Welcome to the Paunch

There is something altogether sad about somebody really, really trying to be something that they are obviously not.
And I don't mean having a bit of a go at something you might or might not be very good at, but actual full-on delusion that you can pull of something you clearly can't. Case in point: James McAvoy. And before I get any further into this, let me state that I do like him as an actor, I enjoyed Wanted, a lot, as I did Penelope, I think he's not too bad on the eyes and there is something about a lazy english-or-thereabouts accent that really gets me going, but the man is not an action hero.
Which is made abundantly clear by his latest, euhm, let's call it a vehicle: "Welcome to the Punch", which was described on the poster as "an intelligent thriller" and for about 7 minutes or so really seemed to move into that direction, and then became a pretty standard "everybody and their grandmothers are the bad guy" type of movie that was made relatively famous by Guy Ritchie and that, as a genre, should have stuck with that man as well.

It is nearly impossible to spoil this movie for anyone who has seen even a smallish sliver of a gritty detective in the past, and I am not going to get into the story at all because, well, there wasn't that much there.

What I am going to get into are two main issues with the movie. To wit : James McAvoy as an action here, and bad scripting and editing.

Jimmy is cute, well, he used to be cute, and that is strike one against him, because full-on cute does not cut it when you are trying to be all gritty and action-y. Jimmy is also short, and a little out of shape, and he looks like he went to a good school and still calls his mum regularly. There is nothing wrong with any of these things, but they don't carry an action movie AT ALL. Now, handsome isn't really an issue. Jason Statham is handsome. Chris Hemsworth is handsome. But there is a massive difference between handsome and cute. An action hero can be (almost has to be) good looking, but he can't look "precious", which is exactly where McAvoy fails. He looks precious. If you fantasize about, say, a Bruce Willis or a Statham, you are considering exactly how much of the room he will trash while entertaining you biblically. If you fantasize about McAvoy, you imagine long letters at dusk and the occasional heart-wrenching scene in the rain. And action heroes, if they do appear in the rain (as they often do), should not be using their time there mentally writing a poem.
So the movie is off to a bad start immediately just from casting alone. And there is really no amount of casting Mark Strong (who is always, always awesome) that is going to make up for basically miscasting the lead, especially if said lead is out-acted by Mark Strong even if Strong isn't on screen, technically, at all.

Then to scripting and editing. The main issue with this movie is that it provides two storylines that separately would have made one reasonably enjoyable movie and one very strong movie. Combined it could have been very, very good, providing you keep them relatively apart. If you fully combine them, they lose a lot of strength. And that is exactly what happened here. Two storylines that meet up only at the end are muddled together constantly and each one brings out what is lacking in the other, without providing adequate sustenance for us, the suffering viewer. Moments that could have real, emotional impact are flattened by their placing in the story, deaths that could have real tension are worked through quickly and all too efficiently and characters that are relevant to the story are only introduced after their deaths. This is not a problem in a movie where tension is built subtly and the story has to be pieced together by viewers who are invested enough to pay real attention, but in this movie, it does not work. We are told important pieces of information *as important pieces of information*. There is no puzzle, nothing. It's like getting as a sudoku-hint a completely filled in sudoku. I just does not work.

A short one this week, as the movie was, ultimately, uninteresting. I suppose fans of guns and gunfights will get their fill, but if you are looking for an intelligent thriller, look elsewhere.

Hosting

It's been a while, about two years, apparently, but I am currently partial to thinking that as a return to better mental health I should take up blogging again. Directly contradicting that statement, I am getting back to reviewing movies, now that I've rediscovered sneak previews, which in all honesty cannot be said to be good for anybodies mental health.

So the first movie I'm going to tackle was not a sneakily previewed one, but just general theater offering, to wit: The Host. The movie based on the book by *cough*acclaimed*cough* writer of Twilight, Stephenie Meyer.

Sooo, yes. It's aliens. And therein lies my first big issue with the movie : aliens? just not that impressive anymore. It is relatively safe to say that if your alien isn't an acid-dripping-and-spitting shiny black monstrosity with adaptive DNA, you are just not going to pack that much muscle in the scary-department, and if it isn't insidiously creepy pod-based shenanigans, the suspense is out of the bag before act two as well.  Much like this movie, which at no point can be deemed "scary". Now, for regular readers of this blog (to whom I apologise for being this late), you know I don't find "scary" an integral part of a good movie, providing it is internally consistent and has good eye-candy.
This movie is, I suppose, somewhat internally consistent. Mostly in that the people in it are idiots, and consistently act like they are. Eye candy... well, maybe. It is certainly very pretty to look at, with wide sweeping vistas of deserty landscapes and the aliens themselves are right-pretty, but since this a Stephenie Meyer-product, we don't get much in the way of shirtlessness or steamy sexual tension. The fact that you spend most of the movie trying to see which of the main actors is Bella, Edward or Jacob certainly doesn't help.

Ok, the plot, spoilers starting now.
An alien race has invaded earth, taking over almost all human beings and eradicating hunger, strife and pollution, and generally perfecting the world in general. The aliens when they are at home look like sparkly silvery slugs avec tentacles about the size of your palms, and they invade human hosts through the neck, taking over the body, forcing the human personality to the background and into what appears to be apparent death, as well as providing very pretty shiny eyes and a general positive, trusting and polite demeanor. Which is my second big issue with the movie, in that I spend the first twenty minutes or so being squarely on the side of the aliens, what with their world-improving tack and a return to general politeness and all. Also, they are pretty, all sparkly and shiny and all, and as humans they tend to dress well and drive impossibly cool silver version of our more drab earth-vehicles. So, genteelness and style, I'd sacrifice a little bit of "being in charge" for effortless style and good transportation.

We are introduced to our main character while she is on the run from these things, and she is not effortlessly stylish or remarkably polite, which really is not helping her case from my point of view, but I suppose one has to give a little bit of leeway in the interest of story. She (obviously) gets caught and implanted, and shows us that this whole "lying back in defeat and drifting off into the great yonder"-thing doesn't always work, as she starts a full inner monologue with the invading parasite, which is actually rather well done and makes for a few genuinely funny scenes, while trying to convince said parasite to not root through her memories to weedle out the rest of the resistance. Only to then show the parasite in question the way to the rest of the resistance. Which they infiltrate (although because of the aforementioned inner monologue, we do know that the parasite isn't fully on the side of her fellow parasites), apparently with the full blessings of the leaders of said resistance.
And there is the third big issue I have with this movie : stupidity. We have a race of aliens that can invade (and thus look like) human bodies, only distinguishable by their eyes, because they can also plug into human memories they can pretty much pretend to be that person in most ways (except for a natural proclivity to be polite, which would distinguish you from most people hands down).
And in that situation, you simply cannot trust a parasitically infected member, no matter what ties used to bind you. Because (as this parasite doesn't, but could easily do) they can pretend that they have the living memory of the body inside them guiding them towards doing the right thing, only to then reveal the pocket on question to the rest of the parasites. And that means, if you are at all serious about your resistance, you shoot to kill when you see the shiny blues of their eyes.

This resistance does not, and it saves us viewers from paying money for a movie that lasts about 40 minutes, but let's face it, in a real world scenario, that's just dumb.

Also, it's pretty clear right of the bat that some personalities stick around longer than is preferred by our sluggy overlords (SOs) anyways, and that in some cases this means sluggy will defect to the pro-human side, occasionally getting wrapped up in a clump of resisting humanity. Which is what the SOs are looking for. So if you know that that is a real possibility, why not, when implanting your brethren into an available neck, also implant a small tracking device, so as to find them when they are wrapped up in their pro-human viewpoint and start refusing to report back to base? Hmmmm? For a race that has hundreds of years of experience jumping into and out of bodies like so many public transport options, this is also dumb.

I dislike dumb.

But apart from that, it''s actually not a bad movie. I'd recommend it if you are or are on an outing with any girl in the teen-range, because they'd get the most enjoyment out of the movie without being spoiled in good overlord-resistance techniques by other, better movies. The acting is.... twilight-esque, as is the writing and the obligatory angst, but all in all it is not horrendously boring or un-entertaining, just a little stupid, in places.

Oh, with thanks to TAFKAB, when I wondered who was charlies mustache, it's the wheat.

Make honey, others don’t.

This was somewhat intended to be a review of the Resident Evil-movie series, which then morphed before fingers hit keyboards into a contemplation of zombies in general, then turning into a review of a completely different zombie-movie-staple (Night of the Living Dead, in fact) and back to Resident Evil. In the end, it’s zombies.

I hate zombies. Used to be a time not so long ago where I couldn’t see a trailer for a zombie-film without suffering really quite horrid nightmares for days after. Watching “Shaun of the Dead” even though I really, really liked it, meant not really sleeping for about three weeks. Zombies, they freak me out. I do occasionally sit through zombie-movies or read zombie-related material on- or offline, suffering the insomniac results, because it pays to keep track of the enemy, and to run through scenarios of an “break glass in case of zombie-apocalypse”-nature. It also, for such is my nature, forces me to consider the mechanics of zombie-ness.


