Salam Cinema

Where were your LJ icons, Guinea?

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:32:15 GMT

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.

TV Review of "Six Feet Under"

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:15:34 GMT

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

Review of "Ong Bak 2", "Halloween 2", "The Midnight Meat Train", "Love Happens"

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:26:46 GMT

Ong bak 2 (Tony Jaa, 2008)
IMDB Link

I’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 Link

Rob 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 Link

It 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

Radio Review of "Does the Team Think....", "The Museum of Curiosity"

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:51:12 GMT

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

TV Show Review "Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire"

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:25:36 GMT

Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire (BBC, 2009)
IMDB Link

Strangely, 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

Goodbye Beirut

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:04:12 GMT

Lebanon

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:04:15 GMT

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?

Madali and Captain Trips Go on an Adventure

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:51:33 GMT

I tried to join the community, bb_messenger , only to have my request to join the community denied. Curious, and slightly surprised, I wondered what the reasons were. The reason was, "Because after looking at your profile and your blog (which is after all a blog and not a proper LiveJournal), I didn't feel you would be a good fit with the community."

I have no real issue with being denied access to a Livejournal Community, but it sparked a train of thought. The reasons seemed initially strange, claiming that my LJ was a blog and not a proper Livejournal, considering that Livejournal IS a blog. But I guess the underlining reason is not the terminology but basically saying, "You are not like us majority users".

This makes more sense, because I suppose my journal is not. And that I think plays a role in my feeling slightly unhappy all the time. I'm never really part of things. Even when I try to get involved in groups or whatever, I always feel like I'm slightly at the edge of it, not really mixing well with the feel of the group. Group thinking makes me uncomfortable and while I believed that I thrived on that in my teenage years, I feel less attracted to it now, but feel it is something difficult to break free from.

This does not mean, I'm an anti-social freak. I can be very social when I need to be, and I do surround myself with people, whether they are friends, family, or colleagues. Its not about not having friends, but about having friends that you feel like you have nothing in common with.

Sometimes, one might be under the illusion that this is celebrated in the west, or at least more common, but I feel like there is nothing furthur from the truth. You can just browse the internet and realize how much people, specially people from the west, enjoy being part of similiar thinking communities. Anti-social freaks with no friends can brag about being anti-social freaks with no friends, but they do it in online communities where anti-social freaks with no friends hang out. Without the tribal communities that exist in the middle east, people from other, less tribal communities make their OWN tribes.

I feel unattracted to both of them. Even when I try to get involved, with either family groups or groups based on interest, I feel slightly being pushed away, as if by some kind of anti-majority magnet. I try, and feel like its working at first, but soon something switches off in my head, and feel less desire to be part of IT.

Unfortunately, this means that I feel bouts of loneliness. Like sometimes I feel like going out with some company, and look through my address book names one by one, scrolling down, and feeling like I don't want to hang out with any of them. Or I go on AIM or MSN messenger with the intention of talking to someone, but staring at the many names, and feeling like I don't want to talk to any of them.

Through the last few years, I have done by best to be a Respectable Member of Society, and while I think I have done a decent job at it, I still feel, underneat my attempts at having Blackberry Messenger Names, birthday parties, social get togethers, career plan, etc, I still desire the world to be engulfed in The Stand-like plague, and wander the empty streets of the world, shooting children and raping their mothers.

Review of "Inglourious Basterds"

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:30:34 GMT

Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino, 2009)
IMDB Link

Towards the end of the movie, the top official Nazis are attending a premiere of “National Pride” in occupied Paris, a film within in a film about a German sniper that was responsible for killing hundreds of the enemy soldiers. He has become a celebrity in German and a film was made on him. The scenes of the film we see are nothing more than the sniper shooting the enemies with the German audience cheering and loving it.

Go back to the beginning. Hans, a German official that specializes in locating Jews, is sitting with a French farmer equating German’s feelings towards Jews being the same as man’s feelings towards rats. He mentions that he does not mean the Jews are rats in the negative, propaganda manner, but that German’s dislike Jews to some instinctive, almost irrational feeling and want it to be destroyed. It does not need to be logical. If you are supposed to dislike something, then you can find yourself cheering violence against it, even when you might be a violent person.

Okay, now time to talk about the secret group of Jewish-Americans in France hunting down Nazis and brutally killing them, the Inglorious Bastards. They are cruel, vicious, brutal, and have no remorse. The audience members, watching this film and viewing the scalping and the murder of prisoners of war, cheers and loves it.

3/5

Insomniac Maniac

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:26:38 GMT

Man, I have such shitty times with sleep. I never sleep well at all, sleeping really late and either going to work late or waking up with a kind of intense effort. A few days back I was so sleepy that when in the showers, I put shampoo on my toothbrush instead of toothpaste, and was blinking at it for a few seconds, wondering why it looked different than usual.

I was so tired that, while playing Soduko on my blackberry in bed at 10pm, I started feeling sleepy, so I slept. Good so far, except I woke up at 1am, and have been awake up to now,and its 4:30 am now. This is awful, because I have to wake up at 6:30.

Life is a nightmare.

Review of "Warlock", "Cannibal"

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:29:34 GMT

Cannibal (Dora, 2006)
IMDB Link

"I'm your flesh."

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Sickest movie I have ever seen.

Now, my children, that is not an easy statement I make. I know my gore movies, and usually I just shrug my way through it. It is rare for a movie to make me queasy, and whenever someone talks about some film that was disgusting (it usually isn’t for me), I tell them to watch something like “120 Days of Sado”.

But from now on, I will tell them to watch “Cannibal”. The film is based on the real life true story of Armin Meiwas. You might have heard of Armin’s case a few years back. He was the German guy who met a guy on the internet with the intention (and knowledge of the other party) to fuck him and then eat him. Yes, THAT Armin Meiwas.

The story itself was really disgusting just reading about it a few years back. The guy posted a note on the internet asking for a person he could meet and eat. And he found someone! Then during the night, he tried to bite the guy’s dick off with his consent, but couldn’t, because the meat was too hard. He later cuts it with a knife and cooks it and they BOTH try to eat it. Seriously though, mind BLOWN.

The film has all of these in detail. And the director (Marian Dora, female director!) creates a very real, dark, unpleasant feeling to the whole film. The movie has barely any dialogue, and for the first fifty minutes or so there is almost no gore. There are a lot of gay sex, which might sound a bit homophobe to some, created a feeling of disgust with me which helped with the later gore scenes. The gay sex scenes mainly made me feel uneasy, not just due to the fact that it was homosexual, but that it was between two unattractive, middle-aged, weird men, filmed in digital, low-budget format, in a dark, untidy room. It was not prime time TV gay sex, but something like scenes from an amateur sex tap between two random men you know.

And then when the gore starts, it’s brutal. It just feels real and ugly and fucked up.

The movie is not good as an entertainment piece or even a good film about the real life case. But as an exercise in excess and a film that is able to create something more vicious than the hordes of films that have tried before it, it succeeds. Whether this success interests you, will be left up to you.

