Guaranteed to be the only film you'll see where the (cloned) fonger of George W Bush is a major character!
Sachiko Hanai is a call girl specializing in teacher fetishes. In the course of killing time between clients, she gets innocent-bystandered in a shootout at a cafe. The bullet lodges in her forebrain, unlocking (in defiance of all known neuroscience) her latent potential and turning her into a supergenius.
The finger of George Bush penetrates her, er, consciousness and delivers a message: she must track down a stolen Doomsday Device before the bad guys do.
Not surprisingly, Sachiko Hanai proved itself well-suited to repeat viewings.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
Hatsujô kateikyôshi: sensei no aijiru (IMDB)
Wince : [****_]
Flinch : [**___]
Retch : [*____]
Gape : [****_]
Beerequisite : [*****]
Pornability : [*****]
Obscurity : [**___]
Explicability : [*____]
Most enduring exclamation: Noam Chomsky!
Unexpected sexual advice: The Bush Technique
Showing posts with label conspiracy theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conspiracy theory. Show all posts
Monday, February 11, 2008
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Blue Sunshine
If you jerk, it won't work!
This attempt at a conspiracy film kicks off with a guy going crazy at a party when his wig gets torn off and people realize he's bald. He races off into the woods, then returns and stuffs a few girls in the fireplace.
One of the other guests gets blamed for all of this, and while on the lamb he discovers a startling trend: people are losing their hair, getting headaches, and snapping under mild stress to go on murderous rampages. It all gets traced back to a seedy dealer-turned-politician and a batch of bad acid passed around Stanford in the 60s.
This works fairly well as a suspense movie, though the camp value is pretty high. The inept protagonist (that's right, the best way to use a gun on an enraged bodyguard is to throw yourself on him bodily!) and his Ballantine-swilling girlfriend pretty much sleepwalk through the film, but the actors and events around them provide some entertainment.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
Blue Sunshine (IMDB)
Wince : [***__]
Flinch : [*____]
Retch : [_____]
Gape : [***__]
Beerequisite : [**___]
Pornability : [_____]
Obscurity : [***__]
Explicability : [***__]
This attempt at a conspiracy film kicks off with a guy going crazy at a party when his wig gets torn off and people realize he's bald. He races off into the woods, then returns and stuffs a few girls in the fireplace.
One of the other guests gets blamed for all of this, and while on the lamb he discovers a startling trend: people are losing their hair, getting headaches, and snapping under mild stress to go on murderous rampages. It all gets traced back to a seedy dealer-turned-politician and a batch of bad acid passed around Stanford in the 60s.
This works fairly well as a suspense movie, though the camp value is pretty high. The inept protagonist (that's right, the best way to use a gun on an enraged bodyguard is to throw yourself on him bodily!) and his Ballantine-swilling girlfriend pretty much sleepwalk through the film, but the actors and events around them provide some entertainment.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
Blue Sunshine (IMDB)
Wince : [***__]
Flinch : [*____]
Retch : [_____]
Gape : [***__]
Beerequisite : [**___]
Pornability : [_____]
Obscurity : [***__]
Explicability : [***__]
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
The Call of Cthulhu
I've been a big H. P. Lovecraft fan for a long time. I spent years scouring used bookstores for each and every book, only to feel foolish later when his work was rediscovered and mass-produced. Much like Phillip K. Dick. It's been awhile since I've read any Lovecraft -- I started with his work in high school, and there's only some many times one can re-read the entire canon -- but I'll always have a high regard for his tales of unearthly horror, often in near reach, that can shatter men's minds.
"The Call of Cthulhu" is not my favorite of his stories, and is probably overrated, but certainly lends itself well to cinematic adaptation. This half-length (45 min) black-and-white silent feature (filmed in MythoScope!) does not disappoint: the pacing, the props, the silent-era acting style all contribute to a unique, creepy-paranoid feel.
The story is simple and true to formula: man meets elder god, man loses mind, another man meets elder god. Everything is predictable, which is expected as the film is an adapatation rather than a new work inspired by the original mythos. I was at first disappointed with the cyclopean city set, expecting the 'weird geometry' to be more indicative of 4-plus dimensional space, but when guys started be swallowed up by corners I was greatly impressed.
The only disappointment in this movie is Cthulhu himself. While the directors rightly decided to use obvious stop-motion effects, they should have made his form much more difficult to discern, more shadowy. A better design artist and a better animator would bat the movie's climax right out of the bark.
A very good film, much better than any other Lovecraft adaptation and inspiration out there (with the possible exception of Cast a Deadly Spell). Let's hope the team behind this decide to team up with Giger and Svankmajer to do a full-length, modern-style Lovecraft movie that drives our brains screeching and keening right back down the stem to hide shivering at the base of our spines. Dare to dream, eh?
