by Dean | Jul 21, 2011 | General
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The Japanese writer Shusaku Endo’s interest in the silence of God led him to provide his 1969 novel on the subject with the mere title, Silence.
The time is the 1600s. Two Catholic priests from Portugal sail to Japan to spiritually aid the Christians there and to find out why a fellow priest called Father Ferreira apparently apostatized. The shocking torture of Christians both Japanese and European has routinely occurred in Japan (at the hands of Japanese authorities) any time a believer has refused to trample on the engraved image of Jesus called the fumie. The novel’s hero, Father Rodrigues, is a godly man, but he is bothered by God’s silence in the face of the suffering he beholds–and he perforce confronts the possibility of becoming a “fallen priest” in such a treacherous land.
Is there a form of Christian “fallenness” that is justified, at least when faith remains in the heart?
Clumsy prose prevails in Silence (“Banging his head against the wall he kept murmuring monotonously: “It cannot be so . . .”), but the novel is sobering. I must ask, however: Are persecuted born-again Catholic priests really concerned about the silence–or “silence”– of God? Perhaps it depends on the nature of the persecution. Much of the novel’s meaning, in any case, is rather questionable. It is not as fine an accomplishment as the novels of Mauriac and Bernanos, who, like the late Endo, were devout Catholics. But it is assuredly religious and hardly uninteresting.
by Dean | Jul 19, 2011 | General
Cover of Clockstoppers
Clockstoppers (2002), directed by Jonathan Frakes, is about adolescents who are empowered by science for moving in hypertime, namely, so fast that everything around them appears as though it were in suspended animation. A stimulating pop piece for a while, the film delivers a narrative about domestic terrorists that is sheer rubbish. When we don’t see this narrative, we witness the film singing the praises of teen mischief (mischief in hypertime). Clockstoppers is worthless. The movie stars Jesse Bradford and Paula Garces, both undistinguished. Miss Garces often displays her navel and in one scene wears nothing but a towel but–sorry, Paramount Pictures–because she is just a kid there is no sexiness here.
by Dean | Jul 12, 2011 | General
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To me Fast Five (2011), the latest fast-and-furious item, is fairly enjoyable. But only fairly. Its best action sequence comes way too early; it’s superior to the final action sequence. It involves a train targeted by Dominic Toretto (a smug Vin Diesel) and several other criminals, and it’s explosive fun.
Nevertheless, why should the details of the movie’s plot be so crazily childish, as when Toretto’s relatives spring him from captivity by savagely wrecking a prison bus? Or when Toretto manages to free himself from chains while suspended from a ceiling? Or when a bikini-clad babe is able to get Mr. Gangster’s handprint on her clothes in order to–oh, never mind. It’s too silly to go into. The Westerns I read make a heckuva lot more sense than this thing.
Oh, well. I still had a good time at Fast Five. Director Justin Lin is talented at filming car chases, etc. FF‘s women are comely, and there are interesting shots of Rio, where the action takes place. Too bad the criminals and a couple of honorable police officers destroy the poor city.
by Dean | Jul 5, 2011 | General
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
I’m not buying the premise of The Lincoln Lawyer (2011), all about a rich boy who, for some reason, beats prostitutes to a pulp. It’s a ho-hum legal thriller.
Marisa Tomei, Josh Lucas, Frances Fisher, Bryan Cranston and even Matthew McConaughey should all be put to better histrionic use.
by Dean | Jun 20, 2011 | General
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The Barbarian Invasions (2003), by Denys Arcand, offers a few characters from Arcand’s 1987 film, The Decline of the American Empire. The ’03 product could almost suitably be called The Decline of the Canadian Nation, but first things first.
Remy (Remy Girard), a middle-aged history professor and staunch leftist, has long loved women and good wine but is now dying of an unspecified illness. His wife (Dorothea Berryman), who spurned Remy long ago for his philandering, is now at his side, and so is his estranged son Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau), a “capitalist” (says Remy) who assesses risk for a London investment bank. Realizing what lousy care his father is receiving from the state-supported Quebec hospital he is in, wealthy Sebastien resolves to better the ailing sensualist’s last days by purchasing favors and privileges. To begin with, he acquires for him a private hospital room and also contacts Remy’s old friends to request a courtesy visit. After heroin is recommended as a painkiller for Dad, Sebastien seeks to buy some, and his instrument for this is pretty Nathalie (Marie-Josee Croze), a junkie who is the daughter of one of Remy’s ex-mistresses. Nathalie, incidentally, falls in love with Sebastien even though the latter has a fiancee–Gaelle (Marina Hands).
