skonen_blades | Entries tagged with movie

I got the news the other day about Black Dog video on Commercial Drive shutting down.
I've been renting there weekly for years.

An elegy is a poem that reflects upon a subject with sorrow or melancholy.
Whereas a eulogy is meant to offer praise.

Well, I come to praise the video store, not to bury it.

This one’s for the DVD
The commentaries from the cast, director, and crew
Giving insight into so many levels of the film
That obscure niche-horror B-movie
That noir foreign film one-shot from that writer-director’s short ‘magical realism’ phase
That divine experimental five-country co-production that’s no longer in print
That hard-to-find music documentary

The transition from Film to Beta to VHS to DVD to Blu Ray to digital
Already filtering out too many movies forever
But video stores were where so many of them could be captured
Collated and hoarded
Caught and preserved
Held in amber
An entire library of culture
A snapshot of the medium itself
A specialty shop of our collective dreams
And voices from the entire planet

Not these weak offerings that have the gall to call themselves services
Offering only the last decade
of only the greatest hits
While furiously churning out their own productions
And ignoring history
Split between a dozen companies that cost fifteen dollars a month
The math is clear
It’s the return of cable
They’re busy recreating the reasons we went to the video store in the first place

I feel like a history professor watching a library burn
While the people in the crowd around me talk about how
the property would make a very valuable something else
Once the lot is cleaned up

Streams are shallow and they have a current
Rapids pulling things by swiftly and then they’re gone
They’re supposed to lead to large bodies of water
Stable, deep repositories that in turn inspire the clouds to rain more ideas
Instead of just endlessly refreshing with the latest offerings
And there’s so much disposable pollution floating past

I’d have less of a problem
If they crossed the streams
And it led to a torrent
Which in turn led to a bay
That wasn’t run by pirates
Streams offers sips to a traveler
But you can live on an ocean
And you can dive so deep

The video store clerk is that elusive sibling
To the comic book store cashier
The record shop worker
The bookstore owner
All arbiters of culture
The person who you go to for a good recommendation
With an entire cathedral of material on hand to offer

I’m worried at what’s to be lost with the transition
As these businesses starve to death in the streets
The libraries do what they can
And I’m grateful they exist
But I worry it’s a band aid on a cut throat

The video store was an entrance to another dimension
Where couples went to pick out films
As a litmus test of compatibility
Where your mind emptied at the door as it faced countless options
Where the counterperson’s encyclopedic knowledge
Could steer you in the right direction
To walk through the shelves and see
The end products of unfathomable hard work
Where the lurid covers vied for your attention

The video store was where the question
“Is this any good?”
Could be answered with honesty
And would lead to a tour of other delights

To conjugate
Like the old man I am
I will miss the video store
I am missing the video store
I miss the video store

And I have so much love for them

So pour one out for all the independent purveyors of fading mediums
And if you happen to see a film buff crying silently in the bar
Consoled by someone with a crate of vinyl
And a person with a bag of zines and comics and old books
Hide your ereader and your iphone
And ask these ghosts of the echoes of the memories of gods
What their favorite anything is
And luxuriate in the ten-day answers

Here’s to Black Dog.
The latest domino on the Drive

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To live long is to become well-acquainted with ghosts
Not just of the friends and family you’ve lost
The Hollywood stars that brought tears to your eyes
The music legends that helped you live
But also the way the neighborhood used to be
The comic book shop
The video store
The second-run repertory theater
That restaurant you loved
That country you visited twenty years ago
The way that person used to be
And even your previous self
Your mind a looping home video
Of people and things that are gone
And relationships that have since ended

You live with that
While new lives bloom around you
And fresh love explodes within you
The value of the moment increasing with every day

This haunting is a maturity
A heavy wisdom at your center
And an armor that informs you of how
Things come and go
Even the stars

