"Nightmare" trailer

Myspace has the HD trailer for Platinum Dunes' "Nightmare on Elm Street" remake up, here's the embedd:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=63620005

I have three immediate strong reactions to this, which I'm inclined to imagine will be shared by a great deal of the web-surfing horror-fan contingent:

#1: The apparent fidelity to the original film(s) is genuinely shocking: Not only do a bevy of the first installments most iconic scenes seem to have been preserved; but the composition, color-palette and even the lighting looks the same. The shot of the pool-party looks like a direct screengrab from "Freddy's Revenge." Hell, is that the same factory, even? Color me intrigued, since PD's previous 80s-horror revamps were both top-to-bottom overhauls.

#2: No really good look at the Freddy makeup yet, maybe they'll try to save that for opening night, but we do get to hear what is probably Jackie Earl Haley's "official" Freddy Voice. THIS part is definately NOT aping the originals... the usual malevolent, self-satisfied cackle seems absent from Freddy's disposition here. If nothing else, it shows that Haley has been granted room to move around in this.

#3: The opening moments of the trailer would seem to confirm the early rumors that there was going to be an added "wrinkle" to the story this time involving the presence of significant doubt as to whether or not Freddy was actually GUILTY of the crimes he was killed for. This will be controversial to fans, but I can understand the angle: A big part of the story in the original film is solving the mystery of just who Freddy Krueger actually is/was. Since the audience this time around can no longer be surprised by those revelations, it makes sense to stage new ones.

I remain fully skeptical that Michael Bay and his Dunes friends are capable of EVER producing a good film, but color me a lot less skeptical than I was ten minutes ago.

Polanski, Part II

Well, this didn't exactly take long even on a Sunday...

Predictably, L'Affaire Polanski ceased to be about the particulars of extraditing an ex-pat American from Zurich on 30 year-old bail-jumping and sexual misconduct charges before the door was closed on his cell; and is now officially a political hot-potato encompassing the entertainment biz, gender, class, family-values, culutre-clash and other "pet issues" of the Chattering Class. Being the weekend, the opinions of Mssrs. O'Reilly, Beck and Grace have yet to be heard from, but all edges of the Web are already well spoken-for. Let's see who's taking a swing:

First up, "Big Hollywood," Andrew Breitbart's nominally-conservative-psuedo-celebrity wildlife preserve. You probably know Breitbart most-recently as the guy shepherding the two kids from the ACORN Video through the media cycle. BH is basically a multi-contributor editorial blog wherein right-leaning movie people vent about their left-leaning industry, making it something of a kind of one-stop-shopping-spot for people you forgot existed doing their best Michael Savage impression. First reporting on the Polanski story from there fell to the site's Editor in Chief, John Nolte; previously launched to Internet Celebrity as "Dirty Harry" from the now-defunct Liberty Film Festival Blog. The site is literally CRAWLING with nutcases, but Nolte is a straight-shooter who can be counted on to be as fair as one can be while still writing what are fundamentally opinion-pieces. He comes down solidly on the "no excuses, bring him back, lets have the trial" side, but with characteristic lack of hyperbole:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2009/09/27/polanski-may-finally-face-u-s-justice/

Pretty cut and dry, right? Okay, now just for fun, here's some samplings of the commentary that's been offered up in response by the site's readership:

"I predict that Obama will pardon him at the urging of Bill Clinton."

"Some days it really does seem that the counter revolution is finally happening."

"The degenerates of Hollywood finance the coalition of scum, slime, filth, vermin and manure that run the Democ-rat Party."

"Woody Allen, anyone?"

*Sigh.* This is the problem with people for whom political-leanings define their existance: Nothing is outside the realm of left-vs-right, everything MUST be made to benefit one end to the exclusion of another. The questions at hand are, from where I sit, transpolitical: Either he ought be punished or ought not be, either there are mitigating circumstances or there aren't. By cynically framing Polanski's supporters as automatic agents of "the left" and his probable conviction as a cause for "the right;" it cheapens the issue and serves only to score the minor "culture war" victory of forcing "the left" to defend him for fear of ALLOWING said victory.

From the other side (in multiple senses) in this piece of Huffington Post; still struggling to find a reason for it's own existance in a world without the Bush Administration. Interestingly, this particular defense comes from the co-founder of Women Overseas for Equality - a potential irony not lost on a slew of the responders:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-z-shore/polanskis-arrest-shame-on_b_301134.html

And these are just the "amateurs"...

Wanted, Desired, Caught

In case you were nervous that 2009 was going to close without a big "Hollywood Values vs. Reg'ler Amrrrrc'n Values" dustup in the media, worry not. Roman Polanski has been arrested:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/27/zurich.roman.polanski.arrested/index.html

Short version, for the younger readers: Polanski plead guilty to a statutory rape charge in the 1970s (the girl in question was 13, drugs and alcohol were involved). So goes the story, he'd worked out a plea-agreement with the judge and prosecutors by which he'd recieve a time-served sentence for 1 charge of unlawful intercourse. Polanski claims to have discovered that the judge - who's since passed away and was the subject of ethical complaints relating to this case for decades - was apparently planning to "surprise" the media-sensation trial by reneging and hitting him with a much more serious sentence. The director's response was to skip bail and flee America for France, who's extradition treaties with the U.S. do not cover the laws he's accused of breaking. That was more than 30 years ago. Polanski has continued to work steadily, recieving an Oscar for "The Pianist" recently, and has sought return to the U.S. on several occasions either by requesting a mistrial or a dismissal. He's been joined in those requests by his then-victim, who has said she wants the ordeal to be done with. However, the Los Angeles prosecutor's office has remained steadfast in saying that if he enters the U.S. they plan to arrest him and put him on trail again, this time for fleeing the original sentence.

