I had a Tim Burton marathon to evaluate his filmography. I skipped Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Batman Returns, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks, Big Fish, Big Eyes, Planet of the Apes and Dumbo. I am familiar with those enough. That leaves Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd, Miss Peregrine..., Vincent, the 80s and 2010s versions of Frankenweenie, Corpse Bride, Charlie & The Chocolate Family & Alice in Wonderland, Shelly Duvall's Aladdin. The obscure films I had mostly never seen.
His aesthetic is built on a childlike cartooning of horror film tropes. Again and again his films reflect his biography as a moody California outsider to a depressed Disney animator to a star director of Hollywood blockbusters and small Gothic serio-comedies. The films reflect his always shifting on the spectrum of positive and negative, black and white. This has left him seen as wildly uneven, repetitive but also unpredictable and cathartic in his obsessively dialectic style.
As an auteur, which camp does he fall? He's known more for dark Eurocentric visuals, weird characters, grand setpieces and excessive visual effects so he's erroneously thrown in with horror directors or oddball New Hollywood types like M. Night or even Spielberg. I think thats more to do with the commercial projects offered to him. Sadly, he's matured into a "Franchise" director for hire, selling his popular style for an excuse to experiment and collect a fat check with his famous friends. Even then, he's one of the better in that genre.
But as a stylist and a potential poet, I find Tim Burton in the realm of dark liberal satirists like Billy Wilder, Roman Polanski, Mike Nichols, Tobe Hooper, later Woody Allen with the shrewd commercial sensibility of B-movie capitalists like Roger Corman, Charles Band, H.G. Lewis, Joe Dante. I think its fair to argue Burton inspired and paved the way for filmmakers like Wes Anderson, J.J. Abrams
Its important to note he was mentored by Francis Ford Coppola who produced Sleepy Hollow and whose young daughter Sofia starred in Frankenweenie. Interestingly, Coppola took some tonal & stylistic cues from Burton when he made Dracula with Winona Ryder. A queasy subversive element arrives in Burton's work when you tie together how many pedophiliac references there are from the casting of Jeffrey Jones & Paul Reubens to Winona Ryder being the goddaughter of NAMBLA member Allen Ginsberg and Johnny Depp's ties to Ginsberg & Polanski. It could just be coincidental and expected in such a small fringe group of Hollywood weirdos.
But Burton's films also have a preoccupation with the sexuality of young girls. The villains seek to attain it, almost always from small blond underage girls, but they rather give it to the dark man-child hero. An underage Winona Ryder as Beetlejuice's child bride and the teenage love interest of Edward Scissorhands. Sofia Coppola plays this archetypal blond desire object in Burton's original Frankenweenie. In the remake, the little blonde is represented as a creepy girl obsessed with Burton's avatar and replaced by a little Goth girl. In Burton's personal life you can chart this sexual obsession in his romance & breakup from blonde bombshell Lisa Marie to marry the dark, eccentric Helena Bonham Carter. Since their divorce, Burton returned the blond teenage lover in Alice (the last film to feature Carter) and Miss Peregrine. Alice also featured a 50ish Crispin Glover trying to seduce the barely legal Alice.
There's also the references to Michael Jackson in Johnny Depp's performances as Scissorhands and Wonka. Chocolate Factory ends with Willy Wonka inviting Charlie to live with him alone and becoming upset that Charlie insisting on keeping his family.
Almost as disturbing but not at all surprising is, as Burton's motif shifted from black & white contradiction to a synthesized moral grayness, his politics have shifted to centrism. Miss Peregrine is a quirky but lazy X-Men ripoff that also serves as a Zionist propaganda. During WW2, a group of genetically superior white children are terrorized by the dark skinned Samuel L Jackson's shadowy, Nazi-like band of child-eating villains. The solution? They are guaranteed a piece of land as sanctuary just for existing. These children are never shown as heroic superheroes protecting society either. They're valuable just because they are different and persecuted. The metaphor is clear.
Burton's films always center on the "magic" of individualist entrepreneurship, middle class values, Eurocentrism, white normality, a distaste for the working class and many visual references to Freemasonry including checkerboard, secret societies, aristocracy, favoring hierarchical systems to equality and a love of Disney. Either Tim Burton is just so within the Hollywood bubble that he doesn't see the Masonic influence on his own work or he's supportive of their craft of Republican centralism against expanding democracy aka socialism. Likely, he's a Mason himself. They are often sickly little European guys in big business. Batman was obviously his first big Masonic work.
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Dr Lamb 1992
Nowhere in this notorious Hong Kong film is the killer called Dr Lamb. He's not even a doctor. And this isn't truly a horror film. Its in the serial killer genre and deliver the exploitation goods like campy stereotype characters, lurid gore FX, inappropriate sexual titillation & wild expressionistic style. But its really a humanistic character piece that exposes the dregs of Hong Kong's impoverished families and the psyche of the young men in them (the target audience I suspect). The filmmakers condemn but sympathize with him fully and the bureaucratic police force are played as bumbling cowards & equally cruel weirdos with no moral code except the honorable chief. This is a common portrayal of roles in HK cinema in the late 80s/early 90s. Its sympathetic of the people trapped in the hell of Communist China and somewhat disgusted with the Westernized freedom given to HK's Chinese and paints a bond or mirror image between disparate participants but it must side with the law, painfully sometimes.
I have been absent from this blog but I've watched tons of movies. Mostly Hong Kong cinema, Charles Band cheapies & cult films that I finally found access to. I post reviews at letterboxd thinking the reviews will live on & find a bigger audience and I think the platform is awesome for reviewing movies but the membership sucks. Its almost only Millennial hipsters virtue signaling through poorly written "humor" reviews. Its a queasy mix of IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes and it seems funded by the major conglomerates because they only push those corporate "indie" films with a phony "liberal" message & veteran bland Hollywood bit players. Nothing international, nothing DIY, nothing by filmmakers outside of LA, nothing made for less than a million.
But they all repeat the same dead-eyes moral of "Made by compassionate capitalists who love our diverse workers and they think should be paid well, but not as much as us... and stay in your tiny mafia-run unions"
But they all repeat the same dead-eyes moral of "Made by compassionate capitalists who love our diverse workers and they think should be paid well, but not as much as us... and stay in your tiny mafia-run unions"
Saturday, August 25, 2018
Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys 2004
So it seems the best Puppet Master films of this century haven't had anything to do with Charles Band or Full Moon. Back in '04, Band loaned out the PM franchise to the SyFy Channel to produce a TV movie that I watched then, forgot and rewatched to find its among the better films starring these killer puppets. Band's films are so minimalist (cheap) that they sacrifice watch-ability and marketability for basic producibility and even profitability.
PMVDT spends the extra chump change to cast a few C-level marquee names, build at least one impressive set and actually give the star puppets some on-screen energy and motivation. More so, the script has a potent plot about evil corporate occultism, child media manipulation & the sacrifice of innocence for the bloodthirsty greed of the elite. These are natural extensions of the themes found in the classic PM films but Band has always ignored story, integrity or art to self-promote himself and his brand.
PMVDT spends the extra chump change to cast a few C-level marquee names, build at least one impressive set and actually give the star puppets some on-screen energy and motivation. More so, the script has a potent plot about evil corporate occultism, child media manipulation & the sacrifice of innocence for the bloodthirsty greed of the elite. These are natural extensions of the themes found in the classic PM films but Band has always ignored story, integrity or art to self-promote himself and his brand.
Friday, August 17, 2018
Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich
I am blown away by how excellent this first movie-watching experience was. Finally we get a reboot that delivers by creating a new continuity without plagiarizing or disrupting the source material. And unlike the well-meaning but unoriginal and lazy reboots coming out of Hollywood, "The Littlest Reich" isn't stifled by political correctness and trying to please everyone. Yet it doesn't sacrifice intelligent morals for its shock value.
Its a simple yet clever premise based on the essential ingredients of a classic modern tale. Essentially its a dark spoof of the original film with the same motives but its own voice, style, universe, politics and point of view. Most importantly it only strengthens the subtext of the original story and showers it in obvious fandom.
Where I think the screenwriter struck genius is making this a film for fans of the original first and foremost but still accessible to wider tastes, not the opposite. Too many reboots and sequels throw out the appeal of the old for eager accessibility by not studying the story mechanics that do or do not still work. This fella knows you have to have Nazis, puppets, slasher victims and 80s fanboy chic, but he finds new uses for all of these things. He fashions something personal from the first film and transplants it to a modern platform. The Puppet Master mythos is reinvigorated but NOT re-purposed.
TLR echos the many obsessions, themes, tropes, aesthetics & appeal of the entire PM catalog, so it fits in like a jewel among its dated and meager family to uplift them to younger, hipper and maybe less educated critics who wouldn't expect so much value from a reboot of an 80s horror cheapie about killer dolls. This is why its not just great cinema, its a great meta meditation and pop cultural commentary on cinema itself. And I'm grateful that a modest indie production could still accomplish this in 2018.
Its a simple yet clever premise based on the essential ingredients of a classic modern tale. Essentially its a dark spoof of the original film with the same motives but its own voice, style, universe, politics and point of view. Most importantly it only strengthens the subtext of the original story and showers it in obvious fandom.
Where I think the screenwriter struck genius is making this a film for fans of the original first and foremost but still accessible to wider tastes, not the opposite. Too many reboots and sequels throw out the appeal of the old for eager accessibility by not studying the story mechanics that do or do not still work. This fella knows you have to have Nazis, puppets, slasher victims and 80s fanboy chic, but he finds new uses for all of these things. He fashions something personal from the first film and transplants it to a modern platform. The Puppet Master mythos is reinvigorated but NOT re-purposed.
TLR echos the many obsessions, themes, tropes, aesthetics & appeal of the entire PM catalog, so it fits in like a jewel among its dated and meager family to uplift them to younger, hipper and maybe less educated critics who wouldn't expect so much value from a reboot of an 80s horror cheapie about killer dolls. This is why its not just great cinema, its a great meta meditation and pop cultural commentary on cinema itself. And I'm grateful that a modest indie production could still accomplish this in 2018.
Monday, August 13, 2018
Godzilla 1998
Few films have given me the intense sadness that this film gives. As I grew bored watching it, I researched the troubled production and failed release. Its the perfect example of how not to make a film. But almost all tentpole Hollywood spectacles are reminiscent of this film. This bad movie might be superior to the 2014 reboot simply because its not as boring.
