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|  Brüno (Charles, 2009) IMDB Link“I am going to be the biggest Austrian celebrity since Hitler.”The funniest thing about “Brüno” is not the jokes themselves, but the context of the joke. If the movie was fully scripted, it would have been eighty minutes of continuous gay jokes, and would not really have been that amusing. If the movie was Sacha Baron Cohen placing people in uncomfortable situations, it would have been funnier, but still, nothing more than a Candid Camera moment. But Cohen takes it to the extreme by placing himself in situations where the reactions are actually bordering on dangerous. This is not a film of Cohen making people say stupid things, but Cohen enraging people around him and it possibly having a dangerous effect on the comedian. It is comical performance art and that is the main reason for me loving the film so much. It should probably be noted that I do not think it is a movie that places a mirror in front of America, the way some people phrase it. Cohen does not really scratch the surface of America and expose the dirty truth or some crap like that. He acts in a lewd, moronic way, and people react negatively to it, and they would have, even if he was not gay. But watch it as a comedy, without trying to make it meaningful (and you shouldn’t, because Cohen is actually a bit of a douche by placing people in certain situations, like Ron Paul), and it succeeds. What other major comedian would go the refugee camp in Lebanon, interview an alleged terrorist leader, and try to prank him? 4/5 The Girl from Monday (Hartley, 2005)IMDB LinkThe films of Hal Hartley seem to be in the range of 6.x to 7.x user rating in IMDB. “The Girl from Monday” is an exception. It has an IMDB user rating of 5.5. Is this a case of Hartley’s film being misunderstood? Well, if it is, then it is also misunderstood by me, because it is Hartley’s worst feature film (and after watching this, I have actually now seen ALL of his feature films, so it definitely is his worse). And even though I love Hartley, this isn’t a case of saying, “its Hartley’s worse, but still better than most films!” No, it is not. It is not better than most films. Film is set in a near future that had the country (America) being taken over by a huge corporation that has turned everyone into a commodity, individualism is being surpassed, and the main hero being part of the corporation, but also secretly an anti-government revolutionary. Yes, sounds exactly like every other dystopia film ever. I’m not one to fault that, given that there are a lot of movies based on that theme that I enjoy, as long as it brings something new to the table. Hartley does bring something new. But it is something new that sucks. He uses his motion blur style from “Book of Life”, but while it somewhat worked in the dreamy world of that film, it utterly fails here, and combined with random black and white scenes, plus a lot of still frames, it becomes tiresome. He has tried all these techniques in his previous films before, and usually they add to it, but here he just piles them all on top of each other, and the film suffocates. The film also misses most of my beloved Hartley trademarks. The wit is almost non-existence (the few that were there were good, such as a character being convicted to two years of hard labor…teaching high school), the philosophy is not thought-provoking, the look into human condition does not expose anything, and the experimentation on the genre does not give it an interesting twist. In an interview Hartley said, “Girl From Monday isn't really a sci-fi film. That's probably the first joke -- I call it a fake sci-fi. It's more like a digression, a rant. These are things I've been thinking about, that trouble me, that excite me, and I'm going to pour all of them into this vessel that we call sci-fi” That’s basically what I think about the film and why I didn’t like it… 1/5 | |
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|  Postal (Boll, 2007)IMDB Link“I get a little horny on here on stage sometimes. If you see the crowd and all that children.”Uwe Boll is known on the internet as breaking fan’s hearts for the video game adaptations he makes. I have not really watched any of his movies, but I have always been amused with the frantic anti-Boll sentiments online and Boll’s own showmanship, such as boxing his critics. Boll is one of those few directors where his personality and his brand name overshadows his films. A lot of people know the brand name (positive or negative) of Uwe Boll, but may not have watched any of his films. I haven’t watched any of his films, but “Postal” interested me enough to check it out. Why “Postal”? Well, it is another video game adaptation, but that is not the important part, because the game barely (as far as I know) has any story and its main purpose is gratuitous violence. Perfect vehicle for Boll’s aim. An over-the-top comedy about crossing all the lines of movies. The film has farts, fat people, rape, midgets, racism, violence, and 9/11. Oh yeah, and my favorite Laugh Out Loud moment, children getting shot in slow motion. The movie has a lot of jokes, some of them are good jokes, but unfortunately, they are not really that funny. And I am not sure how to explain that. The jokes were good, I could see the humor in them, but I would hardly ever laugh at them. Maybe Boll is just bad at comic timing or something. Interesting effort from Boll, but