Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in jon von's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
1:08 am	Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans 8.5/10 Bad Lieutenant does not really seem very much of a re-make of the 1992 by Abel Ferrara film, which starred Harvey Keitel in a role so unconventional and raw few thought a remake or sequel would have much of a point.The movie, somehow remaining a spiritual brother, written by William Finklestein and directed by renowned epic art filmmaker behind Aguirre, Wrath of God, Fitzcaraldo, and most recently Grizzly Man. Aside from Grizzly Man I hadn't seen anything the director had made in the past twenty years, to think he would try and capture an the American cop genre in a world gone crazy I thought it would have been something like this, but I couldn't have imagined this result. The film is a vivid, heart pounding, iguana hallucinating mess; so mixed up in it's amoral genre smashing juggling act that the very structure itself bends to the main character's world, and it's strangely beautiful. New Orleans is very much a character as well as a setting in the movie. the city is crumbling in the wake of hurricane Katrina, moral ambiguity and decay are running rampant. the city is filled with hookers and pushers, the once lustrous allure of the big easy is now something more akin to the swamp that surrounds it. Meet Nicholas Cage as Officer Terrence Mcdonugh, he hurt his back saving a prisoner from drowning during the flood when he didn't need to; it left him bitter, addicted to vicodin and cocaine and limping like richard the 3rd. His girlfriend is a high-priced hooker, they do cocaine together, simply as if sharing their empty world's alongside each other. sometimes he fleeces her clients for more coke. He gambles, murders, steals, rapes and pretty much abuses his his power in any way he sees fit, occasionally being rewarded for it by the department and rarely even suspected even when everyone in the office can hear his bookie (played by Brad Dourif) trying to shake him down for money he owes him and speeding tickets he said he'd take care of. But, when, investigating the murder of a Senegalese family of five, his true sense of ethics starts to rise to the surface. this sends him on a bizarre justice/drug bender, filled with pitch black comedy, oddly hilarious moments, and strangely moving moments of lucidity. Cage delivers what may be one of the best performances since Leaving Las Vegas, his self-effacing but cruel performance has him teetering so close to the edge that his bug eyed wild stare actually seems like a theme. when the other characters regard him in moments of semi-comic, sociopathic wonder, the occasional hint of fear crosses their faces. this is a man whose been on vicodin, cocaine, grass and sometimes crack for too long, and he's the one with all the power. somehow we find ourselves wacthign his struggle to remember the difference between right and wrong in sympathetic terms, other times with the thrill of watching a particularly vicious villain. the film also mixes some artistic tones. a lot of people seem to thing the visual themes of alligators and iguanas placed int he foreground of a shot. Herzog himself said in Grizzly Man, " when look into the eyes of a bear i see only the total indifference of nature". The comparison to Cage's lieutenant seems natural. the scene in which cage walks into a room where some other cops are havign a stakeout and sees two iguanas on the coffee table is especially classic. he regards them with extreme paranoia and suspicion and finally asks what "what the hell are these iguanas doing on the coffee table," at which point his partner ( val kilmer) says, "no iguanas on the table" Cage looks back at them and for a moment he have a disturbed drug induced, extreme close up iguana singing interlude, after which cage snaps back up and says, "let's get the hell out of here" and they all follow him, leaving the iguanas sitting there. The film is really more of a dark parody of police movies when the biggest criminal in the story is the cop himself. But thanks to some serious film making chops from Herzog and a genuinely unhinged performance by Cage, this is both a brilliant black comedy and a parable about power, drugs, violence and lost innocence. (Comment on this)
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
6:37 am	must... destroy... life. - build new. (Comment on this)
Friday, November 20th, 2009
2:35 am	fascinating story of the world's most important six-second drum loop (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 14th, 2009
