http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Fri, 13 Aug 2004 09:57:07 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/08/13/095707.php Rick PowellI haven't tried to write a movie review for local "alternative" paper The Chicago Reader since the first month I moved here in 1989. The review was for Roger and Me and I paid for both showings I attended myself, at the now closed Cinearts (if I'm remembering correctly) on Michigan. At that time working a cashier job for minimum wage, at the long-gone Kenessey Gourmet Restaurant and Bakery on Belmont & Sheridan, that was a big outlay. I could have watched it once but I simply don't trust my first reactions to any movie; or, rather, two viewings only begin to satisfy my curiosity about what great movies have to tell me.[A woman babbles, speaking in tongues, perhaps, more and more loudly, two seats in front of me in filter as I'm writing this. It's starting to drive me crazy.]My review was fairly negative. Although I agreed with Moore's politics I thought he was far too glib and tended to make fun of everyone in the movie except himself, including people who had no real power to respond. Of course, from another perspective that just made the evasions and stone-walling of those who did have power even more damning. In the end though I thought that the left's supporting a political David Letterman so unequivocally was a compromised position at best. Moore's grown up quite a bit since then, and I have too I hope, although he's still too ready to go for the easy kill. The Reader's resident film critic, the estimable and inspiring Jonathan Rosenbaum, had already written a review. However, then-editor Joe Lenahan sent my manuscript back to me with handwritten notes: "I don't have the heart to just throw this out; for what it's worth I found your comments…interesting." Part compliment, part condescension. Oh well. I wrote a letter to the editor instead, critiquing Rosenbaum's overly positive review and the editor printed it. Rosenbaum responded. A couple more people wrote in to agree with me. Rosenbaum responded to all of us. I thought it was a lively and rewarding exchange and although I didn't get paid for it, it was still satisfying to see my ideas in print.I never tried to write another movie review for reasons that had to do with money, being involved in a 6-year relationship and with ACT UP, laziness, struggles with depression and disillusionment with my own writing and anyone's willingness to want to read me, etc. etc. In film school in Carbondale I was somewhat the teacher's pet, at least in heavy writing-oriented theory and criticism classes; the mechanics — the physics, if you will — of filmmaking always intimidated me. In my home town of Indianapolis editor Steve Sylvester of Stepping Out and later The Indianapolis New Times (now defunct like everything else I was involved with in this story) published 99.9% of what I wrote, partly because he had no one else writing decent reviews for him but mostly because, as he said several times, he was a real fan and he admired my sometimes fearless if out-there interpretations. That was generous considering the places queer/feminist theory took me when I looked at film in those days. I've apparently lost forever a New Times review of James Cameron's Aliens that proclaimed its having a pro-choice subtext. One letter to the editor from "Reading in Indy" took me to task but thanked me for my "spirit." Not that queer theory or feminism aren't still valuable tools. But I'm veering…Last week via email I contacted Bryan Wendorf, CUFF Big Cheese, to see if I couldn't get some review copies of the movies playing at this year's Underground Film Festival. I provided some links to both published clippings and blog stuff because although Bryan is very familiar with my, um, "acting" abilities (as "Rock" in "Fucked in the Face" and as "The Sex Slave" in "The Last Fuck," both directed with sadistic glee by the indomitable Shawn Durr. Alas, they're not porn.) I was pretty sure he didn't know I was a writer. After all, the last piece I'd gotten published was in 1997. Bryan replied a few days later that, sure, I could go pick up tapes at the Lake Street Screening Room in downtown Chicago. I actually ran into him as I was going out the gate of my apartment building and he confirmed that it was no big deal and also told me that yes, Larry Cohen would be attending the Festival but no, It's Alive, Cohen's early 70s schlock film about a killer mutant baby, would not be showing. Never mind I'd already written an article specifically about It's Alive and God Told Me To with the theme of Fear of Reproduction, or something.When I got to the Screening Room, no one was around at first, and I began pawing through the piles of VHS tapes. Cool! I