It’s a comfort and a curse

So just wait for a while
And reminisce
And enjoy what’s here now

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The media we see (tv, and comics, films, and books)
Are all just ways to get our money fished out onto hooks
And reeled in to the coffers of the companies that make
Our childhood dreams for dollar streams that river to their lake
The cultural effect they’ve had is simply happenstance
We’re bystanders to advertising; diehard fans by chance
Creatives make a product that they hope will please and thrill
But everything is done because they’ll need to push and shill
The toys and secondary merch the property has spawned
And every single dollar spent is one that has been conned
But when it works, foundation blocks of psyches crystallize
And faithful followers are formed who then proselytize
And have epiphanies that supernova through their mind
Religious converts seeking out those others like their kind
They form what’s called a fandom or what I would call a sect
A base of holy starry-eyed disciples who respect
That film or book or tv show or comic that they bought
Because it gave them happiness when other things did not
But there are those whose zealotry is somewhat frightening
Who gaslight, scare, and harm who they think they’re enlightening
Who don’t seem to realize while they’re on the attack
The properties that thrill them are the ones that owe them jack
The only thing the things fans cherish want is wallets wide
The love that they engender is a nominal aside
Appreciated, yes, because the money that it brings
Is generated by fanaticism’s offerings
The lightning in a bottle that is caught and sold to them
Becomes a sort of monetary black-hole Bethlehem
It feels win-win because the love the fans all feel is real
But corporation’s bottom lines aren’t things that even feel
Fandoms, just like churches, start to schism, split, and change
As ages, tastes, and interests start to spread and grow in range
The hardcores start a new church that they think will be pristine
But that splits, too. They don’t need church. They need a time machine.
You can’t go home again, they say, as months and years go by
The mirror tells the truth, they say, and memory’s a lie
And properties that anchor fans and give them happiness
In many ways, I’m sad to say, don’t actually exist
They’re all just tricks that worked too well and spawned a flock of fans
Who now are faithful missionaries who can’t understand
The god they worship doesn’t care. It only wants the cash.
And it’ll keep on selling ‘til the world’s turned to ash
So when a sequel or a reboot splits a fandom’s flock
And feathers fly and ‘true fans’ cry and use the chopping block
I’m scared that their pursuit of keeping up a purity
Is just a signal of their tragic immaturity
Like those who thinks the stripper’s really into what they say
The ones who thinks that servers flirt for more than simply pay
Fragile dupes and rubes who fell in love with something fake
Who never really realized their god was on the take
And when that god finds target audiences fresh and new
These followers are left behind in their own dusty pew
So know this nerds, from one old priest, from one geek to another
Try to see me as a kind of kindly older brother
Hear me when I saw what’s new won’t disappear what’s old
That childhoods all have their day and then they get resold
Expecting or demanding otherwise is pure denial
You need to welcome all the new with one big nerdy smile
The gates you’re keeping can’t be kept from entropy’s cruel trick
The gates you keep will rust and fall. It’s just arithmetic.
And know that this belief we share will shift and change with time
Embrace the unavoidable when you are past your prime
And be respected, gentle, kind, historians for fans
Instead of cruel, abusive, jerks that no one understands
Remember that your love was bought but faithful you can be
By being kind and welcoming in your idolatry
Cause you if you do, you’ll swell your flock, and you can all join in
And all rejoice whenever new material comes in
And talk about the old and new and love it and relate
Whatever you hold dear, you can hold dear without your hate

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A celluloid tornado kicked in the top of my skull
and poured the kool-aid in when I was a child.
I became a movie.
Half encyclopedia and half sci-fi/horror/comedy/western.
It was Hollywood and the art of film
That folded me up and cut off the alleyways
Defining half of all my worldviews
Propaganda but only the best propaganda.
(Ghostbusters, E.T., Star Trek 2 the Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Tron
The Dark Crystal, The Secret of NIMH, The Road Warrior, Poltergeist,
Blade Runner, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Airplane, Gremlins,
Buckaroo Banzai, Breakfast Club, The Last Starfighter, Star Wars….
And on and on and on)
Sometimes I try to imagine my life without them
Raised in a country without these seminal moments in my life
My small-town upbringing
My sheltered pre-internet life with only a handful of friends
My only ideas of the outside world coming from
My parents, the library, and tv
No doubt I’d have other seminal and communal moments.
Perhaps in my place of worship
Perhaps in my place of work
Perhaps in my hobbies
Perhaps in school
But I imagine they’d all be much more ‘you had to be there’
Than the experience of a movie
That you can talk to other people about
A hundred miles away
Entertainment drives community now
More than it ever has in history
And it explains a lot
The common tropes and myths informing us
Of how our lives should unfold
Shotgunning hope and confidence into certain sectors of the populace
While taking it away from others
We are all shaped by it
The connectors are the influencers
It’s what Andy Warhol meant when he said
“Life imitates art”
And that’s the problem
We’ve seen so many bad guys get their comeuppance
While sitting and watching
That we passively watch bad guys now
Wondering where the comeuppance will come from
The screen is an intimacy remover
A distancer
And a muter
And now with social media
We are all watchers
Participating online
Organized by the companies
Each one of us running our own media empires
Our own movie studios and television stations
Our own publishing houses and radio broadcasters
And the news now goes to the loudest shouters
And journalism itself has been decentralized

