After a lengthy hiatus, Riddick (Vin Diesel) returns, once again stuck on a desolate hostile planet, forced to battle and befriend to survive.
The film appeared to be a rip off to me in the previews, The Chronicles of Riddick having ended with Riddick sitting atop the Necromonger hierarchy, having vengefully transitioned from irrepressible individual to potentially influential figurehead, but I thought I would ignore Riddick's retrograde decision (and bland title) to focus more intently on Pitch Black, worrying about what could have been created seeming futile, wasteful, and unproductive, Riddick still featuring Riddick, iconic bad ass, incontrovertible anti-soldier, that being okay.
But Riddick does explain how he came to be isolated once again and the explanation lacks credibility, considering how easily he consistently outsmarts his adversaries, and the obviousness of the trap he falls into, although he does acknowledge his moment of weakness through narration, and was dealing with quixotically clever foes.
Still, how did he fall into that one, seriously, come on?
Also, when he transmits his presence on the planet to the universe at large why didn't the Necromongers come after him? If he's still alive, he's technically still the Lord Marshal, and should have therefore been cravenously or ceremoniously sought after, by those with an interest in logistical legitimacy. Perhaps they wanted to wait and see if someone else could handle their mess for them, but if anyone knows how agile Riddick is, it's the Necromongers, meaning they likely would have wanted to settle the score personally, as the crow flies.
S'pose this sets up the next sequel though, fingers crossed.
At one point during Riddick, I thought he might quickly outmaneuver the two sets of Mercs intent on his capture and escape to reinstate himself within Necromonger lore, but as it became apparent that this would not happen, I begrudgingly acquiesced.
There are some classic Riddick moments, some classic Riddick lines, some classic Riddick obstructions, and the beginning which focuses on his survival tactics is arguably the film's best feature.
Some key developmental diagnostics flaccidly fluctuate, however, leaving a strong, explosive, crystalline character searching for better material, a fitting ending for this film, now that I think about it.
Really loved the edited version of The Chronicles of Riddick. Waited for this film for years.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
The World's End
12 pubs.
12 pints.
5 friends.
Grievances.
A youthful night of rambunctious drinking whose objectives were not achieved is revisited later on in life after 4 of 5 friends have embraced occupational stability, its chaotic contours representing the other friend's liveliest memory, after a lifetime of nurturing mind-altering nullifications.
The goal is to finish The Golden Mile, drinking a pint at each of Newton Haven's 12 pubs, sticking together as a team, revitalizing a wayward sense of indestructibility.
Gary King (Simon Pegg and Thomas Law) somehow manages to quickly convince his old friends to join him, once being the leader of the pack, compassion, pity, and camaraderie functioning as motivating factors, the beast gassed up and ready to flux capacity.
But a paradigm shift has occurred in peaceful Newton Haven, and although familiar faces remain, things are no longer quite what they seemed.
A challenge to the evening's nostalgic embroileries unravels a sinister intergalactic plot to colonize the Earth and eat organic food, against which the 5 friends must then contend, while continuing to pursue their dipsomanic agenda.
To the World's End.
Is The World's End a diabolical delusion taking place solely within the demented mind of Mr. King, or have people indeed been replaced with glad handing automata, in search of healthier lifestyles?
The improbability suggests the answer is a simple yes, but the film's extracurricular exhibitionism begs the question, if this is merely obstetric, why does it revel so collegially within its confines?
It does function as a response to Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright examining their own encounters with the aging process.
Functions too similarly to Hot Fuzz.
Contemporary kings they may be, I didn't see This is the End, and don't want to compare them to anyone else, my intuition transmitting that these comedic constabularies have intercepted an apocalyptic discourse.
Smart script though, the situations themselves often funnier than what takes place within them, which, I suppose in my case, is also a sign of age.
I would probably only be able to drink 8 pints.
If I didn't have to work for the next two days.
And had several cans of minestrone soup available at home.
12 pints.
5 friends.
Grievances.
A youthful night of rambunctious drinking whose objectives were not achieved is revisited later on in life after 4 of 5 friends have embraced occupational stability, its chaotic contours representing the other friend's liveliest memory, after a lifetime of nurturing mind-altering nullifications.
The goal is to finish The Golden Mile, drinking a pint at each of Newton Haven's 12 pubs, sticking together as a team, revitalizing a wayward sense of indestructibility.
Gary King (Simon Pegg and Thomas Law) somehow manages to quickly convince his old friends to join him, once being the leader of the pack, compassion, pity, and camaraderie functioning as motivating factors, the beast gassed up and ready to flux capacity.
But a paradigm shift has occurred in peaceful Newton Haven, and although familiar faces remain, things are no longer quite what they seemed.
A challenge to the evening's nostalgic embroileries unravels a sinister intergalactic plot to colonize the Earth and eat organic food, against which the 5 friends must then contend, while continuing to pursue their dipsomanic agenda.
To the World's End.
Is The World's End a diabolical delusion taking place solely within the demented mind of Mr. King, or have people indeed been replaced with glad handing automata, in search of healthier lifestyles?
The improbability suggests the answer is a simple yes, but the film's extracurricular exhibitionism begs the question, if this is merely obstetric, why does it revel so collegially within its confines?
It does function as a response to Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright examining their own encounters with the aging process.
Functions too similarly to Hot Fuzz.
Contemporary kings they may be, I didn't see This is the End, and don't want to compare them to anyone else, my intuition transmitting that these comedic constabularies have intercepted an apocalyptic discourse.
Smart script though, the situations themselves often funnier than what takes place within them, which, I suppose in my case, is also a sign of age.
I would probably only be able to drink 8 pints.
If I didn't have to work for the next two days.
And had several cans of minestrone soup available at home.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
La vie domestique
What a prick of a day.
The bourgeois baggage bumptiously builds up in this one, as 4 housewives reflexively mold their materiality.
A picture perfect life, complete with good schools, automobiles, and giant houses has been secured, yet aging has reintroduced theoretically antiquated distinctions between feminine and masculine, whose casual unconscious biases and restrained level-headed counterbalances (the dialogue keeps a cool reserved yet provocative head) suggest that La vie domestique can be thought of as a prolonged micromanifested scream, each of its nanofrustrations minimalistically implicated in the stifling restrictions of gender based economically reinforced comments, along with the gut wrenching crunch of ostensible opportunity.
The aforementioned predominantly applies to Juliette (Emmanuelle Devos) as she struggles in her role of supportive wife and mother, providing extracurricular guidance to underprivileged youth while trying to find work in the publishing industry.
She's strong, confident, capable, and aware that time lacks its former robust capacities, alarming amplifications assiduously absorbed.
Her husband (Laurent Poitrenaux as Thomas) tries to comprehend at times but keeps saying the wrong things, seeking to control rather than comprehend, turning domineering near the end.
The ass at the beginning directly establishes the rage.
The rest multilaterally multiplies it.
The bourgeois baggage bumptiously builds up in this one, as 4 housewives reflexively mold their materiality.
A picture perfect life, complete with good schools, automobiles, and giant houses has been secured, yet aging has reintroduced theoretically antiquated distinctions between feminine and masculine, whose casual unconscious biases and restrained level-headed counterbalances (the dialogue keeps a cool reserved yet provocative head) suggest that La vie domestique can be thought of as a prolonged micromanifested scream, each of its nanofrustrations minimalistically implicated in the stifling restrictions of gender based economically reinforced comments, along with the gut wrenching crunch of ostensible opportunity.
The aforementioned predominantly applies to Juliette (Emmanuelle Devos) as she struggles in her role of supportive wife and mother, providing extracurricular guidance to underprivileged youth while trying to find work in the publishing industry.
She's strong, confident, capable, and aware that time lacks its former robust capacities, alarming amplifications assiduously absorbed.
Her husband (Laurent Poitrenaux as Thomas) tries to comprehend at times but keeps saying the wrong things, seeking to control rather than comprehend, turning domineering near the end.
The ass at the beginning directly establishes the rage.
The rest multilaterally multiplies it.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Fènix 11-23
A young child's fascination with Harry Potter leads him to create The Army of the Phoenix online, dedicated to promoting Catalonian language rights, and defending the culture of Catalan.
Due to recent terrorist bombings, however, his activism runs afoul of Spain's anti-terrorism laws, and he's soon absurdly disciplined and punished.
Recalling Jason Buxton's Blackbird, Èric Bertran (Nil Cardoner) makes the mistake of responding to a threat with threatening language, hostilely mentioning a controversial underground organization in his reply, naively behaving as youngsters often do, unaware of the legal ramifications of his rapid fire inflammatory comment.
Both films examine the resulting social consequences but in Fènix 11-23 a support network develops which eases the tension.
Èric's life undergoes monumental changes as his family, friends, teacher, surrounding community members, and love interest come to terms with their fears regarding the penalties, directors Joel Joan and Sergi Lara rationally unreeling these fears, slowly moving from the callous to the understanding, as concepts such as democracy become more tangible.
Fènix 11-23 doesn't maudlinly express its examination of free speech (it's a true story), nor engage in sensationalist practices.
Rather, it shows how sensationalism can be a political byproduct that can ruin the lives of the people politicians are supposed to protect.
You can't write about controversial issues without expecting the police to take note and place you on a list of some kind. They are concerned with fighting terrorism.
You can expect them not to harass children, or anyone, exercising their democratic rights, turning playful miscalculations into seditious intents, winning a few votes and/or budget increases thereby, while sacrificing the ideals they're supposed to uphold.
Èric's unyielding courage is an inspiration.
Talk about bold.
Due to recent terrorist bombings, however, his activism runs afoul of Spain's anti-terrorism laws, and he's soon absurdly disciplined and punished.
Recalling Jason Buxton's Blackbird, Èric Bertran (Nil Cardoner) makes the mistake of responding to a threat with threatening language, hostilely mentioning a controversial underground organization in his reply, naively behaving as youngsters often do, unaware of the legal ramifications of his rapid fire inflammatory comment.
Both films examine the resulting social consequences but in Fènix 11-23 a support network develops which eases the tension.
Èric's life undergoes monumental changes as his family, friends, teacher, surrounding community members, and love interest come to terms with their fears regarding the penalties, directors Joel Joan and Sergi Lara rationally unreeling these fears, slowly moving from the callous to the understanding, as concepts such as democracy become more tangible.
Fènix 11-23 doesn't maudlinly express its examination of free speech (it's a true story), nor engage in sensationalist practices.
Rather, it shows how sensationalism can be a political byproduct that can ruin the lives of the people politicians are supposed to protect.
You can't write about controversial issues without expecting the police to take note and place you on a list of some kind. They are concerned with fighting terrorism.
You can expect them not to harass children, or anyone, exercising their democratic rights, turning playful miscalculations into seditious intents, winning a few votes and/or budget increases thereby, while sacrificing the ideals they're supposed to uphold.
Èric's unyielding courage is an inspiration.
Talk about bold.
La fille du Martin
The passing of a loved one accompanies a young woman's thoughts as she travels to the region of her birth to mourn.
Unbeknownst to her, a free-spirited youth awaits to assist in the grieving process.
As she convalesces basking in the Lac Saint-Jean wilderness, cinematographer Ronald Richard sensuously suggests that its pristine pastimes strengthen her beauty (Catherine Michaud as Sara Leblanc).
That beauty is indeed strengthened, as young love ignites to cause problems for villainous poachers, headaches for parental guidance, undisclosed wisecracks for a fraternal rivalry, and campfire tales for local legends.
Samuel Thivierge's La fille du Martin unpretentiously lodges a romantic reel in the Laurentian filmscape, lightheartedly casting its luminescent lures, hooking urban and rural encampments alike.
Straightforward, freewheeling, and independent yet accountable, it amicably shifts from outstanding shot to outstanding shot, infusing its comedic relations with bucolic luxury, its health sustained by its spry self-restraint.
I'll have to visit Lac Saint-Jean someday.
Only 5 hours away.
Rent an ATV, do some fishin'.
Hey hey!
(Nice porcupine shot).
Unbeknownst to her, a free-spirited youth awaits to assist in the grieving process.
As she convalesces basking in the Lac Saint-Jean wilderness, cinematographer Ronald Richard sensuously suggests that its pristine pastimes strengthen her beauty (Catherine Michaud as Sara Leblanc).
That beauty is indeed strengthened, as young love ignites to cause problems for villainous poachers, headaches for parental guidance, undisclosed wisecracks for a fraternal rivalry, and campfire tales for local legends.
Samuel Thivierge's La fille du Martin unpretentiously lodges a romantic reel in the Laurentian filmscape, lightheartedly casting its luminescent lures, hooking urban and rural encampments alike.
Straightforward, freewheeling, and independent yet accountable, it amicably shifts from outstanding shot to outstanding shot, infusing its comedic relations with bucolic luxury, its health sustained by its spry self-restraint.
I'll have to visit Lac Saint-Jean someday.
Only 5 hours away.
Rent an ATV, do some fishin'.
Hey hey!
(Nice porcupine shot).
Lost in Laos
Alessandro Zunino's sly transformational obscurely poised Lost in Laos potentially situates a metamockumentary between two worlds, wherein survival is latticed with familial, relational, and biological vertebrae, adrift in the Laotian jungle, anxiously struggling at home.
On the bilateral, feisty student Daniela (Daniela Camera) sets out with her partner Paolo (Daniele Pitari) to intermingle inebriated and impressionistic filmic observations as part of a wild abandoned ad hoc international trance known as Lost in Laos.
She keeps in contact with her traditional parents until too many substances are consumed at once and she wakes up with Paolo miles from town, down the river, passports and related pieces of identification missing, no food, soaking wet, lost.
The credits set up the film's serious yet sardonic transitional identifications by creatively yet dazzlingly introducing each letter of the crew's names before the name appears in full, at that point in time each character possessing a stable conception of self developed over time, after which the full name breaks apart into its individual components, thereby foreshadowing the upcoming psychological turmoil by the letter.
The creative yet dazzling dynamic sets up the surreal metamockumentary exposition as well, Lost in Laos intellectually diversifying its subject matter while picturesquely percolating a piquant self-awareness, whose bright abnegations voyeuristically mystify.
The boundary between truth and fiction forms part of Daniela's thesis and this dialectical deployment caused me to wonder if the film was really about either an aging professional couple imagining what life would have been like if they had taken more risks, or a young adventurous couple theorizing on the benefits of a bourgeois life spent together.
At which point I had to take mockumentary itself into consideration, wondering if Zunino was eruditely lampooning this style of analysis to simply present a troublemaking voyage of discovery.
Difficult to say.
On the bilateral, feisty student Daniela (Daniela Camera) sets out with her partner Paolo (Daniele Pitari) to intermingle inebriated and impressionistic filmic observations as part of a wild abandoned ad hoc international trance known as Lost in Laos.
She keeps in contact with her traditional parents until too many substances are consumed at once and she wakes up with Paolo miles from town, down the river, passports and related pieces of identification missing, no food, soaking wet, lost.
The credits set up the film's serious yet sardonic transitional identifications by creatively yet dazzlingly introducing each letter of the crew's names before the name appears in full, at that point in time each character possessing a stable conception of self developed over time, after which the full name breaks apart into its individual components, thereby foreshadowing the upcoming psychological turmoil by the letter.
The creative yet dazzling dynamic sets up the surreal metamockumentary exposition as well, Lost in Laos intellectually diversifying its subject matter while picturesquely percolating a piquant self-awareness, whose bright abnegations voyeuristically mystify.
The boundary between truth and fiction forms part of Daniela's thesis and this dialectical deployment caused me to wonder if the film was really about either an aging professional couple imagining what life would have been like if they had taken more risks, or a young adventurous couple theorizing on the benefits of a bourgeois life spent together.
At which point I had to take mockumentary itself into consideration, wondering if Zunino was eruditely lampooning this style of analysis to simply present a troublemaking voyage of discovery.
Difficult to say.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Blackfish
Glad I don't work for Seaworld.
Seems to me, that if you capture a killer whale, and stick him or her in a bathtub for the rest of his or her life, forcing them to do ridiculous tricks thereafter, there are going to be problems, problems, problems, as the decades go by.
And if one of the orcas kills a trainer, you should release it back into the wild afterwards, making sure to warn current and future employees about the dangers of working with them, in order to mitigate future conflicts, if you don't decide to simply let them all go, to roam the ocean freely at their leisure.
But while working at Sealand formerly of Victoria, B.C., an orca named Tilikum did kill a trainer, Seaworld did then purchase him, they didn't let their trainers know about his problematic past, and he did kill again, what is your problem, Seaworld?
Documentary filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite comprehensively examines Seaworld's business practices in Blackfish, expertly intertwining the plights of both orcas and workers, thereby synthesizing environmental and humanistic concerns, while chillingly interspersing promotional Seaworld commercials, in an attempt to help put a definitive end to socioenvironmental circus acts.
