March 28, 2009
waiting / depature / truth (madness)
February 20, 2009
Monkey = Funny!
February 18, 2009
Movie Review: Primeval
What’s scarier? Genocide by man, or man-o-cide by a giant crocodile? Primeval’s answer: either way black men must die!
Now, to be fair, it’s true that white men must die too. They get eaten and they get shot. But of the three main characters: the white man survives, the white woman survives, and the black man? Spoiler alert! He tries to outrun a crocodile the size of a Hollywood Budget, and doesn’t make it.
Double spoiler alert! The other black main character turns out to be the leader of a Burundi genocidal militia.
Who are these Hollywood players that somehow miss the most obvious racial prejudices in their movies? How much hair gel are they using, and do the chemicals osmose? Somebody should write a definitive document on How to Treat Black Actors Who Aren’t Will Smith in Action Movies. Maybe that will be my next blog post.
Anyway, Primeval. For a giant reptile monster movie, it does an admirable job of posing the old monster movie chestnut of Who’s the Real Monster? The acting isn’t bad and the giant crocodile delivers on his promises to chomp all humans. Worth watching if it’s on t.v.
December 15, 2008
Movie Review: The Day the Earth Stood Still
If a super-advanced alien civilization designed a nanobot, why would it look like an earth tsetse fly? That was the question in my mind while exiting the theater this Sunday past. I’m pretty forgiving when it comes to sci-fi movies. I can stand wooden dialog and even some inaccurate science here and there, but basic Hollywood stupidity just bothers me.
Maybe the super-advanced alien civilization liked the look of the earth tsetse fly. Hey, they said, let’s make our nanobots look like those doodads. They look pretty cool.
Or maybe after a million design revisions, the super-advanced alien civilization decided the optimum design for a flying nanobot *is* a tsetse fly.
Somehow I doubt it. Somehow I’m thinking the team behind The Day the Earth Stood Still decided that an all-devouring scourge of nanobots (a pretty cool idea and effect, btw) should have the symbolic power of the locust. But since locusts look like friendly grasshoppers, they opted for the leaner, meaner tsetse fly. Hey, let’s make them look like locusts! It’s biblical! But let’s make them a bit meaner looking!
This is when I start feeling tired and wonder if I should have bought a coke. This is when I start thinking, I should have made this movie. Then I wonder if the director, or the screenwriter, or the AP, or the special effects guy thought the same thing while viewing the storyboards. He or she might have said in meeting, “Hey, why would they look like bugs? Since this civilization seems to have mastered the technology of the hovering snowglobe, couldn’t they make hovering snowglobe nanobots? Or hovering buckeyball nanobots? Or hovering dodecahedron nanobots?” And then I wonder if that person’s idea was dismissed by a studio rep who emphasized that locusts are *biblical*, and it’s a *symbol*. Sigh.
I realize I’m in danger of a Comic Book Guy blog post here, but my point isn’t really that this movie is horrible because of tsetse fly-shaped nanobots; my point is that an otherwise imaginative movie is scarred by a moviemaking trick I loathe– what I like to call Rosebudding (reference is to Citizen Kane, not anal sex, about which I feel somewhat neutral, film-wise). Citizen Kane is the most overblown, overhyped, over-respected piece of moviemaking out there, and the Rosebud scene says it all. HEY EVERYBODY! IT’S A SYMBOL! All he really wants is his childhood sled. Sheesh. I realize Citizen Kane used some snazzy camera angles (for its day) and was somewhat forward thinking in terms of media distrust (for its day), but the finale is Rosebud? Give me a break Orson Welles’ of the world everywhere. You are 100% not as smart as you believe you are, despite what everybody says. Smart moviemaking (and smart art making, for that matter) is not about correctly arranging symbols or correctly identifying symbols or correctly using symbols to express meaning. It’s about the ability to use and play with symbols to express meaning while often totally redefining the relationships symbols have with their common meaning. Sometimes it has nothing to do with symbols. Most importantly it’s about trusting your viewers to pick up any subtle references you might choose to use along the way. Subtle with an “s”, not a capital OBVIOUS.
Anyway in a sentence: this movie has a giant cyclops robot who dissolves into an all-consuming swarm of nanobots that are unfortunately shaped like tsetse flies. That about sums it up.
December 3, 2008
Don’t Let the Muggles Know!
I need at least 5 men. You will arrive at my apartment. There will be a picture of a fat lady on the door, and you will tell her the pre-arranged password. You will be dressed based on your character. The characters I need are listed below.
Harry Potter: You must be barely legal, and arrive with your firebolt ready for the best game of quidditch you’ll ever play.
Ron Weasley: You absolutely must have red hair and freckles. You must show up with firewhiskey.
Draco Malfoy: Blonde. Be able to cry on demand.
Remus Lupin: You will alternate between wolf and man. Howl, baby, howl!
Albus Dumbledore: You must be a proud gay man ready to penetrate every other man present You must have a beard and wear a wizard’s hat and half-moon spectacles.
It gets better. (via Craigslist)
November 18, 2008
Ayn Rand Mating Calls
This was just too hilarious to not blog. Real entries from Ayn Rand dating site TheAtlasphere.com.
If you’ve seen the meatbot, the walking automaton, the pod-people, the dense, glazy-eyed substrate through which living organisms such as myself must escape to reach air and sunlight.
^ from Free-Market Meat Market on NYmag.com
