A Few Movies I Done Saw

So, mostly, I just wanted to talk about a few movies I'd seen as of late in lieu of real substantial material, of which I've the substantialest of materials planned. But not yet. First...

Oh. And as always, when I talk about movies, I'll assume you've seen it, so there may be spoilers. Sounds like a personal problem.

Charlotte's Web – The live action one. First, let me state that I've never read the book. I've had it read to me, but probably not for 13 years or more. Every year, the teacher would cry when Charlotte died, which left me thinking, “didn't you see this one coming? I did.” I watched the cartoon like a fiend when I was a kid, but I've not been exposed to others in some time. Having said that, the live action one wasn't too bad. Really, my complaints with it are few.

First, I thought they would try to make it all relevant, which blows. Relevant things suck ass. When you take something that's timeless and classic and memorable (Wizard of Oz, Chicken Little, all the Dr. Seuss books) and make them hip and relevant (The Tin Man, Chicken Little, all the Dr. Seuss abominations), you completely sterilize the source material making it lose not only its original charm, but making it uninteresting in general. That's what I thought would happen, through and through, but it only happened in small amounts. Too much focus on Templeton's antics (which were a very small part of the book and the cartoon) and his wisecracking responses. The geese are now wisecracking black stereotypes, and the sheep are now self aware of what a sheep is, and concepts of following, instead of just being a cranky old sheep like in the book. I don't understand why they put self aware self expounding characters in stuff that's targeted for kids. Kids certainly miss it, and adults might only enjoy it as a novelty.

Second, because it's so incredibly not cartoony (which is such a detriment to cartoons), Charlotte is actually a little bit scary in her bulbous eight legged glory. She's gross. Doesn't at all look whimsical like cartoon Charlotte. She was cute. I would like to have her back, k? Thx, bai.

I understand that it's a children's book and such, and a pig makes a much more attractive protagonist than some stupid fly, but the flagrant double standard has always always bugged me.

The last thing is really more a criticism of book, cartoon, and movie. It's something I've never liked and always kind of balked at (yes, even as a small tater Cuyler), and that's the fact that Fern, who is very much the initiating protagonist (she might not be the ultimate protagonist or the heroine, but she gets the whole ball rolling) protests the killing of Wilbur because it's wrong. It's wrong to kill him just because he's small. Then later, it's wrong to kill him and eat him for all of his sweet pork meats (pork is gross. No me gusta), but then later, when Wilbur freaks out because Charlotte eats the fly, he gets scolded saying, “That's just the way things are. You live, and then you die.” The double standard in the book's philosophy has always bugged me. In farm life, the farmer would have been doing the runt pig a mercy. Sure, it's not pretty, and it's not nice, but it's better than letting him slowly starve to death, and then later, of course the farmer will want to kill the pig. That's the whole purpose for having pigs: food. But it's wrong for Wilbur to die because, well, Fern likes him. But flies? Fuck flies. No one cares about them. Also, no one gives a damn about all the other pigs that we can assume got slaughtered, or sold and then slaughtered.

I Am Legend – I've never read the book. My lovely fiancé has, and from what I've heard, it sounds a. gay, b. ridiculous, and c. like they performed a better adaptation of the idea in the movie... mostly.

Let me start off by saying that I Am Legend was a good time. I feel like I got what I paid for. I feel like I saw what I was expecting to see.

Next, let me say that CG “vampires” (really, these things were much more like zombies) look dumb. Why do studios insist on using CG when it looks fake and cartoon like in comparison to real life, when makeup is so much cheaper, convincing, and unsettling to look at. The movie was genuinely scary when I just saw small snippets and hints of zombies. When the random zombie through itself at a speeding car, or you knew they were there because you could hear their breathing. As soon as I saw the actual zombies, the movie just quit being scary.