can just walk out of here potentially with a movie that could change my life! Eventually an older dude came in and indicated with his body language that he really didn't appreciate a sweaty, bald, bike-messenger-type with a big-ass backpack getting in his professional, shirt-tucked-in way. I picked up my little pile of 3 tapes (didn't want to be too greedy) and got out of there.I chose Esther Bell's exist because I'd met Esther a couple CUFFs ago, had a nice conversation with her in Wicker Park's Earwax about her film Godass, which, along with Jem Cohen's amazing Benjamin Smoke, was a breath of fresh air in a fest filled with callow attempts by juvenile filmmakers to compete for who's the most "underground." Godass had characters and ideas instead of ciphers and poses. She talked about what it was like to direct Fred Schneider of the B-52s and the reaction of gay folks to her movie (I'm pretty sure she's straight.) So after that good experience — one of the great reasons to go to CUFF is to talk, and I mean really talk, to the filmmakers; everyone is really accessible— I was anxious to see what she'd done next.From the description in the press release and on the web site, exist reminded me of The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein, an anti-jingoism independent indie unfairly maligned by The New York Times' A.0. Scott in what I can only describe as a stupid review. (Scott's the kind of reviewer with so little self-awareness that he'll build a critique of a film not based on his own reactions, which he's apparently incapable of examining closely, but on his formidable skills as a writer: his reviews are more rhetorical than just about any major reviewer I can think of right now.) Bell's movie also deals with activists and activism, in this case, anti-globalization activists. I won't go into detail here because I'd still like to write a piece I might actually get paid to write; however, I will say that I was fairly ambivalent toward exist as I watched it, despite the groovy and cute male leads, that I grew progressively more irritated as I thought about it later, especially after I'd watched Jason Massot's politically-engaged and thoughtful documentary Seafarers, also in my little CUFF pile. Unfortunately, Scott's ideological criticisms of Hussein could be applied verbatim to the characters in Bell's film: "Their words are thoughtful, well meaning and maddeningly abstract, and the film shares their aloof, morally complacent detachment from the complexities of real politics." Bell embraces her characters so unequivocally, and her camera seems to have a bit of crush on one of the main characters, Top, that it's hard not to attribute the same aloofness and naiveté to the film itself. Top it off with a plot twist involving a not-so-updated version of White Man's Guilt… well, let's just say I was disappointed.I've only watched about 30 minutes of the third tape I snagged, Todd Verow's Anonymous, and I can already say I like it much better than any other Verow film I've seen except for his hilarious Once and Future Queen. Although the video has its share of preening narcissism, which gay underground filmmakers just can't seem to get away from — just once I'd like for one of them to resist showing his cock — this is the first flick that shows Verow has something else on his mind besides trying to "shock" with "bad taste," a tactic that usually bores the hell out of me, as in his dull, fatuously literal filming of Dennis Cooper's novel Frisk or in Take Away. It's solidly acted, so far, and astutely framed and composed, with none of the show-offy guerilla DV fuss and muss that mars some parts of Bell's video and has definitely been used too often in Verow's movies. It's nice to see him put his camera on a fucking tripod. We'll see how it holds up once I finish it. Video18612@blogcritics.org Fri, 13 Aug 2004 09:57:07 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/08/09/222937.php Rick PowellUntil the Chicago Underground Film Festival starts on the 18th I won't have the money to either go to the movies or rent DVDs; so, I thought I'd run down a few of the DVDs that have meant something to me during the five months I've been playing catch-up. Of the few things I missed about The States, one being Mexican chorizo (I mean that both literally and colloquially), another service I definitely missed was Netflix. Why everyone isn't using it I can't imagine.Another absolute mystery to me why the early work of an American independent director as initially important as Van Sant is still unavailable on DVD. According to Amazon, the brashly thrilling and ambitious My Own Private Idaho isn't even in print on VHS and has never been offered on DVD; while Drugstore Cowboy, beside which all movies about junkies fade