8:18 pm	i hadnt seen it before but i watched the prestige one and a half times today. i was surprised by the conclusion of it, a couple hours later i went back and watched certain parts again. the tesla bit i assumed was a put on the first time but it wasn't and partly because of that i missed the whole other parallel bit with bale. it wasn't just a narrative but in itself a slight of hand impressive alone for a film but also watching it again it revealed a whole level of visual metaphors, especially the birds in cages when you understand it, the repitition becomes more heartbreaking. one of the few modern films i've really liked. i believe it also discusses the change of performance to film and the age of electricty, and the very natures of identity and dualities in a very literate way but without forcing it down your throat. the first time you see a trick you clap and say well done the second time your watching their hands and the other bits so carefully, wanting so hard to catch them at it and usually just missing it, because your eyes always look where someone else wants you to. i also found it fitting an actor like jackman who is so comfortable with the stage to be casting the move from theatre into cinema as a sin. the art of electric reproduciton is cruel and cold, the art of instilling wonder in people is the real virtue. (Comment on this)
Friday, November 6th, 2009
5:58 am	Pontypool 7.5/10 At a radio station in the small town of Pontypool, its winter in the still dark hours of the morning. Grant Mazzie, a radio host let go from bigger things, does morning radio and despite his attempts at shock jock humor he's got a professional attitude and a good voice. But, this morning increasingly confused calls come in and soon the station's only reporter seems to witness something like a zombie outbreak. This epidemic though is something different, instead of a bite, this infection is transmitted by words, the English language in particular. At the heart of Pontypool is that nagging feeling a person might get if they became obsessed with repeating a word. Say Pontypool a few times, does the word gain or lose meaning to you? Does the thrill of obsessing over a word ever appeal to you, it's this spastic repetition which, in the movie Pontypool, causes some words in the English language to become infected; the more one repeats and understands them the more one will turn into a zombie so dependent on words they need voices to eat or they will literally expel their own insides. The compelling William s. Burroughs’s word-virus meets 28 days later twist makes for an uneven thriller here, but since Pontypool takes place entirely in a radio station and stars mostly the few people who work there, the disturbing sounds are rich and plentiful viewers get to hear vivid accounts of violence and use their imagination creating fears later confirmed by restrained but effective use of gore FX. Character actor Stephan McHattie, last seen as Hollis Mason in Watchmen, excels at playing both sides of the story both on and off radio and the other actors are fair to good, struggling at times with the admittedly strange material. The film lacks a satisfying climax, instead offering an artsy ending which demands the viewer stay through some credits to even begin to understand. despite the limp ending there is more than enough of genuine weirdness, strange theory and basic zombie violence to recommend the film. The Invention of Lying 7 What is so hysterical about the controversy over this movie is that I think it was written to showcase Gervais' sense of logic in humor. That Gervais is an atheist and a Darwinist must have seeped in somehow because it's a little stunning when the movie starts matter-of-factly saying the man who invented lying would also have invented novels, screenplays, and religion. He is filled with emotion when he tries to make his dying mother feel less afraid by telling her that a man in the sky is going to take her someplace where she’s forever young and everyone she ever loved is there and so on. People at the hospital overhear and it becomes big news, and the question- is it right if I lie to people to make them feel better? Soon, he's Moses with pizza box tablets arguing with idiots about why the man in the sky does good AND bad stuff to you. The religious satire however is closer to being affectionate towards religion than it appears in the initial obviousness. It isn’t followed through, the story was just a lark where Gervais could do his bit about what’s logical and what isn’t. The idea is genius, but the movie is merely an above average comedy built on the foundation of a brilliant idea. Unlike, mike judge's Idiocracy, or similar modern fables, Lying fails to wring jokes out of the material, instead settling for telling a story which sometimes has humor reminiscent of the comics’ stand-up. I think Gervais underestimated how shocked most people would be by the idea, one which is nicely drawn in the beginning but quickly descends into murkiness with many characters using figures of speech which sound curiously like lies, and a corrupt cop who basically admits to being a liar in a scene which is quite funny at the time but illogical. This is Gervais’ OPINION of what a society of brutally frank people would be like, something he says a lot. That he didn't expect people to say people would be like this in a world where you can't lie, he's saying IN HIS OPINION a world like such could have characters in it, it's not meant to be taken seriously as such and we should welcome a little political/religious satire. Still, it’s a humorous and smart movie and you could do a lot worse. Current Music: spaced - season 2 (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
