The Last Taboo

I've come across the topic of vulgarity vis-a-vis HBO's new fantasy series, Game of Thrones, twice now.  The first time was in a thread at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen: I compared Game of Thrones to Deadwood:

I watched Game of Thrones a bit, and I was actually surprised you didn’t mention the foul language in Deadwood for comparison purposes. Both shows try so hard to beat the viewer over the head with the fact that they are for adults for adults for adults that even a small amount of reflection fosters the realization that they are quite oviously for men between 20 and 35. As a man between 20 and 35, I’d feel uncomfortable watching either show with someone not of that demographic.

The second was from this Daily Beast article, on the plethora of dick-shots in today's Hollywood films:    

No aspect of the minotaur’s penis was left to chance in the recently released Your Highness,

The fearsome appendage, which is revealed at a key moment in April’s medieval stoner comedy, came courtesy of extensive internal debates within and outside the film’s distributor Universal Pictures. How to light the half-man/half-bull’s prosthetic member? How big the balls? The penis’ startling physical dimensions, the state of its, ahem, romantic rectitude—all were subject to boardroom discussions between filmmakers, concept artists and studio executives, resulting in a breakthrough for the R-rated action farce.

“When we filmed it, the creature’s manhood is swinging back and forth between his legs,” said Your Highness director David Gordon Green. “It was actually the head of the studio who had the idea to give him a boner.

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Oscar Preview 2011: The Best of the Best Pictures

Last year I wrote an Oscar preview for Best Picture and outlined my reasons for doing so. This year I have done the same, and I'm glad to say that this year it was a much more pleasurable experience. The films are reviewed in the order they appear on the official nomination list.

1 - Black Swan - Black Swan started off combined with The Wrestler as one film; director Darren Aronofsky brings us the tale of young ballerina Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) and her transformation from Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde. Black Swan is told from Nina's point of view: she is cast as the lead in a production of Swan Lake, and must portray the White Swan and the Black Swan. She is a perfectionist, and can play the White with ease, but she is criticised for her lack of passion when it comes to the Black. Portman puts in a truly Oscar-worthy performance as Nina, and her depiction of a young shy woman's descent into insanity is heartbreaking to watch. Mila Kunis plays Nina's main rival, Lily, whose motives are unclear, as paranoia is a huge part of our unreliable narrator's personality. Lily could be a conniving little bitch, or she could be a genuinely nice woman who is really happy for Nina's achievements. Kunis plays this ambiguity to a tee. Vincent Cassel plays what is unfortunately a clichéd character – the director of the play. He actually spouts of lines like “The only person standing in your way is you” and “you could be brilliant, but you are a coward.” Cassel's convincing pomposity is what ultimately saves his character from becoming a caricature. Barbara Hershey also adds realism to a character we've all seen many times before – the overbearing mother. Aronofsky in this film creates a tense atmosphere that just doesn't let up, even when Nina spends a night out with Lily, trying to let herself go. His use of CGI in this film - whether the viewer is aware of it or not - is quite simply amazing (video contains spoilers). Black Swan is an intense experience, with a slow build up to an interesting if not ultimately satisfying climax.

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Scott Pilgrim is a Christmas Tree

Set in a world governed by video game rules, in order to earn the right to go out with the girl of his dreams, a 22 year old, charming but self-absorbed musician must first defeat her seven evil exes.

A cursory glance at Scott Pilgrim vs The World suggests that this film is amazing. There is a lot of humour involved, be it pithy dialogue or sight gags, and the film is edited in what is becoming Director Edgar Wright's trademark short, snappy style – one minute Scott's in a library, the next frame, he's at home at band practice, and 10 seconds later he's walking down the street, on the way to a party, all in one seamless, fluid motion. Not a moment or space is wasted. Wright makes things happen  at all times, whether it be driving the plot forward, making us laugh, or creating the smug feeling within ourselves of “I get that reference”.

The film also just looks great. The CG special effects are polished, and they perfectly meld the 'real' world with the gaming world. Wright tried very hard to perfect this film on the technical side to within an inch of its life.

However, once you pay more attention to this film, it becomes a soulless vacuum. There is not a single, likable, developed character in the film: the titular character is played by Michael Cera as a more selfish Michael Cera.

At the beginning of the film, Scott is dating a sycophantic high school girl named Knives Chau (best name ever( as a way to make himself feel better, because he still isn't over his last girlfriend, who he broke up with a year earlier. He takes Knives for granted, then forgets about her completely after he discovers his (literal) dream girl, Ramona. It is only at the behest of his friends that Scott breaks up with his jailbait friend.
 
Scott's personal arc in the film is about learning to love himself, but from the outset he loves himself a bit too much – when he reaches his personal climax, a Street Fighter-esque voice booms: “Scott earned the power of self-respect!” Great! Now can he gain the viewer's respect?

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Inception: A Small Golden Nugget in a Mountain of Silver?

