Pardon my indulgence if you will, again please…

Last night I sprawled out naked on the couch and watched the Walt Disney bastardization of Lloyd Alexander‘s “The Black Cauldron”. I had grown up reading and re-reading Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles and had even, back in the halcyon days of 1985, watched the film with my father and sister at the York Theater when there was a York Theater… I was excited when I happened across the DVD at work and quite unashamed to borrow it…

The production had been beset with troubles, not the least of which was attempting to condense five books into an 80 minute movie… You have to forget about relating to the books as you watch or you’ll end up throwing your can of beer at the TV and kicking the DVD player across the room which, it has been suggested, isn’t very polite and doesn’t solve any of the problems… Even still it’s not the best Disney cartoon you’ve ever seen, althought it was the first to receive a PG rating and the first to use computers in the animation process…

The PG rating is what had me screaming in the theater when I was six, scenes I still remember today… It’s not a pleasant story and the animators really go to town– there’s an army of skeletons, flesh being stripped from bones, bloody faces after beatings and a primary character commits suicide… Unfortunately the rest of the film that wasn’t terrorizing me are too shitty for more adult audiences to enjoy (like the Secret of NIMH) so it’s really just the worst of both worlds thrown together… For a movie that had been in production since 1971 when Disney optioned the rights you’d think they might have done a little better… Maybe one day I’ll option the stories myself and present them as they should be, five seperate movies with no soppy muppet abortions…

Afterwards I got to thinking about how technology has really fucked everything that was once cool up… Movies are shot like music videos with expensive effects that look less convincing than the scale models of old… I’m not really an animation buff but I still prefer the old drawn style over the rendered 3D blockbusters which have presented the world with an even more jaded and demanding generation than, well, mine… Someone born in 1985 can probably never enjoy something like “Sleeping Beauty” because it will look too foreign, janky and quaint… They probably won’t understand things like Salad Fingers either which aren’t very quaint but are very janky and foreign…

Not that long ago I was recalling with immense pleasure the old video games I used to play instead of have friends… Sierra snagged the contract to do the Disney adaptation of The Black Cauldron, which I only saw once at a friend’s house and didn’t get to play too much) which isn’t the best example of their craft, but they did have a stint as the most revolutionary computer game company in the world… Eventually they became too inflated, moved to Seattle, digitized their games and aired commercials during the Super Bowl and ate shit accordingly… I thought things were sliding downhill prior to the digital bullshit but the last shining moment was their “Willy Beamish“, a game which still enjoyed the humour and spunk of their previous works and incorporated actual animation, drawn by people, cared for and loved… Everytime I order a Beamish in a bar I still think about the game…

Wait, where was I going? Oh well, next week I’ll talk about how cool 8 Tracks are…

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One news story last week that got lost in the mire was Will Smith trying to break into India’s film market after being excluded from China. If only Smith could court China’s censorship board like his character Alex Hitchens woos the ladies in 2005′s Hitch – a lukewarm romantic footbath for a princess-and-the-pea middle class. One might be inclined to view this as evidence of China’s good taste, but considering only 20 foreign movies made the cut, this turns out to just be a happy coincidence.

Making its way into the global awareness, India’s film market seems primed to welcome Smith with open arms. Bhaliwood’s been the next big thing for so long, shouldn’t it be the big thing by now?

This is a rare boon for US foreign policy. The fresh prince is an ideal cultural colonist: Talented, hardworking; an embodiment of the American dream; a guru of media plurality; and an icon of America’s pretext of racial synthesis and acceptance. How can the rest of the world reject our lifestyle when they see it’s all about punching aliens and shagging coworkers?

This is actually the kind of imperialism I can endorse. It’s always great when there’s a non-violent transmission of ideas between countries. There may be a backlash against the perception that Smith’s brand of the stars and stripes is being shoved down the throat of an audience who’d like to see more movies about their own cultural identity. On the other hand, anyone who’s been to a McDonalds in another country knows that even the most rigid forms of Americanism reach a compromise of interpretation with the receiving culture. This is, perhaps, a bad example given the evil practices of the golden arches, but at least Smith probably won’t slaughter thousands of cows to make his films, and it seems unlikely that you’d become a 25-year-old diabetic from watching his movies since you were six.