Traditional living corpses, at least in mainland-Europe, where not needfully as freaky. They tended to be corpses that were “left alone” and therefore open for possession, after which they would mimic their former lives by trying to move back into their old homes, communities and, in most more icky cases, loved ones (yes, that said they tried to move into their loved ones. Think about it). The reasons they were “left alone” would be any of the usual things that would leave you outside the standard medieval community. Suicide, being a horrid criminal, going against the wishes of the local clergy, that sort of thing. They tended to result in being buried outside of the graveyard (get it, get it?) which meant you were *cough* wide open for any demon or otherwise looking for a place to stay.
Now, I agree, obviously, that this is somewhat creepy, but since traditional European animated corpses got Stokered into attractive, slightly but derangedly bisexual pretty things the creepiness swiftly dissipated, with the new breed of vampires taking over all the “living dead” symbolism of “just because it looks familiar does not mean it does not want to hurt you” and “we don’t talk about uncle Bob because of what he did which we will also not discuss but it can be contagious so stay away from what looks like uncle Bob but isn’t” (also known as “Fear of the outsider”, “Uncanny Valley” and “the monster in our midst”)

Modern zombies (and the term “modern” absolutely and irrevocably does not, in any way, shape or form, apply to zombies nowadays, but hey, license) have a completely different symbolic value. They actually represent not the fear of the slightly known, but the fear of being fully known. The great, blind, grasping masses that nonetheless have you completely in their power, and if they do get you, they get inside your head and take everything of value out of it, turning you into one of them, and all of them, in a little way, into something that is a little more you.

Less original movie-makers, even in their time, tack some sort of consumerist commentary onto the standard “there is tons of us, you cannot escape”-creep-factor but since we have, as a planet, accepted the tenets of capitalism a while ago now you could tack that little inkling of a good idea onto everything and get away with it.


So what freaks me out about zombies? Idiocy.

After more than a quarter century of having a brain that works somewhat different than the brains of most people I meet on a daily basis, I live in a constant fear that I am going to turn out to be more than slightly retarded but with most people around me thinking I’m being very brave about the whole thing and it would be callous commenting on my obvious problems, and only discussing them when I am safely out of earshot. And zombie movies bring home that “you are only a few steps away from mindless drooling, we all know it even if we are not saying anything” feeling to an extent that I can only assume my Shadow has been dead for ages but refuses to lie down for fear of being ridiculed. Strangely enough, only actual zombie-movies do this to me. Movies in which people merely exhibit zombie-like characteristics due to a virus or otherwise-invasion based affliction do not as such affect me at all, but as soon as people need to have died before shambling pitifully ‘long once child-filled streets and whatnot I am gibbering behind the couch.

But lately, that has been changing. And quite a bit, as evidenced by the fact that I have recently seen the first three parts of the Resident Evil-series without actually gibbering in fear even once. Gibbering in wordless anger, suuuure, and even in amazement in some ways, but not fear. Nor have the traditional dreams surfaced. This is always a bonus. Well, this is usually not a bonus, but this time, it is.



Something did get me though.
In the Resident Evil series, it is explained that the virus responsible for all this crap basically re-animates dead tissue with all their base instinct in tact, especially their hunger. And this is ok, I can get with that, even though we thankfully not see any zombies in full rut, and the zombie-folk do respond as a pack of very hungry animals, preferring to prey on the weak and alone first and only really attacking en masse. What gets me here is that we see zombies. Multiple ones. There shouldn’t be. Not really.

Ok. Zombies have an incredible hunger, and can still process what they used to be able to process. This works. It also stands to reason that they would try to go after things that they can most easily ingest, which is what every animal does. You go for the best average where it comes to personal risk versus gain. This ensures that it stands to reason that zombies would eat human. After all, zombies are basically made of human, and this would imply that human meat would have most of the building blocks you’d need. Also, when you have one cornered and worked to the ground, there is very little personal risk left over and you can eat to your hearts content. They are more nutritious than a chocolate bar and you don’t run the risk of being crushed by a vending machine you just tried to work open with your little ineffective zombie-paws. Combine that with the fact that being bitten by a zombie makes you a zombie, a nice and continuous string of infections and more zombies seems to be the only logical conclusion. Only it isn’t, because there is no reason to stop eating the other person after you have started. Even a zombie is still made of human meat and leaving it shambling around is just competition. So logically the first person to turn Z-side should have eaten the second one, and the third, and so on until they infected one that was bigger/stronger/faster which would then eat them and continue on. You’d have dozens of zombies, not millions, and a few piles of maybe animated but certainly just mushy and well-chewed flesh.

In the Day/Dawn/Evening/Twilight/Shortly before sunset/Whutever of the Dead series, it is somewhat established that hell is full, and those who die come back and inhabit their old bodies, albeit murderously insane. I am ok with this, as it clearly explains everything that happens in the movies given some liberties with basic tendon-strength, as most other issues have been waved away with a generic “they cannot re-die, unless you give them no body to re-inhabit afterwards”. In the Night/Day/Return/Whutever of the Living Dead (one word difference, entirely different universe) it is established that the zombies in question need the energies of living beings to maintain their own organic processes, preferably the brains, after being re-animated by a chemical substance. I am also ok with this, as it makes at least some sense. By all means humans are propelled ever onwards by some biological mechanism, and expressing this in a basic “energy” equivalent stored in human organs in such a way as to be harvestable by chemically altered corpses might be effectively ludicrous but basically somewhat sound within the confines of your story. I ask for no more. In this last example, there should also not be any other zombies, and to be honest, there aren’t. There are a few, but mostly contaminated with the same chemical (which is excreted by the zombies, in fact). It is also established that zombies can, and do, eat other zombies but that the return on investment is so much lower that it makes very little sense. This same argument is not, however, made in Resident Evil.

Even going from a starting point of a few hundred zombies with not enough time to start eating each other before fresh human flesh, which is arguably preferable over dead zombie flesh, shows up there are literally miles and miles of zombies who have had no chance of even sensing the human snacks that somehow just sit there and wait until a human pops by, usually in groups, and NOBODY eats ANYBODY. This makes no sense.

Retro-actively making the argument that the deceased flesh becomes immediately inedible or all zombies are part of one bigger organism that does not feed itself is obviously an option, and one that I cannot imagine the writers shying away from at all, but then why not give us that explanation in any of the first couple of movies? It would explain why zombies usually (but not always) stop attacking after somebody has been bitten, at least. So I’m sure that would be what they would go for to ultimately explain it but then what? What were zombies supposed to eat? If their new genetic make-up makes them attack humans only to propagate itself, a perfectly acceptable evolutionary action, what were they supposed to use for food? Never do we see zombies attack other species to then finish them off, they express only a mindless hunger for meat but nothing else seems to interest them overmuch.

I am going so far as to say I would accept the explanation that the virus only wants to maintain itself by jumping from host to host, uncaring of what happens to the host apart form the fact this host needs to be able to continue spreading, as most viruses ultimately do, but then why re-create them in the image of rotting corpses? Surely altering their make-up to make them all resemble skinny people with good skin that smell nice must also be on the list of possibilities, and would be a lot more effective where world domination is concerned. Or at least more fun to look at.

Chloe

I hate things. This is not a surprise, nor is it a secret. Especially when it comes to movies I have a tendency to hate things to the exclusion of positive characteristics. Sometimes, however, I hate things so much they don’t even register anymore, which means I occasionally find myself in theatres surrounded by things I hate (cold, people, sticky floors) looking at things I hate even more (Valentine’s Day was a wonderful case in point). I sat through Happy Feet, realizing halfway through that I hated tap. I sat through the Wolfman, realizing halfway through that I hated Benicio del Toro. Clarification: I did not hate tap or BdT in the movies I hate both full time, all the time, just so, so much that I never noticed they were in the movies until the movie had well and truly started.

I deeply dislike Julianne Moore. I find she lacks depth as an actress and banks on little else but her oh so cool and clean and fragile “beauty” in whatever role she plays, and I thought her casting as not-just-to-my-mind-iconic Clarice Starling was a travesty only eclipsed by the rest of that heaven-renting disaster of a movie (Entertaining? Sure, gore almost always is. Good? Hell no).

I also dislike movies that are casted based on currently popularity of the cast rather than making effective (and affecting) use of the available pool of talent. Give me well-cast unknowns rather than badly cast bigger names. But I realize I am ranting against an unavoidability here, and I would never cast myself as Don Quixote, no matter how sturdy Rosicante, or how lovely Dulcinea. Some windmills refuse to be anything but giants, but some giants refuse to be anything but windmills, so it all works out, I find.

However, I do not hate either Julianne “Tales from the Darkside” Moore OR obvious casting so much that I avoid movies based on those aspects. I should, maybe, but I don’t.

I have been lucky in that regard as it has allowed me to see two movies with both Julianne AND relatively popularity induced casting over the last few weeks, and hey, colour me pleasantly surprised.


The first was “A Single Man” which is, apart form one small flaw, so very very poignant and touching and just all round good that it almost made me forget that I hate Julesy (and mohair sweaters) because she (like everybody in this movie) was just insanely, heartrendingly, believably on her acting-game. If you have not seen this movie yet, go see it. Now.

Reeling from finally having seen Julianne do something that did not make me want to slam her into a wall again (how else to explain that lack of profile) I decided to give the badly reviewed “Chloe” a chance as well. It has Julianne. It also has Amanda Seyfried. I do like Amanda Seyfried, somewhat, but I feel she is being overused at the moment. And I thought her somewhat to light and bubbly for the premise of the movie.

A premise that is as old, predictable and classic as it is simple: Woman (Jules) expects her Husband (Liam Neeson, another one for the “Oh really, you wanted a fatherly figure with an edge? Gosh” box) of cheating on her and decides to hire a prostitute (Seyfried) to seduce him, later suffering Horrible Consequences™ for her unwillingness to tackle the situation directly (Symbolism! Moral!).
Now, in this movie the Horrible Consequences™ are not altogether too horrible to behold. Yes, there is a little blood and some violence, but it could have all been a lot worse, and I seem to remember several movies where it did.

