Issue 193
News/Review: Ken Park: The review.
Recently, I discovered a new reviewer on the That Guy With The Glasses site I frequent. His name is OANcitizen, and his show is called "Brows Held High." His particular niche is reviewing bad Art-House and Independent films, showing that, yes, even in the case of Art House films, Sturgeon's Law, that 90% of everything is crap, still stands. One film in particular he reviewed is something that particularly struck me: Ken Park, the undistributed opus of filmmaker Larry Clark. For the record, Larry Clark is a filmmaker infamous for starting out as a photographer for most of his life (including a book which apparently inspired Taxi Driver) until going into film in 1995 with Kids. I have seen his films all the way up to this one, and the first three were particularly disquieting looks at the inner lives of teenagers. Ken Park, however, not so much, as somewhere between Bully and Ken Park, Clark seems to have discarded any regard for narrative. The film is split into five stories, each focusing on a member of a group of friends. Before one asks, the five stories are tied only in two ways: a photograph of the five, and a gratuitous three-way involving three of them.
1- Ken Park. The lead character of the film, only appears in two scenes: one at the beginning where he goes to a skateboarding park to shoot himself, and one near the end where Clark reveals that he did it because he impregnated his girlfriend, who isn't part of the five.
2- Shawn. This segment is essentially like a porno, except with better production values and hardly any set-up. Simply put, he propositions his girlfriend's mother, and she obliges him. There's hardly any conflict in this segment.
3- Claude. A skateboarder is abused by his muscle-headed father, who is also attracted to him. The dad is played by TV's Patrick the Starfish. You will never look at SpongeBob the same way again. For that matter, after reading up on the newer episodes of the show on TVTropes, and how everybody involved became unlikable, I'll never look at that show the same way again.
4- Peaches. An Asian girl tries to hide her sexual proclivities from her Fundamentalist father. She fails and he marries her. It'd probably be better to swallow if she wasn't of a race commonly portrayed as promiscuous in media.
5- Tate. He is a man who hates his grandparents for no real reason (they never do anything worse than pass off "Sibi" as a word in Scrabble during the whole film.) After doing a lot of unpleasant things, like abusing his dog or... what I will call "rehearsing for a play of the death of David Carradine or Michael Hutchence." Unlike some of the other graphic nude scenes in his previous films, Clark doesn't even try to integrate it into the story proper (even what little there is), and thus the story grinds to a halt. Then, he kills his grandparents while nude and gets arrested.
Simply put, I'm sure that if somebody else could remake the film, especially if they replaced a lot of the sex (Nobody thinks that American film boards should let their hair down more than I, but in this case, there's no real point) with proper character development and plot, who knows? Maybe it could even get a distributor in America, and if I ever meet Larry Clark, I am seriously considering telling him this, perhaps going so far as to talk about directing it myself.
Tract Reviews: That's Baphomet: A Masonic couple has their son attempt suicide. After being lectured on the dangers of Masonry, their son survives.
Still No Revival: Essentially a 50th Anniversary Retrospective tract, somehow managing to incorporate his fear of Muslims, Catholics, and non-King James Bibles. Interestingly enough, he even manages to, for the first time since he incorporated one of Laugh-In's many catch-phrases into one of his early tracts (with the possible exception of the tracts that talk about Harry Potter or Dungeons and Dragons, which don't count because he made abundantly clear that he doesn't understand a thing about either one), he actually shows some awareness of popular culture: He shows a family watching Family Guy.
Recently, I discovered a new reviewer on the That Guy With The Glasses site I frequent. His name is OANcitizen, and his show is called "Brows Held High." His particular niche is reviewing bad Art-House and Independent films, showing that, yes, even in the case of Art House films, Sturgeon's Law, that 90% of everything is crap, still stands. One film in particular he reviewed is something that particularly struck me: Ken Park, the undistributed opus of filmmaker Larry Clark. For the record, Larry Clark is a filmmaker infamous for starting out as a photographer for most of his life (including a book which apparently inspired Taxi Driver) until going into film in 1995 with Kids. I have seen his films all the way up to this one, and the first three were particularly disquieting looks at the inner lives of teenagers. Ken Park, however, not so much, as somewhere between Bully and Ken Park, Clark seems to have discarded any regard for narrative. The film is split into five stories, each focusing on a member of a group of friends. Before one asks, the five stories are tied only in two ways: a photograph of the five, and a gratuitous three-way involving three of them.
1- Ken Park. The lead character of the film, only appears in two scenes: one at the beginning where he goes to a skateboarding park to shoot himself, and one near the end where Clark reveals that he did it because he impregnated his girlfriend, who isn't part of the five.
2- Shawn. This segment is essentially like a porno, except with better production values and hardly any set-up. Simply put, he propositions his girlfriend's mother, and she obliges him. There's hardly any conflict in this segment.
3- Claude. A skateboarder is abused by his muscle-headed father, who is also attracted to him. The dad is played by TV's Patrick the Starfish. You will never look at SpongeBob the same way again. For that matter, after reading up on the newer episodes of the show on TVTropes, and how everybody involved became unlikable, I'll never look at that show the same way again.
4- Peaches. An Asian girl tries to hide her sexual proclivities from her Fundamentalist father. She fails and he marries her. It'd probably be better to swallow if she wasn't of a race commonly portrayed as promiscuous in media.
5- Tate. He is a man who hates his grandparents for no real reason (they never do anything worse than pass off "Sibi" as a word in Scrabble during the whole film.) After doing a lot of unpleasant things, like abusing his dog or... what I will call "rehearsing for a play of the death of David Carradine or Michael Hutchence." Unlike some of the other graphic nude scenes in his previous films, Clark doesn't even try to integrate it into the story proper (even what little there is), and thus the story grinds to a halt. Then, he kills his grandparents while nude and gets arrested.
Simply put, I'm sure that if somebody else could remake the film, especially if they replaced a lot of the sex (Nobody thinks that American film boards should let their hair down more than I, but in this case, there's no real point) with proper character development and plot, who knows? Maybe it could even get a distributor in America, and if I ever meet Larry Clark, I am seriously considering telling him this, perhaps going so far as to talk about directing it myself.
Tract Reviews: That's Baphomet: A Masonic couple has their son attempt suicide. After being lectured on the dangers of Masonry, their son survives.
Still No Revival: Essentially a 50th Anniversary Retrospective tract, somehow managing to incorporate his fear of Muslims, Catholics, and non-King James Bibles. Interestingly enough, he even manages to, for the first time since he incorporated one of Laugh-In's many catch-phrases into one of his early tracts (with the possible exception of the tracts that talk about Harry Potter or Dungeons and Dragons, which don't count because he made abundantly clear that he doesn't understand a thing about either one), he actually shows some awareness of popular culture: He shows a family watching Family Guy.
Labels: Film, Long-Form, Movies, Tract Reviews
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