The Post-Apocalyptic Techno Poem

Extended Trailer.

Squeee!

I joined some friends this evening to take in the new James Bond film, which--in a new turn for Bond films--mainly hinges on story arcs laid out in the first Daniel Craig film, Casino Royale.

In summation, the action sequences were as impressive as any you'd expect from a Bond film and I continued to enjoy the burgeoning "relationship" between Bond and M (which I feel is shaping up to be the true heart of this series of films), but I felt that the burden of being a sequel in the traditional sense held this film back in a number of ways, and I hope that future Bond films can do better now that they've been freed of the Vesper-baggage.

They did lay the groundwork for some interesting future entanglements in the form of a shadowy world crime network (a la S.P.E.C.T.R.E.), but the plot was fairly thin with an overload of foreshadowing, a host of clearly expendable characters, and a denouement that I saw twenty minutes into the flick--something that caused me to spend the rest of the time wondering why Bond couldn't wrap his blunt instrument around it.

But hanging out with friends was a blast, as always. We're planning to do it all again for the new Star Trek. (Hells to the yes!)

I found myself engrossed in a movie that kept me up until 2am last night. The film in question was 2000's Dirty Pictures, a based-on-the-true-story drama of Daniel Barrie, once the curator of Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center, who brought a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition to his museum and subsequently faced fanatical right-wing opposition, community censure, and criminal charges.

I was really knocked back by the theme of this film, which was essentially an exploration of the nature of freedom and the efforts one is sometimes forced to exert in order to maintain freedom. I felt, and still feel, that the struggles over this exhibition were about more than just a definition of art, or of obscenity, but instead were about one person's right to hold intrinsically to their own beliefs in the face of other people's derision and outrage. I found the dramatization of these themes and questions very gripping.

But I have to admit, watching the film made me angry. It irked me to see the mobilized coalition of right-wing religious fanatics in full swing, pompous and narrow-minded as most of them are, so jealous of the private lives of others that they would spend any coin to control them. I found myself biting my tongue in places to avoid screaming at the television screen in frustration (it was almost 2 in the morning, after all, and I do have neighbors).

These people scare the shit out of me.

And I see things like Governor Sarah Palin saying on national television that she doesn't know if she'd call the bombing of an abortion clinic domestic terrorism (because McCain associates with those people, after all), and I want to shriek.

And I note that at the beginning of the film I watched last night, there was an additional parental discretion warning to let the viewers know that Mapplethorpe images would be seen in this film. (Quelle shock, ne? Mapplethorpe images in a film about Mapplethorpe!) So we still have not completely won our freedom.

The audio commentary track for the film Versus is one of the funniest things I've ever listened to in my entire life. Ever.


HAVE SOME FUN!

Tropic Thunder is easily one of the funniest movies ever made. Seriously. There were moments during this film where I honestly thought that I was going to become apoplectic. I couldn't stop laughing. Like, at all. The humor is biting and brilliant, the acting is sharp and skewering, and Tom Cruise fucking owns this motion picture. In one single side-splitting dance sequence he completely regains any and all of his street cred. For reals. Everyone needs to see this movie.

Nine Inch Nails gave a typical performance at Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena on Friday. For the most part, I enjoyed it. However, in my opinion, there were significant flaws with the show. First of all, the light show--though very high-tech and oft-times intriguing--has gotten totally out of control. It cuts the band off from the audience and completely ruins any chance of synergy. The result is a somewhat static show that feels longer than it is. When the LCD screens were out of the way and the band was visible, I felt much more in the zone and was able to enjoy the groove.

Another problem is that many of the songs are so rehearsed, so locked-in to a specific mode of performance, that they too are stagnant. Granted, this is way more noticeable to the fan who's taking in concert number twelve--yes, I've seen Nails that many times--than it is for the fan who's taking in concert number one, but I can't help feeling that the lack of spontaneity must come through to the newbies somewhat as well. That said, the new material was great. "Head Down," in particular, rocks as much as I thought it would, and the instrumental stuff was beyond cool. Trent Reznor can play the xylophone, yo. Who knew?

Finally, after a long conversation on the above topics with my mom--who also loves the Nails and attended the show with me--I finally realized the overarching problem with the Nine Inch Nails show: Trent Reznor.

The man is a musical genius, there's no question of that. And he's certainly got more energy at forty-three than I had at fourteen, but he is not capable of connecting with his fanbase in a live setting. He barely looked at the audience the whole show and said not a word to them either. The introductions and thanks he gave at the end don't count. I'm almost positive he opened up because his family was at the show (Cleveland is his adopted hometown) and for no other reason.

