Monday, April 6, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
watchmen
You know that analogy "he just went video-game on them" that commentators use when the likes of Kobe, D. Wade or Bron Bron completely take over the game...
you can apply that to Zach Snyder's aesthetic aplomb. Especially in Watchmen, his latest smoldering gun of commercial cinema following Dawn of the Dead and 300. Zach goes video-game on em.
In Watchmen, he faithfully stays close not only to the source material, but to the essence of graphic novels and comics as a medium. The result is at the same time admirable and unprecedented and a failure on particular levels.
The comic, as an artistic medium, is fragmented and self-contained in boxes of pop art tableau. Furthermore, the comic itself is inherently a satirized and ironic rendering of reality. The perverse manipulation of reality is the comic's chief device to derive commentary and meaning. You put these two characteristics together and you have a film that can drag and easily detach its audience because it has no flow or any capacity for real emotional investment.
I remember after 300 was released many pundits called the movie homoerotic and essentially, a crap shoot of repressed homosexuality. Watchmen proves that Zach Snyder, if anything and regardless of gender or orientation, is simply an extreme voyeur of reality.
Two things I kept imagining when Dr. Manhattan was on Mars was A) What if Darren Aronofsky (who was briefly attached) co-directed with Snyder for Watchmen... and B) I am so using that monologue about "air turning into gold" that Dr. Manhattan uses on Silk Spectre II next time I'm at the club.
Although, I enjoyed the movie, especially how masterful Snyder controls his aesthetics, I am nervous mass cinema will continue down this direction of fragmented, rhythmless, aesthetic-driven movies that have no sense of narrative flow. Like Transformers. This is disturbing to me.
But what I really wanna know is where does Billy Crudup go after playing a symbolic narrativization of god, and conversely, where does Matthew Goode go after playing the devil?
you can apply that to Zach Snyder's aesthetic aplomb. Especially in Watchmen, his latest smoldering gun of commercial cinema following Dawn of the Dead and 300. Zach goes video-game on em.
In Watchmen, he faithfully stays close not only to the source material, but to the essence of graphic novels and comics as a medium. The result is at the same time admirable and unprecedented and a failure on particular levels.
The comic, as an artistic medium, is fragmented and self-contained in boxes of pop art tableau. Furthermore, the comic itself is inherently a satirized and ironic rendering of reality. The perverse manipulation of reality is the comic's chief device to derive commentary and meaning. You put these two characteristics together and you have a film that can drag and easily detach its audience because it has no flow or any capacity for real emotional investment.
I remember after 300 was released many pundits called the movie homoerotic and essentially, a crap shoot of repressed homosexuality. Watchmen proves that Zach Snyder, if anything and regardless of gender or orientation, is simply an extreme voyeur of reality.
Two things I kept imagining when Dr. Manhattan was on Mars was A) What if Darren Aronofsky (who was briefly attached) co-directed with Snyder for Watchmen... and B) I am so using that monologue about "air turning into gold" that Dr. Manhattan uses on Silk Spectre II next time I'm at the club.
Although, I enjoyed the movie, especially how masterful Snyder controls his aesthetics, I am nervous mass cinema will continue down this direction of fragmented, rhythmless, aesthetic-driven movies that have no sense of narrative flow. Like Transformers. This is disturbing to me.
But what I really wanna know is where does Billy Crudup go after playing a symbolic narrativization of god, and conversely, where does Matthew Goode go after playing the devil?
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
nick and norah's infinite playlist
Finally saw it. Oh boy.
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist had been a project I'd been keeping notes on for awhile, mainly because I've been anticipating Peter Sollett's follow-up since Raising Victor Vargas. Even with an poorly-coordinated trailer and TV spot campaign, my fascination didn't waver in the movie's potential. Up to this point in cinema, it's been a rare occurrence for a legitimate auteur to take on a commercial teen movie. Ever?
And what we get is a contextual masterpiece. I say contextual because similar to Zach Helm's Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist isn't without an occasional kink or potential unrealized. But, this my friends, is a glimpse into Cinema du Adolescence, and broadly speaking, what the scope of cinema has the potential to become. This is what's it about, the new metapop - the subtle revolutions and reappropriations of mainstream culture.
Most importantly, Peter Sollett and the source material does well to embrace reality, embrace the realism of contemporary society. The confusing exploitation of force-feeding sex, aesthetics, consumption and hedonism to our youth and simultaneously admonishing them for taking interest in those same practices are deconstructed. This movie confronts this reality, in which yes, today's youth are at an accelerated level of perversion, but more profoundly, builds from this pragmatic miscalculation. Because we all simply yearn intimacy, connection, are never too far from an epiphany, from realizing that we are more and deserve more than the crude material that binds our flesh and distorts our soul space.
Two particular moments which stand out to me were the scene which involved Nick's ex-girlfriend flaunting herself music-video-girl-style in beam of the headlights while "I Believe in Miracles", one of the most commodified and degraded songs of history is being played. The other, which is truly indicative of the ideals of this generation, has Norah commenting on The Cure. She likes them, they're alright, but why the name "The Cure"? What are they curing? They should be called "The Cause". Self-loathing, hopelessness, and the nihilization of life is sooooooo pre 9-11. Meaning is the aesthetic.
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist had been a project I'd been keeping notes on for awhile, mainly because I've been anticipating Peter Sollett's follow-up since Raising Victor Vargas. Even with an poorly-coordinated trailer and TV spot campaign, my fascination didn't waver in the movie's potential. Up to this point in cinema, it's been a rare occurrence for a legitimate auteur to take on a commercial teen movie. Ever?
And what we get is a contextual masterpiece. I say contextual because similar to Zach Helm's Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist isn't without an occasional kink or potential unrealized. But, this my friends, is a glimpse into Cinema du Adolescence, and broadly speaking, what the scope of cinema has the potential to become. This is what's it about, the new metapop - the subtle revolutions and reappropriations of mainstream culture.
Most importantly, Peter Sollett and the source material does well to embrace reality, embrace the realism of contemporary society. The confusing exploitation of force-feeding sex, aesthetics, consumption and hedonism to our youth and simultaneously admonishing them for taking interest in those same practices are deconstructed. This movie confronts this reality, in which yes, today's youth are at an accelerated level of perversion, but more profoundly, builds from this pragmatic miscalculation. Because we all simply yearn intimacy, connection, are never too far from an epiphany, from realizing that we are more and deserve more than the crude material that binds our flesh and distorts our soul space.
