Issue 197

News: Laurel and Hardy are finally coming to DVD.
You may remember that last month, I made a list of the funniest movies, in my opinion. Of course, I made a few mentions of comedians/films I loved that I omitted from the list, and five stick out in my mind.
1) Woody Allen. As I mentioned, I had a lot of trouble narrowing it down to one good, representative film, and I was torn between five of these films.
2) The Ruling Class. I removed this film from the list mainly because it was unavailable at the Skokie Public Library, and, for a 1-disc, $40 DVD, it's pretty hard to find in the flesh world, but I strongly suggest that my readers seek it out.
3) Mel Brooks. I honestly don't know what happened there. I would have chosen Blazing Saddles if I managed to get it on the list, and recommended virtually all of his other films (except for Life Stinks.)
4)Buster Keaton. I love his works, but I still think that Chaplin is a better comedian. I still recommend The General.
5)Laurel and Hardy. Why did I forget to put them on the list? Because of their checkered history with DVD.
Until fairly recently, there were only a few DVD releases of their films, and here are my summations of what was available on Disc:
*TCM Archives: This two-disc set contains Fra Diavolo and Bonnie Scotland. Unfortunately, these films are definitely not their better works. Unlike the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy's films do not work as well when they're not the main focus.
*Laurel and Hardy Collection Vols. 1-2: These films are, in fact, widely considered among the worst of their careers. Somehow, these films were given a big boxed set treatment before their classic works with Hal Roach.
*March of the Wooden Soldiers: This film got a colourised DVD release from Legend films. Unfortunately, the nursery-rhyme themed work does not at all jibe well with the rest of their filmography.
*Flying Deuces. This film is in Public Domain, and, as a result, it has been given quite a lot of DVD releases, and the best one is, without a doubt, the edition by Kino, at a cheap (for them) $15. However, the film is not really that good, and the film's darker tone (they narrowly escape execution by firing squad only to have their plane crash) just doesn't work well with their pure slapstick comedy.
*The Lion's Gate edition of Sons of the Desert. This, unlike the others does contain a lot of the duo's best works, including Sons of the Desert, which would have been my own pick, if the film was on DVD, and Music Box, one of their best shorts. The problems? One: The picture quality of the DVD is abysmal, bordering on unwatchable. Two: It's out of print, and it sells for obscenely high prices (the lowest price I've seen on Amazon is $31 used, despite selling for $15 new.)

All this has changed with the recent announcement that RHI entertainment is putting out a 10-disc boxed set which covers all their films (except for the films in the first four DVD editions described) from the advent of sound film in Hal Roach Studios in 1929 to their last feature film for Hal Roach, Saps at Sea in 1940. For what it's worth, there was another DVD boxed set of all of their films until 1940, which, curiously enough, also omitted the same feature films as the new set, but also included the silent shorts they made together and colourised versions of the sound films, which, of course, made the European boxed set heftier. Of course, the loss of the silent films isn't too bad for me, because I, and, indeed, most fans, prefer the sound films.
However, I am still somewhat miffed by the fact that they removed the colourised versions, and unlike a lot of film buffs, I tend to have a nuanced view of film colourisation, and, while I know a lot of old Black and White Films don't work well in colour (I saw a colourised version of The Maltese Falcon, and the colour worked about as well as you would expect.) However, some films don't really lose much when colour is added, and Laurel and Hardy's films are among them.
Going back to the original topic, lack of colourised versions aside, it looks like this boxed set would, in fact, be an excellent addition to anyone's DVD collection.

In the meantime, if anyone wants to know my Laurel and Hardy Recommendations:
Shorts: Night Owls, Another Fine Mess, Berth Marks, Laughing Gravy, Helpmates, The Music Box, Them Thar Hills, Tit For Tat.
Features: Sons of the Desert, Chump at Oxford, Saps at Sea.

Film Idea: A sitcom about a high school academic bowl, specifically about the relationship between the coach (I'm currently thinking of an actor with an Estuary accent for some reason) and the five eccentric members of his team:
*A biology/life sciences specialist with a habit of dressing in odd costumes.
*A chemistry/math/physics guy who sleeps with anything that moves.
*A Generalist with Asperger's syndrome who struggles to fit into society.
*A hot-headed History guy with a specific love for the American Civil War who is prone to threatening violence on anything.
*The sports person, a chirpy lesbian with a love for bunnies.

Meditations of Dirkus Aurelius

I, Derekaxe, being of sound mind and body (as far as either of my parents care to know), and having reached the age of 21, have decided to share some of the many lessons I have learned in my life. Be forewarned that many of these lessons get dark and downright insane.

1.Never underestimate the possibility that both sides of a given conflict are beyond redemption.
2.Very few charities will accept sperm as a donation, even if it is worth more than they've raised all day.
3.There is no such thing as “The Song that Ends The Earth,” so quit trying to write it.
4.Using rabies to go back in time to become your entire male line of ancestors only works in Chuck Palahniuk novels.
5.Using rabies to go back in time to become both your entire male and female line of ancestors doesn't even work in Chuck Palahniuk novels.
6.None of Van Morrison's songs have actual lyrics.
7.Jumping into the shark tank at the Shedd Aquarium is a bad idea, especially when you're nude and fully aroused.
8.Stephenie Meyer will never allow a spin-off to Twilight where Bella dies and Edward and Jacob bond over drinks and realise how much they've been wasting their times with her to exist.
9.Do not expect people to agree with you that Thirty H's is one of the great short stories of all time, right up there with “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” “The Overcoat,” “Hills like White Elephants,” and “A Perfect Day For Bananafish.”
10.It was not Aquinas who said that the best things in life were “to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.”
11.The stars and planets do not heave through the void just to be “skewer't bypon ourn fagpoles.”
12.No matter how similar their shows are, HLN will never combine Jane Velez-Mitchell's and Nancy Grace's shows into one show called “Two Hours' Hate.” That would make too much sense.
13.Whenever you are in a hurry, the hounds of Hell will come to do everything they can to slow everything down.
14.Do not expect to be able to get a vegan to eat meat.
15.This goes triple if you've baked somebody who wronged them into a pie.
16.The Olsen twins will never sign on to a remake of Dead Ringers with themselves in Jeremy Irons' roles.
17.Doing a bad Billy Conolly impression somehow causes people to understand you more than speaking normally. Nobody knows why.
18.80% of all transvestites are heterosexuals. Don't expect anyone to acknowledge this fact.
19.Some people are sexually attracted to anything, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, many of whom are Dwarfs.
20.Drilling a hole in the ground and humping it does not count as having sex with the planet Earth.
21.“Devourer of Worlds” is not a title that you can add to the end of your name.
22.Do not expect to be able to get away with saying anything is against your religion if you just created it.
23.There is No Spoon.
24.Do not claim that you have come up with things that cause David Lynch to scream like a little girl until you've actually met him.
25.No matter how much you may think your life sucks, there is always somebody who has it worse. His name is Christian W. Chandler and he lives in Ruckersville, VA.

