For all of it’s seriousness of subject matter and consequential award show pandering (Oprah’s a producer for fuck’s sake), Precious might be the funniest film I’ve ever seen.  I’m also not trying to be ironic when I say, with all seriousness, that Precious should be studied in film schools and academic circles as an example  of how NOT to direct film drama.  I’m usually not this harsh, but Lee Daniels is a cinematic conman.

Lets get something straight, there is nothing inherently funny about this film on paper.  I take no pleasure in laughing at a morbidly obese, physically, psychologically and sexually abused, borderline illiterate, HIV positive African American teenage girl who has 2 little children, one of which has Downs Syndrome.  Sheesh.   I’m not a monster and for the sake of the story that it’s trying to tell, I really wish I felt different.  It’s not that the narrative is problematic, but how it is being told is.  You’d either have to try really hard, and thus be satirical, or otherwise be grossly incompetent as a director to illicit any laughs from this material.  But my God, the laughs.   Any scene displaying any kind of physicality, whether it be watching Precious get hit in the head with a shoe, chased with a frying pan, her falling down the stairs, or stealing a bucket of fried chicken is executed with about as much subtlety as a Looney Toons cartoon.  Part of what makes these sequences so goddamn hilarious is that their intent to illicit responses of sympathy for Precious, and abhorrence for her surroundings and social standing, are so transparent that they fail to do anything but remind the viewer of the extent in which our emotions are being manipulated.  Obviously every film manipulates the audience to varying degrees but well directed films do so without you being aware that you’re being played.  It’s not enough that the lead character has to be poor, monstrously obese, and black for you to feel sympathy for her, Daniels literally has to have Precious’ abusive mother  attempt to drop a TV on her head from the 2nd floor.  Laughter is the only recourse because besides from turning it off, it’s the only way to combat the con that is being worked over you.  Despite the honest efforts of the actors, particularly Gabourey Sidibe and Mo’Nique, the machinations of Daniel’s emotional manipulation are just too evident to be ignored. The only way Precious’ suffering could get any worse, and have us feel any more shared societal guilt,  was if the film had a twist ending and it was revealed that all the suffering you just witnessed was just a concentration camp prisoner’s dream.

If that’s not enough for me to convince you of Daniel’s directorial cluster fuck, consider the scenes involving Precious’ escape from reality through her day dreams.  I have nothing wrong with the idea that Precious would have to retreat into some safe haven, namely her imagination, in order to deal with such a shitty existence.  However, just like the scenes of Precious’ physical abuse, it produces only sudden bursts of gut busting laughter.  Scenes with her parading herself at a fashion show, or getting kissed by the boy she has a crush on, don’t really add anything to the narrative other than the unfortunate revelation that Precious, characterised in these sequences,  is actually quite unremarkable. The content of the day dreams are so cliché that they could be from a 16 year old white girl’s diary so why should I care that they belong to Precious?  I’m assuming Daniel’s is trying to say, “Hey guys, she’s like you and me”.  Well obviously dipshit, she’s a 16 year old girl, you’re not making Frankenstein.  It is also interesting to note that these sequences were a construction of Daniel’s as they did not exist in the script, or the novel with which it was based on.  Needless to say, these sequences could all be removed from the film and absolutely nothing would be missed in terms of narrative cohesion or character development.  Once again, they exist only to manipulate the audiences’ sympathies so that when we cut back to the suffering it just hurts to watch Precious be diagnosed with HIV all that much more.  Not for me though.  It’s still a laugh.

Here’s the thing.  Precious might succeed on some surface level as a fictional representation of social inequalities, but it just fails at being a complete film. Simple as that.  Frankly I don’t care about important messages in films, and the belief that message laden films are somehow more important than regular filmic escapism is just ignorant.  There is a standard in all genres and types of filmmaking, and success thus becomes relative to those genres. In the end Precious doesn’t really match any standard beyond what you might find in an after school TV special, save for the key performances.  With all being said, and as much as I condemn Daniels for his gross incompetence, I’m eternally thankful for it.

Well I’m pleased to report that our radio play, Murder On The Edge Of Nowhere, has won an award for “Outstanding Creative Production” from the National Campus and Community Radio Association (NCRA)!  It’s a nice shot in the arm for all of our egos, and we couldn’t be more honored.  Here’s the full press release, complete with fellow recipients.

