Ah, Joys of Studying…

Giving myself the night off.

Actual partying being out of the question, we ran to Tsutaya to rent a DVD…

Probably one of my favorite of all times as it stands (and to all the ladies out there: if you think Brad Pitt can hold a candle to Marcello Mastroianni, you’ve got no taste).

Qualche volta, la notte, quest’oscurità, questo silenzio, mi pesano.
Sometimes at night the darkness and silence weighs upon me…

E’ la pace che mi fa paura. Temo la pace più di ogni altra cosa:
Peace frightens me; perhaps I fear it most of all.

mi sembra che sia soltanto un’apparenza , e nasconda l’inferno.
I feel it is only a façade hiding the face of hell.

Pensa a cosa vedranno i miei figli domani…
I think, ‘What is in store for my children tomorrow?’

Il mondo sarà meraviglioso, dicono. Ma da che punto di vista, se basta uno squillo di telefono ad annunciare la fine di tutto?
‘The world will be wonderful’, they say. But from whose viewpoint? if one phone call could announce the end of everything?

Bisogna di vivere fuore dalle passione e altri sentimenti nell’armonia che c’è nell’opera d’arte reuscita, in quell’ordino incantato.
We need to live in a state of suspended animation like a work of art, in a state of enchantment.

Vodremmo reuscire al amarci tanto, da vivere fuore del tempo, distacati…
We have to succeed in loving so greatly that we live outside of time, detached…

distacati.
detached.

Steiner to Marcello in La Dolve Vita

Bashing crappy movies, while providing a delightfully entertainming substitute at the same time, is an art that the Filthy Critic has mastered to a point rarely seen before:

That The Day After Tomorrow even has a plot is an obligatory nod to what director/writer Roland Emmerich must feel is a quaint old tradition of story-telling in movies.

[...]

The movie also wants us to despise Dick Cheney. I hate Dick Cheney; I bet his wife and his dog hate him but stick around because he’s got a fucking awesome bomb shelter. But a true and worthwhile hatred has to be rooted in facts and reality. That’s how I establish my hatred for almost everything. If you have to lie to make people hate the same things you do, you’re either an asshole or too fucking lazy to collect the facts you need. This movie’s too lazy.

The Filthy Critic’s take on Day After Tomorrow

In order to keep up with this world’s latest trends, and think global while acting local and eating very local (gyosa with natto and pasta at lunch, to be exact), I regularly go on an extensive browsing and skimming of that mythical “blogosphere” I’ve been reading about in hip media (the same that used to tell me how balls.com was gonna “revolutionize the way I was buying balls online” etc). From my entirely unscientific study sample, it seems one of the latest question on every bloger’s mind is whether Sofia Coppola’s last movie is very racist, kind of racist or not so racist. Even our dear froggy blogers seem to take a keen interest in this burning issue.

The movie, according to its detractors, greatly harms the US Asian population by perpetuating negative stereotypes about Japanese people…

Indeed, as most pointed out, and from what I remember, it does feature:

1. Overly polite Japanese business people who bow every 30 seconds
2. Wacky TV show hosts that go out of their way looking utterly ridiculous, shooting for the lowest common denominator’s type of humor, while more or less humiliating their guests all along.
3. Japanese people unable to tell apart L’s and R’s for the life of them, making way for all kind of crazy misunderstanding and wacky situations.
4. Fading american actors paid a hefty sum to advertise the merits of Suntory Whisky to the japanese masses…
5. Horny young chaps who like to get “private dance lessons” from pretty long-legged ladies…
6. Same young chaps, always ready to massacre a drunk rendition of old american classics at 3am in one of the countless karaoke bars cluttering the city…

And probably countless other examples…

Now, are there any truth in these stereotypical scenes and descriptions?

Hell yea!

