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The World's Sexiest Canadian
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| Vote for me or my Mom will Bury You. |
[Feb. 3rd, 2010|09:19 pm] |
Anyways I'm up for some competition/award regarding writing. And you can vote for me via text message (just like American Idol, only I'm not singing, so you're not screaming and crying). Each vote costs 0.99 cents US. Which is about 48.95 Canadian. Only one vote for mobile phone, so if you're one of those people with like a thousand mobile phones cause you steal them at pools? Now's the time to show me you care. I'll reimburse you. My mom promises home-made cookies to those who vote for me and certain flaming, death via exploding train running through your house for those who don't vote for me.
She's a very vindictive woman. And an explosives expert. So I'd seriously vote. She knows where most of you live.
You have three days. I'd move quickly if I were you. She's making the Napalm.
Vote for me outside of the States
Text: TALENT R5PD72 to :+49 177 178 52 60
Vote for me in America:
Text: TALENT R5PD72 to 21001
Vote for me in the United Kingdom
TALENT R5PD72 to 88010
Thank You and Good Night!
Jeff
PS: Tell your friends. And relatives. And people you meet at the bus stop. More votes equal more homemade cookies. Only voting for Jeff guarantees citizenship in his future empire. |
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| The WSFC's BEST MOVIES OF 2009 |
[Jan. 20th, 2010|11:24 am] |
FAVORITE DRAMA:
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (dir. Werner Herzog)
Nicolas Cage's performances in Ghost Rider, Bangkok Dangerous, Next, Knowing, Windtalkers, National Treasure (1 and 2), World Trade Center and The Wicker Man, all vanished like a puff of smoke, thanks to this film. It's like a whole decade disappeared into the ether and the Nicolas Cage who became famous and infamous for his crazed, dramatic roles had never left. In Bad Lieutenant Cage returned to his roots, in a role that plays to his over the top eccentricities and where he dances precariously between the introverted, self-conscious every-man, the comedic lunatic and the frightening sociopath. Neither a remake of Harvey Keitel's Bad Lieutenant or a sequel, Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant is a intense look at a man molded into different people by different circumstances. It’s about a man who is all at once, a hero, a monster and a helpless victim. It's a classic Herzog character study that refuses to compromise, that dissects our concepts of morality and personality, and never gives us an easy answer, instead daring us to see a man in his entirety and not just in his best moments.
Trailer:
FAVORITE FANTASY:
Goemon (dir. Kazuaki Kiriya)
From the imagination of Kazuaki Kiriya (Casshern) comes Goemon, a sweeping, musical, CGI-enhanced ninja epic featuring the most original creative designs since Jim Henson's Dark Crystal and some of the greatest and most imaginative set designs in many years. Goemon carries all the massive visual power of Kiriya‘s Casshern, but unlike Casshern, Goemon has a strong, simple and well executed plotline dealing with back-stabbing governments, feuding warlords, giant (and we're talking giant) assassins, and tragic romance. A pop-culture classic fantasy adventure served up as a live-action superflat-style cartoon ala Cutie Honey with samurai, pirates, scoundrels, ninjas and knights in shining armor; Goemon is like a cross between Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, Terry Gilliam's Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Final Fantasy. An ambitious and brilliant indie cinema visual treat that laid the smack down on its Big Budget brethren.
Trailer:
FAVORITE ACTION/ADVENTURE:
Red Cliff (dir. John Woo)
Red Cliff is living proof that John Woo has been handcuffed for the better part of a decade. John Woo in the 90s burst onto the scene with A Better Tomorrow, Hardboiled and The Killer, basically re-writing the action movie, the gangster drama and the entirety of Hong Kong cinema all in one fell swoop. Woo's imagery became the template for an ocean of pretenders and homage ranging from Reservoir Dogs to the Boondock Saints. In America Woo was left doing films like Mission Impossible 2 and Windtalkers, attached to badly written scripts and not given the time to properly set up and choreograph his trademark action set pieces. Well that is over now. Woo returns to his roots in Red Cliff and basically crafts the greatest period action film of all time. Woo's two part masterpiece displays the evolution of his style and visual technique, and showcases his patience in crafting mood and building a story. Woo's ode to one of the greatest battles in the history of China is like a living work of art, the best martial arts movie of the last ten years, and once again sets the visual standard for everything that will come afterward.
Trailer:
FAVORITE DOCUMENTARY:
Big River Man (dir. John Maringouin)
Martin Strel is a fifty year old, fat, out-of-shape, drunk-driving, alcoholic, Slovenian madman who eats horse burgers and is dead-set on saving the world. Big River Man is the documentary/character study that is so awesome, so sweeping, so epic, so uncompromising and so bizarre; it's like a real-life Werner Herzog film. The camera follows Strel, a fearless, crazed, everyday madman who has conquered almost every massive river on the planet; and now he's setting his sights on swimming and saving the Amazon. The movie has visuals that will drop your jaw to the floor, insights into a person's character that will blow your mind and an emotional rollercoaster that will leave you breathless. Easily the best Documentary of the year, Big River Man is a mind-blowing look at a real-life superhero.