2010 NCRA Awards

For those of you who have yet to listen to it, here it is in a fully downloadable mp3, FINALLY!

Although we’ve been relatively quiet on posts this year, it’s not to say that we haven’t been busy.  After several months we have finally completed work on a feature length screenplay of Jordan and Bear, and have submitted it to the Canadian Film Centre in hopes of attaining funding. Needless to say,the feature isn’t a rehash of the serial but something that truly expands on everything that made Jordan and Bear so special.  Let’s all hope for the best.

In the spirit of this news, please enjoy the amazing physical prowess of the kung-fu bear.

I really want to like Kick Ass much more than I do. I’m a sucker for comic book movies, and it’s rare and far between where one is made that is even worthwhile. In a way I just wish I hated it so I could just ignore it all together. It does far more right than wrong but what it does do wrong in my opinion shits over everything the film had going for it. When you think about that previous statement it doesn’t really sound that much different than most criticisms of superhero films, but lets put this into context. Kick Ass is a 40 million dollar super hero film made entirely outside of the Hollywood studio system which means no interference from executives, no worries about McDonald Happy Meal tie ins, and no other corporate meddling which often castrate projects like these. Essentially Matthew Vaughn had the opportunity to truly make a different comic book movie, and manages to do so for about an hour until deciding he’d rather just play it safe after all.

There’s been a lot of online squabbling about Roger Ebert’s criticism of the film, where he objects to the film on moral grounds. Fanboys just think he doesn’t get it. I don’t really agree with any judgment of moral values concerning comic books, but that doesn’t mean he is completely wrong. Ebert echoes my problem of the film when he questions what exactly it is satirizing . Is it a satire on comic books, comic book movies, or our own expectations of what those things are meant to be, look like, sound like, etc? I guess so, but it’s hard to really accept that when your main character throws out a mantra as a contradictory as “With no power comes no responsibility…except that’s not true”. That’s a cock tease, pure and simple and it’s really annoying as a viewer. The whole premise of the film is that it’s insane to actually attempt to become a real world superhero. The first half of the film supports this thesis as the protagonist literally gets the shit kicked out of him while attempting to be a hero, and only really attains notoriety for being an online freak show, rather than through any feats of strength. Kick Ass as a character is essentially a joke; a wannabee Peter Parker who pretends to be gay in order to get into the pants of his high school crush. It’s a great deconstruction of the superhero archetype, for the period that it lasts at least. The other supporting superheroes all contribute to this deconstruction in varying degrees, the most noteworthy being Nicholas Cage’s homicidal take on Batman. He looks like he belongs in a modern day Batman film, yet he delivers his lines in the Adam West Batman cadence. Easily the film’s greatest contribution to cinematic history. Then you have Hit Girl, but I don’t really give a shit talking about how revolutionary an idea her character is. She’s a 12 year old girl who kills mobsters with crazy ninja-like skills and says “cock” and “cunt”. Yeah I guess so. She just kind of reminds me of what the character of Poochie was intended to be like in the Itchy and Scratchy show, just trying way too hard to be Xtreme. Not to say that she doesn’t add to the satire, but all of her hard edged-ness is kind of ruined when you think of her as a rapping kung-fu dog. So lets get to the reason why this all just goes to hell.

I won’t spoil too much for you, but long story short it jut becomes every single other comic book movie that you’ve ever seen. The heroes overcome the impossible by doing the impossible, and the one’s that die do so heroically instead of just catching a bullet to the head. Some might say “But Andrew, it’s not supposed to be realistic, it’s a comic book movie.” Fuck you. The damn movie spent an hour or so telling me otherwise. Yeah the idea of super heroes is fantastic in nature, so when you put it in a real world setting where they shouldn’t even exist they should be bound to the laws of that world. That means the guy who lies about being gay just to fuck someone shouldn’t get the girl in the end because it’s a repulsive thing to do, and you shouldn’t be able to figure out how to use a jet pack armed with twin mounted gattling guns over the course of an hour and save the day. In the end it’s still about getting the girl and being the hero and that’s makes it just really too damn mediocre to care or talk about in any more depth. Since this was a shorter review than usual, enjoy what would be the greatest superhero film of all time.

