Since my last couple of posts have been ricockulously all business, I thought I'd lighten things up, tickle your funny Dubra bones, and regale you all with various stories and thoughts.
1.) I just realized that I had my headphones on and hadn't been listening to anything for like 10 minutes.
2.) So there's this really ridiculous girl I went to high school with called Dalby (I have no problem calling her by name because she doesn't know this blog exists and I shall NEVER tell her about it). So like, Obama won on tuesday night, and mostly all of my friends were really happy and excited, and I went on facebook and most were pro-Obama, except for a few hilariously upset statuses. Like this one kid I went to elementary school with and haven't seen in 13 years said he had never been so ashamed of his country, and this girl I barely know (who if I recall from years ago when I had a class with her, used to carry a picture of Dr. Phil around in her backpack) was like "America, are you fucking KIDDING ME?" Anyway, good ol' Dalbo's status was like "Dalby can't believe Obama, that fucking fascist socialist won! I won't be in school tomorrow, BUILDING A BOMB SHELTER" And so I replied, after I had not spoken to her in a couple of years, because, well, she's freakin' crazy and I have a large supply of outrageous stories I like to entertain people with, with something along the lines of "Fascism and socialism are COMPLETELY different things!" My original intent was to just say "You're a fucking idiot!" but I decided to go for a less confrontational response, while still hoping that she replied so that we could get into a huge argument that I could win, so I could laugh into that face of hers. She obviously has no understanding of eiter fascism or socialism, because only Two Face could embody that contradictory ideology. But she never replied, and instead deleted her status and truncated it to just "Dalby won't be in school, BUILDING A BOMB SHELTER". I must say I was dissapointed.
3.)Dalby's the kind of girl that when I approached her one day years ago after she had been absent from our orchestra class for a while and asked her how she was doing she said "Oh, I've just been in the hospital....the MENTAL hospital". She also liked to frequently storm out of class through the back door (bad idea to sit the most unstable person in the class there where they can easily, loudly escape) because she has a billion year old crush on this kid, and if he talked to this other girl, that would be the final straw. We also sat next to each other on one of the orchestra trips, on a 10 hour bus ride to Boston, and she slept on me THE ENTIRE TIME, and I would try to push her off, and she would hit the window and fly back onto me. She also woke up with a mysterious animal cracker in her mouth, and then proceeded to announce it to the whole bus, with me sitting there looking her best friend.
4.) Enough of Dalby, I just realized I titled this post about Dubra, and haven't even talked of the wonders of Dubra, the smoothest, fanciest, most expensive of vodkas that leaves no burn in that throat. Nuh uh, that shit goes down like water. Oh wait, did I say Dubra? Because I meant whatever the polar opposite of Dubra is, because Dubra, when drank by me, makes me to want die. Yet I find myself drinking it every weekend, and I did a shot of Dubra for Obama winning, for some reason. Though as much as I despise everything about Dubra, from it's taste of rubbing alcohol to the way it feels as it slithers down your throat to it's lame design on the plastic bottle (red curtains, that's it!), I will never stop drinking it. Dan Bullman and I agreed last night that we enjoy complaining about things and being miserable, and Dubra is just an extension of that. It's fun to taste that abominable taste and get really sick off of it, because then you can just make a lot of hilarious Dubra jokes, either about how horrible it is and makes you feel or just be "You know, Dubra just makes me feel really good the next morning, AND it tastes good". I NEED Dubra, because it feeds my inner-torment and masochism. I cannot live without Dubra. I AM Dubra.
5.) The radiator in my room, which had stopped making noise for a month by this point, just up and started clanking around today. Oh how I hate that radiator.
6.)I had an idea, while walking back from voting the other day, of an election day themed suspense/thriller. There are two alternate ways it could play, but they both play off the same gimmick. Either someone or a group of people will get kidnapped by two people, each representing the two opposing candidates, and the victims will have to decide/vote for which one of the two "candidates" will kill them. The alternate way would be the "candidates" setting it up so that the citizens of a town/city would be the ones to vote for whoever will murder the victims. And this would represent the psychos philosphy of how the 2-party system continually just fucks everyone over, and it doesn't matter who anyone votes for because the outcome will always be the same and politics are bullshit and the two-party system will never change blah blah blah. I dunno, it was just an idea. The only title I could come up with was "Hellection" but that just sets the whole thing up to be a shitty farce. And "Election Day" is too bland. And thoughts people?
Anywayz, I'm sick of writing. PEACE.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Movie
I think I was scanning some sort of list on imdb of "the most effed up movies ever!" or some shit and came across a title I was NOT familiar with, shocking me to my core, as I thought I was aware of most controversial gross-out fests, even if I had no desire to see it (like those gross pseudo-snuff Guina Pig movies from Japan). The title was "Goodbye Uncle Tom" and I found out it was an Italian fake mondo documentary about the slave trade in America and that it was totally hardcore and showed the TRUE horrors of slavery.
My interest piqued, I did a search on youtube. First I found a trailer that made it look like a trashy exploitation movie (which it essentially is), including this funny part where they had this boob montage and they showed various slaves boobs for like 10 seconds. Then I found a hilarious clip of a Southern dinner party, with various people talking to the camera about slavery (remember it is a fake documentary, with the two filmmakers magically flying into the old south on a helicopter). This one guy's like "I believe in freedom, but I don't believe in equality!" and this other guy with this goofy voice (everyone is hilariously dubbed over, just like all Italian movies) is like "God is white!" and there's this ridiculous fan thing that looks like a giant block of wood swinging back and forth over the table, blocking everyone's faces every few seconds, accompanied by loud "whoooooosh" noises everytime it passes. Then this treat of a scene turned brilliant when one of the women at the table says something along the lines of:
"I am not a southerner and have only stayed here a short time. You see, my name is Harriet Beecher Stowe. And God has told me to write...a story...a BOOK. I think I shall call it...."Uncle Tom's Cabin". And it is my great hope that it shall enlighten and ease our souls."