Thats not to say its not bland and boring in its own right. We have a bloated, past his prime Matthew Broderick surrounded by more C-list actors re-enacting scenes from Jaws, Independence Day and Jurassic Park. Its done in a heavy camp tone courtesy of openly gay German director Roland Emmerich, who sneaks in a lot of subversive images and ideas such as Godzilla being a pregnant male victim this time around and the many baby Godzilla's taking the place of black men in a large basketball stadium. Gay Nazi humor? I dunno. The film is a sick joke on immigration and a huge critique of American nationalism with a very communist slant.
You can argue "Zilla"is some kind of Luciferian metaphor as its a hermaphroditic animal god bent on depopulation. Emmerich's films are obsessed with normalizing depopulation: Independence Day, 2012, Day After Tomorrow. This film is maybe one of the earliest examples of an openly pro-NWO Hollywood blockbuster. Its offensive propaganda that will be a curio someday soon.
The film starts with a lot of good moments. The film looks good and Emmerich actually tells the story visually with a few memorable setpieces and action scenarios. Some moments are extremely disturbing in psycho-sexual ways. But we don't care about any of the annoying cartooned humans, the broad humor is very flat and Godzilla himself seems like an afterthought.
I recommend it as evidence of Hollywood's sick leftist capitalist agenda, depressed Y2K aestheticism and a sometimes amusing slice of poorly rendered schlock.
Thats not to say its not bland and boring in its own right. We have a bloated, past his prime Matthew Broderick surrounded by more C-list actors re-enacting scenes from Jaws, Independence Day and Jurassic Park. Its done in a heavy camp tone courtesy of openly gay German director Roland Emmerich, who sneaks in a lot of subversive images and ideas such as Godzilla being a pregnant male victim this time around and the many baby Godzilla's taking the place of black men in a large basketball stadium. Gay Nazi humor? I dunno. The film is a sick joke on immigration and a huge critique of American nationalism with a very communist slant.
You can argue "Zilla"is some kind of Luciferian metaphor as its a hermaphroditic animal god bent on depopulation. Emmerich's films are obsessed with normalizing depopulation: Independence Day, 2012, Day After Tomorrow. This film is maybe one of the earliest examples of an openly pro-NWO Hollywood blockbuster. Its offensive propaganda that will be a curio someday soon.
The film starts with a lot of good moments. The film looks good and Emmerich actually tells the story visually with a few memorable setpieces and action scenarios. Some moments are extremely disturbing in psycho-sexual ways. But we don't care about any of the annoying cartooned humans, the broad humor is very flat and Godzilla himself seems like an afterthought.
I recommend it as evidence of Hollywood's sick leftist capitalist agenda, depressed Y2K aestheticism and a sometimes amusing slice of poorly rendered schlock.
Sunday, June 10, 2018
Jerry Lewis
Rewatching old Jerry Lewis films after recently rereading his book The Total Filmmaker.
The films have aged well, but more so the films he didn't direct.
I was blown away by Frank Tashlin's Who's Minding The Store? He brought a humanity, romance, sexiness and refinement to Jerry's screen persona.
Jerry's own directing is a mutation of Tashlin's, more bizarre but more sloppy, amateur and rushed. Lewis experimented more as he was less focused on plot, character, emotionality or personal statement. It feels like he's assuming what audiences like rather than giving us what he likes, which is why his films are more difficult, not very funny and often boring.
But Lewis was definitely a more economical and lowbrow director. His directorial debut "The Bellboy" is among his best not because of plot or even cleverness of the comedy. The production aesthetic is minimized because of cost and schedule so he's making what was then a postmodern silent film. Lewis could throw a film together out of nothing and it would be mostly filler but always have a few moments of gold.
He would remake Bellboy into better films like The Patsy, The Errand Boy and The Ladies Man until making his zenith The Nutty Professor thanks to a growing stable of great repertoire writers, actors, designers and a fine budget and premise. Later films like The Family Jewels and The Big Mouth are almost painfully bland, forced, thin, repetitive and unoriginal. Lewis was always more of a performer than an artist and too much of a capitalist lapdog cut off from real social experience. His films often reek of insecurity, depression, sexual confusion and a violent madness, especially as he aged and his star fell.
Tashlin was the real genius who made solo Jerry as well as Martin & Lewis bankable. Lewis developed his style from the colorful and gag heavy Tashlin form. But Tashlin always tempered it with just enough plot, antagonism, protagonism and (imagine it) well thought out jokes. Lewis would depend of improv and putting himself center stage. Tashlin storyboarded, had excess material, surrounded Jerry with amazing supportive players and always respected the audience. He controlled the anarchistic Jerry ego and made it something universal and appealing.
Jerry scored a late stage masterpiece with Cracking Up. I've reviewed it on this blog because it is Jerry at his most focused, experimental, mature, dark and professional.
Lewis maybe wasn't a genius as a director but he was an important and decent comedy director and probably a genius actor when he was coached properly. One of the most tired jokes is that the French are crazy for thinking Lewis was a genius, let alone funny. He was both when he wanted to be.
Monday, May 28, 2018
Made 2001 / Astronaut's Daughter 1999 / The Ninth Gate 1999 / Waking Life 2001
Made is the first film directed by Jon Favreau, the longtime character actor who became an indie darling when he wrote and starred in Swingers. While it becomes obvious the directing of Swingers by Doug Liman was possibly the real reason Swingers worked, Favreau and his Swingers co-star Vince Vaughn recapture some of the old magic. Vaughn deserves most of the credit with his self-deprecating comedic improvising and Favreau gets credit for knowing how to support his star and humanize the rather plotless, pointless story. Its all saved with some smooth cinematography and a sincere working class sentimental gritty romanticism. Its a bit of a waste of some veteran & future acting stars, but its a very enjoyable directorial debut if still a disappointing sophomore script.
Astronaut's Daughter is a bad mega budget high concept ripoff of Rosemary's Baby and Hitchcock's Suspicion. Pre-fame Charlize Theron carries the evil baby of peak-fame Johnny Depp's alien-possessed astronaut. Its full of genre cliches, Depp's horrid fake Southern accent and stylized but braindead commercial directing. I still think its a high kitsch affair that is enjoyable. The DP and Production Designer are the true stars and the whole affair is a great mirror of moody Y2K shallowness and pop culture nostalgia. Also, given recent allegations of Depp's domestic abuse and his all-but-confirmed Luciferian status, this has a few moments of convincing menace. I actually think Depp should switch to playing villains now that his youth and sex appeal is long gone.
Released the same fucking year as Astronaut's Daughter, Ninth Gate is Roman Polanski's return to Hollywood filmmaking and another Johnny Depp vehicle based on Satanism. Thankfully its a much better film. Polanski paints a dark camp hybrid of Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown, his two biggest 70s successes. Its a brilliant way to tie the films together and reveal the shared subtexts. Its wonderfully directed, shot, plotted and Polanski pulls one of the best performances from the wooden Depp (who is doing a rather lazy impression of Jack Nicholson throughout). Whereas Astronaut's is a lukewarm Hollywood meditation on Freemason subversion, Gate is a fearless celebration of mythic Satan worship in cinema as well as a aggressively respectful examination of real world Luciferianism as a philosophy. It can't be as shocking or clever as Polanski's early horror films, but its anti-Christian themes are even more pronounced and playful.
Waking Life is a wonderful, overwhelming and life-affirming celebration of pop existentialism from Richard Linklater, Generation X's cinematic hippie philosopher extraordinaire. Feeling like a Brechtian documentary or simply a psychedelic dream, Linklater keeps it accessible, warm, fun and constantly enlightening. The film features a totally new form of storytelling with diverse influences with heavy subject matter but retains a quality of unpretentiousness. The best film on this short list.
Astronaut's Daughter is a bad mega budget high concept ripoff of Rosemary's Baby and Hitchcock's Suspicion. Pre-fame Charlize Theron carries the evil baby of peak-fame Johnny Depp's alien-possessed astronaut. Its full of genre cliches, Depp's horrid fake Southern accent and stylized but braindead commercial directing. I still think its a high kitsch affair that is enjoyable. The DP and Production Designer are the true stars and the whole affair is a great mirror of moody Y2K shallowness and pop culture nostalgia. Also, given recent allegations of Depp's domestic abuse and his all-but-confirmed Luciferian status, this has a few moments of convincing menace. I actually think Depp should switch to playing villains now that his youth and sex appeal is long gone.
Released the same fucking year as Astronaut's Daughter, Ninth Gate is Roman Polanski's return to Hollywood filmmaking and another Johnny Depp vehicle based on Satanism. Thankfully its a much better film. Polanski paints a dark camp hybrid of Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown, his two biggest 70s successes. Its a brilliant way to tie the films together and reveal the shared subtexts. Its wonderfully directed, shot, plotted and Polanski pulls one of the best performances from the wooden Depp (who is doing a rather lazy impression of Jack Nicholson throughout). Whereas Astronaut's is a lukewarm Hollywood meditation on Freemason subversion, Gate is a fearless celebration of mythic Satan worship in cinema as well as a aggressively respectful examination of real world Luciferianism as a philosophy. It can't be as shocking or clever as Polanski's early horror films, but its anti-Christian themes are even more pronounced and playful.
Waking Life is a wonderful, overwhelming and life-affirming celebration of pop existentialism from Richard Linklater, Generation X's cinematic hippie philosopher extraordinaire. Feeling like a Brechtian documentary or simply a psychedelic dream, Linklater keeps it accessible, warm, fun and constantly enlightening. The film features a totally new form of storytelling with diverse influences with heavy subject matter but retains a quality of unpretentiousness. The best film on this short list.
Monday, May 21, 2018
So few films have any message besides propaganda to buy more and be sold by the status quo on government economics. Everything is a commercial for capitalism. Except socialist propaganda. But we don't need films that tell you they are propaganda. That would be more sincere and honest and wouldn't betray the expectations of the audience, but its only in true propaganda that you can free consumers from exploitation. The audience consuming the worst garbage must be told what they are consuming.