So I am old and lost in this new storm
And I am so damn curious
About the ones that grow up here
In this web

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I see a lot of old movies with a ‘player’ character.
A man trying to charm every woman he meets.
I see him portrayed in these movies as a scamp.
A rascal.
Someone worthy of an eye-roll.
Or if he attempts an actual assault, worth a slap.
And even that is portrayed as roguish.
The aftermath relayed to others with a laugh.
But if he persists.
If he ignores the slap.
The woman’s anger is portrayed as just half an inch to the left of passion.
Her furious resistance dancing over to kissing and clutching in the face of an unrelenting onslaught.
Overpowering her defenses.
Him sparking consent with raw dominance.
That this was encouraged horrifies me.
Its rape played out as romance repeatedly on the big screen.
That constantly seeking out partners
Tricking them into sex
Is a noble pursuit
A noble male pursuit.
Woman who do it are branded.
Don’t get me wrong.
If it was portrayed as an equal opportunity pursuit, it wouldn’t be better.
It’s just so that I so rarely see a meeting of romantic equals on the screen.
A union based on consent and straightforward communication.
A relationship.
I hunger for it.

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Ferris Bueller’s Day Off 2 Pitch:

The sound of Yello’s ‘Oh Yeah’ can be heard in blackness. Some ambient sound of shoes squeaking, some indistinct chatter. The sound of the Yello song becomes increasingly tinny and we realize that it’s on the radio. It fades and the radio announcer comes on announcing that it’s an 80s retro radio station in Chicago and starts to read a weather report for the day before someone clicks it off.

Voice 1: Ferris? Ferris? Dr. Jenkins!

The scene fades in an establishing shot of a care facility. The sign out front reads “Buffalo Grove Home for the Aged, Chicago Illinois”.

Dr Jenkins: What’s the matter? What’s wrong?

Voice 1: What’s wrong? For Christ sakes look at him. Ferris?

Dr Jenkins: Mr Bueller?

Closeup on Matthew Broderick’s face. He is old.

Matthew Broderick is an old man in an old folk’s home in a suburb of Chicago. He fakes a fever to get out of the day’s activities planned with the resident nurse. He calls his friend Cameron who is at a palliative care unit, unbeknownst to Ferris.

Cameron: I’m dying.

Ferris: You’re not dying. You just can’t think of anything fun to do.

Cameron: No, I’m literally dying. It’s stage 4 and it’s metastasized. I have a week at best.
Ferris escapes from the care facility and breaks bald, dying Cameron out of the hospital for a great day on the town in Chicago. One last day.

Cameron is quite rich but still lonely and sad. He’s resolute, however, and has managed to keep his father’s business thriving after taking the board from him at 21. He’s been the CEO of North Brook enterprises for forty years.

Ferris on the other hand, has wasted his life and squandered his potential. He’s gone from easy job to easy job, girl to girl, social group to social group, with the end effect that while he knows a lot of people and charms whomever he meets, he really doesn’t have his life together.

It’s filled with cameos from the original cast, some of today’s stars as Ferris and Cameron’s kids, a wonderful run-in with a bitter and furious Sloane Peterson, and a heart-warming bucket-list message about living life.

Either that or Ferris is dying after his life has petered out and Cameron is the long-game guy who now has tons of energy and comes to Ferris’s rescue?