into the background, is the only one of his important films in print. And as soon as Van Sant's reputed return-to-form was released, after the not-quite-there attempt in Gerry, it was wending its way to me from the number one slot on my NetFlix queue.And it didn't disappoint. Gus Van Sant's Elephant moved me more than any other film I saw. It's short enough and enigmatic enough, despite its surface simplicity, that I watched it twice back-to-back. If this placid film has a political message it's how futile the search is for either meaning or rationale in a seemingly unexplainable act of brutality like the Columbine murders, at least using our culture's traditional modes of inquiry: television news, police prodecure, modern psychology. The film's name is a mockery of these quests for single-paradigm explanations. In the scene that provides the only direct reference to the film's title the camera pans the contents of Alex's, one of the two shooters, room; the viewpoint pivots twice around its central axis: What's it doing? Cataloging? Searching for meaning? Or just killing time as the boys prepare for their big day. There: The answer is pinned to the wall, I guess, if you want to make that random detail the answer.In contrast to what you might expect from certain clueless reviews, Elephant's formalism humanizes the characters; that is, rather than confining these characters within a familiar narrative structure, where we already know the emotional high points and the cathartic pay-off, the ellipitical, overlapping exploration of time and experience during the single day of the shootings gives weight to the amateur performances and opens up the possibility of looking at the characters in other ways, abandoning preconceived notions about what happened and who was at fault. It's a reminder that generic conventions and expectations themselves, especially in the Hollywood system, frequently never allow otherwise compelling characters, not to mention ideas, to breathe. If that weren't true filmmakers would never have to make new endings to please the suits and the folks in the test screenings. As a result the smallest gestures and comments pulse with affect. When Michelle, played by Kristen Hicks, crosses in front of the camera as it's observing a football skirmish, she focuses oddly on something that the camera doesn't see, her eyes following the movement across the sky that apparently only she notices. I remembered that moment when she's shot later, the gun also off-camera; she asks the the assailants if she can help them.When Alex is taking a shower before going to school to massacre other teenagers as confused as he is his accomplice Eric gets in with him, saying, "I'm still a virgin, are you?" The first time I watched it I missed the second half of what Eric said, which was: "I've never even kissed anyone," he adds, proceeding to accomplish that goal with Alex. The amateurish nature of the performances makes moments like these even more-heart breaking and Van Sant uses them well. Having the main actors play characters with their own first names must have also enabled an uneasy identification for the actors themselves.The time-travelling, floating camera in Elephant, frequently just following one teenager after another, branching off when someone else catches its eye, far from being detached or distracted, expresses, through its formal use, intense interest in the characters and renders that interest stylistically as observation rather than judgment. I'm amazed that anyone came away from this movie thinking that Van Sant thought he had the answers as to why those two boys shot and killed their classmates. The quality of intense, quiet observation is not one that's exactly encouraged by our political and religious leaders or cultural gatekeepers. Americans love narrative; they want an end to things; they always want answers regardless of the violence done imposing artificial conclusions. Elephant is one antidote to that and, at this particular time in our country's history, we're lucky to have it. Video18469@blogcritics.org Mon, 9 Aug 2004 22:29:37 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/08/05/200159.php Rick PowellWhat would heterosexual filmmakers and scriptwriters do without homosexual panic, the fear of "going faggot" as Stephen King describes it in his minimally panicky and aptly named novella The Body, to make their adolescent comedies? Sometimes it seems like they couldn't make a move at all, as in turgid teen dramadies like American Pie 2 (or 3, I really can't remember which) which force ostensibly het young men into comprisingly "gay" positions: in Pie's case, forced by two female objects of lust to kiss their (boy)friends — with tongue. The humor depends on the audience's feelings of disgust at