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.
Friday, July 12, 2013
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.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
A change in the adversarial order of things indoctrinates alternative forms of political expression which harness the influence of Chile's pop cultural cheek to bring House Pinochet down.
The inertial byproduct of demographic multiplicities is resolutely ignored as one man's vision wagers that it can disseminate a pluralistic quintessence.
Ethical considerations formulate bilateral echoes as the issue of respect is commercialized.
Transformative modes of production reformulize the new in a combative personally disadvantageous agitative structuralization of Derrida's conception of forgiveness (as found in Derrida).
Not sure if the timelines match up there.
The film reminded me of harmony's fascist/totalitarian dimension and the importance of bearing in mind chaotic forms of retributive conciliations.
No's outcome speaks for itself.
Localized within a specific set of historical circumstances of course.
I thought it exaggerated the importance of political advertisements a bit but perhaps they really do play a major role in electing governments.
I've read numerous newspaper articles claiming they do but figured they may also be exaggerating their importance.
I learned to see through them at a young age and figured everyone else did too, but, as many commentators have been pointing out for quite some time, Adorno's the one I'm going with here, people feel compelled to purchase products even though they see through them (The Culture Industry), and it is fun, but electing a government isn't like buying pastis or a baconator, and taking the time to critically research online what a party's all about before voting, isn't such a bad idea.
It's not!
It's easy!
It's fun!
Not necessarily easy or fun.
The inertial byproduct of demographic multiplicities is resolutely ignored as one man's vision wagers that it can disseminate a pluralistic quintessence.
Ethical considerations formulate bilateral echoes as the issue of respect is commercialized.
Transformative modes of production reformulize the new in a combative personally disadvantageous agitative structuralization of Derrida's conception of forgiveness (as found in Derrida).
Not sure if the timelines match up there.
The film reminded me of harmony's fascist/totalitarian dimension and the importance of bearing in mind chaotic forms of retributive conciliations.
No's outcome speaks for itself.
Localized within a specific set of historical circumstances of course.
I thought it exaggerated the importance of political advertisements a bit but perhaps they really do play a major role in electing governments.
I've read numerous newspaper articles claiming they do but figured they may also be exaggerating their importance.
I learned to see through them at a young age and figured everyone else did too, but, as many commentators have been pointing out for quite some time, Adorno's the one I'm going with here, people feel compelled to purchase products even though they see through them (The Culture Industry), and it is fun, but electing a government isn't like buying pastis or a baconator, and taking the time to critically research online what a party's all about before voting, isn't such a bad idea.
It's not!
It's easy!
It's fun!
Not necessarily easy or fun.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Stoker
A forgotten hushed-up malignant propriety, proper and prim, dainty and exasperating, fratricidically plants himself within a bourgeois pasture, ingenious and precise, incorrigible yet enticing, seeking to cultivate that which he sees fit, to grow, applying a maniacal degree of reflexive fertilization to those he deems a threat, while cloistering the others within a creepy consanguine cluster.
Stoker's plot and narrative lack the depth of the films found within Chan-wook Park's Vengeance Trilogy, but its technical aspects, in terms of cinematography and sound especially, prominently display his brilliance, creating worlds within worlds, caverns and teapots and haunting ravished andantes, sustained sorrowful psychiatric sonorities, patient microscopic pristine insections, crawling and sprawling and mauling, within lurid infinite extratextual specifications.
Not that the script doesn't have its moments, with Nicole Kidman (Evelyn Stoker) delivering the most impassioned piece of seditious sentimental solemnity, it just doesn't match-up to Oldboy etc., which, if The Berlin File (directed by Seung-wan Ryoo) is compared to the original Die Hard, for instance, makes sense.
But seriously, give this guy the right script and he could create the most disorienting American psychological thriller ever made, perhaps encouraging a greater sub/conscious expansion in the process.
A film version of Chuck Palahniuk's Pygmy?
Something with werebears?
Cinematography by Chung-hoon Chung, original music by Clint Mansell.
Stoker's plot and narrative lack the depth of the films found within Chan-wook Park's Vengeance Trilogy, but its technical aspects, in terms of cinematography and sound especially, prominently display his brilliance, creating worlds within worlds, caverns and teapots and haunting ravished andantes, sustained sorrowful psychiatric sonorities, patient microscopic pristine insections, crawling and sprawling and mauling, within lurid infinite extratextual specifications.
Not that the script doesn't have its moments, with Nicole Kidman (Evelyn Stoker) delivering the most impassioned piece of seditious sentimental solemnity, it just doesn't match-up to Oldboy etc., which, if The Berlin File (directed by Seung-wan Ryoo) is compared to the original Die Hard, for instance, makes sense.
But seriously, give this guy the right script and he could create the most disorienting American psychological thriller ever made, perhaps encouraging a greater sub/conscious expansion in the process.
A film version of Chuck Palahniuk's Pygmy?
Something with werebears?
Cinematography by Chung-hoon Chung, original music by Clint Mansell.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Kret (La Dette)
Familial misfortunes beget treacherous tenements whose paranoid genuflections produce pernicious pensions.
The issue of guilt permeates a media sensation whose adherence to the sacred threatens the individual liberties it upholds.
Key players in a pivotal Polish event scramble to defend their prevarications.
And trust is brought to the fore as Rafael Lewandowski thoroughly upends what it means to syndicate.
The film keeps a level head.
Life goes on.
Appointments are kept. Business is transacted. Most friendships remain warm and friendly. Social value appreciates.
Kret's (La Dette's) lack of emotion represents both its greatest strength and most serious weakness as its logic reaches ascetic heights while its emotional depth is stiffly squandered.
Like legal spirituality.
The issue of guilt permeates a media sensation whose adherence to the sacred threatens the individual liberties it upholds.
Key players in a pivotal Polish event scramble to defend their prevarications.
And trust is brought to the fore as Rafael Lewandowski thoroughly upends what it means to syndicate.
The film keeps a level head.
Life goes on.
Appointments are kept. Business is transacted. Most friendships remain warm and friendly. Social value appreciates.
Kret's (La Dette's) lack of emotion represents both its greatest strength and most serious weakness as its logic reaches ascetic heights while its emotional depth is stiffly squandered.
Like legal spirituality.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Oz: the Great and Powerful
The Wizard of Oz meets Xena: Warrior Princess?
That's an A+ in my books.
The old school Wizard of Oz film with which I'm familiar was a lighthearted tale, adored by generations of fantasy loving children, devoted and unassuming, blindly caught up in its melodramatic charm, dreaming sweet dreams filled with hope and sincerity later that night, never failing, to wake up anew.