1:09 am	re: me trying not to be a smart ass at the video store some teens asked me to reccommend a horror movie and said they wanted something really scary, so i was trying to help even though they just got retarded straight to dvd ones anyway but one girl wearing a cheerleader sweater said "yeah, last time the guy said this movie was really scary but when we tried to watch it, it was in norweigan!" and i said, " oh, im sorry, you almost had to broaden your horizens there for a minute". their faces fell and i said "just kidding", then mumbling almost audibly "not really." also, ill get this out of the way, the orphan (spoiler alert), when i find people have allready seen it i try hard not to say (as i've said several tiems allready) " man just imagine, if the dad just made out with a midget for half an hour LIVES COULD HAVE BEEN SAVED. think about it" i said it once and i think i offended someone. (Comment on this)
Monday, October 26th, 2009
1:47 pm	Oh, my God, Sunlight ! The entire lemon, nothing i could despise and love so much, being in you for any period of time almost gives me an allergic reaction, and makes me thirtsty. Not only is the sun god, and the entire reason we ever evolved up from little things, that it is as miraculous and mysterious building as us, as god would have been. For me, however, an inclination, a choice which is beautiful only that in i have evolved to ability to choose something which isn't good for me, as brilliant and random and beautiful as life growing on a rock, as a novel, as being able to throw your life on a whim. How much sense does that make right? (Comment on this)
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
6:52 am	Paranormal Activity Review 500 words exactly Paranormal Activity 6.5/10 Handie Cam Horror Goes Ghost Hunting, Finds a Little Gem. This little cheapie, made in 2007, has been making some news for itself as a terrifying successor to The Blair Witch Project mixed with a bit of reality tv ghost-sleuthing, except in here lies is an undeniably a real presence. A young couple name Katie and Micah (which are also the names of the actors playing them) move into a house. The pretty young wife-and-student complains that all her life she has been followed by an unknown presence, one that that breathes on her and whispers her name at night. Micah buys a high resolution camera and decides to record and film their bedroom for a few nights to see if whatever haunting her is real. Turns out, it is and they’re pissing it off. With a shocking ending, this handie-cam-horror shot for only $ 15,000 both benefits and suffers from dialogue written for realism (often redundant and inane, but realistic). It features Katie on camera for roughly 80 percent of the movie and given its limitations requires a pretty high suspension of disbelief to work. Unless the viewer has turned the lights off, turned the sound up and is scanning the background tensely for ghostly evidence; Paranormal Activity is little more than a prolonged episode of reality TV paranoia, confusingly both obviously scripted and padded with more than enough “real” footage of the couple cooing and arguing like the not-very-bright people they play. But, what then is so scary? Was I scared? The answer is yes. But, I had to put some effort into it. In retrospect I really wish the movie had about ten minutes less of suburban nonsense, the camera was left on the counter less or god forbid the characters take it outside, and that there were a few more payoffs. Never have I seen a movie which invites so much tension by not letting you know where you should look and then squanders it with so few actual occurrences. The sound, however, deserves praise. The excellent mixing creates the effect of footsteps and noise at a distance from the camera (i.e. the audience), leading you to feel as if you can hear, but cannot see, someone there. Paranormal Activity is not a Hollywood film masquerading as low budget, it really is a little bit of cheaply produced wish fulfillment - the seemingly real, found evidence of a poltergeist being goaded on by a couple of idiots who insists on filming themselves (a concept the being does or does not seem to get depending on which of the two major endings you see: the subdued and creepy original or the flashier, exorcist-inspired theatrical). It could be scary to the viewer willing to suspend disbelief, or it could just be another couple arguing amongst themselves for 90 minutes with some spooky things thrown in. But, with a little patience, the lights and the phone off, it can be a worthwhile bit of spooky goodness. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 17th, 2009