Yesterday, Polanski entered Switzerland - which evidently DOES have the proper extradition treaties with the U.S. - to attend a retrospective of his work at the Zurich Film Festival. Swiss police were waiting at the airport, having recieved a request for arrest from U.S. authorities to assist them, and arrested him for the outstanding charges. He is now detained, awaiting the outcome of extradition deliberations. He is allowed to appeal the arrest in Switzerland, but a likely outcome as of this moment is him being sent back to the U.S. to face whatever is waiting. The third player in this, France, is already coming to his defense and chastising the Swiss government.

Unless the French manage to "roll" the Swiss on this one, this becomes a BIG deal. People have been waiting to "have this one out" for a long time; and the image of a guilty statutory-rapist living luxuriously abroad (in France no less!!!) whilst The Industry largely campaigns for his release and rewards him with Oscars has made this case a favorite whipping-boy for the media-critic arm of the "values voters" contingent. Set aside, for a moment, your personal feelings about the case and just think about that particular firestorm-in-waiting. You think this event isn't a GODSEND to them? They get to "fight" 'liberal' Hollywood AND 'godless' Europe. Nancy Grace is salivating like a rapid bassett hound as we speak...

Should be interesting.

Escape to the Movies: "Surrogates"

Waylon Smithers to shit solid-gold brick

According to Variety, Universal has made a deal with Mattel for a live-action "Barbie" movie:
http://weblogs.variety.com/bfdealmemo/2009/09/u-turns-barbie-into-movie-star.html

No matter what else comes of it, this will almost certainly be the film with the widest gulf between how interesting it's development is versus how interesting it could ever be to watch. They never really felt the need to give this franchise a "narrative" (that I know of... ladies? Am I correct as to this?) so the question of "WTF is a movie of this even about?" is more paramount than even for also-optioned stuff like "Battleship" or "Monopoly."

Seriously: Turn off the "this is stupid" instinct for a minute and consider what the people who have to hammer a MOVIE out of this are in for. Is this a movie about this "character" as an actual person? In which case, is it actually a movie about a 5'9, 36-18-33 blonde with seemingly unlimited wealth and about 500 full-time careers? In which case... wouldn't the ONLY way that'd work be to make it something akin to a spoof? Even if so, Mattel isn't likely to let that be the direction - they guard the Barbie brand about as jealously as you'd guard an ACTUAL woman with those measurements. On the other hand, if it WAS a spoof it'd be an eerily perfect vehicle for Anna Faris (if it was a parody) or Jessica Simpson (if it was a comedy and they feel like going straight-to-DVD.)

That is, of course, assuming they want a major star - they might go looking for an unknown. Dear God, can you IMAGINE an open casting-call for "Barbie?" I picture a MASSIVE line of statuesque blonde women in wonderbras and heels wrapped around six blocks in downtown LA. And y'know what? People will be PAID to conduct those auditions. PAID!

OUTTAKES #029

Because I know someone is gonna want to know, the stills with the nuns come courtesy of (I kid you not) Cleopatra Wong (1978). Oh, and before the complaints start rolling in, please just let me say… I LIKE NUNS! I APPRECIATE NUNS! I just sometimes loose patience with the select few who  belong to the “We’re gonna change the Church” crowd. After all, as a convert, I came to the Church because of its power to CHANGE ME, not the other way around. Grrrr.

SHORT FEATURE: DOWN IN DIXIE

Van Beuren Studios was a short lived cartoon house during the 30s who did their best to capture some of the gleeful insanity of  rival Fleischer Studios output. You can be the judge of whether or not they succeeded. What they did manage, unfortunately, was to propagate the broad stereotypical images of blacks that the was so prevalent in mainstream productions during Hollywood’s “golden age” of cinema. The pickaninny imagery alone is cringe inducing enough in these more racially sensitive times, but Van Beuren took things a bit further. Like other cartoons in Van Beuren Studio’s Aesop Fables series, Down In Dixie has become infamous for its bizarre take on the characters from the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. As Christopher P. Lehman explains in his book The Colored Cartoon, what makes these Van Beuren shorts so insidious is that they “significantly altered the abolitionist sentiment of the book to present the message that slaves accepted, even liked, the ‘peculiar institution’, just not their cruel owners.” Now Black History Month wasn’t promoted as much when I was a kid as it is these days, but even so, I’m willing to bet that’s not exactly how the slaves really felt. “Also” Lehman goes on to note, “the novel’s religious references, which had served to enhance the author’s abolitionist views, disappear on film.”

Which is kind of an odd statement really, because even today, you can still find the occasional critic who believes that Christianity has always approved or turned a blind eye to slavery. (Of course, such a stance only works if you ignore the facts of history and the dictates of common sense, but what the hey, that philosophy has paid off big time for Dan Brown, so why not go with a winning formula.) The problem seems to be, at least for the aforementioned critic, verses from the Bible like the one in Ephesians 6:5 where it states, “Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ.” But as Mark Brumley points out, “while Paul told slaves to obey their masters, he made no general defense of slavery, anymore than he made a general defense of the pagan government of Rome, which Christians were also instructed to obey despite its injustices (cf. Rom. 13:1-7). He seems simply to have regarded slavery as an intractable part of the social order, an order that he may well have thought would pass away shortly (1 Cor. 7:29-31).”

Which is not to say that Paul, or any true Christian since, has believed that the systemic injustice of slavery is to be ignored. As Mark Brumley’s article from Catholic Culture and Rodney Stark’s from Christianity Today detail, the Church has had a long history of fighting slavery and has always taught, as the Catechism states, that “the seventh commandment forbids acts or enterprises that for any reason—selfish or ideological, commercial, or totalitarian—lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity. It is a sin against the dignity of persons and their fundamental rights to reduce them by violence to their productive value or to a source of profit.” It’s simply that if such injustices are to be combated, then the best way to start is to convert the hearts of individuals so they will recognize them as objectively wrong. Christianity’s first order of business has always been, and must always be, the salvation of souls, and it will instruct individuals how to move towards that goal no matter what position they find themselves in, be it as master or slave.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Sometimes I know a movie is going to be good right away. This is one of those times, impending-goodness being announced early on when a wonderfully "real"-sounding kindergartener responds to his father's awkward narrow-frame-of-reference advice with an exaseperated cry of "I DON'T UNDERSTAND FISHING METAPHORS!!!" After that, I knew my afternoon was not about to be wasted.