One of the “barbarian invasions” of the film’s perfect title is indeed that of the inflow of illegal drugs–Canadian police can’t stop it–but we learn before long that it also refers to what al-Qaeda did on 9/11. Could it not be true as well that the sensualism of the sexual liberationist era is a barbarian invasion? Arcand, with his focus on Remy, prompts us to wonder. And where there is sexual liberation there is leftism–in a Western democracy, anyway. Invasions is one of the very few fiction films I know that distrusts, however quietly, liberal ideas and tendencies.
Canada’s socialized medicine comes in for a beating, and the warm attitude Remy once had toward Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution he now considers utter “cretinism.” Although the former prof can’t help seeing the non-intellectual Sebastien, who prefers video games to reading, as representing a kind of barbarian invasion, he himself abjectly fears he has lived a life without meaning, one of wasted effort. But does a liberal-minded, secular society, the film asks, produce wasted effort too?
Secular? Yes. A Catholic priest tells Gaelle there was a precise moment in 1966 that the people in his parish stopped attending church, never to return. Remy travels to Burlington, Vermont for medical tests and when a pert hospital employee welcomes him and Sebastien to the U.S.A., the twosome sarcastically reply, “Praise the Lord” and “Hallelujah.” What we have here are French Canadians mocking what they know to be a potent force in America–religion–when they must visit this particular country for superior medical service. Arcand is concentrating on the profound secularism so cherished by the Left and so incapable of arresting . . . the decline of the Canadian nation.
There is a problem with The Barbarian Invasions in that none of its people is a truly respectable or honorable human being, although Sebastien’s nascent love for his father is something to be esteemed. The film’s sophistication goes only so far, but at least it’s there. It’s an intelligent comedy-drama, remarkably successful at blending domestic content with social criticism. . . Arcand’s actors do everything right, with plenty of quiet power emanating from Rousseau and Croze. In fact, quiet power is all over this film.
The Barbarian Invasions is in French with English subtitles.
(Photo above of Marie-Josee Croze.)
by admin | Jun 20, 2011 | Sex
Yes folks, Rod Stewart had to have his stomach pumped back in the 70’s. The story is that he became very sick one night after doing a show in Los Angles.
They knew he had ingested some thing toxic and after a thorough stomach pumping that had removed a few quarts of semen.
It is assumed he had been involved in a huge circle jerk and they had placed him in the middle of the room.
But wait… What the heck is a circle jerk anyway?
by Dean | Jun 13, 2011 | General
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Yes, there is teenage heartache in the 2011 Prom, but there is hokum as well.
Nova (Aimee Teegarden) crushes on a boy who’s uninterested in her and, what’s more, faces the total destruction by fire of the prom decorations she and others have fashioned at her high school. After the school principal forces a bad-boy type to help Nova re-do the decorating, the girl gradually draws close to the lad, which doesn’t exactly win her father’s approbation. Meanwhile, other kids at the school try, and sometimes fail, to find dates for the prom, even as others are reaching for a relationship stability they know can be easily denied them.
Thank goodness this is one teen movie that doesn’t accuse kids who are popular of being snobbish or patronizing. (Nova is class president.) Even so, Katie Wech’s script steps into trite Fantasyland even as it attempts to create some serious drama. Why would Nova think Jesse Richter (Thomas McDonell), the “bad boy”, is right for her? Why does a girl called Simone so readily agree to go to the prom with a morally unworthy boy named Tyler? (Interesting: Tyler is the ONLY morally unworthy character in the film, and he’s African-American.) Simone, after all, is loved by polite, nice-looking Lucas, one of the teens who aches for the aforementioned relationship stability.
A Disney movie, the profanity-free, sex-free Prom fails to be as convincing and as fresh as it ought to be. Teegarden (of Friday Night Lights fame), McDonell, Nolan Sotillo and many others are only passable in their roles, but at least they’re that. Danielle Campbell (Simone) and Kylie Bunbury are less than passable; they’re simply dull, although Miss Campbell has the advantage of being glamorously beautiful.
