Cannes

Well, since the whole world ignores the Cannes, you can ignore my last post.

Dear Michael

“Funny Games.” Really, a director who makes the same movie twice. Sure it takes a certain amount of ego to be a film-master. But to also win the Cannes? It must be undeniably better than the Americans. Touché. Raise a glass to my dead homies, er comrades, and the rest of those who can’t get in to Hollywood because of whatever…

Thank god I didn’t have to pay to see it both times. It’s popular to hate America in Europe and the rest of the world. And, thank Buddha, it’s also easier to bit torrent too:)

In the character of full disclosure, I should admit that I am/was an American. You may call me bias. I don’t give a damn. But frankly, this guy Haneke is a complete arse. Nevertheless, I’m glad he won le festival. Although I haven’t seen his award winning film yet, I’m sure it’s in the same vein as the above. How could it not be?

In a world where actors play people playing real things…

And so it is. Here is a guy who actually has the nuts to make films with out special effects. Shit. With out any regards to editing theory even. Here, here! Give that man the gold. After all, we really hate movies. Right?

It’s really nice to see a crazy woman sniff the smelly tissue, and then scold a boy. I think. Uh, nevermind. See what you can if you have the time. Otherwise go and see the new Star Trek, the new Terminator, best yet the new Night at the Museum. Entertainment is big, big business. Not merely the appreciation of moving photos.

Congratulations asshole, you have shoved your shit in everyone’s face. And not just gotten away with it, but received the highest honor other than an Oscar. Ha, ha.

I can’t wait to see the film that actually won.

Vive la France!

Chobo

An Open Letter to Smaller Countries

Stop copying everything about the Obamas.  His plans are nothing new.  Her dresses come from France.  Their attitude is unique, but why would you not want to be unique yourself?   Make your own, be your own.

Stop

.

from the bad poetry files

shit,

fuck,

shit fuck damn.

bitch

prick

asshole,

mutherfucker, goddamn.

More Life Lessons from Hollywood

In real life, an abandoned baby is an orphan. But in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, this particular child wasn’t left by the stork. It’s a set up foreshadowing a flashback for a period piece. The doctor comes in twice before the first fifteen minutes, and explains the back story created by the mind of F. Scott Fitzgerald who still seems to be Hollywood’s favorite writer. It seems the elite love to talk about their pitiful suffering and the complexities in their relationships. But these rich seem to be good people without too many frills. It’s easy to watch on.

The very father who abandoned Los Angeles must surely be the Jazz Age’s patron saint himself. Because the team of two writers assigned to the task of blowing the dust of this old story saw fit to make this particular dad a better person than he was in Fitzgerald’s time. Not only that, New Orleans is a great place. A place where racial differences have been a much smaller problem then those faced by us in the rest of the United States. “Out damnable affliction, and praise God.” When the saints go marching in, the curtain rises. Who doesn’t want to run up and down the Mississippi River on an old tugboat during the day and peruse the brothels at night? As gospel music changes to ragtime piano, fedoras turns into berets. And more time passes by. Hollywood doesn’t really leave women out of this feel good experience completely. There’s ballet, Paris, Tilda Swinton, and the sixty’s budding sexual revolution with John Lennon and a mattress.

And who can’t put themselves into this movie? An old lady who teaches the “young” Benjamin to play piano could have been a blind black man, but then a film of this magnitude really needs to have something for everybody. I wonder if Mary McPartland saw it? Unfortunately some people have already had to sit by the death bed of one of their family members, so the tears roll from the very first shot of this movie. I find it hard to believe that some people haven’t already heard the story about the man who was hit by lightning seven times, but then anything is possible. It makes sense that a movie about old people should be crippled in production and spend the rest of it’s time in the St. James Infirmary of the post-production suite undergoing process after process, render after render, lab test after… And some say, “Film is dead.”

The philanthropy of the wealthiest filmmakers still leaves much to be desired. Just a stroke of our shoulder leaves us with a good feeling, but it’s our own that we cry on. Then we’re slapped with a lawsuit for watching their film on our computers. Our children stolen from villages. There are better ways for this much money to be spent when you think about it. But apples doesn’t fall far from the tree so we should be happy for what we get. And in this movie, soon even the history lesson goes to hell. It’s not old news reel footage intercut with actors on a cheap set. It’s war-epic production values played backwards in slow motion. Touché Hollywood, touché. Alas, entertainment must be fun. And since everyone hates history class, this movie treats time gone by just like the “Titanic” did. It’s just a mere backdrop to this double-flashback flick. They got a lot wrong. It’s be silly to expect to see the Space Shuttle taking off from the Florida Keys around 1963, give or take fifteen years. But I bet the whole world will love this movie. And it will be exported for years. They will go to see it in air conditioned theaters and buy sugar-water to drink with their with fried corn syrup. When the movie’s over, they will walk back outside into the landfill which their country has become; a super hot world where all the trees have been cut down and sent away; a world in which it takes more and more money to find food. A world where we are all the same. But in a world like this maybe the producers should have watched “The Hours” to understand the proper technique for a story within a story. Or the late great Robert Altman’s “Gosford Park” to understand the true stoic suffering of motherhood. Then perhaps they could watch another one to better understand the truth-of-life device in films, such as “Where the Green Ants Dream” – surely not “Australia”. Maybe then they can find a way to make the nostalgia of the past a little less depressing.