3/5

Warlock (Miner, 1989)
IMDB Link

I’m not exactly sure what compels me to hunt out certain movies. There was not anything compelling about “Warlock”. It is a B-horror movie from 1989, directed by Steve Miner, a director whose work is very unimpressive. He has a varied number of random TV episode credits and features including the atrocious 2008 remake of “Day of the Dead”. I did not check all his features, but of those I checked, none of them were higher than 5 rating in IMDB.

With all of these disadvantages stacked against it, was it able to surprise me? No, neither pleasantly or unpleasantly. It was a very average viewing.

An evil warlock form the past escaped an execution by passing through some kind of time drift or whatever, and comes at the present time (present being 1989). He is followed by a witch hunter. The warlock is then looking for some mysterious book that has the secret name of God and if he says it, it destroys the universe or something like that. Unless he is stopped by the witch hunter and a present day (1989 present day, dude) woman.

All very average stuff, probably would have enjoyed it in 1989 surfing the one English channel available to me and seeing it being the feature film of the day, but in the fantastic 2009, with the vast library of films at my disposal, movies like this are just a complete waste of time.

3/5

Review of "Sick Girl", "Rosetta"

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:01:38 GMT

Sick Girl (McGarr, 2007)
IMDB Link

Okay, plot synopsis. "A girl who wants to protect her little brother, fuck her older brother and torture everyone else out in the barn." And the film is called “Sick Girl”, and the cover is a girl full of blood, with the tagline, “Say hello to Izzy. Then say goodbye”. What possible other reasons would I need for watching this film?

Well, they have always told you never to judge a book by its cover and never judge a movie a movie by its cover and tagline, but I never learn. If “Sick Girl” sounds cool and it was released in 2007 and it has only 94 votes in IMDB, there must be a reason for it.

The reason is this. It is low-budget. Not mainstream independent low-budget. But digital camera horror low budget, which seems to be a huge abundance of in the market. It is interesting that horror movies are never really respected much by the credits in the movie industry, but it is the only genre that allows new directors with low budget to break into, because there exists an audience for it. For other genres, such as drama or thriller, aside from festival runs, there is never really much audience for ultra-low budget films. This means that the horror audience is probably the biggest supporter of independent film out of all the genres. Suck on that, artsy critic.

Back to “Sick Girl”. Terrible acting, filming looks like it is home video, sound mixing is horrendous, dialogue could have been okay but the delivery ruins it, story shits between ultra violence and unreasonably melodramatic, and pacing is bad. Highlight is the sick violence. My favorite is Izzy chopping of someone’s cock of, putting it on some kind of stick, taping it to herself, and fucking a tied up catholic girl with it, while blood drips our of her pussy. Madali’s Seal of Approval for that.

2/5

Rosetta (Dardenne brothers, 1999)
IMDB Link

Rosetta has a shitty life. She does not have a job, can’t find one, and when she does find one, she usually gets fired for reasons that are not her own. Her mother is an alcoholic and a trump. She lives in a trailer park. Rosetta does not seem to have any way out of this life, but she refuses to give in to it. She is angry at her situation, angry at her mother, angry at the world, and angry at herself, and she approaches every situation with this anger, this ferociousness that seems to indicate that she refuses to lose, even if she is given a bad set of cards in her life.

Film does not try to make Rosetta very sympathetic by making her a sweet, lovely angelic girl having a tough life to make us go, “aww”. Rosetta is angry and like most angry people, she is unpleasant. She is mean and rude to the very few people around her, and while it is understandable, it does not make her any more likable. I know, I would not want to hang around her. Too much baggage.

I think films like this have a law of diminishing return. I have seen enough ultra-realistic films about hard lives for it to seem a bit repetitive. Rosetta has a hard life, bad things happen to her, there is very little dialogue, and slow pacing. Seen that already. Also, what’s more, and what really gets on my nerve, is the camera work. It is almost always zoomed in on Rosetta’s face or moving behind her. It becomes a bit claustrophobic. Maybe that feeling was intended but it is not an intention I desired.

2/5

Review of "The Savages", "Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong", "Neighbour No. 13"

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 01:45:04 GMT

The Savages (Jenkins, 2007)
IMDB Link

Wendy (Laura Linney) and Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) did not have a happy childhood due to their father. They are both adults now, and Wendy gets a call that her aging father is sick and needs to be taken care of. The siblings travel to the city their father was in, pick him up, and since they can’t take care of him, they take him to a nursing home.

A brilliant decision by the filmmaker is that it focuses very little on the father’s personality. We know he was not a good father, from his children’s account, and we know he currently is having dementia, but that is all we know. Even though the movie is mainly about the two siblings trying to take care of the father, it does not actually have many scenes with the communicating. There are no scenes of heartfelt forgiving or excuses or reconnections. The father is The Father and the children are The Children, and that is all that matters.

We live in a generation that seems to make it harder and less socially taboo to abandon your parents in a nursing home. This is still not yet fully part of the culture in the Middle East, but we are getting there. And for the parents that do live with their children, it seems there is a strong sense of DUTY in it. It is a person’s DUTY to take care of their parents. But why should it be?

I do not mean why should we take care of our parents, but why should it feel like a duty? Should it not be a natural instinct, the way we take care of our children? No one is applauded for taking care of their children, we take it as a given, and the natural order of things. Maybe it is the way evolution has programmed us. We need the children for the survival of the human race, but not the aging parents. From a purely evolutionary perspective, there is nothing to be gained from taking care of aging humans. It is through our cultural growth that we figured it was ethical to take care of them, but ethical roads have a shortcut. And in our generation, everything has a shortcut. Nursing homes make people feel like they are still doing their duty, and it allows them to feel like they are not abandoning their obligations.

“People are dying, Wendy! Right inside that beautiful building right now, it's a fucking horror show! And all this wellness propaganda and the landscaping, it's just there to obscure the miserable fact that people die! And death is gaseous and gruesome and it's filled with shit and piss and rotten stink!”

3/5

Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong (Woliner, 2009)
IMDB Link

There is not much you can write about stand-up comedy shows. You either have to say “It wasn’t very funny” or say it was. Or say it was somewhere in the middle, which Patton Oswalt’s show stands in.

That’s it for the review of Patton Oswalt’s show, “My Weakness Is Strong”. Now let me fill the rest of the review with slightly related crap.

Stand-up comedy is big in the west but not necessarily in other areas of the world. I think this contributes to most people in other countries, especially in the Middle East, being a bit confused by stand-up comedy. I know there is a slow growth in this industry in our region too, but it is taking time, and there is no reason to hurry it, given that a majority of stand-up comedy is bad.

The ones I watch are the celebrity stand-up comedians, and they are most likably the good ones. Imagine the hordes of awful amateur or start-up comedians that are doing their shows on daily basis. I can hardly imagine how bad those can be.

Although, I would very much like to do an act once in my life, just to see what it feels like. I’d probably do a good, well, a great job, but I know that and you know that, but what about the rest of the world?

3/5

Neighbour No. 13 [Rinjin 13-gô] (Inoue, 2005)
IMDB Link

A young man was bullied in school. He is older now and lives in apartment number 13, near to his former bully’s place. The bully is married and has a kid and does not recognize the neighbor.