I’m not trying to discourage anyone from seeing this film, but I do consider it a weakling.
by Dean | Jun 6, 2011 | General
Cover of Crazy Love
Crazy Love (2007) begins with the murky vision of an injured person, which vision, or eyesight, is meant to be that of Linda Riss. The man who did it to her was her former lover, Burt Pugach.
A plain-looking New York lawyer with money, raised by a barbaric mother, Pugach fell hard for the nigh beautiful Linda in the late 1950s and started dating her. But, unknown to Riss, the skinny chap was a married lover, and his wife refused to divorce him. Linda broke it off, by and by getting engaged to another man. Mad Burt, however, was obsessed with Linda; he couldn’t hack the idea of losing her. If he couldn’t have her, neither would any other man: He hired a thug to throw lye in her face, an act which disfigured and largely blinded the young brunette. Now deeming marriage impractical, Linda urged her fiance to renounce their engagement, which at last he did. Pugach, meanwhile, was arrested, tried and sent to prison. The media coverage was copious.
In prison Pugach wrote and wrote to Linda, declaring his love. She paid no attention, but Linda was in decline, suitor-less, still a virgin. Finally Burt was freed. Can you guess what happens next in Dan Klores’s riveting documentary? That’s right: Linda takes Pugach back and the twosome are married. They’ve been married ever since–usually happily–albeit not without Pugach’s opting to have an affair and Linda’s sad nagging. Crazy love. Crazy life. It is clear that Linda Riss is neither insane nor stupid. Call her weak if you want to. To my mind, she was reduced to marrying Pugach, for no one else wanted her. And she apparently sought financial security.
What a movie! What’s wrong with it, though, is that director Klores is not sufficiently vexed by a man’s throwing lye in a woman’s eyes, AFTER, in point of fact, the man refuses to tell the woman he has a wife and that therefore their liaison is adulterous. In other words, he takes domestic violence–and sheer evil–too lightly. It’s good that his film isn’t moralistic, but bad that it has no moral resonance. What about the Linda Risses of the world who could never bring themselves to marry their Pugaches? They wear the wounds of severe violence and must always be alone. They have truly been victimized.
by admin | Jun 2, 2011 | Culure
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I was told awhile back from some hipsters that the Scooby doo gang are actually pot smoking, poetry writing hippies. Is it true?
Oh sure we all have our own ideas about cartoon characters… I have heard it before.
Cartoon Controversy:
- Beavis and Butthead – Beavis is the smart one?
- Bugs Bunny – He’s transgender?
- Sponge Bob – He’s a gay man?
Oh I’m sure there’s more… I really need to research this stuff huh?
But what about the Scooby Doo ghost busting gang? Let me think about this a minute here…… ????
Hmmmm?
They drive around in the “mystery machine” seeing things. They got the munchies all the time. And they got a dog with the middle name “doobie”.
It’s all making sense now……..
Of course you know they do a great job for the community. Busting bad guys that are scaring off people so they can get away with their crimes. We need more kids like this huh?
It’s a good thing they are not drug testing them over at the ghost buster’s union… Sheese… I’d hope not…
Yo….Scooby and the Gang…. Smoke ’em if ya got em…….
by Dean | May 31, 2011 | General
Cover of Scream Trilogy - Boxed Set
Scream 4 (2011) has Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returning to the town of Woodsboro only to start witnessing, darn it, a new crop of brutal murders at the hands of “Ghost Face”. The story here is stupid and there is so much carnage it gets tedious, but that doesn’t mean Wes Craven’s film is a loser. To me, it’s gruesomely entertaining and intermittently clever, as witness the doings at the teenagers’ horror-movie marathon. And if you don’t like the offensive publicist played by Alison Brie, well, screenwriter Kevin Williamson has no sympathy for her, that’s for sure.
Scream 4 is a deliberately self-aware horror flick (as was the first Scream; I didn’t see the other two), but self-awareness and graphic violence is not a good combination. There’s a certain cheapness about it.
One review I read declares that Craven’s movie has something to say. I disagree. It has nothing to say. It’s just there to entertain. Indeed, I’m glad there is absolutely nothing political about it.