Though Smith most likely plans to use the low production costs in India to increase the profit margin on unvetted projects, he’ll inevitably be a bridge between the two economies, both monetarily and creatively.

All in all this means that you’ll feel less and less special when you find that gem of an obscure Italian movie on Netflix and get to brag about it to all your friends. On the plus side, perhaps when we’re approaching the next country that’s entertaining the idea of nuclear warheads, we can point out that they’ve been entertained by our cinematic antics for years, so lighten up a little, eh?

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Marine reservists are facing the recall, militias battle for influence and territory in the refugee camps of Darfur, the NSA is still spying on you, Iran won’t bend to western pressures, Oakland’s homocide rates are through the roof, the DOW and NASDAQ can’t hold their gains and some guy set up a couple of matresses in front of the coin-op downstairs and is now my neighbor… Two mattresses– how the fuck did you get there here? I didn’t ask him… He was in a bathrobe and I didn’t really want to intrude in his personal affairs…

Lots going on around here so I’ve been sitting on the couch with potato chips for some marathon viewing of the Canadian show “Trailer Park Boys”… Sorry if I’m a little late to the party but it’s only now been making the rounds at work… The pay may not be great and there’s no sense of your job being meaningful– no premature babies are nursed to health and amputees don’t suddenly sprout limbs and begin dancing– but burned DVDs of trash humour are readily available and if you can’t enjoy that you’re probably sleeping on the sidewalk in front of my house…

The show’s conceit is simple– two recidivists attract the attention of a documentary crew who follow them from imprisonment back to civilian life at the Sunnyvale Trailer Park… There’s no overarching plot vehicles beyond staying out of jail– I don’t even know why there’s a documentary being shot in the first place… The pilot, according to the no-lives posting on IMDB message boards, is about the two main characters acting as pet exterminators silencing loud neighborhood dogs so, perhaps the camera crew is explained therein…

It’s a character driven show: a mental midget hothead who can raise pot plants from the dead; a DeNiro wannabe milking rum and cokes trying to score enough the retire from petty crime; a bug-eyed cat-lover living in a shed stealing shopping carts to sell to competing malls; a former cop cum trailer park supervisor; his barechested assistant/lover; bleach blonde former girlfriend; long-haired redneck wheelchair alcoholic father; de-barred hot dog loving vet in a camper; lily-white B-Boy schemer and his black posse; tweedledee and tweedledum pothead Nintendo freaks.

You have reservations? Of course you do– it looks idiotic at best, right up there with anything readily available in various dilluted forms all across the television spectrum… While a co-worker slowly explained to me the show, trying to tie me off and turn me on, I was desperately looking for a polite out… The fact that my laptop DVD player couldn’t handle burned discs wasn’t enough– the gospel needed to be spread…

And I’m glad because the show really is fucking good in a very strange way… The expected overt acts of potty humour are plentiful but the underlying sarcasm and absurdity are what makes the show better than most comedies… The joke’s not that Ricky can’t perform in a low budget porn being shot at J-Roc’s mom’s trailer but that Ricky honestly is doing this to get money to buy his girlfriend an engagement ring… Everyone can see aspects of people they know, and if they look hard enough and they’re in the mood they’ll see aspects of themselves in the characters… Each person is a composite of various stereotypes stretched and pulled and distorted for maximum effect but the stereotypes are true enough to make the characters work…

Perhaps the show works best because so many of the people involved, the director and the producers and the cast, have known one another in previous lives… Many are from the Halifax theatre scene, the show’s creator knew the two leads in highschool, and the actors all play off each other really well… The scripts are probably kept loose intentionally and the boom in the show filming suddenly seems less contrived than you thought it would have been…