Seyfried seemed well set to massively disappoint, but I have to say, she didn’t. Her role as a prostitute could have been played darker, edgier and with a little more fatale glamour, but I think that the simple fact that she did not, that she kept it light, even comically teeny, made it all the more dangerous, all the more understandably seductive.
Because of course, this movie is about seduction. Not necessarily the sexual kind, but a slow and subtle game of leading astray is constantly being played. It is not always played well, obviously, sometimes the tactics and moves are a little… shall we say… pedestrian? But played it is and to relatively good effect.


I really enjoyed this movie. It was slow, but absolutely gorgeously filmed and many of the locations, outfits and shots echo a certain lush emptiness that matches the feel of the movie and the character’s very well, if a little too well in some cases. I’m not going to spoil the movie that much but to use the traditional beautiful-but-mottled-mirror-obscuring-a-face trick to imply a person’s slightly skewed way of seeing themselves has been done to death now, lovely as the imagery is.

Go see this movie as well. I’m not saying I don’t still dislike Julianne “can somebody beat her some” Moore with quite some passion, but I need to give her snaps for these two movies at least.


This post to ease myself back into some sort of regular blogging. My apologies for the long hiatus, I will strive to improve.


K

the Last House on the Left

There is a mode of thought that there are only so many stories in the world, and at some point everything is merely a variation on a familiar theme, and I do subscribe to this theory to some extent. As such, it is no surprise to me that certain movie plots seem to be copied time and time again. After all, with a limited number of stories the number of stories that are eligible for cinematization needs be just as limited, only smaller.

That being said, I don’t really think we ran out of permutations of a theme sometime in the mid to late nineties in such a way as to explain the ENORMOUS amount of re-makes, re-imaginings and other ways of saying re-hashes that are now plaguing the movie-theaters. It becomes practically impossible to spoil anything for the sheer fact that there is nothing playing where the story is not known up front and in many cases has been known up front for the last twenty odd years.

In a way, the new version of tLHotL avoids the rather disappointing effect of being spoiled by never really being spoilable. After all, a spoiler suggests that the ending is unexpected, surprising, something you would not have seen coming if somebody had not just spoiled the movie for you. tLHotL not so, there is no surprise, no twists and turns within the tale, everything made starkly clear, and unpleasantly clear, from start to finish. In its own way, it is not even a thriller, for exactly that reason, and I am not even considering placing it in the “horror” category. Horror, after all, needs a supernatural (or nearly so) element, and thrillers need tension and excitement. This movie has no supernatural element (the Norwegian tale does, but not in the main part of the story) and as said no thrills. I would call this movie simply a “drama”, if not with the melancholy or sad connotations the word holds nowadays.

TLHotL, this time, is a re-make of a movie that was a re-imagining of another movie that was a re-telling of a traditional Scandinavian folktale, and with so many “re”s it is not surprising it lost some of the old tale along the way. What is surprising is how much it has lost since the relatively recent firs tLHotL. The original (for want of a better word) is no more exciting or surprising than this one, but is more uncomfortable, which in a movie like this counts.

The story, very swiftly (as so many old tales this one also can be synopsed incredibly swiftly) is: “Parents kill the people who raped and killed their daughter”. The story is told in simple (near) chronological order, starting with the presentation of the criminals, then the parents + daughter. After this murder, rape and some murder, and then more murder. It’s gory (although less so than the Craven original version) and unpleasant (see last line within brackets) but that is the (natch) meat and bone of the movie.

What I liked about Craven’s original was the fact that it made the viewer complicit in the horrible acts portrayed. What I hate about the current one is that it absolves the viewer from any responsibility towards the situation. In the original a horrible, almost five minute long, shot of a brutal rape that seems to go on for much longer and never relents makes you uncomfortable, makes you wish the camera would pan out, show something else, anything but this poor girl being abused. But it does not, and you feel as much a part of the scene as she. But as you are looking AT her you feel slightly, if subtly, that you are part of the group that allows this to happen to her, you have a responsibility, and somehow, you feel as though you could stop this, but don’t. The new version does pan out, showing trees and other people and more importantly, it only lasts a very short time. And this time, the viewer is placed outside the scene, and thus not really responsible, you care, somewhat, but not really, as the camera seems to care, somewhat, but not really.

When, in the original, the parents find the corpse of their daughter (I won’t spoil how, it is also not important) the decision “right, they raped and killed my little girl, I’m gonna be bitin’ me off some peen” is made willingly, swiftly and decisively. As I imagine mine would be. If I ever find out somebody killed my child that person is dead, never mind that they seem to currently be breathing, they might as well not be. The parents put all their love and caring they used to feel for their daughter into destroying, knowingly, other lives. Does it make them nicer people? No. Does it make them relatable? Yes. The switch in their characters is done so expertly you feel that this killer instinct was always there, just barely kept under the surface for the sake of their child. Their energy could have gone dark as easily as it went light. Symbolically this places the child as the cap on their rage, the one thing that stops these people from turning into murderous beasts.

In the new version, the parents are unpleasant, yes, but form first view about as menacing as a disgruntled bedbug. They seem to be unpleasant to each other, the dad is unpleasant to his daughter and the mother is mostly unpleasant to herself, by staying with these horrid people. The daughter never gets a chance to represent the key to their happiness as there simply is no happiness. When she is inevitably attacked and thus taken out of the equation of this family’s life, the rage is no turning point, no corruption form light to dark; it simply makes the last final step from grubby to foul.

I enjoyed the new tLHotL, unlike the friends I was with, but I did think changes were made that changed the message and the impact of the story. A lot of the “comic relief” bumbling policemen and the like were taken out where they really, really should have stayed in the movie. In the original, at several points, the story could have still been saved but wasn’t because people decided not to take the turn, not to check out the car, not to do this or that, and as a viewer, you get tense because everything could have turned out ok, if not for that small step. The new version does not have that, and unavoidably moves towards the finish. And an unavoidable fate is not an interesting fate.

The last and final point of chance that really did chance so much for me in this movie centers on redemption and escape. In the original, the parents meet up after their rampage, covered in blood, in the living room of their home. They end the story still in the story; they have already begun haunting the place of their crimes. There is no redemption for anybody, as nobody physically leaves the scene of the crime. Also, with their daughter dead and summarily avenged, what do they have to live for? You feel, if not know, that they are ready for a hell of their own making, no more love, or light, but no willingness or need for hate and darkness. A grey eternity rehashing their actions while sitting in that living room, in those clothes, close to their victims memories.
The redemption they sought, the peace they hoped to find is not, and will not be, there. They are punished for their violence, however understandable within the context of their actions, as they are judged by the same standards they have judged by.

In the new version, not only does the daughter live, she is also instrumental in her own and her parent’s survival (alerting them to the danger under their roof). The final scene of this movie has the parent’s, along with their daughter (and for reasons explainable one of the members of the criminal group) in a boat speeding towards help. They leave the place of dark to go into the dawn. They are by their actions or character redeemed. The family is stronger than ever, the daughter has found a new assertiveness along her mother, and the junior criminal looks towards no live of crime. Even better, he fills a void that was left by some unneeded and unexplained back-story death.

Completeness through adversity, strength through resistance and redemption through action are NOT tenets of this story, they are NOT heartwarming messages to take away. The original, as does the original tale, tell that revenge does NOT fulfill, that it does NOT make everything a little bit better, it just makes things worse. With the redemption of the family we condone violence; we say “given the situation you acted right” where they really did not. Remember that the daughter lived, and that therefore the cap was never off the rage, the energy that was put into lighting her life never needed to be turned towards avenging that same life. It makes all the actions unreasonable and the redemption and escape undeserved. It completely turns around the message of the story, and in doing so, negates the impact to such an extent that it makes the movie less “worth it” less debatable, less a topic for discussion (how would YOU act?) and more a standard (or sub-standard) exercise in gore.

I really didn’t, but I will.

“Would you like to be the one to declare Heath Ledger’s last movie crap? Especially with the whole Oscar-thing going on?” were the words Housemate had used to get her boyfriend to wait a little while to see what the reviews for “the Dark knight” would be. She was telling me this last Saturday while we were walking into the theatre to watch this very same movie.

And well, no, I would in fact not like to be the one to do so, even though I am traditionally not so afraid of my opinions differing from the norm. Not that her boyfriend is a sheep, far form it, but traditionally he is a little less (intentionally) rattling than I.
That being said, I’ll stand out on that most precocious of ledges and declare my heartfelt opininon: It sucks.

It does, it really does. I am sorry but it does. Yes, I will admit that Heath Ledger has his character down pat, and his mannerisms and stance convey a deep, deep creepiness that gives a person goose bumps. Facially, there is no creepiness. Yes his tongue moves freakily, and yes he looks freaky, but the look is mostly make-up. Well done make up, but to rely on make-up doing the trick for up-close acting is, in my opinion, a tad sad. Getting an Oscar for doing so is an insult. Completely different topic.

Saying that Heath out-acts the movie is not a stretch, he does. Then again, this is like saying that carrots are better at being carrots than potatoes.
Heath might not have been a tremendous actor, I feel he died too young for objectivity to decide, but the other actors in this movie “perform” with such a lackluster disregard to what they are trying to accomplish that if this performance is what gets the boy his posthumous Oscar I am going to submit to the academy the video of my own personal elementary school Christmas musical, as my own Oscar can’t possibly be far behind. After all, clearly all one has to do is do slightly better than a rasping, awkward and uncharismatic Christian Bale, and I think I reached that level of acting well before my voice changed.

“Batman: the Dark Knight” could have done better. There is a list of actors that have proven themselves in a great many movies previously, the Batman-series as a concept easily lends itself to a deeper-than-average interpretation, allowing for a nicely layered view of the superhero-genre, and there are many perspectives to the series that have not yet been wasted by earlier camptastic installments.
However, it does not do better. Sure, Michael Caine is charming as always, and Maggie Gyllenhaal does well enough, apart from the strange moment of bursting into song, but the rest of the cast, from Aaron Eckhart to Gary Oldman, phone in their performance, sadly resulting in an impossibility to really feel for any of the characters anything but a slight, but noticeable, aversion.