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FAVORITE SCIENCE FICTION:
The Clone Returns Home (dir. Kanji Nakajima)
This movie is a very slow burn in the tradition of the original Solaris; The Clone Returns Home is a science fiction character study about an astronaut who lost his twin brother, who dies in space and is cloned and returned to his family on the countryside. The film deals with the concept of the human spirit and whether or not this is a tangible thing or simply superstition. The movie asks us what defines the human condition. Is it just our appearance and our emotions and our memories, or is there something more to us, something different? The Clone Returns Home uses the idea of the clone as a bridge between life and death, where the concept of going to your own funeral becomes a way for a man to look at himself from outside of his own existence and come to peace with the ghosts that have haunted him for his entire life.
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FAVORITE HORROR: (tie)
Thirst (dir. Park-Chan Wook)
Antichrist (dir. Lars von Trier)
I explain my reasons for these picks here.
FAVORITE SUSPENSE/THRILLER
The Hurt Locker (dir. Kathryn Bigelow)
Can thousands of critics be wrong? Heck yeah. There are many films that have been deemed award-winning based on manufactured praise and safe, boring sentimentalities, like the cinematic equivalent of a shitty coffee table book instead of being a film that actually inspires a sense of genuine enthusiasm. Are the critics wrong in this case? Fuck, no. The Hurt Locker is a vastly impressive tour de force that deftly combines action, characterization, suspense and consequence into one big tapestry of incredible filmmaking. The Hurt Locker deserves every drop of praise that's been showered on it over the last year. Kathryn Bigelow creates a vice-like grip on the audience with the smartest, most thrilling and most honest on-screen film regarding the effects of war since Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.
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FAVORITE ROMANCE:
Summer Wars (dir. Mamoru Hosoda)
Mamoru Hosoda has gone from animating generic cookie-cutter Digimon movies for Japanese Otaku to becoming an award-winning director who has been critically compared to Stephen Spielberg, John Hughes, and Brad Bird and referred to by Japanese film critics as the second-coming of Hayao Miyazaki. In Summer Wars we have probably the highest concept for a romantic comedy in ages. It's like a combination of Meet The Parents, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, War Games The Matrix and the video game Portal. Where most directors would be stumbling and fumbling trying to keep a consistent narrative pace that bridges the various concepts together, Hosoda happily and easily combines them into a mind-boggling fun, super-imaginative, visual roller-coaster ride framed around a romantic, cheerful and heart-warming film for the whole family. It's like classic John Hughes meets classic Spielberg; with relatable engaging and funny characters being flushed out and examined inside the larger structure of a big-budget super computer versus teenage math prodigy B-movie SF flick. Summer Wars is proof that Hosoda is indeed the real deal, a science fiction writer/director with wit, heart and insight to match his immense imagination. Hosoda joins Makoto Shinkai, Keiichi Hara, Masayuki Kojima and Satoshi Kon in a new wave of formidable Japanese animators guaranteed to be game-changers over the next five years.
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FAVORITE COMEDY:
The Fantastic Mr. Fox (dir. Wes Anderson)
In a ridiculously strong year for animated films The Fantastic Mr. Fox was one of the best. Based on a story by Roald Dahl and featuring George Clooney, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson in hilarious performances; Wes Anderson's ode to old school stop motion animation is nothing short of brilliant. It was a movie I expected to be endearing, but instead it’s a powerhouse animated oddity, featuring one of the best screenplays of the year with crackling well-executed one-liners. While most directors struggle trying to create the illusion of spontaneity through rehearsed dialogue and scenes (especially in Animation), Anderson's talent for crafting live performances, gives this animated film scenes that are more genuine, and much odder with an interspersed poly-rhythmic feeling of starts and pauses to the dialog that perfectly compliments the herky-jerky motion of the old-style animation. Fox is one the funniest and smartest films of the year, and has one of the darkest streaks of black humor we've seen in a kid's film in a long, long time. It's a fantastic integration of Anderson's cinematic skill at creating awkward, realistic and relatable characters and Dahl's talent at combining the darker aspects of the real world with the imaginary in a way that makes the outcome equally disturbing and wondrous.
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FAVORITE FOREIGN:
Paju (dir. Park Chan Ok)
Park Chan-ok is one of the most exciting female filmmakers on the planet and Paju is the intellectual/emotional follow-up to her incredible Jealousy Is My Middle Name (2002) Not content with being just a brilliant dramatic story featuring one of the most empowering and progressive portrayals of Asian women in the last ten years, or having the best cinematography of any film this year, Paju is a desolate, wrenching, massively intelligent film that scatters its plot to the wind and challenges the viewers. In Paju random sights and old haunts restore painful memories, flashing back and forward creating a chain of collages that develops the over-all plot. Paju's story involves a young woman looking to escape an old town crumbling under progress and her brother in law who came to the town haunted by a tragedy and is pushed into a conflict that might lead to another. Memories in this movie come like unwanted floods of nostalgia, perception distorts the truth, and Paju’s message regarding the importance of a home and the crumbling decay of our past in the frightening face of progress is as stark and as awe-inspiring as a lightening storm.