There's no doubt that there's some of this in Sam Raimi's envisioning of the land of Oz, wherein we find the Wizard learning to become the factor everyone believes him to be at first sight, but while we don't discover that there's something not quite right about him until Toto's astute perception in the Judy Garland film, it's obvious from the get-go that in Oz: the Great and Powerful Oz (James Franco) is a sleazy unscrupulous cad, successfully (and spontaneously) brandishing his smoke and mirrors, yet hopelessly lacking what one might refer to as conscientious considerations, apart from their individualized financial formalities.
The title itself offers further insight into these competing fantastic motivations.
Oz: the Great and Powerful sounds like the sort of ridiculous phrase you'd expect someone cravenly searching for riches, even if the search only takes place within their own head, to use to describe themselves, while also seeming like an exaggerated mesmerizing monicker carefully chosen to inspire charismatic imaginations, when its historical spectacle is taken into consideration.
I didn't know Sam Raimi had directed before entering the theatre, and his presence added a latent sense of potentially ingratiating cheesy carnivalesque conviviality to these contemplations, wherein bold mischievous alternative emoticons masquerade on a traditional family friendly frequency, seeking to covertly manifest their raunch(iness).
The opening credits themselves kaleidoscopically illuminate this multiplicity, ebulliently engineering a phantasmagorical dissimulation, for whatever audience, startlingly straightforward, arguably the film's best feature.
But after the Wizard lands in Oz and meets Theodora (Mila Kunis) the film is far too startlingly straightforward for the next hour at least. The lines are terrible. Kunis struggles to deliver them. But they're so bad that you start to think that this could be one of those great films which subtly satirizes its generic counterparts while trying to remain appealing to the young at heart in order to conjure a laconic lackadaisical laxative before suddenly introducing moments of kitschy consubstantiations which attempt to transform the preceding mockery into a campy enduring endearing romp, just as the Wizard casts off his mortal shell and takes on his ethereal form, while coming to believe that yes, he can.
When the brutal lines are isolated, with no community within which to blossom and grow, they're tough to take, but when the time comes for Glinda (Michelle Williams) and the Wizard to unite their citizens to fight Evanora's (Rachel Weisz) minions group dynamics socially network their way into a publicly pertinent pyrotechnic plurality, as the Wizard uses his artifice in a startlingly straightforward phantasmagorical dissimulation, lighthearted, melodramatic, and ridiculous yet conscientious and ingratiating, fighting the good fight against overwhelming odds, to save both his community's, and his own, imagination.
And the film too.
I'd like to read a study which places both films within their social historical contexts in order to elucidate which possesses a more substantial degree of traditional alternative reflexivity, thirty years from now.
Classic Sam Raimi.
That's an A+ in my books.
The old school Wizard of Oz film with which I'm familiar was a lighthearted tale, adored by generations of fantasy loving children, devoted and unassuming, blindly caught up in its melodramatic charm, dreaming sweet dreams filled with hope and sincerity later that night, never failing, to wake up anew.
There's no doubt that there's some of this in Sam Raimi's envisioning of the land of Oz, wherein we find the Wizard learning to become the factor everyone believes him to be at first sight, but while we don't discover that there's something not quite right about him until Toto's astute perception in the Judy Garland film, it's obvious from the get-go that in Oz: the Great and Powerful Oz (James Franco) is a sleazy unscrupulous cad, successfully (and spontaneously) brandishing his smoke and mirrors, yet hopelessly lacking what one might refer to as conscientious considerations, apart from their individualized financial formalities.
The title itself offers further insight into these competing fantastic motivations.
Oz: the Great and Powerful sounds like the sort of ridiculous phrase you'd expect someone cravenly searching for riches, even if the search only takes place within their own head, to use to describe themselves, while also seeming like an exaggerated mesmerizing monicker carefully chosen to inspire charismatic imaginations, when its historical spectacle is taken into consideration.
I didn't know Sam Raimi had directed before entering the theatre, and his presence added a latent sense of potentially ingratiating cheesy carnivalesque conviviality to these contemplations, wherein bold mischievous alternative emoticons masquerade on a traditional family friendly frequency, seeking to covertly manifest their raunch(iness).
The opening credits themselves kaleidoscopically illuminate this multiplicity, ebulliently engineering a phantasmagorical dissimulation, for whatever audience, startlingly straightforward, arguably the film's best feature.
But after the Wizard lands in Oz and meets Theodora (Mila Kunis) the film is far too startlingly straightforward for the next hour at least. The lines are terrible. Kunis struggles to deliver them. But they're so bad that you start to think that this could be one of those great films which subtly satirizes its generic counterparts while trying to remain appealing to the young at heart in order to conjure a laconic lackadaisical laxative before suddenly introducing moments of kitschy consubstantiations which attempt to transform the preceding mockery into a campy enduring endearing romp, just as the Wizard casts off his mortal shell and takes on his ethereal form, while coming to believe that yes, he can.
When the brutal lines are isolated, with no community within which to blossom and grow, they're tough to take, but when the time comes for Glinda (Michelle Williams) and the Wizard to unite their citizens to fight Evanora's (Rachel Weisz) minions group dynamics socially network their way into a publicly pertinent pyrotechnic plurality, as the Wizard uses his artifice in a startlingly straightforward phantasmagorical dissimulation, lighthearted, melodramatic, and ridiculous yet conscientious and ingratiating, fighting the good fight against overwhelming odds, to save both his community's, and his own, imagination.
And the film too.
I'd like to read a study which places both films within their social historical contexts in order to elucidate which possesses a more substantial degree of traditional alternative reflexivity, thirty years from now.
Classic Sam Raimi.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Paris-Manhattan
Obsessive particularized therapeutic prescriptions, erudite frank psychological stylizations, pulsating extroverted situational expectations, marriages, family, friends, professions, good food, neuroses, lighthearted delineations, let's observe, express, modify, clarify, recapitulate, integrate, qualify, diversify, riding on bikes, breaking and entering, wherein lies the lesson?, as romance precipitates, with room for error, Sophie Lellouche's Paris-Manhattan theorizes that Woody Allen's form can be refurbished with French content, alarmingly experimental, domesticating the bizarre.
Thankfully Woody Allen will likely be making films for decades to come, continuing to innovate within his hyper-reflective multilayered panorama, but at some point a time may come when no new Woody Allen film can be expected, ever, a terrible time, and someone will have to step in and fill the void.