it is very topical, so the older the film gets, the less controversial it would seem. Jokes about 9/11 is not that controversial anymore, and maybe if Boll had the ability to make and release this film a few years after 9/11, the film would have been noticed more. Some scenes to note: Uwe Boll being in the film and claiming he finances his films with nazi gold, saying he hates video games, and being kicked in the balls from the video game creator of “Postal”. A character wanting to shoot another character and silence the sound, and usually in movies they use a pillow, but here the guy uses a cat, and shoots the bullet from the cat’s anus and out of its mouth. Ending scene, George Bush and Obama Bin Ladin skipping in a field, holding hands, and nuclear bombs going off around them. “Georgie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”The scene has the song, “Magic Sound” by Mark Polak, playing in the background, and I think Polak wrote the song specifically for the film, so I don’t know if the happy sound of it is a joke, but it’s a great song! Shame that Mark Polak does not seem to have any albums out. “I knew this one girl that thought sperm was medicine. All she wanted to do was suck cock. Then she got 3 little children. So she used to put sperm into their bottles to build up their immune system. They all got AIDS.”
3/5
 Amateur (Hartley, 1994)IMDB LinkA man wakes up in the streets, blood on his neck, and without any memories. He meets a woman who tries to help him. There is another woman, who knows this man, and is involved in shady business and is running away from some people who are trying to kill her and get a floppy disc. Huh? Is this a Hal Hartley movie? Doesn’t seem like it from that description, it just sounds like a typical thriller. But it is painted with Hartley’s brush strokes. The man without any memories is played by Martin Donovan, the actor you see in most of Hartley’s films and the one you look forward to the most. He erases any emotions out of his character, and plays the man with no memories, as a focused, cold man, saying his lines as if he memorized them, not thought of them, a technique that only Donovan can make work. The characters are all people of contradictions, their life being pulled in different paths and desperately trying to settle on a new one. Donovan’s character used to be involved in illegal activities and from what we hear from another character, a very dangerous man. But can’t a man without the baggage of his memories choose to become someone else? Is it not just sometimes our memories that dictate who we are supposed to be? Another character was tricked into the porn industry when she was twelve and hooked on drugs. For the first time in her life, she wants to control her own destiny and be a “mover and shaker”. Or my favorite, the character that became a nun, and left it because she was a nymphomaniac. Except, she’s never had sex. Why? “I’m choosy.” A choosy, ex-nun, virgin nymphomaniac? Only at Hartley’s. 3/5
 Fay Grim (Hartley, 2006)IMDB Link“Why is it, when someone starts talking about civilization, I hear the sound of machine guns?”Nine years after the release of his cult film, “Henry Fool”, independent director Hal Hartley made the sequel to it, called “Fay Grim”. Hartley’s films are not exactly the kind of films that seem to pave the way for a sequel, so I was not really that interested in watching this one. But I’ve almost gone through all of Hartley’s catalogues, and it was time to watch this one too. Much better than I expected. It is a sequel and a direct continuation of the story of the first one, and has similar main characters, but it is not really a sequel in the traditional sense, because it feels different. “Henry Fool” was a philosophical film and “Fay Grim” is a political film with a parody of a spy genre plot. Fay, the wife of Henry Fool, is requested by the CIA to go to France, to get some of Henry Fool’s books from the French government. Henry is rumored dead. Fay does it to get her brother, Simon, out of jail. Other parties involved are the Russians, Israelies, anti-American terrorists, and a bunch of other countries name-dropped throughout the whole film. The film is full of plot-twists and would have been confused if it mattered, but this is a Hartley film, the complexities of the situations (who is who and is working for whom and what do they want?) is rarely understand by the main characters, the agents themselves, or by us the audience, and it does not matter. Hal Hartley’s films always seem to exist in their own unique universe, and here it seems that the characters of films like the Bourne trilogy have wandered in Hartley’s world. Suddenly, the violence of a spy genre is understated, they either happen off-screen or are captured in still-frames. There are sides, but they are not good or bad sides, just sides. Characters seem to belong to particular sides, but sides are not drawn by morality, just necessity and belief. In the middle of all the geopolitical espionage is Fay Grim getting in and out of dangerous situation, following the trails of a husband she claims she hates, but other characters aware that she loves. The film is a parody of the spy genre, but not a satire of the human condition, something Hartley seems to be battling with in all of his movies, no matter how experimental and satirical they seem. Beneath it all, there is something always real and intelligent about his films. “Fay Grim” is no exception.