The young bullied man has an alternative personality in him, an angry, violent personality, and to the film’s credit, it does not treat this as a twist to show as at the end, and make us go, oooooh, those TWO people were actually ONE. Wow, pull down my pants and spank me red, good going, Mr Director. Although, I do think there was a twist at the end, but frankly, I do not exactly what it was, so I am not sure if it was a twist, or I got confused, or if I even remembered it correctly, because I was sort of dozing off by the end. This is mainly because it seems that Far-East Asian movies insist on being long. 115 minutes? Make it around thirty minutes shorter and it would have been a more worthy movie.

3/5

Audiobook Review of "The Path of Service"

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:56:30 GMT

The Path of Service (Ram Dass, 1992)

It is difficult reviewing some of the audiobooks I listen to. This is mainly when it comes to the tapes that have so much fluff in them. But I want to review them anyway, because else after two weeks, I would not know I have even listened to them.

Of course, more importantly, why do I listen to such tapes? I listen to something like “The Path of Service” by Ram Dass, and don’t do anything but attack it. It is yet another tape, among millions, about a quote spiritual unquote guru sounding extremely positive and New Age-y and teaching nothing useful. Why do I put myself through it?

Because I am looking for SOMETHING. And I plow my way through film, music, books, and audiotapes, trying to find whatever I’m looking for. And I figure if I can even take 2% out of these crap lectures, it is still worthwhile. I usually listen to them in the car, and I figure car time is going to waste anyway. Instead of listening to the radio with some DJ introducing some crap music, I’ll try these random junk, and hope I learn something. If nothing else, it makes me feel like I would one day be able to turn into a guru myself.

The good thing about “The Path of Service” is that the anecdotes are not bad and Ram Dass is an entertaining enough speaker. The bad part of course is everything else. The guy used to be a Jewish Professor in the 60s called Richard Alpert. But that was the 60s so after some LSD and visiting India, he changed his name to Ram Dass. And in this tape, he talks about some vague notions of something or the other, and then he does meditation with the audience (worst part of the tape) and ends with a Q and A answer, with some crappy questions from the audience.

2/5

Anime Review "Hajime no Ippo: New Challenger"

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:57:52 GMT

Hajime no Ippo: New Challenger (Anime, 2009)

This is the second series of “Hajime no Ippo”. The first season run for 75 episodes from 2000 to 2002, including a one-off TV special and a feature-length episode. I had to wait until 2009 to watch this new season, released this year. And I have to tell you this, guys and gals, it was a long wait because “Hajime no Ippo” was the best fucking anime I have ever watched. It is not even the best anime for me, but it is one of the best TV show experience, whether live-action or animated.

“Hajime no Ippo” is a show I always recommend to people who would give it a chance, and specifically for those that are not into anime, because while it has many anime styles and conventions, it does not have anything that makes it unappealing to non-anime fans. If anything, it is the perfect show for anyone that has ever enjoyed “Rocky”. Not that it has similar characters or storyline (it does have SOME similarity, though), but like “Rocky”, it is a feel-good show about boxing, where it becomes more than boxing, and while watching it, you want to shadow-box and be number one at everything you do.

In the first season, Ippo was a shy, quiet, poor boy that got bullied a lot. Through a random encounter with a boxer, he finds himself in the gym, and to the complete surprise of everyone, including himself, he has a natural talent for boxing. In the first season, he slowly gains confidence, goes through rigorous training, and has matches, slowly climbing the ladder.

Season 2 is the continuation of the Ippo’s journey in boxing. The great thing about this show is that it is not JUST about Ippo. His friends, opponents, and gym-members all have their own matches, and with or without Ippo, their matches sometimes overlap. In Season 2, there is more focus on these matches, rather than Ippo’s. And given that the characters have all back stories, matches are between two established characters. You do not know who will win, making the matches much more exciting. And even when you are sure of the victory, it is still fucking exciting. If only real boxing was like this, with slow motion, voice overs, and flashbacks.

This new installation of “Hajime no Ippo” is not as good as the perfect first season (many times in that season I nearly wet myself from excitement), but to anyone that watched the first season, I can’t imagine them not watching this.

By the way, a small trivia. One of Ippo’s boxing moves is dubbed “Dempsey Roll” in show. This is named after an actual movie than by Jack Dempsey in the early last century. Jack had a quotation that fits perfectly to both Ippo and Rocky, “A champion is someone who gets up when he can't.”

4/5

TV Review "True Blood (S2)", "Breaking Bad (S1 & S2)"

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 12:36:21 GMT

True Blood [Season 2] (HBO, 2008)
IMDB Link

I was not very impressed by the first season of “True Blood”, but that is perfectly okay. Lots of shows have a weak first season, as it sometimes takes a bit of experimentation from the writers to find the right recipe. Some examples are “The Simpsons”, “The X-Files”, and the American version of “The Office”. They all had lackluster first seasons but eventually became really good.

I stuck with “True Blood” because the first season had potential. The second season started off well too, providing several new plot lines that seemed to really have interesting outcomes.

But then it all went wrong. None of the interesting premises went anywhere, as the plot lines slowly faded off into nothingness, leaving one major storyline that was the lamest out of all. By the time the season was nearing its end, it felt hopeless. The main part of the show, the vampires, were almost insignificant in the show, playing little role in the main storyline. With the finale, I could barely care about the resolution of the show.

The show is written in a slow-paced manner, this is not slow-pace in the positive, artful way, but in a way that seems to indicate that the show creators feel like they have a successful formula on their hand, and they can take their sweet time telling the story, to ensure they can run it for many seasons. The main storyline, that started at the tail end of season one and was finished off in the finale, could have very easily done in one episode of “The X-Files”. And better. And with much smarter characters, which is another thing that irritates me about the show. EVERYONE IS STUPID. “True Blood” might as well be a show about retarded people trying to live their lives. Maybe they should have called it “True Retards” and Bill and Sookie are drooling and going “ah luv you sookeehhhh” and Sookie screaming for no reason, and then Sam turning into a donkey and raping Tara to death. That would be a more interesting show.

2/5

Breaking Bad [Season 1 & 2] (AMC, 2008-2009)
IMDB Link

In “Weeds”, a mother in a suburban life has financial difficulties and turns to drug dealing to make ends meet. In that show, the drug was marijuana, and that particular drug has always had less negative connotations attached to it, so the show was a bit light.

But “Breaking Bad” is a complete different monster. Brought to us from the network that brought us the excellent “Mad Men”, this show also has a normal, everyday person, in a suburban life, turning to drug dealing due to financial difficulties. But in this show the drug is meth and meth is a much harder drug than lighting up some weed. This means that the show moves in a much darker path.

And IT IS DARK. The writers do not take short cuts in trying to make everyone involved very sympathetic with carefully structured events. Not at all. The main character is Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a high school chemistry teacher that has recently been diagnosed with lung cancer. Walter’s friend and family love him and he has always been a quiet, decent, hard-working man. The news of his lung cancer, combined with the need for additional money to support his treatments, makes him turn to partnering with a young drug dealer, Jesse (Aaron Paul), to make and sell drugs. It is not an easy profession, with high returns, but also high risk.

