Film

While I’m not nearly as much of a movie buff as many, I do like ’em and watch ’em when I can.

Fresh Hare / All This and Rabbit Stew

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Some days, it’s really surprising what you can get for a dollar. Prairie’s long been a dollar store shopper, as it’s a convenient and cheap way to pick up little bits and pieces for around the home. Last Christmas as part of my stack of presents, she picked up a good-sized stack of dollar store DVDs. None of this is high-quality stuff, but that’s not really the point: it’s fun stuff. Old, bad movies make up a lot of it (we had fun watching The Lady and the Highwayman, an old TV movie featuring Hugh Grant in a mullet), but she also picked up a lot of compilations of old cartoons: Betty Boop, Bugs Bunny, and quite a few others.

A couple of nights ago, we popped in Cartoon Craze presents: Bugs Bunny: Falling Hare, mostly a collection of Bugs Bunny cartoons, with a few other non-Bugs cartoons as well, and settled back for a fun evening of cartoon silliness.

What we didn’t expect to discover was that two of the cartoons on the disc are shorts that have been either edited or outright banned for many years due to racist content. They’re fascinating from a historical context, and I actually think it’s kind of neat to have them and be able to see them — but man was it a surprise when we weren’t expecting them to pop up!

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Vidal on Oscars and Politics

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One of these days I’m actually going to start reading more of Gore Vidal’s work, as each time I’ve run across him (beginning with his role as the Democratic incumbent facing down up and coming right-winger Bob Roberts in Tim Robbins’ excellent political satire), I’ve found him fascinating and incredibly intelligent.

There’s a two part interview with Vidal in TruthDig conducted just before the Oscars that has some wonderful quips in it. Part one looks primarily at the then-upcoming Oscars:

If [Brokeback Mountain] were to win an Oscar, would it be a step forward in tolerance? How important is Hollywood in this equation?

Well, it never has been, and I don’t see why it should be suddenly now. That it was made at all and that it was made so honestly and so well is a good thing, better than to make a mess out of it, or not try at all….

Look, homophobia is fed into every child in the United States at birth. It is unrelenting, it never lets up. They asked a whole raft of high school boys across the country a couple years ago, one of those polls about what they would most like to be in life, and what … they would hate to be, and so forth, and what they would most hate to be was homosexual.

There wasn’t anyone, not one, who just skipped the question. They all said “oh no, that’s the worst thing you could be.”

To get over that training, that’s generation after generation. And it has not done the character of our nation much good. And that’s why we are a joke to the rest of the world, because we carry on about sexual matters everyone else has forgotten about.

Part two concentrates on more political matters:

This is old news now, but in terms of terrorism, there was a lot of protest against the Palestinian Oscar nominee, “Paradise Now,” with a 36,000-person petition to get the film dropped from the roster because it sympathized with “terrorists.”

Never forget there are 1 billion Muslims on Earth. The United States is far too small a country to play big boss – and now far too insolvent a country; we have no revenues, we can’t repair our own infrastructure, much less rebuild the cities that we’ve just knocked down in the Middle East. I think we should learn a little modesty, we’re not number one! At invoking terrorism, yes, we’re pretty good at provoking people to hate us. In fact we’ve been quite successful at that. But we live in a small country, a vulnerable country, a country with no defenses, only “homeland security.” But there’s no true security here – anyone can do anything he wants and will!

Right, so now we have these proposals to build a wall on the Texas/Mexico border, to fill in the tunnels….

Oh it’s just Looney Time, but you see, we have no educational system for the general public. If you come from a well-to-do family, you get a fairly good education, but you get a lot of propaganda along with it. And we have a media that is quite poisonous and only echoes what the administration—and corporate America, which owns the administration—wants us to hear. So the average person has no information, or what he has is so distorted. How can he make up his mind intelligently on any subject?

(via Slog)

iTunes “Metal on Metal” by Kraftwerk from the album Industrial Revolution, 2nd Edition (1977, 3:18).

Ultraviolet is, apparently, Ultrastupid

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Milla Jovovich’s latest film, which I babbled about a couple weeks ago, has opened without advance review screenings (never a good sign). Now that a reviewer has been able to see it…looks like this one is going to be a renter.

