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Sounds right up my alley

“Idiocracy” is a movie that looks stupid, but only in the service of astute commentary. As a prologue explains, smart people are getting outnumbered. While the intelligent tend to be careful about their breeding, a lot of morons are not; too boneheaded to think about birth control or sensible family size, they’re cranking out more dumb babies every day.

So when soldier Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson) wakes up 500 years in the future, the result of a botched hibernation experiment, he finds the country hopelessly dense and incapable of solving the most basic problems. Buildings are teetering and collapsing. Garbage towers high in the streets. Farm fields are barren because a sponsor pumps salty energy drink into every place water used to be — including the irrigation systems.

Most everyone in 2505 is a mouth-breathing lout, barely capable of forming a sentence. They’ve elected as president the guy who seems cool to them, a loudmouthed porn-star wrestler (unfailingly funny Terry Crews, the dad from “Everybody Hates Chris”). They pass their days consuming, defecating, fornicating and gawking at anything that goes boom. Then consuming some more. And because they don’t know any better, they’ve let themselves be co-opted by corporate marketers, taking brands (“Frito”) for names and wearing disposable clothes covered with ads.

Mike Judge (Beavis & Butthead, Office Space) is the creator. It’ll still have to go behind Borat, though. THERE IS NO STOPPING BORAT!

Snakes On A Plane … Send a Message From Samuel L. Jackson!

I watched Tony Takitani today. It’s based on a short story by my favorite Japanese author (Murakami) …then again, I really only know two Japanese authors. Anyway, he’s a good one. Here’s the synopsis:

Tony Takitani had a solitary childhood. Being alone was normal since his mother died young and his father was always away with his jazz band. At school he studied art, but while his sketches are accurate and detailed they lack feeling. Used to being self-sufficient, Tony seems to find emotions illogical and immature.

After finding his true vocation as a technical illustrator, he becomes fascinated by Eiko, a client who in turn is fascinated by high end fashion. Eventually he marries her, and his life changes. He feels vibrantly alive and for the first time he understands and fears loneliness. But her obsession with designer clothes begins to worry him. When he asks her to economize, the consequences are tragic.

It is quite a good movie; subtle, symbolic, powerful. Very much a minimalist masterpiece of love and longing and loneliness and isolation.

Jamie would not like this movie because the visuals are so austere; very flat colors with lots of stark contrasts (almost black and white movie level), but with spots of color at interesting or crucial points (interesting points in the frame, rather than in the story). Like the expression of an emotion that you just can’t keep contained. Did I mention the movie was subtle? Because it is.

In other words, the movie is very Japanese.

Murakami, who is as popular in Japan as, say, Stephen King is here, writes these strangely compelling stories, filled with supremely flawed characters who exist in a sort of narcissistic existentialism world. Some of his overriding themes are loss, solitude, despair… and love. For example, in A Wild Sheep Chase, the divorced, chain-smoking loner protagonist falls for a woman who has ears so enticing that she can never show them in public lest they cause a disturbance. And yet these characters function, in society and in the story, organically. And you, the reader, understand and love these characters by understanding their quirks. Understand and love them without explicitly saying so, because with understanding comes love, and your attention and interest in them is an expression of that love. No garment rending or grandiloquence required.

Like I said, very Japanese.

The pallette chosen by the director for the movie was deliberately muted in order to better reflect Murakami’s literary world. Much in the same way you would want a Luhrman adapting Allende‘s House of Spirits instead of an Aronofsky, I think the director was perfectly suited to the Murakami material.

There’s a gallimaufry of art house Art in the movie as well, which can float your boat or not, depending on your tastes. For me, it’s like a relaxing, thoughtful zen interlude amidst all the strife and turmoil of life. An expression and reflection of outward calm amidst crushing isolation and loneliness; an imposition of discipline to reign in some of the wild, potentially explosive emotions in life. The restrained formalism is also a nice counterbalance to the so-real-you-can-smell-the-horse-shit reality created in a series like Deadwood and without the overwhelming opulence and beauty of a Wang Kar Wai flick like 2046 or In the Mood for Love (the heartbreak remains).

From Murakami’s narrator, talking about the protagonist:

And even the emotions he had once embraced gradually receded from his memory.

His memory gradually shifted, like mist in the wind, growing dimmer with each change.

There’s more to it than that, of course. There’s some truly whack psychosexual overtones for the second half of the film (not to worry, it doesn’t take a turn to Audition land). Good score to the movie as well, also done in a minimalist, spare fashion (solo piano throughout, unless I missed some parts).

As for the actors, Rie Miyazawa, the lead actress (there are only four credited thespians in the movie) first became known to me from Twilight Samurai, where she was as striking as she is here. Turns out, she’s had quite the turbulent life (apparently,I’m not alone in constantly thinking “someone give this girl a sammich” whenever she’s on screen). I could find less about Issei Ogata, the actor who plays Tony.

Definitely very Japanese.

S-H-Y-A-M-A-L-A-N

Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan made his smallest splash since his Sixth Sense breakthrough with Lady in the Water, his first major feature apart from Disney. Shyamalan’s self-described “bedtime story” drew $18 million at 3,235 venues, compared to the $50.7 million debut of his last picture, The Village. According to distributor Warner Bros.’ research, 56 percent of the audience was female and 64 percent was under 25 years old, while the verdict from moviegoer pollster CinemaScore was a discouraging “B-.”

Funny, that’s also how you spell “hack.” I should have included him in the Ratner v. Jackson discussion too.

Looks like that decision to direct “Lady in the Water” over the award-winning, popular, yet plagiarized, Life of Pi wasn’t the wisest movie ever, eh?

Relax. I didn’t do it. Even when I wanted to step to it.