Two particular moments which stand out to me were the scene which involved Nick's ex-girlfriend flaunting herself music-video-girl-style in beam of the headlights while "I Believe in Miracles", one of the most commodified and degraded songs of history is being played. The other, which is truly indicative of the ideals of this generation, has Norah commenting on The Cure. She likes them, they're alright, but why the name "The Cure"? What are they curing? They should be called "The Cause". Self-loathing, hopelessness, and the nihilization of life is sooooooo pre 9-11. Meaning is the aesthetic.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
bcs analysis
In this bowl season, which has so far been one fused with no shortage of thrills, the Pac-10 swept the competition at 5-0. The non-BCS Mountain West had their solid conference run culminate in a Utah Utes drudging of supposed SEC steamroller 'Bama. And despite the WAC not having as strong a postseason as it has in recent landmark years, we all remember Boise State over Oklahoma.
Why then do the Pac-10 and their regional non-BCS counterparts never get their just props, especially comparatively to the major conferences residing in the South and the East of the country? Every year we see USC not only beat, but entirely smother a Big Ten pretender. We also have seen with increasing bravado a non-BCS team such as Boise State or Utah come into a bowl as a heavy underdog and wreak havoc on some big-time player from the Big 12, SEC and all the other major conferences that year in and year out simply get more respect than them.
It's not just some conference bias, but an outright coastal bias. And every year this perception costs west coast teams street cred and a fair shake at bigger bowls with larger amounts of confetti. It's a constant perpetuation that allows west coast teams little leeway during the season and causes them frequently to drop in and out of the Top 25 at the drop of a dime. It's the old hegemony sticking with outdated tradition disrupting the reality of college football today. And that reality is the west coast is simply cultivating better athletes and in larger and more diverse quantities.
But why? Experts that do agree with this assessment overlook the key components in this equation: the rapid ascent of Orange County and the migration of Pacific Islanders.
Orange County has quickly become in recent years ripe picking grounds for recruits, some of the top nationally. But more importantly, the many lightly-recruited, undersized "athletes" types that end up at Pac-10 and non-BCS west coast schools with little fanfare. Do a study and you'll see that the players taking up scholarships and roster spots in major college sports in major conferences these days from Orange County has risen exponentially with this generation. Heck, Tustin High School currently has the most active players in the NFL, more than Long Beach Poly, more than any school from Texas or Florida or anywhere in the dirty south.
Correlative, a steady portion of these players are of Pacific Islander descent, Polamalu, Moala, Ngata, Maleuaga, Moevao; These Samoan and Tongan families just now having their first generation of American-born children coming-of-age in America.
In unison, these two factors play a significant role in the strength of west coast prep sports (and perhaps why the perception of such suffers). Such an influx, despite maybe not nabbing those blue-chip recruits, gives these teams the luxury of having substantial depth on both sides of the ball; talent and athleticism filling holes and flying around the field at every position.
Wake up college football.
Why then do the Pac-10 and their regional non-BCS counterparts never get their just props, especially comparatively to the major conferences residing in the South and the East of the country? Every year we see USC not only beat, but entirely smother a Big Ten pretender. We also have seen with increasing bravado a non-BCS team such as Boise State or Utah come into a bowl as a heavy underdog and wreak havoc on some big-time player from the Big 12, SEC and all the other major conferences that year in and year out simply get more respect than them.
It's not just some conference bias, but an outright coastal bias. And every year this perception costs west coast teams street cred and a fair shake at bigger bowls with larger amounts of confetti. It's a constant perpetuation that allows west coast teams little leeway during the season and causes them frequently to drop in and out of the Top 25 at the drop of a dime. It's the old hegemony sticking with outdated tradition disrupting the reality of college football today. And that reality is the west coast is simply cultivating better athletes and in larger and more diverse quantities.
But why? Experts that do agree with this assessment overlook the key components in this equation: the rapid ascent of Orange County and the migration of Pacific Islanders.
Orange County has quickly become in recent years ripe picking grounds for recruits, some of the top nationally. But more importantly, the many lightly-recruited, undersized "athletes" types that end up at Pac-10 and non-BCS west coast schools with little fanfare. Do a study and you'll see that the players taking up scholarships and roster spots in major college sports in major conferences these days from Orange County has risen exponentially with this generation. Heck, Tustin High School currently has the most active players in the NFL, more than Long Beach Poly, more than any school from Texas or Florida or anywhere in the dirty south.
Correlative, a steady portion of these players are of Pacific Islander descent, Polamalu, Moala, Ngata, Maleuaga, Moevao; These Samoan and Tongan families just now having their first generation of American-born children coming-of-age in America.
In unison, these two factors play a significant role in the strength of west coast prep sports (and perhaps why the perception of such suffers). Such an influx, despite maybe not nabbing those blue-chip recruits, gives these teams the luxury of having substantial depth on both sides of the ball; talent and athleticism filling holes and flying around the field at every position.
Wake up college football.
Friday, January 2, 2009
sir clint eastwood
I'll be an honest son of a gun, I've always held a certain resentment for Clint Eastwood-directed movies (Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flag Of Our Fathers). I resented how much critical praise they garnered during awards season and how they overshadowed works which I considered entirely more deserving, but merely lacking "Eastwood" emblazoned in the credits. Make no mistake, Eastwood's direction is a thing of savvy, many times engrossing filmmaking, but by no stretch, revelatory. It's apparent Clint Eastwood had found degrees of truth and wisdom in his advanced years, he's a very smart man, and finding truth with age is something that shouldn't be discredited or unappreciated. But that in itself doesn't always translate into genius artistry.
Eastwood's latest, Gran Torino, again is assuredly not one of those works that will resonate for any kind of innovation, but man, does it resonate in the grandest way: simple genius. Eastwood, at his core, is a political artist. Not in the sense of governmental policies or war-time atrocities, but in his vision's straightforwardness and use of cultural-perceptional polarizations. Amidst all the extremism as device, Eastwood achieves an undeniable air of lightness in Gran Torino, and even a disarming sort of old-school whimsy.