I seriously suspect that some of the people throwing rather bold accusations of racism (explicit or “submerged”, as some contend) against Sofia Coppola do not have a fraction of her knowledge of Japan. Actually, it is pretty safe to assume they have close to no first-hand knowledge of contemporary Japanese culture. Otherwise, they might have realized how, in a lot of aspects, the “stereotypes” they loudly decry in the movie are, in fact, very much actual - watered-down - traits of Japanese culture…

Let’s take a quick look at the aforementioned points, shall we:

1) Overzealous politeness and incessant bowing is not a myth: ask anybody who’s ever had a business relationship with a typical Japanese company. Not that this is actually something the movie or I would think about criticizing. It is simply a part of Japanese life and common business practice as much as shaking hands is in a western country.

2) Preposterous TV shows featuring excruciatingly annoying hosts: I mean, come on, have you watched any Japanese TV lately??? In comparison, the slightly doppy host in LiT is a model of professionalism.
Update: Actually, my bad. The show host featured in LiT is a real Japanese TV show host (can you tell I never watch TV). I saw a few bits of his show, and can tell you he really toned it down for the movie.

3) One word: Engrish

4) Foreign celebrities and “japandering“: would you be surprised to learn that Bill Murray’s commercial for some local whisky brand is for real - only with a different actor…

5) Regarding “Private Dance Lessons”: if my stint as a bartender/waiter in one of Tokyo’s “most refined gentleman’s club” is any indicator, Japanese youths are indeed very keen on taking the ladies to the champagne room… Yes, Japanese men sometimes are total hornballs who go to sleazy places and pay to see naked girls (or guys). just as much as every other men from about every country on that freaking planet: get over it!

6) Karaoke: Did I mention that before working in a strip club, I did work in a small neighbourhood bar nearby azabu-juban? did I mention that said bar was equipped with the latest in terms of Karaoke technology for the enjoyment of drunk salarymen and tipsy O.L.?

I will merely point you to my current state of mental imbalance and overall borderline psychopathic behaviour, as well as my irresistible urge to stump repeatedly on any microphone-shaped object whenever I hear the word “my” and “way” in the same sentence nowadays… Let’s just say it was a deeply psychologically scarring experience.

So a vast majority of these so-called “stereotypes” about Japanese are irremediably and undeniably true…

Does that make the movie an objective, unbiased look at Japanese culture? Of course not! It is not a freakin’ documentary, it is a movie aimed precisely at showing how people have difficulties understanding foreign cultures and can feel somehow alienated by these differences…

The movie does not claim Bob and Charlotte’s attitude toward their Japanese counterparts to be exemplary behaviour, but since when do movie heroes have to be flawless embodiment of humanistic qualities?

The movie does not imply that the quirky and strange facets of Japanese civilization do not exist elsewhere, otherwise why would Bill Murray’s character feel so alienated by his own all-american Martha Stewartish wife as well?

All of the above points can be successfully matched with equal quirkiness or sheer imbecility by about any culture on Earth: Japanese TV only seem really stupid until your remember Jerry Springer and what passes for TV in the US. I’ll take twenty japanese polite bows any day over your average American sales consultant’s colgate smile and pushy demeanour. And need I say that the occasional melting of English consonants by Japanese locals speaking an otherwise decent English is nowhere near as hilarious as what you get when hapless gaijins take a shot at speaking basic Japanese (and that is, assuming we overlook the fact that most americans have trouble mastering their own language, let alone bothering to learn any foreign language)…

Of course Lost of Translation is packed with clichés a dozen, but if this is a punishable offense, I think it’s time to fold the whole Hollywood industry and call it a day, ’cause the competition is rather fierce in this domain…

I will finish by saying I might give more credits to some of the valid arguments fueling that controversy, if not for the fact that the official boycott site:

1. complains in the name of “Asian Americans and the stereotypes it is conveying about them“. If this is not racism, then I don’t know what is. Implying that a movie that talks about people living in a certain country (Japan) could be applied to people living in another country (US), not even because they are of Japanese descent, but because they are somewhat of the same skin color! Tell me who’s using racial stereotypes here?
   I don’t see how cultural traits of people living in Tokyo are supposed to reflect poorly on American citizen, who just happen to have parents born somewhere in Asia…

2. gives the grossly inaccurate, ridiculously one-sided, historically incompetent Last Samurai as an example of “positive, unbiased” take on Japanese culture. no comment

Frankly, I’m the first one to be appalled at Hollywood’s “lack of cultural sensitivity” (major understatement) and its overall cultural imperialism. But picking on Lost in Translation on that ground is seriously looking in the wrong direction, when it’s so obvious Sofia Coppola has a lot of affection for Japan and Japanese people, and shows it in her movie.