Obviously if you're working with orcas or bears or tigers you need to exercise caution at all times.
Obviously if you're employing people to work with them you have to warn them to exercise constant vigilance, and reevaluate your capitalistic considerations once life threatening patterns emerge.
For example, this whale killed someone. Be careful.
The animals might not understand how much stronger they are than humans and may end up killing someone during what they thought was harmless playtime.
They may also go mad after living in cages for years and grow tired of not receiving staple food allotments after failing to perform the perfect trick, and may seek to teach their trainers a lesson of their own.
Blackfish scientifically explores the nature of orcas and the evidence uniformly indicates that they are highly intelligent beings possessing complex emotional matrices, and strong family bonds.
Leave them in the ocean I say, and let them conduct their leviathanesque affairs unabated.
Whalewatching, a fun family friendly option during the right times of the year.
It's a wonderful thing seeing marine life actively and independently engaged.
Seaworld can recuperate lost profits by building an orca themed roller coaster.
Where people sit in killer whale trains.
And are splashed by artificial sea spray at some point during the ride.
Seems to me, that if you capture a killer whale, and stick him or her in a bathtub for the rest of his or her life, forcing them to do ridiculous tricks thereafter, there are going to be problems, problems, problems, as the decades go by.
And if one of the orcas kills a trainer, you should release it back into the wild afterwards, making sure to warn current and future employees about the dangers of working with them, in order to mitigate future conflicts, if you don't decide to simply let them all go, to roam the ocean freely at their leisure.
But while working at Sealand formerly of Victoria, B.C., an orca named Tilikum did kill a trainer, Seaworld did then purchase him, they didn't let their trainers know about his problematic past, and he did kill again, what is your problem, Seaworld?
Documentary filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite comprehensively examines Seaworld's business practices in Blackfish, expertly intertwining the plights of both orcas and workers, thereby synthesizing environmental and humanistic concerns, while chillingly interspersing promotional Seaworld commercials, in an attempt to help put a definitive end to socioenvironmental circus acts.
Obviously if you're working with orcas or bears or tigers you need to exercise caution at all times.
Obviously if you're employing people to work with them you have to warn them to exercise constant vigilance, and reevaluate your capitalistic considerations once life threatening patterns emerge.
For example, this whale killed someone. Be careful.
The animals might not understand how much stronger they are than humans and may end up killing someone during what they thought was harmless playtime.
They may also go mad after living in cages for years and grow tired of not receiving staple food allotments after failing to perform the perfect trick, and may seek to teach their trainers a lesson of their own.
Blackfish scientifically explores the nature of orcas and the evidence uniformly indicates that they are highly intelligent beings possessing complex emotional matrices, and strong family bonds.
Leave them in the ocean I say, and let them conduct their leviathanesque affairs unabated.
Whalewatching, a fun family friendly option during the right times of the year.
It's a wonderful thing seeing marine life actively and independently engaged.
Seaworld can recuperate lost profits by building an orca themed roller coaster.
Where people sit in killer whale trains.
And are splashed by artificial sea spray at some point during the ride.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
We're the Millers
A cornucopia of unrefined protracted sleaze, non-traditional role models doing their best to advise, their chosen economic insignias problematizing their bourgeois endorsements, choosing questionable yet confident manners of expression, juxtaposed with professional counterparts whose assiduity assumes authority yet lacks respectability, the perseverance of youth humanely automatizing errors in judgment, so many errors in judgment, serendipitously sanctioned, incontinently divine.
The film struggles as its characters acclimatize themselves to each other.
All you really have to do is write about what happens and you're good.
Although you're really not supposed to do that.
There are so many good ideas worked into We're the Millers's script that thinking about what happens afterwards trumps actually watching the film, many of the jokes falling flat, not that there aren't hilarious moments.
For me, it's most significant flaw is a product of the enormous and commendable risks that went into its construction, an attempt to simultaneously deconstruct and build-up cherished yet occasionally hypocritical codes of conduct, the juxtaposition requiring a contraceptive consensus to export its value that never intangibly materializes.
Lacking stability, character development is sacrificed for references and in/direct pop cultural criticisms, leaving it blindly searching for a good episode of Family Guy, rather than focusing on Trailer Park Boys, season 2.
The film struggles as its characters acclimatize themselves to each other.
All you really have to do is write about what happens and you're good.
Although you're really not supposed to do that.
There are so many good ideas worked into We're the Millers's script that thinking about what happens afterwards trumps actually watching the film, many of the jokes falling flat, not that there aren't hilarious moments.
For me, it's most significant flaw is a product of the enormous and commendable risks that went into its construction, an attempt to simultaneously deconstruct and build-up cherished yet occasionally hypocritical codes of conduct, the juxtaposition requiring a contraceptive consensus to export its value that never intangibly materializes.
Lacking stability, character development is sacrificed for references and in/direct pop cultural criticisms, leaving it blindly searching for a good episode of Family Guy, rather than focusing on Trailer Park Boys, season 2.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Elysium
Universal healthcare, workplace health and safety initiatives, and true love are spatially vindicated in Neill Blomkamp's Elysium, wherein the unsympathetic inprickacies of a totalitarian state create an orderly robotic despotic exactitude whose overbearing calculations encourage widespread temporal discontent.
A colony for the wealthiest has been created in space on a station known as Elysium, whose cloistered citizens enjoy incomparable privilege and general legal impunity.
On Elysium, everything is relatively perfect, advanced technologies guaranteeing ideal health and well-being, pools, mansions, extravagance, for all.
For the 99.9% still living on an overpopulated underfunded desolate and impoverished planet Earth, in the year 2154, the law is applied authoritatively and immediately, statistical automatons having replaced the potentially understanding, the struggling worker left with no harmless option but to silently obey.
But even though Elysium possesses enormous technological and financial superiority, Earth's population is too large to ubiquitously suppress, and a group of freedom fighters, whose poverty and encumbering lack of resources necessitates a frugal expedient expensive quid pro quo, covertly flourish in the rubble, using their brilliant hands-on luminosities, to keep a faint degree of hope alive.
Extremes abound.
With characterless villains.
Their attempts to degrade the system even further accidentally nourish an individualistic inductively altruistic messianic thrust, whose attempts to reform were systematically rebuked.
Emphasizing an egalitarian redistribution of resources, and citizenship and advanced healthcare options, for all, Elysium is quite the blockbuster, medically administering a sensationally practical ethical solvency.
Myriad sociopolitical dynamics are built into the script.
Which welds the human factor to the heart of structural change.
A colony for the wealthiest has been created in space on a station known as Elysium, whose cloistered citizens enjoy incomparable privilege and general legal impunity.
On Elysium, everything is relatively perfect, advanced technologies guaranteeing ideal health and well-being, pools, mansions, extravagance, for all.
For the 99.9% still living on an overpopulated underfunded desolate and impoverished planet Earth, in the year 2154, the law is applied authoritatively and immediately, statistical automatons having replaced the potentially understanding, the struggling worker left with no harmless option but to silently obey.
But even though Elysium possesses enormous technological and financial superiority, Earth's population is too large to ubiquitously suppress, and a group of freedom fighters, whose poverty and encumbering lack of resources necessitates a frugal expedient expensive quid pro quo, covertly flourish in the rubble, using their brilliant hands-on luminosities, to keep a faint degree of hope alive.
Extremes abound.
With characterless villains.
Their attempts to degrade the system even further accidentally nourish an individualistic inductively altruistic messianic thrust, whose attempts to reform were systematically rebuked.
Emphasizing an egalitarian redistribution of resources, and citizenship and advanced healthcare options, for all, Elysium is quite the blockbuster, medically administering a sensationally practical ethical solvency.
Myriad sociopolitical dynamics are built into the script.
Which welds the human factor to the heart of structural change.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Blue Jasmine
Financial fermentations can require that lifestyle adjustments be made, Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine perplexedly yet malleably corrugating lead character Jasmine's (Cate Blanchett) descent into madness, competing economic logistics blending the blunt and the beautiful, comedically interspersing experimental affective influences, opportunity knocking, devotion concocting, bitterness imbibing, ripely spoiled.
The truth can be important.
Truths within truths etherealize.
The ethereal cherishes its material foundations.
Specific bases firmly rooted in itinerant psychohistorical discourses.
Jasmine drifts into the past as social interactions manifest a poppy madeleine effect, but their incremental narrative progressions problematize the device's distractions, the plot being secondary to the reflections in In Search of Lost Time.
I've got to find some way to work Proust into the cinema.
The device itself at first tore me away from Blue Jasmine's narrative thread, interrupting scenes which I was hoping would last much longer, at which point I was mildly frustrated by the intrusion, then lured in by the realism, but initially dissatisfied with the resolution.
Within the resolution, when the distraction's coordinated revelations reveal Jasmine's role as ethical agent, the two narratives synthesize then implode, a symbol for the equation of the imaginary and the real, drinking the water of life, causing her to lose her mind consequently.
Which makes the resolution satisfactory, albeit too neat and tidy, apart from the madness, I suppose.
The act of going with the flow is subtly and not-so-subtly lampooned throughout.
With Sally Hawkins (Ginger), Bobby Cannavale (Chili), and Andrew Dice Clay (Augie).
The truth can be important.
Truths within truths etherealize.
The ethereal cherishes its material foundations.
Specific bases firmly rooted in itinerant psychohistorical discourses.
Jasmine drifts into the past as social interactions manifest a poppy madeleine effect, but their incremental narrative progressions problematize the device's distractions, the plot being secondary to the reflections in In Search of Lost Time.
I've got to find some way to work Proust into the cinema.
The device itself at first tore me away from Blue Jasmine's narrative thread, interrupting scenes which I was hoping would last much longer, at which point I was mildly frustrated by the intrusion, then lured in by the realism, but initially dissatisfied with the resolution.
Within the resolution, when the distraction's coordinated revelations reveal Jasmine's role as ethical agent, the two narratives synthesize then implode, a symbol for the equation of the imaginary and the real, drinking the water of life, causing her to lose her mind consequently.
Which makes the resolution satisfactory, albeit too neat and tidy, apart from the madness, I suppose.
The act of going with the flow is subtly and not-so-subtly lampooned throughout.
With Sally Hawkins (Ginger), Bobby Cannavale (Chili), and Andrew Dice Clay (Augie).
Thursday, August 8, 2013
2 Guns
Centripetally incensing two sharp sabre-toothed cynosures to shifting psychotic solipsistic syndicates, vengefully frothing from within and without, taking precautions which establish guidelines ad hoc, a weathered weaponized multileveled liaison, 2 Guns fires, 2 Guns fires back, a Fred Ward cameo keeps things intact, the script sometimes swoons, occasionally falters, through cutbacks monterey jack, transitional malters, but chemistry can be a wonderful thing, and Denzel and the Wahlberg flow smoothly, ching ching, learning to trust what they've often been taught, is foolhardy nonsense, born, to be bought.
They should seriously do more movies together.
Functioning in fraternal unison.
Excited for the sequel.
Their are a bunch of, for lack of a better phrase, prick moments, where one prick talks business with another, both express their angst, neither comes across looking particularly sympathetic, but their points are made, confidently, confidence backed up by bravado.
The soldiering aspect of this Summer's blockbusters, already inculcated by The Wolverine's frenzy, bridges an international divide in 2 Guns, as Trench (Washington) and Stigman (Wahlberg) are forced to bypass the vehicularly qualified Mexican/American border with a group of hopeful workers, reminiscent of a theme from Pacific Rim as well (soldiering also present in Pacific Rim), Trench and Stigman having been abrasively abused by the CIA (Trench), the American Navy (Stigman), and a cartel Kingpin (Edward James Olmos as Papi Greco)(both), leading them to forge a more comprehensive understanding of social democracy, American style.
The 'oak leaves costume' comment worked well, this being a work of fiction.
Strong female role models are lacking within.
Not much of a focus on technology either.
Also, there's no way Trench and Stigman would have been able to kidnap Greco that easily.
The ease with which he was kidnapped does accentuate raw individualistic teamwork however.
Yes, it does.
They should seriously do more movies together.
Functioning in fraternal unison.
Excited for the sequel.
Their are a bunch of, for lack of a better phrase, prick moments, where one prick talks business with another, both express their angst, neither comes across looking particularly sympathetic, but their points are made, confidently, confidence backed up by bravado.
The soldiering aspect of this Summer's blockbusters, already inculcated by The Wolverine's frenzy, bridges an international divide in 2 Guns, as Trench (Washington) and Stigman (Wahlberg) are forced to bypass the vehicularly qualified Mexican/American border with a group of hopeful workers, reminiscent of a theme from Pacific Rim as well (soldiering also present in Pacific Rim), Trench and Stigman having been abrasively abused by the CIA (Trench), the American Navy (Stigman), and a cartel Kingpin (Edward James Olmos as Papi Greco)(both), leading them to forge a more comprehensive understanding of social democracy, American style.
The 'oak leaves costume' comment worked well, this being a work of fiction.
Strong female role models are lacking within.
Not much of a focus on technology either.
Also, there's no way Trench and Stigman would have been able to kidnap Greco that easily.
The ease with which he was kidnapped does accentuate raw individualistic teamwork however.
Yes, it does.
Fruitvale Station
Tragedy strikes a young struggling family in Ryan Coogler's Fruitvale Station, as a tough ex-con (Michael B. Jordan as Oscar Grant) makes the hard decisions necessary to turn his life around.
The film doesn't make him out to be a saint, rather, it delivers a down to earth condensed synopsis of the last few months of his life, during which he comes to terms with the potentially damaging consequences of his extracurricular economic pursuits, and decides it's time to stop selling drugs, find and keep a job, and start applying a higher degree of respect to his partner (Melonie Diaz as Sophina) and daughter (Ariana Neal as Tatiana).
Not so easy to do if you're used to working on your own for more money, but there's respect for working within the law, if you believe in yourself.
Oscar starts to believe but isn't given the chance to make good on his promises after an abusive cop (Kevin Durand as Officer Caruso) unnecessarily roughs up him and his friends one night, another police person then shooting and killing him.
The police had no right to drag them off the train so they were justified in actively voicing their criticisms.
If you do happen to run into a bad lieutenant, however, who has the power to make things difficult for you, and then they start to make things difficult for you, I recommend not saying anything, just keeping quiet, even if they try to provoke you, think of something beautiful, close your eyes after trying to catch their badge number and/or name, and resist passively.
Then they'll have no reason to detain you and if they do anyways just remain quiet until it becomes clear that they have no reason to detain you later on.
There are a lot of situations where this strategy won't work, but if you fight back, things will only get worse.
Freedom is more important than lipping off and the police can take that freedom away.
Or go so far as to take your life, as they did with Oscar Grant.
I'm assuming that in many cases what I'm writing here doesn't apply because the police aren't going to abuse their authority.
They certainly did in Oscar Grant's case though, he was justified in actively voicing his criticisms, and should be currently working and taking care of his family, in the land of the free.
The film doesn't make him out to be a saint, rather, it delivers a down to earth condensed synopsis of the last few months of his life, during which he comes to terms with the potentially damaging consequences of his extracurricular economic pursuits, and decides it's time to stop selling drugs, find and keep a job, and start applying a higher degree of respect to his partner (Melonie Diaz as Sophina) and daughter (Ariana Neal as Tatiana).
Not so easy to do if you're used to working on your own for more money, but there's respect for working within the law, if you believe in yourself.
Oscar starts to believe but isn't given the chance to make good on his promises after an abusive cop (Kevin Durand as Officer Caruso) unnecessarily roughs up him and his friends one night, another police person then shooting and killing him.
The police had no right to drag them off the train so they were justified in actively voicing their criticisms.
If you do happen to run into a bad lieutenant, however, who has the power to make things difficult for you, and then they start to make things difficult for you, I recommend not saying anything, just keeping quiet, even if they try to provoke you, think of something beautiful, close your eyes after trying to catch their badge number and/or name, and resist passively.
Then they'll have no reason to detain you and if they do anyways just remain quiet until it becomes clear that they have no reason to detain you later on.
There are a lot of situations where this strategy won't work, but if you fight back, things will only get worse.
Freedom is more important than lipping off and the police can take that freedom away.
Or go so far as to take your life, as they did with Oscar Grant.
I'm assuming that in many cases what I'm writing here doesn't apply because the police aren't going to abuse their authority.
They certainly did in Oscar Grant's case though, he was justified in actively voicing his criticisms, and should be currently working and taking care of his family, in the land of the free.
Friday, August 2, 2013
The Wolverine
A critical plastic treatise on indestructibility, wherein the mighty Wolverine's (Hugh Jackman) regenerative distinction is resolutely compromised, a family's billions intergenerationally contend with their honour, a seductive viper embodies intransitive antidotes, and an adopted perspicuity prognostically makes dire predictions, James Mangold's The Wolverine sentimentalizes Logan's recrudescence, as he reluctantly travels to Japan, to visit, a man whose life he once saved.