The other night a friend came over and she, my roommate and I sat down to the first disc of MTV’s reality show “Laguna Beach: The Real OC”… Similarly a character driven show except this time they’re all interchangable: spoiled brats snivelling about petty converns closer to your and mine than our friends up in Sunnyvale Trailer Park… No one’s trying to boost lighting equipment for the illegal nightclub because everyone’s concerned about if they’re cute, popular and cool enough… The show has a slicker documentary image more akin to The Real World than TBB’s boom in the shot running down the street look and a soundtrack of today’s (yesterday’s) interchangable pop product… Everything about it is fake except, if you believe MTV, it’s real life drama unfolding before your very eyes… This drama seems to be centered on if douche bag will hook up with Stupid Girl A or B today…

Could a show about a circle of teenage friends in their last year of highschool be insightful, engaging, amusing, heart-breaking and revealing? Of course, but not with these kids… These real life people are stereotypes themselves but their characters are based on stereotypes readily available on TV and movies, not composites of people you see sleeping in front of your house, the whacky guy at the liqour store, your mom, your neighbor or you… These kids are as real as Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Madonna, Britney Spears and that penis she married, Gov. Arnold and President Bush… I’m sure more people would rather know the Laguna Beach future America than the quirky full fleshed creations up in Nova Scotia and that’s a damned shame…
-Slept in too late to make the library so thanks for the computer loan Greta…

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Depending on the films selected by whatever computer program or malicious human the airlines employ, an inflight movie experience can really help a flight speed by (King Kong and various Hugh Jackman vehicles being about top shelf). On a bad day, it’s like thumbscrews on top of the rack. I spent 12 hours about two and one-half feet away from a video screen. After this Clockwork Orange flight, I’m actually unable to think or write about anything else but what was giving me a headache on the plane.

She’s the Man
It’s as stupid as the title, poster, and previews have likely led you to believe. A friend described his impressions of the film gleaned from the poster thusly: “Slapstick, gay jokes, credits.”

The film claims to be based on Twelfth Night by Shakespeare. The shipwreck thing has been replaced by a preachy-p.c.-gender-soccer subplot and in a clever conceit the entire film functions as a train wreck. Also omitted were the witty dialog and masterful suspension of disbelief.

The doughy faced Amanda Bynes unnecessarily mugs her way through 105 minutes of celluloid–a baffling running time, with 90 minutes or less being the rule of thumb for movies this disinterested and cash hungry.

David Cross is hilarious as the principal of the school where all of this impossible bullshit takes place. He manages to do this by pretending he’s the only one in the scene, by my reckoning.

Movie fans will be sad to hear that the kinetic, intimidating soccer guy from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is here as well.

There is a lot of yelling and music cues, and as predicted the film kind of sticks it to the gays–a somewhat baffling development considering that the source material explores a metaphysical view of gender and sexuality that was later to be aped, er, adopted by Virginia Woolf. Imagine if Shakespeare had a sister. Would this sister have been able to run away to London to drink and write plays? Apparently, if she faked a southern accent for no reason at all and taped her tits down, yes.

The Office: An American Workplace
It was ok.

16 Blocks
I spent most of the movie wondering how such ugly blackface comedy stylings made it past the studio suits in this age of tolerance, and was astounded when the credits rolled to learn I had been watching a real black man. Mos Def (referred to by everybody the whole movie as “The Kid”) sho ’nuff is happy when he’s working in this film. Damn it, he’s a simple man who wants to bake and decorate cakes while reforming crooked cops.

Nothing against Mos Def, as he actually does all right, considering what he’s working with. Bruce Willis is pretty good as well, as a drunk cop who’s so drunk, you wonder how he finds the time to get drunk. Transporting Mos Def the titular 16 blocks from his holding cell to the courthouse proves to be as difficult as not drinking. Things kick off when Bruce Willis stops mid-route to buy a bottle of twist-cap red wine which he starts drinking in the liquor store against the protests of the proprietors. This interval is all the bad guys need to start shooting at Lawdy Lawdy! Mos Def.