What I found most beautiful is Eastwood's own artistic redemption at the end of the story, making amends for not only all the glorification of vigilante violence he portrayed early in his career, but also all the triumphalism that he perpetuated.
Eastwood's gonna undoubtedly make a few more films, but Gran Torino is a beautiful culmination to his legacy. And a revelation.
Eastwood's latest, Gran Torino, again is assuredly not one of those works that will resonate for any kind of innovation, but man, does it resonate in the grandest way: simple genius. Eastwood, at his core, is a political artist. Not in the sense of governmental policies or war-time atrocities, but in his vision's straightforwardness and use of cultural-perceptional polarizations. Amidst all the extremism as device, Eastwood achieves an undeniable air of lightness in Gran Torino, and even a disarming sort of old-school whimsy.
What I found most beautiful is Eastwood's own artistic redemption at the end of the story, making amends for not only all the glorification of vigilante violence he portrayed early in his career, but also all the triumphalism that he perpetuated.
Eastwood's gonna undoubtedly make a few more films, but Gran Torino is a beautiful culmination to his legacy. And a revelation.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
childcare
I have never felt less creative than I do in this moment... which I'm only mentioning to qualify the below blog and whatever else follows it while I'm in the funk of an early lifetime.
Just read an article in the Orange County Register --yes, I'm back in The OC and I'm feeling as estranged from my innermost as ever-- in which Adam Shankman, the force behind such spurious studio farces as Bringing Down The House, The Pacifier, Cheaper by the Dozen 2 & Hairspray, is lamely politicking for his upcoming Sandler-starring Bedtime Stories over his weekend competitor the David Frankel directed (Devil Wears Prada) & Owen Wilson-Jennifer Aniston starring Marley & Me.
Like the altruist he is, Shankman deems Marley & Me unfit for family audiences, and his stale, extra-butter popcorn flick the proper choice for crowds seeking safe, wholesome, family fun. This irresponsibility, of course, is infuriating on so many levels, but truly saddening at the most basic level -- the one involving the education of our children, and how that reflects on us.
Shankman calls Bedtime Stories "totally traditionally Disney." That statement and its sentence construction itself speaks semantic volumes. But, more concisely, it mirrors what Disney (along with the majority of manipulative mass-appeal products aimed at our unassuming future) has turned into in these sterilizing days of hyper-capitalism. Fortunately, we have Harry Potter and Pixar, and Zach Helm.
What is this idea of "harmless"? Is it the exercises in sentimentality and farce that have given way to the expression "stupid-funny"? Is harmless not only glossing over sex, violence and death, but many times completely avoiding it? Or worse, constructing a false reality that has its inhabitants devoid of any reason whatsoever?
Entertainment is a tool of education and should be handled with care and responsibility.
Just read an article in the Orange County Register --yes, I'm back in The OC and I'm feeling as estranged from my innermost as ever-- in which Adam Shankman, the force behind such spurious studio farces as Bringing Down The House, The Pacifier, Cheaper by the Dozen 2 & Hairspray, is lamely politicking for his upcoming Sandler-starring Bedtime Stories over his weekend competitor the David Frankel directed (Devil Wears Prada) & Owen Wilson-Jennifer Aniston starring Marley & Me.
Like the altruist he is, Shankman deems Marley & Me unfit for family audiences, and his stale, extra-butter popcorn flick the proper choice for crowds seeking safe, wholesome, family fun. This irresponsibility, of course, is infuriating on so many levels, but truly saddening at the most basic level -- the one involving the education of our children, and how that reflects on us.
Shankman calls Bedtime Stories "totally traditionally Disney." That statement and its sentence construction itself speaks semantic volumes. But, more concisely, it mirrors what Disney (along with the majority of manipulative mass-appeal products aimed at our unassuming future) has turned into in these sterilizing days of hyper-capitalism. Fortunately, we have Harry Potter and Pixar, and Zach Helm.
What is this idea of "harmless"? Is it the exercises in sentimentality and farce that have given way to the expression "stupid-funny"? Is harmless not only glossing over sex, violence and death, but many times completely avoiding it? Or worse, constructing a false reality that has its inhabitants devoid of any reason whatsoever?
Entertainment is a tool of education and should be handled with care and responsibility.
Monday, December 22, 2008
trailer wrinkle
Something I noticed while watching the tube.
The trailer for the new Underworld flick, Rise of the Lycans, aired today and it attempted something rather novel in terms of TV spots. By the way, viewers caution, this new sequel's not directed by Len Wiseman.
What the trailer did was headlined the movie title and its release date at the top of the screen throughout its entire presentation. This did somewhat disrupt the aesthetic appeal of the trailer itself, kinda like a fly buzzing around eye level, but I suppose it did fulfill its overall intention -- we'll see in a couple days whether the release date survives in my living memory. But more imperatively, if it does, whether I give a hootenanny. Because a marketing strategy can brand and implant all it wants, but if the quality of the product and the quality of the product's persuasion is lacking, well, it's irrelevant.
I also noticed a marketing trend which is gathering steam for movies banking on their top-billing movie stars to draw in their audiences: the (playfully solemn) singular close-up, i.e Will Smith in Seven Pounds & Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button. In my opinion, the megawatt movie star is a near-transition away from becoming wholly passe, but this directness in marketing scheme is something that bodes well for aforementioned transition and indicative of it taking course. Basically, the pussyfooting is cutout. But, it's also very fascinating to gauge the expanse of this strategy seeing as the above-stated exemplars both feature these international movie stars in feathery exercises in commercial sentimentality (though probably still solidly entertainment).
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
kanyeezy
I needed this.
Headphones on listening to Kanyeezy's "Coldest Winter" on repeat.
Graduation was a masterpiece of Hip Hop Pop. This is a masterpiece of transcendent metapop caliber. This album is not Michael Jackson phenomenal. This IS Kanye West.
This is the new. This is Eno Hip Hop. This is Prog Hip Hop. This is headphone revelation. And it's not because of Kanye's vocal range. But it is, in the real sense. You can call it the Pink Floyding of the human aspect. The voice, what is it? Is it Michael Jackson and soaring pipes? Is it American Idol finalists? Or is it one's true voice calling out?