Not the best of X-Men films but full of intense scenes which decoratively dilate their doctrine.
Including a wicked-cool high-speed train workout.
For me, it wasn't the trip to the veterinary student that caused Wolverine to begin questioning his mortality, the look on his face as Shingen's (Hiroyuki Sanada) sword punctures his chest lacerating a more penetrating ageless lesion, combatively materializing his countless confrontations with death.
Which strengthens his own conception of honour, reminding him that if he is to die he should die honourably, his encounter with the grizzly earlier on, Wolverine, friend of the bear, laying the foundations of this theme, returned to often enough throughout.
While pointing out how cruel it is to hunt with poison.
But, don't read this if you haven't seen the film, how is it that Professor X (Patrick Stewart) lives again?
He blew up in X-Men: The Last Stand, blew up.
I'm happy to see him back, preferring his approach to Magneto's (Ian McKellen), and am wondering if he transferred his consciousness to Magneto's before his body shattered, and now has the power to create a projection of himself for those by whom he wants to be seen, only after he has stopped the passage of time, which provides a bilateral explanation for how Magneto was able to partially move the chess pieces at the end of X-Men 3, and a rather tight resolution to the Professor X/Magneto conflict, the powers of both leaders adhesively united as one.
Wondering how Mystique will fit into this one.
Her powers must have returned somehow.
Considering watching All of Me again.
Awesome bear scene.
Not the best of X-Men films but full of intense scenes which decoratively dilate their doctrine.
Including a wicked-cool high-speed train workout.
For me, it wasn't the trip to the veterinary student that caused Wolverine to begin questioning his mortality, the look on his face as Shingen's (Hiroyuki Sanada) sword punctures his chest lacerating a more penetrating ageless lesion, combatively materializing his countless confrontations with death.
Which strengthens his own conception of honour, reminding him that if he is to die he should die honourably, his encounter with the grizzly earlier on, Wolverine, friend of the bear, laying the foundations of this theme, returned to often enough throughout.
While pointing out how cruel it is to hunt with poison.
But, don't read this if you haven't seen the film, how is it that Professor X (Patrick Stewart) lives again?
He blew up in X-Men: The Last Stand, blew up.
I'm happy to see him back, preferring his approach to Magneto's (Ian McKellen), and am wondering if he transferred his consciousness to Magneto's before his body shattered, and now has the power to create a projection of himself for those by whom he wants to be seen, only after he has stopped the passage of time, which provides a bilateral explanation for how Magneto was able to partially move the chess pieces at the end of X-Men 3, and a rather tight resolution to the Professor X/Magneto conflict, the powers of both leaders adhesively united as one.
Wondering how Mystique will fit into this one.
Her powers must have returned somehow.
Considering watching All of Me again.
Awesome bear scene.
Monday, July 29, 2013
The Way Way Back
A blunt invasive school-of-hard-knocks step-father imbroglio pejoratively and lasciviously attempts to assert control in Jim Rash and Nat Faxon's dark The Way Way Back, as quasi-conjugal security and stability adjudicates the virtues of its commitment, the historical socializations of both partners and the ways in which they complicate their attempts to activate an ideal contentiously affecting their potentially idyllic summer vacation, a cool misunderstood reserved teen (Liam James as Duncan) struggling his way through, while the bumbling and the beautiful accelerate the malaise.
But a job is discovered, and at this job a carefree yet hardworking cast of endearing lifers collegially coordinate a campy composure, confident and comedic, an freewheeling foil for the judgments of the hyperparticular, wistfully deconstructing their neurotic preoccupations.
I was having trouble coming up with a way to describe The Way Way Back's disconcerting yet feasible obtuse accumulative demeanour, but one scene stylizes this insouciance well.
A fun working day at Water Wizz Waterpark comes to an end, yet the camera suddenly focuses on a young child crying, tantrumly juxtaposing the happy sequence with raw temporal trepidation, editing by Tatiana S. Riegel.
It can easily slip by unnoticed, but if consciously observed, provides a quintessential calibration, which persuasively gesticulates an in/authentically sincere dialectic.
First film I've seen with Rob Corddry (Kip) where he doesn't steal multiple scenes, and it was troubling to see Steve Carell (Trent) playing someone with no redeeming qualities whatsoever (I've only ever watched the British version of The Office).
Sam Rockwell (Owen) and the eye-patch kid (River Alexander as Peter) steal the show.
While watching Rockwell's performance I started to think that he should square off against Ryan Reynolds in a fast-paced kinetic free-flowing homage to jocular jouissance where they're both interested in Carey Mulligan whose a secret lesbian playing them and doting after someone else, directed by Ruben Fleischer.
It could work people!
But a job is discovered, and at this job a carefree yet hardworking cast of endearing lifers collegially coordinate a campy composure, confident and comedic, an freewheeling foil for the judgments of the hyperparticular, wistfully deconstructing their neurotic preoccupations.
I was having trouble coming up with a way to describe The Way Way Back's disconcerting yet feasible obtuse accumulative demeanour, but one scene stylizes this insouciance well.
A fun working day at Water Wizz Waterpark comes to an end, yet the camera suddenly focuses on a young child crying, tantrumly juxtaposing the happy sequence with raw temporal trepidation, editing by Tatiana S. Riegel.
It can easily slip by unnoticed, but if consciously observed, provides a quintessential calibration, which persuasively gesticulates an in/authentically sincere dialectic.
First film I've seen with Rob Corddry (Kip) where he doesn't steal multiple scenes, and it was troubling to see Steve Carell (Trent) playing someone with no redeeming qualities whatsoever (I've only ever watched the British version of The Office).
Sam Rockwell (Owen) and the eye-patch kid (River Alexander as Peter) steal the show.
While watching Rockwell's performance I started to think that he should square off against Ryan Reynolds in a fast-paced kinetic free-flowing homage to jocular jouissance where they're both interested in Carey Mulligan whose a secret lesbian playing them and doting after someone else, directed by Ruben Fleischer.
It could work people!
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Unfinished Song
Routine.
Rock solid routine.
Never changing, never yielding, always the same cantankerous affect, unless he's spending time with his loving devoted wife Marion (Vanessa Redgrave), which is what he does most of the time.
Who sings in a choir.
But when she's diagnosed with terminal cancer and her health begins to rapidly deteriorate, Arthur (Terence Stamp) must simultaneously bat heads with both a crushing sense of helplessness, crippling emotional dynamite, and his rather morose relationship with his only son, James (Christopher Eccleston).
And yes, this guy's a prick.
A loveable curmudgeon he is not, Unfinished Song's script blandly interring a characterless ice age, locked in a cage, a glacial, barricade.
Only the power of music can regenerate his hearty husbandry afterwards, and the film's best feature, the jovial, ebullient, non-traditional choir, lead by the young adventurous Elizabeth (Gemma Arterton) with whom Arthur strikes up a somewhat creepy friendship, is positioned to enable some serious, sultry, soul-searching, sentimental metallurgy, reclamatingly extracting a diamond.
Still, Unfinished Song's no As Good as it Gets, too tame and barren to compete with James L. Brooks's noteworthy creation, not that it isn't worth a viewing, for its modest yet surly depiction of marriage, family and friendship.
Bit of a tearjerker.
Rock solid routine.
Never changing, never yielding, always the same cantankerous affect, unless he's spending time with his loving devoted wife Marion (Vanessa Redgrave), which is what he does most of the time.
Who sings in a choir.
But when she's diagnosed with terminal cancer and her health begins to rapidly deteriorate, Arthur (Terence Stamp) must simultaneously bat heads with both a crushing sense of helplessness, crippling emotional dynamite, and his rather morose relationship with his only son, James (Christopher Eccleston).
And yes, this guy's a prick.
A loveable curmudgeon he is not, Unfinished Song's script blandly interring a characterless ice age, locked in a cage, a glacial, barricade.
Only the power of music can regenerate his hearty husbandry afterwards, and the film's best feature, the jovial, ebullient, non-traditional choir, lead by the young adventurous Elizabeth (Gemma Arterton) with whom Arthur strikes up a somewhat creepy friendship, is positioned to enable some serious, sultry, soul-searching, sentimental metallurgy, reclamatingly extracting a diamond.
Still, Unfinished Song's no As Good as it Gets, too tame and barren to compete with James L. Brooks's noteworthy creation, not that it isn't worth a viewing, for its modest yet surly depiction of marriage, family and friendship.
Bit of a tearjerker.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Kapringen (A Hijacking)
Pirates, sailing the seven seas, or the Indian Ocean in this case, in search of bountiful booty, navigate, locate, negotiate.
Their hostages crew a vessel of little value in the projections of their shipping business, so Tobias Lindholm's Kapringen (A Hijacking) shrewdly economizes a bureaucratic humanism.
Leading the company's negotiating team, contrary to the advice of the expert they hire, is company representative Peter C. Ludvigsen (Søren Malling), whose unassailable acumen accrues early on, but his superlative skills have never prioritized pirates.
The advice is to sternly yet non-confrontationally play hardball, and stern yet non-confrontational hardball is played, leaving the captives and their families submerged in agonizing limbo.
The film poses the question, "does Ludvigsen proceed within humanistic parameters, delicately balancing an incisive international reputation with the needs of terrorized workers, seeking to bring them home as quickly as possible, without bristlingly breaking the bank?"
Obviously you can't give into the initial demands of pirates, but Ludvigsen can't seem to comprehend that his genius cannot match this style of adversary, and he delays until everything the expert suggested would happen, happens.
The workers don't even complain about the length of their incarceration, which I initially thought was a problem with the script, but it actually accentuates Ludvigsen's insatiable misplaced resolve, since they're so lugubriously loyal, because of their situation.
Imperceptibly hijacking the bottom line.
Their hostages crew a vessel of little value in the projections of their shipping business, so Tobias Lindholm's Kapringen (A Hijacking) shrewdly economizes a bureaucratic humanism.
Leading the company's negotiating team, contrary to the advice of the expert they hire, is company representative Peter C. Ludvigsen (Søren Malling), whose unassailable acumen accrues early on, but his superlative skills have never prioritized pirates.
The advice is to sternly yet non-confrontationally play hardball, and stern yet non-confrontational hardball is played, leaving the captives and their families submerged in agonizing limbo.
The film poses the question, "does Ludvigsen proceed within humanistic parameters, delicately balancing an incisive international reputation with the needs of terrorized workers, seeking to bring them home as quickly as possible, without bristlingly breaking the bank?"
Obviously you can't give into the initial demands of pirates, but Ludvigsen can't seem to comprehend that his genius cannot match this style of adversary, and he delays until everything the expert suggested would happen, happens.
The workers don't even complain about the length of their incarceration, which I initially thought was a problem with the script, but it actually accentuates Ludvigsen's insatiable misplaced resolve, since they're so lugubriously loyal, because of their situation.
Imperceptibly hijacking the bottom line.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Pacific Rim
Can't decide if this film was brutal, interdimensional, or exceptional, meaning it was fun, if not ludicrous, to watch.
And write about.
A rift has opened up in the Pacific Ocean from which giant monsters from another dimension (Kaijus) emerge to wreak havoc on various coastal cities, displaying a ferocious universal contempt for diplomacy.
They're difficult to stop, so governments around the world pool their resources to create massive 'robots' known as Jaegers, the ultimate Jaeger Bombs, to combat them.
But bureaucracy intervenes, it's decided that the Jaeger program isn't effective, and its funding is cut off, leaving its proponents forced to find alternative revenue streams, so, when a Kaiju is defeated, its body is sold to opportunistic entrepreneurs, one, named Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), his alias chosen from the Carthaginian military commander Hannibal, and the name of his second-favourite Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn.
It is also decided that giant walls should be built to keep the Kaijus out, but the walls can't withstand Kaiju impacts, they're extremely dangerous to create, and desperate workers are forced to compete for the limited number of perilous positions which result in their construction.
By wasting enormous amounts of money constructing walls to keep out hostile entities while demonstrating that the jobs created thereby are rather life threatening, Pacific Rim suggests that the construction of giant walls is pure and simply a bad idea.
The Kaijus remain a threat, however, but they threaten everyone, so practically everyone unites around the military to fight them.
Whatever the case, the message is clear, a threat to the planet's sustainable security could unite the world, different Jaegars from different countries still possessing a flair for the local (or at least culturally specific theme music).
After a scene focusing on the plight of the workers, a beautiful Asian heroine is introduced (Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori), and one of the workers, the one provided with a chance to once again partially command a Jaegar (Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Becket), Jaegar's requiring two pilots functioning as one conscious unit, through drifting, also speaks an Asian language.
Don't know what Pacific Rim's trying to say there.
An oddball scientist and Kaiju enthusiast (Charlie Day as Dr. Newton Geiszler) eventually drifts with a disembodied piece of preserved Kaiju brain to discover that the Kaijus are planning to colonize the Earth because global warming has ruined our environment to such an extent that it's become a perfect match for Kaiju physiology.
Nice touch.
Possibly the best Godzilla movie ever, taking Real Steel to the next level, charming cheese infused with bellicose brawn, where time is a potent factor and group dynamics require a reluctant resilient cohesivity, Pacific Rim seeks no forgiveness for its action, and exfoliates a bombastic, brilliant, banality.
Quotable lines abound.
And write about.
A rift has opened up in the Pacific Ocean from which giant monsters from another dimension (Kaijus) emerge to wreak havoc on various coastal cities, displaying a ferocious universal contempt for diplomacy.
They're difficult to stop, so governments around the world pool their resources to create massive 'robots' known as Jaegers, the ultimate Jaeger Bombs, to combat them.
But bureaucracy intervenes, it's decided that the Jaeger program isn't effective, and its funding is cut off, leaving its proponents forced to find alternative revenue streams, so, when a Kaiju is defeated, its body is sold to opportunistic entrepreneurs, one, named Hannibal Chau (Ron Perlman), his alias chosen from the Carthaginian military commander Hannibal, and the name of his second-favourite Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn.
It is also decided that giant walls should be built to keep the Kaijus out, but the walls can't withstand Kaiju impacts, they're extremely dangerous to create, and desperate workers are forced to compete for the limited number of perilous positions which result in their construction.
By wasting enormous amounts of money constructing walls to keep out hostile entities while demonstrating that the jobs created thereby are rather life threatening, Pacific Rim suggests that the construction of giant walls is pure and simply a bad idea.
The Kaijus remain a threat, however, but they threaten everyone, so practically everyone unites around the military to fight them.
Whatever the case, the message is clear, a threat to the planet's sustainable security could unite the world, different Jaegars from different countries still possessing a flair for the local (or at least culturally specific theme music).
After a scene focusing on the plight of the workers, a beautiful Asian heroine is introduced (Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori), and one of the workers, the one provided with a chance to once again partially command a Jaegar (Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Becket), Jaegar's requiring two pilots functioning as one conscious unit, through drifting, also speaks an Asian language.
Don't know what Pacific Rim's trying to say there.
An oddball scientist and Kaiju enthusiast (Charlie Day as Dr. Newton Geiszler) eventually drifts with a disembodied piece of preserved Kaiju brain to discover that the Kaijus are planning to colonize the Earth because global warming has ruined our environment to such an extent that it's become a perfect match for Kaiju physiology.
Nice touch.
Possibly the best Godzilla movie ever, taking Real Steel to the next level, charming cheese infused with bellicose brawn, where time is a potent factor and group dynamics require a reluctant resilient cohesivity, Pacific Rim seeks no forgiveness for its action, and exfoliates a bombastic, brilliant, banality.
Quotable lines abound.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The Lone Ranger
A naive child's material desires accidentally instigate a collusive capitalistic intercultural catastrophe, as contemporary conditionals refurbish historical hindsights with oratorical laments, and a story is told, details epically bulleted, questions, considerations, responses, internally and externally as the dialogue between listener and storyteller is narratively emboldened, and The Lone Ranger arrives incognito, possessing both lock and key, determined to develop a fair and equitable jurisprudent viaduct, even after it becomes clear that the canyon's been railroaded.
A sincere yet ingenuous circumspective screw, he lacks the pugnacious grit his fellow citizens unconsciously prevaricate, yet is aptly suited for the role of quizzical non sequitur, twisting and turning to fasten himself to the margins.
The film's first 45 minutes are a fast-paced exhilarating hyperkinetic mélange of symbolism and ideology, economically and stereoscopically situated, frothing, gushing, crushing.
The rest awkwardly yet entertainingly condenses myriad systemic tropes, honesty and integrity occupying the position of outcast in a direct no-nonsense Western filmscape (cinematography by Bojan Bazelli), wherein established politicians and lawbreakers represent both sides of an irremediable coin.
Tonto (Johnny Depp) and the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) activate a spiritually guided sense of justice, the former having no recourse to courts of law, the latter dedicated to enabling one.