In terms of compellingly merging commerce, sociology, art and comedy, consistently and prodigiously, no filmmaker has been more prolifically successful, and in order for the void to be filled, the replacement in question must be prolific.
That's the key to competing with while paying in/direct hommage to Mr. Allen and to do so on a high level for decades while remaining relevant is a lofty goal indeed.
Is this Sophie Lellouche's goal?
Don't know, but she's put together a tight film in Paris-Manhattan, adding her own insightful touch to the brainy perpendicular bravado.
There's a scene where while eating dinner characters from different generations working in various fields freely and non-judgmentally share ideas without having to worry about damaging social consequences in the aftermath.
I suppose I could watch it again and imagine Proust was there but that may ruin the effect I'm going for here.
Proust. Being single. Learning French. Never been to Europe.
Could that be the subject of a Woody Allen inspired double feature, after Mme. Lellouche decides to fly me to Paris and start working on a script posthaste?
The world needs another Woody Allen.
Mme Lellouche could be that Woody Allen.
She only has to make more than 40 more films.
Something like, Kermode in Paris.
Starring me.
Also a big Larry David fan.
Thankfully Woody Allen will likely be making films for decades to come, continuing to innovate within his hyper-reflective multilayered panorama, but at some point a time may come when no new Woody Allen film can be expected, ever, a terrible time, and someone will have to step in and fill the void.
In terms of compellingly merging commerce, sociology, art and comedy, consistently and prodigiously, no filmmaker has been more prolifically successful, and in order for the void to be filled, the replacement in question must be prolific.
That's the key to competing with while paying in/direct hommage to Mr. Allen and to do so on a high level for decades while remaining relevant is a lofty goal indeed.
Is this Sophie Lellouche's goal?
Don't know, but she's put together a tight film in Paris-Manhattan, adding her own insightful touch to the brainy perpendicular bravado.
There's a scene where while eating dinner characters from different generations working in various fields freely and non-judgmentally share ideas without having to worry about damaging social consequences in the aftermath.
I suppose I could watch it again and imagine Proust was there but that may ruin the effect I'm going for here.
Proust. Being single. Learning French. Never been to Europe.
Could that be the subject of a Woody Allen inspired double feature, after Mme. Lellouche decides to fly me to Paris and start working on a script posthaste?
The world needs another Woody Allen.
Mme Lellouche could be that Woody Allen.
She only has to make more than 40 more films.
Something like, Kermode in Paris.
Starring me.
Also a big Larry David fan.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Safe Haven
Attaching a dipsomanic dimension to an otherwise light and fluffy romance flick, Lasse Hollström's Safe Haven quaintly juxtaposes psychosis and contentment as a struggling woman (Julianne Hough) searches for a new life.
Along the way she meets Alex (Josh Duhamel), a widower with two children living in a seaside town.
I could relate to his love of the wilderness, his favourite places to chill etc.
They meet, start liking each other, authoritative madness intervenes, the symbolic clashes with the void.
Ms. Hough does a great job representing various components of feminine strength until it becomes clear that she's hooking up with Alex, after which Terry Stacey's cinematography becomes less provocative.
Don't let this trick you into thinking that since you're in a stable relationship you have to sequester your keen fashion sense.
On the contrary, this is when you're at your most beautiful and should therefore continue to find ways to share your beauty on a predictable yet regularly changing basis, thereby vivifying natural and urban worlds, keeping in touch with the changing seasons, transforming them into a living breathing tantalizing work of art.
Springtime.
It's springtime!
Along the way she meets Alex (Josh Duhamel), a widower with two children living in a seaside town.
I could relate to his love of the wilderness, his favourite places to chill etc.
They meet, start liking each other, authoritative madness intervenes, the symbolic clashes with the void.
Ms. Hough does a great job representing various components of feminine strength until it becomes clear that she's hooking up with Alex, after which Terry Stacey's cinematography becomes less provocative.
Don't let this trick you into thinking that since you're in a stable relationship you have to sequester your keen fashion sense.
On the contrary, this is when you're at your most beautiful and should therefore continue to find ways to share your beauty on a predictable yet regularly changing basis, thereby vivifying natural and urban worlds, keeping in touch with the changing seasons, transforming them into a living breathing tantalizing work of art.
Springtime.
It's springtime!
Snitch
Looking for a dramatized look at how seriously mandatory minimum sentencing laws, laws such as those recently enacted in Canada even though authorities on the subject from the States have sincerely critiqued them, suck?
Look no further.
Ric Roman Waugh's Snitch overtly breaks it down, as one man finds a way to save his son from a system gone wrong, by any means necessary.
The consequences of proceeding by any means necessary harrowingly present themselves shortly thereafter, however.
The only way for John Matthews (Dwayne Johnson) to save his generally law abiding son (Rafi Gavron as Jason Collins) from a lengthy mandatory minimum drug trafficking prison sentence simply for receiving a package which he didn't really want in the mail, is to go undercover for a smug termagant who agrees to reduce his son's sentence if he can infiltrate a criminal organization and instigate the arrest of a well-heeled trafficker, which is the option his son was presented with, but, since he didn't know any traffickers besides his friend who sent him the package and was also arrested, and didn't want to be coerced into informing, he was forced to serve the minimum sentence, the judge having no opportunity to use her or his insight to make their decision.
Cold hard cruel absolutes.
That ignore the evidence.
John swallows his pride again and again and suddenly finds himself ready to take down a kingpin, much to the termagant's self-centred delight.
But in the process, his bold decision and enormous risks threaten everything he holds dear.
The particular sometimes indicates a structural issue that can be modified in order to enhance production.
In Snitch's case, Mr. Matthews functions as a particular designed to modify ethical institutions, his sacrifice directly calamitizing one of their misguided aspects.
However, it's possible that a non-contextual cult has been built upon this potentiality, using it to make antiquated outdated notions seem hip and new, even when the evidence provided by recent similar endeavours can be thought of as wholeheartedly indicating otherwise.
This is a problem.
Great performance by Dwayne Johnson.
I've only seen him in supporting roles and was wondering if he could take the lead.
Job well done.
Look no further.
Ric Roman Waugh's Snitch overtly breaks it down, as one man finds a way to save his son from a system gone wrong, by any means necessary.
The consequences of proceeding by any means necessary harrowingly present themselves shortly thereafter, however.