This is cyborg. This is the eternal bind and the inevitable fusion to technology. Technology is the enabler, but we have the great vision. We're both the end and mean, tech only a consummated mean at best.
This is music. It's not a birdlike voice. It's the vision entire of the mind behind its conception. This is Kanye's vision. It's not a beat delivered, song lyrics scribbled and passed on, it's you, your voice, and all the shortcomings that come with you, vocally or otherwise. And obviously, there's still plenty of coming-of-ages to be had.
"Welcome To Heartbreak" and "Coldest Winter" are the gems. Like silk. "Say You Will" is solid, but overextended. "Paranoid" can funk. "RoboCop" is playin. "Street Lights" is a finely anthemic. "See You in my Knightmares" is Kanyeezy and Weezy, two of the brightest.
I'm using "Coldest Winter" as a trailer version for Photosynthesis.
My new remix: finding ambidextrous vision.
Headphones on listening to Kanyeezy's "Coldest Winter" on repeat.
Graduation was a masterpiece of Hip Hop Pop. This is a masterpiece of transcendent metapop caliber. This album is not Michael Jackson phenomenal. This IS Kanye West.
This is the new. This is Eno Hip Hop. This is Prog Hip Hop. This is headphone revelation. And it's not because of Kanye's vocal range. But it is, in the real sense. You can call it the Pink Floyding of the human aspect. The voice, what is it? Is it Michael Jackson and soaring pipes? Is it American Idol finalists? Or is it one's true voice calling out?
This is cyborg. This is the eternal bind and the inevitable fusion to technology. Technology is the enabler, but we have the great vision. We're both the end and mean, tech only a consummated mean at best.
This is music. It's not a birdlike voice. It's the vision entire of the mind behind its conception. This is Kanye's vision. It's not a beat delivered, song lyrics scribbled and passed on, it's you, your voice, and all the shortcomings that come with you, vocally or otherwise. And obviously, there's still plenty of coming-of-ages to be had.
"Welcome To Heartbreak" and "Coldest Winter" are the gems. Like silk. "Say You Will" is solid, but overextended. "Paranoid" can funk. "RoboCop" is playin. "Street Lights" is a finely anthemic. "See You in my Knightmares" is Kanyeezy and Weezy, two of the brightest.
I'm using "Coldest Winter" as a trailer version for Photosynthesis.
My new remix: finding ambidextrous vision.
Friday, December 5, 2008
charlie kaufman
Last weekend, on the first annual "Saturday Morning at the Cinema" we saw Woody's Vicky Cristina Barcelona & Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. One was full of a playful skeptic's jostling and quips about art and the condition. The other was the sound of the heart breaking.
Charlie Kaufman's an interesting blend. His screenplays (Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine) adapted by Spike & Michel were all instrumental in helping to unearth that compromise of Pop, aesthetics and sincerity. He helped bring about metapop, and is obviously one of the most important minds in cinematic history. But, I say he's an interesting blend because with Synecdoche, New York we see the real Charlie Kaufman. And he's a hopeless romantic, quite metaphysically.
Even though, he's pioneered self-authorship in contemporary art, perhaps the most noticeable difference when taken out of the eyes and hands of whimsical boy auteurs like Spike & Michel is that the cynicism bleeds through when all the cheekiness canvassing it is removed. He sees self-authorship as a timeless trap, not as the ultimate liberation.
When we let our characters die, we live.
Charlie Kaufman's an interesting blend. His screenplays (Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine) adapted by Spike & Michel were all instrumental in helping to unearth that compromise of Pop, aesthetics and sincerity. He helped bring about metapop, and is obviously one of the most important minds in cinematic history. But, I say he's an interesting blend because with Synecdoche, New York we see the real Charlie Kaufman. And he's a hopeless romantic, quite metaphysically.
Even though, he's pioneered self-authorship in contemporary art, perhaps the most noticeable difference when taken out of the eyes and hands of whimsical boy auteurs like Spike & Michel is that the cynicism bleeds through when all the cheekiness canvassing it is removed. He sees self-authorship as a timeless trap, not as the ultimate liberation.
When we let our characters die, we live.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
boycott 2012
I'll sacrifice my blogs aesthetic. He doesn't deserve a photo upload.
From Roland Emmerich, the silly-puddy brain that brought you blockbuster farces like Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow & 10,000 BC, comes 2012. Just watched the new trailer and... Alright, I'm a resolute believer in the necessity of everything in the grand transition toward infinity, but a part of me savors the idea of this fellow ceasing to exist.
His movies are so pomo they give my soulpower hairline fractures. Dear Roland Emmerich, have you no sense of responsibility or integrity? How can you so shamelessly polarize such exigent issues, in popcorn flicks intended for the mass no less. Is your mind heartless?
The postmodern retrograde irony is on his Wiki bio under "advocacy" he's worked to raise awareness on Climate Change. Maybe it's some sort of strange, counter-intuitive manifestation of being gay and raised in Germany that cultivated the vain, ended machismo in Emmerich's films. Not sure, never been to Germany. Wiki informs us that he goes through four cig packs a day, let's hope that inhalation takes its toll soon... No no, c'mon that's messed up. Let's hope he retires from the craft, or learns a thing or two about life. Preferably the latter.
In summation, listen here, 2012 is real in its vital symbolism, but the end of the world's not anytime soon. 2012 is whether we consummate this great work or not, whether we embody humanity. And if we don't succeed in this mission, well lads, that's far worse than being extinct.
I suggest we BOYCOTT the 2012 movie when it drops in theaters, NOT rent it on DVD and definitely NOT at your local Blockbuster, and only watch it FREE streaming online, if only out of sheer curiosity and disdain.
...this was by far the most spiteful blog I've ever written, so I apologize to Roland Emmerich. Albeit unsympathetically. Must be reading too much Vice mag lately... Oh yeah, PS:
Dear Vice Magazine, MAN UP.
From Roland Emmerich, the silly-puddy brain that brought you blockbuster farces like Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow & 10,000 BC, comes 2012. Just watched the new trailer and... Alright, I'm a resolute believer in the necessity of everything in the grand transition toward infinity, but a part of me savors the idea of this fellow ceasing to exist.