I had thought characterizations of famous historical figures, who blantantly state their importance in the most unrealistic manner, were only found in crappy social studies videos, but I was mistaken. So based on that one scene, I assumed that the movie was probably really hilarious and there would be constant appearances from famous civil war figures, and the movie would have some self-importance and self-riteous additude, even though its just a shitty exploitation movie.
Well I was right about the last part, but it was sadly not very funny. More just really irritating and a chore to sit through. I had originally planned to watch it with Adrienne, Anna, and Jordan last weekend, because we all agreed the Harriet Beecher Stowe part was great, but Adrienne fell asleep, Anna was on the phone, and Jordan and I watched 20 minutes of it, only to find out the Harriet Beecher Stowe part was like the first scene in the movie followed by a lot of graphic and weird shit on this slave boat, including a guy getting a cork shoved up his butt to stop diarreah. So Jordan was totally grossed and creeped out and we shut it off and I JUST got around to watching the whole thing today.
Anyway, it's 2 hours long and highly tedious and boring, and really fucking awful. The documentary thing is kind of cool for like 15 minutes, and then that gets old, and the content gets old after like 10 minutes. Basically it boils down to: blacks were treated badly by whites. Then because it has no insight or any fresh ideas on the slavery times of America, the movie throws in multiple rape scenes and tons of violent abuse to show how awful the times were. I think everyone agrees that is the worst part of American history, and people should be aware of its horrors, but this film has NOTHING to say about it apart from it's not right. I was sick of watching it after 40 minutes, and I somehow managed to get through the whole thing.
I'll go ahead and say this movie is kind of offensive, not just because it may be the most unintellectual, tired, and emotionally dry look at slavery I've ever seen, but because, for a movie that apparently is so appalled by the actions of white people during that time and how we're the real monsters, the black characters (if you can even call them that) are a bunch of blank faced or screaming bafoons who are given no dialogue or personality. The only black characters that talk in that movie are two "mammy" fat maid characters with a lot of sass and a 13 year old slave prostitute who convinces one of the filmmakers to have sex with her (which he does, making for an awkward part where the camera fucks her, which also brings up another point that I shall asterik and you can find it at the bottom *). There are also a lot of innapropiate gags throughout the movie that basically portray slaves as dumbasses. For instance, a woman is putting cherries on a cake, and a little boy is grabbing and eating the cherries she puts down, and she goes "I un just keep on puttin' on these here cherries, and they never seem to fill up the cake. It's the darndest thing!" Nice positive view of these people guys. I'm not saying they should all be portrayed as intelligent, scholarly people, because many were uneducated, but at least have populate your film with good people to make them sympathetic instead of making them all as dumb as possible.
It's very evident these guys are racist. They made the movie because their previous feature was labeled racist, and they wanted to show people they weren't. But seriously, these guys are idiots. It's a movie that apparently is disgusted by the white ideology of thinking of black people as stupid animals, so they make a movie that portrays all black people as....stupid animals. Their approach to the subject matter just does my head in.
The most ridiculous part of the whole fucking mess of a movie is the last 15 minutes, where it suddenly cuts to modern day America (though it looks like none of the movie was shot in America) where a black preacher reads the diary of Nat Turner, which recounts a slave revolt, and then the preacher imagines klling a bunch of annoying white people in the same manner as in the book. This includes axing a bunch of people to death and bludgoning a fake baby against a wall. I REALLY don't know how to take this part. It's the final nail on this movies coffin, closing off all good intentions these assholes may have sort of had. So the modern day black person is still an animal who secretly wants to kill all white people, who are also portrayed really goofily and stuck-up. I just don't get what it's trying to say AT ALL. The very end is the preacher popping a white kids ball and the last shot is a freeze on his angry face. Like, is it condoning race riots and violence? Or is it meant to show us white folks made black people this way? Both are offensive for obvious reasons.
Ugh, this is one of the worst pieces of shit I've seen in a long time. I saw a comment on imdb about how they should show this in high school. Yeah buddy! Let's show students a braindead exploitation flick with an annoying fake art brand on it full of graphic rape and gratuitous child nudity (I think these guys are also into children; take the long scene of young boys being covered in gold and silver paint and the camera focusing on their penises and it feels a lot like child porn).
Harriet Beecher Stowe, how I wish the movie had been solely of you.
*It seems obvious through the whole movie that it's a psedo-documentary, with everything being recorded by cameras the people can see, but then when it gets to the guy fucking girl slave thing, suddenly the movie is just through his eyes. So does that mean the whole movie is just through the filmmakers eyes? Do they have the magic ability to zoom in with their eyes and glide across landscapes? Ugh, it confuses me.
My interest piqued, I did a search on youtube. First I found a trailer that made it look like a trashy exploitation movie (which it essentially is), including this funny part where they had this boob montage and they showed various slaves boobs for like 10 seconds. Then I found a hilarious clip of a Southern dinner party, with various people talking to the camera about slavery (remember it is a fake documentary, with the two filmmakers magically flying into the old south on a helicopter). This one guy's like "I believe in freedom, but I don't believe in equality!" and this other guy with this goofy voice (everyone is hilariously dubbed over, just like all Italian movies) is like "God is white!" and there's this ridiculous fan thing that looks like a giant block of wood swinging back and forth over the table, blocking everyone's faces every few seconds, accompanied by loud "whoooooosh" noises everytime it passes. Then this treat of a scene turned brilliant when one of the women at the table says something along the lines of:
"I am not a southerner and have only stayed here a short time. You see, my name is Harriet Beecher Stowe. And God has told me to write...a story...a BOOK. I think I shall call it...."Uncle Tom's Cabin". And it is my great hope that it shall enlighten and ease our souls."
I had thought characterizations of famous historical figures, who blantantly state their importance in the most unrealistic manner, were only found in crappy social studies videos, but I was mistaken. So based on that one scene, I assumed that the movie was probably really hilarious and there would be constant appearances from famous civil war figures, and the movie would have some self-importance and self-riteous additude, even though its just a shitty exploitation movie.
