the melodramatic sentimental tedious exchanges surficially complicate things.
Perhaps Cronenberg is simply trying to say that it's the dreamwork that's more important?
Who knows.
La théorie du tout
Travelling throughout the Québecois countryside, Céline Baril presents the thoughts and observations of a wide variety of local points of view in her documentary La théorie du tout. The countryside is indirectly compared to a musical instrument that needs to be played in order to maintain its jaunty fluidity. Providing work for rural areas enables them to similarly maintain their communal vitality. But over production and obsessions with continually increasing profits have decimated resources that could have indefinitely supported them.
Changing technologies are lamented as a worker who has spent decades operating a specific machine must learn a new set of skills.
A young adult attached to her town wants to stay but her journalistic ambitions leave her with few employment opportunities.
Some individuals adapt and move from one industry to another as mining rejuvenates a struggling economy.
An ominous sense of anxiety pervades thoughts concerning the future of various fisheries as overflowing populations have been reduced to a fraction of their former plenitude.
The emphasis on providing rural workers/job seekers/small business owners/ . . . with the chance to voice their ideas and share their knowledge establishes a bucolic social democratic aesthetic which modestly illustrates sustainable development alternatives to the rapacious bottom line of 'moving forward' capitalists (without using the phrase).
A lot of people don't want to leave the town where they grew up or have lived and worked for most their lives. Sustainable development offers them with symphonic methodologies to orchestrate their futures along harmonic pastoral lines possessing environmentally sound melodies.
Changing technologies are lamented as a worker who has spent decades operating a specific machine must learn a new set of skills.
A young adult attached to her town wants to stay but her journalistic ambitions leave her with few employment opportunities.
Some individuals adapt and move from one industry to another as mining rejuvenates a struggling economy.
An ominous sense of anxiety pervades thoughts concerning the future of various fisheries as overflowing populations have been reduced to a fraction of their former plenitude.
The emphasis on providing rural workers/job seekers/small business owners/ . . . with the chance to voice their ideas and share their knowledge establishes a bucolic social democratic aesthetic which modestly illustrates sustainable development alternatives to the rapacious bottom line of 'moving forward' capitalists (without using the phrase).
A lot of people don't want to leave the town where they grew up or have lived and worked for most their lives. Sustainable development offers them with symphonic methodologies to orchestrate their futures along harmonic pastoral lines possessing environmentally sound melodies.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Delicate operations requiring providential mnemonic triggers and creative conditional calculations present themselves to retired intelligence agent George Smiley (Gary Oldman) as he attempts to identify a Russian spy. Having infiltrated the highest level of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), this spy is well positioned to discretely disseminate significant flourishes of information to his superiors in the Soviet Union. Tacit knowledge, social and institutional information management, and the threat of death play integral roles in Smiley's clandestinely profitable wagers. The stakes are high and the opposition fierce as he descends into the labyrinthine foundations of memory, availability, and time.
In the interests of precision.
Taking ordinary research and adorning it with a strict lethal sense of provocative immediacy, Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy tantalizes the inquisitive faculties while proceeding staggeringly from point A to point B in a laconic linear warp.
Like an indirect salute to editorial predilections.
Trying to unearth the hidden adhesive catalyst whose motivational propulsion will synthesize his pensive analytic re/formulations, George Smiley pursues his subject with a cunningly subtle rigour which wisely sublimates feelings of joy.
While occasionally permitting its ephemeral presence.
In order to thwart bureaucratic instabilities.
In the interests of precision.
Taking ordinary research and adorning it with a strict lethal sense of provocative immediacy, Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy tantalizes the inquisitive faculties while proceeding staggeringly from point A to point B in a laconic linear warp.
Like an indirect salute to editorial predilections.
Trying to unearth the hidden adhesive catalyst whose motivational propulsion will synthesize his pensive analytic re/formulations, George Smiley pursues his subject with a cunningly subtle rigour which wisely sublimates feelings of joy.
While occasionally permitting its ephemeral presence.
In order to thwart bureaucratic instabilities.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
The Hunger Games
Suppose most people are familiar with what happens in The Hunger Games so I won't spend too much time expanding upon the plot.