“You see? They have to bludgeon a man into obscurity before they'll acknowledge his genius.”4/5 | |
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|  Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy (MacFarlane, 2008)IMDB LinkI don’t know how to review this. Have you seen “Family Guy”? Remember those small scenes which occur after a character says something like, “This reminds me of…”? Those scenes are usually unrelated to the main plot and are small, random jokes sprinkled throughout each episode. Created by Seth MacFarlane, “Cavalcade of Cartoon” is basically an hour of similar style jokes. Each skit is around a minute or so and is prefaced by the title of the scene, such as “Name That Animal Penis!” It is very clear the kind of audience that this will appeal to. Like “Family Guy”? Then this is recommended. Don’t? Then fuck off. Simple as that. 4/5
 Mystic River (Eastwood, 2003)IMDB Link"I'm tired of wishing things made sense. I'm tired of caring about some dead girl, and there's just gonna be another one after her. Sending killers to jail is just sending them where they've been heading all their dumb, pathetic lives. The dead are still dead. "I think it was with “Mystic River” that Clint Eastwood found his calling. Delivering feature films that are over two hours, makes the Oscar people cream their pants, have lots of emotional scenes, and attract the mainstream audience. And I don’t mean those in a negative way. Eastwood makes crowd-pleasing, mainstream films, but he makes them well. Any particular entry in a genre that is done well deserves respect, and Eastwood is very good at what he does. But to me, it is not as interesting, because it is the same film wearing different clothes. It always has characters going through emotional pain, helped by overacting, overdramatic script, and loud sentimental music. And big name actors and actresses struggling to have their name be mentioned positively by the critics and maybe have a few awards rolled their way. Wait, I’m doing it again, I’m sounding very negative towards the film, even though I enjoyed it. “Mystic River” starts off with three childhood friends, and one of them getting kidnapped by two pedophiles and being used for Happy Kiddie Ass Fun Time for four days, and now its decades later, the four friends have grown apart, and there is a murder. One’s a cop, one’s the father of the victim, and one is a red herring. 3/5
 Flirt (Hartley, 1995)IMDB LinkHaley’s “Flirt” is a failed experiment. His film is about three stories, each one using almost the exact same script, with dialogue being almost verbatim, which slightly differences in wording, tone, and so forth. All three are about love, with each of them having its own set of characters, in a different country, and different genders. The first one is the best. Pure Hartley. A young man is talking to his girlfriend, who is moving away to Paris for six months, and wants to know if she has a future with him. “How can I answer that”, he says. “Yes or no”, she replies. Trying not to answer it, the young man says, “I can’t see the future.”The woman, irritated, answers back, “You don’t need to see the future if you know it’s there.”The man says that he will get a car and pick her up to drop her to the airport, and when he comes back, he will give her his answer. She agrees. He goes out and calls a woman he feels like he is in love with, but who is in a relationship. He has the exact same conversation about the future with her, but this time, he is the one who wants to know. All this is excellent. And he goes to the bar to meet her, and meets the woman’s husband, played by Martin Donovan, THE actor when it comes to Hartley’s films. If you watch a few of Hartley’s films, you will start appreciating Donovan. There is no one else in Haley’s films who is able to perfectly capture the essence of Haley’s writing style. Donovan doesn’t really act, he seems to PRETEND to act, but somehow it works perfectly. Soon, the story wraps up, and we get the second story. This time it is in Germany, and it starts with two gay men. Then the third story, with the main gender being a woman this time, and set in Japan. The second story was repetitive but tolerable for the sake of the experiment. But third time was not a charm. Not only was the repetition by now tiring, but there was none of Harley’s charm in the Japan story. By then, he had completely lost me, and I just wanted the film to finish. If it was just the first story, I would have loved it. But as three similar takes on the same idea, nope, didn’t work. “Relinquishing a hold on someone is an act of love. Giving up affection and determination to provide comfort are two practicable elements of love. Love requires no proof. Seen in this life, love is a sort of faith. Since a faith that requires proof wouldn’t be a faith at all. But I will make this distinction. Love is an act. Faith is an ability.”2/5 | |