There's a justifiable trepidation among many filmgoers about stopping in for a CG-Animated movie NOT bearing the "Pixar" stamp... you just never know if you're going to get an "Ice Age" (the first one) or a "Shark Tale." Well, if my word counts for anything, I reccomend that fans of animated comedy (or comedy in general) set said trepidation aside and give "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs" a look. It's not aiming for the philosophical heft of a "Wall-E," but it's ALSO not wallowing in an ocean of cheap pop-culture-reference laughs. What we have here is a capital-F-Fun slapstick epic - a broad spoof of natural disaster blockbusters (particular the Roland Emmerich variety) bouncing around in the guise of an extraordinarily well-animated family comedy. I'm actually at a loss to describe the exact "type" of manic comedy on display, but the closest comparison I can think of is to opine that fans of the Spielberg-produced "big jokes for the kids, little jokes for the grownups" animated comedies of the 90s like Animaniacs and ESPECIALLY the late, lamented Freakazoid will feel RIGHT at home.

The whole enterprise is, technically, inspired by a well-regarded 1978 children's book; a good-natured morality-play in which the citizens of a town where food falls from the sky grow weary of culinary ease (plus the food is starting to get too big) and discover the greater joys of self-sufficiency. The FILM sets itself up mostly as a prequel, explaining how the phenomenon happened and why it ultimately stopped. Short version: Wacky inventor Flint Lockwood accidentally launches his miracle water-into-food converted into the stratosphere, resulting in periodic foodstorms that his struggling island town's corrupt mayor tries to turn into a publicity machine. Of course, things fly out of control and Flint and his friends are forced to undertake a dangerous mission to shut down the machine before mankind is wiped out by an apocalypse of oversized foodstuffs.

The plain fact is, it's just a well-made movie. The filmmakers wisely realize that the imaginatively-rendered "foodscapes" (an entire suburb burried in a "snowstorm" of ice cream scoops, a spaghetti tornado, a flotilla of sandwich-boats with pizza-slice sails, a massive fortune cookie crashing down on the Great Wall of China with a helpful prediction about the subsequent impact of a giant corn cob, etc.) are sufficient to generate visual interest and sight-gags without having to "stop for the jokes;" so we wind up with a lot of solidly-realized characters and well-explored relationships amid all the gorgeous tableaus. Flint's difficult relationship with his luddite dad and his creepy seduction by the town's oily Mayor (BRUCE CAMPBELL!!!) hit exactly the right notes; and his budding romance with a nerd-in-disguise weather girl is sweet in a way most live-action romcoms would kill to be.

It also understands that the key to a successful SPOOF is not what you make fun of, but what you DON'T. Accepting and even CELEBRATING the genuine appeal of Bruckheimer-style action scenes is what helped Team America soar, while Young Frankenstein wears it's affection for the Universal Horrors it's mocking on it's sleeve. "Cloudy" has it's fun with disaster movie conventions (a weatherman glibly notes the "odd" circumstance of the foodstorm "attacking" the world's most recognizable monuments BEFORE everything else...) and general movie tropes (during the innevitable "mob attacks man in car but never tries to break a window" scene, a character helpfully calls out "Let's rock his car back and forth!!!") but it also takes pains to play it's action beats "straight"... at least as straight as you can in a movie about giant food falling from the sky. An extended bit where a policeman (a fantastic Mr. T) makes a superhuman dash through the foodstorm to rescue his wife and son is an unapologetic stand-up-and-cheer hero moment - giant Dorito and all - while Flint and company's assault on the (now self-aware) "eye" of the foodstorm is a legitimately thrilling combination "Death Star" air-raid and dungeon-crawl that any live action blockbuster ought to be envious of.

This movie, let's face it, wasn't exactly on any discerning cineastes "must see" list; but in terms of animated family-comedy it's almost a perfect example of the genre. I'm not saying you should skip "The Informant!" in favor of this, but if you find yourself in the position of watching it I can safely say I don't think you'll be dissapointed.

"The Blind Side"

Embedded below, the trailer for "The Blind Side," an upcoming Sandra Bullock vehicle which I'm informed is "based on an inspiring true story" and from the looks of things is primed-and-ready to be the White People Feeling Good About Themselves film of the year...



Yeesh. "True" or not, it literally looks like someone snatched up all the most maudlin and irritating parts of various disposable feel-good films from the last decade and slapped together a "movie." Going by the trailer, it's the story of homeless, emotionally-withdrawn, gargantuan black teenager (think John Coffey meets Antwone Fisher) who is able to right his life only after being scooped up off the side of the road (literally, like he's a stray puppy or something) by a family of rich white people overseen by Bullock as an all-additude matriarch in the Erin Brokovich vein. They teach him how to sleep in a bed, go to school and play football real good; he teaches them... life lessons... about... stuff. ("yer changin' that boy's life!" "No... he's changin' MINE." Are you FUCKING kidding me!!??)

Dontcha just LOVE that one bit with Bullock's character getting the "talking-to" about her adoptee being beyond help by the older black woman presumably of some relation to him? Arentcha just gonna LOVE the way the film will ultimately be about proving her wrong and vindicating Bullock's ability to "save" him with the simple application of all the extra money and time her higher social-standing have afforded her? And how about that bit with Bullock marching up to the scary gangbangers and "tellin' `em the score?"

I'm told this is a true story, and that the guy actually got drafted by the NFL this year. If so, good for him. Doesn't mean the movie doesn't look like crap ;)

spoiler of the year?