The mask remains.
Also an imaginative account of what can be created if one frequently visits museums, libraries, art galleries, etc.
While taking an interest in sport.
A sincere yet ingenuous circumspective screw, he lacks the pugnacious grit his fellow citizens unconsciously prevaricate, yet is aptly suited for the role of quizzical non sequitur, twisting and turning to fasten himself to the margins.
The film's first 45 minutes are a fast-paced exhilarating hyperkinetic mélange of symbolism and ideology, economically and stereoscopically situated, frothing, gushing, crushing.
The rest awkwardly yet entertainingly condenses myriad systemic tropes, honesty and integrity occupying the position of outcast in a direct no-nonsense Western filmscape (cinematography by Bojan Bazelli), wherein established politicians and lawbreakers represent both sides of an irremediable coin.
Tonto (Johnny Depp) and the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) activate a spiritually guided sense of justice, the former having no recourse to courts of law, the latter dedicated to enabling one.
The mask remains.
Also an imaginative account of what can be created if one frequently visits museums, libraries, art galleries, etc.
While taking an interest in sport.
Friday, July 12, 2013
The Internship
As versatile exploratory eclectronic dynamics instigate widespread structural changes within the American economy, two salespersons, two heroes, must reconfigure their occupational allegiances, adjusting their garrulous genuflections to an in/directly interactive domain, sticking to their guns while leaving room for error, boldly entering a new domain where Vince Vaughn (Billy McMahon) has never gone before, wherein past general approaches must swiftly absorb sundry divergent nodes and particulars to fasten new understandings to a previously non-existent fluctuating multifaceted computational interface, psychologically constructed on the fly, after which previous sustainable reflexes find themselves transfigured yet productively cogent, as youth and age contend in a transfixed multiplex.
Or Billy and Nick (Owen Wilson) compete for new jobs while working with youthful misfits initially unreceptive to the ethos of the 1980s.
I suppose Mr. Vaughn has gone here before, The Internship bearing remarkable similarities to Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, but this format fits well, and the film contains some hilarious moments.
I didn't like how Billy ditches the team near the end, just like in Dodgeball, but as the team comes together to build him back up, it becomes apparent that he was indeed a good teacher, constructively no longer feeling like a failure as the obvious beneficial affects of his wisecracking salespersonship animate his teammates, a cooperative collegial streamwise dialectic.
The Internship finds a way to interpersonalize doom and gloom forcastes hewed from theorized claims that the net is depersonalizing general social interactions, comedically encoding a face-to-face aesthetic, while incorporating competitive clashes in an asinine yet convivial flashdance.
Not Vaughn's best work, but a fun intergenerational summertime flick, worth checking out for some cheeky commentary and head shaking laughs.
Owen Wilson, also good.
What a feeling.
Or Billy and Nick (Owen Wilson) compete for new jobs while working with youthful misfits initially unreceptive to the ethos of the 1980s.
I suppose Mr. Vaughn has gone here before, The Internship bearing remarkable similarities to Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, but this format fits well, and the film contains some hilarious moments.
I didn't like how Billy ditches the team near the end, just like in Dodgeball, but as the team comes together to build him back up, it becomes apparent that he was indeed a good teacher, constructively no longer feeling like a failure as the obvious beneficial affects of his wisecracking salespersonship animate his teammates, a cooperative collegial streamwise dialectic.
The Internship finds a way to interpersonalize doom and gloom forcastes hewed from theorized claims that the net is depersonalizing general social interactions, comedically encoding a face-to-face aesthetic, while incorporating competitive clashes in an asinine yet convivial flashdance.
Not Vaughn's best work, but a fun intergenerational summertime flick, worth checking out for some cheeky commentary and head shaking laughs.
Owen Wilson, also good.
What a feeling.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
L'Écume des jours (Mood Indigo)
Assembly lines randomly recite a literary legion of improvisationalists who immediately harness their impressions ensemble with the goal of creating a tale of romantic note.
As the awareness of being written gesticulates limitless extraneous sensual amenities suddenly enlighten, becoming subjects of study or being callously yet festively disregarded, foreshadowing the genesis of love's interest.
The amenities coalesce with a practical and ingenious array of irresistible logical displacements whose metaphoric merits urbanely defy any sense of symmetrical cohesion.
What a world, what a world.
A tragic plot does take shape however whose voluminous sorrows, intricately and in/tangibly elaborated upon and refined, bear witness to the indoctrination of the real, whose vice-like grip expedites decay, within.
It's pointless to say that L'Écume des jours (Mood Indigo) should have been more surreal due to its experimental necessarily incoherent design, since its residual plot provides enough relational factors to make its aesthetic accessible, truly as a subject of beauty, and, if I'm not mistaken, Michel Gondry's saying that a minimum layer of consistency and logic enables radical indulgence to support its erratic spontaneity, although the internal despondency was disquieting as the film progressed.
Don't think I'll ever think of indigo again without thinking about this film, or stop searching in vain for a neat pianocktail.
Terraces in the afternoon.
Nothing but time.
As the awareness of being written gesticulates limitless extraneous sensual amenities suddenly enlighten, becoming subjects of study or being callously yet festively disregarded, foreshadowing the genesis of love's interest.
The amenities coalesce with a practical and ingenious array of irresistible logical displacements whose metaphoric merits urbanely defy any sense of symmetrical cohesion.
What a world, what a world.
A tragic plot does take shape however whose voluminous sorrows, intricately and in/tangibly elaborated upon and refined, bear witness to the indoctrination of the real, whose vice-like grip expedites decay, within.
It's pointless to say that L'Écume des jours (Mood Indigo) should have been more surreal due to its experimental necessarily incoherent design, since its residual plot provides enough relational factors to make its aesthetic accessible, truly as a subject of beauty, and, if I'm not mistaken, Michel Gondry's saying that a minimum layer of consistency and logic enables radical indulgence to support its erratic spontaneity, although the internal despondency was disquieting as the film progressed.
Don't think I'll ever think of indigo again without thinking about this film, or stop searching in vain for a neat pianocktail.
Terraces in the afternoon.
Nothing but time.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Frances Ha
Mismatched integrities and harmonious discrepancies awkwardly balance Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha, infuriating yet emancipating missteps and miscues deftly choreographing the undatable's sprightly adaptation to bourgeois vignettes, which catalyze her own artistic vertices.
Forwards, backwards, backwards to move forwards, the other way around, friendships, apprenticeships, the rent.
A comment on commentary, budgets and bivouacs and biology belittling and embowering a transient sense of permanency.
Should one possess an exhaustive knowledge of French prior to reading Proust in order to fully appreciate his crystalline stylistic calaesthetic?
That's best case, but credit should be given to Terence Kilmartin, Andreas Mayor, and D. J. Enright for creating such an accessible English access point in the meantime, incomparably brilliant acts of translation, a poetic compliment to the gen(i)us of both languages.
Just sayin'!
Frances Ha buoyantly yet frantically dissolves convivial points of reference to magnify a being-in-becoming, a fluctuating, stable intransigist.
Dinner with the successful can be that painful.
Good food though.
Yum.
Forwards, backwards, backwards to move forwards, the other way around, friendships, apprenticeships, the rent.
A comment on commentary, budgets and bivouacs and biology belittling and embowering a transient sense of permanency.
Should one possess an exhaustive knowledge of French prior to reading Proust in order to fully appreciate his crystalline stylistic calaesthetic?
That's best case, but credit should be given to Terence Kilmartin, Andreas Mayor, and D. J. Enright for creating such an accessible English access point in the meantime, incomparably brilliant acts of translation, a poetic compliment to the gen(i)us of both languages.
Just sayin'!
Frances Ha buoyantly yet frantically dissolves convivial points of reference to magnify a being-in-becoming, a fluctuating, stable intransigist.
Dinner with the successful can be that painful.
Good food though.
Yum.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
1er amour
Whoa.
Hold on a second.
What the hell just happened?
Trauma, maximized.
Traditional everything, capsized.
An idyllic summer of youthful exploration, satirized.
Desire and the literary imagination, terrorized.
Or distilled, depending on whether or not young Antoine (Loïc Esteves) and Anna (Marianne Fortier) can poetically compute.
The setting is idyllic. Traditional notions of marriage are elevated. The pivotal moment synthesizes far too many constitutional traumatic clefts for Guillaume Sylvestre's 1er amour not to be considered satirical.
While trying to write a breakthrough novel.
Classical music, cicading un/aware.
The shots of the insects etc. innocently foreshadow.
Is M. Sylvestre trying to classically pinpoint a salacious oxymoronic yet foundational postmodern quintessence or simply diagnosing a psychiatrist's dream?
The final image of the boat speeding away, the family unit confined yet in constant motion, offers little guidance.
But that look on his face.
The risk factor, Lothario, focus on the risk factor.
I might have released this in November.
Solid satire.
Hold on a second.
What the hell just happened?
Trauma, maximized.
Traditional everything, capsized.
An idyllic summer of youthful exploration, satirized.
Desire and the literary imagination, terrorized.
Or distilled, depending on whether or not young Antoine (Loïc Esteves) and Anna (Marianne Fortier) can poetically compute.
The setting is idyllic. Traditional notions of marriage are elevated. The pivotal moment synthesizes far too many constitutional traumatic clefts for Guillaume Sylvestre's 1er amour not to be considered satirical.
While trying to write a breakthrough novel.
Classical music, cicading un/aware.
The shots of the insects etc. innocently foreshadow.
Is M. Sylvestre trying to classically pinpoint a salacious oxymoronic yet foundational postmodern quintessence or simply diagnosing a psychiatrist's dream?
The final image of the boat speeding away, the family unit confined yet in constant motion, offers little guidance.
But that look on his face.
The risk factor, Lothario, focus on the risk factor.
I might have released this in November.
Solid satire.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
The East
Professional integrity lands itself a high-level covert assignment, full of danger and risk, wherein it must clandestinely adjudicate its broad range of astute sociological reflexes to infiltrate a stealth pack of humanistic hyperreactivists and expose their audacious whereabouts.
She finds them far too easily, but after coyly yet adhesively nestling, finds herself inductively considering their proactive cause, which seeks stricter much more effective regulations regarding the ways in which big business generates profit.
She works for a rather big business herself and must come to terms with its motives as she becomes increasingly integrated in both domains.
Her partner is frustrated.
Her conscience is bifurcated.
Friendships coalesce.
She is neither arrogant nor weak.
The East melodramatically yet crucially materializes the dissonant underground social dynamics of altruistically pursuing game changing objectives (the comments made by the underground collective occasionally seem at odds with their ethical ideals), bringing some of Terry Eagleton's arguments to life, without shying away from juxtaposing economic with ethical impoverishment.
The scene where Izzy's (Ellen Page) estranged parent jumps in the toxic sludge works well.
Laws can be made to correspond to the goals fought for in this film.
Made and enforced.
Check out Vincent Lam's Tommy Douglas, part of Penguin's Extraordinary Canadians series, and find out what the CCF party did for ordinary hard working citizens of Saskatchewan in a relatively short period of time, when a lot of people thought nothing could be done.
They enacted social democratic change while balancing the budget.
They proceeded cautiously and soundly to legitimize their movement's thrust.
Not that easy to do of course, but there are people all over the world who become rather upset when their water supply turns carcinogenic.
It's just common sense.
She finds them far too easily, but after coyly yet adhesively nestling, finds herself inductively considering their proactive cause, which seeks stricter much more effective regulations regarding the ways in which big business generates profit.
She works for a rather big business herself and must come to terms with its motives as she becomes increasingly integrated in both domains.
Her partner is frustrated.
Her conscience is bifurcated.
Friendships coalesce.
She is neither arrogant nor weak.
The East melodramatically yet crucially materializes the dissonant underground social dynamics of altruistically pursuing game changing objectives (the comments made by the underground collective occasionally seem at odds with their ethical ideals), bringing some of Terry Eagleton's arguments to life, without shying away from juxtaposing economic with ethical impoverishment.
The scene where Izzy's (Ellen Page) estranged parent jumps in the toxic sludge works well.
Laws can be made to correspond to the goals fought for in this film.
Made and enforced.
Check out Vincent Lam's Tommy Douglas, part of Penguin's Extraordinary Canadians series, and find out what the CCF party did for ordinary hard working citizens of Saskatchewan in a relatively short period of time, when a lot of people thought nothing could be done.
They enacted social democratic change while balancing the budget.
They proceeded cautiously and soundly to legitimize their movement's thrust.
Not that easy to do of course, but there are people all over the world who become rather upset when their water supply turns carcinogenic.
It's just common sense.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
The Kings of Summer
United off-kilter offspring.
Clinical bourgeois dexterity.
Juvenile introspective applicatory superciliousness.
Plunging right in.
Two friends and an accompanying oddball run away to the woods for the summer, and, since no one thinks to check for them there, their wilderness survival antics wantonly dipsy-doodle.
Perhaps not wantonly.
The Kings of Summer could have been more wanton.
Wanton at times however, as the daydreamy trouble making instigator must realize that he lacks the instincts of the hunter possessed by his lifelong associate who can't figure out what his problem is after the introduction of a feminine element.
Biaggio (Moises Arias) etherealizes a somewhat useless hands-on constructivism with a pertinent decorative unassuming acumen, best captured by the interpretive dance he releases to the beat of his rhythmic companions's drumming.
They interact as would young idealistic ill-prepared yet stubborn teens who find themselves inhabiting a nimble hardy brash funny neurotic filmic reverie.
The other main feature is Joe's (Nick Robinson) sarcastic jaded controlling super strict live-in family member whose prick of a temperament endears him to none.
Although he does steal a couple of scenes with his complete lack of sensitivity.
Suppose the scenes were meant for him.
He doesn't steal them.
These kids aren't that concerned with electronic devices.
They are able to competently manage a budget for awhile anyways however.
When Joe actually does hunt The Kings of Summer reaches a higher level.
Fun film.
Clinical bourgeois dexterity.
Juvenile introspective applicatory superciliousness.
Plunging right in.
Two friends and an accompanying oddball run away to the woods for the summer, and, since no one thinks to check for them there, their wilderness survival antics wantonly dipsy-doodle.
Perhaps not wantonly.
The Kings of Summer could have been more wanton.
Wanton at times however, as the daydreamy trouble making instigator must realize that he lacks the instincts of the hunter possessed by his lifelong associate who can't figure out what his problem is after the introduction of a feminine element.
Biaggio (Moises Arias) etherealizes a somewhat useless hands-on constructivism with a pertinent decorative unassuming acumen, best captured by the interpretive dance he releases to the beat of his rhythmic companions's drumming.
They interact as would young idealistic ill-prepared yet stubborn teens who find themselves inhabiting a nimble hardy brash funny neurotic filmic reverie.
The other main feature is Joe's (Nick Robinson) sarcastic jaded controlling super strict live-in family member whose prick of a temperament endears him to none.
Although he does steal a couple of scenes with his complete lack of sensitivity.
Suppose the scenes were meant for him.
He doesn't steal them.
These kids aren't that concerned with electronic devices.
They are able to competently manage a budget for awhile anyways however.
When Joe actually does hunt The Kings of Summer reaches a higher level.
Fun film.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Man of Steel
The Man of Steel.
Itinerant and contemplative.
Modest and self-sacrificing.
Sculptor of the spectacularly withdrawn.
Called to action.
Zack Snyder's Man of Steel seeks to altruistically benefit humankind while remaining practically skeptical of their leader's self-serving pretensions.
A 21st century Superman, different from Richard Donner's incarnation, the past continuously and instructively resurfacing, as opposed to being left behind at a certain age.
Like Superman on Facebook.
Prominent features of Superman lore, even his title, are humbly introduced, a sign mentioning Smallville here, an advertisement for LexCorp there, as the film's quasi-historical background subtly reflects Kent's (Henry Cavill) psyche.
Although there's no Jimmy Olsen.
The film confrontationally yet reticently undulates surreal mnemonic passages with sensational graphic carnage, Superman style, as the effected take the time to lend a helping hand, the innocent are humanely taken into consideration, methods of disseminating information multiply, and the ego is intransigently mollified.
The environmental movement finds support as Krypton explodes à cause de rampant resource extraction and later on we find a sole polar bear exploring beside the vestiges of his or her once dependable pack ice.
Jor-El (Russell Crowe) rides a wicked cool H'Raka too.
Solid blend of Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980), paying homage to its most convincing predecessors while leaving the door open for more adventurous avenues of inquiry.
General Zod's (Michael Shannon) still a bit of a dickhole.
Wasn't impressed with the new Ursa (Antje Traue as Faora-Ul).
Some of the supporting cast had more depth in the earlier films.
It's not just that I was 7 years old when I first saw them.
It's not.
Itinerant and contemplative.
Modest and self-sacrificing.