The movie, at first glance, doesn’t do much wrong. It is a little bit predictable (par for the Batman-course), and it is a little bit boring in it’s set up (again par) but really it shows some snide disrespect for previous movements. A joke at the expense of Tim Burton’s thematically and stylistically far better “Batman” really set of a chain of “too bad they went this way” moments. Even tacking the piss out of the original series is a bit sad, one would hope a movie that is flaunted and hyped like this one deserves to be treated so on it’s own merits, and not just because it can make fun of other movies so they look bad. This is a block-buster movie, NOT the lead-cheerleader in high school that only rules because she can put down those less fortunate.

All in all, the movie lacks the entertainment value, plot and refinement (it has Eric Roberts for goodness’ sake) to be good, and it lacks the ability to laugh at itself to be so bad it becomes funny. It was just boring, sad, and a little bit insulting (as it can apparently laugh at everything else quite easily).

As a comparison, Housemate and I watched “Catwoman” the next day, and found it almost refreshingly entertaining. And that movie also sucked. If a movie can’t easily outshine a bad spin-off of it’s original concept, maybe that’s a sign that the movie should be taken out back and shot.

A disappointed,

Kevin

Funny Games U.S.

Those that have heard me speak for any length of time have almost certainly heard me utter the opinion that one should have opinions and principles roughly the height of a stepping stool. This way, the constant getting on and of a not particularly high horse can have somewhat of an aerobic positive effect.

However, there are some opinions I hold dear, and will defend to a -if perhaps not the- very end. I will grant you that there are not many, but there are at least some. I believe that there is no situation that asks for snapping one's fingers for service, and that berating wait-staff or chefs should be done only after any opportunity for spitting into food has passed. I believe there is no excuse for cruelty to animals, and that you should never kick something unable to kick back. I believe a lot of things.

Among my slightly less vehemently guarded measures of life is the fact I really do not approve of pirated or otherwise illegal copies and performances of music, books and films. This is not a principle I usually uphold all too strictly, I prefer to watch a “real” DVD to a pirated one and will not swiftly buy a ripped copy of a CD, but I do have a play list on youtube of my favourite music videos, and I do not have all those on CD or otherwise. A little hypocrisy goes a long way in these matters.

That said, my long-held opinion that watching a pirated movie detracts something from the experience has been giving a polish and shine this weekend when I had a chance to watch Michael Hanake's remake of his own movie “Funny Games”. Having first watched this as a down-loaded version and now in a official movie theatre, it gave me some measure of comparison. Granted, the down-load was of bad quality, but still, that goes some way to proving my point, actually.

Some context is required for understanding the really quite large differences between the two viewings. I had heard of the classic original version only in a far away way. The remake drew my attention because it stars the actor that seems destined to play me should my life ever warranted filming, Michael Pitt. But upon reading up on the movie, it seemed a good start to a night of thrillers and horrors. The story, a well-to-do family terrorised by a pair of polite, handsome but insane young men, allows for interesting ruminations on politeness and a good meditation on trusting your neighbours.

Watching this movie in a room filled with movie-buffs and in bad quality did not do well for the experience. The shocks and thrills seemed second-hand, and open for mockery, and it all seemed done before and made one feel tremendously blasé.

Watching it, however, in a movie-theatre, surrounded by people who do not analyse every movie to it's bitter end, and in a much better quality, suddenly the movie seemed to change. Much like showing your town to tourists will make you see the town in a whole new light, I saw this catalogue of displacement in a whole new light. Along with my co-watchers, I suddenly found the chance to wonder what I would have done in similar situations, and I bristled with them at the atrocious cheat perpetrated halfway through. Suddenly, the movie's implications became personal, the occasional breaking of the fourth wall more than a clever trick, a personal indictment.

For those who do not know the original or the remake, the story is simple, a family on holiday is trapped in their house with two psychopaths, who bet them the family will not be alive in twelve hours time. Simple, and we have seen it before. The psycho's seem polite and genteel at first, but so did Hannibal Lecter, and it doesn't hit home immediately. But the two also make use of the insular community of friends and neighbours they seem so easily and obviously to belong to, suddenly bringing the danger much closer to home.

The original is known as a classic, the remake, by the same director, with much the same dialogue and scenes, might not, but if it doesn't it is only by virtue of it's status as a remake. Viewed as a separate entity, the acting is mostly very well done, the subdued, actually never shown, horrid violence is wonderfully portrayed still, and the menace remains as true now as when this movie was made first.

I can advise any body to go see this, but there is a certain requirement for a willingness to discuss them movie and it's themes afterwards, so I advice bringing a group of argumentative friends, and adjourning to a good bar swiftly afterwards. And stocking up on eggs.

Back from the dead, I promised to do better this time,

Kevin

With Anthony Hopkins as the 8th dwarf: Freaky.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a massive fan of the fantasy movie-genre, and as such I am more than willing to cut even the worst of the genre some slack for simply being what they are. Also, as a good gay man, I am not at all opposed to the current spate of action-ish movies that show reasonably buff men in reasonably little outfits, but the line needs be drawn somewhere.
Quite literally drawn, in the case of Beowulf, the latest Gaiman-penned screenplay to hit the silver screen in Holland. This fully CGI’d movie butchering and then raping one of the oldest surviving English stories has truly taken the cake with regards to just over the top application of available techniques and moral values.

There is an idea in animation and animatronics that is called the “uncanny valley”, coming from the idea that the more like a person something looks, the more we feel affiliated with them. In other words, the emotional response to something that looks like a human is more positive than something that does not look human. Up to a point. It turns out that when something comes close to looking human but quite clearly isn’t, we feel negative or uncomfortable towards them, but then as soon as they are less and less distinguishable from humans, we are fine with them as well. In short, the more something is clearly trying to look human, but isn’t, we find it uncanny, and if it is simply looking human, we find it acceptable. Apparently this is the reason people have averse reactions to clowns and zombies, because they kind of look human, but then again not.

Anyway, the problem with CGI-humans is that they never quite look human, for all the progress we have made in the field of hair and water as has been evidenced by the whole Shrek-line of movies, it is still all but impossible to reliably mimic the myriad of small muscle movements and suchlike that make a human really human. Thus CGI-Humans always look slightly, well, dead. And a full movie of slightly, well, dead humans just doesn’t really do It for me. After all, I loved Shaun of the Dead, but it did give me nightmares.
Beowulf, however, will not. Even though for most of its running time it wallowed in the shallow end of the uncanny valley, it had enough moments of reasonably pretty imagery to keep me from totally becoming freaked out. But just barely. That said; a good deal of the reasons I did not allow my willies to shiver me out of the theater is because I could barely keep my eyes of the screen. Not because it was so good, it was not, but because I kept wondering what horrible thing they were going to do to the story next.

The original story is very easy to surmise; Grendel kills people in hall, Beowulf kills Grendel, Grendel’s mother kills people in hall, Beowulf kills Grendel’s mother, Dragon attacks somewhere else, Beowulf kills dragon, but dies himself as well. Thus. 1700 lines of ye olde English masculine bovine excrement, but that’s just about the extent of it.
It is also, just about, the net result of this movie, only not quite.

Grendel, as the quintessential aggrieved neighbour, is a slightly to very grotesque thing, rotten skin all over, massive stature, and missing at least one ear and a cheek, but with an enourmous, and enourmously sensitive, eardrum. He goes berserk every time the king holds feasts in his hall and rather than banging a broomstick or posting a snide note on the communal message board, he just starts banging heads and chewing the communal messenger. Now if I were king, I’d move. But I’m not, and the king that is doesn’t. It’s rather sad, really, as Grendel really does have quite a good point, he is just a little overeager.
Anyways, enter B(eowulf), who as a rule has a tendency to slay or fight just about anything. He goes into the hall, falls madly in love with the zombie queen (CGI again) and decides he wants to have a piece of her graphically enhanced (meh) flesh, and the treasury of the kingdom. He sets his men to feasting while he strips, and when Grendel arrives, they fight, and B tears of the arm of the complaining interruption.

Yes. Strips. B, being brawny and MASSIVELY well bodied, apparently prefers to fight naked. Sure, he comes with all these reasons about how it’s only fair, and that if the enemy is unarmed and unprotected so should he be, but that doesn’t really explain why he starts undressing at the drop of a hat before having seen the enemy, or if there even is an enemy. Crickee, even in front of a fully clothed and well-axe-hung Frysian he starts undressing. Apparently the man like being nekkid. No skin of my back, as said, he has a good body, but the enourmous amount of candles, arms, knees, tables, balustrades, donkeys, lobsters, sea-monsters, dragon-scales, water, pointy helmets and otherwise items of a non-disclosing nature do get a little bit absurd very swiftly. Ah well, we do get CGI bum, and that did very much not suffer from any uncanniness.

Anyways, Grendel dead, Grendel’s mom, played by Angelina Jolie who looks like she is very much enjoying herself being all computer generated, comes to complain the next night. Violence apparently being genetic, she appears to B in a dream while she slaughters and hangs his men in the feast-hall by way of complaining. A slight overreaction maybe, but I know if anyone hurts my family I’m willing to write a VERY terse note so I suppose it all works out the same.

B follows her into her cave-lair, the woman is a water-demon, and naked as he is (again) she decides to not fight him but offer him the world if he just sleeps with her. Because she is Angelina Jolie, and the only woman in the time-period in heels (heels that apparently are a part of her body, by the way) B off course agrees, is made king of the land, and lives happily being fought by every other monster and his mother, but surviving on and on.