Issue 196

News: Top 15 funniest films (with honorable mention).
Last week, I met someone I knew from school at the library. We were in the video section, specifically comedy section, and he asked if I had any recommendations for comedic films. I ended up choosing "Serial Mom." As of that moment, I decided that I would create a list of my favourite comedies in case I ever met with him again. I have chosen one film from each of my favourite comedians because, otherwise I would never have been able to narrow it down, but in some cases, other recommendations by the same people are given.

Honorable Mention. Sophie's Choice.
Yes, I do genuinely love this film, especially because it is genuinely disturbing in ways that so many Holocaust films fail to be (even Polanski couldn't help but try to spin an inspiring tale of survival out of one of the most horrific events in human history. You may well ask, Why am I putting a film where a woman is forced to choose which of her kids should live in a list of my funniest films? The answer is actually relatively simple: The sections about the Holocaust only occur in about the last third of the film, and it is for its first two thirds that I put it on this list. There are two characters whose performances are funny enough to put it on this list: Kevin Kline, whose performance as Nathan is almost exactly the same as the performance he would use a few years later in A Fish Called Wanda (which I will cover later in the list), and Stingo's erstwhile love interest Leslie, who is a woman who puts up a pose as a foul-mouthed sex maniac to hide how frigid she really is, wouldn't be out of place in a Woody Allen film (He is not covered later in the list, as I couldn't choose between five of his films: Manhattan, Annie Hall, Sleeper, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Love and Death.)

15. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters
I must admit that I am a big fan of Adult Swim, and when it turned out that one of their flagship series has been given a film, I knew I had to see it. As it turned out, unlike a lot of TV shows that got adapted to film, very little of what got into the film would seem too out of place in the series itself, and, impressively for a show with 11-minute episodes, it doesn't feel like there's any real attempt at padding. That said, it's pretty much impossible to recommend it to people because, on the one hand, if you're not already a fan of the series, you won't become a convert, but on the other hand, if you are already a fan, you'll probably have either seen it or want to do so.

14. Kung Pow: Enter the Fist
In 2002, Steve Oedekerk found an old kung fu flick where a guy managed to weather several kicks to the groin. He liked it so much that he decided to insert himself into the movie (it actually kind of works, believe it or not), and create a whole new script which consists of the characters making odd noises and saying the most insane lines imaginable. Just one example: "I have been called bad before. Many have said I do things that are not correct to do. I don't believe in talk such as this. I am nice man, with happy feelings. All of the time. First, a joke. What do you get when you cross an owl with a bungee cord? My ass." Warning: This film is incredibly polarizing. People either love it for its complete insanity or hate it for those exact reasons.
Other recommendations: All Thumbs. It is a collection of several short films that Oedekerk made around the same time as he was making this film, where several famous films were parodied with a cast made entirely of thumbs.

13. The Butcher Boy
This movie is shelved in the "Drama" section of my local library, and it would seem, for the first half hour, anyway, to be like a lot of Neil Jordan's other films, about life in Ireland during the Troubles, but after Francie, our hero, breaks into his friend's house, the film goes completely off the rails as he starts hallucinating and pretending he is a pig, getting caught by his friend's mother crapping on the floor. By the end of the film, he is on a first-name basis with the Virgin Mother, has survived a nuclear holocaust, and killed said friend's mother Charlie Manson-style.
Other Recommendations: While I did mention that the director made other works, none of them even come close to this level of hilarity or insanity, although many of his other works, including The Crying Game, are quite good.

12. Catch Me If You Can.
I'm normally not that big a fan of Steven Spielberg's movies, but I actually like quite a few of them, but quite honestly, this film, one of his more underrated films, is probably the only one of his films which I really love. Unlike the previous three films on this list, it's not really that insane. What I really find interesting, and even quite amusing, is how easily a sixteen-year old manages to gain a job as a pediatrician, lawyer, and airline pilot simultaneously and even manages to hold on to all three for several years. Of course, having Christopher Walken as the dad really helps make the film funny. Also, this includes one of my favourite court scenes in a film.

11. A Shot in the Dark.
Peter Sellers is widely considered to be one of the funniest people to ever maintain a presence on the silver screen, and, as it turns out, The Pink Panther series is one of the best showcases he was ever given for his comedic talents. Of all the films in the series, the second, A Shot in the Dark, is, hands down, the best, because, among many other reasons, Sellers is, in fact, the star of this one (the first one has him only as a relatively small character). In theory, there were nine films in the series, but four of them were made without Sellers, and three after his death in a desperate attempt by Blake Edwards to prove that he was really the one responsible for the film's popularity, and not Sellers. For what it's worth, there was a reboot a few years ago, but it's not really that good.
Other Recommendations: The other four Pink Panther films that Sellers made (including The Pink Panther, Return, Revenge, and Strikes Again), Dr. Strangelove, and Being There.