Second, I hate when people take mysterious things and try to completely explain them scientifically. It goes a long way in cutting short the fantastic, whether that fantastic be wonderful or terrifying. In this movie, the “vampires” (again, wouldn't have guessed they were vampires if someone hadn't told me. I would have said “zombies”) are the product of a cancer cure gone wrong, and they end up developing rabies gone wrong symptoms: fear of water, deadly reaction to sunlight, and of course, they want brains. Er, blood. I meant blood (brains). They are complete animals, just running around snorting, snarling, scratching, biting, want food eat now fire bad. This guy has completely killed all the wonder of vampires by making them this thing. Gone are the legends about virgins, and allowed entry, and garlic, and mirrors. No. They're just animals. Somehow this virus abrogates reason completely, and they just run around like naked wild children.

So, the movie opens up with Will Smith having lived in this dilly of a pickle for three years, which raises a lot of questions in my mind. Since these zombies are essentially just feral people, they show absolutely no recognition of things like conservation of food or storing or agriculture. They just hide during the day, and then eat during the night. They wouldn't last three years. They would have eaten all the brains that were available, human and otherwise, and then been left with the option of eat each other or just die. That doesn't happen. I suppose I should mention that when you become a zombie, you become the owner of superior strength, agility, and speed, despite the fact that you are undoubtedly under nourished.

Another thing is that they're metabolism runs at speeds that shoot through the roof. All the time. Will Smith heavily heavily heavily sedates one of the zombies, and she still breathes as if she just ran a 100 yard dash. If the body is essentially human, just modified by a crazy virus, they wouldn't be able to live like that. Their bodies would have crapped out either from stroke or heart attack, and the zombie problem would be gone.

I guess I just hate how we innately know, whether we believe in such things or not, that things like vampires are supposed to be these supernatural entities, and then when someone tries to curtail it like this author has, it bugs me. It bugs me even more when he doesn't complete the curtailing and take into account common sense things like food and over exertion.

Apparently, in the book, the virus evolves and the “vampires” become intelligent and try to strategically take down Willy. Well, rather, they send one girl to do it. That strikes me as gay on ice. The book sounds so stupid.

So that's pretty much it. I didn't care for the part when the girl showed up, because it became an entirely different movie. Instead of “ol' Willy tries to save humans from vampires,” it becomes (out of left field), “ol' Willy has to rediscover his faith in God, and then things will fix themselves.” Really jarring. Just as jarring as seeing cartoon zombies.

I read somewhere that in one of the initial drafts, Willy comes to the realization that the antidote he's looking for can only come from himself. Some homogenization of vampire blood and regular dude blood. But, he must inject himself with the cure and then allow himself to be ingested by the zombie folk, and then the anti virus spreads in reverse fashion of the initial virus. That sounds bitchin. That's creepy, visceral, and gross. The kind of stuff I would pay to see in a horror/thriller movie. But, wait, it's PG13. Weak.

So, before I move on to the substantialest material, I wanted to talk about The Transformers, finally (despite being 6 months late) and Sweeny Todd. But I'll do that next time. I need to do productive things now.

The Movies We Watch: Sunshine

First, a trailer you must watch.

Then I must tell you what I've seen.

Sunshine is indescribable. I don't even know how I could tell you about this movie, recommend this movie, without telling you about it. Anything I tell you will ruin it.

It captures this amazing sense of profound solitude and loneliness. Almost the whole movie takes place aboard a ship that we get to see maybe 8 rooms of, none all that large. We see space, and we see Sol, and it feels empty. The sound is large and hollow, space is quiet. The music changes from sweet violins and trumpets to tribal drums, feedback, and static. You can feel the sanity skewing isolation that covers outer space. You truly feel alone watching it. There is only you and the 7 member crew.

The movie has one of the single most scary effects I've seen in a movie, ever. Every time it made my skin crawl just a little bit more, and I missed it the first two times. Parts of this movie had me squirming in my seat, pushing myself away from the screen and into the cushion.

The villain, the saboteur, is portrayed in a way that just breeds panic and confusion. Much like the old sci-fi of the low budget 50s, we never get to see him. The terror, and it's terror, is psychological. None of it visceral.