Another Friday, another abominable movie that wasn’t screened for critics before it opens.

…it’s called “Ultraviolet.” […] It is overstyled, deafening and incoherent.

Violet…brawls with government thugs, twists and flips through the air in slow motion — something we’ve all seen so many times before — dodges bullets and fires off untold amounts of her own. Watching scene after scene of her taking on dozens of men at once, with techno music pounding in the background, quickly becomes repetitive. It’s also dreadfully self-serious, with none of the self-knowing sense of humor that made similar sequences in the “Kill Bill” movies so much more fun.

“Ultraviolet” wants desperately to be a provocative, high-concept action thriller. It apparently is trying to say something about fear and terrorism, paranoia and racism. But it looks more like a shampoo commercial.

Can’t say that I’m surprised, though it’s a bit of a bummer. The trailer looked quite pretty…but apparently, that’s about all that Ultraviolet has going for it.

I’ll still probably rent it, though. C’mon — Milla kicking butt can’t be all bad, right? ;)

iTunes “Mercury and Solace” by BT from the album Movement in Still Life (2000, 5:06).

Ultraviolet

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UltravioletI’m trying to figure out what this movie‘s about, or why it’s been made. I can only come up with a few possibilities:

So: Leeloo + Trinity + Selene = Violet?

Or, to put it another way: Milla Jovovich + tight outfits + promising effects + promising action = my ass is in the theatre. ;)

(Random, only semi-related trivia: In The Fifth Element, Leeloo’s full name is Leelouminai Lakatari Bali Minouchai Ekbat de Sabat [the spelling may not be precise, but I’ve done my best]. I actually took the time to learn that, so that at any given moment, I can let Leeloo’s full name come rolling off my tongue. Why? Why not?)

Moles and Trolls, Moles and Trolls!

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Snagged from lemurlad — and as he pointed out, these results shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me.

Real Genius Genius

95 Genius Points

Real GeniusWOOHOO! You seem to know as much about this movie as I do! You’ve done brilliantly. So brilliantly, in fact, that you may deserve to wear Chris Knight’s underwear. You have achieved the rank of Real Genius Genius. I’m so proud.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:
You scored higher than 96% on Genius Points

Link: The Are You a Real Genius Genius Test written by dasnugglebunny on Ok Cupid.

iTunes “Return to Innocence (Long and Alive)” by Enigma from the album Return to Innocence (1993, 7:07).

Mad Max

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Prairie and I spent three nights last week watching the entire Mad Max trilogy: Mad Max, The Road Warrior, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

The first two, I have to admit, we kept alternating between laughing at and being fairly horrified by. Sure, they’re considered classics of sci-fi/action/post-apocalyptic movies…but wow. Two things kept striking us over and over:

  1. No woman goes unpunished. Almost without fail, every woman who appears on screen is either raped, dead, or abused into catatonia by the end of the films. In Mad Max, the only female character who escapes such a fate is the 60-something lady who owns the house that Max and his wife stay at…so apparently the only way to survive as a woman in this world is to be too old to be concerned with.

    Women fare a little bit better in The Road Warrior, though that may only be because there are more women in the film as background characters in the refinery compound. There’s really only three women that are given any memorable screen time: one who is raped and killed in the distance as Max watches through a telescope; one older woman in the compound who rants, raves, and is generally little more than a Voice of Doom; and one younger woman who serves as little more than a vapid but pretty face for the minicopter pilot to hit on — though at least those two do survive the movie.

  2. The homoerotic imagery, especially when coupled with the fate of the various characters. From the butch leather man costuming of the police force in Mad Max (especially Chief ‘Fifi’, who parades around in naught but tight leather pants and scarf while watering plants) to the range of stereotypes represented by the various bad guys (pastels, prancing, eyeshadow, androgynous appearances, BDSM gear, etc.)…all we could think was that the movies had been made by someone who was extremely unhappy with their homosexuality.