Predator 2 doesn’t get the respect it deserves.  Nowadays everyone loves to gloat about how much they all love the original and rightfully so.  As far as Schwarzenegger action vehicles from the 80’s it’s managed to hold up incredibly well.  Especially when you compare it to stuff like Red Heat or The Running Man.  The holy trinity of Schwarzenegger action films for me will always be Terminator, Predator, and Commando, however, mention Predator 2 in the same sentence as the original and for some reason the Schwarzenegger faithful will accuse you of heresy.  I really don’t understand the criticism, and whenever I’ve asked  someone to explain why they dislike it so much they can never formulate an argument more complex than it sucks because we get Danny Glover in place of Arnold.  The truth is that instead of getting Arnold’s character Dutch from the original film, we’re given Danny Glover’s detective Murtaugh from the Lethal Weapon films.  How’s that for rebutting the argument?  I fucking love Predator 2 and so should you.  Here’s why:

1: Opening Sequence
The image fades in as the camera tracks over a span of jungle trees.  The density of the jungle lessens as the camera passes over the summit of the hill to reveal the hazy city of Los Angeles circa 1997; the fucking future.  What proceeds is a 7 minute opening shoot-out between Sergeant Roger Murtaugh (somehow) of the LAPD and the most crazed, coked-up Columbian drug lords ever put to screen.  I mean they fucking  use cocaine to relieve the pain of their gunshot wounds.  Oh, and then the predator shows up and skins the Columbians.  It’s the kind of scene that Paul Verhoeven would be proud of.  It’s a perfect introduction of both character and setting, and also lets the audience know that its got all the balls of the original, without needing Arnold.  It’s brilliant.

2:Cast
You’ve already heard what I think about Danny Glover.  Instead of trying to find someone to out arnold Arnold, they were smart enough to hire an actor.  Glover’s performance  just makes you believe that he can take on drug lords and investigate predator murders in his spare time.  It’s as if the film takes place in the Lethal Weapon world before Glover got “to old for this shit”. So if you got your Arnold role covered, how do you wind down the rest of the ensemble to compete with Jesse Ventura, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, and all the other nut-jobs?  You get Bill Paxton and Gary fucking Busey.  Everyone thinks that Gary Busey’s well documented insanity is something that has emerged over the last decade or so, perhaps as a direct result of starring in such c direct to DVD classics like The Gingerdead Man.  I submit to you this compilation of some of Busey’s inspired, method acting approach to working on Predator 2.  The 2:20 mark is where things get intense.

Holy shit.  Not much else to say there.  As for Paxton, he plays his usual cocksure caricature that you’ve seen in Aliens and True Lies to great effect.  However,  the true unsung acting hero in Predator 2 is Kevin Peter Hall.  In case you don’t know,  he donned the predator costume in both films.  All those subtleties in the predator’s movements and mannerisms that have contributed to the enduring popularity of the character are Hall’s doing. After all  it’s been mimicked in every subsequent shitty Alien vs Predator film, but his performance will always be the standard.

3: Action Set Pieces
This pretty much stems from the first point.  Aside from the opening sequence, I count 7 action set pieces of varying complexities and duration, concluding with the film’s mind blowing reveal.  After the opening, the Predator picks off both Jamaican and Columbian gangs in a high rise apartment building whilst interrupting a voodoo ceremony, he then kills a cop, then a Jamaican drug lord, then a bunch of armed people on a subway, then another cop, then a whole room of CIA operatives in a refrigerated slaughterhouse,  and then it proceeds to fight Danny Glover for 20minutes, all the way from the high rises of LA to the bowels of the predator’s subterranean ship.  I’ll put any one of those sequences against the best of them in the first film.  Not all of them are large fight choreography extravaganzas either.  In those cases what you don’t see is the violence, just a trickle of blood falling on concrete, a severed head dangling from the Predator’s hand as it walks away, or the ripping out of someone’s spine far off in the shadows.  So I’ll just stop these run-on sentences and leave it at it’s the balls.