This kind of PCness bigotry only serves to weaken an otherwise very respectable cause.

In our pre-apocalyptic days of fear and anarchy, where every pimply teenager equipped with $300 of CompUSA hardware and a broadband connection can contribute to sap the very foundations of our cherished capitalistic society, different people have different ways of fighting “intellectual property theft”.

For the RIAA, which is obviously not reticent about jailing half the 12-29 population in the US and abroad, it has meant hiring a lot of lawyers and turning to court settlement fines instead of record sales, as a source for profit. So much so that they are now being sued under the RICO Act (originally tailored to fight more traditional forms of organized crime and racketeering, but still seems pretty fitting in this case).

The MPAA is slowly coming up to speed in terms of random scare tactics and other useless gesticulations, but in the meantime, they have settled on whining and moaning the usual corporate way, with a touching chorus on their huge profit loss. At this rate, they might even *gasp* have to stop shelling out millions of bucks to semi-articulate actors so they can show their familiar face, bleached teeth, cancerous tan, silicon implants and overall incapacity to convey the slightest human emotion with an ounce of conviction. Come to think of it, they might consider diverting an extra amount of that cash toward hiring real screenwriters to replace the brain hemorrhaging hollywood hacks who come up with such mind-blowing ideas as “Glitter, Maria Carey: the real Story” or “Bring it on: a no holds barred immersion into the fierce world of professional baton-twirling competition”… yea maybe they will (hope is cheaper than most food and you can live on it for a while)…

All in all, the way these people dealt with the unavoidable evolution of technology mostly revolved around raiding kids bedroom and showering Capitol Hill with lobbying money in order to get inept, unconstitutional, protectionist texts voted into laws.

And then, there’s French director Jan Kounen and actor Vincent Cassel, who, in order to thwart the intense trafficking likely to arise around their soon-to-open new movie, decided to release it themselves on P2P networks.

Well, not the real thing, of course: just a very convincing fake file. The actual movie titles would start rolling for a few minutes and suddenly cut into a recording of the two men, explaining with a good-natured smile to the pirate-that-be, how their movie would be much more enjoyable with the nice crispy photography and surround sound of a theater, instead of the usual crappy quality you get with internet telesync rips. The rest of the file cleverly consisting of looped promotional materials (”behind the scenes” footage etc).

How not to be seduced by this smart and funny way to fight for your bread and butter: rather than sue everything in sight, try to appeal to people’s intelligence and expose your case with rational arguments.

Well, this approach does postulate that your intended audience is not essentially composed of gregarious dim-witted simpletons, something that might be hard to establish with regards to your average Hollywood movie…

Every once in a while, especially when you do not watch that many movies and therefore carefully pick the ones you see, you need to go and see a truly horrendously bad movie. Just to remind you that there is such a thing as good and bad moviemaking. just to make sure you have not entirely lost your ability to tell a crappy movie when you see one.

Despite a widespread, though totally unfounded, belief, I am not an eternally unsatisfied cynical pain in the ass: at least not for movies.
I tend to look for redeeming qualities in every single one I watch and usually end up finding some. Lately, no movie was really not worth watching. At least that’s how it felt.

I mean, even Matrix Reloaded seemed to convey some sort of cinematographic interest and did not give me the feeling I had thrown away two (three?) hours of my precious and short existence to watch it… although it certainly did help that I saw it off a divx, on a friend’s home theater system, hence without shelling out any of my hard-earned money to help produce more bloated, self-indulgent, black-is-the-new-black, oh-look-yet-another-kung-fu-fight movies like that.
And by the way, the fact that a movie so blatantly tries to sell you the next sequel by letting its contrived plot lazily hanging by the balls at the end of what is already a blatantly artificially created sequel, just begs for widespread piracy over the internet. how can you so shamelessly display your will to squeeze every possible buck out of a movie franchise… and then be shocked when every good netizen puts to work their freshly learnt lesson in movie-capitalism by saving themselves the inflated multiplex ticket price and escaping release marketing schemes thanks to cut-throat internet competition.
Lazy franchises like the Matrix Reloaded deserve to be pirated.