I'm largely prevented by various obligations from officially "reviewing" movies I see before they come out, but I'm pretty sure it's okay to just talk about various upcoming movies in nonspecific terms COMPLETELY unrelated to whether or not it's good.

In which case, please take note of the following: If someone begins to try and tell you about "the most awesomest thing EVER in 'Zombieland!!!," you should knock that person out with a shovel before they can finish that sentence. Just trust me on this one.

Escape to the Movies: "Jennifer's Body"

Be honest, you kinda saw this coming...



Incidentally, my screening was preceeded by a trailer for something called "Transylmania," which - despite what you may assume (as I did) from the evidence at hand - is apparently an actual thing:



So who exactly was it that was crying-out for "This Generation's Transylvania 6-5000?" A little research tells me this is apparently the third sequel to the direct-to-DVD "National Lampoon's Dorm Daze" franchise, which I guess has some sort of following I wasn't aware of?

What am I not getting here?

Is it wrong that I don't know WHY everyone is so horrified by the Kurt Cobain avatar in Guitar Hero 5? Or rather, more precisely, the fact that you can actually use it like ALL THE OTHER celebrity-rocker avatars in this series - i.e. to perform songs you'd never see them have done in reality?



I both love and am utterly perplexed by the abject DISGUST people are registering at the idea of CGI-Kurt shown performing music that's somehow "beneath" Nirvana's mythic heights. Granted, yes, I was never a grunge fan or an especially big appreciator of Nirvana (I'm still actively hoping that by the time it's been long enough to matter Nirvana will end up being remembered as "Dave Grohl's first Band"); but even if I were I'd like to think I'd STILL be sick to death at this point of Cobain's special-status as the "last thing my generation was supposed to take seriously." Fuck that, at this point.

There are LOTS of dead people CGI'ing their way through the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, many of whom died more tragically and/or had more actual lasting influence on music than Cobain did. Hendrix has been in GH for what, 2 games now? 3? Johnny Cash is in this one as well, also recently-dead. Hell, there's TWO dead people out of FOUR in "Beatles: Rock Band," one of whom was assassinated as opposed to... well, you get the idea. Get over it, already.

INTERMISSION: WOMAN… FRIEND… WIFE…

The Catechism states that “The matrimonial union of man and woman is indissoluble: God himself has determined it "what therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder." This unequivocal insistence on the indissolubility of the marriage bond may have left some perplexed and could seem to be a demand impossible to realize.”

Especially if they’re married to someone whose Netflix queue reads like the index of the Golden Turkey Awards! And yet, even so, tomorrow, September 16th, marks my 20th wedding anniversary. Now, according to a 2002 study by the National Center for Health Statistics, “After 5 years, 20 percent of all first marriages have disrupted, due to either separation or divorce. After 10 years, one-third of first marriages have disrupted.” By 15 years, the rate exceeds 52 percent. I couldn’t find an indication in any of the data sources how much the husband’s lifelong hobby of watching really crappy movies contributes to all those breakups, but you have to figure it plays some kind of factor, no matter how small. I guess I just got a more loving and patient woman than I deserved.

The truth is, even though the circumstances of the past 20 years have been fairly chaotic and high maintenance, and the new century in particular has dealt some downright brutal blows to both my wife and myself, the marriage relationship itself has been pretty easy going. The fact that we truly love one another helps, of course, but returning to the Church in 2001 has more than played its part in keeping our union strong. “Jesus has not placed on spouses a burden impossible to bear, or too heavy.” the Catechism reminds us. “ By coming to restore the original order of creation disturbed by sin, he himself gives the strength and grace to live marriage in the new dimension of the Reign of God. It is by following Christ, renouncing themselves, and taking up their crosses that spouses will be able to "receive" the original meaning of marriage and live it with the help of Christ. This grace of Christian marriage is a fruit of Christ's cross, the source of all Christian life.” Damn right!

Anyway, I just felt like sharing that. We usually keep to a policy around here of ignoring the man behind the curtain, but hey, how many 20th wedding anniversaries does a guy get?

Follow-up i.e. Kanye West

Original post: http://moviebob.blogspot.com/2009/09/this-wont-end-well.html

So... answer to the "which music and/or black political figure will be yanking Kanye's ass out of the fire" turns out to be "Jay-Z... kinda." Mr. Z and Kanye kept their pre-scheduled appointment on the Leno show debut, where Leno asked "the questions" and West reacted like six year-old who'd just been caught hiding cauliflour under his napkin. He stressed "taking time off," which means some upper-crust rehab facility already has a bed made for him.

Amazingly, I was RIGHT that someone was going to ask Obama about this but WRONG that it'd be a young turk... it was freaking TERRY MORAN, who "tweeted" The President's response (in which he called Kanye a "jackass") only to hurriedly delete it once informed that was supposed to be off the record. At least, so-reports NEWSWEEK: http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/09/15/obama-says-kanye-west-acted-like-jackass-at-the-vmas.aspx

About "Tea Party's"...

As much as I seem to do it, I'm actually pretty reluctant to overtly discuss politics outside the context of a relevant film or game topic on the blogosphere. When it comes to movies I'm an expert, I don't consider that bragging. When it comes to video-games I'm an extremely well-read, experienced fan. When it comes to politics... I'm just a guy who watches a lot of news, reads a lot of papers and feeds, listens to a lot of radio and reads a fair share of books on the subject. Not an expert, not a pro, just another blogger. I am, of course, also more reticent as of late now that my name(s) are "branded" in various places; and while no one has ASKED me in any way, shape or form to say the following preface I'm going to say it anyway of my own accord: Anything I've got to say in this post is being said by ME personally, and has no association with any entity for whom I contribute web content. So if you've got an issue, it ain't with them. It's with moi. SO...