His movies are so pomo they give my soulpower hairline fractures. Dear Roland Emmerich, have you no sense of responsibility or integrity? How can you so shamelessly polarize such exigent issues, in popcorn flicks intended for the mass no less. Is your mind heartless?
The postmodern retrograde irony is on his Wiki bio under "advocacy" he's worked to raise awareness on Climate Change. Maybe it's some sort of strange, counter-intuitive manifestation of being gay and raised in Germany that cultivated the vain, ended machismo in Emmerich's films. Not sure, never been to Germany. Wiki informs us that he goes through four cig packs a day, let's hope that inhalation takes its toll soon... No no, c'mon that's messed up. Let's hope he retires from the craft, or learns a thing or two about life. Preferably the latter.
In summation, listen here, 2012 is real in its vital symbolism, but the end of the world's not anytime soon. 2012 is whether we consummate this great work or not, whether we embody humanity. And if we don't succeed in this mission, well lads, that's far worse than being extinct.
I suggest we BOYCOTT the 2012 movie when it drops in theaters, NOT rent it on DVD and definitely NOT at your local Blockbuster, and only watch it FREE streaming online, if only out of sheer curiosity and disdain.
...this was by far the most spiteful blog I've ever written, so I apologize to Roland Emmerich. Albeit unsympathetically. Must be reading too much Vice mag lately... Oh yeah, PS:
Dear Vice Magazine, MAN UP.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
the new showtime
The Lakers are the last remaining undefeated (the Celts just knocked off the Hawks via Paul Pierce jumper), sitting steady at 7 up, zero down. In this still-infant season all signs, immediate and cosmic, point toward redemption, a destined rematch with those same Boston Celtics in the Finals. Though, last season's mental and physical Finals drudging at the hands of those green-eyes won't likely happen again. History repeats itself, and nothing is more historic than redemption. It's about Time, and it doesn't include unsustainable roster quick-fixes, green, luck or leprechauns.
During last year's playoffs I blogged about the link between postmodernity and new sincerity, between the Celtics and the Lakers, the struggle of the new in overcoming and transitioning past the incumbent hegemony. In quick summation, I mentioned a few things. Last year we weren't yet ready, it wasn't yet meant to be. The Lakers, as sports patterns are early outgrowths of cultural yearnings, are a source of present symbolism and a telling signification of the Great Work. Our maturing offensive flow was disrupted by the fracturing, unforgiving defense of the Celtics (and all their hyper-machismo, pseudo-masculine fits of barking and howling and chest-throttling). Our shortcomings were exposed and mercilessly exploited in all its fragile, inexperienced development. It came down to us lacking that sheer determination, that unwavering focus to triumph. We didn't yet have that hunger to complement our drive, that toughness to complement our offensive and athletic prowess. After all, new sincerity's about striking and consummating that great inner balance, that true dynamic, and a limiting singular excellence.
If you were an avid Laker follower last season, you knew that while every media hound dog and outsider was caught up on the absence of Bynum, there was another youngblood just as revelatory to the Lakeshow's present and future-sustaining success, Trevor. In those 30-odd games he played early in the year last season, he was a defensive ninja and a fast break's dream, and with a newly-polished outside stroke this season, watch yo socks. He's dropping 10, 5 boards and 2 steals in 22 minutes so far in this young season. Sixth Man of the Year?
I realize and you should too, that it's still November. But with faith, just like the simple genius of great universal narrative, we all understand and feel in the eternal waves the beatific outcome. Last season's dismantling in the Finals was more than just a matter of missing personnel, missing Bynum and Ariza. From a numerological holism, 200(8) is when change, in all its torrential growing pains, takes root. 200(9) is when that transition's consummated.
And the numbers are evident, they're locking down their opponents to 86.7 points while averaging 104.7, still have yet to allow a team to break the century mark, 8 players are averaging 20-plus minutes (keep your esteem up Machine and Luke, we'll need you). But most impressively, at 35 minutes a game, Dobermamba's playing nearly 4 minutes less per outing than last season.
This new incarnation of the glitzy 80s Showtime are the Real Showtime, a consummating perfection of their harbinger. They're a deep, cohesive group who can score lights out, can run, spread the floor, execute half-court, and most importantly and tellingly, have realized that brazen focus. They're an ensemble cast of role players, including Mamba himself. Lights, camera, live action.
During last year's playoffs I blogged about the link between postmodernity and new sincerity, between the Celtics and the Lakers, the struggle of the new in overcoming and transitioning past the incumbent hegemony. In quick summation, I mentioned a few things. Last year we weren't yet ready, it wasn't yet meant to be. The Lakers, as sports patterns are early outgrowths of cultural yearnings, are a source of present symbolism and a telling signification of the Great Work. Our maturing offensive flow was disrupted by the fracturing, unforgiving defense of the Celtics (and all their hyper-machismo, pseudo-masculine fits of barking and howling and chest-throttling). Our shortcomings were exposed and mercilessly exploited in all its fragile, inexperienced development. It came down to us lacking that sheer determination, that unwavering focus to triumph. We didn't yet have that hunger to complement our drive, that toughness to complement our offensive and athletic prowess. After all, new sincerity's about striking and consummating that great inner balance, that true dynamic, and a limiting singular excellence.
If you were an avid Laker follower last season, you knew that while every media hound dog and outsider was caught up on the absence of Bynum, there was another youngblood just as revelatory to the Lakeshow's present and future-sustaining success, Trevor. In those 30-odd games he played early in the year last season, he was a defensive ninja and a fast break's dream, and with a newly-polished outside stroke this season, watch yo socks. He's dropping 10, 5 boards and 2 steals in 22 minutes so far in this young season. Sixth Man of the Year?
I realize and you should too, that it's still November. But with faith, just like the simple genius of great universal narrative, we all understand and feel in the eternal waves the beatific outcome. Last season's dismantling in the Finals was more than just a matter of missing personnel, missing Bynum and Ariza. From a numerological holism, 200(8) is when change, in all its torrential growing pains, takes root. 200(9) is when that transition's consummated.
And the numbers are evident, they're locking down their opponents to 86.7 points while averaging 104.7, still have yet to allow a team to break the century mark, 8 players are averaging 20-plus minutes (keep your esteem up Machine and Luke, we'll need you). But most impressively, at 35 minutes a game, Dobermamba's playing nearly 4 minutes less per outing than last season.