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The universe is ending
The stars are going out
It's taken years for the light if 50s stars to reach me
My fathers stars
He watched them die as he grew up before death got him too
And now I watch the stars die
Hollywood's white dwarfs and quasars, red giants and blue pulsars blow up, go nova, and turn into black holes
Stars are said to have heat as they get famous and I am watching the heat death if the universe
The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long and a lot of stars die young. The Phoenix nebula. The great Ledger cloud. The Hoffman Spiral Galaxy.
Some new stars are born but these are not my stars. They belong to the the youth. I no longer know their names. Their light is faint to me.
My dad's stars preceded him to the other side. Edward G Robinson. Errol Flynn. Robert Mitchum.
And now mine are starting to go as well. Their deaths change the movies they were in. Patrick Swayze is a literal ghost.
Soon, most of my favorite movies will only hold memories of lives, records of performances from dead stars.
In the entertainment newspapers and TMZ, we watch the stars go out before they go out.
The universe grows and shrinks with every generation of performers.
It's an ebb and flow.
But I live for movies. The triumphs of those actors stories were my triumphs. Their sadness was my sadness. Besides my parents, movies were my parables, my teachers. Life imitating art.
As my teachers die, so I become a teacher.
And soon I will follow them into the blackness of space.
The universe is ending. The stars are going out.
Credits
The end
Fade to black

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In this movie, I play a young man who died of courage. It’s a talkie, one of those new pictures. I play a sort of a sexual beat boxer by the name of Standard Airbags. Rock stardom becomes rock bottom but after some night school, I become an optimistic optometrist. During the closing monologue, I pile my wit so high you can call me mount cleverest. In the final shot, I put the formal in formaldehyde. With clean teeth and a housebroken jailbreak, I become the scariest thing since Galactus of Borg.

It’s not the floss dreams or the montages. It’s the child actresses and cravat salesmen that make me see the world in black and white. Cecil B Demillions gave me a closeup that made me a star. Before that, I was an extra. Surplus in a crowd scene.

I drink rabbit beer made with bunny hops. I’m an out-of-work actor starring in a reality drama. I shun scripts and auditions. I’m a pillow fight in a prison.

In this song, she plays a young woman who plays the piano softly. It’s a hit single, one of those new low-down downloads. She plays a sort of sunset by the name of Emergency Exit. Hard Rock becomes a soft cell but after some tour buses, she becomes a poster child prodigy. During the final bars, she fills her gun with whiskey and takes shots. In the final refrain, she puts the ‘meh’ in melody and the harm in harmony. With a pent-up house and the second half of a return ticket down, she became the hippest thing since hip implants.

It’s not the butlers or the cross fades. It’s the script rewrites and circus bears that make her see the world in rainbows. Cthulouse Latrec painted a portrait of her that made her an icon. Before that, she was a menu. Food for second thoughts.

She drinks coffee with cough syrup. She’s a number one hit on the indie charts. She avoids furs and direct questions. She’s a summer vacation in the middle of a math test.

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I just saw a movie called Clean, Shaven at the VFS Tuesday night Film School which I attend as often as possible and occasionally host. It was hosted by Kryshan this week. The film Clean, Shaven uses sound and editing as a technique to put the viewer within the mind of a schizophrenic. It's a very effective film. I felt my own sanity peel back. I wrote a lot during the film. Here's what I came up with.

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People are rivers. Relationships are all about direction and rate of current. Whirlpools can last for entire marriages.
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The fact that this is all a consensual hallucination scares everyone.
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Insanity comes when simple questions cannot be answered.
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What I'm doing isn't crazy. It just doesn't make sense to you.
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You're operating under the flawed impression that 'we've all been there.'
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Crazy people following the trail of crazy people.
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When you're young, the parts of you are fun. When you're middle-aged, the parts of you are functional. When you're old, the parts of you stop functioning.
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Motion identifies. Motion also obscures.
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Something went wrong.
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I feel related to myself.
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Just as there is nothing outside, there is also nothing inside. The skin only marks a border. It's a flag wrapped around my soul.
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I am a sunset nation.
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I'm divining. I'm dowsing.
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It's not that I only use 10% of my brain. It's that I willfully ignore 90% of it.
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I'm not going crazy. I'm waking up. I'm letting it in.
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His head is a police radio.
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I get these little glimpses of my entire life as a whole so far.
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A return to order

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Fairly spoiler-free but not entirely. Read at your own risk.