The system we pay into is a bloodthirsty, species-sacrificing, animal-slaughtering, child-raping, Devil-worshiping currency-holding game where you and millions like you start losing as soon as you're born. And your competition is born rich and powerful, already ahead of the game and soon plotting to cement rule over the collective body of our population. This is why any objectively good film must always be proletariat and not a work of self-serving Ego vanity that is anti-human or anti-group, prejudice or one-sided, censoring or censored.
This type of Pure Cinema is found on the fringes of what is accepted by corporatized business media. You must be extremely clever in climbing its own dangerous and destructive ranks of soul-crushing success or be as independent and obscure as possible to effect the most basic levels of the proletariat struggle. As influence spreads, you remain unknown to enemies and championed by the most legitimized revolutionaries of the struggle against tyranny.
The system we pay into is a bloodthirsty, species-sacrificing, animal-slaughtering, child-raping, Devil-worshiping currency-holding game where you and millions like you start losing as soon as you're born. And your competition is born rich and powerful, already ahead of the game and soon plotting to cement rule over the collective body of our population. This is why any objectively good film must always be proletariat and not a work of self-serving Ego vanity that is anti-human or anti-group, prejudice or one-sided, censoring or censored.
This type of Pure Cinema is found on the fringes of what is accepted by corporatized business media. You must be extremely clever in climbing its own dangerous and destructive ranks of soul-crushing success or be as independent and obscure as possible to effect the most basic levels of the proletariat struggle. As influence spreads, you remain unknown to enemies and championed by the most legitimized revolutionaries of the struggle against tyranny.
Alien Covenant 2017 2ND REVIW
This film may not have the entertainment and thrill of Alien 2 & 3, but it its so much more satisfying as a sequel (prequel really). The theme of a Luciferian intelligence lurking in technology ties back to the original Alien and also the original Blade Runner. I would argue AC and Prometheus are essentially bridging the worlds of both Ridley Scott franchises in structure, style and continuity. And why not, when the other Alien films (and especially Alien vs Predator films) really play a loose fanboy level of shared history, thats past, presents and future.
Now is the film about real world unsubstantiated conspiratorial possibilities? We don't know and thats where the fear as an audience becomes overwhelming in a pronounced EXISTENTIALLY human way. Juggling the metaphysics of the white man-created mythology is heavy, confusing, sometimes taxing but Ridley Scott is putting on a master teaching class about our shared human experience. He's educating you on the past. Why? Not to welcome you into an elitist club of intellectuals who worship ego and reject utopian progress, but to speak against abuses of any form of collective human power on Earth or in any kind of Heaven, God or man-made.
And yet there's a grim sadness. A depressed bleakness that highlight's a fragile Romantic soul that bleeds its heart for the suffering of others, rather than let them burn in the ravaging stages of any Late Capitalism.
Dullness & pain is felt in the muted aesthetics of Ridley's interpretation of not only the abstract themes of Survivalism, Cave Art, Primitivism, Tribalism, Sexism, Racism, War, Murder, Genocide, Apocalypse, Hell, Extinction, Limbo, Eternity, Nothingness, Nihilism, Horror, Fantasy, Mythology, Romanticism, Occult, Speculative, Science, Fiction, Media, Art, Capitalism, Socialism, Satanism, Christianity, Deitism, Dualism, Dialectic, Neutrality, Monism, Pluralism, Mathematics, Economics, Materialism, Idealism, Marxism, Postmodernism itself and etc.
Its a leisurely film, the kind old directors often make. But it still has enough emotional intensity, mental clarity and visual splendor to satisfy any audience I think. Its very tame in some respects. Subtle rather than outspoken or garish. I haven't always agreed with Scott's outlook on life and society, but I think he has grown as a thinker and artist and watching his descent & ascent commercially and politically has helped an entire generation mature through the shared film-going experience. And for that I am personally grateful to his work.
I think the film, most essentially, sets up a clever and radically original direction for the series. Whether that is retained as this Fox buyout plays on. I don't think Disney can survive this type of inflation so fast. The bubble has to burst. And when it does, the assets of Fox will go to someone who has more buying power than a cost-cutting Disney. I would love if Scott Free could buy Alien or Blade Runner just so Scott's vision can be preserved not in a capitalist sense of corporatizing with monopolists who cheat the market. But actually belong to the workers, unlike the exploited victims in Scott's films.
Walt Disney left an uber-moral, somewhat Stalinist version of rightwing Devil-worshipping brand of communist Christianity built on fleecing Believers for their money a(donations) and silencing their economic opposition as the true Devils. The Devil is a lie in the sense that to believe the character is to believe in the character. What I mean is that Christianity teaches to hate an entire group (Jews) while Satanism teaches to love a non-existent collective animal urge to murder and rape out of some primordial slime DNA's quest for fungal infection in order to reproduce. This scientific revelation has combined with a previous form of Atheism that now sees all religion as a shared fictionalized subjectivity but unconsciously leaving an objective record of human shared self-awareness. We have a hivemind built of psychic energy that seems to exceed time and space. Thats a very rewarding reality but brutal at times when too much order leads to spontaneous anarchy.
Scott's films vs the predominant American moralism in Hollywood. Scott is English so he gets it as much as any European director can probably get it. He follows Kubrick, Franco, Welles and Ridley's brother Tony. Admittedly Ridley Scott's work often feels too willing to comply with corporate interest and obscuring oblique censorship, but he retains a fiery voice that is Pro-Independence always. He's really the last mainstream director to still work freelance as a prolific commercial level. That may turn many off from the sincerity of what he's selling. But I think he's doing as much as he is allowed so he can help the widest audience while hopefully not fleecing too many idiots who don't get the knowledge.
So is Ridley Scott saying anything valuable in his message lately? Has he ever changed his message to sell out? Remember that he entered the film world as a director of big budget commercials and TV. So if anything he's probably started from the right and swung left as he's aged and seen exploitation and the ravages of modernism first hand. And he's still making the most elegant, technological, daunting and challenging films in the business and only getting sharper. Scott is one of filmmaking's masters and has he become one of its biggest "anti-heroic heroes"? Is he simply an Anti-Hero? Is he too a Villain to the complexion of the changing, conglomerized Hollywood product? I think so.
With Alien Covenant, Scott shows us that we create our own demons. To not believe in God is to believe in Self alone. As this robot sets out to prove he is God and greater than his own Creation, he never learns that he is merely a cheap imitation of his Creator's own faulted Will. Many of Scott's films focus on the blinded quest of Aryan supremacy, the fall of Western civilization in a perverse self-love that pits Self against The Other. Man no longer can love brother or sister, love or relation, counterpart or Self. The story of David the android is similar to Roy Batty or Pinocchio or Frankenstein's Monster or Lucifer, the original Anti-Hero. He wants to know what love is because his father gave him none. The search for "Love" as an abstract intellectual goal and not a natural, chemical, sensual experience is why David feels he must create a demonized, hybridized, most primitive and most deadly expression of his own lonely "superiority" complex. What starts in a factory traverses through space travel, global genocide and finally lab-created colonization of the universe. Scott paints a striking metaphor - a moving mirror painted in pulp fiction signs - to reflect the misguided and totally self-satisfied destructive impulses of White Man's fall from grace of God. His failure to become God.
Now is the film about real world unsubstantiated conspiratorial possibilities? We don't know and thats where the fear as an audience becomes overwhelming in a pronounced EXISTENTIALLY human way. Juggling the metaphysics of the white man-created mythology is heavy, confusing, sometimes taxing but Ridley Scott is putting on a master teaching class about our shared human experience. He's educating you on the past. Why? Not to welcome you into an elitist club of intellectuals who worship ego and reject utopian progress, but to speak against abuses of any form of collective human power on Earth or in any kind of Heaven, God or man-made.
And yet there's a grim sadness. A depressed bleakness that highlight's a fragile Romantic soul that bleeds its heart for the suffering of others, rather than let them burn in the ravaging stages of any Late Capitalism.
Dullness & pain is felt in the muted aesthetics of Ridley's interpretation of not only the abstract themes of Survivalism, Cave Art, Primitivism, Tribalism, Sexism, Racism, War, Murder, Genocide, Apocalypse, Hell, Extinction, Limbo, Eternity, Nothingness, Nihilism, Horror, Fantasy, Mythology, Romanticism, Occult, Speculative, Science, Fiction, Media, Art, Capitalism, Socialism, Satanism, Christianity, Deitism, Dualism, Dialectic, Neutrality, Monism, Pluralism, Mathematics, Economics, Materialism, Idealism, Marxism, Postmodernism itself and etc.
Its a leisurely film, the kind old directors often make. But it still has enough emotional intensity, mental clarity and visual splendor to satisfy any audience I think. Its very tame in some respects. Subtle rather than outspoken or garish. I haven't always agreed with Scott's outlook on life and society, but I think he has grown as a thinker and artist and watching his descent & ascent commercially and politically has helped an entire generation mature through the shared film-going experience. And for that I am personally grateful to his work.
I think the film, most essentially, sets up a clever and radically original direction for the series. Whether that is retained as this Fox buyout plays on. I don't think Disney can survive this type of inflation so fast. The bubble has to burst. And when it does, the assets of Fox will go to someone who has more buying power than a cost-cutting Disney. I would love if Scott Free could buy Alien or Blade Runner just so Scott's vision can be preserved not in a capitalist sense of corporatizing with monopolists who cheat the market. But actually belong to the workers, unlike the exploited victims in Scott's films.
Walt Disney left an uber-moral, somewhat Stalinist version of rightwing Devil-worshipping brand of communist Christianity built on fleecing Believers for their money a(donations) and silencing their economic opposition as the true Devils. The Devil is a lie in the sense that to believe the character is to believe in the character. What I mean is that Christianity teaches to hate an entire group (Jews) while Satanism teaches to love a non-existent collective animal urge to murder and rape out of some primordial slime DNA's quest for fungal infection in order to reproduce. This scientific revelation has combined with a previous form of Atheism that now sees all religion as a shared fictionalized subjectivity but unconsciously leaving an objective record of human shared self-awareness. We have a hivemind built of psychic energy that seems to exceed time and space. Thats a very rewarding reality but brutal at times when too much order leads to spontaneous anarchy.