4:  Ending
Thinking that he has finally defeated the Predator, Murtaugh turns around only to find himself out numbered and outgunned by a whole entourage of predators.  They look on him as a worthy opponent, and let him leave.  Before doing so, the eldest predator throws him an old musket hand gun  as a souvenir, the date 1715 inscribed on its side.  Scoff all you want, but that scene elevates the character of the predator beyond a mere sci-fi alien.  It suggests a larger story and a history that we can only begin to imagine where predators showed up all throughout mankind’s evolution to continually test their mettle.  It should have been the beginning of something much greater, but we all know how that turned out.  Thank you very much Paul W.S. Anderson.

5: Stephen Hopkins
I haven’t really talked at all about the director Stephen Hopkins.  Prior to Predator 2 he made Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, one of the series’ lesser sequels.  Since then his most famous film is the big screen adaptation of Lost in Space, a film that tried to make the case for Matt Leblanc as an action hero.  It didn’t work out in case you’re not aware.  Predator 2 however, gives the man an infinite pass of credibility.  The greatest testament to his skill as a director would be that the film feels like it takes place in the same world as the first film.  There are no great deviations in tone, structure, or style from the first film, but it’s just different enough to not be a retread.  That’s a pretty significant accomplishment.

Predator 2 came at the tail end of the great action film boom of the 1980’s.  It’s a period I greatly miss, and one that has been tarnished unfairly by current states of political correctness and hipster irony.  Unfortunately there just doesn’t seem to be any room for any studio financed,  large budget, R rated action films anymore.  Everything is PG-13 and you can’t get away with characters calling each other a” bunch of slack jawed faggots”.  Did we lose some kind of intergalactic war?

A DVD release of experimental filmmaker Francois Miron’s hallucinatory shorts? Yes please! Go order a copy right now, even if you don’t like experimental films. The disc is $25 and you can get it directly from his website Filmgrafix Productions

And for those in the Montreal area there’s a DVD launch today at the Cinematheque Quebecoise starting at 5:30 followed by a screening of Miron’s feature debut The 4th Life and his shorts.

Here’s an excerpt from The 4th Life:

Courtesy of www.deadlinehollywood.com

Upstart distributor Phase 4 Films has given a home to controversial German filmmaker Uwe Boll. Phase 4 has acquired North American rights to three Boll films that include Darfur, the genre filmmaker’s departure into serious subject matter. Billy Zane, Edward Furlong and Kristanna Loken play journalists in Sudan who see gunmen approaching a village and must decide whether to cover an atrocity or prevent it.

Obviously we’re not to be confused with Phase 4 Films, but it’s still fun to imagine any potential partnership with Dr. Uwe Boll himself.

Shutter Island is a good film.  It’s not a particularly memorable movie, nor is it anything that we haven’t seen before, but when Scorsese is involved you’ll at least know that it’s going to be made with a certain level of quality that is inherent just by Scorsese’s affiliation.  I usually tend to avoid talking about big, prestige films made by movie gods.  What is there to say about Scorsese that hasn’t already been said?  Even on his worst day he is still the man, and I am but a lowly cretin rummaging through his garbage at night.   I find it hard to talk shit about the man because it’s like turning your mother into the police after she stabs you.  You just gotta let that shit go.  I guess the main problem I have with Scorsese’s cinematic output post Casino, is that he’s become a big time studio filmmaker characterised by casting big stars, and working with large budgets.   I really don’t mind this, he’s earned the right to make whatever he wants, but there is one constant throughout that I just don’t understand:  Leonardo Dicaprio.

This is what Scorsese has to say about Dicaprio, taken from a recent Esquire article.  (I don’t advocate reading Esquire):

Commitment. Adventurousness. A sense of truth. An ability to hold the screen. These are among the rare qualities that make Leo Dicaprio an essential actor.  There’s an old phrase that certainly applies to Leo: The camera loves him. In other words, his presence before the camera magnetizes us instantly, draws us into a mystery, compels us to follow him… He is absolutely essential to me, to all of us, and essential to the history of movies.