What I did do is come across this great video of a portion of a talk by a sorta-famous, pretty successful movie writer/director. Watching it made me realize something – in an alternate universe, my Hollywood career would not have been like Joss Whedon’s. No, he has far more warmth and humanity than do I, is less aggressive, and is a natural.

I would have, instead, been more like Kevin Smith. The foulmouthed suburban irreverent smartypants white boy, Kevin Smith. Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma. That guy. Fuckin-A, he’s a much better comp.

Here’s the video. Watching it, if you know me, you will, I’m sure, see many parallels. Humor, language, the asides. Well, except the part where I can’t tell a good story (and this one’s a good one. I was captured by it, anyway).

Seriously, though, listening to Smith is like hearing alterna-me. Only, you know, talented and shit. And I wouldn’t have cast Linda Fiorentino.

More proof:

Which director is the bigger hack, Brett Ratner or Peter Jackson?

Discuss

For my part, I’m going with Ratner. Ratner is the definition of ‘hack,’ while Jackson is the definition of ‘schlock.’ They’re both horrible, but when it comes to pure hackery, Ratner’s got everyone beat.

I dub thee, the Hackteur.

Jackie Chan apparently got shitfaced and then jumped onstage at a concert.

Jackie Chan disrupted a concert by Taiwanese singer-songwriter Jonathan Lee and exchanged insults with the audience, a news report said Tuesday.

Ming Pao Daily News quoted the 52-year-old action star as saying onstage that he was drunk.

Chan suddenly jumped on the stage Monday night and demanded a duet with Lee. He then tried to conduct the band but stopped and restarted the music several times, the newspaper reported.

aaaaAAActing! Genius!

Seriously, why does anyone pay to see M. Night Shyamalan’s piece of shit movies? He’s a one-trick pony. A 120-150 minute (feels like 3600) Twilight Zone episode with a Gotcha! ending.

Every. Single. Time.

Sixth Sense was the only one of them that was any fun, and that’s because Haley Joel Osment was pretty damn creepy. But after that it’s been nothing but ultracrap. Unbreakable? The Village? Signs? Fucking Signs?!? Add in the completely unwarranted [Name's] Title here and what you’ve got is a world class wanker.

I know why Hollywood puts up with him – because idiots keep going to his shitty movies.

This must stop, people! His movies are pedestrian in cinematography, his writing is clunky, his plot arcs are shit, and he’s so known as a Gotcha! guy that everyone predicts the Gotcha! (See, e.g., The Village).

This is the guy who fucking wrote Signs, people! Don’t give him any more money! Signs! The hamfisted allegory about faith (which in any reasonable world would be called delusions), the one where the little girl leaves millions of half-filled glasses of whatever everywhere and evil aliens who are allergic to water come to our 67% water planet to eat our 88% water bodies… just so a baseball swing in the living room will dissolve these Wicked Witch/alien things.

People get paid for this shit?

And don’t even get me started on his hubris at giving himself roles in his own movies when he can’t fucking act. At least Hitchcock, whom Shymalan obviously idolizes and thinks he’s better than, had the decency to make tiny, passby cameos.

Every movie Shyamalan makes has an ending as pretentious and enraging as Jacob’s Ladder. At least Jacob’s Ladder had some sweet sex scenes in it. I think. It might have been an anime alien/demon rape vine, but Elizabeth Pena was hizzot! Where was I? Oh yes…

I’m on this rant because the studios are pumping Lady in the Water like there’s no tomorrow and it’s driving me crazy. I hate TV. I’m so cancelling this bitch when they raise the rates.

Shyamalan’s pacing makes Ang Lee look like a manic on amphetamines.

Let’s chart the Shyamalan arc, then I’m going to make a WILD GUESS at the Lady in the Water spoiler.

1. Sixth Sense – pretty good
2. Unbreakable – OK
3. Signs – worm-infested, putresent, bloated and stinking in the sun piece of shit
4. The Village – worse than Signs
5. Lady in the Water – ____

OK, my WILD GUESS: Lady in the Water originated as a bedtime story, thus it follows that everyone in the movie is actually a character in the same bedtime story, and the movie is the telling of this story for you, the viewer. No twist ending, more of a revelation, and you’re supposed to go “wow, man! that’s so… recursive!” The SCARY BAD THINGS are either nightmares, page margins, or editors trying to reign in Shyamalan’s tendency to make 14 hour movies. Got that? It’s a story about being a story, and I’m guessing it will cast you, the viewer, as another character in that story so you are participant and observer. Like gonzo porn, only without all the cock.

Alternate, less interesting but more likely: Giamatti is a writer/storyteller, Story is his story, the wolves are his personal demons, and the movie is the story that he’s telling.

FSM, this guy bugs.

I think am pretty damn sure that I would rather gnaw my own arm off with the help of a rusty spoon, scoop out the subcutaneous fat in the now-severed limb, boil the fat, get the tallow, make some into soap and the rest into bombs, and then impale my right nutsac with a dull kebab while simultaneously rubbing my ass on a cheese grater than see Lady in the Water.

Unless you’re paying.

Joss Whedon at the Equality Now conference:

Equality is not a concept. It is not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity, we need it to stand on this Earth as men and women.

Serenity is being shown around the country right now as a fundraiser for Equality Now. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s good, and now you can for a good cause.

Whedon’s a good representative for what I consider the ideal of the creative class. Smart, funny, and using entertainment to show that which should be normal. No, not vampires and space cowboys, but gender equality. Right on, Joss.

Good Night & Good Luck, a sober, black & white take on the battles of Murrow, et. al., for freedom in the McCarthy era is a good movie. As Hollywood knows, however, good, sober, serious movies don’t sell.

This does:

No, I am not making this up. This is the cover the DVD pirates have made for their version of Good Night & Good Rack Luck.