Scott's films vs the predominant American moralism in Hollywood. Scott is English so he gets it as much as any European director can probably get it. He follows Kubrick, Franco, Welles and Ridley's brother Tony. Admittedly Ridley Scott's work often feels too willing to comply with corporate interest and obscuring oblique censorship, but he retains a fiery voice that is Pro-Independence always. He's really the last mainstream director to still work freelance as a prolific commercial level. That may turn many off from the sincerity of what he's selling. But I think he's doing as much as he is allowed so he can help the widest audience while hopefully not fleecing too many idiots who don't get the knowledge.
So is Ridley Scott saying anything valuable in his message lately? Has he ever changed his message to sell out? Remember that he entered the film world as a director of big budget commercials and TV. So if anything he's probably started from the right and swung left as he's aged and seen exploitation and the ravages of modernism first hand. And he's still making the most elegant, technological, daunting and challenging films in the business and only getting sharper. Scott is one of filmmaking's masters and has he become one of its biggest "anti-heroic heroes"? Is he simply an Anti-Hero? Is he too a Villain to the complexion of the changing, conglomerized Hollywood product? I think so.
With Alien Covenant, Scott shows us that we create our own demons. To not believe in God is to believe in Self alone. As this robot sets out to prove he is God and greater than his own Creation, he never learns that he is merely a cheap imitation of his Creator's own faulted Will. Many of Scott's films focus on the blinded quest of Aryan supremacy, the fall of Western civilization in a perverse self-love that pits Self against The Other. Man no longer can love brother or sister, love or relation, counterpart or Self. The story of David the android is similar to Roy Batty or Pinocchio or Frankenstein's Monster or Lucifer, the original Anti-Hero. He wants to know what love is because his father gave him none. The search for "Love" as an abstract intellectual goal and not a natural, chemical, sensual experience is why David feels he must create a demonized, hybridized, most primitive and most deadly expression of his own lonely "superiority" complex. What starts in a factory traverses through space travel, global genocide and finally lab-created colonization of the universe. Scott paints a striking metaphor - a moving mirror painted in pulp fiction signs - to reflect the misguided and totally self-satisfied destructive impulses of White Man's fall from grace of God. His failure to become God.
Saturday, April 28, 2018
The Running Man 1987
This film is still fresh in my mind. I'm a big fan of mid-career Arnold Swarzenegger but I'm just now delving into its deeper ideology. This film warns of a class-divided capitalist state that has wiped out all libertarianism, right or left.
Quite obviously, Arnold represents the white male rightwing anarchist hero, a total Ayn Rand ubermensch created in a lab somewhere, but he finds great allies in his leftwing anarchist buddies. Ok, they are useless, ineffective minorities who get brutalized masochistically, but then Arnold delivers swift, violent and witty justice to these state puppet capitalists. Its meathead entertainment but true to American conservative democracy. It even questions notions like capital punishment, collateral damage and media propaganda.
Its not as leftist as I would make it, but its a firm bit of ideological fluff from a less enlightened time. It also foreshadows Arnold's becoming a fairly likable republican ally to moderate leftists. Shit, I'd say films like this are extremely helpful to the far left in keeping the rightwing away from Nazism and aware of un-Marxist Communism. While the audience is meathead, Arnold was definitely a thinking, passionate actor with integrity, morally and artistically. If only he valued peace over the freedom to make money.
Quite obviously, Arnold represents the white male rightwing anarchist hero, a total Ayn Rand ubermensch created in a lab somewhere, but he finds great allies in his leftwing anarchist buddies. Ok, they are useless, ineffective minorities who get brutalized masochistically, but then Arnold delivers swift, violent and witty justice to these state puppet capitalists. Its meathead entertainment but true to American conservative democracy. It even questions notions like capital punishment, collateral damage and media propaganda.
Its not as leftist as I would make it, but its a firm bit of ideological fluff from a less enlightened time. It also foreshadows Arnold's becoming a fairly likable republican ally to moderate leftists. Shit, I'd say films like this are extremely helpful to the far left in keeping the rightwing away from Nazism and aware of un-Marxist Communism. While the audience is meathead, Arnold was definitely a thinking, passionate actor with integrity, morally and artistically. If only he valued peace over the freedom to make money.
Rampage 2018
Every film casting Dwayne Johnson has been a fairly unoriginal conservative family-friendly popcorn piece to keep audiences dully entertained while corporations rob them. "Rampage" is no exception. This film casts The Rock as the BFF of a lightskin gorilla that grows too big for its britches til the government decides to kill it. There's an intentionally hokey ending where King Kong isn't killed but joyously accepted as a Nazi "comrade" but the film doesn't trick us. Its pro-Trump anarcho-capitalism that serves to only send America into amoral servitude to enterprising pro-state corporate masters in Hollywood. Fucking terrible film. And thankfully the internet shit on it. Probably because the hypnosis of loving Obama has worn off and the cynical truthism is reactionary at this point in our deep dark night within the confusingly deceptive implosion of Western world bipartisan monopoly.
The film has its mild Romantic moments and it criticizes the government and corporate abuses with baby taps. Its your expected pandering to Leftism from insincere capitalists. But in subverting the crassness you get in other rightwing media, its stupidity hits even harder as bland false advertisement. This is truly a post-Obama, post-Trump American work but for all the wrong reasons. An unintentional documentary of Late Capitalism slave work.
For the record, there are films starring The Rock that I have enjoyed but they were random flukes handled by reasonably responsible directors: the Donnie Darko companion piece "Southland Tales", "Pain & Gain" and, I dunno, maybe a few parts of "GI Joe 2". He seems like a well-meaning meathead jock with a minor artistic sensitivity simply from being an oppressed minority. He's thoroughly indoctrinated Deep South dixiecrat neoliberal who has good ideas but only seems to work in the most regressive circles of media. I guess he's a Libertarian who hasn't embraced socialism yet. Johnson might win a popular election with that status but he won't make a good leader because he seems insulated by manipulative and greedy sycophants... in his own family it seems.
If The Rock made films that were more open-minded, less child-proofed and a lot more subtle, he would have work that equals his immense popularity and natural charisma. He does seem to be getting better and this way more watchable than Hercules or The Tooth Fairy. But, I'm always left disappointed by his starring vehicles. Maybe he is best as a supporting actor, co-billed or even as an antagonist. Something without his too broad "working class" hero cliches. But he is popular among all demographics because there is a democratic way in which he lowers himself.
This film casts man and ape as close relatives. It turns queasy following the heroic quest of 3 ethnic characters VS greedy white people, drawing what kind of a parallel? The races as a hierarchy of apes instead of subspecies of human. Its very racist but in the most covert and smiling way. There's no chance the actors know they are doing it unless the pay was greater than their integrity. But you have to know your history of racism in film, media and recorded history. A film made by white people with a black man telling whites that an ape is his family more than other people is offensive. Ok, maybe I can half-buy it as a tale of African descents protecting the animal kingdom from the disastrous effects of white colonialism. But that insincere reading is so obscured in CGI, bad dialogue, clumsy & timid racial commentary and a lot of pointlessness.
If there's anything redeeming in this movie it was too subtle for me. I doubt that in a video game turned film called "Rampage" that is a combination of like 10 equally bad films.
The film has its mild Romantic moments and it criticizes the government and corporate abuses with baby taps. Its your expected pandering to Leftism from insincere capitalists. But in subverting the crassness you get in other rightwing media, its stupidity hits even harder as bland false advertisement. This is truly a post-Obama, post-Trump American work but for all the wrong reasons. An unintentional documentary of Late Capitalism slave work.
For the record, there are films starring The Rock that I have enjoyed but they were random flukes handled by reasonably responsible directors: the Donnie Darko companion piece "Southland Tales", "Pain & Gain" and, I dunno, maybe a few parts of "GI Joe 2". He seems like a well-meaning meathead jock with a minor artistic sensitivity simply from being an oppressed minority. He's thoroughly indoctrinated Deep South dixiecrat neoliberal who has good ideas but only seems to work in the most regressive circles of media. I guess he's a Libertarian who hasn't embraced socialism yet. Johnson might win a popular election with that status but he won't make a good leader because he seems insulated by manipulative and greedy sycophants... in his own family it seems.
If The Rock made films that were more open-minded, less child-proofed and a lot more subtle, he would have work that equals his immense popularity and natural charisma. He does seem to be getting better and this way more watchable than Hercules or The Tooth Fairy. But, I'm always left disappointed by his starring vehicles. Maybe he is best as a supporting actor, co-billed or even as an antagonist. Something without his too broad "working class" hero cliches. But he is popular among all demographics because there is a democratic way in which he lowers himself.
This film casts man and ape as close relatives. It turns queasy following the heroic quest of 3 ethnic characters VS greedy white people, drawing what kind of a parallel? The races as a hierarchy of apes instead of subspecies of human. Its very racist but in the most covert and smiling way. There's no chance the actors know they are doing it unless the pay was greater than their integrity. But you have to know your history of racism in film, media and recorded history. A film made by white people with a black man telling whites that an ape is his family more than other people is offensive. Ok, maybe I can half-buy it as a tale of African descents protecting the animal kingdom from the disastrous effects of white colonialism. But that insincere reading is so obscured in CGI, bad dialogue, clumsy & timid racial commentary and a lot of pointlessness.
If there's anything redeeming in this movie it was too subtle for me. I doubt that in a video game turned film called "Rampage" that is a combination of like 10 equally bad films.
Thursday, April 26, 2018
While "They Live" is a brilliant not-so-conservative rightwing call for anarchist revolution, John Carpenter's Escape from New York strikes me as pure idiotic ideology-driven "gun propaganda" drivel. Beware a black mayor of New York! Save British colonial idealism! It also promotes white male working class vigilantism and fear-based consumption to prevent urban decay. So nothing changes. It just keeps getting a new lacquered skin to sell the illusion of a democratic state working against classism and classicism.
But I believe Carpenter is a leftwing democrat. He's just being loyal to the pure roots of Western democracy, especially in America's not so young history. The rightwing has gone racist a lot in the last century. But only to match the violent racism that built the democratic parties in America, namely that of the British E.U..
So I'm not even picky for leftwing films or against rightwing films. But the left has always been too moderate and the right has always been too militant, clan-based, competitive, sexist & racist, dependent to capital and material possessions. Hollywood is steeped in a film language and cultural history that is so limited and censored in scope. Modernity and only the most compromised and consumerist (commercial) versions of postmodernist thought are allowed to be discussed socially by the design of a ruling class.