Sculptor of the spectacularly withdrawn.
Called to action.
Zack Snyder's Man of Steel seeks to altruistically benefit humankind while remaining practically skeptical of their leader's self-serving pretensions.
A 21st century Superman, different from Richard Donner's incarnation, the past continuously and instructively resurfacing, as opposed to being left behind at a certain age.
Like Superman on Facebook.
Prominent features of Superman lore, even his title, are humbly introduced, a sign mentioning Smallville here, an advertisement for LexCorp there, as the film's quasi-historical background subtly reflects Kent's (Henry Cavill) psyche.
Although there's no Jimmy Olsen.
The film confrontationally yet reticently undulates surreal mnemonic passages with sensational graphic carnage, Superman style, as the effected take the time to lend a helping hand, the innocent are humanely taken into consideration, methods of disseminating information multiply, and the ego is intransigently mollified.
The environmental movement finds support as Krypton explodes à cause de rampant resource extraction and later on we find a sole polar bear exploring beside the vestiges of his or her once dependable pack ice.
Jor-El (Russell Crowe) rides a wicked cool H'Raka too.
Solid blend of Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980), paying homage to its most convincing predecessors while leaving the door open for more adventurous avenues of inquiry.
General Zod's (Michael Shannon) still a bit of a dickhole.
Wasn't impressed with the new Ursa (Antje Traue as Faora-Ul).
Some of the supporting cast had more depth in the earlier films.
It's not just that I was 7 years old when I first saw them.
It's not.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Epic
The people of the forest, immersed in regenerative evergreen trash talk, immune from the industry of the Stompers, yet still perceptive of their high-flying subterfrugal ways, promoting defensive broad-leaf deciduous synergies, with a staunch sustainable virtuous verdure, to cultivate alimentary symbiotics, and an everlasting intergenerational presence.
The Boggans seek to steal Queen Tara's (Beyoncé Knowles) special pod and awaken it in darkness, thereby sentencing their domain to a putrid epoch of unprecedented decay, during which their malodorous minions will leave the environment in ruin.
A distrusting Stomper's diminutive descension unfurls a wild card in full bloom.
Her realistic encounter with what she considered to be her father's crackpot theories forges deep resplendent rudimentary roots, as well as a cornucopia of friendships.
The profession of safeguarding information is integral to the action.
A living, breathing, biodiverse ecotopia of enchantment and wonder, Epic fumigates unfettered industrial predilections to nurture an arboreal florescence.
Bats get a bad rap though.
Bats are necessary components of a thriving ecosystem and would likely gluttonously feast on Boggans.
I've seen countless bats flying around at dusk and have never had one crash into me.
Mischievous asymmetrical mosquito munchers.
Bats!
The Boggans seek to steal Queen Tara's (Beyoncé Knowles) special pod and awaken it in darkness, thereby sentencing their domain to a putrid epoch of unprecedented decay, during which their malodorous minions will leave the environment in ruin.
A distrusting Stomper's diminutive descension unfurls a wild card in full bloom.
Her realistic encounter with what she considered to be her father's crackpot theories forges deep resplendent rudimentary roots, as well as a cornucopia of friendships.
The profession of safeguarding information is integral to the action.
A living, breathing, biodiverse ecotopia of enchantment and wonder, Epic fumigates unfettered industrial predilections to nurture an arboreal florescence.
Bats get a bad rap though.
Bats are necessary components of a thriving ecosystem and would likely gluttonously feast on Boggans.
I've seen countless bats flying around at dusk and have never had one crash into me.
Mischievous asymmetrical mosquito munchers.
Bats!
Thursday, June 13, 2013
The Lesser Blessed
An isolated inflammatory incident weighs heavy on an Aboriginal teen's conscience while his introverted tendencies and disinterest in his small Northern town's sporty proclivities hinder the smooth development of institutional friendships.
A rough-and-tumble ruffian knows his dark secret and holds it over his head like a combustible cataclysmic rendition.
A practical mistrust of adult male role models heightens the chill pervasive tension while his step-father's commanding yet non-confrontational manner patiently proves that his care is genuine.
There are a couple of great coming-of-age scenes, one, where the youngster in question, Larry Sole (Joel Evans), asks step-father Jed (Benjamin Bratt) for an explanation, which he hesitates to provide due to its grizzly subject matter, but then does, thereby treating Larry with hard-edged respect, and another, where, because of The Lesser Blessed's focus on fighting, drug abuse, hooliganism, and sexual desire, it seems as if the interactive outcome will at least be verbally violent, but when sympathetic reason melts the polarization, a prominent role model begins to take shape.
Jed is contrasted with Larry's teacher who seems like he comes from the South and is ill-prepared for the pressurized seclusion of the Northwest Territories.
Jaded yet convivial crafty confrontations liaise with remote yet age-old ceremonious socializations to foster The Lesser Blessed's adolescent acuity, while incubating an atemporal independent compassion.
With smooth contemporary revitalizations of oral traditions.
Bonding by the campfire.
A rough-and-tumble ruffian knows his dark secret and holds it over his head like a combustible cataclysmic rendition.
A practical mistrust of adult male role models heightens the chill pervasive tension while his step-father's commanding yet non-confrontational manner patiently proves that his care is genuine.
There are a couple of great coming-of-age scenes, one, where the youngster in question, Larry Sole (Joel Evans), asks step-father Jed (Benjamin Bratt) for an explanation, which he hesitates to provide due to its grizzly subject matter, but then does, thereby treating Larry with hard-edged respect, and another, where, because of The Lesser Blessed's focus on fighting, drug abuse, hooliganism, and sexual desire, it seems as if the interactive outcome will at least be verbally violent, but when sympathetic reason melts the polarization, a prominent role model begins to take shape.
Jed is contrasted with Larry's teacher who seems like he comes from the South and is ill-prepared for the pressurized seclusion of the Northwest Territories.
Jaded yet convivial crafty confrontations liaise with remote yet age-old ceremonious socializations to foster The Lesser Blessed's adolescent acuity, while incubating an atemporal independent compassion.
With smooth contemporary revitalizations of oral traditions.
Bonding by the campfire.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
After Earth
Professional militaristic familial dynamics unexpectedly find themselves stranded within a forbidding ravenous planetary panopticon, whose evolutionary criteria must be subsumed then surmounted, as predatory predicaments transform snacks into sentiments, in M. Night Shyamalan's After Earth.
The film's more straightforward.
Establishing a basic super-easy-to-follow far too predictable framework, whose truculent dimensions highlight the potential social impacts of an exhausted environment, it focuses intently on a fearless father (Will Smith) and his spirited son, the only survivors of a craft which crash lands on Earth centuries after humans were forced to flee.
The frame isn't necessarily a problem since After Earth's obviously made for a generalized teenage audience, and I liked the fear speech, but, apart from one scene which indicates that enormous buffaloesque herds have returned, I thought the futuristic depiction of Earth could have used more flora and fauna.
Perhaps due to Epic's contemporaneous release this feature was deliberately limited.
Epic for girls, After Earth for boys?
No comment.
The film's more straightforward.
Establishing a basic super-easy-to-follow far too predictable framework, whose truculent dimensions highlight the potential social impacts of an exhausted environment, it focuses intently on a fearless father (Will Smith) and his spirited son, the only survivors of a craft which crash lands on Earth centuries after humans were forced to flee.
The frame isn't necessarily a problem since After Earth's obviously made for a generalized teenage audience, and I liked the fear speech, but, apart from one scene which indicates that enormous buffaloesque herds have returned, I thought the futuristic depiction of Earth could have used more flora and fauna.
Perhaps due to Epic's contemporaneous release this feature was deliberately limited.
Epic for girls, After Earth for boys?
No comment.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Jagten (The Hunt)
An asphyxiating altercating articulation of innocence incrementally fuels fratricidal flames until an upright loving gregarious educator's life lies holistically in ruin.
Thomas Vinterberg patiently and poignantly crafts a traumatic testament of angelic ostracization as a joyful lifelong friend slowly idealizes the abject.
The childlike recreational pursuits of a supportive communal cohesivity introduced at Jagten's (The Hunt's) outset haunts its terrorized reels in an acerbic antiseptic embodiment of consternated dramatic horror.
Nowhere to go.
No reason to run.
The truth's condemnatory instinct is diatonically disreputed as media sensations are pastorally localized.
Difficult and controversial subject matter.
A didactic tool designed to encourage pause and reflection in order to accentuate the right that one is innocent until proven guilty.
And what can happen if that guilt is assumed inveterately beforehand.
Thomas Vinterberg patiently and poignantly crafts a traumatic testament of angelic ostracization as a joyful lifelong friend slowly idealizes the abject.
The childlike recreational pursuits of a supportive communal cohesivity introduced at Jagten's (The Hunt's) outset haunts its terrorized reels in an acerbic antiseptic embodiment of consternated dramatic horror.
Nowhere to go.
No reason to run.
The truth's condemnatory instinct is diatonically disreputed as media sensations are pastorally localized.
Difficult and controversial subject matter.
A didactic tool designed to encourage pause and reflection in order to accentuate the right that one is innocent until proven guilty.
And what can happen if that guilt is assumed inveterately beforehand.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Mud
Innocent pluck tenderly, loyally, and brazenly clashes with his ideals as their real world applications resoundingly prove despairing.
Not that they aren't still omnipresent, as vital to those whose desires and incomes problematize their sustainability as to those whose iron will does not, uncompromised dedication liaising with starvation and prevarication to slowly devastate an unyielding devotion, destructive acts of retributive jealousy increasing in proportion with their subject's maniacal progressions, with no recourse to substantial alternative educational or economic detachments, to productively cover things up.
Mud's (Matthew McConaughey) love for Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) defines his sense of purpose as a career or a pastime might define another, and only after seeing his self naively rematerialized in the form of a 14-year-old risking everything to help him, does difference dawn.
Jeff Nichol's Mud ruggedly evaporates an accidental transient symbiotic bilateral pact, having uplifted both partners in its unwritten momentary apotheosis.
Seen through a child's eyes, many of the film's sequences are oversimplified.
Strength of character compensates.
Mandatory for lovers of romantic impoverished hard-hitting innovative coming of age bucolics.
Not that they aren't still omnipresent, as vital to those whose desires and incomes problematize their sustainability as to those whose iron will does not, uncompromised dedication liaising with starvation and prevarication to slowly devastate an unyielding devotion, destructive acts of retributive jealousy increasing in proportion with their subject's maniacal progressions, with no recourse to substantial alternative educational or economic detachments, to productively cover things up.
Mud's (Matthew McConaughey) love for Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) defines his sense of purpose as a career or a pastime might define another, and only after seeing his self naively rematerialized in the form of a 14-year-old risking everything to help him, does difference dawn.
Jeff Nichol's Mud ruggedly evaporates an accidental transient symbiotic bilateral pact, having uplifted both partners in its unwritten momentary apotheosis.
Seen through a child's eyes, many of the film's sequences are oversimplified.
Strength of character compensates.
Mandatory for lovers of romantic impoverished hard-hitting innovative coming of age bucolics.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Kon-Tiki
Since a young age I've preserved a healthy skepticism regarding whether or not Columbus discovered America.
As I'm sure many others have as well.
Noting that many of my interlocutors have always maintained a healthy degree of mistrust regarding anything people other than themselves happen to mention, and figuring that this is nothing new, that people have always cultivated such suspicions, it seems hard for me to believe that everyone agreed that the Earth was flat way back when, and that a bunch of disenfranchised trouble makers never simply jumped on a boat to sail the open unrecorded seas, forbidding prohibitions be damned.
I know there are continents on the other side of whatever ocean.
But if I didn't, yet I knew there were islands in the middle of mainland lakes, I could easily hypothesize that similar landmasses existed offshore, and confidently set out in search of their voluptuous bounties.
Thinking ancient cultures didn't travel open waters trading and communicating with each other ir/regularly is too Eurocentric a viewpoint for my tastes, too reliant on the written word, as it was for Thor Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Hagen) in Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Kon-Tiki, who sets out to prove that Indigenous Polynesians already knew, thanks to their reliable oral traditions, that some of their islands were settled from the East as opposed to the West, by ancient Peruvians bravely crossing the Pacific.
Thor boldly proceeds with a crew of 5 adventurers, on a raft, across the Pacific, with no support from the scientific communities of his day, risking everything to expand certain understandings.
Kon-Tiki congenially presents a family friendly bit too comfortable narrative considering wherein hope, faith, inspiration, and truth miraculously guide a stalwart team, with endless shots of their leader (Norway's Peter O'Toole?), and the crabby sentiments of a pesky stowaway.
Its best sequence shows how broken attachments lead to immediate retributions whose consequences, instigated after a confrontational organizational challenge, pits trust against doubt, the same doubt that Heyerdahl represents regarding established truths of his time, said trust triumphing, and said consequences, the situation demanding an immediate life saving response, prove remarkable fortuitous, if not generally foolhardy.
It also productively examines group dynamics for although Herman Watzinger's (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) doubt threatens his group's cohesiveness at times, his continuing presence provides them with the information they need to avoid disaster as they approach their destination, thereby elevating the film's conception of a critical yet devout unified team.
A contemporary established theory that I often hear referenced that seems suspect to me suggests that North and South America were populated by peoples walking across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia.
I've also heard other people suspect this theory and am drawing on such conversations (and writings) in presenting this idea.
And I mean, seriously, enough people crossed this bridge to cultivate multidimensional populations from Tuktoyaktuk to Patagonia, walking all the way, only crossing a land bridge between East Asia and Alaska?
Makes more sense to me that there were already peoples inhabiting North and South America and some eventually walked over the bridge to join them.
Does anyone dispute that Australia's Indigenous population lived there for millennia before first European contact?
Worth investigating anyways.
As I'm sure many others have as well.
Noting that many of my interlocutors have always maintained a healthy degree of mistrust regarding anything people other than themselves happen to mention, and figuring that this is nothing new, that people have always cultivated such suspicions, it seems hard for me to believe that everyone agreed that the Earth was flat way back when, and that a bunch of disenfranchised trouble makers never simply jumped on a boat to sail the open unrecorded seas, forbidding prohibitions be damned.
I know there are continents on the other side of whatever ocean.
But if I didn't, yet I knew there were islands in the middle of mainland lakes, I could easily hypothesize that similar landmasses existed offshore, and confidently set out in search of their voluptuous bounties.
Thinking ancient cultures didn't travel open waters trading and communicating with each other ir/regularly is too Eurocentric a viewpoint for my tastes, too reliant on the written word, as it was for Thor Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Hagen) in Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Kon-Tiki, who sets out to prove that Indigenous Polynesians already knew, thanks to their reliable oral traditions, that some of their islands were settled from the East as opposed to the West, by ancient Peruvians bravely crossing the Pacific.
Thor boldly proceeds with a crew of 5 adventurers, on a raft, across the Pacific, with no support from the scientific communities of his day, risking everything to expand certain understandings.
Kon-Tiki congenially presents a family friendly bit too comfortable narrative considering wherein hope, faith, inspiration, and truth miraculously guide a stalwart team, with endless shots of their leader (Norway's Peter O'Toole?), and the crabby sentiments of a pesky stowaway.
Its best sequence shows how broken attachments lead to immediate retributions whose consequences, instigated after a confrontational organizational challenge, pits trust against doubt, the same doubt that Heyerdahl represents regarding established truths of his time, said trust triumphing, and said consequences, the situation demanding an immediate life saving response, prove remarkable fortuitous, if not generally foolhardy.
It also productively examines group dynamics for although Herman Watzinger's (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) doubt threatens his group's cohesiveness at times, his continuing presence provides them with the information they need to avoid disaster as they approach their destination, thereby elevating the film's conception of a critical yet devout unified team.
A contemporary established theory that I often hear referenced that seems suspect to me suggests that North and South America were populated by peoples walking across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia.
I've also heard other people suspect this theory and am drawing on such conversations (and writings) in presenting this idea.
And I mean, seriously, enough people crossed this bridge to cultivate multidimensional populations from Tuktoyaktuk to Patagonia, walking all the way, only crossing a land bridge between East Asia and Alaska?
Makes more sense to me that there were already peoples inhabiting North and South America and some eventually walked over the bridge to join them.
Does anyone dispute that Australia's Indigenous population lived there for millennia before first European contact?
Worth investigating anyways.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
The Great Gatsby
Extravagant timidity humbly refrains an opulent recourse to true's love sustain.
Spare no expense, attract the best and the brightest, the emotion's too deep, the goal of the tightest.
Business contacts whose illicit elixirs submerge their protractive congenial mixtures.
Sponsor time honoured traditions of courtship, implying ambitious circuitous quartets.
As fate's lavish weave blends with chance's reprieve, the noblest of dreams hail permanency.
For people, and Queens, and the prettiest things.
Preferred Australia and Moulin Rouge!