The story itself is lean. It's methodical. Every step it takes it takes for a reason, never taking more steps than it has to, but never skipping one. It's slow, it's methodical, it's packed, and it almost feels like too much. It steps right to that threshold then looks down before resting.

So, this is probably one of the more disjointed things I've ever written, especially when it comes to movie reviews. That's due in part to the fact that it's late and I'm tired, in part to the fact that the movie hasn't settled yet and I'm still excited over it, and partly due to my catharsis.

The Greeks said that in any good play, by the end, the audience should have experienced a catharsis. They themselves should have experienced the same roller coaster of emotions as the players, and at the end, have a feeling of emptiness and satisfaction. I felt both empty and satisfied.

The Movies We Watch: Doggy Poo

So, before I say anything about the movie, you have to watch the trailer.


Now that you see what I'll be talking about, I can talk about it.

Doggy Poo. Korean made in 2003. Claymation.


First, it's pretty weird. Not that there's anything really weird in it (I mean, apart from anthropomorphic doodoo, something South Park fans should be well accustomed to), or that this movie's execution is particularly weird. It's pretty standard fair as far as message and execution goes. The plot boils down to "child doubts self worth, child encounters people that reassure him of self worth and God's plan, child experiences his potential, and every thing's better." But then you factor in that the child is a doggy poo, and some of the characters he encounters are a talking pile of fertilized soil, a chicken who planned on eating him ("he doesn't taste good anyways momma"), and then your standard fair of flowers and birds. That's where it's weird.

Second, it's very artistic. This is truly a beautiful movie to behold. Doggy Poo is old school style clay animation, the likes of which only Aardman studios (Wallace and Gromit) utilize in this day. The set they use is vibrant and full of natural color, textures that are gritty and realistic, and very convincing mouth synch. Each character's mouth (or rather type. I.e. dirt vs. animal vs. plant) possesses quirks specific to that character, and the lips wrap around the words.

Which are in English. The words that is. "But I thought this movie was Korean?" you might cry forth in confusion, to which I would answer, "Yes, my son. Yes. Such as I have said is such as I have thought." And then my proverbial son might cry forth in a voice of honest seeking, "But pappa! Why?" (or for our bilingual friends), "¡Porque!" I have only one possible answer to this honest agnostic style search for truth.

Have you heard of the Little Donnie Foundation? Now, before you get too clicky, let me let you know what you're getting yourself into.

In the show "The Upright Citizens Brigade," a trio of havoc-wreckers set to undermine society set out to pull a prank on a nation wide scale. The answer to their query? A 30 minute long penis joke in the guise of something serious. Ergo, Little Donnie who is afflicted with a fictional disease where his wing wong is really long, but he has no idea. As any responsible citizen would, the brigade sets up a show to raise awareness and funds for Donnie's disease.

I sort of felt like that's what Doggy Poo is. Picture that at the "Internation Counsel of Nations Against America," or ICNAA as we on the street call them, the French say, "I think the Americans are so dumb, we can sell them water in a bottle while it flows freely from their taps." The Mexicans stand up and say, "¡Ole! ¡The Americans are so dumb, we can sell them the same dish 15 times with different names, same ingredients!" But the brazen Koreans stand and say, "We think the Americans are so dumb that we can make them sit through a 30 minute doodoo joke." The other nations shirk. No man could be so dumb! But they have yet to meet the Americans. We are that dumb, and in fact, we've been enjoying (thanks to the like of South Park and Conker's Bad Fur Day) half hour doo doo jokes long before the Koreans came on the scene. So really, the jokes on them... I guess. Maybe no one wins. And yes, I do owe a nod to Jim Gaffigan for already providing me with the bulk of the joke in this paragraph.

But ultimately, that's what's best about this movie! All the jokes about crap that may or may not have been intended. One of my favorites was turning around to my roommates and exclaiming loudly, "Man! This sh*t's enthralling!"

So thank you Koreans. We have accepted your challenge, and raised your bar. Bring what you will.

In fact INCAA, why don't ya'll bring it?