An uprising was launched by 12 impoverished districts which was crushed by the powers-that-be. In the aftermath, in order to brutally humiliate their subjects even further, they then created the Hunger Games, a competition wherein a youthful male and female representative from each district is selected to take part in a vicious fight to the death.
24 combatants are chosen and by the end only one remains.
The combatants, referred to as tributes, travel to the capital where they're elaborately decked out and paraded in front of the well-to-do in an ancient romanesque spectacle that's designed to showcase the oppressed and impress potential sponsors. These sponsors can provide you with assistance during the Games thereby enhancing your chances of survival. Ratings are provided to each contestant and they have their chance to prove their worth in front of a select group of interested parties and on television as well.
President Snow (Donald Sutherland) makes it clear that the Games were designed to instil a sense of hope within his destitute subjects, a sense that even though your chances of survival are slim, you still might win and be showered with riches forever after.
Obviously the hope he intends to cultivate isn't seen quite so romantically by the citizens of the districts.
Or the participants of the Hunger Games.
But those who have lucratively profited by the current composition of the state cheer and laugh at the hopeless in a disgusting exercise of affluent vanity.
Refusing to participate in the Hunger Games ensures your death.
Participating in the Hunger Games almost assuredly ensures your death.
So you have an extremist government that castigates the poor and suppresses any form of rational descent, demanding strict obedience to its self-serving whims and designs. Its supporters revel in the bloodthirsty celebration and the families of the participants forlornly sit back and watch.
But sponsors can assist you, give you critical support if you put on a good show.
Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) put on the best show they possibly can.
By falling in love.
Love in its true form enables them to change the rules of the game to the vouchsafed delight of their begrudgingly suppliant benefactors.
Thereby suggesting that true love saturated with sacrifice can momentarily defeat the agents of tyranny.
Or that true love fictions are at the heart of the tyrannical enterprise.
Working within a sensationalist frame to provoke a tear jerking deconstructive critical strike disseminating subliminal democratic aftershocks.
Perhaps I expanded upon the plot ad nauseum.
I can't figure out if the end justifies the means.
An uprising was launched by 12 impoverished districts which was crushed by the powers-that-be. In the aftermath, in order to brutally humiliate their subjects even further, they then created the Hunger Games, a competition wherein a youthful male and female representative from each district is selected to take part in a vicious fight to the death.
24 combatants are chosen and by the end only one remains.
The combatants, referred to as tributes, travel to the capital where they're elaborately decked out and paraded in front of the well-to-do in an ancient romanesque spectacle that's designed to showcase the oppressed and impress potential sponsors. These sponsors can provide you with assistance during the Games thereby enhancing your chances of survival. Ratings are provided to each contestant and they have their chance to prove their worth in front of a select group of interested parties and on television as well.
President Snow (Donald Sutherland) makes it clear that the Games were designed to instil a sense of hope within his destitute subjects, a sense that even though your chances of survival are slim, you still might win and be showered with riches forever after.
Obviously the hope he intends to cultivate isn't seen quite so romantically by the citizens of the districts.
Or the participants of the Hunger Games.
But those who have lucratively profited by the current composition of the state cheer and laugh at the hopeless in a disgusting exercise of affluent vanity.
Refusing to participate in the Hunger Games ensures your death.
Participating in the Hunger Games almost assuredly ensures your death.
So you have an extremist government that castigates the poor and suppresses any form of rational descent, demanding strict obedience to its self-serving whims and designs. Its supporters revel in the bloodthirsty celebration and the families of the participants forlornly sit back and watch.
But sponsors can assist you, give you critical support if you put on a good show.
Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) put on the best show they possibly can.
By falling in love.
Love in its true form enables them to change the rules of the game to the vouchsafed delight of their begrudgingly suppliant benefactors.
Thereby suggesting that true love saturated with sacrifice can momentarily defeat the agents of tyranny.
Or that true love fictions are at the heart of the tyrannical enterprise.
Working within a sensationalist frame to provoke a tear jerking deconstructive critical strike disseminating subliminal democratic aftershocks.