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FAVORITE ANIMATION:
Ponyo (dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
Most of the time when I watch animation directed at children I want to blow my brains out. The condescending nature the genre takes towards kids and their intelligence and imagination is nothing short of insulting and most of the shows are like sitting around for two hours listening to an annoying relative talk baby-talk. Not Hayao Miyazaki. For Miyazaki entertaining a five year old is as easy as entertaining a sixty year old, and his ability to do both at the same time without resorting to mature content or 'adult humor' or zingers or self-deprecation is nothing short of an inspiration. Miyazaki is a god of animation, his storytelling skills are so finely honed that he can touch anyone's heart and mind without even really trying. He doesn't need to make everything serious to get a massive emotional reaction, he doesn't need to fill his films with blatant 'life lessons' to teach us about what's important, and he doesn't need half a billion dollars and the most expensive technology on the planet to create completely immersive and seemingly real worlds out of his raw imagination. PONYO is his latest effort and in the opinion of my God-Daughter Talia: "The Best Movie Ever!!!!" Who am I to disagree?
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FAVORITE EXPERIMENTAL:
Love Exposure (dir. Sion Sono)
Prolific filmmaker Sion Sono has finally come into his own. An acclaimed Japanese artist and poet, Sono's first features felt like they were derivative of Takashi Miike and Miike's trademark over-the-top approach to gore and surrealism; but as the years went by Sono has been maturing and becoming more and more impressive, finding his own unique voice and brand of filmmaking. Now with Love Exposure he fires a flare into the sky announcing his arrival. A true story biography about one of Sono's friends growing up; Love Exposure is a four hour long epic movie. It's too bad that critics have bled all the meaning out of the word epic, because in this case it really does apply. Love Exposure is a massive character study and examination on religion and relationships, sexuality, culture, family life, psychology and politics. In many ways Love Exposure is what most Bollywood films try to be, but never accomplish. Love Exposure easily jumps from frightening to hilarious to touching and tear-jerking, playing with a strange mixture of genres and emotions and crafting a thought-provoking tapestry from what appear to be tangential strings. Love Exposure is filled with hilarious scenes and heart-breaking scenes, disturbing scenes and disgusting scenes; I haven't watched any movie remotely like it since Alejandro Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre. Its four hours long, but you don't notice it and when it's finished; for years Sion Sono has been living in the shadow of Miike and other Japanese filmmakers; after Love Exposure, they are going to be living in Sono's shadow.
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FAVORITE OVER-ALL:
Inglourious Basterds (dir. Quentin Tarantino)
The old cliché you hear from film critics is that it's easier to write a bad review than a good review. I feel the exact opposite. I always know a bad film when I see one, because it gives me nothing to talk about afterward. I can sit there and address the film's technical mistakes or plot mishaps, but sooner or later I have to break into a cheesy stand-up comic routine, because it's the only way I'm going to engage the readers. The movie has certainly given me no way to engage them with its content, other than making fun of it. It's given me nothing interesting to discuss with other film fans, no perspectives that challenge them or anyone else. So I find it very monotonous because every negative review becomes essentially the same review.
Jeff: "I saw a movie and it was soooooooo bad..."
Audience: "How bad was it?!"
Writing something like that is about as challenging as getting Jake Gyllenhaal laid at a Gay Bar.
A bad film is like a puddle, you break the surface and there's nothing else there, a good movie is like the mariana trench, where decades after its discovered different people continue to find interesting things in it to appreciate and debate. Bad movies inspire no real reaction; they're mostly gauged by thumbs pointing down and low-counts on the tomato and star meters. Their merit can be entirely judged by nothing more than the equivalent of a Grade School sticker count on a Math Test. Great movies like all great art inspire great reactions (sometimes good, sometimes bad).
You want to talk about reactions? I felt like I could write a book about Inglorious Basterds after I was done watching it. This movie is so rich with meaning and so rich in character and performance, and detail and subtext and homage; it deftly combines a dozen different types of storytelling, building a bridge between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Reservoir Dogs. I truly feel that this is Tarantino's best movie. At the core of the film it combines both the fun and unreality of a pop culture genre flick and the grit of a realistic drama. At times the film has fun with interrupting narratives and diverging storylines, but in most cases the camerawork and editing is so well done and so subtle, it disappears, sucking you into the narrative, not employing any obvious tricks, because the script and the performance of the actors is bad-ass enough to keep people's attention. The overall ballziness of the movie is ridiculous, in this 'alternate history' war epic featuring a band of mercenary Jews preying on Nazis in France during the occupation, we have the ultimate post-modernist revenge fantasy. Tarantino has always been an unabashed film nerd and aficionado, Tarantino loves movies and in Basterds we have a tale of seething vengeance set in World War 2, and in the final sequence it feels like what's really out for revenge against the Nazis is the Cinema itself. The Nazis desire to crush and subjugate opinion through manipulations of art, music and film is like a ghost that haunts every frame of Basterds, and in the end an oppressed Jewish woman who is in the right place at the right time is given an opportunity to show the Nazis how film really can be made into a weapon. It's a loving homage to European cinema, it's a suspense/thriller, it's surrealism, it's comedy, it's fantasy, it's a parody, it has multiple character studies and it's twisted and daring and outrageous; Basterds is everything I love about cinema rolled up into one movie.