This new incarnation of the glitzy 80s Showtime are the Real Showtime, a consummating perfection of their harbinger. They're a deep, cohesive group who can score lights out, can run, spread the floor, execute half-court, and most importantly and tellingly, have realized that brazen focus. They're an ensemble cast of role players, including Mamba himself. Lights, camera, live action.
remakes are for do-overs
Let The Right One In, the Swedish romantic horror directed by Tomas Alfredson and written by John Ajvide Lindqvist (based on his novel) is in talks to be remade by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield). I'm with Alfredson on the economy of remakes, "Remakes should be made of movies that aren’t very good, that gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong." One day I'm gonna remake Neverending Story... then wed the beauty I cast as Childlike Empress.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
poster stroodles: horror
Finishing my "domestic possession" horror; Here are a handful of superb poster arts of the genre.
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Thursday, November 6, 2008
scaling kilimanjaro
The world's in breathless, united apparition. So many are once again, many for the first time, proud to be an American. Ghettos and cul-de-sacs and streets are canvassed in exhilarated celebration. Faith, that eternally puissant soul power, has been rousingly and poetically restored, reclaiming its rightful place alongside the Will of Man. For most of us, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Gen-X, Gen-Y, azure, iridescent, as Andy put it, the 2008 presidential election is the most influential thing we've done so far in our lifetime outside of buying and consuming. For me, it was more a sense of suspended, cathartic relief, soon replaced by an endowing determination for tomorrow's horizon. The celebration ended as soon as Barack stepped resolutely to the podium for our victory speech. We're living history, now it's about Time we make it. This mission which lies ahead, this consummation, will be the most trying struggle of all.
I'm keeping this blog short. We have poured the wine, now let us take a moment to celebrate. But, let us not get wine-flushed and forget in our basking that this is merely the first step of this emancipating journey. Secondly, don't disillusion the significance of this moment by investing your entire, unquestioned faith into Barack. By doing this, you're robbing, degrading and rendering illegitimate this beautiful moment, the man himself, and what we have all yearned and worked for. Don't lose the strength of your own resolve in the lingering romanticism of Barack. More than anything, Barack is the symbol, the enabler we needed to press ahead in this journey. But, moving forward he will need our enduring resolve as much as we'll need his. We finally received the opportunity for a true democracy, one that is a dynamic, not a dictatorship. Now it's our responsibility to uphold our end of the birdsong.
I'm keeping this blog short. We have poured the wine, now let us take a moment to celebrate. But, let us not get wine-flushed and forget in our basking that this is merely the first step of this emancipating journey. Secondly, don't disillusion the significance of this moment by investing your entire, unquestioned faith into Barack. By doing this, you're robbing, degrading and rendering illegitimate this beautiful moment, the man himself, and what we have all yearned and worked for. Don't lose the strength of your own resolve in the lingering romanticism of Barack. More than anything, Barack is the symbol, the enabler we needed to press ahead in this journey. But, moving forward he will need our enduring resolve as much as we'll need his. We finally received the opportunity for a true democracy, one that is a dynamic, not a dictatorship. Now it's our responsibility to uphold our end of the birdsong.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
raves reviews revelations
STEP BROTHERS
After back-to-back missteps of vacuity, i.e Blades of Glory, Semi-Pro, Will Ferrell gets it on like he should with Adam McKay, their 3rd whimsically vulgar collaboration following Anchorman and Talladega Nights, drag-assing the indomitably ethereal John C. Reilly along for some ebullient, wide-eyed and high-hearted bumpus time. With Step Brothers, McKay and Ferrell again use the built-in genre excesses of frat-row comedy to deftly probe what's steadily becoming their intaglio MO: monochromatic social congeniality and formality as cultivated and disillusioned by cultural susceptibilities to submit to the stagnancy of comfort and convenience as manifested from economic and consumptive disenfranchisement and fear of change, as well as the bungling and sophomoric American expression of male bond and sexuality. Mouthful.
Step Brothers was one of the most solid and entertaining comedic chestnuts of the last couple years and a tender keeper. But, as much as I regret to say this to a fellow alum, Will Ferrell's brand of wide-eyed, trusting, irreverently spirited comedic sentiment is nearing its course's end. Maybe within the next half-decade there'll be a tangible transition toward a sense of comedy elaborating on Ferrell's ironic search for sincerity, something that strokes with more focused self-awareness and resolve while sustaining that cherub wonderment. Step Brothers, the title suggests a yearn beyond cynical irony, a near-genuine yearning for brotherly unanimity.
Will Ferrell is the most important comedian of the 21st century, at least. Steve Carrell gets honorable mention.
WALL-E
Pixar delivers another gem, possibly the studio's masterpiece so far. Apart from Cars, Pixar Animation hasn't miscued. What makes Wall-E particularly brilliant and revelatory is its ability to communicate with enduring simplicity its universals of Love, Purpose and Responsibility, all basically without the crutch of talk and rhetoric. This is what children's high-fantasy and Horror as polarized genres can achieve, the purity and universality of the eternal laws governing us, of the potentials we have to ascend and of the temptations which cause us to fall.
I'm searching for my Eva...
MIRRORS
Splat Pack members Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur return with their 3rd gore galore (High Tension, Hills Have Eyes), and it's a studiously adept if underwhelming massacre. I applaud them, at the very least, for attempting to construct and examine the social and perceptional ramifications of mirrors as literal and symbolic artifact for vanity, consumer culture and existential distortion. But generally, the French haven't got the eyes for real, raw horror. Their experienced, fluid narrative romanticism works against them in this genre, aesthetically and sentimentally. Some of these directors included loosely in the Splat Pack don't make the grade; of the ones listed on Wiki (Aja, Darren Lynn Bousman, Neil Marshall, Greg McLean, Eli Roth, James Wan & Leigh Whannell and Rob Zombie) I would in all generosity drop Bousman, Wan & Whannell. The Saw series is like all the insulting sequels to Friday the 13th and Halloween packaged into something slightly and modernly less inane. Wolf Creek by McLean was frenetic and a skilled orchestration, but all aesthetic. Neil Marshall's a solid commercial director and The Descent was one of the best Horror films of the past few years, but Doomsday was a huge letdown. I liked Zombie's Devil's Rejects, but he's obviously limited. Of this list, Eli Roth is the only true auteur. He could potentially be one of the finest auteurs in cinema's future, if he doesn't let the celebrity get to his creative virility, which is very viable risk with Eli.