Spoiler Alert from Adam Quigley's /Film review of Inception:

Spoiling Inception is near impossible without writing out a manual to explain what those spoilers mean, but regardless, this review includes vague references to plot points that could be deemed spoilers by those who probably shouldn’t be reading reviews anyway if they really wanted to avoid finding out anything about the movie. You’ve been warned. -

Oscar season is approaching and Christopher Nolan's film Inception has consistently made critics's top ten lists.  Inception was Mark Kermode's favourite film of 2010, and it featured prominently on lists of two of the three hosts of /Filmcast.  Indeed, /Film's Adam Quigley has provided the most reasoned and measured review of Inception.  

I don't doubt that Inception is one of the better films of last year, but at times I think it has been overrated, by Mark Kermode in particular and elsewhere within the cranes and scaffolding of the Internet geekdom.  It was finally a comment from my brother on Facebook on the hilarious a capella version of the Inception trailer that summed up best how I too felt about the film:

Meh not bad - I have to say the more I think about Inception the less impressed I am. It's just too up itself for its own good. But maybe I should watch it a second time to see if it gets any better. Also the plot was nowhere near as cerebral as everyone made out. 

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Oscar Preview 2010: The Best of the Best Pictures

At Oscar time last year, I had watched very little of what was actually being shown, but I had watched The Wrestler, loved it, and I really thought that Mickey Rourke should have won Best Actor.  It was the best performance I'd seen in a long time, but when Sean Penn won for Milk, I was outraged.  But because I hadn’t seen Milk, I had no business feeling outraged; I was comparing a performance I had seen and loved to a performance I had not seen. So this year, I thought, well, of course, you can’t watch every movie that's nominated for everything, so I decided to watch every movie that was nominated for Best Picture.  That means that when I inevitably disagree with whatever movie wins Best Picture, I can legitimately disagree with the Academy's decision.  The Academy extended the number of picture nominated this year to ten, which doubled my workload, but it was a labor of love.

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Awesome Avatar Message Board Exchange

I recently posted a summary and link to my extremely negative Avatar review on a fanboy site; this elicited no fewer than twelve err, umm, avatars to insult me and accuse me of being a troll.  A routine link bomb had turned into solid entertainment.  Some highlights: 

Vanessa791 says, "It never fails to amaze me that trolls love to get on a FAN site just to be able to trash a movie that the other members love. You actually think the garbage you are spewing is going to open our eyes??? You sir, are a fool then. Go spew your crap on a board where it is wanted, it isn't wanted here."

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Avatar Review Disclaimer

Although Avatar definitely sucked, I must admit that I watched the movie in Japanese because I wanted to see the 3-D.  There was an English version available in my city, but it was the 2-D version, and, really, let's face it, the only reason to go see Avatar is to witness stereoscopic film-making.  As a result, I may have been frustrated - not because I don't understand Japanese - but because I find dubbing to be in poor taste and distractingly ridiculous.  I might understand the rationale behind dubbing - as opposed to subtitling - a special effects movie: people want to focus on visuals and not on reading subtitles.  Nevertheless, dubbing is the norm in Japan for all foreign media.  There are probably only five or six voice actors, and they all sound like Don LaFontaine, even the woman who regularly plays Miley Cyrus.  I attribute this to either widespread hidden illiteracy or widespread poor taste.  Either way, it may have affected my mood as I watched the film.

Avatar is an Elephantine Heap of Excrement

Rowan Atkinson's Na'vi

SPOILER ALERT: If you didn't guess from the title, this review trashes Avatar.  If you still want to enjoy the film, don't bother reading it.  Let's skip over Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves, Ferngully, and all that really funny, funny stuff, because that's played out like a Jheri Curl.  Instead, lets explore the less-covered ground of why the movie really sucks: its crude, ham-fisted politics, invidious racism, crappy animation, unfortunate impact on film-making, and hackneyed unoriginality.   

James Cameron's self-righteous injection of partisan politics and one-dimensional morality that is the story of Avatar is ponderous, underhanded, and due to the whopping success of the film, destined to make us all dumber.  The RDA mining corporation, run by a character named Parker Selfridge, is represented as profit-motivated and evil, willing to do whatever it takes - including genocide - for uncertain returns.  The clash between the Na'vi (Honestly, what's with the breath mark?  An umlaut seemed too pretentious?) and RDA reminds me of the simplistic good versus evil narrative of most comic books, where the superhero is endowed by some sort of natural or spiritual deus ex machina and battles the evil forces of - inevitably - a wealthy businessman or scientist.  As Avatar has all the thematic complexity of a bad comic book, it's hard to see it as the masterpiece twelve-years-in-the-making it's been hailed as, and not as the product of the decadent final stages of a pervasive Hollywood meme.  I wonder if director Cameron was so lost in focus groups, financial projections, and delusions of grandeur (He is the King of the World after all.) that he failed to realize his film treats adults like morally incompetent losers in a Spurlockian fashion.  In the words of Turtle from Entourage, "“James Cameron, baby! This could be the worst piece-of-shit movie ever and it’ll still make a billion dollars.”