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Honorable Mentions: Up, Mother, Coraline, Yatterman, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Private Eye, Moon, Evangelion 1.01: You are (not) alone, Fish Tank, District 9, Dear Doctor, Watchmen, Sword of the Stranger, The Road, Symbol, Accident, The Message, City of Life & Death, Tactical Unit: Comrades in Arms, Two Lovers, Wheat, Possessed, Medicine for Melancholy, Breathless, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Up in the Air, Rec 2, Avatar, Crows Zero, The Children, Blessed, Dead Girl, The Pot |
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| Thank Tentacle for the New Year |
[Jan. 7th, 2010|09:31 pm] |
- I survived Christmas. It was better than most Christmas seasons cause I was around people I enjoyed, got to just hang out and watch movies and generally kick-it with cool folks. Also no carving cars out of the ice or shoveling through eight feet of snow. And no shitty music! And for once I got a gift for my Mom that she actually likes/will use. Sadly there were no signs of Cthulhu-Claws. The stars were not in the right orbit.
- I have a new computer. It's more like a monster than a computer. It is used for video editing and I call it PYTHONA. It loves me and eats squirrels. And has a sexy ass. Oh Pythona.
- Speaking of snakes, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has clearly defined his leadership skills by once again calling for the shut down of government, so nothing can get done. This guy spent his whole life trying to get into office so he could get to the hard work of not doing his job.
- I just found out today that musicians, writers and artists (famous ones) have all been using performance enhancing drugs to give them an edge. No seriously. There are drugs out there that make it easier to write, easier to be creative, easier to concentrate and to make it easier to perform work. I tell you. I need to step up my motherfucking game.
- Todd has finished shooting his film Big Time based on a script Ed and I wrote. And the trailer looks very solid. If swear-heavy. Apparently "fuck" is my favorite word.
- Listed under "People who weigh 155lbs who wear funny rainbow pants, that I wouldn't fuck with in a million years" you'll find K-1's 155 pound MMA champion Shinya Aoki. Who just recently destroyed another MMA division's LW champion, easily breaking the dude's arm and then standing over him laughing hysterically while giving him the finger.
- On the other hand I wonder if those magic rainbow pants come in my size? Cause I would look good in that shit.
- Tammy is finished shooting Henchmen (aka THUG) in SF based on another script of mine and I couldn't be happier. I hear the footage this time is 10 times crazier than anything they did in Driver, which is pretty damn crazy. They told me about a few of the stunts and I was having an anxiety attack in Canada, so they decided to just spare me the rest of the details until I get to see the outtake reels. Which is for the best. I was not cut-out to be a Hong Kong action director, what with my tendency to over-think and over-worry about everything. But I'm glad everybody's in one piece and coming home! Yay!! Ed, Erica, Parker, Carlos, Cesar, Vito and Mila will all return! Party time. In my pants!
- You gotta love Rex Murphy. Not only is he the one Canadian Pundit who constantly looks like his face imploded, Rex flip-flops on issues of social justice so quickly you'd think his moral barometer was made by GM. On one hand Rex viciously condemns Roman Polanski's friends and supporters in Hollywood calling for a glorious public hanging of the director for the brutal rape of a young girl twenty years ago; but when conservatives in Canada get caught with their hands in the torture cookie jar committing war crimes? Welllllllll you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right? So it's OK to illegally rape and mutilate people, just so long as you do it in the name of "The War on Terror". Stupid Roman Polanski! Just rape terrorists man! When you do it to a terrorist it's not "anal penetration" it's "enhanced interrogation!"
- I'm quite excited to see The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Terry Gilliam always gives my imagination a woodie.
- Avatar has made over a BILLION dollars. My prediction is that it will surpass Titanic before it hits DVD sales and destroys records there. Also, I've been hearing on the news that children who go to see Avatar are suffering from depression, because parents have to tell the kids afterward that Pandora isn't real and that the Blue Cat People don't actually exist. That's right, there are tons of kids suffering from depression right now, facing the reality of a universe without Blue Cat People. (Remember when all those entertainment websites said the designs would never work? Yeaaaaaaaaah, this is why Hollywood doesn't listen to those people.) Also did I call the conservative 80s nerd backlash or what?
- A lot of people view James Cameron as being arrogant; but Bubba when you walk the walk, you get to talk the talk. If I made a billion dollars in three weeks, I'd be pretty cock-sure too. Unless I worked for Wallstreet, because getting it via Government Welfare doesn't really count.
- I'm trying to find new music to listen to these days. Cause I am old and very much out of touch with the kids. Educate me. What is the new shit?