The only way for John Matthews (Dwayne Johnson) to save his generally law abiding son (Rafi Gavron as Jason Collins) from a lengthy mandatory minimum drug trafficking prison sentence simply for receiving a package which he didn't really want in the mail, is to go undercover for a smug termagant who agrees to reduce his son's sentence if he can infiltrate a criminal organization and instigate the arrest of a well-heeled trafficker, which is the option his son was presented with, but, since he didn't know any traffickers besides his friend who sent him the package and was also arrested, and didn't want to be coerced into informing, he was forced to serve the minimum sentence, the judge having no opportunity to use her or his insight to make their decision.
Cold hard cruel absolutes.
That ignore the evidence.
John swallows his pride again and again and suddenly finds himself ready to take down a kingpin, much to the termagant's self-centred delight.
But in the process, his bold decision and enormous risks threaten everything he holds dear.
The particular sometimes indicates a structural issue that can be modified in order to enhance production.
In Snitch's case, Mr. Matthews functions as a particular designed to modify ethical institutions, his sacrifice directly calamitizing one of their misguided aspects.
However, it's possible that a non-contextual cult has been built upon this potentiality, using it to make antiquated outdated notions seem hip and new, even when the evidence provided by recent similar endeavours can be thought of as wholeheartedly indicating otherwise.
This is a problem.
Great performance by Dwayne Johnson.
I've only seen him in supporting roles and was wondering if he could take the lead.
Job well done.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Roche Papier Ciseaux
Blisteringly bivouacking underground economics, wherein financial and fanatical furrows mendicantly and mendaciously intertwine, Yan Lanouette Turgeon's Roche Papier Ciseaux pressurizes a sadistic scenario with a heartbreaking degree of scarified sentiment, thrust within a carnal quotidien naturalistic mythos, helplessly held together by conscientious duct tape.
Four characters are fetishistically infernalized, 2 existing in a state of sycophantic servitude, the others desperately caught up in the hyperbolic sensation.
The film slyly blends chance and fate, intermingling sudden monumental highly unlikely cross sections while trivially refining them to make it seem as if there were no other possibilities.
Post-religious materialistic mysticism?
That works for me, even if it's just a flash in the pan.
The film also displays critical attitudes towards tax breaks for Aboriginal Canadians, critical attitudes which are then severely criticized.
I tend to think that every dollar I make, and all of Canada's wealth, is generated, and will always be generated, from income earned on Aboriginal lands, billions of dollars a year, sustaining a multicultural nation. If that means Aboriginals pay less tax, who cares, it's their former land, that they traded for next to nothing in comparison, that's responsible for maintaining our financial infrastructure, and our system wouldn't exist without the enormous revenue gained from what was once their land.
For further reading on what Aboriginals did for Europeans upon first contact and afterwards, see Basil Johnston's The Wampum Belt Tells Us . . ., part of Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past.
Stereotypes associated with Italian North American communities are deconstructed within Roche Papier Ciseaux while those associated with Asian North Americans are unfortunately intensified.
Multidimensional representation people, multidimensional representation points out differences between communities without one-dimensionally vilifying them.
This is key.
Four characters are fetishistically infernalized, 2 existing in a state of sycophantic servitude, the others desperately caught up in the hyperbolic sensation.
The film slyly blends chance and fate, intermingling sudden monumental highly unlikely cross sections while trivially refining them to make it seem as if there were no other possibilities.
Post-religious materialistic mysticism?
That works for me, even if it's just a flash in the pan.
The film also displays critical attitudes towards tax breaks for Aboriginal Canadians, critical attitudes which are then severely criticized.
I tend to think that every dollar I make, and all of Canada's wealth, is generated, and will always be generated, from income earned on Aboriginal lands, billions of dollars a year, sustaining a multicultural nation. If that means Aboriginals pay less tax, who cares, it's their former land, that they traded for next to nothing in comparison, that's responsible for maintaining our financial infrastructure, and our system wouldn't exist without the enormous revenue gained from what was once their land.
For further reading on what Aboriginals did for Europeans upon first contact and afterwards, see Basil Johnston's The Wampum Belt Tells Us . . ., part of Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada's Past.
Stereotypes associated with Italian North American communities are deconstructed within Roche Papier Ciseaux while those associated with Asian North Americans are unfortunately intensified.
Multidimensional representation people, multidimensional representation points out differences between communities without one-dimensionally vilifying them.
This is key.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Barbara
Declarative desire dedicatedly persists after state sanctioned seclusion silences its volatile temerity.
Another, resigned yet combative, is enamoured.
The fate of a rebellious young adult becomes a decisive tangible consequent as the Stasi's invasive pressure deliberately dehumanizes.
A doctor, emphatically refuses, to be muzzled.
Carefully contextualizing different varieties of tension, while diagnosing risk with surgical precision, Christian Petzold's Barbara internally serenades freedom of expression, and externalizes a crisp courageous spiritualization.
An extensive reactive multilateral engagement furtively negotiates an honest state of affairs.
Its interconnected inextricable professional, personal, romantic, governmental and (inter)national relationships foment a forlorn fugitive firmament wherein influential forces collaborate and contend.
Interrogating what it means to pursue.
Attempting to have their voices heard.
Another, resigned yet combative, is enamoured.
The fate of a rebellious young adult becomes a decisive tangible consequent as the Stasi's invasive pressure deliberately dehumanizes.
A doctor, emphatically refuses, to be muzzled.
Carefully contextualizing different varieties of tension, while diagnosing risk with surgical precision, Christian Petzold's Barbara internally serenades freedom of expression, and externalizes a crisp courageous spiritualization.
An extensive reactive multilateral engagement furtively negotiates an honest state of affairs.
Its interconnected inextricable professional, personal, romantic, governmental and (inter)national relationships foment a forlorn fugitive firmament wherein influential forces collaborate and contend.
Interrogating what it means to pursue.
Attempting to have their voices heard.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
The Berlin File
Setting a new standard for fast-paced intricate multilayered action packed films covertly concerned with international relations, Seung-wan Ryoo's The Berlin File's depth frantically conceptualizes a practical competitive bellicose ideological maelstrom, wherein interpersonal integrity can trump engrained national antimonies, as the ambitious pretentions of a jealous privileged communist usurper stereoscopically attempt to remagnify its vortex.
Good communists and bad communists.
Respect for North Korea?
Deconstructive hypoallergenic hyper-reflexive expedition.
And a remarketable union.
The issue of trust gravitationally staggers through myriad ulterior transitional focal points until a specific set of exceptional checks and balances produces an ephemeral allegiance, an amicable diplomatic extract.
The film's tight chaotic suction implodes near the end as a protagonist and his principal enemy square off like traditional martial marionettes.