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| I'm embarrassed to say that I have missed this. But then it seems, in a way, the whole world did. When the Iranian protests exploded back in June, the eye of the world was on Iran. It was on the news, and the internet was buzzing with information about it. It seemed interesting that suddenly the world was interested in the internal struggles of the Iranian people. But you think. Why? Is it that Iran's government has been the bad guy for so long, and in today's political warfare, the best way to make the government look bad is to make the PEOPLE under that government looked oppressed. The past tactics would be to villianize the whole country. Now, it seems actually that they figured it out it works better at home if you make the target's government look like the bad guys, not the people. So Iran got the attention, and Guinea? I missed it and only heard about it on the BBC a few days back due to a special report on it. In short, on 28th September, there was a protest against the military government, that came to power due to coup d'etat (so whats new in Africa, right?). Thousands were on the streets. Soldiers came. Opened fire. Estimates that more than hundred died, more than a thousand injured, and several women raped on the streets itself. "The exact number of women who were abused is not known. Because of the shame associated with sexual violence in this West African country, victims are reluctant to speak, and local doctors refuse to do so. Victims who told of the attacks would not provide their names because they were afraid of retribution.But the witnesses are adamant. "I affirm, in categorical fashion, that women were raped, not just one woman," said Mamadou Mouctar Diallo, 34, an opposition leader who said he had been severely beaten himself. "I saw many rapes."Three women who said they had been attacked described their ordeal this past weekend. "We didn't know the soldiers were going to harm us," said the middle-aged woman, who said she could not sleep at night. She spoke slowly in a darkened room, seated on a bed with two other women. They were in a villa in a district at the edge of the capital here."We heard gunfire," she said. "I tried to flee." With weapons going off, suddenly "it was like a henhouse."She ran, but a soldier barred the way."He hit me," she said. "And he tore my clothes off. He ripped my clothes off with his hands."Then, she said, "he put his hand inside me." The soldier hit her on the head with his rifle, requiring stitches, she said. She also had large welts on her backside from the beating."We are traumatized," she said slowly, looking down.Diallo said he saw at least 10 women raped at the stadium.Describing one such assault, he said: "I saw a woman who was stripped naked. They ripped off, they tore off her clothes. They surrounded her. They made her lie down. They lifted up her feet, and one of the soldiers advanced. They took turns."One woman interviewed at the suburban villa here described how a soldier had ripped her robe off with a knife. She had a large cut on her backside, where a soldier had stabbed her with his knife, and deep bruises on her shoulders.The third woman said she had been whipped by a soldier. "When I went out, I saw one of the soldiers lying on top of a woman," she said. "A lot of women were raped."
Source: Seattle Times
It is a dark world we live in. We kid ourselves with our pretense of civilization. This is not an African problem, it is a HUMAN problem. The difference is that the essence of the inner blackness inside these oppressor's hearts are more free to do as they please. The only difference between countries is that these internal beasts in humans are just better controlled.
I look at this, and I feel we don't really want to concern ourselves with it. | |
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|  Six Feet Under: Season 1-5 (Alan Ball, 2001-2005) IMDB Link“I know that if you think life's a vending machine where you put in virtue and take out happiness than you're going to be disappointed.”I wonder if it is okay if I call “Six Feet Under” a very good soap opera. I know the latter has negative connotations attached to it, but “Six Feet Under” does have many of the features of a soap opera show. It is about a bunch of people (a family, like most soap operas), it deals with life, death, and love, and plot lines include characters dying, characters getting married, and characters getting pregnant. But maybe I should just call it “dark drama”, since that sounds much cooler than “very good soap opera”. Whatever, let’s just move on the show. Nathaniel Fisher runs a funeral house with his son, David. Nathaniel passes away in the first episode and the rest of the family try to deal with it, deal with the business, and deal with life in general. The aforementioned David is played by Dexter Morgan in a non-psycho role. David’s brother Nate has been away from the family and due to the funeral, he gets pulled back into the family and the business. Other family members are Ruth, the mother, and Claire, the teenage daughter. I’m not going to use the term “dysfunctional family”, which American media loves to throw on almost every family in almost every show or movie. Almost every family has their issues, and one of the most repeated phrases is “My family is crazy!”. Everyone somehow thinks that there is something particularly special about their family. Claiming one has a crazy family is like claiming your baby is cute. Everyone says that. But shows like “Six Feet Under” work because we find certain things in their family lives that viewers can identify with. The Fisher family is not a dysfunctional family, they are a family. The show has its ups and downs, but the final ten minutes of the finale is probably the best final ten minutes of any show ever made. “Nathaniel Fisher: You hang on to your pain like it means something, like it's worth something. Well let me tell you, it's not worth shit. Let it go. Infinite possibilities and all he can do is whine.
