Parabasis

Dark Confessions

As a child, I was obsessed with the movie Light Years, which turns out to be an English translation (by Isaac Asimov!) of a French film called Gandahar.  It also turns out to have featured, amongst others, Matthew Modine, Jennifer Grey, Glenn Close and Penn and Teller in voice over roles.

As far as I know, no other human being I've met has seen or heard of Light Years. I found it at the Brazilian-run video store shortly after my parents got our first VCR.

This is probably the part of the film I remember best, that and the giant brain creature and some discussion about soul mates:

Drag Me To Hell

Is awesome. If Sam Raimi can do a couple more of these kinds of movies at this quality level, I might forgive Spiderman 3.

Look Out, Nerds!

A movie possibly expanding the Buffy The Vampire Slayer franchise possibly involving Joss Whedon possibly might be made.  Vague details here.

Can you imagine if we announced plays like this?  In two years The Public might program in a new play by Arthur Kopit that might be about a plague maybe spread by killer ants that might destroy the upper class or something. Bart Sher might direct. Maybe.  Would anyone print that announcement?

Star Trek

I saw it. I really enjoyed it.  Abe is hopefully writing a longer review so I won't write about it at length. Except to say that what is perhaps most clever about it is how they get around continuity so they can tell the story they want to tell using the same characters. And that perhaps what is weakest about it is that Kirk is basically a teenage boy's idea of cool- which is to say an asshole- instead of interesting mix of rebelliousness, horndoggery and compassion that makes the original character likeable. I know you gotta start somewhere if you're going early on into a character's trajectory, I think they just went a wee bit too far on that one.

Does Observe and Report contain a date rape for laughs?

Jezebel and Majikthise are on the case. Dan Kois has more here at NYMag's Vulture blog.  The weird thing is is that everyone involved (including Seth Rogan and Anna Farris) agrees that the scene is at least set up as a date rape scene.  The disagreement is whether or not a drunk, high,  barely-not comatose woman who has vomited on herself can give consent.  

While writing this post, an a for Crank 2 came on the television, which includes a scene of Jason Statham sexually assaulting a senior citizen made "okay" because it turns out she wanted it.

Manohla Darghis

Has anyone else noticed that Manohla Darghis has an odd habit of critiquing (and mocking) actor's appearances in her reviews?  She described Jason Segal's "A cup" in her review for I Love You Man, and in her review of Observe and Report says that Seth Rogan puts "the lump into lumpen proletariat". A full 1/5th of her review of The Countess is devoted to discussing Keira Knightly's body. It's really quite bizarre. I like Darghis in general as a reviewer, but it seems... I don't know... oddly inappropriate.

I Don' Think David Hayter's Doing His Film Many Favors...

...In an open letter attempt to boost the sales of Watchmen at the B.O., David Hayter writes:

All this time, you’ve been waiting for a director who was going to hit you in the face with this story. To just crack you in the jaw, and then bend you over the pool table with this story. With its utterly raw view of the darkest sides of human nature, expressed through its masks of action and beauty and twisted good intentions. Like a fry-basket full of hot grease in the face. Like the Comedian on the Grassy Knoll. I know, I know...

You say you don't like it. You say you've got issues. I get it.

And yet... You'll be thinking about this film, down the road. It'll nag at you. How it was rough and beautiful. How it went where it wanted to go, and you just hung on. How it was thoughtful and hateful and bleak and hilarious. And for Jackie Earle Haley.

Trust me. You'll come back, eventually. Just like Sally.

Might as well make it count for something.

In an apology appended to the letter he writes:

 I am certainly not advocating violence against women of any kind. My sole intent was to reference one of the most complex, controversial and interesting issues in the story imho -- The nature of the relationship between Sally and the Comedian, and likening that complexity to some people's reaction to the film. It was meant more in the spirit of speaking to those who are truly entwined with the heart of the story -- A horrific act, that ends in a love story. I sincerely apologize for any offense.

I think the issue here is less that I felt that he was advocating for violence against women (which I think he pretty obviously wasn't) but rather that he was glibly using an attempted rape scene in his movie as a metaphor for how awesome his movie is. 

Watchmen

Well, dear reader, that's the last time I see a movie because I feel obligated to.

It will perhaps shock exactly no one that I think the film WATCHMEN is an excruciating, hateful piece of garbage. Honestly, I have a dilemma between what angers me more... how bad it is... or how hateful it is.  How my friends could like it as much as they do is really a mystery to me. (Just to be clear, it's not that I think my friends are like bad people for liking it, I just really don't get it. Normally when I disagree with someone about a movie, I understand it at least even if I disagree... like if you think Labyrinth is better than Dark Crystal, I get it, I just disagree... here's it makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills).