Still pretty cool.
Both of the main male communist characters can be thought of as members of North Korea's materialistic pantheon, but the bad one's father occupies a high ranking influential yet corrupt position in the country's militaristic elite.
The other is an extraordinary citizen whose unyielding belief and support have strengthened his iron constitution.
Whether or not he can continue to exercise his commitment to his country, even though an everlasting magical freedom guaranteeing surplus seems somewhat fantastical, not that one shouldn't attempt to realize aspects of it through parliamentary means, depends upon that country's commitment to him.
Hoping there's a sequel.
Sort of like the anti-Die Hard 5.
Good communists and bad communists.
Respect for North Korea?
Deconstructive hypoallergenic hyper-reflexive expedition.
And a remarketable union.
The issue of trust gravitationally staggers through myriad ulterior transitional focal points until a specific set of exceptional checks and balances produces an ephemeral allegiance, an amicable diplomatic extract.
The film's tight chaotic suction implodes near the end as a protagonist and his principal enemy square off like traditional martial marionettes.
Still pretty cool.
Both of the main male communist characters can be thought of as members of North Korea's materialistic pantheon, but the bad one's father occupies a high ranking influential yet corrupt position in the country's militaristic elite.
The other is an extraordinary citizen whose unyielding belief and support have strengthened his iron constitution.
Whether or not he can continue to exercise his commitment to his country, even though an everlasting magical freedom guaranteeing surplus seems somewhat fantastical, not that one shouldn't attempt to realize aspects of it through parliamentary means, depends upon that country's commitment to him.
Hoping there's a sequel.
Sort of like the anti-Die Hard 5.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
A Good Day to Die Hard
Ah, liked the other Die Hard films.
Even Die Hard 3.
Live Free or Die Hard was a big surprise, seeing how it was the franchise's 4th instalment and disseminated one of its best narratives.
Bearing this in mind, I was excited when I heard that A Good Day to Die Hard was being released, naively figuring that they would at least sustain Die Hard 4's momentum with another deep script packed with the expected explosive cast of supporting characters.
In other words, I completely forgot that this was Die Hard 5.
Bruce Willis still excels at playing John McClane. There weren't any moments where it seemed as if he had lost touch with the hands-on hardboiled lawperson whose gifts for instantaneously outwitting ingenious villains in the heat of the moment flexibly manifests an endearing contextual psychocorporeality.
But no single performance could have saved this film, with its brutal lines, shoddy editing, improbable scenarios (usually you try and set up an elaborate situation whose intricate details, improbable though they may be, at least cleverly conceal the improbability), and rather one-dimensional depiction of Russia.
The idea behind the script is solid. Send Mr. McClane to another country where he must contend with the wicked with the help of his son (Jai Courtney as Jack McClane) thereby quasi-globalizing his law enforcement instinct while strengthening his commitment to family.
The film's best moments see John and Jack airing their grievances while preparing for another round of improvisational hyperactivity, and its best line is "Tough to kill a McClane."
But Die Hard 5 can still be categorized with Rocky V and Star Trek V, more concerned with its image than the traditional kinetic synthesis of action, dialogue, stitch, and kitsch that produced it.
Remember the cold war? The creative forces behind Die Hard 5 sure do.
Ugh.
Even Die Hard 3.
Live Free or Die Hard was a big surprise, seeing how it was the franchise's 4th instalment and disseminated one of its best narratives.
Bearing this in mind, I was excited when I heard that A Good Day to Die Hard was being released, naively figuring that they would at least sustain Die Hard 4's momentum with another deep script packed with the expected explosive cast of supporting characters.
In other words, I completely forgot that this was Die Hard 5.
Bruce Willis still excels at playing John McClane. There weren't any moments where it seemed as if he had lost touch with the hands-on hardboiled lawperson whose gifts for instantaneously outwitting ingenious villains in the heat of the moment flexibly manifests an endearing contextual psychocorporeality.
But no single performance could have saved this film, with its brutal lines, shoddy editing, improbable scenarios (usually you try and set up an elaborate situation whose intricate details, improbable though they may be, at least cleverly conceal the improbability), and rather one-dimensional depiction of Russia.
The idea behind the script is solid. Send Mr. McClane to another country where he must contend with the wicked with the help of his son (Jai Courtney as Jack McClane) thereby quasi-globalizing his law enforcement instinct while strengthening his commitment to family.
The film's best moments see John and Jack airing their grievances while preparing for another round of improvisational hyperactivity, and its best line is "Tough to kill a McClane."
But Die Hard 5 can still be categorized with Rocky V and Star Trek V, more concerned with its image than the traditional kinetic synthesis of action, dialogue, stitch, and kitsch that produced it.
Remember the cold war? The creative forces behind Die Hard 5 sure do.
Ugh.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Identity Thief
Loved Planes, Trains & Automobiles growing up.
Arguably both John Candy and Steve Martin's best movie, it brought together two of Hollywood's leading comedic actors, set them up as a mismatched pair, simultaneously catered to bourgeois and working class sympathies, and used Thanksgiving to tie everything together.
By the end of the film, Neal Page (Martin) has been transformed from a cold representative of the bad bourgeoisie who have no social conscience to someone who will at least invite a lonely friend to his home for dinner.
Del Griffith (Candy) smiles, everyone's happy, the end.
26 years later, Seth Gordon's Identity Thief works within the same paradigm, but the cultural codes of the game have changed.
If we're to take the information provided in Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story as solid indisputable fact, unions had generated stable, prosperous bourgeois lives for many working Americans until their strength was weakened by the Reagan administration and many of their jobs shipped elsewhere, some, in the interests of capitalism, to at least one communist country.
Theoretically, a significant proportion of the American population were no longer able to maintain their suburban lifestyles (in the same location over a long period of time) and found themselves individually competing for new jobs in a pop cultural system that vilified anything besides the undeniably exceptional.
Does this theory resonate throughout little old unsuspecting Identity Thief?
I don't know, but here's my take.
Lead character Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) is struggling to get by, working for a corporation who only values the contributions of upper management, living with his wife and two kids.
He's played his cards right but at the end of the month only has a little more than 14 dollars of potential savings to show for it.
And trouble's a brewin.'
Diana (Melissa McCarthy) makes her living stealing peoples identities and using them to finance her freewheelin' acquisitive lifestyle (Patterson seems like he's too smart to have fallen for her scam, but that's another matter).
She steals that of Mr. Patterson just as he launches a career as the vice-president of a new company.