the characters' experience of humiliation; um, some might say torture.Director Danny Leiner has another way. In his cult hit Dude, Where's My Car?, referenced hilariously in H&K twice, Leiner pits his two male het leads in a kissing contest against Fabio and a bimbette and guess who wins — with tongue? It's hilarious, it's a great kiss, and it's only a non-sequitor if you ignore the affectional basis of all these buddy movies. It's the subtext that refuses to die and refuses to stay quite so sub. I mean even the movie itself says, self-reflexively: "It's obvious they're totally gay for each other."Newcity critic Ray Pride has this to say about Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle: "John Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg's politically incorrect, homosexual-panic-embracing screenplay is an equal-opportunity offender in its pursuit of twentysomething comic touchstones… Well I dunno about that last bit: you'd have to be pretty hung up to be offended by a movie so good-natured and with a lead so cute and open-mouthed. But what exactly happens when you embrace homosexual panic? In Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg's script it means every ten minutes or so some dude looks at your penis while you're pissing or sloppily swabs your full brown lips seductively (I'm right there witcha') or you trim your pubes in your roommate's room and ask said roommate to inspect your work (a warped queer-eye-for-the-straight-guy moment: "It makes it look bigger!"). And after each incident you either don't feel particularly creepy or you ignore the incident completely as if it's all part of your daily life. Considering how high a rating H&K is getting on IMDB (an average of 7.5 out of over one thousand votes) and the gleeful cackling farted out by all the potheads around me at CN14 this movie will do well and, despite the weird, not-quite-successful sequences like the blue-screened cheetah and the raccoon-puppet, that veer away from what Leiner does best — character-based comedy with an astute if skewed sense of cultural and social dynamics — I feel just fine about that; but I can imagine the folks who wouldn't be. Video18329@blogcritics.org Thu, 5 Aug 2004 20:01:59 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/07/29/031433.php Rick PowellThe Terrorist, a film by Santosh Sivan about, you guessed it, a terrorist — named Malli, played by Ayesha Dharker — is curiously apolitical; what impact it has relies on the spectator's response to aesthetics rather than politics. Or else it posits, if you've read any Genet, that aesthetics are good reasons as any to make a martyr out of oneself. Also, since the movie emphasizes the social dynamics and rewards of belonging to a tight-knit terrorist group rather than simply individuals committed to a particular ideology it suggests we can better understand the motivations of such young and seemingly naive suicide bombers. In an interview with David Walsh Sivan says as much: Here you have a group of young people, mostly teenagers. They are deprived of any kind of education, sex life, smoking, everything is considered harmful, and invariably most of them go off by the time they're 22. All of them are made to believe that being a martyr is the biggest thing to happen, and they're given fantastic funerals. It is like the ultimate high for a person in that kind of environment. The gorgeous cinematography, also by Sivan, illustrates differences in perspective, ideological and otherwise, through a constantly gliding camera, a shallow depth of field and selective focus: For instance a young boy who had just helped Malli cross a river undetected intently watches her leaving; on the left side of the frame, completely out-of-focus, several agitated human-shaped blobs take the attention away from the boy's face: he is oblivious to everything except his departing friend. Moments later the camera focuses on Malli in the boat while a single gunshot and Malli's startled expression tells us all we need to know. The moment is made all the more poignant by the fact that the boy was uninterested in Malli's politics and had in fact tried to persuade her not to go through with her plans.The incessantly dirging musical soundtrack somewhat mutes the effectiveness of the cinematography, however: putting blunt points on the subtlety of the images. Similarly but conversely, the immediacy of the amateur performances are taken down several notches by the deterministic nature of the accompanying music: note how, during an early flashback when Malli relives the aftermath of the massacre caused by the traitor, you can barely hear the conversation between her and fallen male comrade, another teenager, and billed as The Lover in the credits. Instead the musical accompaniment