* * * R A T I N G * * *
The Call of Cthulhu (IMDB)
Wince : [***__] (** for the cultists, * for Cthulhu)
Flinch : [*____]
Retch : [*____]
Gape : [**___]
Beerequisite : [*____]
Pornability : [_____]
Obscurity : [**___]
Explicability : [****_]
Scene I'd watch on endless loop: The crew exploring and fleeing Kong^H^H^H^H Cthulhu Island.
Memories I want to erase: The boat hitting Cthulhu's stomach.
What I would do different: Replace the Cthulhu model with Little Otik and bad lighting.
"The Call of Cthulhu" is not my favorite of his stories, and is probably overrated, but certainly lends itself well to cinematic adaptation. This half-length (45 min) black-and-white silent feature (filmed in MythoScope!) does not disappoint: the pacing, the props, the silent-era acting style all contribute to a unique, creepy-paranoid feel.
The story is simple and true to formula: man meets elder god, man loses mind, another man meets elder god. Everything is predictable, which is expected as the film is an adapatation rather than a new work inspired by the original mythos. I was at first disappointed with the cyclopean city set, expecting the 'weird geometry' to be more indicative of 4-plus dimensional space, but when guys started be swallowed up by corners I was greatly impressed.
The only disappointment in this movie is Cthulhu himself. While the directors rightly decided to use obvious stop-motion effects, they should have made his form much more difficult to discern, more shadowy. A better design artist and a better animator would bat the movie's climax right out of the bark.
A very good film, much better than any other Lovecraft adaptation and inspiration out there (with the possible exception of Cast a Deadly Spell). Let's hope the team behind this decide to team up with Giger and Svankmajer to do a full-length, modern-style Lovecraft movie that drives our brains screeching and keening right back down the stem to hide shivering at the base of our spines. Dare to dream, eh?
* * * R A T I N G * * *
The Call of Cthulhu (IMDB)
Wince : [***__] (** for the cultists, * for Cthulhu)
Flinch : [*____]
Retch : [*____]
Gape : [**___]
Beerequisite : [*____]
Pornability : [_____]
Obscurity : [**___]
Explicability : [****_]
Scene I'd watch on endless loop: The crew exploring and fleeing Kong^H^H^H^H Cthulhu Island.
Memories I want to erase: The boat hitting Cthulhu's stomach.
What I would do different: Replace the Cthulhu model with Little Otik and bad lighting.
Monday, August 20, 2007
The Atrocity Exhibition
This is a novel (?) that I've wanted to read for a long time, ever since RE/Search reproduced it along with Octave Mirbeau's The Torture Garden in a half-hearted attempt to re-release banned books. The RE/Search editions had pictures, so I had to find proper editions of these: the Mirbeau at a used bookstore somewhere between the Tenderloin and North Beach, the Ballard at a mall (!) bookstore in England. Guess they've stopped banning it.
I was a bit disappointed. The narrative is nonlinear and fragmented, but in some sense having direction as each segment helps illuminate those that follow. Ballard recommends reading the segments at random, as that is how he wrote it. This is known, in the reading trade, as a bad sign. Still, one of my favorite Ballard shorts, "The Assassination of President Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Race", was included in this book, so I gave it a go.
Essentially, the protagonist has many selves (one in each chapter) who all try to use collections of seemingly unrelated objects (generally, but not exclusively, photos, artwork, and fragments of text) as a catalyst for changing (and understanding) reality. It's hard to get more specific without rewriting the entire book; suffice to say that many of the obsessions found in Ballard's later work are here (Crash and Super-Cannes probably being the most obvious), as well as a few mid-sixties fixations (pop art, the space race, the JFK assassination to name a few).
As experimental fiction, I cannot judge it. As a novel, or as a collection of short stories, it is outshone by virtually everything else Ballard has written. As a window into the mind of the author, however, it is fantastic -- especially the new edition with Ballard's endnotes.
I was a bit disappointed. The narrative is nonlinear and fragmented, but in some sense having direction as each segment helps illuminate those that follow. Ballard recommends reading the segments at random, as that is how he wrote it. This is known, in the reading trade, as a bad sign. Still, one of my favorite Ballard shorts, "The Assassination of President Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Race", was included in this book, so I gave it a go.
Essentially, the protagonist has many selves (one in each chapter) who all try to use collections of seemingly unrelated objects (generally, but not exclusively, photos, artwork, and fragments of text) as a catalyst for changing (and understanding) reality. It's hard to get more specific without rewriting the entire book; suffice to say that many of the obsessions found in Ballard's later work are here (Crash and Super-Cannes probably being the most obvious), as well as a few mid-sixties fixations (pop art, the space race, the JFK assassination to name a few).
As experimental fiction, I cannot judge it. As a novel, or as a collection of short stories, it is outshone by virtually everything else Ballard has written. As a window into the mind of the author, however, it is fantastic -- especially the new edition with Ballard's endnotes.
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