10. Bratz
When I saw the trailer for this film before Harry Potter 5, I knew that this had to be utterly ridiculous, but eventually, I managed to see it, and only then did I manage to notice how utterly insane this film is. Like Buster Keaton's featurette Sherlock Jr. (A film which is not on the list as a consequence of shortening the list down), almost every second is either devoted to something utterly hilarious or is leading up to something. Of course, in the case of Bratz, the laughs are almost entirely unintentional. What kind of things am I talking about here? Here's a few: a Hispanic family which inexplicably has a live-in mariachi band, a girl changing her outfit out in the open, students who dress like dinosaurs, the popular girl brandishing a sword in her own office (which she apparently has), and, as you might expect from a movie based on fashion dolls, insanely unnecessary makeovers. No, I'm not making any of this up.

9. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Is there anybody who doubts that there is really much of a point to explaining why I would be into this sort of film? In essence, the film is roughly two hours of Johnny Depp and Benecio del Toro acting completely out of their gourds. How could that fail? It may be possible, but it certainly doesn't happen.
Other Recommendations: An adaptation of Hunter Thompson's novel The Rum Diary, also starring Johnny Depp has actually been made, and is currently scheduled for an October release. It may be saner, but it may be quite good.

8. Plan 9 From Outer Space
This film is widely considered to be one of the worst films of all time, and also the epitome of "So Bad it's Good." I tend to lean towards the latter, because the movie is way too entertaining to be considered the worst film ever. Here's the plot: two aliens in a spaceship made of paper plates decide to avert the creation of a bomb that can blow up particles of light, which would lead to the destruction of the universe. They do so by going to a cemetery and resurrecting two dead people, one of whom is played by Bela Lugosi except when he's not. All those two dead people do is wander around that cemetery and kill a police officer, and make him one of them. Eventually, two other cops go up to the spaceship and the aliens explain everything. Shortly afterward, they leave.
Other recommendations: Glen or Glenda and Bride of the Monster were made by the same guy, and a biopic titled Ed Wood was made by Tim Burton about the making of those films. Of course, a similarly ridiculous film is 1938's Reefer Madness, which is probably a better companion piece.

7. Modern Times
I must admit that this film holds a particular hold on my heart (reading about him made me want to get into film), but the main reason I only gave it #7 is that, according to many people, Chaplin's own sentimental style doesn't hold up very well. Although, that said, he actually does sentimentality much better than most filmmakers, even Steven Speilberg, and even then, he manages to put a lot of priceless bits into the film, from his going into a machine to tighten the nuts on the inside, while it's still operating, stopping a jailbreak while on cocaine that he accidentally ate, and even the rollerblading scene where he manages to evade falling off a ledge blindfolded several times.
Other Recommendations: While any of his films between 1921-1952 (with the possible exception of The Circus and the definite exception of A Woman of Paris), are, in my opinion, essential viewing, only Modern Times and The Great Dictator (wherein he takes on Hitler) are currently in print.

6. Borat
Of the many comedians I've talked about here, Sasha Baron Cohen is one of the very few (with the possible exception of Williams Street, who made #15, and Edgar Wright, who will be talked about below) who appears to currently be in the prime of his career. The fact is that Baron Cohen made his name on television giving interviews with three different alter egos: Ali G, a wigger who is incredibly dense, Borat, a Kazakh journalist whose humour derives from the vast differences between his culture and that of the West, and Bruno, an Austrian fashionista who interviews mainly show business figures and people who would not be very comfortable with his homosexuality. Each character is known to use their personae to paint a less than flattering portrait of the people they interview, and each character had a film devoted to them. Ali G's was, hands down, the worst, due to its complete genre shift, and Bruno's film was still quite funny and far more psychologically revealing for American Culture (as the commentary for that film will underscore), but in terms of sheer funny, Borat's film was definitely the best, and part of the reason for this is, despite all the bigotry that Borat displays towards blacks, women, and Jews (which Baron Cohen is), it's evident that the character is actually pretty good-natured. And despite the fact that all three characters have been retired, it seems like he's still going strong.
Other Recommendations: As mentioned before, I also liked the Bruno movie, and as it turns out, he's also making a film based on a novel by, of all people, Saddam Hussein.

5. Hot Fuzz
This film was the third collaboration of Edgar Wright (director and writer) and Simon Pegg (Star and writer), a team which has probably been the most popular and best thing to come out of British comedy since Monty Python (and any of its spin-off projects, which I will talk about below). This film's particular target is police movies, and what really struck me about this film was that, not only did they reference many cop movies, and deconstruct many of the elements that are in them, but that they managed to do a lot of research about what the police actually do, but that they managed to incorporate an insane amount of things that they learned about it(Yes, Nicholas Angel is probably one of the only movie cops who would actually do well on the force). And considering that around the same time, Seltzer and Friedberg were working on several films which focused on "parodying" movies without doing any more research than watching their trailers, so, considering that Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg managed to do all the work that they did and still make the whole film a laugh riot shows that filmmakers like Seltzer and Friedberger have no excuse.
Other Recommendations: Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright have also collaborated on the zombie film Shaun of the Dead, and the TV series Spaced, and will both work with Steven Spielberg on the upcoming Tintin film adaptation. Wright went solo on the Scott Pilgrim movie, which I also recommend.