overwhelms what should have been an intimate moment between the two young combatants.An erotic subtext surfaces periodically with images of the helpless male/powerful female: the opening scene has a traitor bound shirtless, with pleading looks and pouty lips, and shot, in the head presumedly, by the female terrorist; the female terrorist comforts a fallen male comrade (later we find that he impregnated her before he dies but during their conversation this outcome is only suggested); the target of the terrorism is a male religious figure and although she kneels at his feet we know that she's the one with the power as she waffles about going through with the assassination, a power she ultimately elects not to exercise, not out of mercy for him but out of desire to see her unborn child.Although director Sivan takes a risk by subsuming specific political context (although, admittedly this might be a Western bias on my part) and the movie is perhaps a bit too beautiful for its own good, The Terrorist is rewarding for its suggestive landscapes, literally and emotionally. Video18002@blogcritics.org Thu, 29 Jul 2004 03:14:33 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/07/24/124627.php Rick PowellAs a critic who unfashionably believes that the android character of Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation explored the ethical issues exhaustively, some might say ad nauseum, involved in creating and dealing with artificial life forms, and that Scott's Blade Runner and Spielberg's AI are pretty much the only cinematic art to successfully deal with similar subject matter, and given Hollywood's track record adapting sci-fi, adding in my general indifference to Asimov, I can't say I was expecting much out of Alex Proyas' I, Robot. And indeed, the summit of philosophizing about the possible sentience of robots is attained with the lead 'bot's fleeting question to detective Del Spooner: "Who am I?" At least, I think that's what he asked. It might have been "What am I?" but the moment passed by so quickly I can't be faulted; and, of course, it was posited during a series of acrobatic escape moves (special effects) on the part of the robot.But really, it doesn't matter that much; I, Robot is still a good ride. Although it borrows heavily from both AI and Minority Report, and Blade Runner, for that matter, for its general look and feel, and it's nowhere near as inventive and fresh-looking as Proyas' own somber and menacing Dark City, it does have one thing that none of those other movies have and that's Wil Smith. A considerably more serious, and more seriously buff, Will Smith.Smith gives the first adult performance since his breakout role in Ali [edited by Rick]. He's a haunted man in this one, not the jokey sidekick, and he's the center of the whole movie, and so gone are the gratuitous one-liners accompanied by his trademark smirk; even his wise cracks are bitter and pointed. In terms of adult performance, I'm not primarily talking about the scene where Smith capably weeps revealing the origin of Spooner's prejudice against robots; no, the scene where Smith most shows his chops is when Bridget, the female lead character, admires Spooner's cybernetic arm as he's getting dressed. The scene seems to begin obviously as a shy, understated attempt at exhibitionist seduction on Spooner's part but once we see the mixed emotions of both pride and shame on Smith's face I realized the character was trying to make what was for him the most painful confession of all, a confession made all the more poignant when Bridget's human responses are overshadowed by her professional curiosity: she handles Spooner's arm and chest not as if it's a piece of meat or the wounded but beautiful body of an emotionally vulnerable man, but rather as an exquisitely crafted machine part, constructed by someone else. A rare, complex moment in a fairly simple movie; but it does make me wonder just who the "I" is in the title. Video17791@blogcritics.org Sat, 24 Jul 2004 12:46:27 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/07/23/111615.php Rick PowellWhile it was fun to watch Jean Pierre Léaud recreate his fevered reading of Jean Luc Godard's famous anti-establishment text outside the La Cinematheque Francaise during the week running up to the May 1968 uprising in Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci's sleek and dryly sex-obsessed The Dreamers contains hardly another passionate moment despite the full frontal nudity, both male and female, and the screenplay adapted by Gilbert Adair from his own out-of-print novel The Holy Innocents.As usual Bertolucci's fear of the possibility of gay sex seems paradoxically tangential — a spectator could hardly deny the possibility was there and it's all over the source material but