Well I was right about the last part, but it was sadly not very funny. More just really irritating and a chore to sit through. I had originally planned to watch it with Adrienne, Anna, and Jordan last weekend, because we all agreed the Harriet Beecher Stowe part was great, but Adrienne fell asleep, Anna was on the phone, and Jordan and I watched 20 minutes of it, only to find out the Harriet Beecher Stowe part was like the first scene in the movie followed by a lot of graphic and weird shit on this slave boat, including a guy getting a cork shoved up his butt to stop diarreah. So Jordan was totally grossed and creeped out and we shut it off and I JUST got around to watching the whole thing today.
Anyway, it's 2 hours long and highly tedious and boring, and really fucking awful. The documentary thing is kind of cool for like 15 minutes, and then that gets old, and the content gets old after like 10 minutes. Basically it boils down to: blacks were treated badly by whites. Then because it has no insight or any fresh ideas on the slavery times of America, the movie throws in multiple rape scenes and tons of violent abuse to show how awful the times were. I think everyone agrees that is the worst part of American history, and people should be aware of its horrors, but this film has NOTHING to say about it apart from it's not right. I was sick of watching it after 40 minutes, and I somehow managed to get through the whole thing.
I'll go ahead and say this movie is kind of offensive, not just because it may be the most unintellectual, tired, and emotionally dry look at slavery I've ever seen, but because, for a movie that apparently is so appalled by the actions of white people during that time and how we're the real monsters, the black characters (if you can even call them that) are a bunch of blank faced or screaming bafoons who are given no dialogue or personality. The only black characters that talk in that movie are two "mammy" fat maid characters with a lot of sass and a 13 year old slave prostitute who convinces one of the filmmakers to have sex with her (which he does, making for an awkward part where the camera fucks her, which also brings up another point that I shall asterik and you can find it at the bottom *). There are also a lot of innapropiate gags throughout the movie that basically portray slaves as dumbasses. For instance, a woman is putting cherries on a cake, and a little boy is grabbing and eating the cherries she puts down, and she goes "I un just keep on puttin' on these here cherries, and they never seem to fill up the cake. It's the darndest thing!" Nice positive view of these people guys. I'm not saying they should all be portrayed as intelligent, scholarly people, because many were uneducated, but at least have populate your film with good people to make them sympathetic instead of making them all as dumb as possible.
It's very evident these guys are racist. They made the movie because their previous feature was labeled racist, and they wanted to show people they weren't. But seriously, these guys are idiots. It's a movie that apparently is disgusted by the white ideology of thinking of black people as stupid animals, so they make a movie that portrays all black people as....stupid animals. Their approach to the subject matter just does my head in.
The most ridiculous part of the whole fucking mess of a movie is the last 15 minutes, where it suddenly cuts to modern day America (though it looks like none of the movie was shot in America) where a black preacher reads the diary of Nat Turner, which recounts a slave revolt, and then the preacher imagines klling a bunch of annoying white people in the same manner as in the book. This includes axing a bunch of people to death and bludgoning a fake baby against a wall. I REALLY don't know how to take this part. It's the final nail on this movies coffin, closing off all good intentions these assholes may have sort of had. So the modern day black person is still an animal who secretly wants to kill all white people, who are also portrayed really goofily and stuck-up. I just don't get what it's trying to say AT ALL. The very end is the preacher popping a white kids ball and the last shot is a freeze on his angry face. Like, is it condoning race riots and violence? Or is it meant to show us white folks made black people this way? Both are offensive for obvious reasons.
Ugh, this is one of the worst pieces of shit I've seen in a long time. I saw a comment on imdb about how they should show this in high school. Yeah buddy! Let's show students a braindead exploitation flick with an annoying fake art brand on it full of graphic rape and gratuitous child nudity (I think these guys are also into children; take the long scene of young boys being covered in gold and silver paint and the camera focusing on their penises and it feels a lot like child porn).
Harriet Beecher Stowe, how I wish the movie had been solely of you.
*It seems obvious through the whole movie that it's a psedo-documentary, with everything being recorded by cameras the people can see, but then when it gets to the guy fucking girl slave thing, suddenly the movie is just through his eyes. So does that mean the whole movie is just through the filmmakers eyes? Do they have the magic ability to zoom in with their eyes and glide across landscapes? Ugh, it confuses me.
So I saw a REAL girl with one arm
She was across the dining hall tonight while I was eating dinner, and she was truly and honestly a one-armed girl.
Just thought I'd mention that.
Just thought I'd mention that.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Rambling critique on Salo
Warning: This post is ALL business.
After only watching some of a poor quality unsubtitled bootleg of Salo last year and being kind of morbidly fascinated by it, I've finally watched the whole thing translated on Criterion Collection's new DVD. Before I get into any analysis, I have to say that it was an unexpectedly beautiful looking movie, with very classy and colorful cinematography and top-notch production design. The only other Pasolini movie I've seen (Teorema) was pretty bland looking (and boring to boot), so I was expecting this to be the same, but it really is an attractively shot movie, ironic considering its uncomfortable onscreen content.
The movie doesn't really have any sort of plot to speak of, apart from its premise, which even then is simple. In 1944 Nazi occupied Italy, four middle-aged powerful, wealthy, and evil aristocrats (who are never given names apart from formal titles like "excellency" and "lord") kidnap a bunch of teenagers, chosen by their attractiveness, and lock themselves up in a lavish mansion, along with a few close, and equally cruel, brothel madames, for a celebration of perversity and debauchery, all at the expense of their victims. The characters progress through stages of hell, which include the "circle of obsessions", the "circle of shit", and finally the "circle of blood", each hosted by a different aging prostitute, who sits in a big hall and romantically tells hideous and unusual stories of various unsavory sexual practices, which in turn influences the libertines to act out these tales on their teenage sex slaves.