4. Harvey.
This is probably one of the most well-crafted comedic plays of all time (many of Shakespeare's works included). The film is about a man who appears to be best friends with a 6 1/2-foot tall invisible rabbit named Harvey. It's really hard to put my finger on just one thing that makes this film so funny, but I think that a large part of the humor comes from how nonchalant Jimmy Stewart's character is about everything, and another part of it comes down to how something as simple as getting a stoic man who appears to be hallucinating a large rabbit to get committed goes so disastrously wrong.
Other Recommendations: This film is not available in the library, but Jimmy Stewart and the director Henry Kostler reunited twelve years later to create a very different film called Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation. The film is definitely a product of the early sixties, when Hollywood was beginning to let its hair down, but not to get so risque as to actually break the Production Code. That said, Jimmy Stewart's roles in Harvey and Mr. Hobbs couldn't be any more different, but he makes them both work well.

3. A Fish Called Wanda
Of all the many projects that featured members of the Monty Python troupe without actually being part of the canon, this is without a doubt, the best of them all. It starts off as a heist film, beginning with the theft of several diamonds, and, after trying to collect the loot, Jamie Lee Curtis decides to seduce John Cleese so she can discover the real location of the loot, her boyfriend Kevin Kline (in one of his better performances) gets jealous, and while all this happens, Michael Palin tries to kill the only witness to the crime, but only manages to get her dogs. How funny is it? Well, it caused a guy to literally die of laughter several years ago.

2. Monty Python and the Meaning of Life
Monty Python is probably my favourite comedy troupe, and, for what it's worth, it's probably everyone else's favourite troupe as well. It was really difficult to choose which of their three films were the funniest, but I decided to choose their last film, Monty Python and the Meaning of Life, due in no small part to their retaining the format of their classic television series. In fact, one of my favourite moments comes from this film. In one animated sequence, a leaf falls, but just before that happens, it appeared to be going into a suicidal depression. The same cycle happens for the leaf's "Wife and kids", but after the kids fall, there is a pause, and every other leaf on the tree falls off simultaneously.

1. Duck Soup
Of all the films that the Marx Brothers made, this was probably the funniest. If it was certainly good enough to bring Woody Allen out of a suicidal funk in Hannah And Her Sisters, it's certainly good enough for you. As Roy Blount, who recently wrote a book-length analysis of the film, wrote, there is, at most, one dead spot in the entire film: and it appears when Groucho references a recently popular song entitled "That's Why Darkies Were Born." Yes, this song really existed, and it's just as patronising as you would expect it to be. What really makes the moment is that just after he drops that title, Groucho lets out a single "Huh!" that is pretty much the sort of reaction somebody who actually gets the reference would react to the scene. That said, every other second of the film is hilarious.
Other Recommendations: Any of the Marx Brothers' other films from 1930-1935 are highly recommended, and that includes most of their other Universal films which are only available on the same boxed set as Duck Soup.

At any rate, it's pretty difficult to analyse humour, and I honestly hope I did a pretty good job.

Issue 194

News: Three Books I've read to be turned into films. Trailers reviewed here.
The Adventures of Tintin. Relatively recently, I rediscovered the Tintin comics (specifically, Crab with the Golden Claws, Secret of the Unicorn, and Red Rackham's Treasure), and around the time I started college, I learned that there would be a film based on some of the comics, with filming apparently imminent. What was surprising is that, around the same time that I graduated from Oakton, three years later, only now has the trailer finally been released. I must admit that, while I really hate it when classic cartoon characters are given an unusually realistic look (see the recent Alvin and the Chipmunks reboot, and then see the 1980s series for a good reason why). What really surprised me was that, from what I've been able to see from the trailer, the filmmakers seem to have put a lot of effort into making the CGI that many studios seem to prefer to the "Hand-drawn" style these days look a lot like Herge's original drawing style. As for the casting, I was pleasantly surprised when they announced Simon Pegg and Nick Frost from Hot Fuzz as the "twin" detectives Thomson and Thompson, and I can't see any major problems with the casting. So far the only cons I can think of would be that Professor Calculus isn't in the film (he was introduced in Red Rackham's Treasure), and that Steven Moffat has evidently decided that the best books to adapt into a sequel would be the two volumes about Tintin and Co.'s adventures in Peru, because I personally think that, of the official 21 volumes that the Herge estate acknowledges, they are the two weakest, due to the climactic moment, which, apart from being a blatant rip-off of the eclipse scene in A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court, makes less sense in the context of real history (especially jarring considering Herge's commitment to accuracy,) since the real-life Incas were certainly not the kind of people who thought eclipses were signs of the gods like medieval Europeans. My personal pick would be the two volumes dealing with the moon mission; they actually contain some of the strongest plots of the series, with a story arc long enough to sustain a feature-length film, and, on top of all that, would provide a good place to introduce Professor Calculus. Release Date: Christmas 2011.
We Need to Talk About Kevin- Shortly after I read this in November 2009, I discovered that there was to be a film adaptation of the novel. I was apprehensive about the way that the plot could be handled, as I had a fear that the story would be handled as a straight horror film, about a bad seed who hates everyone and everything and decides to take it out on the people in his class one day. The fact is, that the novel is fundamentally a family drama that just so happens to include some genuinely horrifying scenes. There is actually no trailer on Youtube, but there are three short clips, each less than two minutes long, which showcase the style: Simply put, the film feels quite spare, quite possibly a reflection of people trying to recover from a disaster, and also reflecting the relative tranquility of the scenes in the book that aren't horrific. At this point, of the three films I've put here, it's the only one I can find that critics have already seen and been able to post reviews of, due to its being screened at Cannes, and its rating: 92% positive. That said, the ranking will probably be lower, but as of right now, there is only one negative review, and that one was written by somebody who hated the source material. Release Date: None at the moment, but in Britain, it's apparently hitting screens on September 2.
Mr. Popper's Penguins: I only learned about this film's being released this weekend. There doesn't seem to be anything too spectacular about it, though, and I don't really have too many emotional ties to the book at this point. Release Date: June 17.