nobody's doing any — and yet that fear determines and is reflected in the disjointed editing and confused character development. In a 70s interview with Gerald Peary Bertolucci confesses, revealingly : "I've been in Freudian analysis for eight years and I think 'adult' homosexuality is an impossible contradiction. It can't exist." Not for you, maybe. Under the eye of a less coy and more self-aware director the actors might have been able to commit to their characters' confusion; instead, it's replaced by a sketchy project on the part of the American guy, played tentatively by Michael Pitt, to change the French perverts. And this despite Bertolucci's obvious francophilia.Aside from the brief appearance by Léaud I didn't buy a single element of the milieu, most especially not the depiction of the student riots that erupt at the end of the film. In a 70s essay published in the Chicago-based radical film journal Jump Cut about Bertolucci's considerably more accomplished if equally coy The Last Tango in Paris a certain French filmmaker and critic is quoted as characterizing Tango's directing style as getting "fucked up the ass but refusing to come." If only The Dreamers were even that committed; it's more like an interrupted hand job with so much lube you can't feel a thing. To my mind one of 2003's most overrated films. Video17745@blogcritics.org Fri, 23 Jul 2004 11:16:15 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/07/22/234818.php Rick PowellI tear up fairly easily during movies. It's embarassing. I don't understand it really. Only that something about what I'm watching by-passes or jumps over whatever walls of cool intellect I usually have erected during my normal, non-movie watching life.Some recent examples include one of the endings (of the 3 or 4 false ones) to The Return of the King. Merry, Pippin and Sam find out that they're not only saying goodbye to Bilbo and Gandalf and Galadriel but also Frodo — forever. Seriously, I had to gulp down a sob. And that was the second time I'd seen it. In Prague, even, surrounded by what seemed like bemused and restless Czechs.I even teared up when the normal folks on the El train in Spider-Man 2 reached out their hands to keep an exhausted Spidey from falling after he'd saved them. I'm nuts, right? Maybe it's only during hokey cinematic moments like these I allow myself to be a blubbering sucker; the rest of the time I'm a blunt asshole.In a totally different vein during a documentary film I saw yesterday I did more than tear up, I blinked and two thin streams of salty fluid trailed down my cheeks. The moment was not during Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, although that film provided some harrowing emotional highs as well; no, it was watching Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, the world's largest commercial carpet manufacturer, in the amazingly effective and convincing The Corporation, admit to having a Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus conversion and in a speech to a convention calls himself and fellow CEOs, "plunderers" of the earth. I found it inspiring to hear him argue level-headedly, passionately and eloquently about the necessity of sustainability while making it clear that our current economic system is anything but sustainable. Further, and here I'm paraphrasing: "In the world I want to live in and the world I want to give the children of the future the way I conduct business for profit would be criminal."Easily as inspiring is the struggle of Bolivian peasants to wrench control of the water of their country — from U. S. corporation Bechtel —redefining it as a human resource and not a commodity. But then, this whole movie is instructive as well as being inventive, coherent and entertaining both as cinema and provocation, even moreso than Moore's film; based on Joel Bakan's book of the same name, The Corporation proves decisively that the documentary form is the most vibrant and vital it's been worldwide in quite some time. Video17730@blogcritics.org Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:48:18 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/08/06/182541.php Rick PowellI know I'm in the the minority who thought the first Lara Croft movie was a lot of fun; and, now I know I'm in the minority who think the new one is a big snooze. (The wildly uneven Salon critic, Andrew O'Hehir, disagrees with me; although, I must admit I can't be bothered to actually read his review.) After the much ballyhooed and endless glide off the skyscraper my date turned to me and said: "Is it over?" Not because he was ready to leave but because the sequence lasted so long that you just knew it had to mean something. Turns out all it really meant was an opportunity for Joel Siegel to gush ("People actually