It feels like the writers have done their research, as Walter and Jesse face obstacles that we generally do not think of. Making meth seems to be the easy part of the process, everything that comes after that seems to be the real challenge.

I mentioned this earlier, about how the writers do not take the easy route of making the characters sympathetic, and I will mention it now again in more detail. A premise like this would be very easy for the writers to create scenarios that make the characters make difficult decisions for the best, most morale reasons. Imagine how easy it would have been to make Walter doing it for purely, unselfish reason? It feels that way at first, Walter needs the money and does not want his family to fall in debt. But soon, we realize that Walter’s decency is a sort of front. He LIKES being involved in the business. He lies to his family, he is occasionally cruel to his partner, and soon, he becomes the driving force in the partnership to take their business into more dangerous territory.

The show’s brilliance, which I find some viewers are not noticing, is that Walter is not selling drugs because he has to do, but because he likes to.

4/5

Audiobook Review "Ramayana", "The Whammy ", "Sharpening your Influence"

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:16:03 GMT

Ramayana (William Buck [Retold By], 1991)

The ancient Indian epic, “Ramayana”, is, as far as I know, one of Indian’s most popular and loved epics, and it seems to have been composed around 500 to 750 BC, although there are many variations throughout the centuries. The gist of it is probably the same though.

The one I am talking about here is just an audiobook translation by William Buck, and I say translation, but I actually mean a retelling. It is not in poetic form, it is retold in simple modern English narrative, which means that it is probably significantly different from the original, but I still assume that it has some grains of the original, for me to at least familiarize myself with the story.

In short, very short, Rama is the son of a King and is actually the human form of a God (the God comes to Earth as a human form, but he forgets he is a God, this is way it always works). Something happens something happens, he is exiled, his beautiful wife, Sita, is stolen by a demon king, Ravana, and he needs to save her. Something something, epilogue.

Here is the absolute fascinating thing about the epic for me. If the story is written around 2,500 years back, we really have not progressed much, story-telling wise. Seriously, people always whine about how recent films are copying the classics from fifty or thirty years back, and Ramayana has the basis of a lot of epic films released nowadays. The main highlight for me in the epic, and the one that best illustrates this, is the main battle between Rama’s army and the army of the demon king. This is almost Lord of the Ring.

Rama is a powerful bowsman and there is part in the epic where he gets a really strong bow. He has a bad ass friend who is really strong. They befriend the races of monkeys and bears, having a few main characters in these races. And when they face the demon king, it is almost like it was written today. When he starts losing, he starts sending out strong characters one by one, and each one seems undefeatable at first, and Rama’s army seems to be losing, but one character goes against him and wins, and then the next fighter. It was pretty exciting! My favorite character was probably Indrajit, he was seriously kicking ass. It was very…anime.

The Whammy (David Barron, 2009)

To those that do not know, NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. The name is mainly used to make it sound much more impressive and scientific than it actually is. It is basically used as a term by gurus and consultants and every random prick selling anything related to just about anything. It is full of crap, bullshit, and self-serving dribble.

Unfortunately for me, I do think there is something to it. Not the actual terminology of the phrase nor the exact methods they talk about, but the simple belief that we can alter the way we think and others think using certain methods. How we do that, is the difficult question. I do not think this is easy, and these presenters cannot sell their product if they do say it is not easy, so they all have simple methods that might sound reasonable to the person who is into their garbage, and they will usually be ready to take it like a cheap whore.

This audiobook by David Barron is a good example of a bad product. His product is only 45 minutes long (with some extra material, which I won’t even acknowledge) and he splits it into three different techniques, Elicitation, Anchoring, and The Whammy, to be able to used as persuasion. The first two are generic NLP stuff, with the third one being his and I guess you can just figure out from the name how shitty it is. If you call something “The Whammy”, then you know it can’t be good.

I’ll just talk about The Whammy, and just listen to how stupid this is, and see if you can fucking persuade anyone with this technique. Tell someone to think of something true, like the sun rises every morning or breathing is good. They think of it, now tell to visualize it and ask them questions to help with the visualization (such as “Is it in black and white or color?”). Then ask them where the location of that picture is. They will point somewhere, and you put your hand there. That’s it. Next time you want to ask them something that you want them to think is true, just put…your..hand…there when you ask the question. Because that is the location of their Truth, and you putting your hand there will make them think you are….fuck, let’s just stop.

1/5

Sharpening your Influence (Jonathan Altfeld)

Hooray, this seminar on influence did not make me want to shoot my brains out. Congratulations to Jonathan Altfeld.

The material he talks about is actually good. Not very WOW, but it is nice to listen to things that seem common sense, but such things always help you anyway. Basically, Jonathan talks about the way we can phrase our sentences and questions to be able to handle people’s objections to things. If you tell a friend to come out and they say they don’t have time, how can you change that to influence them to come? Is it that they do not have time, or they don’t feel like coming? If it is time, can you put it in a context for them? Can you tell them that they will regret not coming, in relation to the time they can use? Can we make the frame of the time bigger, making “not enough time” seem like nothing compared to the years available to him. And so forth.

Unfortunately, the audiobook is a recording of a seminar, and like all of these seminars, the presenters sound like such douches and the audience members are sound like douches and he stretches everything he teaches to milk maximum amount from the attendees, so I had to swim in a cesspool of douchary to find the crumbs I liked, but I’m now almost immune to the crappiness of a lot of these audiobooks, so I am able to grab what I want, and professionally dodge the rest like a true ninja.

3/5

Review of "Night of the Comet", "Outlander", "Blind Fury"

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:54:18 GMT

Night of the Comet (Eberhardt, 1984)
IMDB Link

"You wouldn't believe what we want from you. In your worst nightmare you wouldn't believe."

A comet is going to appear over the city. Everyone is shitting their pants with excitement. Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Samantha (Kelli Maroney) are two high school sisters. The comet flies over the city, and when Regina and Samantha wake up in the morning, the city is empty. Everyone has vanished.

Well, except for a few zombie-like creatures that run after them, but otherwise, it’s an empty city.

When the girls realize this, they go…shopping. Yes, they try on expensive clothes with “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” in the background. This is the kind of film it is.

I liked the girls. They are stereotypical valley girls in a way, more interested in boys and clothes, than the end of the world, but I found it neat that they combined it with their ability to handle guns and defend themselves, because their father was a war veteran and had trained them in these things when they were kids. So it was fun watching the cheerleader firing a machine gun.

Except it does not have enough of these things. It needed more zombie action, more zombie killings, and more extra characters to be zombie fodder. What it DID have was constant 80s music background and since I’m not a fan, it was not a plus for me.

"I'm not crazy, I just don't give a fuck."