    Max himself as the hero (or, more accurately, anti-hero) is the sole obviously heterosexual “man’s man”, out on a mission to wipe clean the light-in-the-loafers renegade bikers (even when the bikers attack a young couple, when found later by Max and his partner, it’s only the guy that has lost his pants — the girl, while catatonic, is still dressed). The “homosexuality is bad and evil and should get you killed” subtext is so blatant that it hardly even counts as subtext anymore. I kept remarking that I’d be surprised if entire treatises hadn’t been written exploring this, and from the looks of a quick Google search for ‘“Mad Max” homoerotic‘, it looks like I was right.

Thankfully, Beyond Thunderdome was a far better movie than either of the first two. The costuming was an obvious evolution of the post-apocalyptic fashions of the first two (managing to carry the visual theme while decreasing, if not quite completely removing, the homoerotic overtones), the world was no longer divided into “straight = good, gay = bad” camps, and there were not just one, but two decent female characters — and they even managed to find a plot that was more engrossing than simply “drive around and kill things.”

By the time we’d sat through the first two films, both Prairie and I were approaching the third with no small degree of trepidation…but as the credits rolled, we were both rather pleasantly surprised to find that we’d both actually liked the last film. Not only was the story far more interesting (actually two separate but overlapping stories: the battle between Auntie and Master Blaster for control of Bartertown; and the lost tribe of children waiting for Captain Walker), but the characters were developed beyond the one-dimensional portraits they’d been in the first two films (Max himself gains some humanity, and Master goes from bad guy in the first half of the film to good guy and fellow escapee in the latter half).

I found the second half of Thunderdome to be more interesting than the first — the battle for control of Bartertown was fun and all, but the lost tribe of children were far more interesting to me, especially linguistically. The writers had come up with a very believable pigdin English for the children to use, and the two storytelling sequences that bookend the last half of the film were beautifully done.

So when all’s said and done, I’m not a big fan of Mad Max as a trilogy — but you can definitely count me as a fan of Beyond Thunderdome.

iTunes “Professional Widow (Armand’s Star Trunk Funkin’)” by Amos, Tori from the album Professional Widow (1996, 8:06).

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

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Prairie and I just got home from seeing The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We were a little nervous going in: not only was this a movie adaptation of a favorite childhood book (something which all to often suffers when translated to the screen), but Prairie’s sister Hope had seen it last week and hadn’t been terribly impressed. Once all’s said and done, though…

So. Very. Good.

The Lion, the Witch and the WardrobeStory-wise, the movie is very nearly — and quite successfully — a direct adaptation of the book, with only a very few changes made along the way. The most major change is the addition of a few minutes of prologue to the film, expanding a single sentence from the book (“This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids.”) in order to help modern audiences get a feel for the time period and the reasoning behind the children’s visit to the country. A later addition — a confrontation at the base of a frozen waterfall — doesn’t insert itself quite as smoothly, but still doesn’t come across as too jarring.

Effects-wise, the film does wonderfully. Aslan, while not perfect, is quite acceptably realized, but the real standouts are the creatures created by Lord of the Rings veterans Weta. From Mr. Tumnus and his fellow fauns to the centaurs, from the Minotaur to the harpy, from the gryphons to the phoenix…across the board, absolutely stunning creature effects. Both the centaurs and the phoenix were deemed “better than in the Harry Potter movies” by Prairie and me, and the harpy in the White Witch’s army was, for me, a true jaw-dropper. So much stuff, so beautifully realized.

Last — but, of course, far from least — the characters themselves. The children were wonderful (especially Georgie Henley as Lucy), James McAvoy was suitably charming as Mr. Tumnus, and Tilda Swinton as the White Witch…oh, I got such a kick out of her, especially during the ending battle as she drives her polar bear-drawn chariot across the battlefield with Aslan’s shorn mane fashioned into a battle headdress. Simply gorgeous.

And as for the “Christian element”…eeeh. Sure, the allegory’s in the movie as in the book, but without it being pointed out, I don’t think most people would care one way or the other. Those who look for it will find it, but it’s certainly not like there’s a big neon “Christ Figure” sign pointing at Aslan every time he comes on screen. If anything, there’s a bit less overt references to Christian mythology in the movie than in the book — while both refer to the children as Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, the movie never mentions the White Witch’s origins as the daughter of Adam’s first wife Lilith and a giant.