Perhaps I expanded upon the plot ad nauseum.
I can't figure out if the end justifies the means.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Carnage
Propriety is caustically deconstructed in Roman Polanski's Carnage as two couples meet to discuss a recent altercation between their contentious offspring.
And inadvertently try to get to know one another.
The situation is this: one kid was confronted by a group of kids mouthing him off so he picked up a stick and hit the leader of the group in the mouth, damaging his teeth. The parents of the former make an effort to apologize to the parents of the later by stopping by their apartment in a show of good faith. They discuss things amicably and the parents of the former are about to leave but one thing leads to another and their conversation is extended.
As the mother of the later (Jodie Foster as Penelope Longstreet) becomes more and more intrusive in her comments and suggestions, the father of the former (Christoph Waltz as Alan Cowan) becomes increasingly defensive and irate. The resulting polemic pits two couples from different socio-demographic backgrounds against one another and the children are soon forgotten as the animosity intensifies.
But each couple has their own internal struggles as well and the genders eventually square off while enjoying another round of afternoon scotch.
Known for its transformative curations.
Carnage works as a deconstructive piece which champions open honest airings of grievances over uptight formal indisputable appearances. Tearing away at the veneers which constitute a wide variety of social interactions, it finds catharsis through confrontation while productively disrupting and recasting established codes of conduct.
As everyone remembers their youth.
This could have been an exceptional film but there's something missing from its bitter tranquil blend. While I respected its formula, I couldn't find that cohesive regenerative spark which would make me want to wholeheartedly engage in subsequent viewings.
Some sort of kinetic catalyst.
Everything's reputably in place to make Carnage stand out and I think that may be the problem. This script may have found more life with a less successful cast and crew looking to make a resounding impact.
As they fight for recognition.
And inadvertently try to get to know one another.
The situation is this: one kid was confronted by a group of kids mouthing him off so he picked up a stick and hit the leader of the group in the mouth, damaging his teeth. The parents of the former make an effort to apologize to the parents of the later by stopping by their apartment in a show of good faith. They discuss things amicably and the parents of the former are about to leave but one thing leads to another and their conversation is extended.
As the mother of the later (Jodie Foster as Penelope Longstreet) becomes more and more intrusive in her comments and suggestions, the father of the former (Christoph Waltz as Alan Cowan) becomes increasingly defensive and irate. The resulting polemic pits two couples from different socio-demographic backgrounds against one another and the children are soon forgotten as the animosity intensifies.
But each couple has their own internal struggles as well and the genders eventually square off while enjoying another round of afternoon scotch.
Known for its transformative curations.
Carnage works as a deconstructive piece which champions open honest airings of grievances over uptight formal indisputable appearances. Tearing away at the veneers which constitute a wide variety of social interactions, it finds catharsis through confrontation while productively disrupting and recasting established codes of conduct.
As everyone remembers their youth.
This could have been an exceptional film but there's something missing from its bitter tranquil blend. While I respected its formula, I couldn't find that cohesive regenerative spark which would make me want to wholeheartedly engage in subsequent viewings.
Some sort of kinetic catalyst.
Everything's reputably in place to make Carnage stand out and I think that may be the problem. This script may have found more life with a less successful cast and crew looking to make a resounding impact.
As they fight for recognition.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
21 Jump Street
After royally screwing up their first arrest, rookie policepersons Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) are reassigned to the undercover division 21st Jump Street, where they're tasked with discovering the supplier of a new narcotic which has recently claimed its first victim.
While preparing for life back in high school, Jenko, who played football, takes the lead, providing advice to the less intellectually challenged Schmidt, who was a member of the Juggling Society. Pretending to be brothers and bunking out at Schmidt's parent's house, they reacclimatize themselves to the young adult social predicament as best they can, before youthfully arising and plunging back in.
But things have changed since they came of age, and environmentalists are now just as popular as the jocks were back when Jenko tossed his tight spirals. Jenko and Schmidt quickly see their traditional roles reversed as the later makes headway with the cool kids and the former infiltrates the nerds.
But as Schmidt begins to socially prosper for the first time, he loses sight of their law enforcement objectives.