David Fisher: Well, what am I supposed to do?
Nathaniel Fisher: What do you think? You can do anything, you lucky bastard, you're alive. What's a little pain compared to that?
David Fisher: It can't be so simple.
Nathaniel Fisher: What if it is?”4/5 | |
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|  Ong bak 2 (Tony Jaa, 2008) IMDB LinkI’m a big supporter of Tony Jaa. I like to talk about him, whenever people discuss Jackie Chan and Jet Li. I go, pff, they are old, the new hip martial arts guy is Tony Jaa, people. Forget those grandpas. I was already a big fan of “Ong Bak” and “Tom yum goong” and took my friends with me to watch “Ong Bak 2” on the big screen. They need a bit of insisting on my side, since they did not want to watch a silly Thai movie. I told them not to expect a good story, but the action would kick their ass. They did not expect a good story, nor got it, and the action did not kick their ass, nor did it kick my ass. “Ong Bak 2” was a big disappointment compared to his two previous major features. It should not even be called “Ong Bak 2” as it has nothing to do with the first one. “Tom yum goong” and “Ong Bak” are more alike, then the supposed sequel. While the first one is set in present times, the sequel is set sometime in the past. Not sure the exact era, but they live in jungles and don’t have TV, WAY PAST. The story in Tony Jaa’s movies has never been things to look out for, but at least, it had a small set-up, and it got out of the way quickly enough. This time around, the film-makers think they are making some great martial arts epic, and they take their plot very seriously, meaning that in between fights, you get completely boring fillers. And worst of all, it does not even end. Like “Kill Bill”, this film is a two-parter, with the second (or third, depending on how you want to look it) one to be released after this and to continue the story. I guess, it is time someone from Hollywood gets him to America and makes him star in a movie where he joins forces with a black guy or runs for president or takes care of spoilt children. 2/5
 Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)IMDB LinkRob Zombie did a pretty good job with the remake of “Halloween”. I like horror remakes more than any other remakes. It seems to be one genre that a remake can present an old product with a new fresh look. No matter how classic they are, horror films are still not “Godfather”, so I don’t mind a remake. Although, I’m not sure why Zombie did a sequel to it. Even John Carpenter did not direct the original sequel himself. He had made a great horror film, and moved on. Rob Zombie proved naysayers wrong by making an above average remake of the first film, so why did he not just move on? With “The Devil’s Rejects”, he had already proven that he could handle making a great horror film, so why does he have to rely on sequel remakes? Zombie’s “Halloween 2” is decent, but not where I want Zombie’s filmmaking path to take him. I give him props for paving his own way with this film and not trying to retrace the original’s footsteps. No reason to make a remake, if you don’t have the balls to shake things up a bit. And I like the brutal feel of the whole thing. But Zombie had the initial momentum, and felt like he could be a major, consistent horror director. I hope he has gotten the “Halloween” franchise out of his system, and goes back on track. 3/5
 The Midnight Meat Train (Kitamura, 2008)IMDB LinkIt is strange. Movies based on novels usually don’t work because the film medium cannot contain all the details of a book. But at the same time, it seems movies based on SHORT STORIES work even less. By trying to stretch the short story to fit a feature film, these movies seem to almost never succeed. “The Midnight Meat Train” is based on a short story by Clive Barker. The story was a quick read, with a weird ending, and it all worked, BECAUSE it was SHORT. Someone is killing people on a train and it is up to a photographer to find out what is going on. A few gore here and there, and you get the explanation in the end. In the story, it is an interesting finish to a short story, but in the film, it is out of place, because it does not match the tone, feel, and content of the film prior to the ending. You could say the story did not have enough…meat. Oh, and the film is another shitty horror film directed by a non-American director that was brought in to Hollywood and given a crappy film to direct and the director probably shat his pants in excitement, knowing that he finally arrived in U. S. A. Nine years before this film, the director was in Japan and made “Versus”, a ridiculously fun movie. 2/5