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Action Movie Review: 300

300 burned hot, loud and fast through the popular consciousness of 2007.  Clearly the action movie of the year- if not the most iconic movie of any type - it had a je ne sais quoi that made it immediately intelligible for everyone.  Yet, beneath the slow motion capes and oiled, tanned abs a festering sickness hid, making it a Trojan horse for an ahistorical nationalism. Combining the themes of Triumph of the Will with the pathos of a Marine recruitment video and the lazy visuals of an M-rated video game, 300 is a potent spoonful of sugar for moviegoers looking to escape their banal lives of not thinking too hard about important things to a place where they don't have to think at all about unimportant things.  

Any moviegoer expecting more briskly lost that innocence when the damn thing opened on a field of infant skulls as two flawless, superheroic Aryan men decide whether or not to kill a baby if it fails to meet certainly eugenic standards. Should the baby make the cut, it will be beaten and starved to toughen it into a super soldier. Don't worry though, the Spartans don't get off on this sort of thing, there are plenty of crying mothers around to show that they are just doing their duty creating the master race.  These are noble, isolationist Nazis, content to cannibalize their own - but you better not fuck them (but won't it be cool to see someone do it anyway?).

From that initial scene till the last overwrought second- where the whole movie is revealed to be the long version of William Wallace's "but they'll never take our FREEEEdom" speech in Braveheart- 300 pits our perfect looking, straight, white heroes against the forces of evil: black people, Asian people, ugly people, gay people, diplomatic people and people who have sex outside of marriage. Much has been made about how gay the Spartans look oiled up in big red capes, but they make it clear that they aren't like those "boy lovers" in Athens. The Spartans aren't gay, they are just phalluses that rip and tear through their effeminate foes; they are the Platonic (he was a boy lover too) form of "top," all swaggering machismo and swinging dick. The slow motion shots of bloody penis spears thrusting through less masculine men only cement the comparison.

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Movies, etc.

Just finished watching Australia.  What a disappointing, melodramatic piece of crap.  If I hear Somewhere over the Rainbow (click on that link) ever again, I probably not going to vomit, but I be very, very upset.  For quite some time, the offerings of Hollywood-plus have been rather mediocre, and nothing has had that perfect mix of camp and high art that I so crave since Blade Runner (actually released four years before I was born).  Nevertheless, I am hopeful for the near future.  I am totally, totally excited for The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, which stars both Christopher Plummer and Tom Waits, two legendary badasses.  Perhaps Terry Gilliam will finally hit a home run with this one, but I may have to wait for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.  No Country for Old Men writer Cormac McCarthy's The Road starring an Aragorn-esque Viggo Mortensen also looks promising, but I've generally been unable to stomache Mortensen since Eastern Promises.  But speaking of post-apocalyptic movies, while watching House DVDs last night, I saw a preview for the 2008 Jason Statham vehicle Death Race, which somehow flew below my radar.  Wow.  Cars with guns?  Haven't seen that in a while.  Enough said.  This movie looks awesome and I'm salivating over my plan to rent it this weekend.  (But I'm wondering what the hell Joan Allen is doing in it.)  I think Statham is the closest we have to Arnie these days, not by virtue of his acting skills, or lack thereof, but because he knows how to pick 'em: between The Transporter, The Transporter II, Crank, War, Transporter III, and the upcoming The Expendables, Statham, not The Rock, not Vin Diesel, is definitely carrying the torch, albeit a waterlogged and flaccid one.       

Predator and Robocop: Two Classic Action Movies from Rap to Remakes

I learned on The Soup a few weeks ago that "legendary tough guys" Topher Grace and Adrien Brody are slated to star in a remake of Predator, to come out in 2010.  And as if things couldn't get any worse on the Predator front, Fox recently took down from Youtube Irish hip hop artists DJ Mayhem and Mouthmaster Murph's amazing Predator rap.  The lyrics are still available, but the film footage has been taken down by Fox for violating copyright law.  This doesn't make any sense to me: why would fox not want free viral advertising for one of the greatest action movies of all time to a new generation of hyper-computer-literate movie-goers?  Luckily, I found the video on break.com after searching for about five minutes.     

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The Video Store

I went to the video store today.  Unlike US stores, Japanese video stores responded to the onslaught of free downloading by reducing their prices, and thus are thriving.  When I was back home for Christmas a few years ago, the internet in my house was broken, and I desperately wanted to watch Season 2 of Rome.  I think I paid around 85 dollars in all at Blockbuster - a mistake.  However, today I rented twelve DVDs for twelve dollars from Video One, the second floor of which is enirely devoted to pornography.

 American comedic genius, Michael Moore, sandwiched between Will Ferrell and Robin Williams

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Black Gold and the Law of Large Numbers

This afternoon I watched the 2006 coffee trade documentary "Black Gold" for the first time and learned some things, like, for instance, in terms of trade volume among commodities, coffee is exceeded by only oil, and that the eco-friendly fair-trade image cast by Starbucks and other chain coffee shops is only a veneer.  The film follows a group of Ethiopian coffee growers and is harshly critical of the World Trade Organization, which it claims keeps the world price of coffee artificially low to benefit the four major middlemen (Sara Lee, Proctor and Gamble, Kraft, and Nestle) as well as consumers in rich countries.  "Black Gold" criticizes foreign aid for Africa as a poor substitute for extending an appropriate share of the profits generated by coffee sales and those of other commodities to the poor Africans that produce them. 

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