FLY!"). But alas the ride, if you can call it that, wasn't over. Unlike the first Tomb Raider, whose bungee and motorcycle fights I found clever and elegantly choreographed, and whose final Captain Nemo-esque set looked great, I can't honestly think of a single memorable shot or cool sequence in this one. And all the stunts are either monochromatic or clunky. Oh, wait. The night shot across the harbor in Shanghai, that was nice; but, it was a static shot.From the incredibly irrelevant, unconvincing, stupidly directed EARTHQUAKE! opening, to Jolie's mind-numbing delivery of plot exposition to the anti-climactic non-opening of Pandora's Box I kept being reminded of nothing so much as Batman. And I don't mean the movies; I mean the series.Those cheesy sets! Those cheesy set-ups! Lady Lara punches a computer-rendered shark and the shark screams! Lady Lara jumps on the neon dragon and rides it, slowly, toward the helicopter. That was supposed to be exciting? Your average episode of Xena was about a billion times more exciting and fun. And Ms Lawless had both better comic timing and fewer "turkey's done" slinky outfits. And so many action sequences began exactly the same way each time: Lara, caught in the cross-fire, scrunches up her face, tosses her fake hair to one side, face framed by her guns and dives sideways in slow motion as the bad techno blasts away. Seems like they failed to get decent coverage (and apparently an adequate budget judging from the styrofoam Cradle of Life) in the action sequences because they relied on a zoom lens for both wide shots and close ups, giving the movie a cramped look. The opening sequences were missing so many connecting shots I thought the film broke and had been spliced at some point. But no, it was just bad editing. I can't think of another recent blockbuster that was so poorly imagined and inexpertly shot. Come to think of it, I can't think of a recent bad movie that was so inexpertly shot and poorly imagined. There wasn't a single cool set piece I'd like to see again. Well, actually, I wouldn't mind seeing Gerard Butler with his shirt off again. Why couldn't we see some slow motion of him? Turn around one more time there, Gerard… no, no, keep your arms up. Yeah, just like that. Have to give it to Lara she has hot boyfriends and this one got to keep his chest hair and his accent, if not his life. Video7430@blogcritics.org Wed, 6 Aug 2003 18:25:41 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/08/05/054541.php Rick PowellIt's becoming increasingly clear to me why the government of The United States of America (and its servant/partner nations like Israel and Britain) and radical Islam are at each others' throats - it's because they're both run by fanatics. So much in common: Two fundamentalist religious ideologies, one rich and overtly dominant, the other poor and characterized by guerilla desperation, in a struggle for the hearts and minds of the world. We all know that radical Islam is a cult, and a violent one; however, the Republican Bush administration also behaves like a cult, not least in the way in which it refuses to be self-critical.Read through the list below and ponder. (I've highlighted my favorites): BELIEFS HELD BY CULTS The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment. The group is preoccupied with making money. (LOL - Rick); or, to put it another way: Cults, particularly in regard to their finances, are shrouded in secrecy. If one questions the beliefs of the group or the leaders of the group, one is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to even question The group is elitist, claiming it is the only one that has the truth, often claiming a special revelation. Members are the chosen people and are spiritually superior to other members of society; and further, the rest of the world is not saved, not Christian, not transformed (whatever) - the only valid source of feedback and information is the group The group refuses to consider that it might be wrong. Such groups often have a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with society. The group believes its exalted status or ends justify the means the group uses to achieve the ends. This is even though such means might be considered unethical or illegal by members of society, or members prior to their indoctrination. This list was compiled from a couple sources, here, here and here. Politics7404@blogcritics.org Tue, 5 Aug 2003 05:45:41 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/06/12/173251.php Rick PowellThe cover of Entertainment Weekly for May 30 displays yet another headline about The Matrix Reloaded: "4 Ways Its Blockbuster Debut Will Change the Way We Watch Movies." Of course, turning to page 9, I find the real subject is not how we watch movies; but, rather, how, or