Film Idea of the Day: Skating Away. A Burned-out composer and a PTSD sufferer on the brink of mental disaster form a friendship (just how they meet, I'm not sure, but I would think that their meeting has something to do with an attempted assault committed while flashing back.) My current climax has the sufferer blowing himself up, and the Composer finally getting some of his creative spark.

Film Review: Moon. I can only speculate that this could very well be part of the reason Moffat hasn't decided to adapt the moon albums of the Tintin series into film. The fact is, that both of the films are amazingly accurate looks at what life would be like for people who go on lunar expeditions (in the Tintin case, the accuracy was especially exceptional due to being published in the days before space travel). However, unlike those albums, Moon tends to have a feel very similar to 1970s Sci-fi films, especially 2001 and Solaris. In the proper plot, Sam Rockwell plays an astronaut who is harvesting Helium for a company on earth, and he meets his clone. I wish I could go into further detail.

Link of the Day: A Death Note Fanfic read aloud.

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.

Issue 192

News: This is probably old news, but...
Once again, I'm sorry I haven't been updating. I've been working on a short story, college applications, getting my service hours squared for my Criminology class, reacquainting myself with Arthur Miller, Samuel Beckett, and King Lear, and spending Easter at my grandparents' house (for the last time, since they're apparently selling it), so, between all of that, there hasn't been much time to write for the blog. That said, I have had a few ideas for blog entries, and here's one of them.
On March 20th, Not The Terry Jones, Fundamentalist nutjob who has been condemned from all sides for threatening to burn the Koran in September (for the record, I have mixed feelings about the act itself, ultimately resolving in a Voltairean "I disagree with what you say, but I agree with your right to say it," aided by the fact that, if a Koran is to be disposed of, technically, burning it is the recommended method), finally managed to do so. But he decided to first put the book on trial for six hours. What I'm wondering is: if he feels justified to do so for the Koran, what's to prevent someone from doing the same for The Bible? I can almost imagine it; Getting a man to prosecute the Bible (ideally a Gideon Bible, since they're pretty much free in any hotel room), and a priest to defend it in a court of law (I'd especially like to see it if we could get at least one of the lawyers to say something like "now, I'm just a simple country lawyer," like Jimmy Stewart), against charges of Crimes Against Humanity (what I have in mind would ultimately be something like Judgment at Nuremberg), and seeing how far it goes, especially if we can see it streaming online or after the fact on sites like Youtube. If the Bible is found guilty, it would be burnt while some fitting tunes (all of which should involve fire-related imagery), definitely beginning with Arthur Brown's Fire.

Film Review of the Week: Mildred Pierce (2011 version). For a while, the 1945 film version of James M. Cain's Mildred Pierce has been one of my favourite films noir. However, until recently, I hadn't read the original novel, and now that Todd Haynes adapted it into an HBO miniseries, I think that it's a worthy successor, so let me go over some of the most important elements:
*Mildred: Honestly, after looking into Joan Crawford's real-life motherhood, it's ultimately hard to take her seriously as a woman who would take a bullet for her daughters like she does in this film. However, in the film, it comes close to almost disintegrating any lingering doubts, but there's still the occasional thought in the back of my mind that wants to make a snarky reference to wire hangers. Kate Winslet, to the best of my knowledge, appears to have no such parenting problems, and it is much easier for me to take her seriously as a doormat of a mother. And, what's more, in the novel and the miniseries, her character arc becomes more dramatic: She goes from doting on Veda to saying (albeit at Bert's promting) "to hell with her."
*Veda: To be honest, it's very hard for me to say whether Evan Rachel Wood or Ann Blyth is a better actress in this role. They both seem to nail down the "Bratty-bordering-on-sociopathic Teenaged Daughter" role, and both look like they could very well be the daughter of the women playing their mothers, even if, in the case of Wood and Winslet, their ages are too close together for it to be realistic. However, to break the tie, I will note the climactic scene in the new version: When Mildred discovers that Veda is dating Monte, she strangles her, but she manages to get away. After this, Evan Rachel Wood curb-stomps willing suspension of disbelief by running around the house and then sputtering, repeating this for several minutes. Unless I can find some sort of evidence of this sort of thing being feasible after being strangled, I will use this as an example of how Ann Blyth's acting is better.
*Ray/Kay: I definitely have a favourite here: Jo Anne Marlowe's Kay is a much more interesting character than the Ray that Quinn McColgan played in the miniseries. The main reason for this is that I cannot help but find it satisfying that, in the 1945 film, the younger daughter, of all people, is something of a voice of reason for the family, and we see that a change occurs in the family dynamics when she dies, sometimes calling Veda out on her greed and ego. However, in the miniseries, she's just a little kid who just tries too hard to be cute, and when she dies, it feels more like the author is himself trying to get the audience to think that Ray was "too good for this sinful earth."
*Pacing/The Second Half: After reading the book, you really come to see how much the plot came to feel rushed in the film version; in fact, major plot points are completely glossed over in the film, like the fact that Veda is taking music lessons: these are mentioned enough times that they can be counted on one hand. In the miniseries and original novel, much of the novel's second half, and the last two episodes of the miniseries revolve around Veda's getting a career as a singer (a coloratura soprano, to be precise). Of course, the plot in the film still makes sense as a whole, and thus, it works, even though the miniseries allows the plot to breathe more.
*Mise-en-Scene: Michael Curtiz made it into a film noir. Todd Haynes filmed it to look like a lot like Douglas Sirk's "Women's pictures." They both worked extremely well for what they are. The choice between the two styles boils down to one's own personal preference, and mine leans strongly towards noir.