It's now up to Jenko to hold the team together and nerd where he has never nerded before.
Down, set, hut.
Ignoring the film's ludicrous structure and myriad implausibilities, the question of where 21 Jump Street sits in the political spectrum remains up for debate, and I'm sure it's currently being dissected in political philosophy classes across North America.
I may as well add my two cents.
The objective of the film: stop the flow of easily accessible trendy narcotics within high schools.
Point awarded to the Right Wing.
But it's not as if the Left Wing wants to see the proliferation of drugs proceed unabated, it simply recognizes that the traditional means that have been employed to prohibit them have had little effect (they're not going away), and since many of them are less harmful than alcohol, don't see an enormous problem with systematically controlling them and making a productive fortune off their taxation. However, the narcotics in 21 Jump Street are new and little is known about them so it would make sense that the Left would seek to analyze their contents and resultant effects before judging whether or not they should be legally regulated/distributed. A commodity is being trafficked off the grid and the government wants to step in and regulate it in order to understand its harmful effects more comprehensively and better educate the public: point awarded to the Right Wing withdrawn.
21 Jump Street Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) tells his recruits to focus on stereotyping everyone they encounter in order to fit within their high school social spheres more snuggly.
Point awarded to the Right Wing.
Yet by focusing intently on stereotypes, Schmidt and Jenko have trouble fitting into their new environment and only succeed after opening their minds to the possibility of difference.
Point awarded to the Right Wing withdrawn.
Drugs are demonized throughout insofar as curtailing their distribution is sought after yet the ways in which they are presented glorifies their consumption.
Point awarded to neither.
While the Left realistically understands that the war on drugs is futile, it still doesn't glorify their use, and neither does the Right.
The female officers working for 21 Jump Street close their first case long before Jenko and Schmidt are in a position to begin solving theirs.
Point awarded to the Left.
Chauvinism pervades Right Wing discourses and by making Schmidt and Jenko semi-incompetent buffoons who pale in comparison to their feminine coworkers, 21 Jump Street counteracts its "might is right" ethos. But at the same time, the heroes of the story are men, and even though the women obtain results much more efficiently, their achievements are still only ephemerally referred to and the point is by no means elaborated.
Point awarded to the Left withdrawn.
The principal student drug dealer is an environmentalist, directly synthesizing facilitators of intoxication with those who support initiatives such as sustainable development.
Point awarded to the Right.
Yet the student in question, Eric Molson (Dave Franco), is given some of the film's best lines and shown to be an understanding and compassionate person who cares about his fellow classmates with whom he gets along well. But still, when 21 Jump Street reaches its conclusion, he's dragged off in handcuffs to answer for his activities.
Point awarded to the Right sustained.
From the Schmidt and Jenko duo, it's the football playing jock who holds things together and ensures their success.
Point awarded to the Right.
Then again, while professional football seems at times like a prolonged jingoistic advertisement for the military, this doesn't mean the game itself is necessarily Right Wing, inasmuch as when you ignore the ways in which it's sensationalized, you can still sit back and enjoy an entertaining sport, played by many a Left Winger.
Point awarded to the Right withdrawn.
And ambiguity permeates 21 Jump Street insofar as it's difficult to strictly determine what its political motivations are.
Point awarded to the Left.
Although, even though the Left attempts to break down strict polarities and establish a level non-stereotypical playing field wherein historical factors play an inductive role, it still staunchly adheres to specific points within established dichotomies in order to ensure their ethical survival.
Point awarded to the Left withdrawn.
The only sustained point may have been awarded to the Right, but I still hesitate to classify 21 Jump Street as a conservative film. There's simply not enough evidence.
Is it still an entertaining film that I didn't want to leave half way through?
You be the judge.
While preparing for life back in high school, Jenko, who played football, takes the lead, providing advice to the less intellectually challenged Schmidt, who was a member of the Juggling Society. Pretending to be brothers and bunking out at Schmidt's parent's house, they reacclimatize themselves to the young adult social predicament as best they can, before youthfully arising and plunging back in.