- I played DJ Hero at Todd's house with Duke and Jason after doing a short horror shoot. And wouldn't you know it? I suuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Oh man, do I suck. It's painful how badly I suck at this game. You'd have to beat some handicapped kid over the head with one of those plastic guitars to get somebody bad enough to play on my level. I suuuuuuuuuuuck so bad.
- I realized the other day that everytime Godzilla stomped Tokyo and fought those space monsters he was doing it in the nude. And I got sexually aroused.
- Which reminds me. Is it ever OK to sleep with your friend's sister? TOO BAD, I'M DOING IT ANYWAYS. |
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| God Rest Ye, Scary Gentleman |
[Dec. 31st, 2009|04:28 pm] |
RIP: Chas Balun.
A great film critic, enemy of censorship everywhere and all around decent person. |
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| Best Horror Films of 2009 |
[Dec. 23rd, 2009|12:17 pm] |
To see Fatally Yours lists of "Best Horror Movies" for 2009 Go Here
Here's my Top 10 (with an honorable mention)
HONORABLE MENTION:
Missing - A thrilling return to low-budget genre work by Korean director Kim Seong-hong (Say Yes) involving the terrifying real-life story of an elderly serial killer in Korea who was a fisherman in his 70s. Missing is a stark, suspenseful and simplistic thriller dealing with a woman who goes looking for her missing sister only to find herself face to face with a bonafide monster. The lead performance by prolific veteran Seong-kun Mun is electrifying and takes an already strong film and makes it that much more intense.
Number 10:
The Human Centipede - You’ve had enough of Torture Porn? Well say hello to 100% Accurate Medical Science Freak-show Porn. The feel-good story of three people who are being surgically connected ass to mouth to form “a single digestive unit”, The Human Centipede is one of those movies you use to clear out a room full of people and remind your grandparents why they think you’re slowly transforming into a serial killer. It’s hideously hilarious and surreal trash for the sake of trash featuring strong performances, gut-wrenching moments and an absolutely unrepentant and unforgettable flair as it wallows in its Stygian pit of subhuman delight. But hey, this is the horror genre and we are nothing if not the home of the unwanted, the unwatchable and the unforgivable.
Number 09:
Grace The heart-worming story of a pregnant woman who carries a still born baby to full term, only to have it come alive! Full of anxieties connected to pregnancy, child-birth and childbearing, Grace is a ghoulish movie that plays with our deepest set fears; sinking its fingers all the way into our primal lizard brains, generating knee-jerk, instinctual reactions of dread and disgust. This movie was responsible for people fainting in the cinema during screenings and for inspiring thousands of women watching to get their tubes tied. But the zombie baby was soooo cute!
Number 08:
Trick ‘r Treat The feel-good horror flick of the year, Trick ‘r Treat is a throwback to old school Creepshow, anthology-style 80s horror, set back in the days when horror flicks were something that kids and adults could both love for various reasons, regardless of their content rating. Trick ‘r Treat is a rare seasonal horror flick for the whole family that is entrenched in Halloween spirit and mischief. Any film that has Brian Cox playing John Carpenter being tormented by a Halloween-themed unstoppable monster, while werewolves roam the woods, zombie Mongoloid children rise from their murky graves and serial killers share a seasonal carving with their children is aces in my book.
Number 07:
Martyrs In horror cinema there is The Good, the Bad and the Canadian. Martyrs is Canadian. A mixture of the French new-wave of brutally sadistic realistic horror with the classic unsettling Canuxploitation well known for its trappings of body horror, intense weirdness and graphic violence; Martyrs hates the world and wants to hurt you with a baseball bat. The difference between this movie and its contemporaries, is that Martyrs is a film set on a path of violent cynicism and glorious self-destructive misanthropy, where getting through it becomes a feat of strength as it goes from strange, to horrific, to just plain insane turning its final running minutes into a cavalcade of ‘can you top this?’ moments of brutality and sadism. It nearly got an X-rating in its native France, and let me tell you Bubba, when the French are considering censoring your film, it is one baaaaaaaaad motherfucker.
Number 06:
The Pot A scathing indictment of evangelical bible-thumping crazies set against the backdrop of a suffocating family life, Korean horror flick The Pot is Kim Tae-gon’s launching pad. It’s a tiny budget indie horror flick that was actually funded by Kim Tae-gon’s University (and kudos to them for doing it), and it showcases a writer/director with an impressive flair for storytelling and casting and a sense of bold honesty in his approach to his subject matter. The Pot reminds me of Repulsion and that’s a very good thing; Kim Tae-gon’s shots aren’t as polished as they could be, but his enthusiasm and fearlessness make up for his inexperience.
Number 05:
Deadgirl Now this is a truly unsettling movie. The story of a couple of teenage boys who find an undead zombie girl in an abandoned mental health center and turn her into a sexual slave sounds exploitative and trashy on paper, but its execution makes the content stone-cold serious and positively chilling. The film makes no bones about its commentary regarding the objectification of women and misogynism and its assault on sexist teenage mentalities takes a horrific concept and transforms it into a serious social commentary that can easily stand outside of its genre.