And there's no need to fear the competition of any corporation of private investors and legal or illegal funds to express monopoly on all industry. They may rule certain sectors at certain times, but unless they build their own private army or gain a permanent hold of government, these "deep state" conspirators can pull the wool over our eyes but can never out-gun the government or the people. Because SOME of the writers and signers of the Constitution were great and brilliant people. They devised parchment to prevent the destruction of the people, the state, their business and their privacy.
Now we're always under siege of a disastrous destruction of that safety, but that document provided enough laws to serve justice and protect peace. The world is facing an insurrection of powerful criminals who exist in shadows but they will always fall to America and the world because America puts God first, even if it was once based on a racist, sexist, mythological revisionist historian-perverted version of "God".
Should a small group of elitists run everything? Should democracy be kept a lie, a capitalist video game that only serves the leaders of state? Can they be trusted to be fair and right the wrongs of history's leaders? Who should run the next government? And how do we make sure they are not puppets of more powerful republicans who seek to destroy democracy?
But I believe Carpenter is a leftwing democrat. He's just being loyal to the pure roots of Western democracy, especially in America's not so young history. The rightwing has gone racist a lot in the last century. But only to match the violent racism that built the democratic parties in America, namely that of the British E.U..
So I'm not even picky for leftwing films or against rightwing films. But the left has always been too moderate and the right has always been too militant, clan-based, competitive, sexist & racist, dependent to capital and material possessions. Hollywood is steeped in a film language and cultural history that is so limited and censored in scope. Modernity and only the most compromised and consumerist (commercial) versions of postmodernist thought are allowed to be discussed socially by the design of a ruling class.
And there's no need to fear the competition of any corporation of private investors and legal or illegal funds to express monopoly on all industry. They may rule certain sectors at certain times, but unless they build their own private army or gain a permanent hold of government, these "deep state" conspirators can pull the wool over our eyes but can never out-gun the government or the people. Because SOME of the writers and signers of the Constitution were great and brilliant people. They devised parchment to prevent the destruction of the people, the state, their business and their privacy.
Now we're always under siege of a disastrous destruction of that safety, but that document provided enough laws to serve justice and protect peace. The world is facing an insurrection of powerful criminals who exist in shadows but they will always fall to America and the world because America puts God first, even if it was once based on a racist, sexist, mythological revisionist historian-perverted version of "God".
Should a small group of elitists run everything? Should democracy be kept a lie, a capitalist video game that only serves the leaders of state? Can they be trusted to be fair and right the wrongs of history's leaders? Who should run the next government? And how do we make sure they are not puppets of more powerful republicans who seek to destroy democracy?
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
WHAT ARE YOU CONSUMING?
I haven't watched much cinema lately. I'm tuned out of reviewing 2018 releases after the stream of trash in 2017 and I've burnt out on watching older films. I'm not even entertained by revisiting films, although I had a great time watching Batman, The Running Man, Commando and a few others.
I'm a bit jaded with film period after delving pretty deep into the cult of Jess Franco films. My opinion of him is more confusing than ever. Clearly, many of his films are glorified and over-analyzed. Many have little merit after a one or two time watch. But they all serve the impact of his great works, which are some of the most powerful films to come out of their genre, era or budget range.
Venus in Furs is a near masterpiece its so ahead of its time. A Virgin Among The Living Dead is better than 9/10 films you'll ever see. But many films (especially after the death of Soledad Miranda and the death of XXX theaters) are simply entertaining and well-crafted schlock and some are just tedious. No doubt they are smarter and more beautiful than other exploitation films and have more art than "serious" films, but there's an intense sadness in the fact that he made so many films but so few great ones. But again few directors make great films and this guy made a lot of good ones out of nada. Its almost its own genre of pure cinema. I understand his mournful disposition later in life and his own ambivalence to his own career, but I still cherish and honor his actual talent and resilience standing up to the degradation of auteurist filmmaking.
I'm at a weird crossroads where many films I once loved don't work for me now. Mainly because most films are either beholden to bland commercial or critic-serving scriptwriting or indulgent, distracting and stooge-fooling visual spectacle. They have no singular voices and certainly won't challenge the viewers out of fear of not reimbursing investors.
The Millennial reboot of Blade Runner is not a favorite film of 2017 for me but it unsurprisingly has a diehard cult of defenders who are calling it superior to the original and attributing meanings and accolades that aren't there. I'm not even too bothered because the cult is made up of 20 year old's who haven't seen anything outside of modern Western film or anime. I haven't seen any serious lovers or critics of film buying BR2.
We're in an era of Gen X filmmakers and Gen Y audiences who have inherited so much powerful technology, secondhand knowledge and inflated sense of Self, that EVERYTHING is deemed "art" so long as its of the moment and rejects the past and offers a predictably dark but hopeful view of the future. Its so... phony. This is a perfect reflection of the post-Obama, post-Trump mindset. "The majority is evil but WE select few will save the world by destroying it and remaking it in our image". This Us Vs Them shit. Everyone is so distracted, distrusting and maddened by the 1% that they don't see THAT is the game. Media wants us all to hate each other and pay to see simulated violence against each other and hand over control to politicians and corporations and keep being zombified consumers. Oh, technology will save us!
Its time for a real radical voice of social revolution and individual responsibility. Films for the people and by the people. A return of INDEPENDENCE! They've taken every platform we have for getting the message out: the press, TV, film, internet. Whats left? The real fucking world. Let them have Virtual Reality. We live in the here and now of physical space where they can never rule. Ok, they can monitor us, brainwash us, embarrass us, harass us and leave us disenfranchised. But there's still more of us than them. We can't all sell out.
BTW, John Carpenter's "They Live" is one of the real classics of the 1980s and should be a manual going forward not only for independent filmmakers and artists but all of humanity. We are waking up and our enemies are scared.
I'm a bit jaded with film period after delving pretty deep into the cult of Jess Franco films. My opinion of him is more confusing than ever. Clearly, many of his films are glorified and over-analyzed. Many have little merit after a one or two time watch. But they all serve the impact of his great works, which are some of the most powerful films to come out of their genre, era or budget range.
Venus in Furs is a near masterpiece its so ahead of its time. A Virgin Among The Living Dead is better than 9/10 films you'll ever see. But many films (especially after the death of Soledad Miranda and the death of XXX theaters) are simply entertaining and well-crafted schlock and some are just tedious. No doubt they are smarter and more beautiful than other exploitation films and have more art than "serious" films, but there's an intense sadness in the fact that he made so many films but so few great ones. But again few directors make great films and this guy made a lot of good ones out of nada. Its almost its own genre of pure cinema. I understand his mournful disposition later in life and his own ambivalence to his own career, but I still cherish and honor his actual talent and resilience standing up to the degradation of auteurist filmmaking.
I'm at a weird crossroads where many films I once loved don't work for me now. Mainly because most films are either beholden to bland commercial or critic-serving scriptwriting or indulgent, distracting and stooge-fooling visual spectacle. They have no singular voices and certainly won't challenge the viewers out of fear of not reimbursing investors.
The Millennial reboot of Blade Runner is not a favorite film of 2017 for me but it unsurprisingly has a diehard cult of defenders who are calling it superior to the original and attributing meanings and accolades that aren't there. I'm not even too bothered because the cult is made up of 20 year old's who haven't seen anything outside of modern Western film or anime. I haven't seen any serious lovers or critics of film buying BR2.
We're in an era of Gen X filmmakers and Gen Y audiences who have inherited so much powerful technology, secondhand knowledge and inflated sense of Self, that EVERYTHING is deemed "art" so long as its of the moment and rejects the past and offers a predictably dark but hopeful view of the future. Its so... phony. This is a perfect reflection of the post-Obama, post-Trump mindset. "The majority is evil but WE select few will save the world by destroying it and remaking it in our image". This Us Vs Them shit. Everyone is so distracted, distrusting and maddened by the 1% that they don't see THAT is the game. Media wants us all to hate each other and pay to see simulated violence against each other and hand over control to politicians and corporations and keep being zombified consumers. Oh, technology will save us!
Its time for a real radical voice of social revolution and individual responsibility. Films for the people and by the people. A return of INDEPENDENCE! They've taken every platform we have for getting the message out: the press, TV, film, internet. Whats left? The real fucking world. Let them have Virtual Reality. We live in the here and now of physical space where they can never rule. Ok, they can monitor us, brainwash us, embarrass us, harass us and leave us disenfranchised. But there's still more of us than them. We can't all sell out.
BTW, John Carpenter's "They Live" is one of the real classics of the 1980s and should be a manual going forward not only for independent filmmakers and artists but all of humanity. We are waking up and our enemies are scared.
Saw a review calling the new Avengers film a "virtuoso" film because it brings together a couple "hit franchises". Ok. If it actually tied together a couple pre-existing independent and iconic franchises (ex. Freddy vs Jason), I would be impressed. But these franchises were created solely to be merged. Shit, half of them didn't even exist until recently (Black Panther, Dr Strange, Guardians). And I have to ask, what adult can care about this shit with the shape the Western world is in and the insidious role corporate media plays in it, Disney being one of the worst.
Friday, March 16, 2018
Francophilia: An Ode to Cult Directing
I've tried to see how deep the rabbit hole goes in cinema, as well as political and sociological history. Cinema is actually a great textbook on many fields of psychology, philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, poetics, dramaturgy, satire and sexuality. It all boils down to narrative style. Tone, inflection, grammar. These are tools maybe best expressed in jazz.
Jess Franco - the director I've covered this past year - is maybe the most clear translator of his own demons and angels through an intelligent aesthetic of communist dualism and Buddhist transcendentalism. The guy so valued his freedom from censorship and commercialism and any cap on his spiritual, moral and intellectual growth that he made films "among the sinners" and castoffs that made up the Wild West that was European schlock cinema. I've used his ideology as a lens for the current climate. Did this man contribute or damage the craft of cinema?
Its hard to detect when he is simply exploiting or deconstructing a salacious subject or is fetishizing or morally engaging it. His films feature sadism, incest, hypnosis, slavery, torture and so many things that The Catholic Church branded him a Satanic figure, basically excommunicating the youngest star director from ever reaching Hollywood. So he made Z-grade films that mirrored the injustice, abuse and exploitation he suffered. He drew pictures of the dragons who slew his dream to be a knight. He sacrificed his Messianic image to battle the image of fascism that would someday enrapture world cinema's mainstream. Why? Because he was attuned, almost mystically, to the complexion of the human spirit. He had a sensitivity, a blues in him that brought together other ailing geniuses. In his collaborators and his deep cult fandom.