5:19 pm	directors! something i've been thinking about are who my favorite directors are. my initial list would go : martin scorsesse, david cronenberg, quentin tarentino, brian depalma, akira kurosawa, dario argento, mario bava, takashi miike... uh, for better or worse steven spielberg, hayao miyazaki (obvious, but does animation count?) jan swenkmayer, paul verhoven, hitchcock, ingmar bergman, lucio fulci, jean rollin these are mostly horror filmmamakers, what about comedies? billy wilder, george Cukor, the woodman, coen brothers, spike jonz, michel gondry, wes anderson, jim henson, frank oz, harold ramis, christopher guest afterthoughts for- stuart gordon (messy but always works for me), ridley scott (old dependable), ralph bakshi (stood up to "the man"), danny boyle, joe dante, john carpenter ( would be in firts list but overuse of tv-style camera works bogs down material) steven soderburgh , micheal hanake, stanley kuberick's style is impossibly inimitable, peter jackson ( who abandoned horror fans to bring lotr to the world, a fact i understand but am ultimatly alienated by), sam raimi ( look you allready have all that money from xena, why keep making spidercrap!), paul thomas anderson (messy but genius), tim burton, terry gilliam, oliver stone ( for his absurd mixture of skill and insanity) some asian directors: wong kar wai, tsukamoto ( who did testuo- the iron man among others), chan wook park, kiyoshi kurosowa, jon woo, tsui hark, & shohei imamura so there you go. that is basicly my list of my favorite directors of all time. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
1:00 am	That murderous little turkey who winds the vices, it escapes! Springs as big as time itself, are winding (eternally winding). Doubtless, the peasants all will be pleased. Nothing, O' nothing made all the dances pretty. Their order and butterfly prettiness make millions in reproduction by their own virtues, without help, from us, the writers. For me, even, it is a fear of reproduction. Our own humanity will do nothing but use mechanization to reproduce ourselves. Cybernetic America green fields glass tubes, nice America! A horse to the god damn sun! Can you believe such a deal? Thank you science, I love you, thank you. The violent language of machines, mimes our elegant suburban charm. As peasants we all love the captor, or are the ones capturing. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
2:50 pm	A poem for the modern divorcee. Estrangement, which seems initially to be the theme, Is one which should have been recalled and leashed. Treated as if it were and animal, Oh, that manipulative beast! Does strength lie in living for ones self, Or allowing the "gentle" removal of one's limbs? Are our homes made by the hands God gave us, Or scripted by our captors whims. I drew up a path and, like that kid with the crayon, It bloomed into a dusty road-less-traveled. I found the shoes my parents made, But walking in them, they unraveled! Oh, it isn't so bad after the first few deaths, Sylvia wasn't lying about that. A pheonix/ a person/ & an engineer, Alternating the player at bat. We are kissed by this though, our imaginations, Can make this endless place benign. Not only you, the road builder who, And the long-ago placer of signs. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 18th, 2009
6:56 am	I never had the courage to admit, most of the time, I wasn't "onto it", I had the feeling of a dream, not just... I wasn't listening. I wasn't just preoccupied,it was more like making alibi's. I had the hope that something good, came out of being never understood; Sure, there was a time when I, sang of how a fictional hero dies, and however ever much I learned was wit, the rest was mostly faking it. everywhere I was I was, I only wanted to leave because, I wanted to be home alone and dreaming. "The people of Austin, TX where characterized as "repellent not of apathy but disgust"." Everyone else wanted to participate in the dream, at first even I thought I was sick, they had a horse, I got onto it, playing along it would seem. I thought that I was innocent, as any man in the bible but, I knew not when the taking was good. Recalling that the laughter and games were unique, and not that I was misunderstood. There's just so much to, when people are offering you, You can tell them they're special for a while, until nothing was fun, there's nothing to do, but offer an unhelpful smile. "It's easy, it's so easy," sang minstrel of playing a part. I only wanted to know, the smell and the flow, thinking, boy I am so smart. It's a coy evolution, the claws one evolves, which can be done without realizing how. I'd like a hand to, accepting the part, but I wouldn't trust anyone who did. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