There are two things about the "Tea Party" faux-nomenon that piss me off, neither one of them wholly related to the professed politics of (most of) the people attending. I LIKE a little chaos an incivility in political debate - it keeps things interesting. If EVERY politician in America was met by an... "enthusiastic gathering" of citizens upon the occasion of every major piece of legislation coming up, I think we'd have a better-functioning country. Elected officials were never meant to become complacent. So, let's be clear right off the bat: This isn't primarily about ideology.

THE FIRST THING in the "pisses me off" category is, however, ideological-INCONSISTENCY - both on behalf of the folks AT the "protest" and on behalf of some of the people NOT there. The "Tea Partiers" claim, in the broad strokes, that they are against "big government." They are against wasteful spending, expansion of the federal government and intrusion by The State into individual privacy. Now, ON PAPER, those are things I can get behind. I am, after all, a libertarian (please note the SMALL "l") at least to the extent that if you ask me what my thoughts are on the ideal way to manage a "society" I'm likely to reply "Natural Selection" and only be a little-bit 'kidding.'

So yeah, ON PAPER I'm inclined to be sympathetic... until I regain my grasp of recent history and am compelled to ask: WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU ALL BEEN!!?? If you're against "wasteful government spending," where were you for the last SIX YEARS during which the previous administration sunk BILLIONS of dollars and - more importantly - thousands of American and Iraqi LIVES into a worthless experiment in "Iraqi Democracy?" If you don't like "intrusion by The State into individual privacy," can I assume you were just as upset about the Patriot Act as you are about nationalized healthcare?

Do they not have IRONY where you're from? You can't say you're FOR an ideological blanket-statement like "small government" and then suddenly turn AGAINST it once the party opposed to you is in power if you want people to take you seriously. If you're "against government expansion," that means you're against it no matter WHO'S doing the expanding. If that's the case, then just be honest: You're not against "expansion," you're against "expansion in THIS direction." In other words, what you're REALLY mad about is that President Obama is a Democrat. You're a partisan. And that's FINE! You've got a side! Own it! But don't abuse the language to make it sound like your dissent is coming from some untainted well of ideological purity when it's plainly NOT.

Egh. Deep breath....

The SECOND element is a bit less specific to the "Tea Parties," but thrown into sharp-relief by them: People, if you're going to co-opt icons, slogans or images from earlier historical "movements" in order to add the veneer of legitimacy to you and your "events;" at least try and develop a working UNDERSTANDING of what these images, icons or even PEOPLE actually believed in relation to what you're saying.

Let's start with that name "Tea Party." The obvious frame of reference being "The Boston Tea Party," a historical even that occured about a twenty-minute drive from my home. Folks... the "Boston Tea Party" was NOT a big show-offy "protest" event staged for the media - it was a gang of rowdy young proto-patriots costumed-for-effect as Indians committing an act of politically-symbolic vandalism under cover of darkness. The people at these rallies have about as much in common with the Sons of Liberty as Kanye West does with Crispus Attucks.

Then there's the ever-subtle Glenn Beck, using the "Don't Tread On Me" snake imagery as the icon for his assinine "9.12 Project." Right off the bat, he's mixing his metaphors (at least on his TV show graphics, I've not seen if he's since corrected it) - making the common error of conflating the original Ben Franklin "Snake In 13 Pieces" from the French & Indian War with the coiled "Don't Tread On Me" snake from Revolutionary War-era "Gasden's Flag," but to be fair people have been screwing that up for years...

Finally... Ayn Rand. I'm actually a little surprised to see her OR her philosophy coming up in this at all, since so much of the mythology of the "Tea Partiers" is framed as a battle of "the common folk" versus "the elites" and, let's face it: If there's one thing Objectivism AIN'T, it's "on the side of the common folk." (Shorthand descriptive of Objectivism: Did you play Bioshock? All that stuff Andrew Ryan keeps going on about, THAT'S Objectivism. SHORTER-hand: "Revenge of the Nerds.") But, though not in great numbers, you're starting to hear them bring it up. Now, to be sure, ON PAPER Objectivism, Rand and particularly her book "Atlas Shrugged" is an ideological fit; being that's it's the quintessential anti-nationalization tract. But I'm inclined to doubt that anything CLOSE to a majority of the "partiers" have read the damn thing or even known what it's about other than that it's a well-known book broadly on their "side." If they had, I'd gather we'd be hearing "Who is John Galt" being chanted instead of "You Lie," no? That'd be kind-of a no-brainer, right?

But what really both irks and amuses me is the inescapable fact that Rand is now being invoked by the disgraced and degarded remnants of a political movement that she would BARELY recognize as being political "conservatives" as she knew them. Objectivism - and it's founder - may be/have-been a wee bit on the "nutty" side, but at least they were consistent and would've BALKED at the strange alliance between so-called "conservatives" and Christian social-engineering that dominates the agenda of the Republican 'right' today. And, conversely, do you think that any of the "religious conservatives" among the "Tea Partiers" know that this person they're invoking had THIS to say their favorite pet issue:

Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?
--Ayn Rand on abortion, 1968.

So... if I HAVE a point other than being annoyed here, it'd be that it's probably a good idea to form a working grasp of what you're ACTUALLY upset about and what you REALLY support before you start holding a "march." Otherwise, you end up looking kinda... well, stupid ;)

This won't end well...

Scene from this weekend's (tonight's?) MTV Video Music Awards, which I was actually unaware they were still holding (do they still do the Movie Awards, too?):

(I should preface this by mentioning that, while I'm aware of Kanye West by reputation, I don't think I could name you a song either of these people sing with a GUN to my head and I have no idea what a Taylor Swift is. Wait... Kanye did that one awful song that sampled "Diamonds Are Forever," yes?)


SO... I was going to ask what the over-under is on how long it'll take for this to be made into a "racial" thing, but, that's kind of a foregone conclusion, yes? Teeny lil' blonde white country(?) singer accepts award, hyper-aggressive black musician jumps onstage, grabs mic, declares that award should have instead gone to black female competition... this is pretty much all-but-written, right?