Number 04:
Possessed A case-study in why you should never generalize a film by its genre and why critics who do so should be fired from a cannon into a brick-wall; Lee Yong-Ju’s Possessed looks like a K-Horror derivative of the long-haired Asian girl Ringu/Grudge genre, but looks are deceiving. Possessed is a tremendously ambitious and well-crafted suspense-horror, which puts an emphasis on intelligence, story and atmosphere over cheap-scares, fake-outs and the cash-grab. Possessed is a low-budget horror movie with brains and heart, and is the best in its genre since Tale of Two Sisters.
Number 03:
[Rec] 2 Jaume Balagueró returns with a punch for the amazing [Rec] 2, which continues to be the best and most effective of the hand-held shaky-cam film genre. Featuring a plot-line that splits in several different directions with elements of The Exorcist and Evil Dead combined with a masterful use of atmosphere and action, [Rec] 2 takes the viewer on a whirlwind ride through a haunted house of infected zombies and possessed demons leading to a shocking conclusion that changes the whole scope of the series.
Number 02:
The Children Effective and paranoid, British horror gem The Children is by-far the scariest horror film involving little kids on a rampage, since Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s Who Can Kill a Child. Tom Shankland slowly transforms an isolated Christmas vacation into a mounting, uncomfortable and emotionally tense time-bomb that eventually explodes into a maelstrom of violence and hideous brutality. The film relies on characterization to carry the weight of its effectiveness and uses uncomfortable relationships between the older characters and their younger counterparts to slowly lead to its apocalyptic conclusion. The Children is very simple, very smart and very effective.
Number 01: TIE
Antichrist and Thirst – These two films are probably two of the most underrated and important films of the year, in any genre. They are both massively superior to the majority of safe, banal, mediocre ‘great movies’ that are currently being listed in Critics Top 10 rankings and that were nominated for Golden Globes Best Picture. Daring, passionate and challenging, Park-Chan Wook’s Thirst is the most scorching commentary on religious-guilt since Buñuel’s Viridiana, and Lars von Trier’s grotesque masterpiece Antichrist is a brilliant postmodernist deconstruction of classic cinematic conventions and modern thinking regarding relationships and nature, that is as confrontational as it is stylistically brilliant. They are both superior works of art that demolish conventional film-making and construct worlds of emotional turmoil painted onto canvases of psychological dread. They both have incredible, daring and layered performances from some of the best actors in the world, and they are both dedicated, truly, completely and totally to the art of making people uneasy. And looking at the reception they’ve received, outraging stuffy and pouty critics across the planet while impressing filmmakers and artists, they have accomplished their goal with flying colours and are both deserving of being called The Best Horror Movie of the year. |
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| Movie Review: AVATAR |
[Dec. 22nd, 2009|07:35 pm] |
Avatar is a half-a-billion dollar science fiction action-adventure about blue catgirls in space with really big eyes, humans in giant robots and space machines and a climatic duel against the backdrop of a gravity defying wacky environment with a romantic/melodramatic story featuring an underlining message about anti-imperialism and pro-environmentalism.
While watching it a friend of mine accurately stated "Wow, this is a really expensive Japanese Anime."
The most expensive Anime ever, in-fact; and it's one I've seen before (three times) and it's one I've seen done better (three times).
Lets see, we got a hero facing a disability who finds himself in a mystical, far away magical forest with a new chance at redemption and finding a sense of spirituality, while working for a group of people mining the land who have to deal with the threats of an indigenous group of alien monsters who the hero eventually discovers are beautiful in their own magical and unique way.
Yes, I really did love this movie...when I saw it ten years ago and it was called PRINCESS MONONOKE.
OK, yes, lets be fair here, James Cameron and originality do not go hand-in-hand. Duh. Titanic is basically Romeo and Juliet on a boat, Aliens was really Starship Troopers, and Terminator was...well Harlan Ellison's idea. Cameron's biggest contribution to cinema has never been story-lines but how he delivers those story-lines. In fact if you take any one of Cameron's films and place them in the hands of an average director, what you get has roughly the texture and consistency of diarrhea.
Take for example the recent Terminator sequels, or the Terminator TV series, or the Alien sequels, or the Alien vs Predator movies, or the bajillion romantic-adventures trying to rip-off Titanic's model in the hopes of creating a movie as profitable as Titanic.
See Prequels, Star Wars, for example.
Point made yet?
Cameron's strength has always been his ability to keep his fingers on the pulse of the mainstream audience and be able to create a movie that competently plays to their interests, more emotionally than intellectually. Terminator 2 isn't a great story, when you really, really start thinking about the plot, T2 falls apart like a cheap watch, but emotionally-speaking the execution is brilliant. Titanic's story was basically seen by critics as a bloated, over-dramatic manipulative piece of hyperbole submerged in an ocean of clichés (which is true), BUT a funny thing happened on the way to the box office; people like melodrama and some story clichés become cliché for a reason: because they fucking work. Star Wars was melodramatic, cliché and had all been done before, but it was done well and that's all that really mattered. Being original is not always synonymous with being good, or even watchable. There is something to be said for competent film-making and James Cameron is nothing if not a very competent filmmaker. And Cameron's competent film-making is what sets Avatar above most of its contemporaries.