So far, apart from the not-fighting-but-fucking, the story follows reasonably closely the original story, and as such I have not spoilt too much of the happenings in this movie, while still expressing most of the things I really did not like to much about it or find absurd. Because it is slated to be one of the mayor movies of the winter season, I will not go on and spoil any more.
It is an entertaining move, but really, its crap, funny crap, entertaining crap, crap nonetheless. The main problem is that there is no acting whatsoever that is well picked up by the computer puppets, something I hoped I would look past after a while, but never quite did. I could not escape the idea that if they’d have just done a real life movie, it would have been better.

Stripes at 00110 “If my neighbour complains again, I’m ripping her arm off”

Grtz,
Kevin

EXACTLY

It says something about a movie if the best thing you can say about it is that it is, at least, aptly titled. I realize I’ve said about “the Fountain” that it was aptly titled, and I still stand by that, but the aptness of “the Fountain” can hold no candle to the aptness of “Superbad”, the truly horrendous piece of regurgitated swill I almost forced myself to sit through yesterday.

And I ask myself now; “Why do I do these things to myself?”, why am I so stubborn in leaving a movie theater that I force myself to watch the interminable boredom of “Cashback”, why do I suffer the badly acted thinly veiled morality play that is “SawIII”, why, why, why?
Why? Because I am a movie-masochist. I secretly like nothing better than watching a bad movie for the slight chance of seeing cute people badly acting their way out of a paper bag. That’s why. That’s why I sat through “Cashback”, and “Saw”. Not that my efforts were rewarded or anything, but I live in hope that one day, out of the blue, the next Josh Duhamel will accidentally strip of in American Pie 65 and I can see I at least saw him naked in his first ever movie when he is a big star.

This did not happen, or had any faint hope of happening, during “Superbad” yesterday. Other things that didn’t happen during this truly terrible movie (or at least the 45 minutes I sat through before Housemate evoked the safety-word of movie-leavage) were: Something even remotely funny for those not humor-deprived since birth, the wolverine-vs-freddy style sla(sh/y)ing of that truly annoying and shite-ugly fat kid, the moment the “friends” of the fat kid finally told him to shut the bleeding fuck up and other thigns I really would like to have seen.
Ok, I am being a bit unfair, we did see fat kid’s throat being slit by a security guard, something that pleased me enough to whoop a little mid-movie, but that turned out to be a scene from fat kid’s imagination, something that pulled a well-meant “CRAP!!” from my toyed-with emotional psyche.

Ok, sorry, “Superbad”, movie about three guys, all nerdy, almost all acceptably nerdy for a standard high-school-movie, on their quest for pussy and suchlike, as one has now come to expect from high-school-movies. The three guys: Fat Kid (FK) who seems to be the leader of this little group of misfits but is more than likely just the guy the others hang around with just so people will spit on other people. Nerdy guy (NG) the classic nerd. Glasses, dark hair, pasty. Nerdlike, and therefore to my mind slightly endearing, but massively overshadowed by the sad fact he is friends with FK. And Average Guy (AG) who doesn’t really stand out in either direction, could be cute, could be ugly, but is nothing really. Dresses in brown.

After the initial set-up and introduction of this threesome, the movie tells us basically three things: They are all after girls, they are all idiots, and they should all die. So far, so same as every other high-school movie ever. Not exactly the same, as this movie sucks, whereas most HSM’s do have a certain charm to them. This one does not. From the first moment to the moment where I walked out, with the exception of the times FK was not on screen and the moment his throat was slashed, all it was was pure and simple crap.
Crap. Fucking crap. Effing crap. Rotten-corpse-of-Douglas-Adams flinging crap. No sign or show of any form of humor, charm or elegance in it’s execution, no power behind it’s convictions, no pure and simple movie magic in it’s make and pedigree.

I am certain the acting, however, was flawless. The three K’s did their very best, and did put down two reasonably believable characters and one truly atrocious one. But good acting of bad characters does not make a movie fun to watch. That said, the rest of the theatre was in stitches with every unnecessary “fuck” and every over the top allusion to the character’s rampant latent homosexuality, so it is possible the jokes just passed straight over my head (pun intended).

Is this it? Is this where we are headed? At least the “Naked Gun” movies had some planning in their badness. “Police Academy” lost it after a while but started smart enough through their bad jokes. “Revenge of the Nerds” had charm, “American Pie” was in places really, truly funny. But now we are getting these movies that seem only intend on being disgusting, stupid or demeaning, and if they can at all manage it, they go for all three of those. I thought I’d seen y worst movie with “Date Movie”, and I was wrong.
The worst part is that this movie is praised critically and through box office acclaim, it is “the next big thing” and the actors are lauded and feted around Hollywood. WHY? WHY in the name of all that is good and beautiful in the world WHY are we celebrating the type of jokes that special kid in the back of the class used to make until he was put into remedial teaching?
Honestly people, saying fuck fifteen times in a row is NOT funny. Showing an 8-year old drawing dicks is NOT funny, even though some of the dicks absolutely were. Watching a woman drink from a fat of her own fat is NOT funny. All these things, however, are happening in movies RIGHT NOW and there are audiences the world over that are laughing their retarded heads off watching this execrable garbage.

Can’t we get back to a world where humor was not based on excrement? I understand Mel Brooks’ statement that tragedy is when I cut my finger, and comedy is when you fall into an open sewer, but really, there is a massive difference between schadenfreude and filth.

Ah well, I am rerunning my episodes of the office to get the taste of FK out of my brain, then to go on to some actually funny things that don’t make me cringe.

Stripes at 00100, by now a well-known combination.

Grtz,
Kevin

30 Days of Night

Well, what to say… I like vampire films. In fact, with the possible exception of vampire bats when applied to my own specific hairdo, I roughly like vampire-everything.
Vampires, as a psychological archetype or an evolutionary mental exercise, are massively interesting creatures. And every vampire novel or movie sets up its own vampire back-story, and ideas behind it. Part of the charm of watching a vampire movie for me is figuring out how they stack up to other vampires, given what we are told in any story.

Dracula was able to walk in daylight according to Bram Stoker, but Bela Lugosi would have burned horribly in the same situation. The Hunger's Miriam and John Blaylock had no problem with daylight either, and lacked fangs as well, but drank blood nonetheless, with the aid of a little knife secreted in a necklace. (An idea re-used in the badly homoerotic The Brotherhood) The Hunger, by the way, also has the strange distinction of being a very elegant movie about two people who are clearly and undoubtedly vampires, yet the word “vampire” is never used or seemingly considered.

That said, almost all vampire movies or novels have to exist in an internal universe where-in there exist no other vampire movies or novels, but there is an abundance of arcane text about same, because, as a rule, vampires target fringe groups, for the tasty drug-laced blood and the lack of uproar over a couple of missing people, yet nobody ever immediately jumps to the conclusion of undead fangy stalkage.

Now I know vampire fan-dom is a little more widespread among my circle of friends than some other groups of people, but I know that as soon as the sucked-dry corpses of urban outdoorsmen start showing up under Amsterdam’s bridges with two puncture marks on their necks, the first thing somebody will say would be: “euh, maybe it’s a vampire” as a joke if not the first sketchy lines on a psychological profile.
But no, vampires are always the last possible refuge of the well-thinking character, and then only after we have seen several instances of turning to dust, glowing red eyes, massive fangs, and turning into bats/wolfs or otherwise creepy animals.
Of course, I realize movies would sell a lot less well if they consisted of one victim, a victim’s friend who says “people, it’s a vampire”, other potential victims stocking up on garlic, crucifixes and the like, and a defeated vampire scuttling off into the moonset within the first five minutes of filming, and thus there has to be a certain tension, a moment of discovery, and somewhat of a hunt to allow for all the product placement that a modern movie needs to stay alive. This is also one of the reasons why vampire ideas keep changing with every new movie and every new book, because if established vampire-detergent always works, there is no tension.

Still, there’d be more tension than there was in 30 Days of Night, the first of two vampire movies to hit Dutch cinemas in the coming period. Now I am not expecting particularly much of the second one, but it has to be better than this exercise in dual sided stupidity.
Some spoilers ahead, by the way.

The idea of a vampire troupe hounding a small town waaay up North is not a bad one in its own right, and as such a good premise for a vampire movie. The town Barrow, setting of this little piece, apparently has no sun for a set period every year, during which most of the town moves to sunnier (or sunny, at all) climes elsewhere, and only a skeleton crew of law-officers and suchlike maintaining vigil in the dark of sunless days. So far, so good. During this period, the vampires decide attack and obliterate the town. Good plan, no light to burn the lily-white skin, reduced visuals for the human meatsicles, all nice and ready for the pickings.

So what’s wrong? Well, stupidity is wrong, for one. And ugly vampires, also wrong (but slightly forgivable). And more stupidity.

These vampires are smart enough o hatch a plan like this, are incredibly fast, know how humans work well enough to set bait and try to trap them into coming out, but no when in the thirty days except for the absolute last day do they start setting fire to possible hiding places.
Foolish things.
Once more it is proven it is a good thing I personally am not an undead scourge on human society, cause y’all’d’be fucked.
If it were me leading an intrepid band of undead explorers, the first thing I do is take as many humans out as possible, as is done in the movie as well, good. Then, during the first night, when the remaining humans have gone to ground hiding, I start setting fire to the houses. This will mean that any humans left inside will run out pretty swiftly, ready for the taking.
Considering the fact that there are only a couple of hundred houses in town, to about 25 vampires, this ensures that the whole town will be burned to the ground, bled dry and fed upon within about 4 days of the given 30 days of darkness. Given the fact we are told over the course of the movie that there are about 4 or 5 more towns nearby that are also completely dark, this means you can be back on your sun-blocked boat before day 25 and undo your belt for a good bloody burp.