Well, I guess I did not like the Matrix 2 that much after all…

But seriously, beside all the unavoidable hollywood bullshit factors, none of the movies I saw recently gave me an irrepressible urge to go back in time and warn myself against spoiling neurons which could have been used so much more wisely by dropping acid and sitting in front of my screensaver for hours.

I am not talking about the obviously bad stuff. The flicks where you just need to spot the mere presence of Martin Lawrence in the cast, some talentless pop-star’s real-life story in the plot or Jerry Bruckheimer in the credits… to know beforehand that you are dealing with movies so aggressively bad that no amount of mind altering substance or date’s groping in the dark can make them even remotely bearable.
See, using common sense and any internet movie database cross-referencing, it is pretty easy to spot the marks that a given movie is a sure shot for mtv’s funniest-dood-movie-of-the-year award.

But here, we are talking about the work of one of this decade’s best director, shooting a classic, popular - if not deeply intellectual - story and most likely endowed with an holywood budget proportional to the size of its main protagonist. Everyone was expecting something slightly out of the ordinary. And I guess nobody would have complained if Ang Lee had injected to the traditionally brain hemorrhaging blockbuster style some degree of wit and wisdom, as he has done so masterfully in the past.

Well, I am glad to announce it is still possible to find desperately bad movies with no attenuating circumstances or excuses.

I am also extremely thankful I did not spend any money on this one, as I would have been morally obligated to engage in a long and costly civil lawsuit against the studio, the actors and the director, seeking retribution for psychological damage and the excruciatingly painful state of bore where this movie has kept me for two hours.

Hulk, the movie, is one of the worst piece of cinematography I have ever seen.

I won’t comment on the CGI craft, or lack thereof, since I am clearly biased by my blind hatred toward most uses of cgi in recent films, where the semi-decent to nearly-believable quality of the effects seem good enough excuses for absence of proper acting, incoherent plot and epileptic editing. No need to restate that, in the end, intelligent use of technology and subtle blend of special effects made the Lord of The Rings infinitely more watchable than, say, Spiderman.

Hulk the movie is bad, not only because most aspects suck so openly, but also because you can tell where the director tried really hard and failed lamentably. Setting unreachable goals is not, in my book, any attenuating circumstance for not even managing to come within reach of them.

One example: it is not hard to see how Ang Lee, through different nifty cinematographic tricks, tried to literally render the world of comic books. All kind of split screens, simultaneous multiple angles, pop transition effects, not to mention a cartoony looking monster, make it all look like animated paper comic… or rather, it is supposed to… because even though the intent is clear, it is about as successful at it as the uber kitsch original batmanrobin show (you know, the one where you see big “POW!” and “TACK!” popping on screen each time they punch a villain)…

As for the actors and their characters: it is hard to discern if you are watching crappy acting, crappy dialogues or just both combined. Every actor seem to have mastered the art of uttering their line with complete absolute dullness, which after all, fits the quality of the dialogues.
The repressed military/distant father character plays so well distant repressed rage that you really need to listen carefully to his words to understand he is not placing a pizza order.
Every character is a one dimensional space filler constantly struggling to keep itself out of zero-dimensionality (and this is not exactly the kind of struggle that you get into)… The villains are so enticing and present in the plot that the lead evil character in the whole movie is basically a yapping mutant french poodle (I am not kidding).

As for the plot, I spent the first two thirds of the movie wondering why it took so long to start the story… and then realized that this was the story.
I don’t think I will be spoiling anything by telling you it’s about a doomed scientist who is, deep-down inside, a repressed monster waiting to get out, who finally get out, get captured, get out again, trashes stuff around and finally dies. Well, sort of dies, because in what seem like one of hollywood’s most audacious moment, somebody at the studio apparently think there was room for a sequel.

And considering that even The Fast and the Furious got their “sequel”, it is reasonable to fear this monstrosity might get one too. The mere thought of it sends shivers of fear and hate down my spine.