6:35 am	I've just watched the first season of 2003-2005 BBC animated series Monkey Dust. I feel unclean, almost in a good way. Has it's... merits, depending on how funny you find pedophilia, rape, murder and other depraved acts. how often does someone get describe something as hillariously depraved? The surprise of clive is best left unspoiled. nsfw if anyone can hear, despite some by goldfrapp during walking in london. (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 27th, 2009
5:45 am	one part of my brain is following the stream of bullshit made popular inside the commercial domes of teenage fancy; the other peeling layers of meaning from my own child-like subconscious, informed by its own market interests, by its own terrors and fears of rejection. kid-size apartments were filled with the intended furniture and words of their captors- only... the claims were made by My Corporation, of which i am an imaginary member, the cynical, partisan visions are: to all the children, and, likely to those of the future, unable to do anything but be total suckers, as we all were, as everyone who was ever a human being before was, with hearts on sleeves, buying the visions and fire of their own youth as a plastic daydream or a castle in the sand. it's unknown why all adults stopped finding that all metaphors of children applied to them also, chose to narrow the willingness to laugh at anything at all and outright desire to project emotions they don't even know they have yet onto handfulls of killer, pretty lies. it's not like i, myself frothed about with anything so simple since days long before i learned the handy trick of multiple deaths. the difference perhaps is the many deaths of the self or the many small murders one can commit. Despite the admissions and complete inability to see themselves, perhaps it would be worth the trip if one just gave up and reclined and made art with the play and exploration given to them by god, perhaps it would be worth... damn your... eyes, I give up. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
3:14 am	They pushed time forward with a sensory organ located near the sinuses; it was a concentration of within as amidst a great parade. They became needles on which whole worlds revolved and some hoped they could provide only fleating glimpses of animal warmth. the land grew mists and mellow apertures which beheld the spectacle oscillated hesitantly. Holding hands the mother and the father walked out into the lane, followed by the ghosts of their children. Three fates watched on as decay reached a conclusion and became growth. inhuman myth flourished; unbound of the human gods, they found ancient dances. the cobblestones cobbled, homes sank into the land as hedges in winter do. but nothing, oh nothing! unbound the lives of sense, soaring about and inspiring the feeling of life. (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 9th, 2009
3:03 pm	How many lists? so many lists, enough to fill up a hundred hope chests. too many keys to apartments you please, I met a mother in clinic out west. the lists we would make, to the clinic we'd take brought notes of apology to the palms. but the keys! oh the keys to apartments you please, were keeping our hearts tied to the psalms. any emotion made were a couple more rays on the sun bleached mountains of the west, however it seemed, it was as fitfully dreamed as the tumult of the heart in my chest. (Comment on this)
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
10:55 am	saw bruno, looking it up on imdb theres a thing at the bottom, reccomended viewing. Salo: 120 days of sodom. your kidding imdb, right. (Comment on this)
8:15 am	a sciency book review Because weekends are boring i read micheal crichton's Prey because i was interested in nanomachines. I went the library on friday because thats when the cleaning ladies come. it's also the day i do my laundry and pick up the ditry dishes left around. personally i think people should pre-clean when someone comes to clean. like, food and clothes and stuff. I'm just saying i think it's rude not to, because some people dont care and leave their mess about. same goes for the dishwasher; i just want to make sure it's not crusty! Have some respect. i went ot the library and poked around at some books. I looked in the science section and found two books i looked at. One was a sort of young adult book about nanotechnology and a space exploration book about exploring alpha centauri and rocketless propulsion. The nanotechnology book had lots of pitcures and was informative and even mentioned the grey goo phenomenon which i think is an underutlized end of the world scenario. It mentioned the afore-mentioned Micheal Crichton novel. I'd read read any of his books but my interest in nanotechnology was peaked. the rocketless propulsion book was kind of neat. it sounded like crazy science speculation it would take to travel a distance like that in a lifetime. It spoke of antimatter propulsion and solar sails, i only got about twenty-five pages into it. how does one go faster than light; by bending away somehow. Crichton's novel was