Spare no expense, attract the best and the brightest, the emotion's too deep, the goal of the tightest.
Business contacts whose illicit elixirs submerge their protractive congenial mixtures.
Sponsor time honoured traditions of courtship, implying ambitious circuitous quartets.
As fate's lavish weave blends with chance's reprieve, the noblest of dreams hail permanency.
For people, and Queens, and the prettiest things.
Preferred Australia and Moulin Rouge!
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Star Trek Into Darkness
Star Trek, born again.
Was a bit disappointed that Star Trek was born again with the crew from The Original Series, but it's not like there aren't manifold versions of Hamlet out there, Batman will likely live to see another day, Hawaii Five-O is back (I've never seen either of the series), and Beatles and Rolling Stones cover bands will likely continue to sing for centuries to come.
I was hoping to see the Rolling Stones in Montréal next month but the cheapest seat I could find near the rafters costs over 200 hundred dollars. I paid 34 dollars to see them in 1994.
Bring on the cover bands.
Star Trek Into Darkness confidently gambles that the success of its predecessor paved the way for it to take greater liberties with Star Trek's most sacred moments, and I'm assuming every Trekkie has already seen the film twice, and are already dividing into different fastidious factions, each with their own take on the reintroduction of Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch), and the pastiche of Star Trek II's classic ending, so I'm discussing related plot details.
In my opinion, the new cast and crew of the Starship Enterprise were ill-equipped and unready to incorporate this classic ending, nor the famous Khan scream, and their sophomoric attempts to do so, more concerned with travelling at warp speed than taking the time to generate genuine emotion, even though the trap they fall into justifies this dependence, and within the film the new cast and crew is ill-equipped and unready to confront their adversaries, were, still, disheartening.
The cameo from Leonard Nimoy didn't suck me in.
Giving Chekov (Anton Yelchin) and Sulu (John Cho) expanded responsibilities while leaving them primarily in the background heightened the tension.
The who-should-be-captain dialogue between Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) was played out in the last film.
And McCoy's (Karl Urban) all wrong (no offense to Karl Urban, he does his best with the material).
Still though, if they hadn't touched Star Trek II's ending, and classic Khan scream, Into Darkness could have been quite different.
And it's not that I didn't think the fight between Khan and Spock was awesome. It's always awesome when Spock suddenly fights in a Star Trek moment, since you suddenly remember that not only is he one of the phenomenon's smartest humanoid characters, he's also one of the toughest.
Giving Carol Marcus (Alice Eve) a strong supporting hopefully continuous role was a great idea.
Introducing consequential conflict amongst the senior staff, Scotty (Simon Pegg) and Kirk, went beyond the professional dynamics found in the films featuring the cast of The Original Series, and since this consequential conflict sees constructive results, it fits nicely with contemporary conflict management theories, while directly encouraging freewill.
Benedict Cumberbatch impresses as Khan.
Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Spock's relationship reappears but isn't focused upon, rather, it comically ameliorates an otherwise typical shuttlecraft descension, accentuating the difficulties of sustaining romantic ties to people with whom you work, while giving Spock a memorable opportunity to advance his coherent logic.
Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) provides a pestiferous dimension rarely seen within the Federation, thereby diversifying Star Trek's internal cohesions, while preempting a sequel, sigh, where there's a war with the Klingons.
This seems more like Picard territory, where there's a possible war, but Picard finds a way to negotiate a peaceful settlement.
Much too early for Picard however.
Perhaps the Borg will attack midway resulting in a sudden pact between Klingons and the Federation.
Kirk never fought the Borg.
Please don't revisit the Nexus.
But a different ending. Something radically different. This would have lessened the cheesy kitsch factor and not caused me to immediately remove my 3D glasses.
The Wrath of Khan is the only Star Trek film that can stand on its own outside the Star Trek parallax.
Discourses of the sacred.
Khan!
Monday, May 20, 2013
Blackbird
Examining the abysmal side of small town teenage individuality, as the newer kid, a goth stranger from the city who can't adjust to hushing up, hunting, and playing hockey, falls for a girl who likes him but also makes sure to attend every game.
Her partner, and the entire hockey team, are none to amused, and regularly threaten and humiliate him physically, thereby intensifying his sense of isolation.
Young Sean Randall (Connor Jessup) tries not to back down.
Having no social outlet for his frustrations besides his leave-things-alone loving yet integrated father, he starts an online journal, venting through revenge fantasies and continues to pursue Deanna Roy (Alexia Fast).
The threats continue, his texts childishly denote violence, the police arrest him, he's locked up, he has to remain for months awaiting trial, he's assaulted and outcasted inside, his lawyer cluelessly recommends a guilty plea to get him out, he's tired of the beatings and the unrelenting anxiety so he agrees even though he's innocent, he's released, now the entire town thinks he's a psycho, he's too in love to follow the restrictions of his restraining order, his mother hardly seems to care, he's locked up again, Blackbird is a worst case scenario.
But it doesn't back away from offering legitimate fictionalized contemporary post-Columbine theorizations.
It takes on difficult sociological subject matter and starkly yet provocatively delivers.
It romantically demonstrates how youthful desire has trouble curtailing its pursuits.
And the ending provides a concrete heartbreaking traumatized apathetic helpless rigid mechanical characterization of strength whose embattled fortitude deromanticizes and cauterizes resistance.
He's just a kid.
You obviously have to worry about kids going Columbine but if you arrested everyone of them who expressed a desire to get back at the bullies who make their lives miserable, you'd have to arrest tens of thousands of people who were likely never going to do anything illegal.
In such instances, I recommend multiple viewings of Revenge of the Nerds.
Disturbing, demented, dissonance.
A chilling look at a non-traditional individual's heartland.
Her partner, and the entire hockey team, are none to amused, and regularly threaten and humiliate him physically, thereby intensifying his sense of isolation.
Young Sean Randall (Connor Jessup) tries not to back down.
Having no social outlet for his frustrations besides his leave-things-alone loving yet integrated father, he starts an online journal, venting through revenge fantasies and continues to pursue Deanna Roy (Alexia Fast).
The threats continue, his texts childishly denote violence, the police arrest him, he's locked up, he has to remain for months awaiting trial, he's assaulted and outcasted inside, his lawyer cluelessly recommends a guilty plea to get him out, he's tired of the beatings and the unrelenting anxiety so he agrees even though he's innocent, he's released, now the entire town thinks he's a psycho, he's too in love to follow the restrictions of his restraining order, his mother hardly seems to care, he's locked up again, Blackbird is a worst case scenario.
But it doesn't back away from offering legitimate fictionalized contemporary post-Columbine theorizations.
It takes on difficult sociological subject matter and starkly yet provocatively delivers.
It romantically demonstrates how youthful desire has trouble curtailing its pursuits.
And the ending provides a concrete heartbreaking traumatized apathetic helpless rigid mechanical characterization of strength whose embattled fortitude deromanticizes and cauterizes resistance.
He's just a kid.
You obviously have to worry about kids going Columbine but if you arrested everyone of them who expressed a desire to get back at the bullies who make their lives miserable, you'd have to arrest tens of thousands of people who were likely never going to do anything illegal.
In such instances, I recommend multiple viewings of Revenge of the Nerds.
Disturbing, demented, dissonance.
A chilling look at a non-traditional individual's heartland.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Still Mine
Couldn't help but wonder what Michael McGowan's Still Mine would have been like had it been made in the States.
The narrative introduces a stern yet friendly do-it-yourself farmer named Craig Morrison (James Cromwell) and his loving wife Irene (Geneviève Bujold), 2 of their 7 children, and the traditional family structure that intergenerationally holds them together.
Craig is 86 and in incredible shape.
When it becomes apparent that his home can no longer safely accommodate Irene, due to her ailing health, he decides to build a new one, on his own, going so far as to cut down the requisite trees, by himself, this guy's hardcore.
But bureaucratic regulations and an intransigent unsympathetic inspector (Jason X's Jonathan Potts as Rick) go to ridiculously meticulous lengths in their adherence to related laws, even after Mr. Morrison yields to their demands, doing everything he can to uphold them, paying hefty fees along the way.
Craig Morrison is exceptional.
He's 86.
He's in better shape than I will ever be.
He doesn't only know how to build a solidly constructed immaculately modest house, he can do it, he starts doing it, he does it.
Still Mine makes a great case for the fact that some individuals possess the necessary skills and knowledge to develop intricate ideas and see them through, on their own land, even though they may not hold related educational credentials and may be unaware of the legal consequences of doing so at first, yet if they are still willing to abide by said consequences after discovering their existence, they should therefore be given some productive leeway by obnoxious young bucks with nothing better to do but cross every t.
Mr. Morrison yields.
He pays.
He plays ball.
Weapons aren't involved, the film's not called The Grandfather Clause, he has the wherewithal, and doesn't go ape shit.
I didn't like how he cut down old growth spruce but that's another matter.
He makes a funny point about how many of the houses built in St. Martins New Brunswick without a National Building Code 200 years ago are still standing.
Still Mine also romantically nurtures a devoted conception of marriage, which is difficult for me to understand after all that Proust.
Not that everyone isn't devoted to marriage in In Search of Lost Time.
They simply employ a counterintuitive methodology in their application of various codes of conduct.
The narrative introduces a stern yet friendly do-it-yourself farmer named Craig Morrison (James Cromwell) and his loving wife Irene (Geneviève Bujold), 2 of their 7 children, and the traditional family structure that intergenerationally holds them together.
Craig is 86 and in incredible shape.
When it becomes apparent that his home can no longer safely accommodate Irene, due to her ailing health, he decides to build a new one, on his own, going so far as to cut down the requisite trees, by himself, this guy's hardcore.
But bureaucratic regulations and an intransigent unsympathetic inspector (Jason X's Jonathan Potts as Rick) go to ridiculously meticulous lengths in their adherence to related laws, even after Mr. Morrison yields to their demands, doing everything he can to uphold them, paying hefty fees along the way.
Craig Morrison is exceptional.
He's 86.
He's in better shape than I will ever be.
He doesn't only know how to build a solidly constructed immaculately modest house, he can do it, he starts doing it, he does it.
Still Mine makes a great case for the fact that some individuals possess the necessary skills and knowledge to develop intricate ideas and see them through, on their own land, even though they may not hold related educational credentials and may be unaware of the legal consequences of doing so at first, yet if they are still willing to abide by said consequences after discovering their existence, they should therefore be given some productive leeway by obnoxious young bucks with nothing better to do but cross every t.
Mr. Morrison yields.
He pays.
He plays ball.
Weapons aren't involved, the film's not called The Grandfather Clause, he has the wherewithal, and doesn't go ape shit.
I didn't like how he cut down old growth spruce but that's another matter.
He makes a funny point about how many of the houses built in St. Martins New Brunswick without a National Building Code 200 years ago are still standing.
Still Mine also romantically nurtures a devoted conception of marriage, which is difficult for me to understand after all that Proust.
Not that everyone isn't devoted to marriage in In Search of Lost Time.
They simply employ a counterintuitive methodology in their application of various codes of conduct.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Wrong
Small talk.
Having the time.
Honestly expressing oneself.
A hard day's work.
The first film that I've seen that takes banal quotidian frustrations and places them generally within a framework resembling something like a bourgeois displacement of Twin Peak's Black/White Lodge, wherein neuroses and hyperanalytic tendencies proceed, full-speed-ahead, even as corporeal and material structures inexplicably change shape and regenerate, the insignificant theoretically becomes essential, and declarations of counterproductive antisocial lassitudes bifurcate, with explanations required and clarifications sought after, a face burned by acid, a formula for hard wiring permanent love, detectives hired to figure out what's already known to have taken place, figure 13-d, it (Wrong) could be qualified as Kafkaesque but the transitions, the hilarious transitions, director Quentin Dupieux isn't only a master of framing confused asymmetrical curious yet despondent facial expressions, again and again and again, it keeps working, he does the same thing when transitioning from scene to scene, meaning that something ornery takes place, the mood becomes anxious, and then we're back to a comfortable pastoral cheery suburban image, overflowing with stability and integrity, happiness and relaxation, there's no job but the bills are paid, let's start again fresh, like you're having a picnic in a meadow, lakeside, surrounded by elk wearing glasses, before hero Dolph Springer (Jack Plotnick) must once again attempt to socially interact, and everyone's notable lack of expertise, or bizarre exhaustive supernatural comprehensions, violently yet sweetly cover things up, like a thunder storm bombarding an idyllic mountain stream.
Pets are important.
Routines are important.
It's important to ask questions.
Scientific exploration has no limits.
Caught somewhere between the anal retentive and the blissfully vacant, Wrong appreciates the ways in which the extroverted ideal (see Susan Cain's informative Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking [I love this book!]) has been adopted by oh so many people who were not born to embrace it, but still adamantly attempt to do so.
The key seems to be to buy a pet.
Love it.
End up crushed when it disappears.
And revel in ecstasy when it returns.
Magic: the magic.
Best comedy I've seen in awhile. Stand Up Guys is just as good, but Wrong does it without star power.
Accept for William Fichtner.
Who is now one of my favourite actors.
Almost forgot about the final song.
Still laughing. I'll be thinking about this film and laughing for months.
Dependability.
Wrong defines dependability.
It does.
Having the time.
Honestly expressing oneself.
A hard day's work.
The first film that I've seen that takes banal quotidian frustrations and places them generally within a framework resembling something like a bourgeois displacement of Twin Peak's Black/White Lodge, wherein neuroses and hyperanalytic tendencies proceed, full-speed-ahead, even as corporeal and material structures inexplicably change shape and regenerate, the insignificant theoretically becomes essential, and declarations of counterproductive antisocial lassitudes bifurcate, with explanations required and clarifications sought after, a face burned by acid, a formula for hard wiring permanent love, detectives hired to figure out what's already known to have taken place, figure 13-d, it (Wrong) could be qualified as Kafkaesque but the transitions, the hilarious transitions, director Quentin Dupieux isn't only a master of framing confused asymmetrical curious yet despondent facial expressions, again and again and again, it keeps working, he does the same thing when transitioning from scene to scene, meaning that something ornery takes place, the mood becomes anxious, and then we're back to a comfortable pastoral cheery suburban image, overflowing with stability and integrity, happiness and relaxation, there's no job but the bills are paid, let's start again fresh, like you're having a picnic in a meadow, lakeside, surrounded by elk wearing glasses, before hero Dolph Springer (Jack Plotnick) must once again attempt to socially interact, and everyone's notable lack of expertise, or bizarre exhaustive supernatural comprehensions, violently yet sweetly cover things up, like a thunder storm bombarding an idyllic mountain stream.
Pets are important.
Routines are important.
It's important to ask questions.
Scientific exploration has no limits.
Caught somewhere between the anal retentive and the blissfully vacant, Wrong appreciates the ways in which the extroverted ideal (see Susan Cain's informative Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking [I love this book!]) has been adopted by oh so many people who were not born to embrace it, but still adamantly attempt to do so.
The key seems to be to buy a pet.
Love it.
End up crushed when it disappears.
And revel in ecstasy when it returns.
Magic: the magic.
Best comedy I've seen in awhile. Stand Up Guys is just as good, but Wrong does it without star power.
Accept for William Fichtner.
Who is now one of my favourite actors.
Almost forgot about the final song.
Still laughing. I'll be thinking about this film and laughing for months.
Dependability.
Wrong defines dependability.
It does.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Iron Man 3
Adding a surprisingly human dimension to Tony Stark's (Robert Downey Jr.) Iron Man, through which relatable stresses such as panic attacks are relativistically normalized through recourse to the exceptional, Iron Man 3 finds him suffering from the aftershocks of his debut with the Avengers, aftershocks which force him to begrudgingly confront his mortality.
Kind of.
At first, he compensates by stretching his extroverted insignia to the limits by trash talking a terrorist who then uses his arsenal to obliterate the Stark residence, leaving him theoretically helpless after he barely escapes.
He is exceptional however and thanks to an avenue of inquiry established by his prior research, fortunately lands himself in a crucial situation wherein his gifts are practically vetted.
Screenplay writers Drew Pearce and Shane Black (who also directed) do a great job here of rationally justifying a seemingly highly improbable scenario.
Colonel James Rhodes's (Don Cheadle) dialogue with Stark is used to rationally justify another seemingly highly improbable scenario later on as well.
They also play with the device which sees franchises seeking to extend their limits by introducing youth (something remarkably different more generally) to nurture a newfound pluralization.
Yet shortly after doing this it becomes clear that the Iron Man films will not be (heavily) relying on such devices, as Tony harshly yet avuncularly explains.
Excellent confident synthesis of the particular (the Iron Man films) and the universal (movie trilogies generally).
Some of the minor characters shockingly receive a lot of depth as well as comedic components of Machete's narrative unreel.
The film makes it clear that experimenting on humans is unethical by attaching this component of its narrative to the villains, villains who were created by Stark's callous self-obsession.