It's a shame. He'll never be able to match the impact of his albums, let alone surpass them, until he can connect with the crowd and generate the energy that turns a performance by a star into an exchange between friends.

That said, I'll probably go to the Columbus show in November. I'll never get over hoping for better, I guess.

Thanks to muroku for reminding me about Spielberg's latest sure-to-be-a-sci-fi-travesty project: A live action Ghost in the Shell remake.

Here's her excellent commentary on the subject. There are links to a couple of news stories about the project in her post, and there are comments about it from both she and I in my last entry.

I really am going to have to bitchsmack him.

All three presentations are now done.

The war paper is currently a draft of fifteen pages, the Japanese paper has to be corrected and resubmitted, and the paper for my advisor exists only as an outline at present.

The presentation for my advisor, K., went fairly well. I talked about my project, from a six-page outline, for over an hour and got good feedback from her - which included comments like, "have clearly done as much as you can in English, which is great" and "working on something that no one else is talking about" and "so happy to see this topic finally being examined in detail." I'm fairly pleased with what I've accomplished thus far and where I'm hoping to take the project in the upcoming year.

Also, I was selected for a 2008 Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Summer Fellowship! [does dance of joy]

The deadline for my final paper for K. has been extended slightly, which gives me more time to translate sources, check facts, and refine the present argument. It also enables me to take a nap - which I will be doing shortly - and maybe watch a movie.

Lately, I've been on a Kitano "Beat" Takeshi kick. So far, I've watched Kikujiro and Sonatine - both of which I loved. Additionally, I finally snagged a copy of Battle Royale and watched it. (lillith_knox, we'll watch it together another time because I would totally watch it again. I really dug it!) Anyway, Kitano didn't direct that film - he only starred in it - but it was still intriguing and - also - gross. It led me to another of Kitano's films, Kids Return, which stars one of the actors from Battle Royale - Ando Masanobu - who some of you may recall as the student who signed on for fun and who never said a single word. I was rather impressed with him, and thought I'd continue the Kitano kick with one of his offerings just to see if he's any good as an actor when he has dialog.

But first - the nap. The nap has been a long time in the making.

Pleasant dreams, yo.

I could not even begin to ever hope of coming close to a description of this movie, let alone a synopsis. All I will say on the matter is that when I hit the hometown in a few days I will have a copy of the dvd with me. And then it's on, bitches.

So, the reviewers who said that Ju-on 2 was a better movie than Ju-on were smoking crack. I don't have time to get into the details very much, but pretty much any movie that features a sequence where a vengeful ghost emerges from the twat of a pregnant woman is a bad movie. It wasn't scary in Warlock 2; it wasn't scary here.

Actually, I think the dvd menu playback was scarier than the film.

Ah well, you win some; you lose some.

In Franco's Spain, a young girl is on her way - with her very pregnant mother - to join her stepfather at his army outpost. He is a sadistic captain in Franco's army fighting a deadly war with the rebels that live in the surrounding woods. On route their convoy stops to give the girl's mother air and the girl wanders down the road a ways, discovering a piece of stone that has broken off from a carved totem of some kind. The girl replaces it and it is by this action that the faeries know her for the long lost daughter of the king of the underworld, and so begins her journey to undertake the three tasks that will open the portal and take her home to her true family.

This tale is interspersed with the story of the rebels who fight against Franco's regime, with the cruelty and strangeness of the captain the girl's mother has married, and with themes of courage and sacrifice. It is beautiful, frightening, and intensely graphically violent. Written and directed by the man who helmed such projects as Mimic, Blade II, and Hellboy, who could expect anything else. (Although, amusingly, I would estimate about 85% of the packed audience at the theater were completely and utterly taken aback by the gut-wrenching horror sequences.)

Pan's Labyrinth has many things to recommend it - not the least of which is gorgeous filming and acting - but what I loved most about the film was the leading way the narrative brought the audience to a single, shinning point of beauty. Beyond its overlapping themes of choice and consequence, cruelty and kindness, courage, sacrifice, failure, and fear, was one of the most sublime depictions of the notion that dying is easy while living is hard - not for the faint of heart, you might say, nor for the weak in spirit.

Dr. Ferreiro, Mercedes, and Ofelia were the brave, the strong, the true, and my life will be all the richer for spending a bit of my time in their company.