For me what is interesting about the four libertines is that they consider themselves true fascists and are obviously part of the fascist government in Italy, yet a lot of their actions go against their own political party. They set-up their own puppet society in the mansion, with its own class system (the victims being the citizens and themselves the self-appointed leaders), and they have a collection of strict rules that the victims must silently obey, but their rules glorify homosexuality (something hated by the nazis/fascists of the era) and sodomy. So these men are essentially hypocrites, saying they adhere to their fascist ideology, but continually going against it. The mansion becomes some sort of weird reverse-fascist state, where abnormal and destructive sex becomes the norm, but the strict rule and class system still applies. The victims are all either in the exact same clothes or completely naked the whole movie, as a way to show the conformity that is thrown upon them. There's a blase additude to all of the terrible things done over the course of the movie, with the fascists barely ever pleased or satisfied by their vicious actions, and the victims accepting their own imprisonment and helplessness. The libertines seem to be men who don't even understand themselves, and use their position and power as a way to explore their violent and vile sexual appetites in a sexually repressive society, but it beings them no real joy, and their tempers rise into frequent brutal violence.
The libertines also seem to be experimenting with their victims. The first few guys captured don't becomes the sex slaves, but are given positions of power instead. They are rounded up and taken, and then the next scene shows them in full military garb, acting out their first orders. Only one of them rebels, and he is later instantly killed. It's disturbing how fast the others, when not in the lower tier of the little society, become just as corrupt as the adults. They also forcibly marry eachothers daughters in one of the opening scenes, as a way to bind their fates together, and then throughout the rest of the movie, the daughters are equated with the regular teenaged victims and are stripped, humiliated, raped, and eventually killed.
The storytelling prostitutes always have the most hideously fake and souless smiles stretched across their weathered faces as they casually sit around chatting, always dressed in the classiest gowns, while never-ending abuse takes place around them. Their vulgar tales of their pasts show that they themselves were corrupted and abused at a young age, most likely unwillingly at first. One of the women tells of her first sexual experience, where her professor ejaculated all over her face when she was like 7, and then how she became a prostitute. The actresses who play these characters can actually be kind of funny, especially the first storyteller who dances around and speaks in different voices and plays it up big time for amusing, albeit uncomfortable results; the other two, especially the last one who tells the creepy torture tale (who I recognized from a couple Fellini movies) are less funny and more disturbing. The women specifically tell these tales to influence the activities that go on over the course of the 120 days, so they probably are reliving past experiences through the new set of victims. This is also very circular (just like how the movie passes through circles of hell), as the victims of the past are now the oppressors, and by the end of the movie, a couple of the victims themselves become fascist and are saved in the end from the tortures inflicted on the rest, last seen drinking wine and socializing with the libertines and storytellers, while the others are tied up in the other room, awaiting their deaths. The film's abrupt non-ending seems to suggest that what took place is something that never truly ends. Stuff like this does happen, and has since happened. I read an interesting review that compared Salo to Abu Gharib, and that in the writer's mind, the film gained new signifigance because of it; that what we see here, while fictional, isn't too far from the truth.
Now, I've never really liked the argument that because something horrible exists, that warrants a graphic depiction of it. You can make that argument for a lot of really trashy disgusting movies, like Cannibal Holocaust or something. And I've read a lot of reviews that condemn this movie as pointless trash, but with the pretense of being art. But when I watched it, I didn't at all think the movie was gratuitous prententious arty junk. I feel like the message is a little muddy overall, and any point it's trying to make can dissapear from the intense reaction a lot of people get from it. And while I found much of it bothersome, I was much more intrigued by it. Some people get too bent up over the gross scenes (which are actually all pretty brief and about as tasteful as tasteless material can be) and seem to miss a lot of cool scenes and details.
There's this mysterious woman who plays the piano during the storytelling scenes who has almost no dialogue, and the music she plays during the earlier parts in the movie are joyous and upbeat, then it becomes slower and more somber, and by the end she's playing really creepy minimalist music. Then she plays one last upbeat tune before she throws herself out of a window. There is also some interesting ironic use of religious statues in parts of the mansion, and during the wedding feast of shit scene, everyone is dressed in elegant clothes, sitting at long tables with bottles of wine and flowers on them, while they eat turds off of china plates with forks. It's a more interesting, bizarre, and sometimes darkly humorous movie than people give it credit for. I also liked this bewildering part during this mock wedding ceremony where the libertines dress up as women and marry their favorite man in the group, and the pianist (hilariously carrying an accordion) does some weird comedy skit in French with one of the prostitutes, and then they start screaming, then they start laughing uncontrollably. I mean, I don't get it, but it's just so strange...
I dunno, I just kind of jumped around a lot and put some thoughts down, but I thought in terms of graphic content it was a little over-hyped, but that it was a lot more interesting and thought-provoking than I expected. Watching it as "the most effed up movie EVAR" is stupid because it has a lot more too it than just empty controversy. I wouldn't go so far to say that it's a great movie, but I did think it was really good, and pretty much unlike any movie out there. I had been led to believe by reviews I had read that the movie was a cold, sparse, emotionless, disgusting movie, but it turned out to be a lot more colorful, weirder, and fascinating. That's not to say it isn't messed up and disturbing, because it is, the final 10 minutes especially. Ugh, there's this particularly gross scalping during the final torture orgy that is really awful, and there are a handful of nasty scenes here and there, but none of them are really quite as bad as the hype says, and you can find movies that are much more consistently graphic than this. But this isn't a gore/gross-out flick, so it coming up shorter on that stuff than I expected (and was scared) to see worked in its favor. Though I'm hardly a judge on the matter; I can pretty much watch anything by this point without being fazed, so maybe the hype is right, this is unwatchable, and it should NEVER be seen. But I can say I thought it was a genuinely well-made and interesting movie, denser and stranger than I anticipated.