We ask was Jess Franco a free mason? His films make perfection depiction of not only Masonic themes, rites, symbols and stories like "generation", craftsmanship, surveillance, atonement and ascendancy, but also the feared Illuminati doppelganger image that is cultivated by their enigmatic reputation. Hypnosis, rape, sodomy, incest, pedophilia, libertine sadism, prostitution, murder, Satanism and a thousand other Illuminist references are made film to film by Franco. Was Jesus Franco a Luciferian? I've heard him say there is no singular God creator, but I never heard him disavow Man as God. I think Franco was cinema's most powerful and open occultist and warlock (or "wizard" if the term is too dark for you). Franco even claimed he was the inspiration for Yoda. Its a claim you want to believe isn't a lie. But what is the truth? Clearly he knew these groups secrets even if he never joined them.
Aesthetically his films are flawless for my enjoyment as a film-lover. But are his films moral? Certainly they are too scary, complex, offensive and demoralized for some. But does that make them less true? Does it make them "evil"? Art is probably evil in the eyes of Christians. But its not evil in the eyes of Christ. This was Jesus' point all along.
Franco depicts himself as a boogeyman to scare the ignorant and intrigue those who are teachable. And he makes no special boasts or pursuit of fame. The man practice the same humble social servitude promoted in Rudyard Kipling's poem If, the Masonic writer's ode to Freemason code.
It seems the aim of anti-Christian directors and artists (Masonic or anti-Masonic) is neither to create or be The AntiChrist but to eliminate need for Anti or Christ. To honor an open dialectic with truth and discovery not fixed in the static disintegration of dogma. Of course they are called Devils, so they must exist as private citizens. And if one falls and commits crime or dishonorable acts, they must face the same penalties as all men and women. Period. In a way, all directors are like a watchful society of enlightened artistic heroes and potential villains.
I'm not saying Jess Franco is a bad guy or a good guy. He's certainly a good artist. To my knowledge, he never did anything as wretched as Polanski or Woody Allen. After selling out his craft like a Jodorowsky, Lynch, Wells or Kubrick, he refused to stay down and became MORE prolific. He never lost sight of a positive moral message of secrecy while admitting its dangers, demons and disasters. He brought a message of magical thinking that shouldn't be bound by any one God. This is radical and blasphemous to most. But one must ask was he right or wrong? This is another Christian parallel Franco sets up in his career's narrative. It is his meta-trope.
He studied and challenged every ideology he could simply to raise questions about the human condition and any metaphysical realm of judgement beyond it. Like Lynch, he is obsessed with balancing the warring opinions on the very substance and texture of shared realism. He knows he can only express his worldview in a projection of theatrical dreams. His canvas is illuminated thought in the dark. How many learned spiritualism in film from Franco. Of course Franco followed many others with bigger names, but Jess was a gateway inside cheap populist mass media in a young technological age of movie-searching. It's such a Romantic notion of posthumous fame for a cinemist. He became the idealism of purity to the purely idealistic film fan. It's an important distinction from the other classes of notable filmmakers.
I find more and more to analyze in the deep texts of his small, quiet examples of film poetry. This is my favorite director, love him or hate me. He is simply the most advanced thinker for any class of directors. But now he is gone. And someone must try to fill his shadow.
Jess Franco - the director I've covered this past year - is maybe the most clear translator of his own demons and angels through an intelligent aesthetic of communist dualism and Buddhist transcendentalism. The guy so valued his freedom from censorship and commercialism and any cap on his spiritual, moral and intellectual growth that he made films "among the sinners" and castoffs that made up the Wild West that was European schlock cinema. I've used his ideology as a lens for the current climate. Did this man contribute or damage the craft of cinema?
Its hard to detect when he is simply exploiting or deconstructing a salacious subject or is fetishizing or morally engaging it. His films feature sadism, incest, hypnosis, slavery, torture and so many things that The Catholic Church branded him a Satanic figure, basically excommunicating the youngest star director from ever reaching Hollywood. So he made Z-grade films that mirrored the injustice, abuse and exploitation he suffered. He drew pictures of the dragons who slew his dream to be a knight. He sacrificed his Messianic image to battle the image of fascism that would someday enrapture world cinema's mainstream. Why? Because he was attuned, almost mystically, to the complexion of the human spirit. He had a sensitivity, a blues in him that brought together other ailing geniuses. In his collaborators and his deep cult fandom.
We ask was Jess Franco a free mason? His films make perfection depiction of not only Masonic themes, rites, symbols and stories like "generation", craftsmanship, surveillance, atonement and ascendancy, but also the feared Illuminati doppelganger image that is cultivated by their enigmatic reputation. Hypnosis, rape, sodomy, incest, pedophilia, libertine sadism, prostitution, murder, Satanism and a thousand other Illuminist references are made film to film by Franco. Was Jesus Franco a Luciferian? I've heard him say there is no singular God creator, but I never heard him disavow Man as God. I think Franco was cinema's most powerful and open occultist and warlock (or "wizard" if the term is too dark for you). Franco even claimed he was the inspiration for Yoda. Its a claim you want to believe isn't a lie. But what is the truth? Clearly he knew these groups secrets even if he never joined them.
Aesthetically his films are flawless for my enjoyment as a film-lover. But are his films moral? Certainly they are too scary, complex, offensive and demoralized for some. But does that make them less true? Does it make them "evil"? Art is probably evil in the eyes of Christians. But its not evil in the eyes of Christ. This was Jesus' point all along.
Franco depicts himself as a boogeyman to scare the ignorant and intrigue those who are teachable. And he makes no special boasts or pursuit of fame. The man practice the same humble social servitude promoted in Rudyard Kipling's poem If, the Masonic writer's ode to Freemason code.
It seems the aim of anti-Christian directors and artists (Masonic or anti-Masonic) is neither to create or be The AntiChrist but to eliminate need for Anti or Christ. To honor an open dialectic with truth and discovery not fixed in the static disintegration of dogma. Of course they are called Devils, so they must exist as private citizens. And if one falls and commits crime or dishonorable acts, they must face the same penalties as all men and women. Period. In a way, all directors are like a watchful society of enlightened artistic heroes and potential villains.
I'm not saying Jess Franco is a bad guy or a good guy. He's certainly a good artist. To my knowledge, he never did anything as wretched as Polanski or Woody Allen. After selling out his craft like a Jodorowsky, Lynch, Wells or Kubrick, he refused to stay down and became MORE prolific. He never lost sight of a positive moral message of secrecy while admitting its dangers, demons and disasters. He brought a message of magical thinking that shouldn't be bound by any one God. This is radical and blasphemous to most. But one must ask was he right or wrong? This is another Christian parallel Franco sets up in his career's narrative. It is his meta-trope.
He studied and challenged every ideology he could simply to raise questions about the human condition and any metaphysical realm of judgement beyond it. Like Lynch, he is obsessed with balancing the warring opinions on the very substance and texture of shared realism. He knows he can only express his worldview in a projection of theatrical dreams. His canvas is illuminated thought in the dark. How many learned spiritualism in film from Franco. Of course Franco followed many others with bigger names, but Jess was a gateway inside cheap populist mass media in a young technological age of movie-searching. It's such a Romantic notion of posthumous fame for a cinemist. He became the idealism of purity to the purely idealistic film fan. It's an important distinction from the other classes of notable filmmakers.
I find more and more to analyze in the deep texts of his small, quiet examples of film poetry. This is my favorite director, love him or hate me. He is simply the most advanced thinker for any class of directors. But now he is gone. And someone must try to fill his shadow.
We live in a world of conspiracies and conspiracy theories; a "post truth" world full of illusions. Our mass media entertainment has become what Baudrillard called simulacra: copies of copies of copies which have lost resemblance to their origin. The Real is now so divorced from truth and swamped in daily rumors and corporatized presentations of reality that we've collectively (and conveniently) forgotten the most prevalent, scary and corroborated theories of conspiracy to Man.
We are distracted by trivial political affiliations as to forget the real villains. Liberals blame greedy republican business men. Conservatives blame Satanic government monopolists. Neither come together to face either of these theoretical menaces or try to piece together a coherent shared idea of the mutual enemy. So before constructing a meta-narrative, lets look at the damning evidence. Films can be the most obvious mirror to our demons.
Before there was "populist paranoia" about secret society agendas, there were historical documents in cinema of our nightmare horrors.
Study the work of Orson Welles, Jess Franco, Stanley Kubrick, D.W. Griffith, David Lynch, Zack Snyder, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and many more to find these portrayals of Masonic and Anti-Masonic propagandas. And how many of our narratives are true and how many are false? Is it a perfect balance or a terrible imbalance or an inspiring and beautiful surplus of justice and global victory? The last millennium and centuries were a long-fought battle against fascism, slavery, abuse, pedophilia, rape, evil, crime and moral savagery. Its defined us to this point and created mental illness and spiritual starvation.
ARTISTS ARE OUR WITCHDOCTORS
Freemasons, Illuminists, Satanists, Deists, Romans, Christians, Buddhists, Atheists and a billion other ideologists have expounded their views to create a diverse and chaotic disorder that must find its new order not in forced mastery but a natural discovery of its evolution. What is our future? We all choose. No group of "elite" should decide for us. Democratic socialism with no national, ethnic, social or even political biases should silence the individual voice.
What we see happening in this so-called postmodern "New World Order" so far is a corporatist dogfight for media control and social engineering. We are brainwashed, not talked to. There is no discourse when our banks run our lives. They make money on our money and even more on our poverty. There's too much money for any of it to have value anymore. And its tainted with the sins of so many capitalist exploitations of business. There is no free market because free markets don't work in systems with geographic inequality. This creates the problem of colonial attempts of "Enlightenment". We end up with Manifest Destiny religious communes run by warlords who rape the planet and its people. This is McDemocracy.
