Movie Review: The Science of Sleep

[the scene: on the couch, watching The Science of Sleep with G. The end credits start to roll]

G: That was dumb.

Paul: What, c’mon it was weird but it certainly wasn’t dumb. I thought it was visually stunning. Very inventive with flourishes of—

G: --it was utter bullsheet.

P: What, you missed the first half of the movie, how can you judge?

G: Do you need me to kick you in the balls for 90 minutes to know you don’t like it? After 45 minutes, you already know for sure.

P: That’s a horrible analogy. Even if you don’t exactly enjoy the movie it’s not physically painful.

G: It was for me. Like the part with the 1-second time machine, was that for real or was that a dream?

P: You know, it was supposed to be real, but at that point in the film his dreams were bleeding into his waking life. Obviously no one will ever invent a time machine so I think it demonstrated his rich inner life and his desire to achieve much more than his dead-end job.

G: No. It just demonstrated pretentious bullsheet.

P: You have no taste. You hate on films that try something new, yet you love America’s Funniest Home Videos. It’s pathological.

G: Then why are you with me?

P: Definitely not for your taste in movies or books or art; I’d have to say I with you for…[staring obviously at her large breasts] your winning personality.

G: For your sake, I'm going to pretend to accept the answer that came out of your mouth and not your eyes.

[the end]

The Science of Sleep is a simple love story. And all love stories need an obstacle. And the obstacle is that the main character is weird, and the girl he likes, she likes him but doesn't want to be his girlfriend. Everyone has been there. They’re eccentric, yet sweet characters -- you want to fall in love with them both.

And who amongst us hasn’t had nervous conversations like this when trying to woo a girl?

Guy: [searching for an analogy] It's like touching your penis with your left hand.
Girl: I don't have a penis.
Guy: But you have a left hand.

And:

Girl: [after receiving the 1-second time travel machine from the Guy] For what special occasion that I deserve such a nice gift?
Guy: For the occasion of... you're pretty.

TSoS is directed by Michel Gondry, who did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Which I also liked, but here he takes it up a notch. “It” being the fantastical quirky. Also it’s in French, English and Spanish but as a viewer you never get tripped up by the language changes. The main character does and gets mocked for his bad French. Its kind of a plot point.

But the movie is mostly about dreams. With the simple story as the skeleton, Grondy can add all the surreal dream melting with reality stuff. I laughed at some of the visuals: like who hasn’t dreamt about taking over their office kung-fu style and bending a shapely co-worker over the copier while being lavishly praised as an artistic genius?

Not one among us.

Pitchy

How to pitch a screenplay to Steven Spielberg

-You're on speakerphone. Could you please tell us all a little more about, um, your unique concept?

-You mean Rapebear, the bear that rapes?

I just love this image

The first pig in space getting fuelled up for his mission. (click for more stills)

(via Boing Boing)

Movie Review: Match Point

Watched Woody Allen’s latest on DVD last night. It’s good film; the old man still makes very good films. And it’s entirely comedy free (on purpose). Like Annie Hall (1976), the setting is the world of educated, yet neurotic; financially comfortable, yet wanting social urbanites. Match Point (2005) happens to be set in London instead of Allen’s beloved NYC but he still absolutely nails the posh dialogue.

Match Point also has Annie Hall’s quirky meet-cute scenario; relationship navel-gazing; and a love that initially blossoms but ultimately fades. Unlike Annie Hall, there’s a gruesome shotgun blast double homicide.

I don’t recall if neurotic Alvy Singer ever filed down a shotgun while laying in wait to murder Annie. Maybe it was one of the Annie Hall deleted scenes. I'll have to check the DVD for extras.

So Match Point can be found in your video store’s drama section. The themes it explores include:

Luck - How we may delude ourselves into thinking that hard work and intuitive goodness determines what we achieve in life, but how so much is just dumb, blind luck. Luck in tennis is the metaphor here for luck in life.

Class – The main character is poor Irish tennis-pro but works hard to move up. He’s well read, appreciates fine culture and through chance at the opera meets a lovely girl and marries into her wealthy London family. He’s set up for life but jeopardizes it all for a torrid affair with a smokin’ hot sultress played convincingly (method acting, perhaps?) by Scarlett Johansson. The cinematography is so good, you practically taste the sultry temptation.

Destructive Desire – I found it a bit awkward to watch a hot adulterous affair with my significant other. The tennis pro’s caught in a web of lies and keeps spinning. I’m on the couch stuffing my mouth with popcorn, avoiding eye contact. He wants to keep his comfortable life but wants to have the passionate woman too. I don’t want to get punched in the arm.

As a man, I felt vicariously guilty. Especially since I’d so have a hot adulterous affair with Scarlett Johansson. So if you’re reading this right now…[makes “call me” hand sign]. I feel guilty already.

Justice – The plot recalls Allen’s previous dark drama Crimes and Misdemeanors and that Russian guy’s Crime and Punishment. Reasonable circumstances get out of control and the tennis-pro reaches a morbid conclusion that should not be reached.