But no, Vamps decide to wait with the burning until day 30. Why? No idea. Meanwhile they barely get to eat, and they also spectacularly fail to find about 30 hiding survivors. Vampire idiots.

Do the humans do better? Well, yes, but a) barely and b) only because of the aforementioned vampire stupidity. If you are fighting a vampire, and it is conclusively shown that only beheading will work, would you not start beheading them? I would. But no. You’d apparently continue trying to bring them down by pillow-fighting them, snowballing them, trying unsuccessfully to burn them, whatever. So they have to hide out on someone’s attic, with no food or water, and they still manage to not only survive, but come out looking chipper and in some cases remarkably well-shaven.
And don’t start up about the fact they can melt snow for drinking water. True as that may be, it takes MASSIVE amounts of snow for even a little bit of useful water, and considering there are about 9 people there, this would be a 24 hour job, that nobody is doing. Also, there just plain isn’t enough snow to do this without being noticed by anything paying attention.

There are a lot of moments in this movie that are just plain stupid, or barely understandable. Does this make 30 Days of Night a bad movie? In my opinion: yes. Was it an enjoyable-for its stupidity-movie? In my opinion, yes again. It is worthy of seeing for two real reasons: 1) the movie’s premise is well thought up and executed, if a little bit shaky, and 2) the sheer pleasure of picking it apart. The tension is build well in some rare spots, but mostly underdone by the obvious attempts at sorry comic relief.

Stripes at 11110, for 30.

Grtz,
Kevin

Snobism, zombies and the loss of emotional speed,

I consider myself a snob. Not too the extent that I believe I am better than anybody else, but to the extent that I have trouble understanding or really believing that anybody can lack having experienced what I have experienced and still call themselves a cultured human being. Thus, if someone expresses to me the fact they believe they are a cultured human being, I immediately assume they will have seen every movie I have ever seen, listened to every song I have ever listened to, and eaten the same food in the same restaurants I have eaten them in. Not only that, but I take for granted that they have taken the same thing from all these experiences I have taken from them. The basic result of this is the situation where I will start quoting and rehashing and suchlike, and when I am met with the customary blank stare of my conversational partner, who almost inevitably never really paid that much attention to the dress worn by the second interviewee in a movie they didn’t really like five years ago, I immediately assume this conversational partner is full of shit and not worth talking to. Snobbery, thy name is Kevin.

This is not to say I only do or see those things I consider high-browed, as can be evidenced by the massive amount of people who saw me trying to masticate a hotdog last Saturday, while simultaneously trying to hide the evidence of doing so with all the verve of an elephant trying to hide in a mouse-hole.
In light of my ongoing quest to never miss a culturally important development in the realms of schlock-horror and bad exploitation, I have done something yesterday I have not often done before and more than likely never will do again. I have sat through what was effectively a zombie movie. And I despise zombie-movies. Why? They give me nightmares.

But as soon as the silver sneak screen yesterday flashed the opening credits of “Planet Terror”, Robert Rodriguez ‘ contribution to the double feature escapade set up by him and Quentin Tarantino, two things happened:
1) Boyfriend assured me that he would protect me from the zombies
2) I remembered that even though I hate Zombies I do love Rose McGowan, and the idea of her with a gun for a leg did it for me, in a completely platonic move way

So we stayed, and watched, and retched. Yes, retched. Without giving away even a single quark of the plot, this movie has gore. Good, fun, wholesome gore. Gore that befits the set-up of a seventies flashback really, which is the general idea behind the Grindhouse-double feature, the other half of which consists of Tarantino’s “Death Proof” which also has plenty of gore, even though it lacks somewhat in the zombie department.

Because for me it is almost impossible to talk about a movie without spoiling it like a tomato left out in the sun, I want to talk about the double feature idea itself, and more specifically about the moment where both movies lose some of their speed. And I am going to do this after this short introductory interlude that will seem to have nothing to do with the plot of this blog so far.

There is an meme running rampant in the mind of the horror aficionado that one should never “open the door”, for what I can imagine behind the door will always be infinitely more frightening than what is going to actually be behind the door. Suggestion, swift flashes and shadows hinting at the monster are more effective in many ways than the actual image of a slobbering pile of well animated plastic. Thus the build up to the reveal of what is behind the door should be a slow and subtle process, reminiscent of the best works of H.P. Lovecraft and Alfred Hitchcock. If the monster is shown to soon, the tension leaves swiftly to be replaced with scared little jumps whenever it appears suddenly again. That said, the monster should at some point be seen and explained, or there is no emotional investment in surviving the horror, which, after all, is not absolutely there.

To my mind the current spate of wet-little-ghostly-kids-in-long-hallways-style J-horror flaunts the rule above like there is no tomorrow, often staging a good part of the action after we have had a graphic and lengthy close-up of whatever is animating the little kid in all her glorious wetness. To me this means I am full of tension for about half an hour into the movie until we see the tentacle puppet master and then I sit there for an hour more thinking “Bah”.
I have started describing this as Emotional Speed vs Actual Speed, where ES is the swiftness of the emotions inside me and AS is the speed of what is actually happening in the movie. As long as I am investing in the development of the movie in my mind, the ES is quite high, but it is likely to happen during character build up and development, which means AS is usually low. Then, when shit hits the proverbial fan, the ES goes down and the AS starts up, with ES running steadily along in the background because I know these people now and want them to survive. Or die horribly if I find them truly annoying, which happens often.

The two “Grindhouse” movies lack nothing in AS, but quite a bit of ES. Strangely enough, and much as I would like to deny it, the Tarantino flick moves along at a pleasant to a swift pace in both cases for the first half, leaving a little of in the second one as far as ES is concerned, but in an entertaining and rewarding way, I would almost say. “Planet terror” Started of swiftly, stayed swift, and used characters and situations so darned swift in set up and movement it was almost impossible to invest emotionally. The few characters that were set up calmly and nicely instilled nothing so much as a “good on her” feeling in myself and Boyfriend, and the rest of the movie just invited to be torn apart.

All in all, choosing between the two is not something I would do, personally. They are enjoyable in their own right and work well together. If you are however looking for the better movie, see “Death Proof”. Not because it is excellent, but because I spent some time after the movie talking about it with people, dissecting it to some extent and wondering about it’s inner workings. With “Planet Terror” all I said was “That was gross, and I hope I don’t get nightmares”. Which I didn’t, by the way.

Well, it is late now, and I need my beauty sleep,

Till next time, stripes at “any nightmare free zombie is a good zombie”
Kevin

Venom, Sand, Crap.

Last week, Housemate and myself decided on a long overdue movie day. As I had a Tuesday off, we could nicely schedule in one or two movies for our customary Sneak. A plan was made, refreshments were purchased, and off we went.

The first movie, Blades of Glory, I’d already seen, and reasonably enjoyed despite a tremendous hatred for Will Ferrel. Still, the movie is exactly as one can expect of it, and this is not always a bad thing.
The third movie, the sneakly previewed one, was the movie Black Snake Moan, a surprisingly interesting movie about a town slut and a good Christian. This is a movie I would recommend to almost everybody, but it must be said that part of my reasoning here is a liking of Christina Ricci, who may have had her least Ricci-like role in this little flick.

But the second movie of the day is what we need to talk about here. Need? Yes. Need. After all, sometimes a movie so heinously uninteresting, so laissez fairly acted, so badly scripted and so uninspired in it’s direction and plot that upcoming moviegoers need to be protected from it with all summonable power and tranquilizers.

Which movie?
Spiderman 3.

The movie itself is almost al that could be expected, there are disasters, there are colourful villains who have outlandish powers to counteract the enlarged spideryness of the main character, there are daring rescues and some easily contrived backstories. So far, so reasonable. Nothing we didn’t see in the first two movies.
So what was there that we in fact did not see in the first two movies that we saw now and that propelled this movie into the higher stratospheres of utter and complete crap? I hear you ask this, and as luck would have it, I am well prepared and gearing to answer.

And where to start? Luckily, this movie had a good number of “those moments”. Unluckily, one has to almost relive them to find a good starting point.
What are “those moments”? Those are the exact moments in any film where you realize that impaling yourself on a beverage holder or checking whether it is really possible to gouge through your wrists with an empty crisp packet is preferable to continuing with watching a childhood favourite be bloodily raped in the ear.
And it is also the exact moment where you realize you can’t stop watching, for you might miss the redeeming qualities.
Not that there are very many, if any, in this steaming pile of offal that calls itself a film-reel.

There are a number of reasonable flaws one can mention. The fact that an escaped criminal can get away from policemen with dogs and guns on an open field? Unlikely, but artistic license. The fact that that same escaped criminal can stumble into an open pit thus eluding his would be captors? Yes, sure.
But at the moment where that same pit is the location of a particle physics testing facility where nobody notices that a good sized man has stumbled into what holds their presumably fragile and incredibly expensive testing machinery one has to realize one has inadvertently stumbled into something smelly…
To add insult to injury, the mention that the readings from within the pit o’ expensiveness where off was greeted by one of the scientists with the explanation that it was most likely a bird flown into the pit, which apparently happens often in these environments.

Two things:
1)If you are doing some carefully monitored research on something like particle physics, would you then not prefer to do so in an environment that has, among other things, a reasonable unlikelyhood of birds flying into your testing radius?
2) A bird with roughly the size and weight of a full grown man is a common occurrence?

