Friday, March 11, 2011

Drive-by Reviews of Recent Viewings

Cold Souls
Paul Giamatti brings his particular gift of infusing potentially repugnant characters with a bit of grace and charisma to this low-budget rumination on what it might mean to possess a soul. (I suspect he's a very charming IRL.)

Here, he plays "himself" - an actor named Paul Giamatti - who's currently starring in a Chekov play where, after seeing an ad for soul removal and its benefits, decides he'd perform the role better soulless.

Turns out there's a black market for these removed souls which even involves "soul mules." Through this we discover that anyone who uses (wears? injects?) someone else's soul is left with something like a residue that remains behind from large emotional events - a child dying, for instance.

There's such a thing as soul envy, too. For example, if you carry someone's soul and discover it's better than yours, you tend to want to keep it.

I enjoyed this movie in that mild way one does when a movie is full of nice little moments and clever ideas, but doesn't tip over the lip into something you love wildly. Kinda like a date where you enjoy the person's company, but there's no romance in the air (and no one utters some of the most acidic words in the English language, "Let's just be friends).

If you wanted to have a little movie festival with a theme of directly and viscerally experiencing what it would be like to be someone else, you could queue up Cold Souls with: Being John Malkovich and Brainstorm.




Eat Pray Fuck
Yes, that is what it should've been called had the publishers had the guts to follow the calling-a-spade-a-spade trend like the books Sh*t My Dad Says and The No Asshole Rule did.

The plot follows the title; she loads up on pasta in Italy, goes to Bali and believes the crap a shaman tells her (which isnothing much more than your average horoscope bs), goes to India where she witnesses a couple enter into an arranged marriage (which is meaningful for her because she's left her husband), and then goes back to Bali and finds a hunk-cicle to bone for a while, the end.

I enjoyed this in spite of myself, but I think that's because I had no expectations, I watched it out of the corner of my eye while playing games with my six-year-old, and Julia Roberts is just one of those people who's a true movie star, thus she's always interesting to watch.

Throughout, I felt the plain-jane cousin of the emotion of bliss, known as contentment. It was akin to drinking a nice cup of good tea on a brisk day, though not like drinking an awesome cup of coffee first thing in the morning, which is more of a needful experience.

Like a lot of reviewers on Amazon noted, it's nearly impossible to ignore the fact that someone could do this only if someone else was bankrolling them or they were independently wealthy, so spiritual enlightenment for the masses this is not. But, if you were able to overlook the deluxe apartments the under-employed "Friends" had in their sitcom, then you can overlook the masquerade of getting to party on someone else's dime and claim personal growth (outside of the waistline).

Hey, if anyone wants to pay for a couple year's worth of my dorking around in foreign lands, I'll wrote a book claiming anything you want, short of stating today's Republicans and Tea Baggers are honest, reasonable people.

This is one of those flicks where if it comes on TV and you've got nothing better Tivo'd or don't have a book lying around, it'll fill a couple hours harmlessly.




Jennifer's Body
It's official: I just don't like today's torture porn/horror fests. They're too graphic (though, somewhat hypocritically, my favorite movie of all time was the most graphic of it's day: John Carpenter's The Thing), sometimes they're legitimately too scary (I still recall The Grudge at unfortunate times when I'm sleepless in the wee hours and find myself alone in the bowels of the house with all the lights off).

Besides, there's almost nothing to this that hasn't been done before - though the creation of the monster is worth a grin: the character played by Megan Fox, who appears to be playing herself, is offered up as a virgin sacrifice, and since she's anything but, the result isn't as intended.. There was too much gratuitous lesbian stuff, too.

Getting back to John Carpenter's The Thing, it occurs to me that I tend to dig sci-fi-related gore, but supernatural/horror gore either gets my eyes or my stomach rolling.

If you're a fan of the genre, you might want to check this out if it's free, but otherwise skip it.




Morning Glory
Cute little workplace comedy (isn't this a distinct genre anymore?) with no big surprises and a lot of similarity to Harrison Ford's other job-com Working Girl, except this time he's too old to bag the babe without all of us yacking our Jujyfruits into our popcorn.

Another rainy-day, don't-want-to-move-from-the-couch, some-channel-just-started-playing-it-so-I-guess-I'll-watch-it kinda thang.




Jackass 3
There are three kinds of people in the world, those who laugh at Jackass movies (and TV installments), those who are appalled by the same, and those who died trying one of the stunts.

I'm in the first category. I used my little one's portable DVD player to watch it while they all watched something chick-friendly and my chortling intrigued them so much, I had to switch it to the primary TV and man the remote to provide a PG version of the antics. They all laughed very hard, too.

Not for the faint of heart. Disgusting. Embarrassing. Revolting. Wrong on every level. Probably contributes to the decline of society.

But if the visage of someone's ass painted green to look like the rolling hills in a model train set which then rockets liquid poo into the air like an obscene volcano will make you grin in spite of yourself, check it out.

Oh, and you get to see someone use his dick like a baseball bat and then see someone else try to catch the pop-fly in his mouth. If that doesn't intrigue, what possibly could?

Thursday, March 10, 2011

From bad to worse

Warning: a political post, which I suck at.

So, it’s been a glorious week for America.

- Wisconsin Republicans manage to bust the public sector union.
- The Republicans in the House go after net neutrality, so that corporations can fuck us all over with “preferential treatment [to large corporations] in the form of tiered services”.
- And, via a sting orchestrated by James O'Keefe, a conservative ass-pounder, the vice president for development for NPR, Ron Schiller, was recorded saying some shite about Tea Baggers and subsequently suspended. (Free speech? Fuck that!) Here are various thrusts related to the story: wham, wham, wham.

Fuckers.

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Rango

This post is kind of a spoiler; if you intend to go to Rango (the new cartoon starring Johnny Depp as a chameleon), skip it.

Ebert gives the film a glowing review, and as a family we had a deep need to get everyone into the theatre, so there we were. We loves ourselves some cinema.

The general family review was "cute, but've seen better." The six-year-old appeared bored at times.

I've got to remind myself to read my other go-to critic, Peter Travers, when Ebert raves, and vice-versa.

Wait for the video if your kids will allow it. Adults without young kids can skip it altogether.

Originally, I was just going to post the above, and not give away the best line in case you decide to see it, but since Travers gives away the best line in his review, I'm going to as well.

The plot is straight-up hero's journey fare. When all appears lost, our hero wanders into the desert and meets God ("the spirit of the west" in the film's nomenclature), who is in the form of Clint Eastwood piloting a golf cart. When our hero asks if he's in heaven, the Great Spirit responds:
If this was heaven, kid, we'd all be eating Pop-Tarts with Kim Novak.

That floored the adult portion of the audience. I still chuckle when I think of it.

I will be sure to use that at parties this summer.

Friday, March 04, 2011

My New Favorite Piece of Trivia

We've all heard the phrase, "Does not compute."

Who's the one who made it a meme? Julie Newmar, aka Catwoman (the one all of our loins remember - no disrespect to the lovely Eartha Kitt).

See, there was this show called My Living Doll that premiered in 1964 on CBS, created and produced by Desilu and the creative staff behind My Favorite Martian. The premise was this scientist has created a robot (a sexy, female robot, of course) and he gives it to a bachelor psychologist friend of his to train it to make it "more human."

The robot's refrain when "she" was asked something she didn't understand was: "Does not compute." Before Lost in Space, even.

You can watch snippets and read some history here.