Question: Who watches the Watchmen?
Answer: I do.

At the midnight showing at the Rio last night, I was proud to attend the premiere of The Watchmen, the new movie directed by Zack Snyder based on the seminal 1986 graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. I wanted to catch the midnight screening premiere before impressions from the rest of my friends started flooding in. Even knowing that it was three hours long didn’t stop me.

The sold-out audience at the Rio last night had a hundred of my friends mixed in with them, including the projectionist. There was a costume contest to kick off the show and the winner was a guy dressed up as a grumpy Alan Moore. Witty. As the lights went down, the guy in front of me put his X-Men comic back into its plastic bag and settled in to watch the show. That alone let me know that I was with my tribe in a neighborhood theater, ready to watch the show.

I was tired and the experience was like a dream. I am here today on my lunch hour on the day after, sunshine coming in the window, and I’m reflecting.

I was in The Watchmen. I was an extra in the riot scene where Nite Owl and The Comedian come down and start shooting into the crowd. I didn’t see myself in the background but the scene went by pretty quick. I’ll frame-by-frame it later on DVD. My friend Lori Watt played Rorshach’s mom. That was awesome. I’m pretty sure another acquaintance played Andy Warhol during the opening credits. I’m glad that they used a lot of Vancouver talent in the film seeing as it was shot here. Almost all of the exteriors were built on one giant lot here in Vancouver and for three glorious nights, I was suited up in late 70s gear and rioted underneath the Archimedes owl ship. Seeing the movie, I recognized almost all of the exterior locations from that one giant set.

Being an extra in that movie was like starring in a geek porno. Seeing it on the screen was an almost metaphysical experience.

I can appreciate the choices that Zack Snyder and the studio made. The fact that so much of the comic actually did make it to the screen is a testament to brass balls and power struggles that probably took years off of Zack’s life. I’ve read the screenplays that have been written over the last twenty years in the various attempts to bring this film to the screen. In one, the movie opens with super-heroes battling it out on the head of the Statue of Liberty. In various versions they’ve tried to cut out Mars, Rorschach, the Black Freighter, any sex, setting it in the 80s, and the ending. They’ve tried to add a list of other characters and plot lines to make it more digestible or contemporary for modern audiences. They all failed and never made it to the screen.

Thank God. As my friend Alannah New Small summed the experience of watching this film up perfectly when she said, “It was way better than I feared it would be.”

I need to say that I agree with the choices movie-makers made. When the movie doesn’t get it right, it’s at least attempting to get it right. When the movie does get it right, it hits it out of the fucking park. For that alone I’m grateful.

The criticisms I’ve heard so far are valid. It’s bloated and clumsy in places as it struggles with the source material, the makeup on Nixon and Carla Gugino is a little overdone, and the CG on Billy Crudup suffers from a little ‘uncanny valley’ action. Malin Ackerman, Mathew Goode and Carla Gugino turn in performances that are less that vibrant and oddly stilted. And while I like the tweaked ending, (or at least recognize the simple necessity of it from a screenplay standpoint) I know that it’s going to rankle the purists.

I’m going to watch it again, probably twice, and then I’m going to watch the DVD extras and the interviews and the Black Freighter and the Under the Hood documentary and read the graphic novel again. Then I’m going to wait for the super-special deluxe DVD Box set edition and watch that.

I think it’s a laudable attempt at getting it right and probably the best attempt that I’m likely to see in my lifetime. Thank you, Zack Snyder. You’re going to be attacked mercilessly over the next year for this movie but I’m on your side.

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I thought it would be funny to mix up Wolverine from the X-Men and that old film Logan's Run. It's a great idea. I think it's a winner. Very silly but good.

Mutant powers kick in at 30 years of age.

This whole society knows what happens when a person gains their mutant abilities. Sure, some of those powers are benign. The ability to sculpt light, for instance, or the ability to perfectly mimic the sounds of animals.