But things have changed since they came of age, and environmentalists are now just as popular as the jocks were back when Jenko tossed his tight spirals. Jenko and Schmidt quickly see their traditional roles reversed as the later makes headway with the cool kids and the former infiltrates the nerds.
But as Schmidt begins to socially prosper for the first time, he loses sight of their law enforcement objectives.
It's now up to Jenko to hold the team together and nerd where he has never nerded before.
Down, set, hut.
Ignoring the film's ludicrous structure and myriad implausibilities, the question of where 21 Jump Street sits in the political spectrum remains up for debate, and I'm sure it's currently being dissected in political philosophy classes across North America.
I may as well add my two cents.
The objective of the film: stop the flow of easily accessible trendy narcotics within high schools.
Point awarded to the Right Wing.
But it's not as if the Left Wing wants to see the proliferation of drugs proceed unabated, it simply recognizes that the traditional means that have been employed to prohibit them have had little effect (they're not going away), and since many of them are less harmful than alcohol, don't see an enormous problem with systematically controlling them and making a productive fortune off their taxation. However, the narcotics in 21 Jump Street are new and little is known about them so it would make sense that the Left would seek to analyze their contents and resultant effects before judging whether or not they should be legally regulated/distributed. A commodity is being trafficked off the grid and the government wants to step in and regulate it in order to understand its harmful effects more comprehensively and better educate the public: point awarded to the Right Wing withdrawn.
21 Jump Street Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) tells his recruits to focus on stereotyping everyone they encounter in order to fit within their high school social spheres more snuggly.
Point awarded to the Right Wing.
Yet by focusing intently on stereotypes, Schmidt and Jenko have trouble fitting into their new environment and only succeed after opening their minds to the possibility of difference.
Point awarded to the Right Wing withdrawn.
Drugs are demonized throughout insofar as curtailing their distribution is sought after yet the ways in which they are presented glorifies their consumption.
Point awarded to neither.
While the Left realistically understands that the war on drugs is futile, it still doesn't glorify their use, and neither does the Right.
The female officers working for 21 Jump Street close their first case long before Jenko and Schmidt are in a position to begin solving theirs.
Point awarded to the Left.
Chauvinism pervades Right Wing discourses and by making Schmidt and Jenko semi-incompetent buffoons who pale in comparison to their feminine coworkers, 21 Jump Street counteracts its "might is right" ethos. But at the same time, the heroes of the story are men, and even though the women obtain results much more efficiently, their achievements are still only ephemerally referred to and the point is by no means elaborated.
Point awarded to the Left withdrawn.
The principal student drug dealer is an environmentalist, directly synthesizing facilitators of intoxication with those who support initiatives such as sustainable development.
Point awarded to the Right.
Yet the student in question, Eric Molson (Dave Franco), is given some of the film's best lines and shown to be an understanding and compassionate person who cares about his fellow classmates with whom he gets along well. But still, when 21 Jump Street reaches its conclusion, he's dragged off in handcuffs to answer for his activities.
Point awarded to the Right sustained.
From the Schmidt and Jenko duo, it's the football playing jock who holds things together and ensures their success.
Point awarded to the Right.
Then again, while professional football seems at times like a prolonged jingoistic advertisement for the military, this doesn't mean the game itself is necessarily Right Wing, inasmuch as when you ignore the ways in which it's sensationalized, you can still sit back and enjoy an entertaining sport, played by many a Left Winger.
Point awarded to the Right withdrawn.
And ambiguity permeates 21 Jump Street insofar as it's difficult to strictly determine what its political motivations are.
Point awarded to the Left.
Although, even though the Left attempts to break down strict polarities and establish a level non-stereotypical playing field wherein historical factors play an inductive role, it still staunchly adheres to specific points within established dichotomies in order to ensure their ethical survival.
Point awarded to the Left withdrawn.
The only sustained point may have been awarded to the Right, but I still hesitate to classify 21 Jump Street as a conservative film. There's simply not enough evidence.
Is it still an entertaining film that I didn't want to leave half way through?