surprisingly well written, interesting in a few ways. For example, His methods of lenghing the plot are very clever, when a suspenseful thign happens he makes time go more-and-more slowly stretchign out a battle to sixty pages, the hero's thoughts more intense and use shorter sentances. the hero often repeats themes or ideas over and over as if weighing the thoughts he felt int the begining of the story at each new occurance. it seems to work, to revisit the themes at each interval of the action for a novel of  this lengh. I thought more would happen than really did but it did a very good job of having everything sort of jump in to a compellign story and then follow the next forty-eight hours to a resolution of sorts. His main characters are very well written as beleivable scientists but the minor characters were little more than stereotypes, even one who becomes co-hero is rarely describes as more than a beautiful, silent asian scientist. Not only did i learn a lot of scientific theory ont he subject i expected to,  but he introduced me to behiovoral biology and showed how the field could relate to the field of artifical intelligence; and all of it extensively attributed in the bibliography. the monster was a hyper-evolving swarm of nanoparticles, i thought more could have been done with the premise but i think crichton's idea is intesting. i want books with new kinds of machines and this left me hungry. (Comment on this)
Monday, July 27th, 2009
1:33 pm	Some reviews, more to come- Reviews Knowing This movie is a bit of a surprise treat. At first, it looked like Nicholas Cage was reprising his psychic bit from “Next”, and it’s hard to say that he isn’t, given his limited range. But, a Cage is only a tool and director Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City, and I, Robot) definitely shows that he hasn’t lost his touch with fantastic visuals and engaging stylistic touches. Starting off as a thriller and then changes with a big-budget, left-field, sci-fi twist. However, the story is a bit predictable anyway. The apocalyptic twist is likely to work for some and leave others cold, still there’s no denying Proyas’s skill with special effect set-pieces, cinematography and basic storytelling. This movie is likely to be a pleasant surprise for those not expecting a lot from modern big-budget sci-fi thrillers, and for the less cynical may even be truly exciting. Premonition Sandra Bullock stars in this intricate, but ultimately contrived tale of a woman who finds herself living days out of order. In an effort to retain her sanity and save her husband and daughters from gruesome fates, she runs around, emotes, gets confused and then runs around an emotes some more. Hindered by too many arbitrary shocks, inconsistencies  and a lack of sympathetic characters, Premonition is a mediocre race-to-prevent the future thriller. Bullock is likable as always and tries to carry the movie but it’s hard to be surprised by the see-it-from-a-mile away climax, and/or care about some of the supporting cast. Blindness This Julianne Moore Vehicle about a mysterious plague which causes blindness is overlong, cynical and lacking entirely in suspense. The illness causes the government to turn against the sick, locking them in camps where they struggle and turn against one another. Those who are inside struggle to maintain order while more afflicted keep getting sent in and the outside world seems increasingly to fall apart. What seemed like an interesting premise is marred with sexism, sloppy writing and an over-reliance on racial stereotypes. Watch the classic “Day of the Triffids” instead, at least there after everyone goes blind stuff actually happens. Mr. Brooks. In an unlikely nail-biter Mr. Brooks succeeds as a superior serial killer thriller. Director Bruce Evans whose sole directing effort before this was Kuffs with Christian Slater, turns a pretty good script into something devilishly good with Kevin Kostner, Demi Moore and William Hurt all showing an unusual amount of energy in their roles. The story revolves around Kostner as a box magnate who also happens to be addicted to murder and is followed around by his other personality, played by Hurt, who only he can see/hear. When a younger man (Cook) tries to blackmail him into letting him tag along to kill, things get complicated quickly. Cook, a comedian, who grew a beard to look serious and manages not to shoot himself in the foot, does an OK job. Moore, who I thought had taken a vacation from acting, is a police officer obsessed with solving the crime. The acting and directing in this genre thriller with a twist make it stand out as a surprisingly good thriller if maybe a bit of a guilty pleasure too. Taken A father-daughter thriller masquerading as a Boune Identity-style actioner. Daddy’s-little-girl college beauty  and her friends get lost in Europe and find themselves sold into human slavery.