But more often than not, the powers are terrible and evil. Like the ability to read minds and influence memory. The ability to manipulate metal with a thought. Invulnerability. Flight. Heat vision.

As the man said, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The mutant wars of the past nearly caused the extinction of the human race. It was a close war. All of the mutants were killed. The surface of the Earth was ravaged, though, and it was only through the minds of the brilliant human scientists that the human population was saved.

Humans live in domed arcologies now. The cities are utopias. The cities are peaceful and optimistic. The populace is physically fit and happy.

They all commit suicide on their thirtieth birthdays in giant cremation ceremonies that the whole cities attend. They are called Renewal days. They keep the society free of mutations and the possibility of extinction. They give their lives to keep the human race free of super powers.

This is the story of James Howlett, otherwise known as Logan. He is a police officer. He is known as a Wolverine.

There are small numbers of people in this society who believe that state-sanctioned suicide on one’s thirtieth birthday is wrong. They hide out. They wait for their mutant powers to manifest. They try to live in secret or escape the arcology.

It is the job of the Wolverines to hunt them down and kill them before they team up or attempt to disrupt the society.

Logan is 29. He is smart. His grandfather was one of the scientists who made the society. He is a fierce fighter. He was looking forward to the Renewal society but he’s having second thoughts.

On his thirtieth birthday, he didn’t go to the renewal ceremony. The age-sensor underneath his skin turned red. He was a mutant now.

He was caught on a main thoroughfare and shot by his fellow Wolverines.

His wounds healed instantly. He killed his friends and escaped out into the wastelands.

He is there now, starting a home for other mutants.

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On the planes in between New York, Vancouver and Scotland, I watched a lot of movies. It was cool. I also saw a few in the theaters. I got caught up a lot. It was awesome. Here are my views on them.

I Am Legend

I only saw the first half of this one before we had to land. My impressions were that the CG ruined it and that the product placement was out of control. I’ve heard a lot of bad things about the ending so I’m guessing I didn’t really miss out. Wil Smith seemed to do a good job, though, from what I saw.

There Will Be Blood

This was an intense character study that I could only appreciate by going into symbolism and metaphor. I figure it was symbolic of the competition between organized, profitable religion and organized, profitable capitalism. It was interesting to note the differences in the two forces, namely that Daniel Day Lewis was getting his drive and inspiration from the black, tangible, blood of the earth that he himself dug down and extracted while Paul Dano’s ‘Eli Sunday’ character got his drive and inspiration from the ethereal, belief-driven religion of his followers that he had to create by whipping his followers into a fervor. They both pretended public meekness while practicing cut-throat ferocity behind closed doors.

There are those that believe that the film was pointless in the extreme and that Daniel Day Lewis was a hammy over-actor. I, myself, could see the subtlety in his character and I thought that it was a fascinating and well-shot radical departure for Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, Boogie Nights)

Jumper

Hayden Christensen plays an alienated teenager that discovers that he can teleport. He amasses a personal fortune through theft and lives the life of a stylin’ billionaire before discovering that not only is he not unique, there’s also a secret-society group of radically religious people out there (headed up by Samuel L. Jackson) that kill his kind. Jamie Bell (from Billy Elliot) plays a scrappy loner teleporter who befriends him and the chase is on.

I thoroughly enjoyed this schlocky little film as a ‘what if’ about people who can teleport. There were a lot of special effect chase scenes and other little touches that I enjoyed but hey, I collect comics. Definitely not a deep-thought kind of film but I don’t think it deserved the outright thrashing that it got.

Beowulf

Hilarious from start to finish. Photo-realistic in places but utterly silly throughout. If I had taken it seriously, I would have called it garbage. Luckily I didn’t and I had a good hearty chuckle. Mocap, facial tracking, obscenely expensive plugins/shaders, and big stars doing the voices do not make a good CG film. Hopefully this travesty will be the appalling high-water mark that finally lets the studios out there realize this fact.

The Savages

Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman pay the bills. In my eyes, it was an embarrassingly autobiographical account of two estranged siblings putting their dying and forgetful father into a nursing home. If you’re a real fan of either actor or you’ve recently had your father put into a home, maybe go see it but other than that, meh.