Issue 190

News/Review: Phantom Tollbooth: Book v. Movie.
A few weeks ago a big blizzard struck, as any midwesterners reading it would know. (What much is there to say about the blizzard itself? There was a massive amount of snow and I had to shovel it.) Just before the blizzard struck, I managed to get a book both in dead tree and audio editions, after discovering that Thirty H's apparently included an allusion to it an episode with a .58 child in Chapter 6. and most of the time I spent shoveling it, I had spent listening to the audiobook version. That book was Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. Quite honestly, I think it's one of the best kids' books I've ever read, and my only regret is that I hadn't read it as a kid myself, and after listening to the interview with Norton Juster on the audiobook, I regret not having read it as a teenager, either, since, according to him, many people have written to him talking to him about how they read the book as children, teenagers, and as adults, and that it seemed like a different book each time. As it turns out, there will apparently be a new hardcover edition for its fiftieth anniversary in November (something I'd like come December), and I find it very likely that when I write my "Best Books of the Many I read in 2011" list next year, I am almost certain that it will be in the top five at least. And so, in honor of this, I must inform you that there is actually a film adaptation from the early seventies directed by Chuck Jones, which recently received its first DVD release through Warner Archives. But unlike some other films which took a ridiculously long time to come to DVD (like Wise Blood or The African Queen), there is a very good reason that it took this long: Simply put, it's bad. It's not a faithful adaptation at all. Needless to say, I've written two previous posts about film adaptations of books that changed some things significantly from their source material, but unlike Watchmen, where Zack Snyder did what he could to keep the film at a manageable length, and the 1959 version of the Brothers Karamazov, which attempted to reduce an 800-page novel into a 2 1/2 hour film by stripping away almost every subplot not directly related to the murder of Fyodor at the expense of many major characters. This film, directed by no less an animation god than Chuck Jones of Looney Tunes fame, has no excuse. The film's character designs are pretty good, even if they do deviate significantly from Jules Feiffer's illustrations (at this point, my main qualm about this aspect of the film is the fact that Tock the Watchdog's watch seems to be tucked into some sort of pouch on its body, and apparently downplaying the fact that he is supposed to be a "Watch Dog" with a real watch on his body. The fact that his voice actor is pretty bland doesn't help matters.) The film's major problem is with its pacing. It seems to be good in the opening scenes (where Milo manages to say the opening paragraphs of the book to a friend over the phone, thus finding a pretty good vehicle for putting the exposition in without the use of a narrator. However, after the scene in the Doldrums, the film begins to dramatically change from the book. Namely, in the book, after leaving the Doldrums, Milo and Tock head straight on to Dictionopolis, and then, after learning of the story of how the princesses Rhyme and Reason were cast out, decide to quest for them (with The Humbug, another character from Dictionopolis who lost much of his distinctive character in the film, drafted into joining by King Azaz the Unabridged), with several episodes following on the way. On the other hand, the film features Milo and Tock managing to encounter many of the people they found in the book long before they managed to get to Dictionopolis (on the one hand, there's nothing that wasn't in the book, but on the other hand, there was no 0.58 child anywhere in the mix). Needless to say, by the time the film finally gets around to giving the film its backstory about two-thirds of the way into the film (That's right. Important backstory that is supposed to set up the main plot of the book doesn't even get introduced into the film itself for about sixty minutes into the film's ninety-minute running time) there isn't much left for Milo, Tock, and the Humbug to do. It's like making a remake of Rain Man where most of the antics Charlie and Raymond get into happen in Cincinatti before they finally go to L.A. Yes; It would have been as poor a film as the real version is a poor depiction of autism. One more problem I have with the film is the treatment of the ending; in the book, as Milo drives away after reuniting the Mathemagician and King Azaz the Unabridged, they both remind him to remember the importance of words and numbers. This restarts the argument the two had been having about which one is more important that led to the imprisonment of Rhyme and Reason. With the disappearance of the Tollbooth from Milo's room, and the note that came with it, it implied heavily that the book's plot would happen again with some other bored child in Milo's place. In my opinion, this was a pretty effective twist ending. However, the film does not give any such implication. It's just a more simple "happily ever after" ending. Granted, the tollbooth still vanishes, and it even goes to the kid Milo was talking to on the phone. Unfortunately, by leaving out that little scene, Chuck Jones has managed to strip the scene of some crucial context making it poorer than the book's version. Simply put, if Chuck Jones had decided to keep the Book's structure, and maybe bite the bullet and add a few more scenes to make it longer than 90 minutes, it would have been a better film. However, he didn't, and I had enough material to rant about for quite a while.

Tract Review: There's two new tracts on Jack Chick's website, but they're both new versions of old tracts. One is a new version of "This Was Your Life," entitled "You Have a Date." The main differences are that the protagonist is now female, and instead of telling dirty jokes, has apparently had a lesbian experience as a teen. In addition, Jack seems to have realised that claiming whispering is a sin (as he did in previous versions of this tract) is idiotic. The other new tract was a new version of "The Attack" changed with a plug for a new book which no doubt regurgitates many of these arguments.