After only watching some of a poor quality unsubtitled bootleg of Salo last year and being kind of morbidly fascinated by it, I've finally watched the whole thing translated on Criterion Collection's new DVD. Before I get into any analysis, I have to say that it was an unexpectedly beautiful looking movie, with very classy and colorful cinematography and top-notch production design. The only other Pasolini movie I've seen (Teorema) was pretty bland looking (and boring to boot), so I was expecting this to be the same, but it really is an attractively shot movie, ironic considering its uncomfortable onscreen content.
The movie doesn't really have any sort of plot to speak of, apart from its premise, which even then is simple. In 1944 Nazi occupied Italy, four middle-aged powerful, wealthy, and evil aristocrats (who are never given names apart from formal titles like "excellency" and "lord") kidnap a bunch of teenagers, chosen by their attractiveness, and lock themselves up in a lavish mansion, along with a few close, and equally cruel, brothel madames, for a celebration of perversity and debauchery, all at the expense of their victims. The characters progress through stages of hell, which include the "circle of obsessions", the "circle of shit", and finally the "circle of blood", each hosted by a different aging prostitute, who sits in a big hall and romantically tells hideous and unusual stories of various unsavory sexual practices, which in turn influences the libertines to act out these tales on their teenage sex slaves.
For me what is interesting about the four libertines is that they consider themselves true fascists and are obviously part of the fascist government in Italy, yet a lot of their actions go against their own political party. They set-up their own puppet society in the mansion, with its own class system (the victims being the citizens and themselves the self-appointed leaders), and they have a collection of strict rules that the victims must silently obey, but their rules glorify homosexuality (something hated by the nazis/fascists of the era) and sodomy. So these men are essentially hypocrites, saying they adhere to their fascist ideology, but continually going against it. The mansion becomes some sort of weird reverse-fascist state, where abnormal and destructive sex becomes the norm, but the strict rule and class system still applies. The victims are all either in the exact same clothes or completely naked the whole movie, as a way to show the conformity that is thrown upon them. There's a blase additude to all of the terrible things done over the course of the movie, with the fascists barely ever pleased or satisfied by their vicious actions, and the victims accepting their own imprisonment and helplessness. The libertines seem to be men who don't even understand themselves, and use their position and power as a way to explore their violent and vile sexual appetites in a sexually repressive society, but it beings them no real joy, and their tempers rise into frequent brutal violence.
The libertines also seem to be experimenting with their victims. The first few guys captured don't becomes the sex slaves, but are given positions of power instead. They are rounded up and taken, and then the next scene shows them in full military garb, acting out their first orders. Only one of them rebels, and he is later instantly killed. It's disturbing how fast the others, when not in the lower tier of the little society, become just as corrupt as the adults. They also forcibly marry eachothers daughters in one of the opening scenes, as a way to bind their fates together, and then throughout the rest of the movie, the daughters are equated with the regular teenaged victims and are stripped, humiliated, raped, and eventually killed.
The storytelling prostitutes always have the most hideously fake and souless smiles stretched across their weathered faces as they casually sit around chatting, always dressed in the classiest gowns, while never-ending abuse takes place around them. Their vulgar tales of their pasts show that they themselves were corrupted and abused at a young age, most likely unwillingly at first. One of the women tells of her first sexual experience, where her professor ejaculated all over her face when she was like 7, and then how she became a prostitute. The actresses who play these characters can actually be kind of funny, especially the first storyteller who dances around and speaks in different voices and plays it up big time for amusing, albeit uncomfortable results; the other two, especially the last one who tells the creepy torture tale (who I recognized from a couple Fellini movies) are less funny and more disturbing. The women specifically tell these tales to influence the activities that go on over the course of the 120 days, so they probably are reliving past experiences through the new set of victims. This is also very circular (just like how the movie passes through circles of hell), as the victims of the past are now the oppressors, and by the end of the movie, a couple of the victims themselves become fascist and are saved in the end from the tortures inflicted on the rest, last seen drinking wine and socializing with the libertines and storytellers, while the others are tied up in the other room, awaiting their deaths. The film's abrupt non-ending seems to suggest that what took place is something that never truly ends. Stuff like this does happen, and has since happened. I read an interesting review that compared Salo to Abu Gharib, and that in the writer's mind, the film gained new signifigance because of it; that what we see here, while fictional, isn't too far from the truth.
Now, I've never really liked the argument that because something horrible exists, that warrants a graphic depiction of it. You can make that argument for a lot of really trashy disgusting movies, like Cannibal Holocaust or something. And I've read a lot of reviews that condemn this movie as pointless trash, but with the pretense of being art. But when I watched it, I didn't at all think the movie was gratuitous prententious arty junk. I feel like the message is a little muddy overall, and any point it's trying to make can dissapear from the intense reaction a lot of people get from it. And while I found much of it bothersome, I was much more intrigued by it. Some people get too bent up over the gross scenes (which are actually all pretty brief and about as tasteful as tasteless material can be) and seem to miss a lot of cool scenes and details.
There's this mysterious woman who plays the piano during the storytelling scenes who has almost no dialogue, and the music she plays during the earlier parts in the movie are joyous and upbeat, then it becomes slower and more somber, and by the end she's playing really creepy minimalist music. Then she plays one last upbeat tune before she throws herself out of a window. There is also some interesting ironic use of religious statues in parts of the mansion, and during the wedding feast of shit scene, everyone is dressed in elegant clothes, sitting at long tables with bottles of wine and flowers on them, while they eat turds off of china plates with forks. It's a more interesting, bizarre, and sometimes darkly humorous movie than people give it credit for. I also liked this bewildering part during this mock wedding ceremony where the libertines dress up as women and marry their favorite man in the group, and the pianist (hilariously carrying an accordion) does some weird comedy skit in French with one of the prostitutes, and then they start screaming, then they start laughing uncontrollably. I mean, I don't get it, but it's just so strange...