in this case, when, we go to movies: "Essentially, [we've] reprogrammed the public… to believe they must see a movie on opening weekend," says Fox Searchlight distribution president Steve Gilula. Nice choice of words, Steve.Wondering about the how or why of movie-watching is of course beyond the purvey of fluffy industry shills like EW and I'm sure Mr. Gilula couldn't care less; I mean, we might have to ponder those Twin Towers of American unmentionables: emotions and… and… POLITICS! "Entertainment," by consumer capitalism's definition, precludes both.Looking for emotional satisfaction or provocative ideas? For the former, you'd be much better off seeing Disney's Holes where you get some anti-authority kicks, girl- and kid-power, interracial romance, and some deliciously devilish performances from Sigourney Weaver and, in an especially funny turn, Jon Voigt.For intellectual stimulation the best bet right now is Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things. I've found LaBute's movies satisfying for their surface cynicism about romance; but, I've found them interesting and provocative for their materialism: In a sense, all his movies are about "the shape of things." We would all like to believe that our search for completion in another human being is unique to ourselves; LaBute's fundamental insight is that the whole romantic narrative is pre-determined from the outset: fuck the content, forget the character of the individual; so long as we cover the basic plot points we're all happy to go along for the ride. The contrived situations and slightly stilted acting style of LaBute's movies are formalist devices intended to highlight the deterministic nature of what we'd like to, more comfortably, consider as spontaneous and organic.The Shape of Things is perhaps the feminine revenge for LaBute's brutally masculine In the Company of Men, where two men play out a cruel romantic joke on a deaf woman. We eventually come to realize that the joke was also played on the audience as well as the other lead male character.Andrew O'Hehir's "review" of The Shape of Things is sometimes descriptive, often dismissive, frequently clueless (he calls the movie "earnest;" has he seen The Hours?), always glib. He accuses LaBute of being "a square Mormon dude from Wherever, USA, who's working too hard at being cool all the time." Sigh. And this from the guy who delivers the most seriously over-the-top, self-deluded review of The Matrix: Reloaded. (O'Hehir really needs to read Stuart Klawans dead-on critque of TM:R, titled, appropriately: "Medium Cool.") A future we can fight for? I'd say there's much more of a future to fight for within The Son's shattering, costly compassion than there is in the techno-religious bullshit in Reloaded, not to mention an economical, both emotionally and technically, method of filmmaking to be emulated not ridiculed. Which is to say, I guess: The Matrix Reloaded is a very American movie and The Son is more French. But then, in the same review, he calls David Cronenburg a "chilly intellectual, born and raised" (whatever that means) as well as arch Peter Greenaway. The Son was similarly, cluelessly bashed by Stephanie Zacharek, another frequently annoying Salon film critic. Her review is typical of much of Salon's film criticism. I often read Salon's movie reviews bassackwards: they often accurately describe, yet massively mis-characterize, precisely the sorts of movies in which I'm interested. Stephanie Zacharek's intellectually fatuous review of The Son employs the royal "we" over 24 times, suggesting that she really didn't know what she thought, arrogantly assuming she could predict how we might respond to the film. This also reveals a rampant editorial glibness (not to mention laziness: I wouldn't allow any writing like that past my desktop), extending to the often crass subheads of movie reviews: "Gus Van Sant escapes Hollywood! Famous indie director back to making boring little movies." Okay, folks, if you can so easily dismiss Van Sant's first three movies (Mala Noche, Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho) then clearly you have nothing to say to me that I haven't already skimmed over in Entertainment Weekly. It also casts doubt on Salon's ostensibly sincere commitment to cover "indie" filmmaking. At first, the editors felt it necessary to label film reviews with a warning label. I'm still waiting for the reviews of "way outside the mainstream Hollywood system" movies. Their absence might make you think that there aren't any. In short, I think Salon's commitment to independent filmmaking is mostly hot air and a disservice to Salon's readership. Reading Entertainment Weekly, sadly, might be a decent antidote. Video6132@blogcritics.org Thu, 12 Jun 2003 17:32:51 EDT