Speaking of the Horror genre, look out for the writer/director of Transmission 1 from The Signal.
HANCOCK
I felt cheated. Rather, my feelings were voided. So po-mo. Similar to Iron Man, Hancock was just a fragmented, postmodern collage of scenes brusquely and clumsily strung together to construct some undercooked narrative of coolness. In another potential-unrealized flop by Will Smith (the other being I Am Legend), Hancock was particularly a frustrating disappointment because there were many flowers which under the brass knuckle direction of Peter Berg weren't able to blossom. Hancock was the epitome of manufactured sincerity and the aesthetic cover-up of a film under-conceived. This hearkens back to the Iron Man comparison because Berg and Favreau are both comedic actors-turned empty flash directors and were co-stars in Very Bad Things. Now, as directors they suffer from the same postmodern symptom, overstatement and lack of fluidity. There's more to say, especially about the amateurish subterranean commentary on true masculinity, but I'm over this blog. I will give props Jason Bateman, as well as Vincent Ngo, my fellow Vietnamer, for writing the script 12 years ago.
After back-to-back missteps of vacuity, i.e Blades of Glory, Semi-Pro, Will Ferrell gets it on like he should with Adam McKay, their 3rd whimsically vulgar collaboration following Anchorman and Talladega Nights, drag-assing the indomitably ethereal John C. Reilly along for some ebullient, wide-eyed and high-hearted bumpus time. With Step Brothers, McKay and Ferrell again use the built-in genre excesses of frat-row comedy to deftly probe what's steadily becoming their intaglio MO: monochromatic social congeniality and formality as cultivated and disillusioned by cultural susceptibilities to submit to the stagnancy of comfort and convenience as manifested from economic and consumptive disenfranchisement and fear of change, as well as the bungling and sophomoric American expression of male bond and sexuality. Mouthful.
Step Brothers was one of the most solid and entertaining comedic chestnuts of the last couple years and a tender keeper. But, as much as I regret to say this to a fellow alum, Will Ferrell's brand of wide-eyed, trusting, irreverently spirited comedic sentiment is nearing its course's end. Maybe within the next half-decade there'll be a tangible transition toward a sense of comedy elaborating on Ferrell's ironic search for sincerity, something that strokes with more focused self-awareness and resolve while sustaining that cherub wonderment. Step Brothers, the title suggests a yearn beyond cynical irony, a near-genuine yearning for brotherly unanimity.
Will Ferrell is the most important comedian of the 21st century, at least. Steve Carrell gets honorable mention.
WALL-E
Pixar delivers another gem, possibly the studio's masterpiece so far. Apart from Cars, Pixar Animation hasn't miscued. What makes Wall-E particularly brilliant and revelatory is its ability to communicate with enduring simplicity its universals of Love, Purpose and Responsibility, all basically without the crutch of talk and rhetoric. This is what children's high-fantasy and Horror as polarized genres can achieve, the purity and universality of the eternal laws governing us, of the potentials we have to ascend and of the temptations which cause us to fall.
I'm searching for my Eva...
MIRRORS
Splat Pack members Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur return with their 3rd gore galore (High Tension, Hills Have Eyes), and it's a studiously adept if underwhelming massacre. I applaud them, at the very least, for attempting to construct and examine the social and perceptional ramifications of mirrors as literal and symbolic artifact for vanity, consumer culture and existential distortion. But generally, the French haven't got the eyes for real, raw horror. Their experienced, fluid narrative romanticism works against them in this genre, aesthetically and sentimentally. Some of these directors included loosely in the Splat Pack don't make the grade; of the ones listed on Wiki (Aja, Darren Lynn Bousman, Neil Marshall, Greg McLean, Eli Roth, James Wan & Leigh Whannell and Rob Zombie) I would in all generosity drop Bousman, Wan & Whannell. The Saw series is like all the insulting sequels to Friday the 13th and Halloween packaged into something slightly and modernly less inane. Wolf Creek by McLean was frenetic and a skilled orchestration, but all aesthetic. Neil Marshall's a solid commercial director and The Descent was one of the best Horror films of the past few years, but Doomsday was a huge letdown. I liked Zombie's Devil's Rejects, but he's obviously limited. Of this list, Eli Roth is the only true auteur. He could potentially be one of the finest auteurs in cinema's future, if he doesn't let the celebrity get to his creative virility, which is very viable risk with Eli.
Speaking of the Horror genre, look out for the writer/director of Transmission 1 from The Signal.
HANCOCK
I felt cheated. Rather, my feelings were voided. So po-mo. Similar to Iron Man, Hancock was just a fragmented, postmodern collage of scenes brusquely and clumsily strung together to construct some undercooked narrative of coolness. In another potential-unrealized flop by Will Smith (the other being I Am Legend), Hancock was particularly a frustrating disappointment because there were many flowers which under the brass knuckle direction of Peter Berg weren't able to blossom. Hancock was the epitome of manufactured sincerity and the aesthetic cover-up of a film under-conceived. This hearkens back to the Iron Man comparison because Berg and Favreau are both comedic actors-turned empty flash directors and were co-stars in Very Bad Things. Now, as directors they suffer from the same postmodern symptom, overstatement and lack of fluidity. There's more to say, especially about the amateurish subterranean commentary on true masculinity, but I'm over this blog. I will give props Jason Bateman, as well as Vincent Ngo, my fellow Vietnamer, for writing the script 12 years ago.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
mumblecore, or
Just finished watching Quiet City, a trailer I spotlighted awhile ago, and was softly charmed by its nascent looseness and its oft-inverting depiction of a modern romance. The mumblecore movement, or alternatively, the Slackavetes, emerged correspondingly in the early-2000s embracing & realizing a consortium of tenets which New Sincerity strives for: D.I.Y., collaboration, economic frugality, and an exacting of self-authorship. Aesthetically and economically, mumblecore recalls the focused improvisation of French New Wave & Cassavetes, and dawdles in the scenes and compulsions of sparkless twenty-somethings.
