Well…

Probably not going to use this blog for Film Studies class anymore.  So probably ignore all the posts I scranted 3 minutes before class started.  They’re just not good.  K cool thanks.

Salty.

Quantum of Solace

Quantum of Solace was a pretty fly movie.  Visually striking and with a decently complex storyline, it kept me interested for repeat viewings.  It isn’t the most complex story, and it’s definitely a Bond doomsday scenario, but I can’t complain about too much in it. 

The review by Maddox is a little harsher, but he’s like that about everything.  He makes a good point; the main villain is a bit ridiculous.  But then again, that’s classic Bond.  That’s the point dammit.

What’s changed between this Bond and the old Bond is a number of important things that reflect socials attitudes at the relative times of release.  The old Bonds always had the whole world threatened by an evil guy who was crazy and bent on revenge.   Read: Britain should care about America being threatened because Britain would also be destroyed by the same giant laser or nuclear holocaust.  Then the nuclear disarmament pact wrecked all the fun and derailed that plot vehicle.  The new Bond is just pissed that some greedy French guy wants his big business to become even more successful.  Post-consumer heroism at its finest.    And Bond isn’t trying to stop the guy because he’s threatening the whole world, he’s threatening a poor South American country and therefore we should care.  In this day and age we like to feel like the sheltering wing to all those poor little countries, so we movie goers cheer for the little guy to beat big business.  Yet the movie even shows America as being the one who’s pushing the deal ahead because we’re just as greedy.  In the end, we can walk away from the film feeling like heroes because we saved the little guy through our national hero, that Bond fellah who talks funny.  USA numba one.  God bless our guilty conscience and our self-depreciating tastes in film.

You Only Live Twice

The movie You Only Live Twice was an interesting perspective into the early years of the Bond genre, but certainly was not the best example of that era’s Bond films.   I definitely agree with this reviewer when he says it just falls apart as a film viewed solely for pleasure.  It’s full of holes, but it gives us a look at society at the time, and therein I find its worth.

The domineering theme of the film was technology, although there is no tour of Q’s lab.  This technology took a front an central role in the plot, and it seemed the like entire film was really just a vehicle for a showcase of Western dominance in the field of cool useless gadgets.  For example, Bond’s little helicopter that looked barely more airworthy than da Vinci’s original designs.  It looked about as reliable as an Osprey but somehow it knocks out a number of enemy helicopters.  The use of smoke screens and para-mines was crucial in knocking out the first few copters, yet by the end Bond just shoots a heat-seeking rocket and blows the last one to kingdom come.  This begs the question; why not just load the whole damn thing with those rockets?

Then there’s the whole pretense of kidnapping the astronauts; if you plan on destabilizing the world and causing a nuclear holocaust, why bother to safeguard the lives of a few astronauts with a ridiculously complex scheme?  Is it so you don’t piss off the western world for killing a few spacemen or anger the Kremlin for frying their cosmonauts?  It seems to me like they’d be just as mad about the abductions as they would be about flat out vaporizing of the astronauts.

The theme of chauvinism was also present, of course.  Yet the movie manages to somewhat deflect the harshest of these overtones by making Bond surprised at the chauvinism of Tiger.  Therefore Bond can be seen as almost progressive when compared to the film’s portrayal of Japanese culture and views on feminism.

The biggest difference we’ll see between the old Bond and the new Bond (at least in these films) is the focus on technology.  There is no Q in the new(est) Bond.  There is no car that shoots rockets (or goes invisible, crawl into a hole and rot, Die Another Day).  The western world was no longer Baby-boomers who were being bred as a generation of superconsumers intent on having the best and newest technology.  The new (read: post-consumerist) Bond focuses on the man rather than the gadgets, and the few nice things he has are classic (read: cool and classy) and they end up getting destroyed, like his car.  I think this quite clearly reflects western society’s transition from hyper-optimistic consumers who believed the future was an endless frontier to becoming nostalgic post-consumerists who long for the days when the world was simpler and helicopters fit in suitcases.

Hairspew

Thanks to its campy nature and satirical take on the 60s, the old Hairspray had charm, like an old rusty red rider wagon your weird aunt still has.  The new Hairspray had the charisma of the tetanus you got from riding on that wagon and watching it was just as fun as the ensuing tetanus shots.  There’s a special corner of hell reserved for the people who write musicals, right next to the people who think Big Bang Theory is witty.

I was graced with a prior commitment and couldn’t stay for the entire movie.  I was slow roasting pulled pork in my secret spices; it melted like butter it was so tender.  You all had to sit through that drivel.  Let the jealously ensue.  I googled the ending, I guess that it was kind of progressive and took some thinking to make.  Still hated the movie though.  So did this chick and her review, God bless her.

This movie butchered camp.  It was literally just a reworking of High School Musical set to an integration theme.  Good old progressive Hollywood, way to show the one gay character as a pervert (John Waters, the flasher).  The movie didn’t leave a sour taste in my mouth; salad leaves a sour taste in my mouth.  This movie did far worse; it scarred my very existence.  My days henceforth shall be haunted by those absolutely garbage musical numbers.  I’m forever marred by the thought that people lacking so much talent can make so much money doing something so terrible.  I would honestly rather gnaw through my own wrist or bludgeon myself to death with a ¾” piece of steel pipe than watch that tripe again.