Really?  Essential to the history of movies?  Who am I to argue but I just don’t see it.  Dicaprio is not a bad actor, but I can think of tons of far more deserving and capable young actors that fill Scorsese’s criteria far more effectively.  More so, the guy just doesn’t hold his own when working onscreen with far better actors.  See Gangs of New York and Daniel Day Lewis to get the gist of what I’m saying.  In Shutter Island you have a similar problem and I think it comes down to his face.  You can always tell what Dicaprio’s character is thinking because he just grimaces so goddamn much when he plays anything else other than a pretty boy.   He translates toughness by squinting his eyes and furrowing his brow with one days’ growth of beard stubble.   Look at that still above the review if you don’t believe me.   I get it, you’re intense.  What else can you do?  In hindsight, although he isn’t as grossly miscast in Shutter Island than in say Gangs,  his melodramatic tendencies give away too much too early on in the film.  I won’t spoil the twist, but Dicaprio’s performance allows you to see the mechanics of the screenplay a little too clearly.   He seems more suited to the silent film era than anything else.  As I said, I can’t pretend to know more than Scorsese does and this is more of a rant on the insistence that Dicaprio is somehow an essential actor.  The man bangs supermodels left and right.  I just don’t buy it. More on the supermodels later on.

If you haven’t seen a Scorsese film then you have a problem and I have no idea what you are doing reading this, but if you have you know what you’re in for stylistically.  If there is one thing that hasn’t changed, it’s the man’s ability to compose shots and move a camera.  I’ve read that Scorsese made this film as an homage to Kubrick’s The Shinning.  You can’t help but get a little excited by that prospect.  The most effective moments in the film are when Scorsese channels Kubrick’s cold, calculated compositions in the context of setting up the film’s more supernatural elements.   The homage is quite blatant and actually works very well.   Unfortunatel,y the narrative shifts about half way through and Scorsese ditches the Overlook Hotel overtones and goes into Shyamalan twist-ending territory.  It’s too bad, really.  There are some really great performances from essentially every cast member other than Dicaprio.  So much so that I was far more interested in the secondary characters and was disappointed that the film choose to have Dicaprio carry most of the film.  I’m complaining about a lot of things that aren’t entirely based on a qualitative assessment of the film.  I guess I was just hoping for a Scorsese horror film through and through, rather than the cinematic cock tease that the movie ends up becoming.   At the end of the day, you can say much more than I have about the film. I just don’t really care enough about the movie to get into any more detail over what works vs. what doesn’t.  I will say however that the first 20 minutes are probably the best bit of filmmaking Scorsese has done in the last 15 years.

The review is now over, and I’m going to go off on a tangent right now.  In reality the whole reasoning behind a review on Shutter Island is just to have an excuse to express this theory I’ve developed over the past 4 collaborations between Scorsese and Dicaprio.  Martin Scorsese is 5’4” tall.  Leonardo Dicaprio’s supermodel ex- girlfriends Gisele and Bar Raefeli are 5’11”, and 5’8” respectively.  That is all.

I remember the night as though it was yesterday, December 26^th 2006.  Whilst my brother and I sat down to enjoy a snifter of porto, we thought to ourselves what better way to wind down the day than to enjoy a movie.  What could possibly go wrong?  Lady In The Water is what went wrong, and it set in motion what was to be a brief stay in the hospital for yours truly.

So far I’ve reviewed a lot of “shitty” movies, but in doing so I’ve always looked for something worthy of critical reassessment, the silver lining to the shit cloud as it were.  I can say with as much certainty as I can possibly muster that Lady In The Water offers no such lining, and in reality is the worst film ever made by anyone from this galaxy.  All you really have to do is look at the opening scene of the film; it basically serves as the shit-prism in which everything else can be viewed.   Apartment building superintendent Cleveland Heep, played by Paul Giamatti, attempts to crush a bug under the sink while a family cowers in the background, screaming in terror as he tries to smash the bug.  It’s filmed in one continues take, and it goes on forever, and you really do think that it’s a joke.  Everything from the overtly stereotypical Mexican family wailing in horror at the violence being committed in front of them to a fucking bug, to Paul Giamatti’s incomprehensibly awkward Porky Pig stutter, to the camera’s static position and insistence that what you are seeing is somehow significant, all led me to believe at the time that the film was a parody.  Whether people are aware of this or not, the opening scene of every film is the most important; it sets up the tone and the visual language which will inform the rest of the film.  Think of The Godfather, The Dark Knight, Pulp Fiction, etc.  In a way this scene does just exactly that, just not in the way that benefits the narrative.  What it sets up is the same sense of disbelief that you will continuously encounter throughout the film over how goddamn stupid every single writing and directorial decision truly is.