3/5

Outlander (McCain, 2008)
IMDB Link

It sounded like it would be a fun movie, if not a great movie. A spaceship from another planet crashes on Earth, except not present Earth, but in 709 AD, Norway. The man from space looks exactly like us, so he is not Spielberg’s ET. He is captured by the Vikings, and after a while, he befriends them, to fight against a monster that is attacking their village. A bit of Beowulf influence there.

The premise sounds like it could be fun. Man from a technological advanced planet visits Iron Age Earth, to join forces with the locals, and battle against another alien from another planet.

Unfortunately, the film takes itself way too seriously, and soon becomes a bland, man versus monster film, very similar in its mediocrity as “Reign of Fire”, another film with potential, but lacking any fun.

The movie goes through the processes. The conflicts between the locals at first, the monster keeps attacking ,they join forces and have a plan, plan seems to work, but doesn’t, and then a few of the more major characters (all bland) go to hunt the monster down, and finishes in a dark setting with lots of running around, sword fighting, and me trying desperately to stay awake.

2/5

Blind Fury (Noyce, 1989)
“Unreasonable men make life so difficult.”

Easily one of the most underrated action films from the 80s. I remember watching this as a kid, but did not remember much about it until I watched it again recently, and it is a fucking good movie.

The set-up is done very quickly. Rutger Hauer plays Nick Parker, a Vietnam veteran who was blinded in the war and stayed with the locals and trained in martial arts. He returns to USA after twenty years to find his friend from his squad. This friend of his has had problems with some bad, bad guys, and very soon, Nick is hauling his friend’s preteen son, fighting off bad guys.

I think back in 1989, the world was not used to action anime style and maybe that is the reason it is not as fondly remembered as it should be. Nick slashes around with his sword, cutting off guns, tables, limbs, heads, and torsos. He even fights in a cornfield. How cooler can you get?

Hauer himself does a great job in the role. He does not play a bland, extra-macho, angry fighter. His character seems to mostly be amused by things happening around him. When he drives a car (don’t ask, just watch it) during a car chase, he accidently scratches a car beside him, and the guy angrily shouts if he is blind. Nick answers, “Yeah. What’s your excuse?”, smiling, and continues driving.

4/5

Review of "The Lathe of Heaven", "The Matador", "Sunshine Cleaning"

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:06:22 GMT

The Lathe of Heaven (Barzyk & R. Loxton, 1980)
IMDB Link

"Did you ever happen to think, Dr. Haber, that there might be other people who dream the way I do? That reality is being changed out from under us, replaced, renewed, all the time -- only we don't know it? Only the dreamer knows it, and those who know his dream. If that's true, I guess we're lucky not knowing it. This is confusing enough. "

George’s dreams change reality. Sometimes when he dreams, he wakes up to find his dreams have changed the reality, in such a way that the new reality is a reality that has always been like that. That is, if the city has been raining for years on end, and he dreams that the city does not have rain, then when he wakes up, the reality has changed. The people are not surprised that the rain has stopped, because to them, there has never been rain.

This is making George very troubled. He feels guilty for having his dreams affect reality and he tries to commit suicide using drugs. He does not succeed, and is forced to visit with a psychiatrist or be charged with abusing drugs.

He visits the psychiatrist, but how can he prove it to the doctor? The doctor uses hypnosis to put him to sleep and suggest his dreams, but when George wakes up, the reality has changed, and of course, the doctor will not believe him that the reality has changed, because for the doctor the new reality is the only reality he has ever experienced.

What can be worse than this? What can be worse than no one knowing the reality is changing?

Someone knowing that the reality is changing. After a few sessions, the doctor suddenly realizes that the reality HAS changed. Now it is even worse, because the doctor understands that he can suggest dreams to George and have reality change. To the doctor, this gives me the ability to change the world for the better. George becomes a tool for the doctor to use for his own purposes, even though in his mind, he is doing it for the benefit of mankind. And what can be more dangerous than that?

The story of this sci-fi is the sort of thing I loved best about movies. Not Man battling aliens or evil robots, but a “what if” story line that intrigues me. The film has done with very low-budget, and while a lot has been done with the constraints of this, it does come with the baggage of low-budget films, occasionally weak acting, terrible special effects (even for 1980), and this might not have anything to do with it being low-budget, but the film moved away from the first two great acts. As the movie progresses, the stakes are raised higher and higher, and this changes the movie from what I enjoyed in the beginning. The patient and the doctor in room, just talking. But when this turns into running around, chases, and saving the world, it does not work as well.

3/5

The Matador (Shepard, 2005)
IMDB Link

“The Matador” is not the first film about the lighter side of being an assassin. And it is also yet another film about a man with a unorthodox, immoral profession befriending a normal person, and the second person going “wha? Na? ah?” and “!!!!” every once in a while, and the bad person acting all cool about it.

Eventually, they become buddies. “The Matador” stars Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry. No wait, wrong film.

It stars Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal. Shit, wrong film again.

But similar to those, it stars an action hero as the confident guy with the immoral profession, this time it is Pierce Brosnan. And the other guy is Greg Kinnear. Brosnan is an assassin and he meets Kinnear, who is a normal, business guy with a wife and a home.

The film is amusing at best and entertaining, but if you want to watch a recent film about an assassin , with some of the themes in “The Matador”, then the film that you need to watch is the excellent “In Bruges” that was released three years after “The Matador”.

3/5

Sunshine Cleaning (Jeffs, 2008)
IMDB Link

I’ve seen almost all of Amy Adams’ films from the last few years. You want to sell a film to me, just tell me it has Amy Adams in it. I usually am not even interested in what the film is exactly about.

Well, you are probably not me, so I’ll tell you what the film is about. Amy Adams plays Rose and Emily Blunt (also adorable, but in a different way) plays Norah, two sisters that are not making much of their lives. Norah is the younger sister and can never hold a job for long, and Rose is a maid, raising a child by herself and having an affair with a married man. Her life is not going anywhere either.

The sisters’ luck turns for the better when they get involved in a new business. Cleaning up houses, where a murder or suicide occurred. The police take the body away, and it is up to these professionals to wash out the blood and clean out the house.

I have watched so many thrillers and cop shows, and this part never crossed my mind. The cops come and take pictures and look for clues, we see the body being taken away, but then the scene finishes. Who does the cleaning up?

Well, it is Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, and when Amy Adams is involved, even with a film with death so prominent, it is done in a cute way, and she calls the start-up cleaning service company “Sunshine Cleaning”. Heh.

4/5

Radio Star Killed the Livejounal Star

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:48:49 GMT

Was a guest on a radio show, with a friend of mine from Wearethemovies.com, talking about films. We spoke for around 30 minutes with the host, and below is a bit of the recording. It is not all the recording, but whatever. The stuff that wasnt there was me ranting against the horribleness of Bollywood.

http://wearethemovies.com/miscell/radio/part1_basterds_QT.mp3

http://wearethemovies.com/miscell/radio/part2_district9_PJ_time_travel.mp3

My friend, Faizan, is doing most of the talking. We decided that he does the main talking, while I just jump in and say random, annoying stuff. So if you want to know which one is me, I'm the guy who does not talk too much, mumbles a lot, attacks Tarantino, and talks about zombies.