Issue 188

News/Film Idea/Review: Some notes on Holocaust Films.
In my last entry, on the best books of the many I read in 2010, I mentioned that I had put 25 books in the shortlist. Two of the books that didn't make it onto my list were Holocaust memoirs. Specifically, those memoirs were two classics of the genre: Primo Levi's If This Is A Man, and Elie Wiesel's Night. I have to admit that there's a reason I didn't include them in my list beyond the fact that I found Bruce Campbell talking about the making of The Evil Dead more enjoyable than their harrowing experiences im Lager. The fact is that, I can't help but think that while they are basically true and don't feel the need to nit-pick like some people do, the medium of the memoir has advantages and disadvantages, and one disadvantage is particularly crucial: they are ultimately one-sided. The way I see it, if books and films are to be used to show people the horrors of the Holocaust, we should be forced to see ourselves not only in the shoes of those who got killed, but also the shoes of those who did the killing. To go further into this, I will examine what is probably the most famous film about the Holocaust, Schindler's List. In the film, the villain Amon Goeth is portrayed as being utterly, outrageously cruel. One would be tempted to call out Spielberg for portraying him as too unrealistic if one didn't know that Spielberg actually toned down his evil for film. The problem I have with it is that, unfortunately, Goeth wasn't exactly representative of Concentration Camp workers. When off-duty, many of them would seem pretty normal people, and not necessarily the type of people who would routinely kill people for a day. This is what Hannah Arendt meant by "The Banality of Evil." This is a thought that should frighten you, because it means your best friends or even you could very well be capable of committing genocide without emotion. It is also essential for understanding why the Holocaust happened in the first place, but, surprisingly, very few of the films that take place in the camps try to deal with that idea. In essence, I feel that not including that theme in a film (or other art form) about the Holocaust is ultimately irresponsible, even when a big name like Spielberg does it. Even when Roman Polanski, a filmmaker known for being gloomy and pessimistic (at least when you look at his film career, as opposed to his personal life), made a film about it, he seemed to avoid this issue like Spielberg did. Of course, considering he lived through it all and lost most of his family, it sort of makes sense he would focus solely on the victims. To remedy this, I have come up with three possible ideas for a Holocaust film if I ever make it to Hollywood, in order of likelihood that they will be made (most likely last.)
*Death Dealer, based on the memoirs of Rudolf Hoess, an actual Commandant of Auschwitz. Considering that a lot of the criticism of Boy in the Striped Pyjamas seemed to focus on making a Nazi sympathetic, this is probably the least likely one to be made.
*Eyewitness Auschwitz, based on Filip Mueller's autobiography. It is about a Jewish inmate who survived the camp for three years because of his skill in working the crematoria, thus blurring the line between victims and villains. Definitely more moral ambiguity, but I doubt that a film like this would be made.
*The Wave. This is the one I think is most likely to be made, because, simply put, it's already been made several times, most notably as a Television special in 1981, and a German film in 2008. What do I think I can add to the story? Before I tell you that, I should tell you a little about Miltonian criticism. In his book, Surprised by Sin, Stanley Fish attempted to explain the sympathetic portrayal of Satan by saying that by making Satan seem likable, Milton helps simulate the Fall of Man on the reader. In very much the same vein, I hope to extend the power of the Wave to the level of the audience by using cinematic techniques that mirror those used by Leni Riefenstahl in her amazingly made propaganda piece Triumph of the Will. That film managed to boost allegiance to the Nazi party whenever it was played, and even allegedly scared a film critic into joining the Nazi Party. If we are led to be in as much awe of the movement as the students are, the big reveal will be even more shocking.

Issue 186

News/Film Review: Film Class and Earth.
Throughout the previous semester, I had one particularly interesting class: Intro to Film. In essence, Wednesdays would be spent setting up a particular movement, and almost without exception, I would be supplementing his information, and I would sit next to some guy whose enthusiasm was matched only by his utter lack of knowledge of the medium's history pre-Karate Kid. Fridays would be spent discussing the film in more detail. By the end of the class, we had to rank each film we saw on a scale of 0-10. All but one film ended up watched ended up with a score above 6.0. The one that didn't was Alexander Dovzhenko's Earth. There's several reasons for this, and I will divide the reasons into innate and environmental problems.
Environmental problems:
*There were only two films we ended up watching on Friday. Since Friday classes and the film were approximately the same length, there wasn't much of a discussion.
*The room was designed differently, and thus, the likelihood that somebody's heads were covering up the subtitles (and the film was a silent, no less) was much higher.
*Seriously, subtitles in a film where the dialogue is communicated through intertitles? If Kino can try to replicate the stylised intertitles of Metropolis, they can at least translate the nondescript ones used in Earth.
*The DVD's print was taken from 1971. The film was heavily reliant on visuals, so, in essence, Kino, who released the film on R1 DVD screwed up. Amazingly, a British Distributor (Mr. Bongo) has managed to put out a version on DVD that looked much better. That said, I haven't seen that version, but at least I'd not be able to ask "What the hell am I looking at?" as often as I was. I shouldn't have to question whether I'm looking at a wheat field or not.

Innate Problems:
*Soviet Montage is a hard movement to find an accessible entry point for; of the three major features, Battleship Potemkin gets dull at points, Man With the Movie Camera hasn't much of a plot, and Earth is... well... Earth.
*Its pacing is bizarre. The opening scene is very slowly paced, consisting of two title cards, shots of a man slowly dying (presumably to symbolise the death of the Tsarist way of life), and shots of what I can only assume to be fields. By the end, there are no less than five scenes being intercut, and while some of them make sense (particularly the one of the priest trying in vain to get God to stop a non-church-based funeral), some of them are completely nonsensical (like a man putting his head to a sand dune and running about in a circle). The juxtaposition makes no sense, and I even said as such when I had to write a report. Apparently, it was supposed to spur people into action.
*The plot is almost impossible to follow. I had to look up several plot summaries of the film before I had to figure out what was supposed to be going on (apparently the man running about in a circle was in guilt over murdering his brother. I suppose Raskolnikov only got off as long as he did because Porfiry never saw him doing that), and sometimes what I was supposed to be looking at. Once again, if I have to look up summaries to be able to recognise a wheat field, something is very, very wrong.

Here's hoping that I can get back to doing two posts a month.

Also, according to my Dashboard, I apparently have a follower: Enrrique (apparently he has two r's in his name) Perez. If his profile is correct, he is apparently from Duarte in the Dominican Republic. According to the one post he's made that I had to translate with Babelfish because I don't speak Spanish, He apparently thinks all politicians are equally bad, and with the last two years in mind, I can't say I blame him. Here's hoping we can actually come into some sort of contact (preferrably in English)

Links: Because every Soviet film made before a certain date is in the Public Domain, here is a copy of the film on Youtube.