Naturally he's pissed, and sets out for Florida to confront and bring her back to Denver, due to infrastructural peculiarities that prevent the Denver PD from working with their Floridian counterparts.
But he's not the only one in hot pursuit, for she's run afoul of others seeking vengeance who track and attempt to overcome Sandy and Diana after Sandy captures her.
By the end of the film, Sandy's developed a social conscience at least to the degree where he cares about one of the proletarian characters who ends up in jail.
Most of the proletarian characters (likely) end up in jail.
Thus, as good jobs become harder to find than they were in the 1980s, working American people find themselves resorting to a higher degree of criminal activity, much more violent than John Candy's family friendly shenanigans, corporate upper management remains influential and unaffected unless those whom they disregard can out-compete them in the marketplace (hopefully without becoming like them during the struggle), wherein which these competitors might lose everything, as some seem to have even though they had stable unionized jobs, which possibly faltered due to their lack of a coordinated multidisciplinary international network.
Among thousands of other rather complicated factors of which I'm unaware.
Identity Thief's script contains a broader array of consistent characters than Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Melissa McCarthy's performance is strong enough to indicate that she may be able to function as a 21st century John Candy, there are some funny scenes which utilize sleaze as everyone chases, tricks, slanders, and/or shoots at one another, which seems to be the comic style of our time, but it's not attached to a holiday, and is missing a substitute for Steve Martin.
Jason Bateman's good. I love his work. Bold to compete with Steve Martin. I wouldn't even be able to order coffee for an extra's stunt double.
Genesis Rodriguez (Marisol) is my favourite real world name ever.
No mention of the Broncos.
Arguably both John Candy and Steve Martin's best movie, it brought together two of Hollywood's leading comedic actors, set them up as a mismatched pair, simultaneously catered to bourgeois and working class sympathies, and used Thanksgiving to tie everything together.
By the end of the film, Neal Page (Martin) has been transformed from a cold representative of the bad bourgeoisie who have no social conscience to someone who will at least invite a lonely friend to his home for dinner.
Del Griffith (Candy) smiles, everyone's happy, the end.
26 years later, Seth Gordon's Identity Thief works within the same paradigm, but the cultural codes of the game have changed.
If we're to take the information provided in Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story as solid indisputable fact, unions had generated stable, prosperous bourgeois lives for many working Americans until their strength was weakened by the Reagan administration and many of their jobs shipped elsewhere, some, in the interests of capitalism, to at least one communist country.
Theoretically, a significant proportion of the American population were no longer able to maintain their suburban lifestyles (in the same location over a long period of time) and found themselves individually competing for new jobs in a pop cultural system that vilified anything besides the undeniably exceptional.
Does this theory resonate throughout little old unsuspecting Identity Thief?
I don't know, but here's my take.
Lead character Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) is struggling to get by, working for a corporation who only values the contributions of upper management, living with his wife and two kids.
He's played his cards right but at the end of the month only has a little more than 14 dollars of potential savings to show for it.
And trouble's a brewin.'
Diana (Melissa McCarthy) makes her living stealing peoples identities and using them to finance her freewheelin' acquisitive lifestyle (Patterson seems like he's too smart to have fallen for her scam, but that's another matter).
She steals that of Mr. Patterson just as he launches a career as the vice-president of a new company.
Naturally he's pissed, and sets out for Florida to confront and bring her back to Denver, due to infrastructural peculiarities that prevent the Denver PD from working with their Floridian counterparts.
But he's not the only one in hot pursuit, for she's run afoul of others seeking vengeance who track and attempt to overcome Sandy and Diana after Sandy captures her.
By the end of the film, Sandy's developed a social conscience at least to the degree where he cares about one of the proletarian characters who ends up in jail.
Most of the proletarian characters (likely) end up in jail.
Thus, as good jobs become harder to find than they were in the 1980s, working American people find themselves resorting to a higher degree of criminal activity, much more violent than John Candy's family friendly shenanigans, corporate upper management remains influential and unaffected unless those whom they disregard can out-compete them in the marketplace (hopefully without becoming like them during the struggle), wherein which these competitors might lose everything, as some seem to have even though they had stable unionized jobs, which possibly faltered due to their lack of a coordinated multidisciplinary international network.
Among thousands of other rather complicated factors of which I'm unaware.
Identity Thief's script contains a broader array of consistent characters than Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Melissa McCarthy's performance is strong enough to indicate that she may be able to function as a 21st century John Candy, there are some funny scenes which utilize sleaze as everyone chases, tricks, slanders, and/or shoots at one another, which seems to be the comic style of our time, but it's not attached to a holiday, and is missing a substitute for Steve Martin.
Jason Bateman's good. I love his work. Bold to compete with Steve Martin. I wouldn't even be able to order coffee for an extra's stunt double.
Genesis Rodriguez (Marisol) is my favourite real world name ever.
No mention of the Broncos.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Le prix des mots
Engaging in speculation can be a risky business.
Julien Fréchette's Le prix des mots explores how engaging in what can be thought of as scholarly research can be risky as well, if you draw conclusions from your research that directly critique those who seem like enormously wealthy capitalistic players.
In Canada anyways.
Mining is big business in Canada.
When I look around my apartment and count the gadgets and appliances I frequently use that wouldn't exist without mining, and consider the social programs that can be supported through the extraction of minerals, as well as the jobs that can be consequently created, I don't see much of a problem with it, as I've stated before.
But said mining operations must proceed ethically in an environmentally and socially responsible manner so that tax payers aren't left cleaning up potentially irremediable pollution for generations to come, and the workers can enjoy a fruitful share of their profits.
According to this article, containing information from Canadian Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Scott Vaughan's final report after five years on the job, if there was currently an oil spill or nuclear accident within Canada, Canadian taxpayers would be exposed to huge financial risks.
According to this look at closure alternatives for Yukon's faro mine, moving the tailings could take between 10 to 20 years, and this article states that "with devolution, managing the cleanup of the mine became the responsibility of the Yukon government, while Ottawa is still obligated to pay the bills," although it doesn't mention whether or not Ottawa is exclusively paying for the cleanup with tax payers money (I think it's safe to speculate that this could partially be the case).
To speculate further, applying environmental regulations can also be a tricky business. Constant vigilance is possibly required. This requires chill lefties to adopt psychological dispositions that can be stereotypically associated with their right wing counterparts, although there are probably plenty of chill right wingers as well as a plethora of tenacious left wing professionals. The adoption of such dispositions will possibly lead to a conservative comedic backlash, and it's possibly easier for people to appear chill when they're sitting on boatloads of cash (that can possibly be used to conservatively prop up pop culture [people with money often don't do this and many are deserving of a sincere degree of respect due to how hard they work, their intelligence, the jobs they create, and their commitment to democratically ensuring that those jobs are available for years to come]).