All in all, both Prairie and I came out quite satisfied. Some small quibbles here and there, to be sure (neither of us particularly cared for the stylized approach to the moments after Jadis is defeated), but on the whole a marvelously successful job of translating the book to the screen. Hurrah!

And now I’m off to find some turkish delight…

Poseidon

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Apparently, there’s a big-budget remake of the 70’s disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure being made, and the first trailer just hit the ‘net.

As I was watching the trailer, a shot of the huge wave bearing down on the ocean liner made me wonder about just how likely such an event really was. To my (admittedly limited) knowledge, waves such as that are generally associated with tsunamis, where waves that might be unnoticeable on the ocean grow to incredible height as they progress into shallower water near shore. Large waves away from shore are generally associated with storms or hurricanes. So, to see a wave large enough to capsize a modern ocean liner in the open sea on an otherwise clear night seemed to be straining, if not outright breaking credibility.

In my head, then, I decided that part of the remake should be the question of where such a wave would come from and what could generate it. In my version of the movie, the survivors of the capsized cruise ship would make it to the surface, find a life raft or some other craft, and make it in to shore…only to discover that the wave had been generated by a huge meteor or asteroid crashing into the ocean not far from their ship, and by the time they’d escaped the ship and made it to land, huge tsunamis had wiped out entire coastlines across the world, practically destroying the world as they’d known it. Kind of a modern-day Planet of the Apes ending, only without the sci-fi time travel element.

What really surprised me when starting to write this post, then, was noting these two passages on the IMDB’s trivia page for The Poseidon Adventure:

Paul Gallico was inspired to write his novel by a voyage he made on the Queen Mary. When he was having breakfast in the dining room, the liner was hit by a large wave, sending people and furniture crashing to the other side of the vessel. He was further inspired by a true incident which occurred aboard the Queen Mary during World War II. Packed with American troops bound for Europe, the ship was struck by a gargantuan freak wave in the North Atlantic. It was calculated that if the ship had rolled another five inches, she would have capsized like the Poseidon.

Such mid-ocean “rogue waves” were previously thought to occur only once every ten thousand years. A 2004 study of satellite radar images showed they can happen as often as hundreds of times every decade.

Whoa. Such waves are real? Apparently so!

Rogue waves are freakishly large waves, much bigger than the surrounding swell. They seem to rear up out of nowhere, sometimes out of a fairly calm sea, and disappear just as quickly. Mariners have recounted tales of such waves for centuries, but until recently oceanographers discounted them, along with sightings of sea monsters and mermaids. Naval architects, however, have analyzed the wrecks of ships sunk in recent decades, and have found that a large proportion of them have damage consistent with an encounter with a rogue wave, which can reach heights of a hundred feet. Even supertankers have been sunk by these monster waves. Now the evidence is too great to ignore, and physicists are trying to understand how rogue waves are generated. The issue is important not only for our understanding of the ocean, but also because rogue waves seem to be responsible for the loss of many lives at sea.

Hot damn that’s cool. Freaky and scary, but really cool. Guess I should be giving the scriptwriters a tad more credit than I had been!

Marie Antoinette

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How very odd this is — odd, though, in a way that gives me a grin. The first trailer for Marie Antoinette, a new film by Sofia Coppola (from whom Lost in Translation came to the screen). It’s a period piece starting Kirsten Dunst (yum!) as the ill-fated queen…and the trailer is all set to New Order‘s “Age of Consent“.

Odd…but I think I like it.

(via Pop Astronaut)

Update: I keep seeing places linking to this (interruptorjones, kottke, and others) describing the soundtrack as ‘indie rock’. Since when is New Order — especially New Order circa 1983, when ‘Power, Corruption and Lies‘ was released — ‘indie rock’ instead of ‘new wave’ or ‘new romantic’? Bad enough that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with all the various genres, sub-genres, and sub-sub-genres that have been concocted for today’s music world, but retrofitting today’s labels to music that’s 23 years old just makes it even more confusing.