The radio show producer invited us back as regulars, but I figure once is enough, to scratch it off my things-to-do-before-I-die list, because it was extra stuff to do on my weekend, and don't want to do it every week.

TV Review of "Important Things with Demetri Martin", "Party Down"

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:37:04 GMT

Important Things with Demetri Martin (Comedy Central, 2008)
IMDB Link

I did not know anything about Demetri Martin before I watched this new show of his from Comedy Central. I have to say though, I like him.

The show is a mixture of Martin doing standup comedy (most of which are jokes rather than long anecdotes), drawing on large pads, skits, and playing comedy songs. Each episode ties all these together with an “important” theme, these being things like “Safety”, “Power”, and so on.

A comedian is not funny just because of the quality of the jokes he says, but how he presents them, and how the jokes fit in his presentation style. I find that Martin’s style works for me. He looks very young, a Beatle’s cut hairstyle, tshirt and jeans, and he comes across very harmless and likable. Jokes are never edgy or in your face, nor extremely clever and groundbreaking, but I found his observations amusing and entertaining.

Did not shake my world, but I will keep an eye on for the second season.

3/5

Party Down (Starz, 2009)
IMDB Link

“Party Down” takes the feel of the Ricky Gervais’ “The Office”, without being able to make it work. It focuses on a group of people in a work force (here it is a party organizing company). It has a boss that is a bit delusional and too business-y but disliked. It has a male lead that is likable, but bored and nice and a girl in the workforce that he starts building a relationship. And work hijinks ensue.

But something is missing. The boss is not amusing in his ineptness. The male and the female lead are not really THAT likable. And the secondary characters are not as funny as the show things they are. The awkward situations are just awkward, without being funny. The writers think that just by making a situation embarrassing, it automatically makes it hilarious, but that is not the way it works.

2/5

Anime Review "Lucky Star", "Azumanga Daioh"

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:39:21 GMT

Lucky Star [Raki suta] (Anime, 2007)
IMDB Link

Sometimes I’m surprised by the kind of stuff I like. I’m always going on and on about a movie being “manly” and that is the reason it interests me, and then rate low a film or show that is targeted towards girls and women, but then sometimes, I like them even though it seems absolutely feminine. Like “Gilmore Girls”.

Or in this case, “Lucky Star”. The intro itself is so adorably cute and fun. A bunch of teenage high school girls singing and dancing to an upbeat J-pop, and so fun to listen to, that I did not skip it once through the 24 episodes that I watched. My darring daring preeeease.

In a way, “Lucky Star” is more like “Seinfeld” than “Seinfeld” was. They always talk about how that sitcom was about nothing, but it still had a semblance of plot from start to end. In “Lucky Star”, it is just about a few high school female students talking about random things throughout the episode. Sometimes you get a bit of theme to the episode (like the characters going to a festival) but usually you don’t even get that. It is disjointed, unrelated topics about the characters talking about anything fluffy, such as sleep timings, studying, family, etc. The first half of the episode of the first episode is just the characters sitting in their school talking about…food. That’s it.

There is no big drama in the show and boys play almost no role in the show. Aside from one of the girl’s father, there are almost no male characters in the show. It is just girls talking about girl stuff.

And…I like it?

4/5

Azumanga Daioh (Anime, 2002)
IMDB Link

A good companion piece to “Lucky Star”. Both are about a bunch of high school girls talking about random things each episode, no specific plot throughout the show OR episodes, no significant male student, no romance, and the only male adult, is a pervert.

And both really funny! I’m not even sure which one I like more. “Lucky Star” is more colorful and cute, but “Azumanga Daioh” has more funny characters. My favorite is Osaka, the girl who is rubbish at studies and sports, and spouts random stuff, and always seems to be in her own world.

It is strange that these girly girly animes are somehow more appealing to me than some of the more serious and dark anime. Because it seems the latter usually have some overblown romance, soap opera style melodrama, and characters constantly crying. In contrast, there is none of that in “Azumanga Daioh”. It is basically a girls talking, and since it has no whining in it, nor has it anything to do with the crushes and drama over guys, it is extremely enjoyable to watch!

4/5

Review of "Twelve Monkeys", "Encounters at the End of the World", "Martin

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:20:30 GMT

Twelve Monkeys (Gilliam, 1995)
IMDB Link

There are so many movies I have to watch. Hundreds and hundreds of films from all around the world, released in all kind of years, that I have not seen before. And more films being released every year. This is the reason I usually do not rewatch movies. There is enough I have not seen for me to watch things I have seen.

But then, there are many movies I may have seen, but seen years before, and of which I do not remember much from it. Like, “Twelve Monkeys”. I had seen it more than a decade back and I knew I loved it and I also knew the ending, but if you put me down and asked me questions about the movie, I wouldn’t know how to answer.

Time for a revisit then. Will I still like it?

I do still like it. I have now a vast film knowledge since I saw the film as a teenager, when my knowledge of film was limited to movies shown on the local channel and films I could rent from the video store, that usually had abysmal selections.

I can now comfortably call “Twelve Monkeys” one of the best time travel films and probably Terry Gilliam’s best work. It has the special, unique, surreal Gilliam visuals that are prominent in his films, especially in “Brazil”, but at the same time, it is restrained by a great story that is almost conventional, if he doesn’t keep adding his own touch everywhere.

The second time around, I am not as impressed with Brad Pitt’s acting as I was the first time. He does seem to overplay his crazy role, and at times, he even does the crazy eye thing, but I will not directly fault Pitt. It is obviously something Gillian wanted and does fit in the crazed feel of the film, but I think still the more impressive actor here is Bruce Willis. Violent, a bit delusional, and unhinged, this is not a guy you want to visit you from the future.

Although, interestingly, Brad Pitt’s character is a bit like Tyler Durden, if mentally deranged and completely insane. Some of his dialogues are very Durdenesque .And plus, you got to love the weird coincidence of both of them being anti-mainstream revolutionaries that want to bring down the establishment and calling their army something monkey related. Space Monkeys. Twelve Monkeys. Weird.

“There's the television. It's all right there - all right there. Look, listen, kneel, pray. Commercials! We're not productive anymore. We don't make things anymore. It's all automated. What are we *for* then? We're consumers, Jim. Yeah. Okay, okay. Buy a lot of stuff, you're a good citizen. But if you don't buy a lot of stuff, if you don't, what are you then, I ask you? What? Mentally *ill*. Fact, Jim, fact - if you don't buy things - toilet paper, new cars, computerized yo-yos, electrically-operated sexual devices, stereo systems with brain-implanted headphones, screwdrivers with miniature built-in radar devices, voice-activated computers...”

4/5

Encounters at the End of the World (2007, Herzog)
IMDB Link

I might not yet be a Herzog fan, but I’m getting there with each movie. Because I’m starting to GET him.

He is a very visionary filmmaker. Who else would make a documentary about the Antarctica and make the ices look like the harbingers of doom for humanity? Not in an obvious, dum dum dum way, but a few subtle hints here and there, from facts, visuals, and interviewee comments, that soon the huge icebergs look like a ticking time bomb. The day these motherfuckers melt, we’re doomed. Because they are SO BIG.