So, instead, two automatic followups: Which "outraged" media "commentator" will be the first to step waaaaay over the line (don't everybody guess Glenn Beck all at once...)? And secondly, which sage-voice-of-reason black-community/music-industry leader will be enlisted to yank Kanye's ass out of the fire? Russell Simmons? Puffy? Jay-Z (who's already involved since Beyonce is his wife)? Or will it be serious enough to go all the way up to Sharpton and/or Jackson? Ooh! Just thought of a third one: Y'think one of the "youth outlet" reporters will try and make a name for himself by asking President Obama what he thinks?

CUTAWAYS: THE MIRACLE MAKER

As you may have heard by now, the Catholic News Agency is reporting that “the Pontifical Council for Culture is organizing a meeting of artists (including Ennio Morricone, oh yeah!) from around the world with Pope Benedict XVI on November 21… “The aim of the meeting," Archbishop Ravasi explained, "is to renew friendship and dialogue between the Church and artists, and to encourage new opportunities for collaboration.” If you ask me (not that anyone has), this refocus on the arts is long overdue for a Church which has a statement in it's Catechism which reads, “Arising from talent given by the Creator and from man's own effort, art is a form of practical wisdom, uniting knowledge and skill, to give form to the truth of reality in a language accessible to sight or hearing. To the extent that it is inspired by truth and love of beings, art bears a certain likeness to God's activity in what he has created.”

As a one-time art student, I'm probably a little biased, but I do believe there are times when the arts just do a better job of communicating the nuances of a subject. As an example, let's take the mention of Mary Magdalene's pre-Jesus condition in verses like Mark 16:9 where it says, "When he had risen, early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons." Now I could write one of my wordy ten paragraph essays on the arguments over whether Mary's "possession" represented true demonic influence, a case of schizophrenia, or a little bit of both. But instead, let's take a look at 60 seconds from 2000's The Miracle Maker.

Demonic possession? Mental Illness? Both? Ultimately, that's not the most important thing in the story. In one minute's time, The Miracle Miracle offers up all those arguments, but brings the focus back to what really matters; whatever the source of her affliction, Mary found her refuge and comfort in the healing hands and heart of Jesus. The fact that The Miracle Maker accomplishes this in a very cool looking and emotionally engaging way without the need for any of my overlong verbosity attests to the simple power of the arts. So drag in as many artists as you can, Pope Benedict, I'm behind you all the way. After all, just the thought of letting the composer of The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly and The Untouchables loose on a little chant has me pumped.

Escape to the Movies: "9"

Ah, well...


http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/924-9

Incidentally, one of the "non-Anime-mature-animated-films" briefly referenced in there was Rene Laloux's "Fantastic Planet." Today regarded as a classic of both the scifi and animation genres, it shares in common with other appreciated-in-the-US-later foriegn masterworks like some of the early Bergman pieces having been first brought before American eyes by prolific director/producer Roger Corman. Though most of his catalogue (especially the films he ALSO directed) are justly regarded as below-average B-movie schlock, the guy is probably the ultimate legend of American independent filmmaking; with an eye for young talent that launched the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Brian DePalma, Johnathan Demme, James Cameron, Jack Nicholson and literally HUNDREDS of others. For these and other contributions, he will be recieving an honorary Academy Award this year. The director of "It Conquered The World" and "Teenage Caveman" holding an Oscar, THAT is a photo I want to see. Awesome.

True Grit countdown begins

According to "Variety," the Coen Bros. are looking to make a second film based on Charles Portis' western novel "True Grit" - it was filmmed once before in 1969 with John Wayne in the lead as one-eyed marshall Rooster Cogburn; the role for which he finally won an Academy Award. The Coen's supposedly want their "Big Lebowski" star Jeff Bridges to play Cogburn.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118008446.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

Well, that's... interesting.

Today, the original "Grit" is mainly remembered for Wayne's Oscar win to the exclusion of anything else - it's a competent "transitional" Western mostly overshadowed by it's similarity to other, better films in the genre (most of them also starring Wayne.) But, of course, the concept of a remake will lead to a major rush to defend or at least reappraise it. For my part, allow me to add my "me too!" to the nigh-unanimous web response of "odd, but I trust the Coens."

Thing is, this stuff is wholly predictable, so I thought I'd start a little informal "countdown" of how long it takes the following things to happen:

1.) Statement from someone on the production on the lines that this "isn't a remake of the earlier film, but rather a closer approximation of the original book."

2.) Snarky "where are we now?" article about the 'decline' of movie heroes from "The Duke" to "The Dude."

3.) Conservative weblog having a pre-emptive COW over the notion of anyone remaking a John Wayne movie and wondering how "Hollywood Liberals" will "use it to trash Wayne's legacy."

tick tick tick tick...

COMING ATTRACTIONS: SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM

Hopefully my long unintended Summer hiatus has come to an end and we can get back to business around here. Assuming I’ve got any readers left, be sure to stick around over the coming months as we have a number of firsts lined up, including our first musical. But before we get to that particular nightmare, we’re going to take our first crack at the venerable genre that is Blaxploitation. Coming soon, courtesy of a request from the even more venerable Mr. WAC, it’s 1973’s Scream Blacula Scream.

GYMKATA

THE TAGLINE

“A new kind of martial arts combat! The skill of gymnastics, the kill of karate.”