Anyway, did I tell you how bad I thought this movie was?

Since I was asked why, in my entry on Adam Gopnik’s review of the Matrix Reloaded, I pointed to some mistakes and inaccuracies regarding the Cathars, here is a bit of explanation.
(more…)

went on a tape rental frenzy with Hiromi yesterday late and watched movies until morning…
Among them, I got to see Cecil B. Demented that I had unfairly skipped in the theaters due to some rather unanimously disappointed critiques.
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A rather well written movie review by Adam Gopnik interestingly trying to enumerate the more or less plausible philosophical references alluded to by the Wachowski bros. in the two first volumes of their magnum opus.
Along with an entertaining and mostly negative critic of the sequel, is the attempt to go over the first episode once again and dig a much decomposed corpse from a grave where it is high time to let it rest: “Philosophy and the Matrix”. In one single column, Adam Gopnik manages to cram references to no less than: Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, French philosopher Jean Beaudrillard, the Cathar religion (with some glaring mistakes and inaccuracies, by the way), Plato, Daniel Dennett, Robert Nozick, Hilary Putnam and Princeton philosopher James Pryor, along with a host of other writers and the predictable -yawn- tribute to sci-fi grand pubah Philip K. Dick…

So, beside letting us know in lengths that he is a highly refined, well-read, educated man who knows his classics and beyond, Mr Gopnik nonetheless listed an interesting point made by James Pryor and worth rehashing a bit more:

[...] the Princeton philosopher James Pryor posed the question “What’s so bad about living in the Matrix?,” and, after sorting through some possible answers, he concluded that the real problem probably has to do with freedom, or the lack of it. “If your ambitions in the Matrix are relatively small-scale, like opening a restaurant or becoming a famous actor, then you may very well be able to achieve them,” Pryor says. “But if your ambitions are larger —e.g., introducing some long-term social change— then whatever progress you make toward that goal will be wiped out when the simulation gets reset”…

Quite a good point imho, “what is so bad about living in the Matrix?”, well, absolutely nothing in most cases. It is even a good deal if you praise the stability of the overall system and inner limitations put on any social interferences.

So, if you are quite satisfied with the system -and who isn’t?- who cares if it is not the original system designed for you. What difference does it make? The essential is that it works, and that it works for you in particular…
Opening that restaurant, becoming that famous actor or getting that job promotion… all these are more likely to happen soon in a well-ordered, Matrix-style system than in the chaos which could only replace it. Right?
Better yet, your dream to gather the entire collection of Matrix action figures or the ultimate website repository of matrix’ links: where do you think you stand better chance to achieve it? within the Matrix… Or outside in the wild ?
Of course, the system has its flaws, not everybody get his fair share of happiness and it even seems like only a handful of people do… but what if that’s the only way for you to get what you consider your well-deserved fair share of happiness?

By now I hope you understand that this is not only about the metaphoric Matrix concept such as exposed in the movie, it’s much more generally the idea of a “thought system”, more or less efficient, unconsciously adopted by the majority, thus redefining for the masses what is “real” and what is not… it can be religious, political or even much deeper down in the psyche of civilizations…

Anyway, just thought it was somewhat amusing that most fans of the movie and overall the type of people who kept nodding their head and mumbling “I knew it” while exiting the theater, when given the choice, would typically prefer to remain within “the matrix”…

Nobody waited for Warner Bros to devise ways of controlling people’s minds or to wonder about how much credit we can give to our senses…
Religious and political systems have been quite successful at the former, and still are nowadays, to the best of my knowledge. Like a perfectly designed Matrix, they usually ensure that you are assimilated or disposed of.
It is also essential that nobody sees what’s on the other side of the wall, look at the USSR or the USA of the 50’s ? How much accurate information did each one know of each other ? For either one, the other side was about as real as a propaganda cartoon on national TV… still is to this day, except the sphere of influence of one matrix has eventually overcome and practically erased the other.

As it has been pointed out way too many times already: yes, we live in the “Matrix”… but does anyone really want to get out of it?
I doubt it.

Ok, time to go to catch Fox news.