And which other documentary filmmaker would interview people living in such a place, ask them questions where they spout their life philosophy in great flowery language, and then in the narrative, slightly mock them? Herzog likes eccentric people, but he is not enchanted by them.

Which brings me to this. Herzog is a funny fucker. He makes comments that make me laugh without me even knowing if he was being comical or not. He speaks to a marine ecologist, and then when the interviewee stops talking, he says that he had to keep the conversation going.

So he asks, “Dr Ainley, I read somewhere that there are gay penguins. What are your observations?”. And after he gets his answer, his next question is, “Dr Ainley, is there such thing as insanity among penguins?”

But Herzog is not Ali G. He’s not trying to be hilarious. But he is trying to do SOMETHING, I’m sure. And then a scene later, from his penguin insanity question, is a beautiful image. One penguin does not go back to the colony. Instead it walks alone, straight into the distance, step by step. The interviewee claims that once in a while a rare penguin does this, they will just go to the mountains, and die.

It just looks great.

While watching it, I was slightly bored with the film, but now that I look back on it, I realize that it was indeed a great documentary, much more than it seems to be.

“From the very first day, I just wanted to get out of this place. McMurdo has climate control housing facilities, its own radio station, a bowling alley, and abominations such as aerobic studio and yoga classes. It even has an ATM machine. For all these reasons, I wanted to get out into the field as soon as possible.”

4/5

Martin (Romero, 1977)
IMDB Link

"Things only seem to be magic. There is no real magic. There's no real magic ever. "

With his zombie films, George Romero was able to insert a previous magical creature into a real world. Zombies did not feel like supernatural creatures, but actual, flesh and bone beings that could very well exist in our world. We just did not fully understand the how part or why part, but it felt almost REAL.

Romero tries to do the same thing with the mythology of vampires in “Martin”. Currently in 2009, vampires have again become the trendiest monster, and a lot of current movies try to strip away some of the legends surrounding the vampire.

In “Martin”, Romero strips away almost everything about a vampire. Martin is the vampire in the movie, a teenage looking boy that moves to a different town to stay with one of his older relatives. On the way, Martin kills a woman and drinks her blood. But there is nothing magical about that. He goes about it carefully, injecting the woman with something that makes her unconscious. Then he uses a razor to slip her wrist, drinks her blood, cleans up, and stages it to look like a suicide. In the new town, his older relative, calls him a vampire, and says that he will first save his soul and then kill him. In the meantime, he sets a few rules, hangs garlic everywhere, and allows him to stay with him, claiming that he can’t refuse him as it will shame the family.

"Nosferatu. Vampire! First I will save your soul, then I will destroy you. I will show you your room. "

Martin is not scared of garlic or crosses, does not get affected by sunlight (claims it makes him a bit shaky), appears in mirrors, can eat food, does not have fangs, and so on. He’s so normal, that while watching it, we can ask the question, is he EVEN a vampire or just delusional? Both he and the older man claim that Martin is 89 years old and we see flashbacks from that era, but again, it is possible that the family has claimed that Martin was a vampire since childhood, and he has gone a bit crazy.

There is a reason for Romero’s vampire film not changing the genre completely the way his zombie films did. “Martin” is too psychological, too ambiguous, and there is none of the survival entertainment value the zombie films had. It is all from Martin’s perspective, as he tries to understand the world and drink people’s blood. Still, one of the most unique vampire films ever made.

"Do you believe God's whole world runs by the laws of the few sciences we have been able to discover? Oh, no, Christine, there is more. But people are satisfied. They know so much, they think they know all. And that makes it easy for Nosferatu. That makes it easy for all the devils. "

4/5

Review of "The Bed Sitting Room", "Factotum ", "CQ"

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:44:11 GMT

The Bed Sitting Room (Lester, 1969)
IMDB Link

“I hear the Pope's allowing contraceptives for all occasions, except during sexual intercourse.”

Post-apocalypse movies are awesome!

Post-apocalypse British comedies from the 60s? Not as much.

It is not that the film can’t be funny, it is just that it can’t be funny enough regularly to not bore you. The film has a low budget because post-nuclear war Britain does not look like post-nuclear war Britain, but instead some dump site. There are piles of garbage in the desert, and that is about it.

That is a bit understandable given that the film has been born out of a play. Understandable but not forgivable. Even comedy needs to the person to be immersed in its world, even if it is surreal comedy. Characters are varied and strange, a family that had been living in a moving train for three years, with the mother later on believing she is dead because someone handed her a death certificate, a male nurse dressed in a female nurse uniform (it was the 60s, cross-dressing was hilarious), two police officers in a balloon that asks everyone to move along, an upper class man that is turning into a bed sitting room (ahh, that’s where the name is from), and so on. There is no specific story and film plays as sort of a series of sketches.

“I’d have it ‘ere on her shoulder.” (Meaning the woman’s vagina) “See. Then she couldn’t get raped by midgets.”

“Suppose they stood on each other’s shoulders?”

2/5

Factotum (Hamer, 2005)
IMDB Link

"I decided to clean up the apartment. I thought I must be turning into a fag. "

I know I have seen enough movies when I watch a low-budget, independent American film and then check the director’s credentials and realize I have seen his earlier work that was non-American.

Back in 2003, Mr Hamer was in Norway releasing his film “Kitchen Stories”, a film that received a lot of critical acclaim and recognition, and was a worthwhile watch if a bit slow. And like a lot of these non-American directors, they rush to Hollywood at the first sign of success.

In 2005, he did “Factotum”, a movie based on Charles Bukowski’s work, and I think, this is the strangest choice of director ever. Bukowski’s work is very gritty, raw, and American. No wonder the film does not work for me at all, it seems to have been viewed from a European perspective. And not even, a place n Europe like the slums of London, but Norway.

And I feel it shows. The film has a very CLEAN look. I’m not extremely familiar with Charles Bukowski’s work but I have read enough of him to feel the dirt and shit and the age and the drunkness and filth in it. The characters in the film drink and smoke all the time, but it feels like a put on. Actor Matt Dillon wears a beard and talks in a gruff voice, but he looks too pretty and too young to imagine him as the Bukowski alter ego he is supposed to represent. It should have been someone with a million lines on his face, with scruff and toughness and the streets visible across his face. The places he lives in are supposed to be small apartment dumps, but it is looks neat and clean.

The film has a lot of narrative, which are excerpts from Bukowski’s work, but it does not work. If I want to constantly listen to someone reading from his work, I’d just listen to audiotapes of it, rather than watch a film that should be able to translate the work into film, but capturing the FEEL of it and discarded the rest if it is not easily translatable to the screen.

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs. And maybe your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance. Of how much you really want to do it. And you'll do it, despite rejection in the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is. "

1/5

CQ (Coppola, 2002)
IMDB Link

I wonder what Roman Coppola feels when he joins his sister, Sofia, and his father, Francis, at dinner. His father is an accomplished director and his sister, while not as accomplished, has a decent portfolio of films.