But still, mister-escaped-convict has fallen into the sand, and for some odd reason a little bit of sand gets stuck in a little bit of his DNA and he turns into sand. I know this is roughly Spiderman canon and I should not say anything, but seriously. Sand. DNA.
In Jurassic Park, parts of amphibian DNA were used to splice together the DNA of dinosaurs from the blood sucked up by prehistoric mosquitoes. The dinosaurs then had some characteristics of the species that provided the splicing materials. This is far fetched, but ok.
SAND has NO DNA. I have eaten a good deal of sand in my life, working up to my bushel, and not yet have I been even able to turn into an enourmous sand-creature, and not for lack of trying, I might add. And for everyone who now wants to say something about nuclear physics, wave theories and the assumption of characteristics through insertion of alien objects: Shut up or I will arrange for some insertion, ok? This did not make sense.

The fact that the weight of roughly a man then walked out of the research environment in the shape of sand also makes little sense, but these scientist obviously had their funding set for years to come, so what do they care.

From here on in, the stupidity gets worse and worse. Letting canon and the inherent bad logic of a creature made of sand lie, as it really wasn’t what crappified this movie, there is more.

This movie introduces Venom. Starting as a black and gooey alien lifeform, Venom quickly morphs into an alternative Spidey suit. As such, it enhances the emotions and powers of its wearer. What it also does, it makes mild mannered reporters absolutely gross dickheads.
I think I need to scrub my retinas with a mixture of bleach and steel wool to get the image of the incredibly emo-looking Maguire strutting his stuff down the streets of New York from off my memory, but at least almost everybody in the movie responds to him with the same unhidden and great loathing I did, so I felt at least roughly justified during this little bit of the movie.
Another thing that Venom does, multifunctional as it is, is turn you into the Son of Mask, as was evidenced by the frankly embarrassing piano and dance number performed midway through this movie. The fact that Peter Parker ends this scene with a good hammering of the ever whiney Mary Jane is obviously not OK, but was more pleasing than anything else the movie offered, and all those who know how I think about slapping the little lady around would know what that says about the rest of the movie.

Coincidentally, the rapid mental decline of Aunt May is beautifully illustrated by her first reaction to her nephew telling her he hurt the love of his life, as she says the hardest thing here is to learn to forgive oneself.
This met with such an almost uncontrollable fit of laughter from Housemate and myself that we felt the need to turn it into a coughing fit lest we’d be forcibly ejected from the movie, but it must be said here that the hardest thing is in fact NOT forgiving oneself, but rather owning up to the dickhead one has become and asking forgiveness from the person one has slapped around a drinking establishment.

During all this strutting and slapping and badly dubbed piano-playing there is the umpteenth try to resurrect the long dead love triangle between MJ, Peter and, euhm… Harry? Bob? Tracy? Played by James Franco, the character of “the other guy” is so unremarkable and so dreadfully unnecessary that it becomes difficult to remember anything he really says. Which is odd, cause the guy’s only function in the movie is to be cuter than Spiderman himself.
In this instalment he apparently gets amnesia from being repeatedly being banged into a wall. Well, fair enough, he gets a beating that would get most people a good dose of death, so he gets off lightly, I guess. Plus, he gets to be in a hospital gown that very nicely shows off some shapely pecs and a good nipple, so who is worrying.
The amnesia gives us a stupid subplot that ends up literally nowhere but in a vengeance fuelled bit of overacting, like, you know, the last movie.
So, to recap, (H)arry thinks (P)eter, as Spiderman, killed his dad and wants revenge. The fact that his dad was a supercriminal does not really factor here, blood being thicker than intelligence and all that, but still.
H uses Dad’s equipment to attack P, loses, gets amnesia, remembers, attacks again, gets maimed, wants to attack yet again, when this movie starts delivering it’s kicks to internal consistency with renewed vigour.
It is at that moment that the butler, of all people, decides to put an end to all this senseless exploding and webbing, by giving us a bit of information that one the one hand would’ve been handy a few movies earlier, and on the other hand is so blatantly and stupidly untrue that all those who believe in the old “is truth beauty, is beauty truth” adage would be well forced to take their own life in absolute terror.

The line? “I bandaged your fathers wound when he lay dying, and they were self inflicted, nobody killed your father” or something of that ilk.
A few things:
1) We had just had a flashback to H cradling his dying father in his arms. So the butler was doing his bandaging at that very moment? No he wasn’t, we and H would have remembered.
2) H’s dad did indeed die of a series of events he had himself set into motion, but Spiderman did have a great hand in this. As I recall, grievous internal damage was the real killer here, which Daddy-H got in a fight with the arachnoid.
3) The butler could possibly have told this to the young ward before all the rampage, since he knows apparently all that goes on in the house. The fact that the very pretty H is by now a good look-a-like to a certain organ playing genius in the bowels of the Paris’ sewer, it would have been welcome information.

I am going to finish this rant pretty soon, but not before regaling to you the absolute coup de grace for the dignity of this film… The American Flag.

At one point, Spidey, on his way to erscue his girlfriend, stops for a goodly length of time to pose heroically in front of a crappily CGI’d image of the good old red white and blue.
It was at this point that Housemate and I chorused a few lines of “Oh Goden this is too cheap” and the movie took it’s final plummet to a future of alcoholism, pain and dejection.

Caveat Emptor, moviegoers.

Strips at Caveat,

Kevin.

Déjà vu?

“The Fountain” the latest effort of the director of Requiem for a Dream and Pi was shown us as part of the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival. And well titled, in fact, it was. This movie describes itself best as a fountain.
A fountain of plain obviousness sparkling in the light of unrelenting repetition and set in a courtyard of empty beauty.

This movie, due to it’s visuals and enforced tearjerkyness is well on it’s way to be THE overrated film of the year, and since almost everybody who will see it will disagree with me I feel no compunction with regards to spoiling it, snide little bastard that I am.

The movie, pretending to weave three storylines in one, is about a doctor, name of Tom, played by Hugh Jackman, and his wife, Izzy, played by Rachel Weisz. Izzy is dying of a fast growing brain-tumour, and Tom is hard at work doing research on monkeys that apparently have the same type of brain-tumours as Izzy, and he thinks he is very close to a cure.
At the same time, it is about the book Izzy writes, which is about a conquistador in Spain, Tomas, who is looking for the tree of eternal life for his Queen Isabella, whose country is slowly being taken over by an inquisitor.
Thirdly, we have a futuristic Tom who is flying through space in a bubble, with a big and dying tree, trying to get to a nebula in which the tree can remain alive.

Is it obvious yet?

All three Toms being the same Tom and looking for a way to keep his wife with him for ever and ever and effur?

Well, it should be.

And if it isn’t, the movie lays it on. And lays it on thickly.
Examples?

Well… -At one point we see the “evil” inquisitor with a map of Spain, spreading bloodlike ink over the parts he has already taken over. The map is slowly, and spreadingly, taken over by these bloody patches.
-When Dr. Tom won’t go out walking with his wife in the first snow, as they apparently always do, he immediately afterwards loses his wedding ring.
-We get a number of shots of Tom whispering into Izzy’s neck, and the hairs there standing up to his lips. We also get numerous shots of him whispering to the tree, and the fibers of the tree reaching towards his lips.

And when I say “numerous”, I mean freaking “NUMEROUS”. Seriously, if you take out all the double shots form this movie, it loses about 45 minutes. The fact that it would also gain a great deal of solidity and speed need not concern us here, as it clearly did not concern the makers of this piece.

The makers, who also made “Pi” and “Requiem for a Dream”, both movies I really liked, RfaD even making it to the unwritten top of my movielist.
This movie will not. Although I am sure it will for many people.
It is emotional, striking and beautiful, but so, so very obvious.
There are no sweet and silent allusions to pain and the loss of power, in stead the mention that Izzy loses her feelings of warmth and cold is directly followed by a bathroom destroying session of ablutionary sex. See, it tells us, just because she is dying, she is no sad and simpering person, she has sex still!
Obviously, she is a sad and simpering person, just not in the scenes we see of her, and clearly uses this sexual act as a way to regain control of a husband (and through him, life, see symbolism) that is slipping away from her. If the directors had chosen to show us this, in stead of the empty pointing at sparks of dying life, this movie could not have impressed me more. As it is, it just saddened me.

At one point, she collapses in a museum, before the eyes of her horrified husband, and he cradles her until the ambulance arrives. Later, she says at that pont she felt complete, she felt held fast. And the chump answers: “yes, that was me, holding you”. Kinder souls would have liked to take him away and explain to him that she was talking about something else, which was presumably what the movie intended us to think. All I could think was that I’d rather hit him with a good sized clue-stick then and there, as it was so bloody obvious.

I would advise anyone to watch this movie, in all fairness. It is beautiful, and that counts for something.
Also, I will starts selling saltlicks, as a simple grain will not do you for the blatant propaganda against the movie-of-the-weeks in which Cancer is a fact of life, and I am hoping to make a profit as soon as this thing hits the theatres.

Gawd.

Shoes at all stripes but one down, guess which one out of five…

Kevin

So you are saying she looks “good” in a kimono?

The answer, obviously, is an astounding yes. The question, perhaps less obviously, is about Gong Li. That said… less obvious? In the past few years of moviemaking we have seen a renewed interest in the visual and sartorial elegance of the far east. It can be said that most movies based in, on or around Eastern source-material in the west give the wrong image of Asian culture, and there is a certain merit to that point.

But what certainly can be said is that whatever the occasion, certain people thrive because they have a talent that seems to capture the spirit of an age. Cole Porter, the bisexual but prolific songwriter encapsuled in person and song the zeitgeist of his 1940’s joie des vivre. Kurt Cobain had not much to do to become the personification of the grumpiness of early nineties Seattle. A number of the reviled and revered have in their own way been able to so strikingly set an example of the time they lived in, that they are indelibly connected to an idea, a philosophy.
The green velvet of Oscar and the trailing scarves of Isadora stand a good chance of being joined by the kimono of Gong Li, who seems to have been taken up in the storm of events that can be described by one simple line that must’ve gone through the mind and come out of the mouth of a lot of producers in the last period:

Is there a Kimono in this movie? And if so, is Gong Li wearing it?