Now we need a world that actually works; Not as Disneyland but as a secure and honest voice of objective reason for subjective voices. We can't silence naysayers and dreamers for pushing the status quo. Nor can we war with suppressed and oppressed voices. We need structure for a post-Structuralist world that is wounded but unable to spiritually lick its social wounds. But we must protect the socially weak from spiritual predators. The world is full of metaphysical vampires who don't need physical strength. They feast on the fear and insecurity of the strong. The illuminated thinkers serve independently as superheroes who don't need a thanks but should receive deserved and earned penance in some way. Not money or extra freedoms. The will should not be allowed to rule in anarchy. We need laws, check and balances.
This should be the mission of all men, women and children without any sanction or guidance from any "ascended" order but by mandatory membership in a society. Society comes before class, race, government system, economics or what have you. And no mind lays claim over it for any reason. Not IQ, social status, bloodline, privilege or secret weapon. The rich are not allowed to have more value than the poor. The state is not allowed to have more power than the world government. The psychopaths and actors can't get away with fooling and victimizing the innocent and meek. Justice must be served. And Karma does not decide who wins and loses. It takes the shared wisdom, the altar of knowledge to find any semblance of what is true. And that starts with having every voice be heard and every case be measured fairly. The court of morality exists outside of Masonic parliament and Builderberg meetings or choreographed press.
What is the aim of filmmaking? What is its philosophical tenants? What function does it serve beyond crass enjoyment of spiritualist materialism? Filmmaking tells us who we are at any given moment. Cinema is a pinpoint of nature's physics and stitch in the time stream. We've soared high and fallen low before, all of us. Now to fly again.
The true artists are the independent artists. The best directors are the ones who don't slave or master their craft. They simply coexist peacefully. How? By dramatizing conflict as The Big Other. This can become real world mass hystics and delusional matrixes if we don't ground it in fiction. Small opinions based in big facts, (rather than huge opinions over mass-produced facsimiles called "facts"). Knowledge must be reevaluated like the sciences, laws and metrics within it. As our minds grow, so will our shared perception. For all and not just for some. Everyone is an equal participant and producer of positive abundance. There will always be negativity created by man and by nature and by the cosmos itself, but thats not a deterrent against life. Its what composes the passionate defense of living. This is man's eternal destiny. And whether we come from a God, communicate with a God, dream a God or convene as a God (or many Gods), we are all still free to live so long as we protect the lives of everyone else by not impinging or impending on rights. We all have basic human rights that can't be removed. This is the way not of one nation but of the galactic whole.
We must celebrate our universe by exploring, understanding and respecting it by not filling it with too much trash. What do I mean? The surplus of carbon emissions from industry, toxic pollution, farming deregulations and anything making our ozone hard to breathe. How to fight it? Producing good vibrations. Its as simple as that. Be loved. Be honest. Be inspiring. Be real. Be in the know. Be in the Now. Be You. Be a work of Art.
We are distracted by trivial political affiliations as to forget the real villains. Liberals blame greedy republican business men. Conservatives blame Satanic government monopolists. Neither come together to face either of these theoretical menaces or try to piece together a coherent shared idea of the mutual enemy. So before constructing a meta-narrative, lets look at the damning evidence. Films can be the most obvious mirror to our demons.
Before there was "populist paranoia" about secret society agendas, there were historical documents in cinema of our nightmare horrors.
Study the work of Orson Welles, Jess Franco, Stanley Kubrick, D.W. Griffith, David Lynch, Zack Snyder, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and many more to find these portrayals of Masonic and Anti-Masonic propagandas. And how many of our narratives are true and how many are false? Is it a perfect balance or a terrible imbalance or an inspiring and beautiful surplus of justice and global victory? The last millennium and centuries were a long-fought battle against fascism, slavery, abuse, pedophilia, rape, evil, crime and moral savagery. Its defined us to this point and created mental illness and spiritual starvation.
ARTISTS ARE OUR WITCHDOCTORS
Freemasons, Illuminists, Satanists, Deists, Romans, Christians, Buddhists, Atheists and a billion other ideologists have expounded their views to create a diverse and chaotic disorder that must find its new order not in forced mastery but a natural discovery of its evolution. What is our future? We all choose. No group of "elite" should decide for us. Democratic socialism with no national, ethnic, social or even political biases should silence the individual voice.
What we see happening in this so-called postmodern "New World Order" so far is a corporatist dogfight for media control and social engineering. We are brainwashed, not talked to. There is no discourse when our banks run our lives. They make money on our money and even more on our poverty. There's too much money for any of it to have value anymore. And its tainted with the sins of so many capitalist exploitations of business. There is no free market because free markets don't work in systems with geographic inequality. This creates the problem of colonial attempts of "Enlightenment". We end up with Manifest Destiny religious communes run by warlords who rape the planet and its people. This is McDemocracy.
Now we need a world that actually works; Not as Disneyland but as a secure and honest voice of objective reason for subjective voices. We can't silence naysayers and dreamers for pushing the status quo. Nor can we war with suppressed and oppressed voices. We need structure for a post-Structuralist world that is wounded but unable to spiritually lick its social wounds. But we must protect the socially weak from spiritual predators. The world is full of metaphysical vampires who don't need physical strength. They feast on the fear and insecurity of the strong. The illuminated thinkers serve independently as superheroes who don't need a thanks but should receive deserved and earned penance in some way. Not money or extra freedoms. The will should not be allowed to rule in anarchy. We need laws, check and balances.
This should be the mission of all men, women and children without any sanction or guidance from any "ascended" order but by mandatory membership in a society. Society comes before class, race, government system, economics or what have you. And no mind lays claim over it for any reason. Not IQ, social status, bloodline, privilege or secret weapon. The rich are not allowed to have more value than the poor. The state is not allowed to have more power than the world government. The psychopaths and actors can't get away with fooling and victimizing the innocent and meek. Justice must be served. And Karma does not decide who wins and loses. It takes the shared wisdom, the altar of knowledge to find any semblance of what is true. And that starts with having every voice be heard and every case be measured fairly. The court of morality exists outside of Masonic parliament and Builderberg meetings or choreographed press.
What is the aim of filmmaking? What is its philosophical tenants? What function does it serve beyond crass enjoyment of spiritualist materialism? Filmmaking tells us who we are at any given moment. Cinema is a pinpoint of nature's physics and stitch in the time stream. We've soared high and fallen low before, all of us. Now to fly again.
The true artists are the independent artists. The best directors are the ones who don't slave or master their craft. They simply coexist peacefully. How? By dramatizing conflict as The Big Other. This can become real world mass hystics and delusional matrixes if we don't ground it in fiction. Small opinions based in big facts, (rather than huge opinions over mass-produced facsimiles called "facts"). Knowledge must be reevaluated like the sciences, laws and metrics within it. As our minds grow, so will our shared perception. For all and not just for some. Everyone is an equal participant and producer of positive abundance. There will always be negativity created by man and by nature and by the cosmos itself, but thats not a deterrent against life. Its what composes the passionate defense of living. This is man's eternal destiny. And whether we come from a God, communicate with a God, dream a God or convene as a God (or many Gods), we are all still free to live so long as we protect the lives of everyone else by not impinging or impending on rights. We all have basic human rights that can't be removed. This is the way not of one nation but of the galactic whole.
We must celebrate our universe by exploring, understanding and respecting it by not filling it with too much trash. What do I mean? The surplus of carbon emissions from industry, toxic pollution, farming deregulations and anything making our ozone hard to breathe. How to fight it? Producing good vibrations. Its as simple as that. Be loved. Be honest. Be inspiring. Be real. Be in the know. Be in the Now. Be You. Be a work of Art.
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
Case for Zack Snyder
I watched half of Batman v Superman (the 3 hour director's cut) because I can't remember if Zack Snyder is a good director or not. He's a very wise stylist. One of the most visual directors, but the morals are weak. There isn't much method to his aesthetic and he hasn't grown all that much as a storyteller. He reminds me of Jess Franco if Franco sold out and became a millionaire marketing puppet and rightwing government propagandist.
I've found a few decent articles arguing that Snyder is a pro-fascist director. I think its quite the opposite. By applying a "Triumph of the Will"/"Fountainhead"/"Birth of a Nation" lens of disturbing nostalgic Americana, he calls attention to the problematic elements in his subjects, much like Franco used the fascism of Spain as villainy in his own films. The stilted melodramatic dialogue, unrealistic abstracted action and torturous tone of tragedy are intentional and meaningful. Snyder's films have been called "rightwing" merely for playing and analysing imagery and ideology and showing sympathy for modern working class paranoia in the post-9/11 West. His version of Watchmen and Dawn of the Dead exploit racism, Nazism, fascism sexism, etc. But he never condones it. Its exploitation for subversive and transgressive motives. His films are pro-America but not nationalist, white culturally but not white supremacist. He takes a very balanced, neutral, communist stance on nearly every level.
Now I know these Snyder attacks are totally Disney/Marvel propagandists who call themselves fans, so Snyder's work represents a mirror of our recent resistance to corporatist, colluding conspiracy for capitalist gain. "Batman is a vigilante, Superman is a messiah". Totally. This was set in stone before Snyder was even born. And correctly, Snyder honors the tradition of their origins by keeping them old school liberal champions who are pro-state but not of the state. Superman as a journalist seeks truth, justice, blah-de-blah. He lives a modest middle class life and polices THE WORLD equally. But Snyder recognizes the fascism and elitism inherent in Superman's totalitarian-level power. He even shows us Superman as the ultimate threat, a God-like ruler executing humanity's last hope, represented in Batman. Batman comes off like an obsessed, terrified, scarred, alienated sadist. Thats what the character would be in reality. But his hardcore moralism to use his bourgeois status to protect both classes makes him a powerful ally to Superman... and also a threat. Batman, working in his own jurisdiction, has too much power and not enough socialism. Batman is shown killing in dubious moments, falling victim to a crazy Lex Luthor-created conspiracy theory to kill Superman and basically coming up short in his quest to do what's right. Snyder clearly favors the working class alien pacifist Superman over the violent macho anarchist-capitalist extremism in Batman. Snyder is firmly a liberal director and spreading as liberal a message as you will find within mainstream Hollywood "high concept" franchise pictures.
So why was the media so against him? Why are fanboys and fangirls so anti-Snyder and pro-Marvel? I don't think they are. Since BVS, DC's comics have soared and fans have a newfound serious respect for the characters as mythic icons and political archetypes. The failure of BVS's sequel Justice League can't be a determiner of anything as it suffered from both a terrible distribution deal (certainly rigged by Marvel) and then forcing their spy Joss Whedon to replace Snyder as director. Its a blatant infowar. Disney is pushing a neo-conservative/neo-liberal corporate takeover of Hollywood and news media. Time-Warner is targeted heavily in this push towards the extinction of freedom of speech.