As a fan of the book, the problem with the film is that it follows the letter of the source material, not the spirit. WATCHMEN is  a great act of comics humanism, the film is an act of exploitive, pretentious misanthropy.

 The film's pornographic depiction of violence is inexcusable, assaultive and ultimately boring. The movie is far more violent and far more graphic in its depiction of violence than the book. Its disgusting until it becomes exhausting. The movie, simply put, loves bloodshed and hates people. You never feel anything for anyone. It locates the moral center with the absolutist Rorschach and not (as the book does) with the conflicted Night Owl.  Ultimately, like the 300, its another piece of fascist pornography. 

You know who is a visionary? Terry Gilliam. You know who else is? Stephen Soderburgh. You know who is not? Zach fucking Snyder. Following a graphic novel as a story board doesn't make you a visionary, it makes you a hack. Slowing something down and then speeding it up again doesn't make you a visionary. Can he handle a camera better than Brett Ratner? Sure. But Ratner has never made anything as spectacularly awful as WATCHMEN. Hell, if I had to choose between watching RUSH HOUR II and watching WATCHMEN for the rest of my life, I think I'd choose the former.

The movie is so bad, it makes me like the book less, because it amps up the misogyny and hectoring lecturing moralistic tone of Alan Moore and jettisons all of the depth, humanism, feeling and formal mastery that makes the book a classic.  As a result, it made me think "christ, there's a lot f shit wrong with that book". It make me understand AO Scott's condescending review in which he dismissed the graphic novel.  It makes me understand why Alan Moore took his name off of it. 

Speaking of which, let's talk about that misogyny. I mean, jesus christ does this movie hate women. The book doesn't have much respect for them, but the movie's conception of women is, essentially "they're all whores". The exploitative filming of the rape scene is enough to make me want to punch Zach Snyder in the dick (presumably said dick is not as magnificent as Billy Crudup's digital one). In the book the attempted rape is swift and horrible. In the movie, Carla Gugino essentially provokes The Comedian into trying to rape her, the attempt of which is lovingly rendered down to a slow motion shot of his belt buckle coming off.

I could go on and on and on about how awful this movie is. I just did, in fact, in a bar in my neighborhood for about two hours with two friends (neither of whom had read the book and hated the film). A friend of mine described (accurately) as, "The movie the comic book guy from the Simpsons would make if you gave him a hundred twenty million dollars."

Also, the worst use of soundtrack music perhaps ever.  

Are there good parts? Sure. Ultimately however those good parts coalesce into an excruciating checklist "oo, they did that part right, that part wrong, that was okay, hm, interesting moment" etc.

The book terrified me. The movie made me despair for Western Culture. And not in a good way.

Gomorrah

Please do yourself a favor and see the film Gomorrah.  It's playing in select cities in movie theaters but (and this is important and awesome) IFC also makes the film available uncut and widescreen via In Demand (I think it costs six bucks).  See it.  A mob movie that is also an ideological critique of mob films, Gomorrah portrays a civil war between two warring Mafia factions in a Naples housing project but focus entirely on the street level soldiers.  The film follows a tailor, two wannabes, a new recruit and a low level bagman who all get caught up to some extent in the coming war.  A war, it should also be said, that is never explained and whose reasons are never known.   By keeping the focus limited on those who carry out the day to day dirty work of the mob, the film keeps its subject from every being glamorized, and it's brilliantly shot by Matteo Garrone. It's simultaneously sanguine about the girt and decrepitude of everyday life in a housing project while also being compositionally beautiful. 

Wedding Crashers, Politics, Milk

So i had never seen TWC, and Anne has a coworker who demanded that we see it. 

All I can say is I'm really quite shocked that a movie that deeply homophobic can still be made in this day and age without anyone going "er... this whole gay son who is an insane rapist and a painter might be a little problematic".  And that's not even getting started with the bizarrely shoe-horned in reaction right wing politics of the film in general.  The repartee between Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan is pretty funny, but I really am kind of gobsmacked at the film's politics.

All the more reason why the acceptance speech from Milk's screenwriter Dustin Lance Blackwas by far the best part of the night last night.  Another backlash I don't understand is the anti-Milk backlash. It actually makes a fairly by-the-numbers biopic work really well, and it's deeply felt and well crafted and well acted (with the embarrassing exception of Diego Luna) throughout.