You be the judge.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Shame
Consumed and dominated by uncontrollable sexual desires which demand constant strategic salacious improvisations, Brandon Sullivan's (Michael Fassbender) unquenchable thirst for carnal pleasures is disproportionately interrupted by a visit from his little sister (Carey Mulligan as Sissy Sullivan).
Who, as it turns out, has no where else to go.
His private carnivalesque prurient pursuits must now adjust themselves to the potential impact of familial judgment and the threat of patronizing restraint. As it becomes clear that Sissy's economic circumstances are by no means self-sufficient, the resultant limitations psychologically materialize a contemptuous backlash which leads to a breakdown in their sustainable relations.
And a resurgent unfettered libidinous conflagration.
Shame works as an emotionless stark rigid character study which sociologically examines localized affects of satyriasis. Michael Fassbender's focused distant unattached self-absorbed performance seductively infuses Mr. Sullivan with a wantonly calculated individualistic purpose. Carey Mulligan's struggling confused desperate counterpoint functions as an effective curve.
Responsibilities bear their consequences in jolting destructive strikes whose unleashed immediate pressures instantaneously distill a sense of belonging.
Consequent reactions determine semantic interpretations incorporating previously manifested patterns built into historical socio-foundations established in relation to a kaleidoscopic point of view.
Director Steve McQueen's direct approach attempts to resist the interpretative labyrinth.
In so doing we're given the cold hard narrow unforgiving facts.
Which themselves impose additional limits on Brandon Sullivan's freedom.
Who, as it turns out, has no where else to go.
His private carnivalesque prurient pursuits must now adjust themselves to the potential impact of familial judgment and the threat of patronizing restraint. As it becomes clear that Sissy's economic circumstances are by no means self-sufficient, the resultant limitations psychologically materialize a contemptuous backlash which leads to a breakdown in their sustainable relations.
And a resurgent unfettered libidinous conflagration.
Shame works as an emotionless stark rigid character study which sociologically examines localized affects of satyriasis. Michael Fassbender's focused distant unattached self-absorbed performance seductively infuses Mr. Sullivan with a wantonly calculated individualistic purpose. Carey Mulligan's struggling confused desperate counterpoint functions as an effective curve.
Responsibilities bear their consequences in jolting destructive strikes whose unleashed immediate pressures instantaneously distill a sense of belonging.
Consequent reactions determine semantic interpretations incorporating previously manifested patterns built into historical socio-foundations established in relation to a kaleidoscopic point of view.
Director Steve McQueen's direct approach attempts to resist the interpretative labyrinth.
In so doing we're given the cold hard narrow unforgiving facts.
Which themselves impose additional limits on Brandon Sullivan's freedom.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
The Artist
Pride leads to a tragic fall in Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist, as silent film superstar George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) refuses to adapt to a technological paradigm shift. Losing everything after the advent of the Talkies, he descends into a self-obsessed alcoholic tailspin while remaining loyal to his preferred form of artistic expression.
To which he was an unparalleled sensation.
Paying hommage to an abandoned form of film making which was responsible for cinema's resounding success, The Artist works, presenting a remarkable synthesis of motion and sound whose historical resonances are fashionably festooned.
Ludovic Bource's original music playfully harmonizes with the action and temporally positions us within a revitalized inspirational epoch. Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo (Peppy Miller) use the full range of their creative non-verbal subtly to emit an understated existential dialogue which encourages evocative sensual reflections as one tries to imagine what might have been said.
Even as Valentin seems destined for dereliction, a sense of innocent naivety permeates The Artist's being, as its expertly timed stylistic complexities leisurely conjure an effervescent cascade of childlike simplicity by delicately condensing multilayered supporting complements into an affective cry.
Nothing that surprising takes place in the narrative itself. It's the cohesive viscid micro-details which transform each moment into an exception of its own that make The Artist such a compelling film.
Nice to see Ed Lauter with a supporting role.
To which he was an unparalleled sensation.
Paying hommage to an abandoned form of film making which was responsible for cinema's resounding success, The Artist works, presenting a remarkable synthesis of motion and sound whose historical resonances are fashionably festooned.