For really, has there been a movie coming out since “Memoirs of a Geisha” where a kimono was needed to be worn where it was in fact NOT worn by this woman?

Don’t get me wrong, those who know me, and those who don’t know me but know what Boyfriend looks like, know that I am a great appreciator of beauty, it might well be said it is one of the guiding principles in my life, and this woman looks good. In my mind, she will never be any more beautiful then she was as the courtesan Hatsumomo in the aforementioned diaristic endeavour, and in her version of that role she has without a doubt joined my personal list of appearances that define female beauty. But seriously, the joke is up now.

Last I have seen her in was in “Curse of the golden flower” which IMDB keeps telling me should be referenced as “Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia”, and who am I to deny it this due. And since I won’t be able to spell that title out all that often without going into carpal tunnel syndrome, this was all it is going to get.

The movie itself, a beautifully and colourfully shot drama to the backdrop of the forbidden city, about madness within the Chinese royal family. I won’t spoil this movie by going into details, but let’s be most certain about one single thing. She is in it, and there is kimono in it, and she is in that as well.

A sidenote… I have been using the word “kimono” as meaning “clothing” for most of this blog, it means “thing to wear” in it’s original language, and as such can be used in a piece about Chinese clothing just as well as it could have been used in a piece about Japanese clothing. Besides, Kimono was stolen from the imperial courts in China anyway.

Anyway, so far for now, I will strife to do more movie reviews from now on. This weekend is the “night of Terror” in Amsterdam, and Boyfriend and I are going to try and pull an all-nighter for this gala of gruesome gore. Most likely, I will have something to actually say about a movie after that again.

For now, stripes at half open,

Kevin.

Stuck on Title

One of the good things about seeing a movie that is based on a historical event, is that it is virtually impossible to spoil. After all, all who have some interest in the backstory of what they are watching will know what is supposed to happen, and if you don’t, why watch the movie?
A movie about John F. Kennedy will likely end with the death of the main character, a movie about Marilyn Monroe no less so. A second world war movie will have the German alliance losing after a land-war in Eurasia, and Napoleon will never be depicted as anything but a world-conquering emperor manqué.

That said, some movies don’t completely follow the exact turns of events, and add something to their storyline to be spoiled by honest reviewers for discerning moviegoers.

Good thing I have a remarkably small amount of readers, and as such can spoil to my little hearts content, as there is little chance of ruining things for a mass audience. I say “good thing” in a remarkably sarcastic way. For all the praise this blog garnishes for me, word of mouth is not doing it’s best for my blog, which I think is a shame, as I like people reading this. What else am I doing this for, after all.
Well, yes, I do this for me and my almost unending megalomania, but that’s another story.

Anyways, back to movies. Specifically “300” the movie based on the Frank Miller comic based on the film based on a desperate last stand of a small piece of the Spartan army.
And a good movie it is. Visually arresting and very recognizable as a translation of a Frank Miller comic, it must be said that some of it’s storyline has been sacrificed to create this movie. Not that there is much storyline, but hey, if I wanted only pretty pictures I’d have kept to the movie-stills, thank you very much.

The story, for those interested, is of Spartan king Leonidas who goes against the advice and will of his council to try to stop the Persian king Xerxes (the first, lest this be confusing) from invading Greece. The place he chooses to do this is; the pass of Thermopylae, a narrow pass on the coastline of Greece, and easily defendable by a small contingency of men.
Well, small…
Sure, there are about 300 of them, give or take a few hundred Phoenician and assorted Greek stragglers, but in no dictionary can these men be called small.
Perhaps as a result of the weather or the idea of Spartan functionality, almost nobody of any importance in this movie is more than 1/4th clothed. This clothing, if present, would consist mostly of red cloaks, leather briefs, the occasional bandage and in case of the GodKing Xerxes, about half a mile of chain.

Is this a problem? Not really, as bar one all these people have bodies that I, personally, would kill for. The abundance of pecs, thighs, biceps, abs, shoulders and assorted parts of the male anatomy on display in this movie makes one think of a casting bureau’s portfolio gone steroid. If it wasn’t for the fact of Boyfriend, and the small thing that I think he is far more than shite-good looking enough for me, I probably would’ve invested heavily in time travel and a ticket to Sparta.
Seriously, David Wenham, or “the man with the least typecasted portfolio in Hollywood” who played the wimpy friar in Van Helsing even manages to buff it up with the big boys, in a very interesting display of abs indeed. Which I liked, as I found him very attractive indeed in Lord of the Rings, and it never hurts to see ones moviecrushes disrobe to a good extent.

Storywise all is predictable. There is a last stand, it fails, but it rallies those left behind to an extent to overthrow the would be conqueror. There is a beautiful queen who guards the homestead in name of her king, there is a slimy grand vizier type person who troubles her. It is all rather standard, but even in it’s standardness I think it is very well done.

All in all, I am very happy to have seen this movie, and am hoping to see it again sometime soon. Seriously, go see it.

In other news, this Saturday is the 6 month anniversary of the first date with Boyfriend, and I am very happy to have him in my life. We are going towards our official six month anniversary in a month or so, and I am very much looking forward to the next 6 months, and all the time after that I am planning to spend with him.
Because there is little chance of me to say rightly what I want to say to you, I am going to copy something down here by ee cummings, who says these things better than I can.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart)
i am never without it(anywherei go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


Ok, sappyness over now, I apologize to my readers who are not Boyfriend.

Stripes at half open,

Kevin

And then, suddenly, it hits you…

There should be a word for the moment the realisation hits you that the situation is not all ok, not all spiffy and shiny. Obviously, calling it an “oh-shit-moment” does it’s job admirably, but I say a real, dictionary approved word is needed here. And I am pretty sure I am not the only one, so I say: come on and use the power of the internet, use it and come up with my word.

In another note, I just realised this is the second time I am asking all of you to come up with a word for me. Granted, last time it was a word that would chill the blood of an offending party to the point of involuntary suicide, but still.

Anyways, last Thursday the lovely Bienie and myself took our little butts into the cinema to watch the new animated picture “Happy Feet”, about a tap-dancing penguin. We’d both seen the previews, and I had found some tap dancing excerpts of our movie-choice. So we worked our way past the posters of the tapping P’guin, discussed the options of tapping within an animated environment, had a short conversation with the studenty girls behind us about the tapping options of your average penguin, and turned towards the screen to see a tapping penguin.
And we watched a penguin. And he tapped.

Then, roughly two scenes into the movie, two distinct and very separate realisations hit me.

The first, not at all unusual, was the fact that I needed to pee. And pee I needed. Not just a little nudge from the bladder upwards that he was in fact approaching fullness and would appreciate being empties anytime most convenient, no. No this was a full on bladder-kidney civil attack. For a second I truly felt like the next thing I was going to hear was a small “pop” and see my insides dribble softly out of the hole in my side. This did not, however, happen. I am quite happy about this, and so I imagine were the people who worked at the cinema. I have never worked in any cleaning capacity myself, but I imagine if I ever would, the thought “God I am happy there is no kidney debris to clean up here” would cross my mind more than occasionally.

The second realisation, somewhat less urgent but all the more persuasive for it’s subtle delivery, was “Kevin… you well and truly despise Tap… Why are you the FUCK here?!?”.
Now I never like shouting to myself, and would have severely disciplined me, but in this particular case, I had to agree with the vehemence of my feelings.

Because I really do hate tap. Don’t get me wrong, as a discipline and training it is remarkably difficult to master, it has subtleties well beyond my abilities to express and all the validity as an artform.
I just really do not like watching it at all. Really. Not one bit. If given the chance to ride a unicycle through a room filled with the spiderinfested corpses of clowns during a full moon on the anniversary of the day 20 circi (plural of circuses) burned down on an Indian burial ground while mad incantations were screamed across the ashes by the deeply burned clown who just managed to save himself with his spritzing carnation or watching a bit of tap, I would be willing to desecrate some clowny corpses in less time than it took you to read this sentence.
So I dislike tap. This sentiment was delivered by me on numerous occasions, I think only my diatribe on the inherent manipulations of small children had more airtime than Tap. But somehow this little fact had completely slipped my mind while planning to go to this movie, buying tickets for this movie, seeing the posters for this movie, and whatnot.

I turned to Zaandam-haling bombshell next to me and said this, and she answered with a weary “I know”…

So why not leave, you ask me? Was it the incessant sugary sweetness of the movie glue-ing you to your seat? Well, partly. Was it because you never walk out of a movie, having even sat through the cinematographically challenged disease-toting disaster that were AI and Intolerable Cruelty? Yes, this is also right. Actually, this is the only reason I kept my place in the theatre. Kevin be damned if he lets a fluffball on softshoe drive him out of his natural habitat.

Next thing, The bean turns to me, and whispers. What she whispers is surprisingly close to what I described above. “I need to pee, but if I stand up now I won’t want to go back again… so I am staying”
And we did. We were there to see roughly fifteen million hearts be made out of bubbles, fishcorpses, penguinphlegm, snow, stones, clouds, the sappy minds of thirteen 6 year olds. Seriously, if it is even remotely possible to make a heart out of something, this movie does it.

But in all fairness, the movie wasn’t the worst I’ve seen last year. Not the best, certainly, but also not the worst. If you have small kids and a full frontal lobotomie, by all means, go see it and be entertained. Just do not tap on the way there.

Stripes at half open,
Kevin.