Issue 183

News/Review: In Defense of The Searchers.
Recently, I was browsing TVTropes when I stumbled upon a page for reviews of John Ford's classic "The Searchers." The only review of it was negative, but there were just too many wrong points in that review for me to accept it. The first paragraph focuses on the portrayal of the Comanche nation. After making a good point about how their sole motivation for taking Debbie seemed to be to rape some white women, he made a mention about how he didn't like that they were so incompetent after that incident. It should be noted that at that point in the Indian wars when the film was set, the Comanches were clearly losing, and most of them had already been sent to reservations. And besides, they kept a woman captive for five years; they clearly had to have been doing something right. He goes on to complain some more about the portrayal of the Indians (I really have to ask: was he really expecting something like Dances with Wolves in 1956? It was certainly a fair portrayal for its day)even though, the fact is, that John Ford makes it perfectly clear that their actions are driven by a general hatred of the white man because, well, they tended to be no more likable than John Wayne's character Ethan Edwards was. Which brings him to the next point; he seems to think that Ethan is like every other character John Wayne played. Funny, I don't remember Tom Doniphon trying to desecrate Liberty Valance's corpse on the off-chance that it would hurt him in the afterlife, and I don't remember Sean Thornton giving Will Danaher rabbit-punches during their famous Donnybrook in the same way that Ethan shoots at retreating enemies in this film. And while the "Look" subplot definitely hasn't aged very well, it is certainly an oversimplification to compare Martin to Tonto, especially since, while Tonto was effectively the Lone Ranger's loyal slave, MArtin has several moments where he calls out Ethan on his behavior (like when he tries to kill Debbie, who has gone native.) The reviewer seems to miss the depth of the characters, apparently seeing the main conflict of the film as being Ethan vs. Comanches, and missing the point that, clearly, there are unlikable people on every side of a conflict, and Ethan and Scar both fit the bill for their societies very well. However, he seems to have not noticed that the conflict that is given more screen time is clearly the conflict between Martin and Ethan, with Martin acting as Humphrey van Weyden to Ethan's Wolf Larsen. The fact is, that this film is not even really about the rescue of a woman from the Indians. It is, in essence, a film about how revenge shapes the nature of our minds.

Issue 181

News: MGM possibly going out of business: the Good and the Bad.
Well, one of the great American film studios has fallen on hard times, and because of that, it appears that there's only going to be 22 Bond films, and in addition, the film adaptation of The Hobbit will be at least put on hold, and I admit that if I gave a damn about fantasy movies in the first place, I would be galled by that. However, one other film that was more recently in the pipeline that is going to be affected by the studio's hard times is the remake of the 1984 film Red Dawn. I learned about the remake while I was setting up for a show at work, and I had a debate with my boss about whether it would be in any way plausible, and I doubted it was, and still do. In effect, the original, being about the invasion of Colorado by the Soviet army, would at least have made a little sense, perhaps it could have been seen as being a little bit plausible for anybody who grew up knowing Brezhnev as the leader of the USSR. Yes, the wisdom of one nuclear power leading an invasion of another is very suspect, especially considering that the invadee has no first-use policy, and the invader does(though nowhere near as stupid as unloading every nuclear weapon it has on a small coastal nation), but the fact that, at the time, Russia was an enemy of the USA at least gave the movie some credibility, even if, almost immediately after the film's release, things changed. However, in the remake, it's China who invades America. The problem is that making China the invader makes no sense in the current world situation, especially since, officially, China and America are neither allies nor enemies, things seem to point more strongly towards the former. To make an apt comparison, the Olympics before the original was released was in Moscow. We boycotted it. However, the most recent Olympics was in Beijing, and we didn't. I can imagine a movie like "Islamist Dawn," where Islamist militants from the Middle East manage to somehow take over the world could somehow work, even if the specifics of the invasion would almost certainly be as silly as that of the original, but the suspension of disbelief required to let Islamist militants on the other side of the world manage to be strong enough to take over is much less than that required to believe that China would actually feel the need to do it.

Film Idea of the Day: After writing a deeply insane children's book, an author of detective fiction is told to keep writing what made him famous, and his mind unravels as he writes it.

Film Review of the Day: Aisha. I was dragged into this movie yesterday. It was a Bollywood version of Jane Austen's Emma. Wow. A novel by an author I detest like a sickness in a genre I don't particularly care for. I was in for a treat. Sarcasm aside, Let me just do a capsule review.
Plot: It's just what you expect of it.
Music: Surprisingly for a genre known for its musicals, none of the music stays with you. Even the visuals for the musical numbers are utterly unremarkable.
Language: Pick a bloody language and stick with it! I can imagine using another language to "put on airs" or to communicate with someone from another country, but switching back and forth between languages at random just gets irritating. I suppose it's just annoying to me because I'm not from India, since it appears to be extremely common in Bollywood films.
Direction: Goes from being chaotic in the beginning to inept to just plain unremarkable. At several points, Rajshree Ohja tries to make montages, but especially in the shopping montage near the beginning, it seems more like she's just spiced frames out willy-nilly, or covering for damaged film stock. If this was done to disconcert the viewer (e.g. Natural Born Killers or Requiem For a Dream), this would have been Okay. However, in a musical romantic comedy for the proles of India, it makes no sense. As it turns out, the director seems to have made other films (I intend to review another film I hated, by a first time director, in the future), but, if IMDb is any indication, none of them were particularly consequential.

Quote of the Day: "Protestants

When I was watching a program (I believe on the History Channel) about Satanism, one person said basically that Catholicism represents all that the Devils is against (imagine that, Satanist might get along better with Catholics than most Protestants). [24.1]
I'm an atheist who agrees with Satanism as well, but I wouldn't tell that to my family. [24.2]
The word atheist may carry false connotations of being "immoral" or " that satanic ", and this of course is simply not true. [24.3]"
________________From the cPedia article on Satanism.

Link of the Day: C-Pedia. It's like Wikipedia, except the articles make no sense whatsoever.