Avatar's got romance, its got action, its got breathtaking sights and sounds and unlike many films these days you can actually see those sights and hear those sounds. And what a difference that makes in enjoying a film. Go figure. Watching AVATAR reminded me of how few truly good action directors are currently active in motion pictures. I've gotten so used to supreme shaky-cam, horrific editing and low-light applied to FX that to basically be able to see the action made me enjoy Avatar considerably more than the majority of action films in the last ten years. Cameron is a superior action director, that has always been his strength, because he knows how to shoot these visuals without constantly attempting to re-invent the fucking wheel. I know some people like the Bourne epileptic seizure-cam, but if you have to explain why a camera trick should work for hours on end to people, guess what, it doesn't work.
Cameron keeps the slow motion for tension (as it should be), he lets the audience see everything, he uses editing to show more (not less), and he has a good sense of in and out of frame action. The only problem with Cameron is his desire to make visual puns (which is often, and those puns are real groaners).
On the other hand the CGI creatures are nothing short of phenomenal. The blue cat girl isn't very convincing in the commercials, but she is very convincing in the film. She's the single most perfectly realized CGI creature I've ever seen, she's more expressive than the majority of people I've met while Christmas shopping this year. I am certain the Pretty Blue Cat Girl would say 'thank you' when I held open the door for her, and would be aware enough not to ram her cart full of Wal-Mart crap into my spleen while she was making her way through the mall. Half the cast of Twilight could take acting lessons from the Blue Cat Girl. Her character works, not because the creature design is particularly iconic (it's actually kind of mediocre), but because subtle elements of her movement and gestures ring true and Cameron understands how to present her to the audience to make her believable. Avatar also completely revamps 3D cinema from the ground up and makes it work, not as a gimmick, but as an actual tool of storytelling. The use of 3D is to create a sense of complete immersion in an alien world and not to make things jump out of frame like carnival side-show props at you in a cheap haunted house. Because of this massive difference in technique the 3D is not constantly blurring out the background and giving everyone in the theater a fucking headache. And that is pretty goddamn amazing.
Avatar is a big budget, SFX spectacular with a goofy plot and silly dialogue with a story borrowed from other superior stories but I cannot deny that Cameron hits all the points well and the action never gets overly confusing or loses it focus.
There have been accusations that Avatar is a case of White-Guilt; but this particular story has archetypes from all over the world, in China, Japan, Africa, India, etc. The concept of an adventurer who comes into a conflict between his conquering kingdom and a threatened new world, only to take the side of the new world, is nothing new. It’s more about the universal aspect of cheering for the underdog then racial inequalities. Although the fact that we continue to paint ‘alien’ civilizations in the actual identity of real minority groups (native ‘aliens’, samurai ‘aliens’, etc) shows a painful level of naivety and ignorance we continue to hold towards other races and cultures. However I think that’s a more pandemic problem when it comes to genre, science fiction and fantasy writing and it is certainly not exclusive to Avatar.
The biggest backlash towards Avatar appears to be coming from the overcompensating conservative 80s fan clique. They were expecting Avatar to be Cameron's next big thing. Which to them, meant a pro-military, guns and ammo magazine ad for future weapons, instead of a storyline. It was suppose to be the awesome science fiction epic adventure of a life-time, but a funny thing happened on the way to the big screen. It didn't come in the visual language that the conservative 80s nerd appreciates. They wanted muscle-bound, no-necked, cabinet-chested, iron-jawed overcompensating space marines perpetually covered in grease and sweat that chew cigars and shoot ridiculously large pulse rifles at anything that looks remotely not white. What they got was one of said overcompensating space marines ditching his body in favor of a lithe, feminine space-cat and promptly dashing into the magical forest of the space-cat people to frolic with the pixies.
One can understand how conservative overcompensating 80s nerds who have spent most of their lives worshiping at the altars of body-building jar-headed superheroes in tight revealing spandex, might find Avatar's subtext in this case to be a tad bit....too confrontational?
I think what Avatar is really about is shirking off the childish, male-centric view of space exploration as a militaristic means to an overcompensating end, and embracing a more beautiful, wide-eyed, innocent and wondrous approach to alien life. I think that perhaps Cameron’s adventures to the deepest reaches of the oceans and its untold beauty and mystery, which is under siege by human advancement, has taught him that science is not just about discovering things and blowing them up, but co-existing with them and appreciating them on their own level. I think that modern science has given Cameron a technological avatar in the form of a submarine that allowed him to be free of the modern world and its asinine problems and to live in an alien underwater universe, full of danger, and new sights and new discoveries. And I think that experience had a bigger emotional impact on Cameron than he could properly articulate, and this is his way of sharing that wonder with us.