Miyu, I just remembered this is your favorite movie but I’m not going to rewrite my blog…sorry.  You can say you hate James Bond next week and I promise not to be offended, even though he’s in the top 200 coolest guys ever and no one should mock his awesomeness.

Hairspray

Hairspray does a perfect job of encompassing all that is campy.  Please note, I don’t like campy.  I like camping.  And not that mollycoddled “Make sure to pack two pillows for me in the RV” kind of camping.  I mean going out into the woods with a bowie knife and a flint and hopefully coming back alive.  So you can imagine my tastes running somewhat askew to the style and motif of the movie.  I dutifully sat through this tripe but it was a form of suffering I’m not eager to repeat.  It’s a shame to see so much good hairspray wasted when it could have been used to cannon potatoes at sheds; if you don’t get this reference, kindly “man up”.

It was well done, with a fair amount of charm; it was campy without being trashy or sodden.  The characters were for the most part sincere although I agree with this article in saying the beatnik scene completely missed the mark.  The Beatniks were appropriators of black culture, so to mock the beatniks with the film would be to mock black culture as well.  The movie lacked any real plot or suspense and there was no real buildup towards a climax.  It was a high-budget afterschool special and no one ever had to worry about the bad guy winning out in the end. 

Art should not have constraints placed upon it.  Camp certainly has its value and place, and being exposed to it broadens my experience and understanding of it.  I appreciate the film for existing, as there is certainly a market for it and I’m glad there are people who can enjoy it, they deserve access to what they enjoy.  I also now have a much greater appreciation for those hours of my life not spent watching this movie.

Do The Right Thing

Halfway through the movie, I was worried it was going to end too predictably, with the racist Italian feller learning a lesson.  But the plot definitely developed into a rich and deeply thought provoking work of cinema, much more than I thought it would be.  I can definitely see how this film was taken as a work that could incite more racial violence and tension, but I feel like it was a story that had to be told.  It was no longer time to repress these feelings, it was time to address the tension and strife rampant in the country at the time.

Some themes from our previous units came up, especially the theme of miscegenation when Mookie gets extremely angry and upset when Sal is taken by Mookie’s sister Jade.  There was also a strong use of camera work to convey power in scenes.  Radio was always shown with an upward camera angle to make him look even more imposing and above the pettiness of the street life.

I definitely liked how non-polarized the cast and portray of race was.   Despite multiple types of characters within each ethic group there was no real hero, no group or character less flawed than the rest.  This is what turned the film into something that broke away from being a story that was written and acted out; rather it was a story that seemed to be captured on camera as it unfolded. 

There wasn’t a single character that lacked human flaws, except perhaps Jade, as she is always seen as sweet and hardworking.  Mookie was lazy and a bad father and ends up busting up the pizzeria.  Buggin’ Out was always trying to start trouble and Radio Raheem was domineering and heavy-handed with his ideas of bringing about change.  Sal was at times bigotry and had an explosive temper.   The blonde cop choked Radio to death.  As this article explained well “It seems like none of the characters actually did the right thing.”

All in all, I think the movie handled the subject well, because Lee wasn’t afraid to comment openly and brutally on race relations at the time.  He didn’t tip-toe around the delicate subject; rather he bulldozed in with a skillful yet unforgiving hand at directing.  The movie doesn’t teach us a lesson, it teaches us what the world is like and we’ve got to take our own lesson from it.

Shaft?

The new Shaft wasn’t disappointing, it wasn’t upsetting, and it was decently entertaining.  But its name was a malapropism, because by no means did this new movie carry any of the weight or political clout that the first film did.  I didn’t go into this new film expecting to be excited by the new views it presented, challenging the standard mindset of Hollywood of the time.  A year later SLJ played the same role in Formula 51, so clearly he didn’t exactly break out of his shell to be the “new and improved” Shaft. 

It was what I expected it to be, a SLJ action movie, better produced than Snakes on a Budget and moderately engrossing.  But it certainly wasn’t what it expected itself to be, because the new Shaft didn’t carry any of the hatred of the establishment that the old Shaft gloried in.  The new Shaft got fired by the bad cracker, the chief who’s taking money on the side (yet never gets his proper comeuppance.)  Yet four minutes later Shaft is right back on the police force, just in a different unit.  The old Shaft wouldn’t have ever stood for this jive; the old Shaft was proudly operating outside and often at odds with the system.

The new Shaft did give more time to developing the bad characters, which made it a more mainstream and relatable film but also took away the beauty of the “everybody’s out to get him” feel of the old Shaft.  I thought Christian Bale did a good job of playing a spoiled rich kid who’s taking a liking to recreational bludgeoning, but that wasn’t enough to redeem the over-simplicity and polarization of the plot as a whole.  I also liked how black and white characters were partnered in their good and evil roles to make sure that the audiences understood the film was not racist and that any race can fill any role. 

This BBC review extols the new Shaft for having “more cool, swagger, authority and menace” and putting “Roundtree’s Shaft firmly in the shade.”  This alone is justification for the Wars of Independence (circa. 1776, 1812, 1860) in which we fought off the oppression of this toolish British idealism.  Perhaps their greatest crime is not boiling meat, but rather completely misinterpreting an entire cultural movement and then stamping their seal of approval on the flashiest caricature that surfaces.