I dunno, I just kind of jumped around a lot and put some thoughts down, but I thought in terms of graphic content it was a little over-hyped, but that it was a lot more interesting and thought-provoking than I expected. Watching it as "the most effed up movie EVAR" is stupid because it has a lot more too it than just empty controversy. I wouldn't go so far to say that it's a great movie, but I did think it was really good, and pretty much unlike any movie out there. I had been led to believe by reviews I had read that the movie was a cold, sparse, emotionless, disgusting movie, but it turned out to be a lot more colorful, weirder, and fascinating. That's not to say it isn't messed up and disturbing, because it is, the final 10 minutes especially. Ugh, there's this particularly gross scalping during the final torture orgy that is really awful, and there are a handful of nasty scenes here and there, but none of them are really quite as bad as the hype says, and you can find movies that are much more consistently graphic than this. But this isn't a gore/gross-out flick, so it coming up shorter on that stuff than I expected (and was scared) to see worked in its favor. Though I'm hardly a judge on the matter; I can pretty much watch anything by this point without being fazed, so maybe the hype is right, this is unwatchable, and it should NEVER be seen. But I can say I thought it was a genuinely well-made and interesting movie, denser and stranger than I anticipated.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Oh yeah, I have a blog....
Hmm, seems I've been unwilling to regularly post something, and while writing on here has been in the back of my mind for the past month, I was just never in the mood.
So here I'm forcing myself to write to get back into the habit, even though my day stunk and I'm currently not doing too great in a few of my classes and I have a headache and I'm grumpoz and one of the heaters in my room is really noisy and is making this annoying boiling liquid sound and even though it's been set to zero, meaning that it should stop, it just keeps making that noise, and it's getting REALLY irritating and I'm probably about to snap any second.
So looks like things are goin' my way!
Anywho, I don't want this to be a whiny bitch blog, so I'll try not to dwell on how annoying this heater is.
Things of interest as of late:
1.) Remember Stephanie from Full House? No? Well she came to campus for an inspirational lecture and inside look at her life post-Full House. Naturally, I didn't go, but I was in my horrible psych lab and some girl was telling another girl about it, and she was like "Yeah, I saw Jodie Sweetin, you know from Full House?" and the other girl was like "What'd she do?" and the other girl was like "Oh, she talked about how she was hooked on drugs and it ruined her life." and the other girl thought that was hilarious.
2.)I got an e-mail last week from my dad with the title "my brush with fame". So my interest was piqued and it wasn't one of his normal "I'm all business" e-mails about me not doing something I should be doing, so I opened and found there was a picture attachment. And the picture was of him sitting at an outdoor table at a restaurant in Philly and Sarah Palin is there, shaking hands with my dad's friend Bob. Needless I didn't expect that. Also, I hate Sarah Palin (:wink:). Apparently they talked about Alaska. BIG SURPRISE.
3.)Dan Bull-man tells me that Take 10, the only genuinely good place to eat on Duquesne's stupid campus (the other options being the OK Options, the awful Towers, and the hideously unmentionable vomit-inducing death-trap known as the Off-Ramp) was closed down! The poor people that worked there (who probably got underpaid as is) are now probably out of jobs, roaming the streets of Pittsburgh, a numbing hunger in their stomachs that can never be replenished, freezing from the harsh wind, killing in the night. I guess Duquesne was all "Let's cut the food budget so we can pay for more crucifixes!" I can't stress how much I'm happy to be out of that place and out of the grasp of that horrible alien Jesus. Dan also told me there was a Duquense blanket that had Duq "landmarks" on it and one of them was the scary Jesus. Can you imagine someone snuggling up with that horrid thing? Having sex? Duqsgusting.
4.) It was freezing in Whitney for so long, and now they turn on the heaters and my room has one that makes hideous noises. Fantastic.
5.) I broke my own rule and mentioned the heater. Whatev.
6.) I got nothin'
Get outta ma face!
So here I'm forcing myself to write to get back into the habit, even though my day stunk and I'm currently not doing too great in a few of my classes and I have a headache and I'm grumpoz and one of the heaters in my room is really noisy and is making this annoying boiling liquid sound and even though it's been set to zero, meaning that it should stop, it just keeps making that noise, and it's getting REALLY irritating and I'm probably about to snap any second.
So looks like things are goin' my way!
Anywho, I don't want this to be a whiny bitch blog, so I'll try not to dwell on how annoying this heater is.
Things of interest as of late:
1.) Remember Stephanie from Full House? No? Well she came to campus for an inspirational lecture and inside look at her life post-Full House. Naturally, I didn't go, but I was in my horrible psych lab and some girl was telling another girl about it, and she was like "Yeah, I saw Jodie Sweetin, you know from Full House?" and the other girl was like "What'd she do?" and the other girl was like "Oh, she talked about how she was hooked on drugs and it ruined her life." and the other girl thought that was hilarious.
2.)I got an e-mail last week from my dad with the title "my brush with fame". So my interest was piqued and it wasn't one of his normal "I'm all business" e-mails about me not doing something I should be doing, so I opened and found there was a picture attachment. And the picture was of him sitting at an outdoor table at a restaurant in Philly and Sarah Palin is there, shaking hands with my dad's friend Bob. Needless I didn't expect that. Also, I hate Sarah Palin (:wink:). Apparently they talked about Alaska. BIG SURPRISE.
3.)Dan Bull-man tells me that Take 10, the only genuinely good place to eat on Duquesne's stupid campus (the other options being the OK Options, the awful Towers, and the hideously unmentionable vomit-inducing death-trap known as the Off-Ramp) was closed down! The poor people that worked there (who probably got underpaid as is) are now probably out of jobs, roaming the streets of Pittsburgh, a numbing hunger in their stomachs that can never be replenished, freezing from the harsh wind, killing in the night. I guess Duquesne was all "Let's cut the food budget so we can pay for more crucifixes!" I can't stress how much I'm happy to be out of that place and out of the grasp of that horrible alien Jesus. Dan also told me there was a Duquense blanket that had Duq "landmarks" on it and one of them was the scary Jesus. Can you imagine someone snuggling up with that horrid thing? Having sex? Duqsgusting.