Then the cops also turn out to be bad guys and familiar faces slip into familiar roles. Bruce Willis winces in the movie. I think he’s always wincing, actually. He has a bad leg. And then he gets shot in the hand, which leads to more wincing. Mos Def at one point comments that he never smiles. This is not surprising, because the movie is never, ever funny–a bad choice given that it doesn’t deliver the sublimation promised by drama.

There is one twist, followed by a turn, and then later everything sorts itself out about twenty minutes after I stopped caring. A Barry White song plays during the credits, so don’t leave early!

Pride & Prejudice
This latest incarnation is worth watching for the scene where Dame Judi Dench royally bitches out the famously A-cupped Keira Knightley, who should really gain ten pounds and be shoved out of the pictures. One gets the sense she doesn’t understand her lines or give a shit. All she can do is crinkle her eyes and fake a warm smile, as well as occasionally get haughty in that by rote manner that’s sort of killed this type of film. Buh buh BUH BUH buh buh buh. BUUH Buh buh buh. Buuuh BUH! *Door slams*

Donald Sutherland seems to get more charming with age, and is well-placed as a kindly uncle. He presides over countrified dance hall gaiety that always feels forced.

Other than that it was too boring to watch, with audience members of all demographics dropping like flies. It was sooo boring. At one point Mr. Darcy was talking to Mr. Bingley out on the moors and I was like, “What the fuck could possibly still be happening in this movie?”

RV
Mercifully not screened despite being scheduled.

Add to this a 24-hour layover at SFO courtesy of the TSA and transatlantic alarmists and maybe terrorists at some point as well and I am hangdog. Maybe you should watch Jackie Brown tonight. Really, think about it.

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Though the title of Berkeley in the Sixties leaves little to the imagination, the documentary itself inspired me enough to write a post about it. The virtues and agendas of student protests on the UC Berkeley campus are debatable – I’m not really sure where I stand on them – but it was nonetheless moving to watch a police car stalled by a bunch of top-heavy utopians in the Cal quad.

As part of the ‘whatever’ generation – a label I derive from the elegant and ubiquitous catch-all that is completely malleable to context and interpretation – it was, and is, difficult for me to take a passionate stand against anything. Perhaps a comfortable suburban upbringing spent lampooning any sort of public message, be it a commercial or a class assembly, honed my criticism while leaving my powers of belief atrophying in the locker room.

At some point it became cool to opt-out. To act was to be vulnerable; to be the criticized instead of the critic. The multitudes caught on and soon it was socially precarious to voice an endorsement of some not-yet-vetted trope. I’d like to think that appendage is purely vestigial, but I get the impression many people my age still rely on it.

If we all lived in the sixties now, many of my friends would be up on the steps of city hall giving fascism what for. Perhaps even me. Are our lives today simply better then they were for kids our age back then? Was more at stake? Do we think protest is ineffectual?

Not only do civil disobedience and street protests seem too one-dimensional for very fractured issues, it’s not clear what all the quasi-revolutions by students in the 60s accomplished. In many cases it seems to have sent people back to the drawing board as to how power is checked and what democracy should be. Or, in our case, we grew up at the drawing board and haven’t seen a plan good enough to spur us into action.

And so I pose these questions: Is there anything we can do now to directly oppose that which oppresses and kills? Are we forever mired in arguing over the definition of those words to put an end to them? What kind of person would it take to fill this vacuum of leadership and convince you to participate?

I think the tactics of the past are antiquated and too easily marginalized, not just by the media, but by our own cognitive dissidence. We need to engineer a better technology of protest that isn’t just a series of coups, that doesn’t just transfer power, but spreads it evenly. I think most people would agree that it should be very difficult for anyone to grab as much power as Bush has, politics aside. We need something simple enough for people to understand and believe in, but also versatile enough to assuage complex reservations.

What will it take for me to put you into this protest today?

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