Sweeney Todd

The songs suck some serious donkey balls (with maybe the exception of the song where he sings to his long-lost razors) but the parts in between the singing are sumptuous and amazing to behold.

Much gorier than I was expecting. The amazing combination of Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton yields spectacular results.

It further proved to me that Alan Rickman has surpassed humanity and has become some sort of acting god. The man can just twitch a nostril and he has my complete attention. What an actor. Jeez.

And an awesome little cameo from Sascha Baron Cohen (Ali G, Borat, the French race car driver in Talladega Nights) who continues to impress in every role he’s in.

Charlie Wilson’s War

I love this movie. And by that, I mean I’m going to buy it. Seriously. Well-crafted, well-acted, well-shot, and well-written. The dynamic between Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Julia Roberts is fantastic. That’s not a sentence I ever thought I would write. Amy Adams in probably my favourite actress these days as well and she does not disappoint in this film. Ned Beatty even gets in on the act. It highlights the problems that Afghanistan’s facing and it shows a little slice of the governmental process. Rent it. Seriously.

Iron Man

Love it. Case closed. Fantastic movie. Robert Downey Jr. was perfect casting, Jeff Bridges chews up the screen with a rockin’ beard, the effects are great, ‘helmet-cam’ looks wicked, and I even enjoyed Gwyneth. A great adaptation of the comic book for the screen in my opinion.

With the exception of Terence Howard being the black guy who says “Damn!” at one part. Not Another Teen Movie has forever ruined movies for me that feature one black actor saying things like “Damn!”, “Shit!”, or “That is wack!” at key points. This was one of those films. I think someone in Hollywood should declare a moritarium on this behaviour.

In Bruges

Pretty good. Gets really heavy-handed and formulaic when the pay-offs start coming down the pike in the third act but the premise and the dialogue in the first two acts are golden. Really good stuff. Colin Farrel and Brendan Gleeson both at their most likeable. Ralph Fiennes tries his hand at being a rabid baddie but it doesn’t really work in my opinion. I think he’s more effective when he’s calmly insane like in Schindler’s List rather than growling and barking like in this movie but hey, whatevs. I recommend it.

Son of Rambow

Fucking brilliant. Go see it. Amazing low-budget British film. Not part of the Rambo franchise. Super awesome. I’m going to buy it as soon as I can so that I can show it to everyone I know.

So there you go. Those are my nutshell reviews of a good, hearty bunch of movies.

Auditions. They ruin your sense of individuality. Sometimes in a good way.

There are one hundred and sixty-eight talent agencies in this city. They all have a stable of actors that suit most occasions. The call goes out for ‘handsome African-American male, mid-fifties, glasses and a suit’ and the agencies rush to supply the need.

This time, the call was for ‘extremely tall white male, very skinny, missing right arm, eyepatch, scarring, tattoos and a pronounced speech impediment’.

That’s me.

I got a job with the talent agency in the hopes that I could possibly play some hideous mutants or circus freaks and make some extra cash. This is a movie town, after all. I’ve heard it said “If you can’t hide it, decorate it.” and that’s what I’ve done. I have tattoos. I stand up straight. I take my shirt off at rock concerts regardless of my scars and prosthetic arm.

It was a logging accident when I was a teenager. A petrol can exploded and threw me against the bucket of a bulldozer, slicing off my arm. I lay there burning while my co-workers tried to beat out the gasoline fire with blankets. They didn’t realize that they were only fanning the flames. It took one of the older guys to realize that wrapping me in the blankets was the only way to put them out. We were out in the deep forest. There was no way anyone could get me to a hospital quickly.

I also lost my right eye and part of my jaw as well which gives me a lisp that I still haven’t been able to get rid of, even with speech therapy.

Mostly, I get by with a smile. I look terrifying which is pretty cool in most situations. It’s not too cool when I’m trying to pick up a girl or make a new friend. A lot of people say hi to me and invite me to parties because I’m local colour. I’m a freaky feather in the cap of most popular people.

They don’t hang out with me, though, and that’s the rub. I’m a bartender in a dingy bar and for the most part, I like it that way. I chat to most of the regulars and my ‘right hook’ pours the pints just fine. It leaves my days free for auditions and watching movies. I don’t go out in daylight unless I have to.