Ludovic Bource's original music playfully harmonizes with the action and temporally positions us within a revitalized inspirational epoch. Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo (Peppy Miller) use the full range of their creative non-verbal subtly to emit an understated existential dialogue which encourages evocative sensual reflections as one tries to imagine what might have been said.
Even as Valentin seems destined for dereliction, a sense of innocent naivety permeates The Artist's being, as its expertly timed stylistic complexities leisurely conjure an effervescent cascade of childlike simplicity by delicately condensing multilayered supporting complements into an affective cry.
Nothing that surprising takes place in the narrative itself. It's the cohesive viscid micro-details which transform each moment into an exception of its own that make The Artist such a compelling film.
Nice to see Ed Lauter with a supporting role.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Like Crazy
Don't know if I'm the write person to be reviewing romantic films.
Drake Doremus's Like Crazy seems like a good one, with all the typical heartbreaking circumstances in place, presented in a harrowingly tranquil laid-back predictable manner, as a young couple falls in love but has trouble staying together because they live in different countries.
Marriage fails to solve their problems.
Long periods of separation lead to affairs.
There's nothing bizarre or distracting.
We're left wondering if the power of love will bring them back together in the end.
And it does and everyone's happy.
Hooray!
I liked the film's form. It's chill, non-judgemental, mature, flat and consistent.
But its content wasn't very surprising and lacked the distinct mesmerizing transitional scenes that could have differentiated it more prominently from typical tear jerking romances.
None of my tears were jerked.
Unlike the first time I watched Star Trek: Generations.
Drake Doremus's Like Crazy seems like a good one, with all the typical heartbreaking circumstances in place, presented in a harrowingly tranquil laid-back predictable manner, as a young couple falls in love but has trouble staying together because they live in different countries.
Marriage fails to solve their problems.
Long periods of separation lead to affairs.
There's nothing bizarre or distracting.
We're left wondering if the power of love will bring them back together in the end.
And it does and everyone's happy.
Hooray!
I liked the film's form. It's chill, non-judgemental, mature, flat and consistent.
But its content wasn't very surprising and lacked the distinct mesmerizing transitional scenes that could have differentiated it more prominently from typical tear jerking romances.
None of my tears were jerked.
Unlike the first time I watched Star Trek: Generations.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
My Week with Marilyn
Suddenly thrust into an accelerated kinetic critical creative complexity wherein two distinct approaches to acting clash on their way towards cinematic seduction, the youthful Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) finds himself balancing myriad egotistical dexterities while trying to maintain his liturgical nerve.
And pacify the deployments of irrepressible temptations.
Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) has an undeniably perplexing presence whose improvised flexible non-linear magnetism has trouble adhering itself to Laurence Olivier's (Kenneth Branagh) by-the-book routine.
Olivier isn't the most forgiving figure either and Marilyn struggles with his disdain. She also misinterprets some of her husband's writing which accentuates her sense of ineptitude.
But as established unflattering men futilely attempt to control her, she combats their derision with a burgeoning youthful laissez-faire methodology which aesthetically appeals to the young and energetic Colin.
Whose working on his first film.
My Week with Marilyn studies the convoluted diversions and rewarding excursions to whose preponderant inconsistencies young professionals must rationally respond. Colin's seamless integration and exceptional ability to smoothly fluctuate perhaps doesn't offer the most transferable set of relatable interactive qualifications, but his success and good fortune can generate abundant ambitious daydreams, from whose integrated prosperous peaks one can fleetingly unearth kernels of truth.
After placing them within a poetic context and analyzing the resultant metaphorical flow.
And pacify the deployments of irrepressible temptations.
Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) has an undeniably perplexing presence whose improvised flexible non-linear magnetism has trouble adhering itself to Laurence Olivier's (Kenneth Branagh) by-the-book routine.
Olivier isn't the most forgiving figure either and Marilyn struggles with his disdain. She also misinterprets some of her husband's writing which accentuates her sense of ineptitude.
But as established unflattering men futilely attempt to control her, she combats their derision with a burgeoning youthful laissez-faire methodology which aesthetically appeals to the young and energetic Colin.
Whose working on his first film.