 Love Happens (Camp, 2009)IMDB Link“Funerals are important rituals. They're not only recognition that a person has died; they're recognition that a person has lived.”Yes, I watched “Love Happens”, starring Jennifer Aniston, and a synopsis that says, “About a widower whose book about coping with loss turns him into a best-selling self-help guru. On a business trip to Seattle, he falls for a woman who attends one of his seminars, only to learn that he hasn't yet truly confronted his wife's passing”, a poster with the two characters leaning towards each other, smiling, and a tagline that says, “Sometimes when you least expect it…” This is not my kind of film at all. But movies, like life, sometimes occurs irregardless of your desires. Thankfully, the film did not make me want to slice my throat with my car keys. Obviously, it wasn’t good (how could it have been?), but it was just barely tolerable. It has most of the crappy, re-used scenes you have seen a million times before, such as an ending where the character says something, and the audience is silent, and then one person starts clapping, and then another person starts clapping, and soon everyone starts clapping. But at least it did not end with one of the couple leaving the other because of a conflict, going to the airport, and then other person running after them trying to make it on time. It did not have that, but I almost feel someone in the filmmaking crew wanted to put it in. 2/5 | |
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| Does the Team Think.... (BBC, 2007-2008)Format. Hosted by Vic Reeves with four guests each episode. Members of the audience asks the team a question (I do not know if questions are scripted, but if they are not, most likely pre-approved by the producers) and they discuss a few minutes discussing it. Questions are general questions that are a spring board for the guests, all comedians, to try to be funny. This kind of improvisation can be hit and miss and while it is not great hits, there are no high frequency of misses for it to make the show dull. I like the second seasons better, because the host Vic Reeves chills a bit. In the first season, he had the annoying habit of trying to overshadow his guests. If you think you are so funny, then don’t bring on guests, especially comedians. When there are going to be comedian guests, then it is annoying if the comedian is trying to set up a joke and taking a few second extra, and Vic Reeves keeps jumping in and trying to be funnier. In the second season, Reeves cools down a bit and allows the guests more space to be funny themselves. Still, the format of the show does not allow for that many funny responses, and not all the comedians on the show seem to be really that funny thinking on their feet. And when you combine five comedians together in thirty minutes, then you have a lot of them trying to jump in the other’s story spouting out punch lines. 3/5
 The Museum of Curiosity (BBC, 2008-2009)Even with British humor it is rare, but I have a thing for mixing comedy with deeper subjects. I do not mean making it high-brow comedy necessary, but just being able to discuss various educating subjects while having a laugh about it. You get away from it learning something, like Stephen Fry’s show “QI”. “Museum of Curiosity” is almost like a radio show of that. Not similar in programming but similar in making you laugh and think at the same time. The show is hosted by John Lloyd for both seasons, with Bill Bailey co-hosting the first and Sean Lock hosting the second. Each episode there is three guests. The first half of the show is focused on introducing the guests and chatting with them. This is the weak portion of the show usually and the second half is about each guest “donating” an item to the fictional museum. The items can be anything and can be conceptual. Examples of the donations are “Silence”, “the urge to press red buttons you know you shouldn’t press”, “A chimpanzee rain dance”, and so on, and they spend a few minutes talking about their choices. This is the best part because as some guests have interesting and funny things to say about the items. As the guests are not necessarily comedians, it makes for some interesting topics. My favorite donation is “Nothing”, donated by particle physicist, Frank Close. I could not find the transcript for that, but here is the one about “Privacy” from Ben Elton. “Er, Orwell's nightmare vision of the future, set out in 1984, has as its central and terrifying oppressive feature the concept of being continually observed, not only in the streets, but in the home. In fact, Winston Smith, the hero, briefly believes he's found a place in which to be private, only to discover a hidden television camera in the room. And it's the most shocking moment in the book, and triggers the end of Smith's dream of any kind of individual life or self-expression. Now, I think today, Orwell would perhaps not be surprised to learn that his vision has come entirely to pass. What would shock him utterly is that this hellish idea has not been imposed by some fascistic oligarch or government, erm, but, in fact, we've brought it on ourselves. We've not only embraced it, we've welcomed it, from the CCTV in the streets, to the webcams in our bedroom, we have become our own Big Brother. Privacy isn't dead; er, well, if it's not dead, it's terminally ill, and we're certainly hastening its demise. What I'm saying is the idea of exposing yourself has become not just, sort of, something that, you know, people are encouraged to do, but people want to do. I mean, more and more people are stripping naked on TV. I mean, it doesn't matter what your body's like: You strip off and you tell people how crap your sex life is. I mean, it's extraordinary, isn't it? I mean, those two horrendous old harridan . . . bully, oh, I don't know . . . Skinny and Tranny or whatever their bloody names are . . .