Le prix des mots is about what I consider to be a courageous book, based upon what I've seen in the film, Alain Deneault's Noir Canada, and the problems Mr. Deneault and his publisher Écosociété encountered after its publication.
It was only published in French in Québec but ended up being prosecuted for libel in an Ontarian court afterwards.
Parts of Mr. Deneault's defence are presented in the film and it seemed to me like he was on trial for drawing logical conclusions from the articles he cited in his book.
Perhaps the language he used was too direct, but if everyone who draws logical conclusions from cited articles ended up being sued for libel, you would have to place written and verbal communication themselves on trial, as, according to my understanding of the phenomenons, that's what they do.
One could potentially interview/interrogate/subpoena everyone who ever wrote about/interpreted/criticized/discussed a specific printed entity, if they had the financial resources, until so much ambiguity was attached to every nuance that it would be impossible to make a clear point, the clear points people are often taught to make using the active voice in school, as if the active voice itself is reserved for the forces of capital.
If that clear point happens to be true and it's made in the defence of people who don't have vast financial resources by someone who also doesn't have vast financial resources, this could be (is?) a serious problem.
Écosociété confidently stood by Mr. Deneault throughout the proceedings.
His book is about the activities of some Canadian mining companies in Africa and how they (possibly) affected local populations.
Looking forward to picking up a copy.
Julien Fréchette's Le prix des mots explores how engaging in what can be thought of as scholarly research can be risky as well, if you draw conclusions from your research that directly critique those who seem like enormously wealthy capitalistic players.
In Canada anyways.
Mining is big business in Canada.
When I look around my apartment and count the gadgets and appliances I frequently use that wouldn't exist without mining, and consider the social programs that can be supported through the extraction of minerals, as well as the jobs that can be consequently created, I don't see much of a problem with it, as I've stated before.
But said mining operations must proceed ethically in an environmentally and socially responsible manner so that tax payers aren't left cleaning up potentially irremediable pollution for generations to come, and the workers can enjoy a fruitful share of their profits.
According to this article, containing information from Canadian Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Scott Vaughan's final report after five years on the job, if there was currently an oil spill or nuclear accident within Canada, Canadian taxpayers would be exposed to huge financial risks.
According to this look at closure alternatives for Yukon's faro mine, moving the tailings could take between 10 to 20 years, and this article states that "with devolution, managing the cleanup of the mine became the responsibility of the Yukon government, while Ottawa is still obligated to pay the bills," although it doesn't mention whether or not Ottawa is exclusively paying for the cleanup with tax payers money (I think it's safe to speculate that this could partially be the case).
To speculate further, applying environmental regulations can also be a tricky business. Constant vigilance is possibly required. This requires chill lefties to adopt psychological dispositions that can be stereotypically associated with their right wing counterparts, although there are probably plenty of chill right wingers as well as a plethora of tenacious left wing professionals. The adoption of such dispositions will possibly lead to a conservative comedic backlash, and it's possibly easier for people to appear chill when they're sitting on boatloads of cash (that can possibly be used to conservatively prop up pop culture [people with money often don't do this and many are deserving of a sincere degree of respect due to how hard they work, their intelligence, the jobs they create, and their commitment to democratically ensuring that those jobs are available for years to come]).
Le prix des mots is about what I consider to be a courageous book, based upon what I've seen in the film, Alain Deneault's Noir Canada, and the problems Mr. Deneault and his publisher Écosociété encountered after its publication.
It was only published in French in Québec but ended up being prosecuted for libel in an Ontarian court afterwards.
Parts of Mr. Deneault's defence are presented in the film and it seemed to me like he was on trial for drawing logical conclusions from the articles he cited in his book.
Perhaps the language he used was too direct, but if everyone who draws logical conclusions from cited articles ended up being sued for libel, you would have to place written and verbal communication themselves on trial, as, according to my understanding of the phenomenons, that's what they do.
One could potentially interview/interrogate/subpoena everyone who ever wrote about/interpreted/criticized/discussed a specific printed entity, if they had the financial resources, until so much ambiguity was attached to every nuance that it would be impossible to make a clear point, the clear points people are often taught to make using the active voice in school, as if the active voice itself is reserved for the forces of capital.
If that clear point happens to be true and it's made in the defence of people who don't have vast financial resources by someone who also doesn't have vast financial resources, this could be (is?) a serious problem.
Écosociété confidently stood by Mr. Deneault throughout the proceedings.
His book is about the activities of some Canadian mining companies in Africa and how they (possibly) affected local populations.
Looking forward to picking up a copy.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Stand Up Guys
Went in blind to this one, lured by the cast, became worried after viewing a preview for Red 2, but then the laid-back unpretentious low-key credits and accompanying music brought upon feelings of relief, illuminated by Doc's (Christopher Walken) artwork, reminding me of those from Barfly and Pulp Fiction, for some unknown reason.
Was still worried that the film may be too status quo having been let down by similarly cast movies in the past, but wow, my worries faded quickly as I discovered that in the twilights of their careers, Christopher Walken, Al Pacino (Val), and Alan Arkin (Hirsch) were taking on grizzled rambunctious radioactive roles with hardly any inkling of sanitary preconditioning, they just thought it up and did it, ironically reincarnating the precocious spirit that likely lead to them becoming Hollywood mainstays in the first place.
Challenge. Acceptance. Realization.
That description applies more directly to Al Pacino who plays the most dynamic part but Walken and Arkin also get the job done.
The film explores a pyrotechnic variability while slowly excavating poignant distinct clarifications.
Hirsch's introduction escalates a seismic shift after which malfeasancient minerals are mercantilized.
It's funny.
Director Fisher Stevens knows how to make you laugh by encouraging specific nondescript awkward facial expressions or juxtaposing a hardened con with his choice of tasty treats.
Economic matters are classified while its joie de vivre is liquidated.
And family and friendship find frenzied filial refinements in the final moments.
Plus, these guys have a potent response for the coercive rapacious scum found in Kim Nguyen's Rebelle.
Volatile, chill, and collaborative.
On the record.