THE PLOT

After his father is shot in the back with an arrow and falls hundreds of feet to his death while participating in Parmistan’s deadly “Game”, world renowned gymnast Johnathan Cabot agrees to take his place at the request of the U. S. government. Following a grueling two month training montage, Johnathan travels first to the city of Karabal where he is immediately set upon by a group of communist double agents whom he easily overcomes with his newly developed Gymkata skills and a clothesline that looks suspiciously like a high bar. From there, Cabot proceeds to Parmistan, where it doesn’t take him long to realize The Game is being manipulated by the eeevil warlord Zamir as part of an upcoming coup to dethrone the country’s khan. Having become intimately involved with the country’s princess during those moments of his training where she wasn’t trying to stab him, Johnathan feels compelled to save the Parmistanian khan as well as completing his secret mission. All of this is placed on the backburner, however, when The Game begins and most of the contestants are quickly hunted down and killed by Zamir and his men. In no time at all, only Cabot and the vicious Thorg are left to face The Game’s final challenge, the dreaded Village of the Crazies. All seems lost as the villagers dispatch Thorg and swarm Cabot in numbers too overwhelming for even his amazing gymkata skills. Fortunately, a last minute rescue arrives in the form of Johnathan’s father(!), who pulls his son to safety. Unfortunately, the reunion is short lived as Zamir arrives and cruelly shoots the elder Cabot in the back with an arrow (again) and he dies (again), leaving an exhausted and grief stricken Johnathan to face Zamir alone, mano-a-mano. Meanwhile, back at the castle, the princess leads the peasants in an assault on Zamir’s rebels, but will it come too late to save Johnathan from the same fate…, um, fates as his father?

THE POINT

In Season 11 of The Simpsons, the Machiavellian Montgomery Burns visits the doctor expecting a clean bill of health, only to learn that he is, in fact, the sickest individual on the face of the planet, kept alive only by a condition known as "Three Stooges Syndrome". This extremely rare form of homeostasis is created by the presence of every disease known to mankind (and a few unknown ones, too) trying to invade the human body simultaneously, yet inadvertently cancelling each other out as they, much like The Three Stooges, get jammed in the body’s doorway while trying to enter at the same time. One wrong twitch and the whole thing could fall apart, proving instantly fatal, but as long as the delicate balance is maintained, all remains well. Relatively speaking. Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

My friends, if ever there were a movie which could be said to have “Three Stooges Syndrome”, it is Gymkata. Released in 1985, Gymkata tried its best to cram in every single element it could think of in order to ensure it at least a modicum of box office success with the typical 80s moviegoer. It had ninjas, commie spies, a superstar athlete, a hot foreign chick, a training montage, a surreal horror sequence, you name it. And yet, no matter how crowd pleasing the plot device, Gymkata miraculously managed to bungle the premise every single time. Every. Single. Time. There’s not one scene which isn’t an unmitigated cinematic disaster. It’s so bad that if you were to take even one scene from Gymkata and splice it into another movie, it would instantly kill that movie.

This is not mere hyperbole. If I had reams of paper to write them down on, I could only scratch the surface of the multitude of inanities found in Gymkata. For brevity’s sake, however, I’ll only list a few.

(1) After their best agent is killed, the U. S. doesn’t send in their 2nd best agent, or a special-ops guy, or a navy seal, or an undercover cop, or even a really tough Eagle Scout. Instead, they send in the guy’s mullet wearing teenage son, a gymnast, who receives a total of two whole months of martial arts training to prepare for a game known to have killed every participant. And the word training is used lightly as the process seems to consist almost entirely of the kid walking up a flight of stairs on his hands while the camera lingers, and I mean lingers, on his ultra tight gym shorts. (All I’m saying is that if you really need to know whether or not Kurt Thomas is circumcised, but you don’t really want to see him naked in order to find out, then this is the film for you.)

(2) The khan of Parmistan, a country populated by East Europeans dressed in leftover wardrobe from Fiddler On The Roof, is played by the couldn’t-look-more-American Detroit native Buck Kartalian who continuously bellows “Yamkallah!” (whatever that means) while his daughter, Phillipine born Playboy model Tetchie Agbayani (of whom one character inexplicably declares, “Don’t worry, her mother is Indonesian.”), and a gaggle of very Caucasian ninjas look on. Admittedly, while this kind of It’s-A-Small-World style of casting might be interesting in some other context, it just doesn’t feel quite right for the citizens of Parmistan, a country so isolated from the rest of the world that it can only be reached by white water rafting.

(3) For generations, people from around the globe have travelled (by white water rafting) to participate in a contest from which no one has ever emerged alive for no other stated reason than that the khan has promised to grant the winner a single wish which can be used to ask for anything, ANYTHING, the winner desires. Apparently every contestant believes the khan is in a position to grant such a wish despite the fact that he rules over a country which has no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and everybody dresses in leftover wardrobe from Fiddler On The Roof.

(4) The Village of the Crazies. So large is that segment of the population of Parmistan who are off their rockers that it became necessary to dump them inside a walled town of their very own with food, livestock, and LOTS AND LOTS OF SHARP WEAPONS! Because there’s nothing a whole town of unsupervised lunatics needs more than lots and lots of sharp weapons. Well, except for maybe a pommel horse. And I’m not talking about one of those centuries old four-legged pommel horses used to train soldiers in the fine art of riding. I mean a standard Olympic competition size pommel horse made of concrete sitting right smack dab in the middle of town. And thank God it’s there, because by sheer coincidence, it’s the very thing an expert in the art of Gymkata needs to help him kick the snot out of every man and woman in the village until help can arrive.

It would be easy to just keep going, but why bother? If the pommel horse scene isn’t enough to convince a person that this movie is diseased, then nothing else is going to. This film should have been declared dead and then buried before its release date ever rolled around. And yet, somehow, the sheer volume of cinematic blunders in Gymkata miraculously hold each other in check for a full 90 minutes, creating a tenuous balance which transforms the film into something… something… not good, no, not even close… but something mesmerizing, something almost transcendent for the majority of dedicated B-Movie fans. So singular is the experience of watching this movie that when MGM conducted an online poll in 2006 to determine their next round of DVD releases, genre fanatics flooded the company with votes for Gymkata, with the end result being that one of the worst movies ever made won out over films made by the likes of John Frankenheimer, Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppola, and Brian De Palma. Yikes! Or better yet, Yamkallah! (whatever that means).