But, er, you know! I mean, seriously, what an extraordinary way to run a tele-- . . . I mean, get someone, strip 'em naked, and then say, you know, "How crap are you?" "Well, I'm really awful, I've got no confidence, my husband hates me, my kids laugh at me. " "Well, you need a new bra! Put the new bra on. How do you feel?" "Oh, I feel empowered. I've been made over. I'm a new woman." We've given . . . We've given up on any sense of ourselves, and yet, we try to expose ourselves at all times.
I mean, this idea that we all need to hear everything about everybody's dysfunctionalism--we need to see and know everything about everybody--is deeply worrying. And with Facebook, and MySpace, we've got to the a point where young people who watch Big Brother and watch people wandering around, aimlessly talking about themselves all the time, and are introduced to the astonishing fiction that talking about yourself is somehow empowering--indeed, noble; in some way, enriching, just talking about yourself the whole time--and this becomes translated into the Facebook generation where you show everything. And frankly, the idea that we all share the details of every embarrassing piss-up with everybody we've ever met, and all their friends, all the time, I think, is a real problem for society, and I think the idea that we've given up on the idea that you might want to keep things private is a massive problem. I think we'd all rediscover a bit of self-respect: respect for yourself, respect for the other people’s right not to be interested in you . . . Shut up, keep your agony, your heartbreak, your learning journey, your personal growth, and your fabulous new breasts that have allowed you to be the you you want yourself to be . . . private.”4/5 | |
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|  Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire (BBC, 2009)IMDB LinkStrangely, we do not have that many comedy-parody fantasy shows. After the huge success of “Lord of the Rings”, you’d assume we’d at least have some shows parodying the sword and sorcery genre. Well, good news to those of you that have been waiting eagerly for me to bring you good tidings of such a show. “Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire” is such a show. Krod (Sean Maguire) leads a small group of freedom fighters. He is the hero, with the flaming sword and the prophecy that claims he is the Golden One. He’s brave and his heart is in the right place, but he’s a bit clumsy, smashing into things, not very smart, and sometimes forgetting his sword. By his side is his pagan girlfriend, Aneka (India de Beaufort). Much to Krod’s constant heartbreak, Aneka is very open about her sexuality due to her being a pagan and has sex with random strangers. The other members of his group consists of a slave (which is a bit of a PR nightmare for Krod, considering he fights for freedom), a black warlock (who never seems to do any magick), and…a gay guy. The group is faced with the evil Chancellor Dongalor (Matt Lucas), probably the funniest character on the show. The show, being British, is only six episodes per season. This is good for certain shows and helps keep the material strong and fresh. But for silly comedy shows like this, it would have been better if it was longer. Six episodes of almost twenty minutes each is only two hours. That’s hardly a series. It’s just a slightly long American movie or a really short Bollywood film. 3/5 | |
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| I'm in lebanon for two week training course in the American University of Lebanon. It sounds more exciting that it is, when the excitment of being in a foriegn country is replaced with a realization of being at a daily course from 9am to 5pm and realizing that there isn't realy much to do after 5 everyday.
I feel homesick, and I paid for wifi in my room only to realize that its a bit pointless. I don't have an access to a phone and I feel like it doesn't matter since there isn't anyone that probably feels my absence in a sigbificient manner, aside from my parents, which is a given.
Same with my blackberry and email. There really aren't any indication that I'm gone. in a way, it was good, because it has removed my homesickness.
Because homesick from WHAT home? | |
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