So I figure I’m pretty unique. This is a big city, though, and I know there are a lot of freaks.

Even knowing that, it didn’t lessen my shock to see the waiting room for the audition.

There must have been around eighty versions of me there. Eighty tall, skinny guys missing their right arms. They all had scarring. Some from burns, some from blades. They were all tattooed. Some with full-body sleeves, some with just a little ink on their arms. It was like a pirate convention there with the eye patches. There were a lot of glass eyes as well. The whir of servomotors in the arms was a constant insectile buzz.

It was a little like heaven. I was prepared to be the only one. I was prepared for the audition to be a formality.

Instead, I made eighty new friends. We talked about the pros and cons of the different prosthetic arms on the market. We talked about the pain of skin grafts. We admired each other’s tattoos. There was a lot of phone-number swapping and promises of future meetings.

We’re thinking of forming a club that meets once a month at my bar. I can’t wait.

tags

So it's like this. Ed Wood's movie Orgy of the Dead has been turned into a burlesque production for the stage by the Screaming Chicken Theatrical Society. They do it every year.

In the play, a young couple get caught in a car wreck and wake up in a graveyard only to be kidnapped by a mummy and a werewolf. They're brought to the Lord of the Underworld and his dark mistress, chained up, and forced to watch a cavalcade of grotesque members of the undead. The members of the undead are burlesque numbers.

On the stage, there are a couple of oiled-up giants that interact with the ladies if they require it and keep the stage clear of discarded props and costumes. No lines but they're on the stage for pretty much the duration of the show.

One of thier giants quit two weeks ago. I go to a lot of their shows and I know a few of them to say hi to. At one of their shows recently, they were lamenting the fact that they had no giant. Where could they find a giant on such notice? Where on Earth?

Well, I'm really tall. They asked me. I volunteered. Bob's your uncle.

So I performed two shows on Friday night and two shows on Saturday night.

NOW

My friend Kryshan is a director of movies. A real up-and-comer, if you will. He's always got a film going on. He needed some extras for a television pilot he was filming this weekend.

The television pilot's set in an office so I had to look like a high powered businessman. I had the ponytail (the 'ponis') and the suit.

SO. YESTERDAY.

Me at 10 AM.

Me at 10 PM.

Not the most surreal or crazy day I've ever had but looking back on it, it's up there. Man, it was a great time. I'm not an actor anymore but apparently I play one in the movies and on the stage.

Good times.

tags

Heavily abused by the last two episodes of season one, Heroes came out of the gates this year like a freshly-blinded kitten with polio.

It ambled. It limped. It bled all over the track. It mewled horribly. It cried for its absent mother. It was a horrible and pitiable sight to behold. The image of something so defenseless, cuddly and undeniably beautiful treated in such a fashion made my blood boil until, powerless, defeated, and resigned, I had to squint my eyes shut and merely look away. I bit my lip. I choked back tears. I managed to get myself under control.

It was merely more evidence of the entertainment industry's ironic cruelty to successful creative endeavours. The cash-coloured spotlight of Sauron's Television Eye had settled on one of the most tightly plotted and well-written comic-book-based series ever. Producers descended like some weird form of vultures that fed on the thriving instead of the dead.

Compromises surfaced like corpses in a swamp in the form of plot holes and new characters. Obvious byproducts of behind-the-scenes power struggles, they were horrific blights. The show merely becoming the latest Great Thing to be ruined by rich people taking an interest. It kept me awake for a couple of nights until I had to get over it, accept another lash on the back of my comic-book-collecting childhood, and keep on trucking.

I'll resist giving spoilers. One thing I can say, though, is that the show's creators listened.

This season is almost a mirror image of the arc of last season.

The first seven episodes or so suck donkey testicles.

The last three or four episodes are edge-of-your-seat awesome.

Apparently Tim Kring listened to the boards, said "Yeah, you're right, world. It's blowing stronger than Katrina. We will fix." and they did.

I'm happy.

Here are the awesome opening credits to the movie The Kingdom.

Watch on YouTube