In a dream, he muses:

It would be fitting if I were apprehended... and punished. At least there would be some small sign of justice - some small measure of hope for the possibility of meaning.

On some level, he wants to get caught. And he was sloppy in execution, almost inviting his condemnation. The universe remains indifferent.

Plot - The plotting is commendably even and not to spoil the surprise ending, but...Harry Potter dies in the end. Also, Rosebud is a sled.

Summary - Match Point is pretty darn good. It's been hailed as both a critical and commercial success and heralds a welcome return to form for Woody Allen. Critics rate it 4.5 out of 5 possible asian stepchild brides.

Nation of Retards

Wonkette provides some thoughtful context and analysis to Newsweek’s polling data.

Nation of Retards

How dumb are Americans? A fifth of you think most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Iraq, which makes sense as 41% of you think the September 11, 2001, attacks were an Iraqi military operation. An elite 11% were able to identify the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

If you’ve wondered who could possibly approve of Dick Cheney, it is likely the same 10% who believe the American or British empires predate the Roman Empire, or the 8% who chose “sports utility vehicles” as the one thing that definitely does not contribute to global warming.

Related: I just watched Mike Judge’s Idiocracy; at times it was so stupid and also not-stupid. It’s already getting a cult following on DVD like his Office Space did.

Here’s a litmus test. If this clip makes you laugh, then you should rent the film ASAP. If it’s just weird to you, then you definitely shouldn’t, cause you'll really hate the movie.




It’s almost a dystopian science fiction film, in a way. In the future, people have been dumbed-down so much that the top TV show is called "Ow, My Balls” which only shows a guy hurting his balls. The clips of this show-within-a-movie can be enjoyed on two levels. First as cutting cultural commentary, revealing the poisonous anti-elitism in our society. And also on the level of it being funny watching a guy kicked in the balls.

The 300 / Novelty Parking

#1 Ordering movies at the library...the Seattle library has a great electronic reservation system, but you have to wait your turn. Placed an order in for the violent CGI spectacle "The 300" and got this message: "There are 338 active holds ahead of you". So it took less men to actually fight the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C....than are ahead of me in line.

Seems oddly ironic, like how it cost more money to make "Titanic" than it took to make the Titanic.

#2 Been mildly irked by these kinds of novelty parking signs lately:


I've been driving around for days looking for a place to park and whenever there's an open spot I don't qualify for it. Really need more hobbies and/or ethnicities, otherwise I'll keep getting these novelty parking tickets.

Anyway, coming into work today I notice one: "Parking for GodSmack Fans Only". Which seems odd, the people who buy these signs are more typically the "World's Best Grandpa" type and less typically into moshing with GodSmack. Searching for a deeper meaning, what this sign really says is, the owner of this house has tragically lost all taste in music.

Basically it's a Handicapped Parking Sign.

Transformers: The Suckening

There’s a Sudanese genocide going on right now in Dufar, so now it’s more important than ever to raise awareness -- of infamous director Michael Bay’s attempt to make a live action movie version of Transformers. Some horrible and incoherent things have already happened, namely Bad Boys II, Armageddon and Pearl Harbor. This summer, like famine victims, the movie-going public may not have much choice. Amnesty International fears the worst, a record-breaking opening weekend.

I fear Hollywood is going to corrupt a relatively sweet part of our 1980s childhood. Transformers invoke a time when good and evil were clearly delineated; when any household object could transform into a fighting robot -- for no apparent reason. In short, Transformers are innocence itself.

A lot of us in the 80s grew up as latchkey kids. And our parents gave us the Transformer toys instead of attention and love. In my mind, Optimus Prime was basically my dad. He was strong, dependable and could always drive me to soccer practice, since he was a semi. And like most boys my age, I used to put a blond wig and dress on Megatron and pretend he was my mother. Megamom would always tell me how proud she was; and would bake delicious cookies with her shoulder-mounted fusion cannon.

[Megatron, pictured left. I must've blocked out any memory of his protruding codpiece and unfortunately located trigger. Jesus, is that wrong!]

If I had one of those decals on my body that would change into a robot face when rubbed, you know where I’d put it? On my protruding codpiece. More Than Meets the Eye indeed.

Back to the movie, below is why I fear corruption. Will they keep the artistic purity of the original Transformers?

From the movie production notes:

[Producer] Don Murphy had wanted to retain the Bumblebee character’s original Volkswagen Beetle form, but Michael Bay changed him to a Chevrolet Camaro, and the other Autobots also became GM-owned vehicle lines, as part of a tie-in deal. The alternate modes of the Decepticons were supplied to Bay from the U.S. army.

Bumblebee is not any goddamned Camaro … he’s a Bug…a yellow, possibly retarded VW Bug. Which apparently doesn’t square with the lucrative GM tie-in deal.

They were just toys, not exactly Shakespeare, but the source material was abundantly clear: Bumblebee was a Bug. Bee, bug, Beetle. The world made sense back then.