(!) Unfortunately for the kidnappers one of the girl’s father is a secret government hitman, played by Neeson, who hunts down, question and kill human traffickers to find his daughter before she is auctioned off . Sounds better than it is. Neeson's watchable and there's some slick action but the film’s only real relationship is between Neeson and his daughter, mostly on cell phones, and it isn’t very well written. If you wanted a a slick actioneer where a father kills a dozen people to save his daughter's virginity, well here you go. Crank 2 Living up to the frantic pace of the original Crank would be enough, but the sequel goes one farther and is equal parts: off-the-wall comedy, adsurdist mobster tale, porno-culture obsessed music video and over-the-top action movie. Whether this dizzying combination, and it will be dizzying, was a good idea doesn’t seem to matter. This film is something that was clearly a blast to make. It features about half an hour of nudity, uses exaggerated racial stereotypes and had a lot of violence. The R- rated approach of the comedy is so  exaggerated that I laughed but didn’t know what to make of random music-video like montages of women’s rear ends. If you like lots of hard rock, explosions, nudity, and literally dozens of people be crushed by a constantly-electrocuting-himself  Jason Statham in every conceivable way you can think of, then this could appeal to you.   Push As a movie which approaches reality like a comic book would, Push is actually an enjoyable superhero movie(read: veiled X-Men, manga hyrbid). The film is an action fantasy in a world where certain people have the equivalent of mutant powers which appear in a narrow range of specific types and each of the main characters has a different power; they can movie things, read minds, see the future, make things invisible and the have power to convince people of anything. The film is most notable for a variety of kinetic action sequences with excellent computer effects. Set in China, a group of young and great-looking characters, each gifted in a different way, fight an elaborate aeries of battles with the psychics from American Government, who wants one of them  back very badly, and Chinese syndicates. Despite a certain cartoonish appeal, I could be tempted to label this movie as shallow but Its straightforward and filled with creative fight scenes. Not brilliant but for popcorn entertainment, you could do a lot worse. Wanted. Wanted is a little strange, with its shades of Fight Club in the beginning and the narration style, Angelina Jolie looking like a crack addict with collagen injections, and its wimpy-turned superheroic main character. To judge Wanted by its awkward script and exaggerated characters, though, would be missing the point. This is a movie were stuff blows up, cars spin through the air in slow motion and ambitiously crazy action scenes are the order of the day. A secret order of assasins with time-and-space controlling powers take in and train the new recruit, unfortunately there is more to the order than is let on. After several training montages, the recruit performs missions and discovers the horrible truth of the organization. I want to stress the quality of the action scenes here, director Timur Bekmambetov a Russian director who is the director of the entire Night Watch series, including the forthcoming Twilight Watch. The director has such a flair for ambitious action that it should be worth the price alone, even if it is a little dumb. The unborn In a movie pitched squarely at girls between the age of 16-22, about a college student haunted by visions of a dead twin with a shocking reason for the being’s visitation. The main character spends an inordinate amount of time taking showers and standing in front of mirrors. The movie is based strongly around the relationship between the lead girl and her best friend, and I thought they are both pretty dumb at first but then it turned out their friends were dumber. I expected to hear Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait” play anytime. The first part of the movie is filled with some painful dialogue about ghosts and about two dozen arbitrary shocks. The second and third parts, surprisingly turn up the action with a bizarre twist in which the ghost is actually a ancient demon trying to force it’s way into the world. So, even those who did’t relate to the vapid dialogue might be satisfied by some good j-horror inspired special effects and something of a big budget climax. Also, has Gary Oldman as a Rabbi. (in retrospect some of these are kind of mean) (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 25th, 2009
11:05 am	Henry and the Djinn Scene 1 of a play (or teleplay) that I was inspired to write after seeing a twilight zone with a similar plot. Id heard the genie story before and I'd always wondered, how come no one ever really thinks about their wishes in these things? I'm shooting for 4 scenes, something which would be between a half hour and forty minutes when done. ( Read more... ) </style></div> (Comment on this)