I blogged about Hannah Takes The Stairs, another mumblecore effort, when it came out on DVD, using it as a platform conceptually for meaning becoming the aesthetic. However, my perspective on such compromise has taken broader perspective since reading Saramago and watching Blindness onscreen, along with of course the passing of Time.
For the many reasons mumblecore is contextually innovative and necessary, these same qualities are also its weaknesses moving forward, ultimately speaking. These flicks are being done by artists generationally at the Gen X-Gen Y intermingling. This is to say that in these works there are the spirited manifestations of New Sincerity as well as the perspective and symptomatic reflections of Gen-X postmodernity. The movement of mumblecore into the next realm revolves around the consummation of these latter tendencies.
In its focus on interpersonal relationships, mumblecore cinema subversively comments on our subsisting cultural contrivances, primarily communication and sexuality. This is usually done by inversion - in Quiet City, moments usually resulting into kisses don't - and by scenes capturing a moment of vulnerable musing away from the hustle. These subversive hints are in a way passive-aggressive. Hints, without the risk of accountability or more semantically, responsibility. Slackavetes.
So this conflict I'm having with mumblecore doesn't remain in the cinema itself, but in its inherent reflection of our potential unfulfilled. Can we find compromise to passive-aggressiveness and find a potent, gentle force? French New Wave captured these same relational dynamics, but more significantly, used cinema as a platform and breeding ground to not just capture these relationships but to doctorally observe them. (Furthermore, French New Wave was a battle for liberation of aesthetics). Mumblecore, however, projects inherently a certain postmodern nihilism in its immediacy, or rather its immediacy without arching tenet of greater purpose blanketing its narrative. In this sense, all this capturing is merely a shapeless cataloging - to be incisive, a postmodern form of vanity and hedonism.
In Quiet City, sure it celebrates the elementary beauties of collaboration and teamwork (making music on the keyboard together, getting help over the wall), but in what seems to be the overriding trait of mumblecore and late Gen-X cultivation, the twenty-somethings are unambitious, immature and utterly irresolute. They do cute, random things for attention, they own and collect cute, random, usually nostalgic blasts from the pasts. But they're not immature because they can be a degree of blithe in moments, it's because their co-dependency, their unsureness and inability to show resolve and composure becomes kiddish, in the most detrimental way. All this vagrant cuteness reverts back to an ironic kitsch. And that's exactly it, it's lacking in that last consummation of sincerity, to no fault of its own.
So, the consummation that follows mumblecore is enabling and sustaining such hypercapitalism killers as self-authorship, D.I.Y. and frugal economy and channeling them into works that focus and weave together all that yearning and enervating spontaneity into something purposefully interconnected and holistic.
PS I fell for Erin Fisher.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
on the road with beatification
I think of Dean Moriarty...
I've finally read those final touching words from Kerouac's contextual masterpiece On The Road. Holy molasses, was it a long, persevering endurance test to get there. From when I first cracked the book to when I finished, I read two Saramagos (Seeing, Gospel According to Jesus Christ) & went a couple chapters deep into Last Unicorn & a Ho Chi Minh biography. Capote called On The Road typing. Not necessarily a harsh reduction, but an creative innovation missed & misunderstood on Capote's part.
On The Road & The Beats revolutionized, or rather socialized, the expressive form of writing, helping to channel the Self, loosening it from the grips of privileged, hierarchical modes & systems.
It was visceral, immediate, unabashedly autobiographical. It was wide-eyed, sloppy, fervent, had a devouring curiosity & tragedy, it saw us as eternal brothers, had the search of empathy at its core. It was also a precursor & the opening in which postmodern semantic deconstruction of rhetoric and semiotics slithered through to find us at superfluous dribbles & purposelessly excessive word counts; It was fast, loose & instant. It trampled concisely meditated prose, but was necessary to the movement. This is also to say, I will probably never read another Kerouac novel again, but that doesn't mean his contribution was any less admirable.
The thing is, like a hyper-explosion, The Beats in literature blew communication into smithereens, and we've only gotten faster, more brusquely so, since. But it's about moderation, compromise. In this case, slow down but sustain those big-wondering eyes, be cool but be intimate & engaged, loosen up form but don't lose form, be autobiographical but deliberate it a bit. The Beats were one of our prophets, one of our direct mystic providers, they asked us, their future nephews to find equanimity, to fill that emptiness that ached them & embody sincerity, to become, to arrive. And like the eternal Law of the Universe, they delivered us the tools to blunt something they themself helped create & diminish all at the same Time.
I've finally read those final touching words from Kerouac's contextual masterpiece On The Road. Holy molasses, was it a long, persevering endurance test to get there. From when I first cracked the book to when I finished, I read two Saramagos (Seeing, Gospel According to Jesus Christ) & went a couple chapters deep into Last Unicorn & a Ho Chi Minh biography. Capote called On The Road typing. Not necessarily a harsh reduction, but an creative innovation missed & misunderstood on Capote's part.
On The Road & The Beats revolutionized, or rather socialized, the expressive form of writing, helping to channel the Self, loosening it from the grips of privileged, hierarchical modes & systems.
It was visceral, immediate, unabashedly autobiographical. It was wide-eyed, sloppy, fervent, had a devouring curiosity & tragedy, it saw us as eternal brothers, had the search of empathy at its core. It was also a precursor & the opening in which postmodern semantic deconstruction of rhetoric and semiotics slithered through to find us at superfluous dribbles & purposelessly excessive word counts; It was fast, loose & instant. It trampled concisely meditated prose, but was necessary to the movement. This is also to say, I will probably never read another Kerouac novel again, but that doesn't mean his contribution was any less admirable.
The thing is, like a hyper-explosion, The Beats in literature blew communication into smithereens, and we've only gotten faster, more brusquely so, since. But it's about moderation, compromise. In this case, slow down but sustain those big-wondering eyes, be cool but be intimate & engaged, loosen up form but don't lose form, be autobiographical but deliberate it a bit. The Beats were one of our prophets, one of our direct mystic providers, they asked us, their future nephews to find equanimity, to fill that emptiness that ached them & embody sincerity, to become, to arrive. And like the eternal Law of the Universe, they delivered us the tools to blunt something they themself helped create & diminish all at the same Time.
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