How can this movie be anything other than a 96-minute commercial for GM? Why not take the endorsement deal to the next level and make the genocidal Decpticons into Hondas: “The Ruthless HondaBots want to destroy planet Earth – only the GM Autobots (TM) can stop them with 0% APR financing”


Real Transformers Movie Tagline:

On July 4th, Our World...Will Be Transformed.

Alternate Transformers Movie Taglines:

Your Expectations for Enjoyable Movie Entertainment…Will Be Transformed!

Heartless Robots…Ultimate Evil…Michael Bay’s Production Company.

On July 4th, Michael Bay is going to Need a Newspaper…When He Takes a 96-Minute Dump All Over Our Childhood Memories.

Idiocracy

I need to see this movie, based solely on the concentration of beautiful stupidity in this one still:

So awesome! This is America's official currency 500 years in the future. Given where we're at now, this is entirely plausible.

A movie review, based on the type-setting used in the film: http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/003066.html

Brokeback Mountain Out of a Brokeback Molehill

Finally saw Brokeback Mountain this weekend. And I’m a little surprised to say this: but it didn’t turn me gay. There were tense moments, sure, but when the credits rolled, Paul was still batting right-handed if you know what I mean.

Consciously chose not to see it in the theaters when it came out--when the movie came out—er, when the movie was released. Figuring if the movie was good enough to make me suddenly gay, then it’d be easier to explain in the privacy of my own home than in a theater full of strangers. And that’s why DVDs are so popular.

The movie itself is pretty good. Not as good as Children of Men, but it’s got a solid plot and is exclusively character driven. Long story short: white trash cowboys fall in love; it’s unacceptable; tragedy unfolds. Credits roll as you dry your eyes.

Just like any classic love story the most important thing is the obstacle. Which in this case is just not society’s intolerant rednecks, but the little intolerant redneck that lives deep inside all of us—even if we’re having gay sex at the time.

Three things I noticed:

1) Saw a bunch of class concerns in there: Paying the bills, living in trailers, broken down trucks, that kind of thing. Thought the actors did have some pretty good drawls and it totally brought back memories of growing up trashy--hats off to their voice coaches! One of the plot points I suppose was that things would be all dandy for Jack and Ennis if their circumstances were different. I'm pretty sure gay money managers at Merrill Lynch don’t have the same problems they had.

2) The main relationship is a classic introvert-extrovert pairing. Ennis is the man of few words; Jack the outgoing goofball. Why introverts and extroverts are inexplicably drawn to each other is something of a mystery, but it happens all the time in real life.

3) The scenery was so darn beautiful. It was pretty much the 3rd most important character.

First Ang Lee film I saw was The Ice Storm back in college. Is good. He’s a hard director to get a bead on since he’s all over the map. Ice Storm was a dysfunctional suburb drama that’s black in tone as opposed to the melancholy of Brokeback. He’s done several Chinese language films and an English period drama. And then he did The Hulk where Hulk smash. Smash good! So in conclusion Lee is a schizophrenic who somebody gave a camera to.

Children of Men is simply excellent.

Saw it last night with Justin at the Metro—glad to catch it on a big screen because there’s a lot of details you’d miss otherwise.

Year is 2027, most of the world is in chaos from an unspecified cocktail of maladies: most likely drug-resistant diseases, civil wars, ecological collapse and/or nuclear mishaps. And as a cake topper: all women in the world have been infertile for the past 18 years. For unexplained reasons, England is the only place that’s maintained order, but it’s become a police state that rounds up foreigners, takes their lunch money and generally acts like a total dick.

Why I like it:

• It’s not preachy and not obvious.


• Show me; don’t tell me -- It’s a director’s movie. Alfonso Cuaron, was pretty damn sanguine about tossing out elements of the book. Which I never read, but that’s what I’m told. Plot-wise, some major things have obviously happened in the last 20 years--but they are never explained. You have to guess from things in the background like newspaper clippings, city signs or burning cattle.


• The actors do their jobs. No scenery chewing.


• Shit goes wrong, in an extremely plausible way.

And it’s a tense movie, basically a chase movie, but also much more. Things it made me think about in no particular order:

• Christianity in general, and the nativity story in particular


• V for Vendetta but this is a much better movie


• On the Beach


• Blade Runner (only at the end)


• Y Tu Mama Tambien and how this movie is so absolutely nothing like Y Tu Mama Tambien


• Julianne Moore giving me a vigorous scrub down


• Hippies and Earth Liberation Front. Ends justifying means.


• 9/11 of course and especially the crypto-paranoid style of politics that followed it


• Of course fascism. And xenophobia.


• How I totally knew Clive Owen was a bad-ass back in Croupier


• How so few science fiction elements Children of Men has, but how it’s great science fiction. No cool gizmos really. In 2027 they got better flat-screen monitors, more security cameras, some new games and moving advertisements. That’s pretty much it. No robots, no aliens. People drive to work or take the bus; they watch TV and smoke pot.


• City of God and the kind of meaningless chaos it showed on the streets of Rio


• Why are there so many Poles living in London these days? Something to do with the EU I bet.