Seeing as though I hate this film I won’t bother producing my own plot synopsis. I’ll just steal it from IMDB.

Apartment building superintendent Cleveland Heep rescues what he thinks is a young woman from the pool he maintains. When he discovers that she is actually a character from a bedtime story who is trying to make the journey back to her home, he works with his tenants to protect his new friend from the creatures that are determined to keep her in our world.

That’s the plot, and in reading such a concise write up you can see that it actually isn’t bad at all, perhaps even original.  And herein lays the root of every single, cringe worthy moment in the film.  M. Night Shyamalan is so concerned with setting up a mythos to his self-constructed fairy tale that he confuses bad ideas with originality, bloating a simple idea for no other reason than to stroke his own ego as cinematic auteur.  You want proof?  The name of the mythical nymph that he saves from the pool is “Story”.  How meta.  Oh, and he also casts himself ala Hitchcock as a writer, who will one day write a book that changes the world.  You gotta be fucking kidding me.   It’s filled with horrible plot contrivances like this, but I digress.  This isn’t a review as much as it is an account of the violent bodily reaction I had to it.  There are just way too many instances of utterly offensive stupidity to fit in this measly review.  Also I find that talking about this film at length gives it too much credit.  Watching it was a waste of time, writing about it is almost a bigger waste.   I have a bad habit of not turning off movies that I don’t like because I always try and give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe, just maybe, there will be something worthwhile.  By the end of the film I needed my whole body to hate this thing, so much so that I noticed a slight discomfort forming in my chest.  I thought nothing of it, and I went to be bed.

In the morning the pain hadn’t gone away, but had gotten worse.  Sharp stabbing pains in my chest, pains in my upper arm, I thought I might have had, or was presently having a heart attack.  I went to the clinic, they sent me to the emergency room as a precaution were they plugged me up to all kinds of Weapon-X styled machinery to measure any fluctuations in my heart beat patterns.  On day two they gave me an angiogram where they injected a dye into my blood stream and tracked the flow via a real time x-ray machine.  They tried to inject the dye several times through my arm; thankfully it worked in the last attempt.  Otherwise,  it would have had to go through an artery in my groin.

SO.  Turns out I didn’t have a heart attack, or any blocked arteries.  What I had was a virus called pericarditis which inflames the heart muscle, thus explaining the constant pain.  They put me on anti-inflammatory and eventually it all went away after a few months, with a follow up 6 months later just to make sure that it had been eradicated.  Like with many illnesses, it’s difficult to pinpoint the specific moment where one comes into contact with the contagion.  However, I don’t think that there is any question as to how I got sick; this movie is a fucking disease riddled, prostitute corpse that molested me for 2 hours, thus transferring the virus.  I don’t care if the science doesn’t add up. I know that I was the picture of health beforehand.

I’m not a Shyamalan hater.  The Sixth Sense is an effective ghost story, Unbreakable is a highly original take on superheroes, but that’s about as far as I can go in supporting his filmography.  The quality of his films seems to be directly proportional to the growth of his ego as a “writer/director/producer”.  Not many filmmakers get a marquee title above the actors’ names in the promotion for their films, and it’s gotten to his head.  He has the chops to develop concepts that regardless of execution are at least attempts at originality.  He should just learn when to shut the fuck up and maybe direct from another writer’s script whose head isn’t as far up his own ass.

Oh and that header is an actual line of a dialogue from the film.  Check mate Shyamalan.

Oh well, I guess the Streamys felt that such a popular and star-studded webseries like Jordan and Bear wouldn’t benefit from a nomination.  I guess it’s better to shed some exposure on lesser known talent.  I mean, who the fuck is this Zach Galifinakis guy?  Next thing you know they’ll be giving awards to shutins like Joss Whedon.

Uhhhh.  Fuck me.

http://www.streamys.org/winners/2010-nominees/