My only real problem with Avatar is that I feel guilty watching it. I don't hold anything personal against the film or Cameron; I had no expectations for the movie. It’s just that, did we really need to spend half a billion dollars to see Blue Cat People? Are Blue Cat People somehow more convincing now that we've spent nearly a billion dollars on them, then they were in the hands of Japanese anime artists? Wouldn't that money have been better spent on anything, really constructive? Like building a road? Or feeding homeless people? Or helping out children suffering from easily treatable sickness or AIDS? I can think of lots of really good uses for half a billion dollars that are more important than my entertainment. Avatar is very pretty, but I feel spoiled watching it. I don't need someone spending that much money to give me a fantasy film with a fluffy ideal. It's not that I don't appreciate it; I just...would rather that money went to a better use than making a movie for me. I love movies, I always will, but my entertainment is just not that important.
However if the Blue Cat Lady is reading this; CALL ME.
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| RIP: Dan O Bannon. |
[Dec. 18th, 2009|12:02 pm] |
One of the greatest script-writers ever, responsible for Return of the Living Dead, Dark-Star, Alien, Life-Force, Total Recall, Dead and Buried, Star Wars, Dune, and one of my favorite low-budget Canadian horror flicks of all time Bleeders.
Sad to see him go. |
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| Just in time for the holidays: The Witching Hour Teaser Trailer!! |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|03:38 pm] |
The Witching Hour Teaser Trailer from JJTIMBRO on Vimeo.
Here's the teaser for my ultra-low budget short movie The Witching Hour, that I wrote and directed. Witching Hour was shot over two days on a Sony HDR FX7 using a Audio-Technica ATR 35s to capture the audio. The music and voice-over on the trailer comes from a mash-up of Old Canadian radio movie trailers in the public domain, the original audio recorded on set and some folly sound FX using the ATR 35s mic.
The short film is an homage to classic Canuxploitation horror flicks from the past as well as the short features that used to play on local public access channels in Ontario. The film features performances from Canadian actors Emily Schooley, Chris Maddison and John Cormier. |
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| And for my next trick, I will eat my fist! |
[Nov. 27th, 2009|07:26 am] |
Wrote a short script last night. It's a Torture Porn/Science Fiction/Romantic Comedy feat U2, dimension-jumping alchemist serial killers and Saskatchewan.
I need to get some sleep. |
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| My First Time... |
[Nov. 16th, 2009|05:09 am] |
I tried some Hong Kong style fight choreography today with my buddies Todd and HK stunt man/fight choreographer Jimmy Lo for the first time.
Things that didn't surprise me.
- My cardio stinks.
- I have all the grace of a hippo doing gymnastics.
Things that surprised me.
- I could keep up with Todd's hand speed pretty well (at least defensively). Although when he went from 50% normal speed (which is what he does in training) to 70% speed (which is what he does in action scenes while shooting), it was completely insane and I thought I was going to get clocked. I was actually shouting out in shrill terror like a little sissy during the exchanges a couple of times.
- I've heard people compare it to a dance, but they're wrong. It's a lot like a very fast 'reacting' punching drill exchange, where you throw punches against their pads and then they throw against your gloves. Only here you have no pads/gloves and you have to remember the choreography of your exchanges and your timing (otherwise, Haha, you get punched) and your opponent's blocking (otherwise, haha, you punch your friend) and you have to exchange at pretty much fighting speed, instead of 'drill bag' speed, so it's super-intense.
- The physical toll it takes on your endurance is actually comparable to a real fight, because you're going from zero to a hundred. Its like choreographed sparring going full out. I did around fifteen exchanges at full speed and I was ready to vomit. It just cooked my cardio.
- I thought I had some idea how intricate and difficult this stuff is, but I actually had no idea, none whatsoever. I have no idea how Carlos and Todd can do this stuff for a full minute, running through rooms, around objects, while acting and reacting. Right now, for me it would be ridiculous, but even in my best shape, when I was running stairs every single day and doing boxing, kickboxing, MMA and wrestling, I would never be able to do it. I mean they did one fight, that took them six weeks of shooting, eight hours a day, every single day. That's fucking crazy. I seriously doubt I could even remember up to fifty/sixty exchanges in a single session let alone the two hundred and seventy Carlos/Todd did in their one fight. In particular while running down an alleyway, trying to keep your body's positioning right with the camera, under heavy lighting, avoiding obstacles, and acting/reacting and 'selling' the hits. That's lunacy. People who call this stuff 'Chopsocky' and downplay how difficult it is are totally retarded. This is as intense and difficult an art as you will ever been exposed to in your life. It's more difficult and more dangerous and requires more physical discipline than something like dancing. The people who do it effortlessly like the Donnie Yens, the Sammo Hungs and the Jackie Chans, are literally the best physical performers of all time, and that includes Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.
Like this fight from Drunken Master 2:
The fact that Chan didn't win an Oscar for that performance is a travesty. |
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| Great cover of a crappy song |
[Nov. 15th, 2009|07:44 pm] |
Much thanks to Stewart for getting at least five of my friends hooked on the Doug Anthony All Stars. |
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