Was still worried that the film may be too status quo having been let down by similarly cast movies in the past, but wow, my worries faded quickly as I discovered that in the twilights of their careers, Christopher Walken, Al Pacino (Val), and Alan Arkin (Hirsch) were taking on grizzled rambunctious radioactive roles with hardly any inkling of sanitary preconditioning, they just thought it up and did it, ironically reincarnating the precocious spirit that likely lead to them becoming Hollywood mainstays in the first place.
Challenge. Acceptance. Realization.
That description applies more directly to Al Pacino who plays the most dynamic part but Walken and Arkin also get the job done.
The film explores a pyrotechnic variability while slowly excavating poignant distinct clarifications.
Hirsch's introduction escalates a seismic shift after which malfeasancient minerals are mercantilized.
It's funny.
Director Fisher Stevens knows how to make you laugh by encouraging specific nondescript awkward facial expressions or juxtaposing a hardened con with his choice of tasty treats.
Economic matters are classified while its joie de vivre is liquidated.
And family and friendship find frenzied filial refinements in the final moments.
Plus, these guys have a potent response for the coercive rapacious scum found in Kim Nguyen's Rebelle.
Volatile, chill, and collaborative.
On the record.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Rebelle (War Witch)
Calmly passing through a series of tumultuous events, Kim Nguyen's Rebelle (War Witch) follows Komona's (Rachel Mwanza) path as she's forced to serve as a child soldier.
Viciously separated from her family, she despondently acquiesces to her chaotic surroundings, inductively developing psychological survival strategies which enable her to tactically trudge through her wartorn environment.
The film placidly displays the bitter helpless wanton affects her predicament necessitates before accentuating their terror by transferring them to a supportive realm wherein their sublimation proves perplexing.
It's not emotive or sentimental, just a raw exemplification of debilitating dissonance which presents a reality the victims of organized violent insurgencies must endure.
Under the guise of their best interests.
How one suddenly returns to a constructive life after suffering under such hardships without occasionally expressing themselves with fits of irrepressible anger is beyond me.
Complete with contextual symbolic sabotage.
Viciously separated from her family, she despondently acquiesces to her chaotic surroundings, inductively developing psychological survival strategies which enable her to tactically trudge through her wartorn environment.
The film placidly displays the bitter helpless wanton affects her predicament necessitates before accentuating their terror by transferring them to a supportive realm wherein their sublimation proves perplexing.
It's not emotive or sentimental, just a raw exemplification of debilitating dissonance which presents a reality the victims of organized violent insurgencies must endure.
Under the guise of their best interests.
How one suddenly returns to a constructive life after suffering under such hardships without occasionally expressing themselves with fits of irrepressible anger is beyond me.
Complete with contextual symbolic sabotage.
Monday, February 4, 2013
En kongelig affære (A Royal Affair)
A gifted enlightened town doctor (Mads Mikkelsen as Johann Friedrich Struensee) fortuitously finds himself suddenly reshaping his country's (Denmark) feudal character in Nikolaj Arcel's En kongelig affære (A Royal Affair), relying heavily upon his lucid acumen to enact social democratic reforms.
But a misguided sense of permanency and an affectionate indiscretion result in his ignominious downfall.
King Christian VII (Mikkel Følsgaard) wants little to do with ruling and prefers to revel in unconditioned debauchery.
Doctor Struensee does little to disuade his ambition and the two strike up an amiable friendship, prominently acting for the good of the people.
As opportunity strikes, freedom materializes, yet its nascent state fails to consider history's quotidien counterbalance.
As dinner is served, a competitive course of cultural compositions is collusively seared, and the foundations of a revolving polemic picturesquely present themselves.
Too picturesquely perhaps.
One of En kongelig affære's principal problems is that there aren't any proactive plebeian representatives. A film boldly illustrating a crucial moment in Danish social democratic development should have likely included characters to whom said developments directly apply.
Instead they're stereotypically depicted as a mob.
It may have been too maudlin to include proactive plebeian reps but it also lacks a healthy contingent of subtle continuous economically disadvantaged background personnages which could have diversified its filmscape.
Obviously doing this continuously throughout a film is expensive and time consuming, and since En kongelig affære highlights the dangers of proceeding too quickly with social democratic reforms, perhaps this is an example of form working hand-in-hand with content.
The economic dangers are obviously real but so are the dangers of a right wing government that constantly pleads poverty (or creates an inexhaustible debt) when there is in fact of abundance of wealth, and the film examines a period which inaugurated social democratic reforms, not one where they already hold partial institutional prominence in some countries.
The King is at least cognizant of his faults and logically prefers friendship to fidelity considering his own predilections.
The film also concerns a love affair.
Don't know if I've ever seen a better example of the ridiculousness of the absolute application of ideology than when the Queen (Alicia Vikander [Denmark's Keira Knightley or Natalie Portman?]) is told to be more ladylike while giving birth.
Outstanding.
But a misguided sense of permanency and an affectionate indiscretion result in his ignominious downfall.
King Christian VII (Mikkel Følsgaard) wants little to do with ruling and prefers to revel in unconditioned debauchery.
Doctor Struensee does little to disuade his ambition and the two strike up an amiable friendship, prominently acting for the good of the people.
As opportunity strikes, freedom materializes, yet its nascent state fails to consider history's quotidien counterbalance.
As dinner is served, a competitive course of cultural compositions is collusively seared, and the foundations of a revolving polemic picturesquely present themselves.
Too picturesquely perhaps.
One of En kongelig affære's principal problems is that there aren't any proactive plebeian representatives. A film boldly illustrating a crucial moment in Danish social democratic development should have likely included characters to whom said developments directly apply.
Instead they're stereotypically depicted as a mob.
It may have been too maudlin to include proactive plebeian reps but it also lacks a healthy contingent of subtle continuous economically disadvantaged background personnages which could have diversified its filmscape.
Obviously doing this continuously throughout a film is expensive and time consuming, and since En kongelig affære highlights the dangers of proceeding too quickly with social democratic reforms, perhaps this is an example of form working hand-in-hand with content.
The economic dangers are obviously real but so are the dangers of a right wing government that constantly pleads poverty (or creates an inexhaustible debt) when there is in fact of abundance of wealth, and the film examines a period which inaugurated social democratic reforms, not one where they already hold partial institutional prominence in some countries.
The King is at least cognizant of his faults and logically prefers friendship to fidelity considering his own predilections.
The film also concerns a love affair.
Don't know if I've ever seen a better example of the ridiculousness of the absolute application of ideology than when the Queen (Alicia Vikander [Denmark's Keira Knightley or Natalie Portman?]) is told to be more ladylike while giving birth.
Outstanding.
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