In the end, Stark perfects their methods, however, thereby leaving the film in an ambiguous domain wherein which it's difficult to discern what it's clearly stating.
Clarity is important regarding such matters.
The protagonists use technology to differentiate themselves, the villains, experimental performance enhancing pseudodrugs.
These drugs themselves were developed using nefarious methods, and in my opinion, the film would have been stronger if Stark had destroyed everything having to do with them, even though he was indirectly responsible for their creation, in order to find an alternative cure for his condition.
I understand that this is highly improbable, but having an exceptionally gifted iconic individual not use said gifts to actively create an ethically acceptable alternative by overtly employing different tactics while directly acknowledging said differentiation doesn't make sense to me.
Not using research obtained through such means to pursue beneficial ends does make sense to me.
The ending would have been stronger had Iron Man acted accordingly.
Kind of.
At first, he compensates by stretching his extroverted insignia to the limits by trash talking a terrorist who then uses his arsenal to obliterate the Stark residence, leaving him theoretically helpless after he barely escapes.
He is exceptional however and thanks to an avenue of inquiry established by his prior research, fortunately lands himself in a crucial situation wherein his gifts are practically vetted.
Screenplay writers Drew Pearce and Shane Black (who also directed) do a great job here of rationally justifying a seemingly highly improbable scenario.
Colonel James Rhodes's (Don Cheadle) dialogue with Stark is used to rationally justify another seemingly highly improbable scenario later on as well.
They also play with the device which sees franchises seeking to extend their limits by introducing youth (something remarkably different more generally) to nurture a newfound pluralization.
Yet shortly after doing this it becomes clear that the Iron Man films will not be (heavily) relying on such devices, as Tony harshly yet avuncularly explains.
Excellent confident synthesis of the particular (the Iron Man films) and the universal (movie trilogies generally).
Some of the minor characters shockingly receive a lot of depth as well as comedic components of Machete's narrative unreel.
The film makes it clear that experimenting on humans is unethical by attaching this component of its narrative to the villains, villains who were created by Stark's callous self-obsession.
In the end, Stark perfects their methods, however, thereby leaving the film in an ambiguous domain wherein which it's difficult to discern what it's clearly stating.
Clarity is important regarding such matters.
The protagonists use technology to differentiate themselves, the villains, experimental performance enhancing pseudodrugs.
These drugs themselves were developed using nefarious methods, and in my opinion, the film would have been stronger if Stark had destroyed everything having to do with them, even though he was indirectly responsible for their creation, in order to find an alternative cure for his condition.
I understand that this is highly improbable, but having an exceptionally gifted iconic individual not use said gifts to actively create an ethically acceptable alternative by overtly employing different tactics while directly acknowledging said differentiation doesn't make sense to me.
Not using research obtained through such means to pursue beneficial ends does make sense to me.
The ending would have been stronger had Iron Man acted accordingly.
Monday, May 6, 2013
The Pharmacist
The Pharmacist's bland yet perky narcoleptic metainsouciance is amphetamanic.
For the first half anyways.
Not that the second half isn't worth sticking around for.
Let me explain.
Writers Christopher Craddock and Indy Randhawa seem well aware of what audiences may be expecting from a typical run-of-the-mill romantic comedy.
The delivery of The Pharmacist's early lines suggest that this awareness is mobilizing a derogatory hyperreflexive irreverent crude yet sympathetic aesthetic, wherein it's difficult to distinguish the zingers from the platitudes, inasmuch as the material presented can potentially appeal to myriad disillusioned tastes, succeeding scenes observe their predecessors with witticisms which motivate the actual plot, the metaplot, and the meta-double-down (the plot which suicidally yet fertilely recognizes how this device has been played as well as the sycophantic yet authoritative intricacies of its institutionalization [I like this form {in films}]), the ways in which the subtitles are showcased will hopefully become an industry norm, while the protagonist, a Franco-Albertan pharmacist suffering from narcolepsy, continuously drifts off, which, during the film's first half, with the help of animation and various changes of setting, genre, etc., metaphorically harnesses multimedial synergies in which a fluctuating banal surreal jaunty consternation unpredictably flourishes.
I was hoping the multimedial influence would sustain the unpredictability, but the film eventually settles on a somewhat glum consistent course, whose insufficiencies are despondently yet quirkily ironed out beforehand, which would have caused me to think its course was tragic if its hyperawareness didn't make me think it was giving me the finger, not that I don't appreciate that, and during the second half I did keep drifting off and then refocusing, as if the film's narcoleptic amplitudes were catching, and the ways in which The Pharmacist gives-'er are commendable, the audaciously meek Mad Dog, pharmaceutically gettin'-'er-done.
What else?
The film feels oppressed by its own design. This is often hilarious.
It would have been nice if there were no reconciliations.
Just brainy underground shape-shifting embers.
No need for generalized coherency in such films.
For the first half anyways.
Not that the second half isn't worth sticking around for.
Let me explain.
Writers Christopher Craddock and Indy Randhawa seem well aware of what audiences may be expecting from a typical run-of-the-mill romantic comedy.
The delivery of The Pharmacist's early lines suggest that this awareness is mobilizing a derogatory hyperreflexive irreverent crude yet sympathetic aesthetic, wherein it's difficult to distinguish the zingers from the platitudes, inasmuch as the material presented can potentially appeal to myriad disillusioned tastes, succeeding scenes observe their predecessors with witticisms which motivate the actual plot, the metaplot, and the meta-double-down (the plot which suicidally yet fertilely recognizes how this device has been played as well as the sycophantic yet authoritative intricacies of its institutionalization [I like this form {in films}]), the ways in which the subtitles are showcased will hopefully become an industry norm, while the protagonist, a Franco-Albertan pharmacist suffering from narcolepsy, continuously drifts off, which, during the film's first half, with the help of animation and various changes of setting, genre, etc., metaphorically harnesses multimedial synergies in which a fluctuating banal surreal jaunty consternation unpredictably flourishes.
I was hoping the multimedial influence would sustain the unpredictability, but the film eventually settles on a somewhat glum consistent course, whose insufficiencies are despondently yet quirkily ironed out beforehand, which would have caused me to think its course was tragic if its hyperawareness didn't make me think it was giving me the finger, not that I don't appreciate that, and during the second half I did keep drifting off and then refocusing, as if the film's narcoleptic amplitudes were catching, and the ways in which The Pharmacist gives-'er are commendable, the audaciously meek Mad Dog, pharmaceutically gettin'-'er-done.
What else?
The film feels oppressed by its own design. This is often hilarious.
It would have been nice if there were no reconciliations.
Just brainy underground shape-shifting embers.
No need for generalized coherency in such films.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Ce qu'il faut pour vivre (The Necessities of Life)
Inuit hunter Tiivii (Natar Ungalaaq) finds himself in a bit of a pickle in Benoît Pilon's Ce qu'il faut pour vivre (The Necessities of Life), after he's transported away from his family on Baffin Island, where he's lived his entire life, by boat, to a sanatorium in Québec City, having been diagnosed with tuberculosis.
That's a serious transition.
Linguistic factors initially accentuate his sense of isolation until he's introduced to a precocious youngster fluent in both languages.
Kaki (Paul-André Brasseur) enables Tiivii to communicate, share his stories, modestly acculturate, and actively interact.
The film innocently blends differing urban and rural dispositions in a wondrous yet suffocating unexpected encounter with seemingly magical technological and naturalistic attributes whose intricate designs and developments stifle while encouraging Tiivii's desire for exploration.
I loved his first sighting of a tree.
Intercultural relations are helplessly, patiently, curiously, humorously, and communally negotiated, as differing aspects of culturo-linguistic adaptations socialize.
Thought the ending was a bit too tragic.
Seemed like a happy ending film to me.
Thought Tiivii's telephone conversation with his wife was cut off too quickly as well.
Excellent expression of an individual's relationship with the land however.
That's a serious transition.
Linguistic factors initially accentuate his sense of isolation until he's introduced to a precocious youngster fluent in both languages.
Kaki (Paul-André Brasseur) enables Tiivii to communicate, share his stories, modestly acculturate, and actively interact.
The film innocently blends differing urban and rural dispositions in a wondrous yet suffocating unexpected encounter with seemingly magical technological and naturalistic attributes whose intricate designs and developments stifle while encouraging Tiivii's desire for exploration.
I loved his first sighting of a tree.
Intercultural relations are helplessly, patiently, curiously, humorously, and communally negotiated, as differing aspects of culturo-linguistic adaptations socialize.
Thought the ending was a bit too tragic.
Seemed like a happy ending film to me.
Thought Tiivii's telephone conversation with his wife was cut off too quickly as well.
Excellent expression of an individual's relationship with the land however.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
42
Humanizing a legend's heroic ability to overcome adversity by continuing to excel at his chosen profession through the suppression of his justified temper, thereby demonstrating how the strength of a ground breaking individual (Jackie Robinson) can benefit his or her collective generally, adopting a subtle resilient egalitarian sense of fair play to tell its tale, egalitarian in the sense of equal opportunity for all, even those whose private indiscretions conflicted with the Brooklyn Dodger's public image, Brian Helgeland's 42 cooperatively merges the particular and the universal by accentuating the economic benefits of their synthesis, without hesitating to showcase the hardships endured.
It's persons like Jackie Robinson who paved the way for a more inclusive society, for something much more openminded.
It's this simple.
I don't care if you're black or white, English or French, female or male, gay or straight, wealthy or homeless, there are members from each of these groups with whom I will get along, others with whom I will not, I'm going to try to get along with everyone and analyze each specific social interaction individually, taking economic, educational, cultural and professional factors into account, while keeping the door open for differing perceptions, a conclusion kept in a state of permanent flux, nurtured by reading Proust, to act ethically, and collectively, in the postmodern world.
I don't think I have the courage or the capabilities of a Jackie Robinson, very few people do.
I can never know what it's like to have to deal with that kind of penetrating pernicious prejudice.
I can act ethically however in order to help others to not have to deal with it either.
It's just good business sense.
It's persons like Jackie Robinson who paved the way for a more inclusive society, for something much more openminded.
It's this simple.
I don't care if you're black or white, English or French, female or male, gay or straight, wealthy or homeless, there are members from each of these groups with whom I will get along, others with whom I will not, I'm going to try to get along with everyone and analyze each specific social interaction individually, taking economic, educational, cultural and professional factors into account, while keeping the door open for differing perceptions, a conclusion kept in a state of permanent flux, nurtured by reading Proust, to act ethically, and collectively, in the postmodern world.
I don't think I have the courage or the capabilities of a Jackie Robinson, very few people do.
I can never know what it's like to have to deal with that kind of penetrating pernicious prejudice.
I can act ethically however in order to help others to not have to deal with it either.
It's just good business sense.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
R/evolution
The evidence seems clear to me.
Even if the earth's oceans are acidifying at a slower pace than that suggested in Rob Stewart's documentary R/evolution, they're still acidifying at an alarming rate, the impacts of which, if ignored, could significantly threaten future generations, and are significantly threatening ours.
The impulse to receive immediate gratification theoretically drives a lot of decision making.
Some of these systemic problems require 400 as opposed to 5 year plans, however.
But if such plans are not universally agreed to, soon, as the vast majority of climate change scientists contend, polar bears aren't the only ones who'll be having trouble surviving the upcoming centuries.
Climate change scientists equal Copernicus.
Big business's voracious desire for continuously increasing profits, not just profits, they have to be continuously increasing, equals the religious pricks who killed Copernicus.
Thankfully there are currently millions of logical Copernicans who have evidence to clearly state their convincing case.
It's not a socialist plot, it's coherent global strategic planning.
Disastrously, influential global warming denying charlatans have deep pockets, well-financed lobbyists, and, perhaps, an obsession with tricking people into believing in nonsense like the rapture.
Taking on the coal industry isn't easy (don't know if the coal industry [or if anyone] has an obsession with tricking people into believing in nonsense like the rapture, but the coal industry and the tar sands are examined in R/evolution).
What happens to all the people it currently employs if coal is eliminated as a source of energy?
Well, if alternatives to coal can be integrated, why not set up industries to replace it in the effected towns and train the employees to work within them.
Everyone keeps their jobs and no one has to move.
R/evolution points out that if we change the way we do business by adopting environmentally friendly models, the resultant decrease in profits will be insignificant and the über-capitalists can continue to make massive profits, which makes this situation all the more exasperating since it's obvious that it's an ideological battle, one side willing to risk existence to prove that the untethered pursuit of wealth is the best possible socioeconomic matrix, the other, armed with close to unanimous erudite scientific evidence-based support, not fantastic castles in the sky, suggesting that a slight decrease in profits will save existence, labelled fools, extremists, and crackpots consequently, because they know God's not going to clean-up this mess.
Science has solutions to these problems.
If God exists, he or she could be counting on us to use science to take care of the planet.
If we can't take care of our planet, how can he or she expect us to manage our environments in the afterlife?
Canada's conservative government won't even let scientists discuss their research in public.
Thomas Mulcair risked everything when he quit Québec's Provincial Liberal Party because of a matter of environmental principle.
Frustrated with politics? Jaded? Unconcerned?
I bet he was too.
But he kept going, kept fighting, and found a New Democratic model.
Which works. Is working. And will continue to work.
For a more just society.
Even if the earth's oceans are acidifying at a slower pace than that suggested in Rob Stewart's documentary R/evolution, they're still acidifying at an alarming rate, the impacts of which, if ignored, could significantly threaten future generations, and are significantly threatening ours.
The impulse to receive immediate gratification theoretically drives a lot of decision making.
Some of these systemic problems require 400 as opposed to 5 year plans, however.
But if such plans are not universally agreed to, soon, as the vast majority of climate change scientists contend, polar bears aren't the only ones who'll be having trouble surviving the upcoming centuries.
Climate change scientists equal Copernicus.
Big business's voracious desire for continuously increasing profits, not just profits, they have to be continuously increasing, equals the religious pricks who killed Copernicus.
Thankfully there are currently millions of logical Copernicans who have evidence to clearly state their convincing case.
It's not a socialist plot, it's coherent global strategic planning.
Disastrously, influential global warming denying charlatans have deep pockets, well-financed lobbyists, and, perhaps, an obsession with tricking people into believing in nonsense like the rapture.
Taking on the coal industry isn't easy (don't know if the coal industry [or if anyone] has an obsession with tricking people into believing in nonsense like the rapture, but the coal industry and the tar sands are examined in R/evolution).
What happens to all the people it currently employs if coal is eliminated as a source of energy?
Well, if alternatives to coal can be integrated, why not set up industries to replace it in the effected towns and train the employees to work within them.
Everyone keeps their jobs and no one has to move.
R/evolution points out that if we change the way we do business by adopting environmentally friendly models, the resultant decrease in profits will be insignificant and the über-capitalists can continue to make massive profits, which makes this situation all the more exasperating since it's obvious that it's an ideological battle, one side willing to risk existence to prove that the untethered pursuit of wealth is the best possible socioeconomic matrix, the other, armed with close to unanimous erudite scientific evidence-based support, not fantastic castles in the sky, suggesting that a slight decrease in profits will save existence, labelled fools, extremists, and crackpots consequently, because they know God's not going to clean-up this mess.
Science has solutions to these problems.
If God exists, he or she could be counting on us to use science to take care of the planet.
If we can't take care of our planet, how can he or she expect us to manage our environments in the afterlife?
Canada's conservative government won't even let scientists discuss their research in public.
Thomas Mulcair risked everything when he quit Québec's Provincial Liberal Party because of a matter of environmental principle.
Frustrated with politics? Jaded? Unconcerned?
I bet he was too.
But he kept going, kept fighting, and found a New Democratic model.
Which works. Is working. And will continue to work.
For a more just society.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
L'homme qui rit
A child is grossly deformed and abandoned.
Chance intervenes, providing shelter, friendship and nourishment.
The passage of congenial times nurtures love and success, swathed within an impoverished yet self-sufficient itinerant tenacity, innocent yet cunning, diligent and stable.
Until historical alignments introduce an aristocratic heritage whose peers and privileges threaten his sense of balance.
But these very same entitlements present means, pretentious and vitriolic though they may be, through which that sense's desire for social justice can institute positive change, in pre-revolutionary France.
L'homme qui rit is more of a kid's film, filled with obvious larger-than-life stereotypical depictions situated within a maudlin yet tear-jerking realistic fairy tale, but it does function as a contemporary allegory for democratic citizens who lack wealth but still wish to use their (available) political channels to influence current affairs, such as the environmental footprint of big business.
It's difficult.
It's daunting.
And seemingly impossible.
Unless you take into consideration the work of organizations like Avaaz and/or what's currently taking place in highly industrialized nations like Germany, whose decision to replace all of its nuclear reactors with environmentally sustainable technologies should be applauded.