Poor Roman though has only one directing feature under his belt. One film, “CQ”, released in 2001, became a commercial flop and nothing after that. I guess even father’s muscles could not give him another chance. He’s done some music videos and was somewhat responsible for penning the script for “Darjeeling Limited” (I say “somewhat responsible” because the script is crediting to Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman also). Still, you know his awards shelf is empty in the family house. And to add insult to injury, look at the comment threads in IMDB. These are some of the subjects:-

“Someone buy this a Razor”

“Roman Coppola= the ugliest man I’ve ever seen…” (longest thread in his forum)

“Holy unibrow batman!”

“lmoa, nice unibrow”

And there are two other threads with the subject being “His picture” and “Eek” and neither are very complimentary.

Poor, poor Roman. And his feature “CQ” is not even all that bad. The film is set in the 60s about an editor on a sci-fi film. The director gets fired for not having a good ending and refusing to budge, the next director has an accident, so they bring the young editor in to finish the work. While working on the film, he also is making his own film, a typical pretentious black and white personal film, but while the character is earnest about it, Roman Coppola is aware that it is not as groundbreaking as his character thinks it is, so he uses other characters criticize it.

It is a very likable first feature and while not that memorable, I do think Coppola should try his hand again at making films. It looks like he has his own vision and style, and it would be interesting to see it grow.

"Paul: I just want to capture what's real and honest.

Marlene: And what if it's boring? "

3/5

Review of "Simple Men", " The Unbelievable Truth", "Suviving Desire"

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 22:31:55 GMT

Simple Men (Hartley, 1992)
IMDB Link

“Ned, there is no such thing as adventure. There's no such thing as romance. There's only trouble and desire… And the funny thing is, when you desire something you immediately get into trouble. And when you're in trouble you don't desire anything at all.”

“Simple Men” is very much a Hal Hartley film, the mood, the acting, the dialogue, it is all there, but it does not feel like a GREAT Hal Hartley film. After a few movies of Hal Hartley, I am now in tune with his style. The characters do not act like our world, they all feel like they are part of the same person, the way they say their lines and delivery, it has a certain unrealism to it.

I do not mind it though. I think it could have come across as fake in other movies, but it does not matter here, because it does not pretend to be realistic. They are not actual people, but imaginations of a writer, and the film and the actors know this.

Two brothers go to a different city in search of their fugitive father whom the government is looking to find, for bombing the pentagon. In their quest, they come across women, and their lives…I’ll stop. I have the hardest time trying to talk about Hal Hartley movies sometimes, because the plot means almost nothing and gives the wrong impression.

Let me try this instead. The film is about men’s relationship to women, their dislike of the troubles they bring, and their need for they love they have. A police comes to investigate a crime, and instead sits down, smokes a cigarette, and talks about his relationship. “Why do women exist?”, he asks to no one in particular.

One thing you notice in his movies is that he reuses the same actors. My favorite choice of his is Martin Donovan. He is almost everything is done, and he is the only one who seems to perfectly understand the way to spout dialogue. It is hard to explain, but he delivers them in a tone more serious than the context of the scene requires, and it comes across as overdramatic, but I find it works perfectly. He is a minor character here, but he is responsible for my favorite part of the film. An hour of the film has passed, and so far, everything has been quiet. Hartley’s music has been a slow seconds of acoustic guitar between dialogues. But suddenly Donovan’s character stops his car, gets out, takes off his cap, throws it to the ground, kicks it, and shouts, “I CAN’T STAND THE QUIET”. Sonic Youth music starts, scene changes with one of the character’s dancing to the song. Another character joins in, and soon another, and then all the characters are dancing to the song. Excellent. Things go back to normal after this random music/dance scene.

3/5

The Unbelievable Truth (Hartley, 1989)
IMDB Link

“People are only as good as the deals they make and keep.”

Welcome to Hal Hartley’s first feature, “The Unbelievable Truth”, and maybe it’s because it is his debut, but this film is relatively “normal” by Hartley standards. A man, recently released from prison, walks back into his old town. People know him. They talk about him. He seems to have been in prison for murdering one person, two people, or more, but no one is quite sure.

He gets a job as a mechanic and he meets the mechanics daughter, a high school girl. They find something each other that spark the other’s attention.

While still relatively conventional, it still has Hartley’s style. People read books and spout dialogue as if reading from books. People smoke a lot. But unlike his other movies, they seem to react to dialogue and situations more…well, realistically. To me, this is the film’s flaw, because it seems that Hartley does not have the confidence yet to do it his own way.

I always find it a bit difficult to adequately so this time I’ll just use a bit of help from Roger Ebert. “The approach involves inventing a real world of ordinary people, and then filling it with bizarre and mysterious events…He establishes them as completely ordinary, and then he lets them wander off into the byways of their destinies. What makes the film fun is the deadpan, tongue-in-cheek humor that undermines the seemingly sincere dramatic scenes.”

By the way, aside from giving Hartley’s debut three stars, I’ve noticed that any other movie of his that he has reviewed he has given it a low rating. I think Ebert is right with his statement, and I think as he makes more films, Hartley dwells more and more into having his character “wander off into the byways of their destinies”. To a lot of people, Ebert included, they wish that Hartley can pull them back a bit. I say, throw them off the cliff (the characters, not poor, sickly Ebert).

4/5

Surviving Desire (Hartley, 1991)
IMDB Link

“Listen pal, you can't waltz in here--use my toaster-- and start spouting universal truths, without qualification!”

I have watched several of Hartley’s movies in a short space of time and I think I have run out of ways to talk about them. It would be like writing a separate review for each episode of a TV show (although, I DID that with nine seasons of “The X-Files”) and I say this because Hartley’s movies sometimes use the same actors, soundtrack, tone, style, theme, and even the same font for the title. I’d call it repetitive, but I don’t see that as a big criticism. No one blames a doctor for being specialized in one area, but it seems artists are supposed to be able to do everything, else it annoys people.

Some notes on the movie. It has my Martin Donovan, my favorite actor in Hartley’s films. Donovan brings such intensity when it comes to Hartley’s characters and he has a fascinating way of doing everything over-the-top, that it is a shame when people watch him in Hartley’s films and call it bad acting.

Anyway, instead of writing more, I’ll just transcribe some random dialogue from the film,

“Henry: You know Jude, that’s your problem. You do not believe in anything.

Jude: That’s a problem?

Henry: Course, it is.

Jude: Seems to me that the people who believe in things are the problem.

Henry: How do you mean?

Jude: People who bomb embassies usually insist they believe in things. Rival terrorist organizations machine gun women and children in supermarkets because they believe in things. Like officials, shut down hospitals and vote for increase in the defense budget…usually because they believe in things. You know, I’d rather not believe in things.

Henry: What’s the alternative? Man can’t live without faith.

Jude: He can live without faith, he can’t live without understanding. Faith comes after understanding.

Henry: Then how do you suppose one gains understanding?

Jude: Through experience.

Henry: Ah, you want to achieve a spiritual end through materialist means. That’s your problem.

Jude: Henry, leave me alone. You’re drunk.”

4/5