4.) It was freezing in Whitney for so long, and now they turn on the heaters and my room has one that makes hideous noises. Fantastic.
5.) I broke my own rule and mentioned the heater. Whatev.
6.) I got nothin'
Get outta ma face!
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The girl with one arm
So I was sitting in my Philosophy lecture today, which is a class I normally like, but today found deadly boring (I've been disinterested in pretty much everything this week, so I've legally changed my name to Andy the Corpse of Corpse St).
So I was spending my time doodling various animals and shapes, when I looked to the bottom front of the lecture hall (I was up in the high seats in the back) and saw this girl sitting at a desk away from the regular seats, slumped in her chair and also looking bored. The professor walked by and asked her to sit up straighter and at least look interested during the lecture. I paid this no attention, so I continued to zone out.
It wasn't until the last 10 minutes of class that I noticed, as she was sitting up straighter, that she was missing most of her right arm; it looked severed a little above the elbow. I wondered whether the e-mail I received about a note-taker for a disabled student had applied to her. Then I looked at her face and noticed that she was very pretty. I wondered whether it was difficult for her to get close to people because of her disability and whether she had ever been intimate with anyone. She was naturally pretty, but her missing arm would probably always be a factor to got in the way. And I wondered if I myself could date and become romantically involved with a woman that had only one arm. I'd like to think that I'm opened minded and looks certainly aren't everything, but I wasn't sure I could do it. As much as I'd try to make it a non-issue and focus purely on the person for who they were, I feel like the missing arm would always be looming in the back of my head, and I feel like most people would agree with me. So as I thought of this, I felt sort of sad for that pretty girl sitting up front in the class, even though I really didn't know her at all and had no idea whether she was a sad or happy person.
Anyway, the class ended and she exited quickly from the front door. I packed my stuff together and left through the back door. I walked down the hallway and down the stairs to the front entrance of the building, which met up with the students that had left from the front door. And just outside the entrance, I saw the girl, except that she actually HAD two arms, and her pink jacket she was holding in her right arm perfectly matched her pink shirt, making her arm "dissapear" underneath it.
Needless to say, I had pondered something interesting and melancholy out of something completely normal because I lack basic skills to see shit properly.
My life is bland.
So I was spending my time doodling various animals and shapes, when I looked to the bottom front of the lecture hall (I was up in the high seats in the back) and saw this girl sitting at a desk away from the regular seats, slumped in her chair and also looking bored. The professor walked by and asked her to sit up straighter and at least look interested during the lecture. I paid this no attention, so I continued to zone out.
It wasn't until the last 10 minutes of class that I noticed, as she was sitting up straighter, that she was missing most of her right arm; it looked severed a little above the elbow. I wondered whether the e-mail I received about a note-taker for a disabled student had applied to her. Then I looked at her face and noticed that she was very pretty. I wondered whether it was difficult for her to get close to people because of her disability and whether she had ever been intimate with anyone. She was naturally pretty, but her missing arm would probably always be a factor to got in the way. And I wondered if I myself could date and become romantically involved with a woman that had only one arm. I'd like to think that I'm opened minded and looks certainly aren't everything, but I wasn't sure I could do it. As much as I'd try to make it a non-issue and focus purely on the person for who they were, I feel like the missing arm would always be looming in the back of my head, and I feel like most people would agree with me. So as I thought of this, I felt sort of sad for that pretty girl sitting up front in the class, even though I really didn't know her at all and had no idea whether she was a sad or happy person.
Anyway, the class ended and she exited quickly from the front door. I packed my stuff together and left through the back door. I walked down the hallway and down the stairs to the front entrance of the building, which met up with the students that had left from the front door. And just outside the entrance, I saw the girl, except that she actually HAD two arms, and her pink jacket she was holding in her right arm perfectly matched her pink shirt, making her arm "dissapear" underneath it.
Needless to say, I had pondered something interesting and melancholy out of something completely normal because I lack basic skills to see shit properly.
My life is bland.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Yoz, We'ze goin' to College
I'm not talking about a REAL college assholes, I'm talking about the movie, College, which tanked at the box office (along with Disaster Movie, which makes me very excited for a future where another movie movie isn't coming out by those douches Friedburg and Seltzer; here's hoping they also inexplicably die).
I first got excited about College when I saw the trailer zonked out of mind before Pineapple Express. It promised to be the lamest comedy this year, AND it starred Drake Bell, who I hate, AND it had a hilariously simplified title. So it seemed like the perfect night at the movies. Bad jokes=hearty laughs in my book.
So Anna and I traveled 35 minutes to some other town to see it, only to leave late and get lost on the way and then show up to the theater 25 minutes late, where the ticket lady didn't seem to know of the movie, and then upon realizing what we were seeing, managed to be as slow as possible, so Annz and I payed full price to see like an hour of the movie. And what a horrendous hour it was.
It's essentially a jokeless comedy, with Drake (looking hilariously past his prime, even though he's only like 20), some forgettable lispy nerd, and this awful fat kid (more on him later), who are high schoolers who go visit some generic college and have the weekend of their lives! Which basically means you just watch one long party montage throughout the whole movie, with frequent bouts of hazing organized by the frat jerks (who all look 30). Parties are fun to be in, but their not so fun to just watch for an hour. Basically the gags consist of the three characters just being drunk, and not even amusingly so; they just kind of stumble around and dance and romance with vacant female characters. Highlights include watching the high schoolers do tequila body shots off of this weird hairy guy call Bearcat (the fat kid drinks tequila out of his ass at one point), being forced to clean a shit filled toilet, the three friends going to a gay frat party where everyone has light up condoms on their dicks, and lots of gratuitous female nudity (which I guess I don't really mind, though it seems a lot more ridiculous in this one; there are constant scenes of women dancing around naked in cages making out with eachother and if that a'int college I don't know what is).