The affection so many bad-movie lovers hold for Gymkata may seem puzzling to the uninitiated (probably as puzzling as the fact that there are bad-movie lovers to begin with), but the answer is really quite simple and summed up quite elegantly in Roger Ebert’s brief review of Gymkata found in his book I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie. “This is one of the most ridiculous movies I’ve seen in a while” Ebert wrote, “but make of this what you will. I heard more genuine laughter during the screening than at three or four so-called comedies I’ve seen lately.” And that’s the key. You see, despite the fact that it fails miserably in the craft of movie making, Gymkata ultimately succeeds in the one mission a film like this should have. It’s entertaining.

Now of course, Gymkata doesn’t arrive at that goal the way the people involved in making it probably thought (hoped? prayed?) it would, and their own ineptitude in producing the thing came oh so close to derailing it every step of the way, but in the end, it gets to where it needs to. It’s a near miracle. And I say that, because, as someone who watches an inordinate amount of bad cinema, I can attest to the fact that too many movies (good, bad, or otherwise)never accomplish the simple mission of being enjoyable. The people involved are rarely able to overcome their own shortcomings to get the job done. But I suppose that’s how it is with a lot of things. Really, about the only group that comes to mind who always seem to fulfill their mission, despite the sheer volume of bunglers involved in the undertaking, is… the Church.

Admittedly, the “mission statement” for Christians is a bit tougher to follow than the one for making an entertaining movie. Along with the Great Commission to "go therefore and make disciples of all nations” and the individual call “to seek [God], to know him, to love him with all his strength”, the Catechism also tells us that Christians are "called and prepared so that even richer fruits of the Spirit maybe produced in them. For all their works, prayers, and apostolic undertakings, family and married life, daily work, relaxation of mind and body, if they are accomplished in the Spirit - indeed even the hardships of life if patiently born - all these become spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ... And so, worshipping everywhere by their holy actions, the laity consecrate the world itself to God, everywhere offering worship by the holiness of their lives." So basically, we’re expected to participate in the salvation of the world. Yikes! Or Yamkallah! Whatever. Any way you look at it, it’s a pretty lofty goal Christians are called on to achieve. And the problem is, assuming the Church is full of people like me, the efforts to accomplish that goal are more often than not going to look pretty sloppy and bad. And a lot of times, much like with so many movies. they’re not going to be entertaining, but instead actually painful to watch play out.

That’s why it should come as no shock to us Christians to find so many people put off by our actions when we make a mess of the Christian message. In the recent Summer 2009 issue of Filmfax magazine, renowned fantasy artist Greg Hildebrandt, who describes his own current beliefs as a kind of spiritual agnosticism, discusses his time spent in the employ of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. In the article Hildebrandt explains how Bishop Sheen sent him to do documentary work in impoverished nations, and how the conditions he saw there seemed so at odds with the extravagant way some of the hierarchy of the institutional Church lived back home. In effect, the experience increased his faith in God, but destroyed it in what he saw as a corrupt organized religion. And yet when asked, he absolutely believes that Sheen was a true man of God and has participated in the efforts to have him canonized a Saint of the Church. To his credit, the interviewer Dwayne Epstein presses Hildebrandt gently and asks, “Had you considered the fact that since it was Bishop Sheen opening your eyes to this, he was part of that establishment?” And to his credit, the artist doesn’t exactly dodge the question, but his answer that “Absolutely. It’s a two-edged sword, a yin/yang that all fits together.” only scrapes the surface of one of the biggest paradoxes in Christianity; that while the people who make up the Church, much like the makers of Gymkata, miraculously manage to bungle the premise almost every single time, when all is said and done, a Church made up of sinners still manages to produce Saints to fulfill its primary missions again and again and again.

Look, we know we’re doofuses, okay? Even the Catechism is quick to admit that “on her pilgrimage, the Church has experienced the "discrepancy existing between the message she proclaims and the human weakness of those to whom the Gospel has been entrusted.” We Christians are well aware that we don’t deserve to benefit from something so beautiful as God’s plan, much less be allowed to participate in it. But as G. K. Chesterton wrote in his book Heretics, “The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy. There never was a man in love who did not declare that, if he strained every nerve to breaking, he was going to have his desire. And there never was a man in love who did not declare also that he ought not to have it. The whole secret of the practical success of Christendom lies in the Christian humility, however imperfectly fulfilled. For with the removal of all question of merit or payment, the soul is suddenly released for incredible voyages. If we ask a sane man how much he merits, his mind shrinks instinctively and instantaneously. It is doubtful whether he merits six feet of earth. But if you ask him what he can conquer--he can conquer the stars.”

Star Conquerors. You know, I like that. It’d make a great B-movie title. (Although odds are that it would make a lousy movie. Which I would watch. And then tell you all about it.) Good old G. K., with his well-documented love for penny dreadfuls, I kind of think he might like it too. And just maybe, he might have appreciated Gymkata as well, recognizing in it a kindred spirit to the Christian’s fumbling, bumbling success. Or maybe not. But even if he didn’t, then at least, smart guy that Mr. Chesterton was, he might have been able to explain to me what the heck that pommel horse thing was all about.

THE STINGER

Oddly enough, despite the length of screen time devoted to the development of Thomas’ ability to walk up a flight of stairs on his hands during the first act of the film, it plays absolutely no role in the game once he reaches Parmistan. Praise be to God, however, that neither does his form fitting gym shorts. Can I get an amen? Or at least a Yamkallah? Whatever that means.

New "OverThinker" at ScrewAttack

FYI, my other little venture "Game OverThinker" has it's newest episode up on ScrewAttack. Check it out here, if you like:

http://www.screwattack.com/TGO/WhoWillBeRemembered

Escape to the Movies: "Gamer"

SPOILER: It's not good.