It can be done.
It's being done.
Canada can do similar things.
If it's intent on moving forward.
Chance intervenes, providing shelter, friendship and nourishment.
The passage of congenial times nurtures love and success, swathed within an impoverished yet self-sufficient itinerant tenacity, innocent yet cunning, diligent and stable.
Until historical alignments introduce an aristocratic heritage whose peers and privileges threaten his sense of balance.
But these very same entitlements present means, pretentious and vitriolic though they may be, through which that sense's desire for social justice can institute positive change, in pre-revolutionary France.
L'homme qui rit is more of a kid's film, filled with obvious larger-than-life stereotypical depictions situated within a maudlin yet tear-jerking realistic fairy tale, but it does function as a contemporary allegory for democratic citizens who lack wealth but still wish to use their (available) political channels to influence current affairs, such as the environmental footprint of big business.
It's difficult.
It's daunting.
And seemingly impossible.
Unless you take into consideration the work of organizations like Avaaz and/or what's currently taking place in highly industrialized nations like Germany, whose decision to replace all of its nuclear reactors with environmentally sustainable technologies should be applauded.
It can be done.
It's being done.
Canada can do similar things.
If it's intent on moving forward.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Trance
Establishing an historical distinction regarding old and new security precautions taken to protect precious paintings during auctions, right-off-the-bat, thereby foreshadowing both the ways in which Danny Boyle's career has progressed from Shallow Grave to Trance and its contemporary utilitarian utilization of amnesia and hypnosis, narrative tools which frequently showed up in the television shows I watched during my youth, and have possibly been used regularly since then, although I may be blowing the memory out of proportion, Trance has traditional motifs, enticements and motivations (find the painting and cash in) which are thrust into a coherent mesmerizing fugacious distillery, whose economic and romantic film noiresque reversals, complete with critical comments concerning legal structures that prevent female victims of violence from obtaining justice, fitting in relation to the recent horrific suicide of Nova Scotia's beautiful young Rehtaeh Parsons, its diversified ambient tonal modifications, young professional addiction seeks underground remedies for financial miscalculations (gambling debt) which in turn threaten the livelihoods of everyone involved, upend expected outcomes, as if Boyle is precisely aware of what you require him to elucidate, apart from the absent review of Simon's (James McAvoy) extracurricular activities, which I thought would have fit considering that he's responsible for safekeeping 25 million dollar works of art (is that how much it cost to make this film?), most likely because I just saw New World, a review which wouldn't have fit well anyways due to the dense nature of Trance's convolutions (another layer within would have made the brew too lucidly phantasmagorical), destined diagnostic discombobulating detoxification, a less analytical form of Inception, but, if they had found a way, amidst the sex and the greed and the artifice, to stick to the opening sequence more devoutly, while paying the same meticulous attention to unnecessary yet compelling details, I would have perhaps given it a rating of 9.7 instead of 9.4, which really doesn't make much difference.
Friday, April 12, 2013
New World
Not sure whether Hoon-jung Park looked to The Godfather when writing and directing New World, but I think the comparison warrants consideration.
I'm not saying the film will have the same impact on South Korean audiences as The Godfather had on North American ones, just mean that elements of its matrix, components of its design, seem to have been intelligently incorporated into New World's script, and the result is a strong examination of an individual's struggle within two worlds, those being an underground criminal organization seeking corporate status and the police who are trying to in/directly influence them.
In Settai the police and the smugglers neutralize each other leaving the protagonists free to explore alternative means of expression.
This is not a comedy, however, it's a voracious rampant demented hypermasculinized scripture, complete with fierce consequences and mortal outcomes, a strict pressurized treacherous contemplation wherein expendable means and sought after ends conspicuously strive for psychological dominion.
Or survival.
Like The Godfather, the violence is omnipresent yet detained, erupting in sophisticatedly timed bursts, unlike what the previews and opening sequence would have you believe.
Both worlds suffer from a lack of abundant institutional active feminine counterbalances whose integral presence would theoretically decrease the violence.
The 50/50 split is best case.
Those fighting to lead aren't from the same family but their characters grow and expand throughout, overcoming stock critiques often easily launched at such personas.
The ending's totally Michael Corleone and less predictable than The Godfather's.
The law enforcement dimension arguably pushes New World past The Godfather, adding an additional layer of consistent threatening complications to the story, well thought out and cripplingly jaded, symbiotically existing with the syndicate which explodes from the inside to the contrary.
I suppose that's the purpose of roughing up the police photographers early on. In The Godfather, that's it, end of scene, in New World, Detective Kang (Min-sik Choi) steps in and asserts New World's respectful intertextual alternative outlet.
While revelling in his unrestrained cheek.
A new Godfather outlet.
Respectful and alternative to The Godfather, not a respectful alternative new outlet.
This outlet's been around forever.
Detective Kang reminded me of Columbo.
A prick Columbo.
A more-of-a-prick Columbo.
Columbo with additional responsibilities.
He's very Columboie.
I'm not saying the film will have the same impact on South Korean audiences as The Godfather had on North American ones, just mean that elements of its matrix, components of its design, seem to have been intelligently incorporated into New World's script, and the result is a strong examination of an individual's struggle within two worlds, those being an underground criminal organization seeking corporate status and the police who are trying to in/directly influence them.
In Settai the police and the smugglers neutralize each other leaving the protagonists free to explore alternative means of expression.
This is not a comedy, however, it's a voracious rampant demented hypermasculinized scripture, complete with fierce consequences and mortal outcomes, a strict pressurized treacherous contemplation wherein expendable means and sought after ends conspicuously strive for psychological dominion.
Or survival.
Like The Godfather, the violence is omnipresent yet detained, erupting in sophisticatedly timed bursts, unlike what the previews and opening sequence would have you believe.
Both worlds suffer from a lack of abundant institutional active feminine counterbalances whose integral presence would theoretically decrease the violence.
The 50/50 split is best case.
Those fighting to lead aren't from the same family but their characters grow and expand throughout, overcoming stock critiques often easily launched at such personas.
The ending's totally Michael Corleone and less predictable than The Godfather's.
The law enforcement dimension arguably pushes New World past The Godfather, adding an additional layer of consistent threatening complications to the story, well thought out and cripplingly jaded, symbiotically existing with the syndicate which explodes from the inside to the contrary.
I suppose that's the purpose of roughing up the police photographers early on. In The Godfather, that's it, end of scene, in New World, Detective Kang (Min-sik Choi) steps in and asserts New World's respectful intertextual alternative outlet.
While revelling in his unrestrained cheek.
A new Godfather outlet.
Respectful and alternative to The Godfather, not a respectful alternative new outlet.
This outlet's been around forever.
Detective Kang reminded me of Columbo.
A prick Columbo.
A more-of-a-prick Columbo.
Columbo with additional responsibilities.
He's very Columboie.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Settai
Writer John Mahendran has packed a plethora of modest jocose sensationalizations into Settai's script, subtly and frankly working within while deconstructing what I'm assuming are Bollywood tropes, the singing and the dancing, always with the singing and the dancing, while intricately laying the foundations for an alternative journalistic cultural outlet, practically yet scatologically introducing capitalistic sentiments (the scoundrel of the film's triumvirate of struggling unmarried young male professionals knows how to find money but suffers from recurring bowel disruptions throughout), as well as a host of additional interconnected motivations.
The film is deep.
Fidelity, friendship, professional integrity, authenticity, keeping up with the Joneses, love, economics, other things, all of these concurrent psychological influences are mischievously intertwined, made to seem ridiculous yet pertinent, in an attempt to encourage change from within.
I think.
For instance, one of the first scenes shows a song about to be sung by gaudy performers equipped with robotic tigers but we then discover that it's just being played on a television screen in an airport and has nothing directly to do with the film.
Hence, I thought there would be less singing and dancing.
There is still a lot of singing and dancing but one number does include flaming sitars.
They're not really flaming, it's more like gigantic electric sparks are shooting forth from their instrumental breadth, but still, a nice touch.
The distinction between quality and quantity appears again and again as mistakes introduce obstacles the surmounting of which proves empowering.
Reminded me of my idea to start a new National monthly periodical, 25% First Nations, 25% Francophone, 25% Anglophone, 25% Allophone.
Something like Multicultural Mayhem.
Not really the title I'm thinking of.
I don't have a title.
Just need some capital.
And some contacts.
And some colleagues.
And a market.
And a title.
Looks like I may have to learn to sing and dance.
Cool flick.
The film is deep.
Fidelity, friendship, professional integrity, authenticity, keeping up with the Joneses, love, economics, other things, all of these concurrent psychological influences are mischievously intertwined, made to seem ridiculous yet pertinent, in an attempt to encourage change from within.
I think.
For instance, one of the first scenes shows a song about to be sung by gaudy performers equipped with robotic tigers but we then discover that it's just being played on a television screen in an airport and has nothing directly to do with the film.
Hence, I thought there would be less singing and dancing.
There is still a lot of singing and dancing but one number does include flaming sitars.
They're not really flaming, it's more like gigantic electric sparks are shooting forth from their instrumental breadth, but still, a nice touch.
The distinction between quality and quantity appears again and again as mistakes introduce obstacles the surmounting of which proves empowering.
Reminded me of my idea to start a new National monthly periodical, 25% First Nations, 25% Francophone, 25% Anglophone, 25% Allophone.
Something like Multicultural Mayhem.
Not really the title I'm thinking of.
I don't have a title.
Just need some capital.
And some contacts.
And some colleagues.
And a market.
And a title.
Looks like I may have to learn to sing and dance.
Cool flick.
G. I. Joe: Retaliation
Better than the first G.I. Joe film.
And a good episode of G.I. Joe.
Cobra's back and still tryin' to take over the world.
The Joes are betrayed and have to head to the underground for cover.
They're able to find this cover quite easily and confidently stroll around in broad daylight even though the American government, whom Cobra has infiltrated, is looking for them.
But like I said, it's a good episode of G.I. Joe, following a format which employs improbability as a cogent asset in order to conceal their recruitment tactics.
There is a clever scene which neutralizes attempts to analyze the film following the opening credits, wherein Duke (Channing Tatum) and Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson) are found playing militaristic video games, a scene whose immediacy implies that the film has been made in good fun and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Message received.
Other highlights include the best poppy condensation of a strategical debate I've seen in a while, which is simultaneously bland, comic, disconcerting and instructive, plus Roadblock and Duke consistently dissect their discussions while conversing.
Agents of Cobra do not.
Cobra's not hip to Web 2.0 applications.
Adam Reed is hands down the master of humorous observational conversational commentary.
Adam Reed did not write G.I. Joe: Retaliation.
And would not have ruined the affect by introducing a remark endemic to the Terminator series in the film's concluding moments.
In such moments, you synthesize your intertextual research into a franchise specific all-encompassing one-liner.
Ad infinitum.
And a good episode of G.I. Joe.
Cobra's back and still tryin' to take over the world.
The Joes are betrayed and have to head to the underground for cover.
They're able to find this cover quite easily and confidently stroll around in broad daylight even though the American government, whom Cobra has infiltrated, is looking for them.
But like I said, it's a good episode of G.I. Joe, following a format which employs improbability as a cogent asset in order to conceal their recruitment tactics.
There is a clever scene which neutralizes attempts to analyze the film following the opening credits, wherein Duke (Channing Tatum) and Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson) are found playing militaristic video games, a scene whose immediacy implies that the film has been made in good fun and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Message received.
Other highlights include the best poppy condensation of a strategical debate I've seen in a while, which is simultaneously bland, comic, disconcerting and instructive, plus Roadblock and Duke consistently dissect their discussions while conversing.
Agents of Cobra do not.
Cobra's not hip to Web 2.0 applications.
Adam Reed is hands down the master of humorous observational conversational commentary.
Adam Reed did not write G.I. Joe: Retaliation.
And would not have ruined the affect by introducing a remark endemic to the Terminator series in the film's concluding moments.
In such moments, you synthesize your intertextual research into a franchise specific all-encompassing one-liner.
Ad infinitum.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Olympus Has Fallen
An otherwise dismissible action flick makes a good point regarding teamwork that can be transferred to sporting domains, amongst others, at least.
The point under examination concerns the removal of an esteemed member of the President's (Aaron Eckhart) personal security force after exceptional naturalistic circumstances result in the death of his wife.
At Christmas.
The esteemed member's presence serves as a constant reminder of the misfortune and he therefore must find work elsewhere.
When your team loses a big game or your strategic plan fails to generate predicted revenues there seems to be a prominent cultural desire to attach blame to a specific individual and then punish them accordingly.
Obviously when the game is lost or the revenues fall short there's a period where what could have been disrupts the cheery flow of social relations but shortly thereafter things (often) return to normal.
You still have an experienced team, and, obviously again, due to the tenacity of the competition you're up against, can't win all the time.
New deals are made.
Partnerships negotiated.
Adjustments taken into consideration.
And another NFL/CFL season begins.
Or BlackBerry takes back its former share of the market.
In Olympus Has Fallen, a rather downcast despondent far too rigid Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) (he's no John McClane [not that everyone needs to be like John McClane but he's a good model {different from the Kurt Russell model/which I loved in The Thing\}]) loses his job only to discover later on that he's the only shot the United States's got to prevent a terrorist lunatic from starting a war between the Koreas.
If he had still been on the job the terrorists may have never gotten a leg up.
Although if they had never let him go he would not have avoided the initial onslaught after which he (miraculously) finds himself in a position to disintegrate their network.
When the unexpected intervenes those who failed to find an exceptional solution within shocking unpredictable circumstances and were consequentially let go find the opportunity to prove their worth as the natural becomes corporeal and its features pursue mad personal goals whose existence presents the criteria for a successful occupational reintegration.
Perhaps that isn't a good teamwork related point.
Not a very good movie either.
Ugh.
The point under examination concerns the removal of an esteemed member of the President's (Aaron Eckhart) personal security force after exceptional naturalistic circumstances result in the death of his wife.
At Christmas.
The esteemed member's presence serves as a constant reminder of the misfortune and he therefore must find work elsewhere.
When your team loses a big game or your strategic plan fails to generate predicted revenues there seems to be a prominent cultural desire to attach blame to a specific individual and then punish them accordingly.
Obviously when the game is lost or the revenues fall short there's a period where what could have been disrupts the cheery flow of social relations but shortly thereafter things (often) return to normal.
You still have an experienced team, and, obviously again, due to the tenacity of the competition you're up against, can't win all the time.
New deals are made.
Partnerships negotiated.
Adjustments taken into consideration.
And another NFL/CFL season begins.
Or BlackBerry takes back its former share of the market.
In Olympus Has Fallen, a rather downcast despondent far too rigid Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) (he's no John McClane [not that everyone needs to be like John McClane but he's a good model {different from the Kurt Russell model/which I loved in The Thing\}]) loses his job only to discover later on that he's the only shot the United States's got to prevent a terrorist lunatic from starting a war between the Koreas.
If he had still been on the job the terrorists may have never gotten a leg up.
Although if they had never let him go he would not have avoided the initial onslaught after which he (miraculously) finds himself in a position to disintegrate their network.
When the unexpected intervenes those who failed to find an exceptional solution within shocking unpredictable circumstances and were consequentially let go find the opportunity to prove their worth as the natural becomes corporeal and its features pursue mad personal goals whose existence presents the criteria for a successful occupational reintegration.
Perhaps that isn't a good teamwork related point.
Not a very good movie either.
Ugh.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Caesar Must Die
The real's incarcerated dominion finds itself transformed into a Shakespearian atemporal time warp whose interpersonal intertextual transhistorical vertices passionately bridge a parochial rubicon.
The play within the play transports the film into a concrete surreal hyper-reactive microcosmology, crime, punishment, serendipity, urbanity, patiently orchestrated by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, enacted by denizens of the damned.
As the conception is corporealized manifested methodologies collaboratively clash while their situational subject matter is acutely fumigated.
Artistic adornments and monumental minutiae see their beings metamorphically idealized as the process of creation extends its interdimensional limits.
Memories forge an objective counterbalance.
Brutus and Cassius must flee.
That is how it was written.
More than a thousand years after the fact.
A roguish retinue theatrically matriculates as an artistic presence brings semantics to life.
In/transitively.
The play within the play transports the film into a concrete surreal hyper-reactive microcosmology, crime, punishment, serendipity, urbanity, patiently orchestrated by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, enacted by denizens of the damned.
As the conception is corporealized manifested methodologies collaboratively clash while their situational subject matter is acutely fumigated.
Artistic adornments and monumental minutiae see their beings metamorphically idealized as the process of creation extends its interdimensional limits.
Memories forge an objective counterbalance.
Brutus and Cassius must flee.
That is how it was written.
More than a thousand years after the fact.
A roguish retinue theatrically matriculates as an artistic presence brings semantics to life.
In/transitively.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)