The acting in these movies doesn't have to be good, but the fat kid in particular is absolutely horrendous. He's a Jonah Hill wannabe, who possesses no comic timing, shouts all of his lines, and is given non-joke lines like "This is fuckin' lame!" or "Look at that pussy! Hot!" or some equally mindless comment devoid of any humor. You also see his ass multiple times, and he gets it on with this chick who looks, like everyone else in college, 30. Drake and the other kid are completely forgettable in every way, but the fat kid just leaves an obnoxous fart taste in your mouth.
And then the movie has the nerve to get all "real" and shit in the last 20 minutes, where the main characters friendships are tested in ways they never imagined and the empty shell dead-eyed personality-deficient love interest for Drake tells him about how she was basically raped by the frat house leader (though they never actually explicitly state this, which is odd considering the movie goes out of its way to be as over-the-top and edgy as possible). But the high schoolers get the last laugh by trashing the frat house and covering the main dickhead's room full of pig shit, and the move ends with the possibility of another crazy booze-filled weekend at another college! All in all, it's an awful movie. And it was, suprisingly, directed by a woman!
Yep, somehow a woman (named Deb Hagan and who I assume has absolutely no self-respect) directed this shit-fest. It's not like a woman shouldn't direct a more teen male-oriented movie; Kathryn Bigelow made Point Break, which is a total guy movie, and it rocks. But College specifically is so sexist; it's very much on par with recent National Lampoons movies. I've talked with freinds recently about the female characters in the recent string of the Judd Apatow team movies, and how they are given almost no jokes or any interesting aspects to their characters. Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express had particularly awful and boring women. But with College, it's even worse, and it was somehow directed by a fellow woman. In College, the women have big boobs, no brains, and are extremely easy to get with. I could see this being made by a lame sexist male director who doesn't care, but Deb Hagan is just continuing this annoying trend. Their aren't nearly enough female directors in the biz, and she sure isn't helping. She also appears to have no talent, as the movie is generally ugly and bland looking and sometimes confusingly edited.
Conclusion: The film College is exactly like actual college in every detail. Stellar work by cast and crew. Complex, demanding, insightful. Perfect. 10/10
I first got excited about College when I saw the trailer zonked out of mind before Pineapple Express. It promised to be the lamest comedy this year, AND it starred Drake Bell, who I hate, AND it had a hilariously simplified title. So it seemed like the perfect night at the movies. Bad jokes=hearty laughs in my book.
So Anna and I traveled 35 minutes to some other town to see it, only to leave late and get lost on the way and then show up to the theater 25 minutes late, where the ticket lady didn't seem to know of the movie, and then upon realizing what we were seeing, managed to be as slow as possible, so Annz and I payed full price to see like an hour of the movie. And what a horrendous hour it was.
It's essentially a jokeless comedy, with Drake (looking hilariously past his prime, even though he's only like 20), some forgettable lispy nerd, and this awful fat kid (more on him later), who are high schoolers who go visit some generic college and have the weekend of their lives! Which basically means you just watch one long party montage throughout the whole movie, with frequent bouts of hazing organized by the frat jerks (who all look 30). Parties are fun to be in, but their not so fun to just watch for an hour. Basically the gags consist of the three characters just being drunk, and not even amusingly so; they just kind of stumble around and dance and romance with vacant female characters. Highlights include watching the high schoolers do tequila body shots off of this weird hairy guy call Bearcat (the fat kid drinks tequila out of his ass at one point), being forced to clean a shit filled toilet, the three friends going to a gay frat party where everyone has light up condoms on their dicks, and lots of gratuitous female nudity (which I guess I don't really mind, though it seems a lot more ridiculous in this one; there are constant scenes of women dancing around naked in cages making out with eachother and if that a'int college I don't know what is).
The acting in these movies doesn't have to be good, but the fat kid in particular is absolutely horrendous. He's a Jonah Hill wannabe, who possesses no comic timing, shouts all of his lines, and is given non-joke lines like "This is fuckin' lame!" or "Look at that pussy! Hot!" or some equally mindless comment devoid of any humor. You also see his ass multiple times, and he gets it on with this chick who looks, like everyone else in college, 30. Drake and the other kid are completely forgettable in every way, but the fat kid just leaves an obnoxous fart taste in your mouth.
And then the movie has the nerve to get all "real" and shit in the last 20 minutes, where the main characters friendships are tested in ways they never imagined and the empty shell dead-eyed personality-deficient love interest for Drake tells him about how she was basically raped by the frat house leader (though they never actually explicitly state this, which is odd considering the movie goes out of its way to be as over-the-top and edgy as possible). But the high schoolers get the last laugh by trashing the frat house and covering the main dickhead's room full of pig shit, and the move ends with the possibility of another crazy booze-filled weekend at another college! All in all, it's an awful movie. And it was, suprisingly, directed by a woman!
Yep, somehow a woman (named Deb Hagan and who I assume has absolutely no self-respect) directed this shit-fest. It's not like a woman shouldn't direct a more teen male-oriented movie; Kathryn Bigelow made Point Break, which is a total guy movie, and it rocks. But College specifically is so sexist; it's very much on par with recent National Lampoons movies. I've talked with freinds recently about the female characters in the recent string of the Judd Apatow team movies, and how they are given almost no jokes or any interesting aspects to their characters. Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express had particularly awful and boring women. But with College, it's even worse, and it was somehow directed by a fellow woman. In College, the women have big boobs, no brains, and are extremely easy to get with. I could see this being made by a lame sexist male director who doesn't care, but Deb Hagan is just continuing this annoying trend. Their aren't nearly enough female directors in the biz, and she sure isn't helping. She also appears to have no talent, as the movie is generally ugly and bland looking and sometimes confusingly edited.
Conclusion: The film College is exactly like actual college in every detail. Stellar work by cast and crew. Complex, demanding, insightful. Perfect. 10/10
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