Warners knows why JL sucked and so does DC: because Snyder is being silenced by the Elite. Snyder seems canned from the DC franchise. Maybe not a bad thing. It was probably too conservative and not populist enough to really maximize his influence positively. I mean, half of previous Batman and Superman films were pretty lame. But he needed to make a strong run with these successful canons to cement a place in film history.
Zack Snyder is not at a level where I would call him one of the greatest directors ever, but he's certainly among the strongest of the last generation. As the most anti-Oscar and most "for the people", he can never earn the respect of elitist critics, fans and industry insiders. But no one can dispute the incendiary recognition or passionate debate over his name. And that is way more important to an individual film-goer than, I dunno, an IMDB rating (bleck!)
I've found a few decent articles arguing that Snyder is a pro-fascist director. I think its quite the opposite. By applying a "Triumph of the Will"/"Fountainhead"/"Birth of a Nation" lens of disturbing nostalgic Americana, he calls attention to the problematic elements in his subjects, much like Franco used the fascism of Spain as villainy in his own films. The stilted melodramatic dialogue, unrealistic abstracted action and torturous tone of tragedy are intentional and meaningful. Snyder's films have been called "rightwing" merely for playing and analysing imagery and ideology and showing sympathy for modern working class paranoia in the post-9/11 West. His version of Watchmen and Dawn of the Dead exploit racism, Nazism, fascism sexism, etc. But he never condones it. Its exploitation for subversive and transgressive motives. His films are pro-America but not nationalist, white culturally but not white supremacist. He takes a very balanced, neutral, communist stance on nearly every level.
Now I know these Snyder attacks are totally Disney/Marvel propagandists who call themselves fans, so Snyder's work represents a mirror of our recent resistance to corporatist, colluding conspiracy for capitalist gain. "Batman is a vigilante, Superman is a messiah". Totally. This was set in stone before Snyder was even born. And correctly, Snyder honors the tradition of their origins by keeping them old school liberal champions who are pro-state but not of the state. Superman as a journalist seeks truth, justice, blah-de-blah. He lives a modest middle class life and polices THE WORLD equally. But Snyder recognizes the fascism and elitism inherent in Superman's totalitarian-level power. He even shows us Superman as the ultimate threat, a God-like ruler executing humanity's last hope, represented in Batman. Batman comes off like an obsessed, terrified, scarred, alienated sadist. Thats what the character would be in reality. But his hardcore moralism to use his bourgeois status to protect both classes makes him a powerful ally to Superman... and also a threat. Batman, working in his own jurisdiction, has too much power and not enough socialism. Batman is shown killing in dubious moments, falling victim to a crazy Lex Luthor-created conspiracy theory to kill Superman and basically coming up short in his quest to do what's right. Snyder clearly favors the working class alien pacifist Superman over the violent macho anarchist-capitalist extremism in Batman. Snyder is firmly a liberal director and spreading as liberal a message as you will find within mainstream Hollywood "high concept" franchise pictures.
So why was the media so against him? Why are fanboys and fangirls so anti-Snyder and pro-Marvel? I don't think they are. Since BVS, DC's comics have soared and fans have a newfound serious respect for the characters as mythic icons and political archetypes. The failure of BVS's sequel Justice League can't be a determiner of anything as it suffered from both a terrible distribution deal (certainly rigged by Marvel) and then forcing their spy Joss Whedon to replace Snyder as director. Its a blatant infowar. Disney is pushing a neo-conservative/neo-liberal corporate takeover of Hollywood and news media. Time-Warner is targeted heavily in this push towards the extinction of freedom of speech.
Warners knows why JL sucked and so does DC: because Snyder is being silenced by the Elite. Snyder seems canned from the DC franchise. Maybe not a bad thing. It was probably too conservative and not populist enough to really maximize his influence positively. I mean, half of previous Batman and Superman films were pretty lame. But he needed to make a strong run with these successful canons to cement a place in film history.
Zack Snyder is not at a level where I would call him one of the greatest directors ever, but he's certainly among the strongest of the last generation. As the most anti-Oscar and most "for the people", he can never earn the respect of elitist critics, fans and industry insiders. But no one can dispute the incendiary recognition or passionate debate over his name. And that is way more important to an individual film-goer than, I dunno, an IMDB rating (bleck!)
Friday, March 2, 2018
Black Moon 1975 / The Strange Case if Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne 1981 / Messiah of Evil 1973 / Bloodsucking Freaks 1976 / The Devils 1971
"Black Moon" is a Dadaist dream about a young girl who is fleeing a war between men & women. She seeks solace in a dreary country farm occupied by an old woman who knows everything about her and an incestuous mute brother & sister. The film is full of abstract episodes that are probably clever statements on female sexual maturity a'la Alice in Wonderland, but I didn't recognize them. Overall, the experience is rather grating. Its studiously composed but the film feels pretentious with its abundance of cruelty to animal actors, boring metaphors and faux-educational exploitation of its extremely young actress' sexuality. Its worth a watch because it is so unique and its frequently entertaining, but its no lost gem. My impression of director Louis Malle is a wannabe Godard/Bunuel without much originality or talent.
Walerian Borowczyk is much more impressive with his loose adaptation of a classic horror novel. He brings so much voyeuristic intensity and expressive technique to what has to be a minuscule period piece production. The film is a rare accomplishment in balancing erotic and horror tension so well. This is truly one of the most sensual and glossy films of its period (or any period) but it has a grisly urgency. It walks that fine line between art and exploitation beautifully. Seek this movie out.
Messiah of Evil is a film by the couple who wrote Temple of Doom & Howard the Duck for George Lucas. Its a post-hippie horror "feature" about a young woman in a spooky seaside town of zombies. Its freakishly similar to Franco's Virgin Among the Living Dead but they were released the same year (but, Virgin was shot in '71). Its a decent snapshot of a time and generation but its not effective on scares or mood beyond some stylish lighting and minimalist staging. It feels like an arty cash-in on drive-in films without any respect for its audience. Its determined to show off its own intelligence, but there isn't much. To its credit, the film features production design by Jack Fisk, husband of Sissy Spacek and lifelong friend of David Lynch. There is actually a HUGE impression of Twin Peaks in the setting of this story, so its memorable and important for that.
Bloodsucking Freaks could be the best film Troma ever released, alongside The Toxic Avenger and maybe The Last Horror Film. Like those movies, it is a lurid portrait of NY independent filmmaking from a bygone era of sleaze, art and political dissidence. This is the most extreme of its kind, a satire about white slavery full of cannibalism, torture, murder and brainwashing. A decade ago, this film made me queasy to watch. Now I appreciate the immense intelligence and bravery in pulling off such a disturbing but complex little exploitation. A film like this is looking to make a statement more than a profit.
I finally watched Ken Russell's The Devils. Besides maybe a snippet of Tommy, this is my first film by popular British cult director. Wow. What a brilliant technical director and stylist he is. His camera is so alive and magnetized by every action on the screen. There isn't one lazy performance or dull scene or false moment in this classic story of religious persecution and moral corruption. The story itself is a great and bold attack on Catholicism, but it avoids tempting melodrama or bland tragedy by setting us up with so many laughs and spectacles. Russell's film has a broad irony that had to be a game-changer then. He really reflects the Mod sensibility of his generation and marries it with the most classic but unsuspecting narrative tropes. And its more than just a bunch of clever tricks. It moves you and haunts you.
Walerian Borowczyk is much more impressive with his loose adaptation of a classic horror novel. He brings so much voyeuristic intensity and expressive technique to what has to be a minuscule period piece production. The film is a rare accomplishment in balancing erotic and horror tension so well. This is truly one of the most sensual and glossy films of its period (or any period) but it has a grisly urgency. It walks that fine line between art and exploitation beautifully. Seek this movie out.
Messiah of Evil is a film by the couple who wrote Temple of Doom & Howard the Duck for George Lucas. Its a post-hippie horror "feature" about a young woman in a spooky seaside town of zombies. Its freakishly similar to Franco's Virgin Among the Living Dead but they were released the same year (but, Virgin was shot in '71). Its a decent snapshot of a time and generation but its not effective on scares or mood beyond some stylish lighting and minimalist staging. It feels like an arty cash-in on drive-in films without any respect for its audience. Its determined to show off its own intelligence, but there isn't much. To its credit, the film features production design by Jack Fisk, husband of Sissy Spacek and lifelong friend of David Lynch. There is actually a HUGE impression of Twin Peaks in the setting of this story, so its memorable and important for that.
Bloodsucking Freaks could be the best film Troma ever released, alongside The Toxic Avenger and maybe The Last Horror Film. Like those movies, it is a lurid portrait of NY independent filmmaking from a bygone era of sleaze, art and political dissidence. This is the most extreme of its kind, a satire about white slavery full of cannibalism, torture, murder and brainwashing. A decade ago, this film made me queasy to watch. Now I appreciate the immense intelligence and bravery in pulling off such a disturbing but complex little exploitation. A film like this is looking to make a statement more than a profit.
I finally watched Ken Russell's The Devils. Besides maybe a snippet of Tommy, this is my first film by popular British cult director. Wow. What a brilliant technical director and stylist he is. His camera is so alive and magnetized by every action on the screen. There isn't one lazy performance or dull scene or false moment in this classic story of religious persecution and moral corruption. The story itself is a great and bold attack on Catholicism, but it avoids tempting melodrama or bland tragedy by setting us up with so many laughs and spectacles. Russell's film has a broad irony that had to be a game-changer then. He really reflects the Mod sensibility of his generation and marries it with the most classic but unsuspecting narrative tropes. And its more than just a bunch of clever tricks. It moves you and haunts you.
Friday, February 23, 2018
Racial recasting is rarely interesting but it could be used to make important statements. Black Panther is basically African Bruce Wayne and that highlights some issues with black hero worship in the West. Shouldn't racial recasting have some purpose bigger than meeting "diversity demographics"? How about ironic racial casting to actually disassemble racism? Could America swallow a black Donald Trump? Doubtful. Thats a movie idea right there.
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