My Week with Marilyn studies the convoluted diversions and rewarding excursions to whose preponderant inconsistencies young professionals must rationally respond. Colin's seamless integration and exceptional ability to smoothly fluctuate perhaps doesn't offer the most transferable set of relatable interactive qualifications, but his success and good fortune can generate abundant ambitious daydreams, from whose integrated prosperous peaks one can fleetingly unearth kernels of truth.
After placing them within a poetic context and analyzing the resultant metaphorical flow.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
The Lorax
Sustainable Development finds a pop cultural proponent in the new musical-comedy The Lorax, based on Dr. Seuss's children's book of the same name. Within, young Ted (Zac Efron) seeks the affections of Audrey (Taylor Swift) who loves the environment and would like to acquire a living tree.
They both live in Thneedville where their surroundings are predominantly non-organic.
Having never seen a living tree and possessing no knowledge of where to find one, Ted contends with a puzzling situation as his romantic daydreams complicate his ability to socialize.
Until Grammy Norma (Betty White) steps in.
She secretly tells Ted that if he wants to locate a tree he'll have to consult the Once-ler (Ed Helms) who lives in the treacherous badlands outside Thneedville's city limits.
To obtain the sought after information, Ted hops on his motorized bike and leaves the safety of Thneedville's uniformity behind. The Once-ler is discovered but before Ted can benefit from his stricken arboreal wisdom, a tale must be told in multiple instalments.
Wherein we meet the Lorax (Danny DeVito).
Guardian of the forest.
What follows is a harrowing reenactment of economic opportunism which results in the destruction of a lush wilderness and the displacement of its local bear population. The Once-ler capitalizes on the forest's marketable trees but his blind greed results in the harvesting of every last one.
And the devastation of a vibrant ecosystem.
The Lorax himself may be the guardian of the forest but there is little he can do to combat the forces of commercialization, besides trying to emphasize their folly before it's too late.
He's a secondary character in the film whose non-consequential fantastic presence is there to accentuate the importance of a realistic united environmental front, designed to disenchant extremist right wingers who like to preach about how environmentalism is the dream of children who can't understand that God is going to miraculously come down from heaven and clean up this mess some day.
Or just leave it behind and rapturously reward the extremist faithful.
Who for some reason haven't been diagnosed with a mental illness.
At least The Lorax makes it clear enough that divine intervention is not on the way and that we have to take matters into our own hands to find a progressive vision for a multi-generational solution to this misguided point of view.
Here on planet Earth.
They both live in Thneedville where their surroundings are predominantly non-organic.
Having never seen a living tree and possessing no knowledge of where to find one, Ted contends with a puzzling situation as his romantic daydreams complicate his ability to socialize.
Until Grammy Norma (Betty White) steps in.
She secretly tells Ted that if he wants to locate a tree he'll have to consult the Once-ler (Ed Helms) who lives in the treacherous badlands outside Thneedville's city limits.
To obtain the sought after information, Ted hops on his motorized bike and leaves the safety of Thneedville's uniformity behind. The Once-ler is discovered but before Ted can benefit from his stricken arboreal wisdom, a tale must be told in multiple instalments.
Wherein we meet the Lorax (Danny DeVito).
Guardian of the forest.
What follows is a harrowing reenactment of economic opportunism which results in the destruction of a lush wilderness and the displacement of its local bear population. The Once-ler capitalizes on the forest's marketable trees but his blind greed results in the harvesting of every last one.
And the devastation of a vibrant ecosystem.
The Lorax himself may be the guardian of the forest but there is little he can do to combat the forces of commercialization, besides trying to emphasize their folly before it's too late.
He's a secondary character in the film whose non-consequential fantastic presence is there to accentuate the importance of a realistic united environmental front, designed to disenchant extremist right wingers who like to preach about how environmentalism is the dream of children who can't understand that God is going to miraculously come down from heaven and clean up this mess some day.
Or just leave it behind and rapturously reward the extremist faithful.
Who for some reason haven't been diagnosed with a mental illness.
At least The Lorax makes it clear enough that divine intervention is not on the way and that we have to take matters into our own hands to find a progressive vision for a multi-generational solution to this misguided point of view.
Here on planet Earth.
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