Wednesday Double Feature – British Dark Humor

by on March 2, 2016 at 8:52 am
Posted In: Test

In an attempt to clean my palette from last weeks material I found myself leaning towards comedy but since the I was feeling just a little snarky I went for the dark cynical kind. Especially the kind of dark humor that the creators of Great Brittain excels in.

Four_Lions_posterThe first of the films on my list, Four Lions, is the story of four ordinary blokes form Sheffield, South Yorkshire who just happens to be Jihadi terrorists. Fortunately they’re not very good at this and hilarity ensues. This is a hard film to like. It’s cynical view of the world where the only reason our “heroes” are even remotely successful is because the police are nearly as incompetent as they are. Which frequently leads to terrible things including a hostage situation where they can’t distinguish the hostage from the terrorist and shoot him, a police sniper being unable to distinguish a bear costume from a Wookie costume (an important distinction when you have both in your sight.) and mistaking the conservative  more devout brother of one of the terrorists for a terrorist simply because he looks the part of a cliche muslim, and shipping him… somewhere, (Omar, the lead terrorist wears western clothes.) 

Despite this it’s not completely hopeless. Despite the protagonists going on about western decadence, nearly everybody treats them well but in the end the level of their incompetence is deadly killing all of them, three bystanders and a sheep.

poster-filthThe next on my list, Filth, is based on the book of the same name by Irvine Welsh the author  of Transporting staring James McAvoy as Bruce Robertson, worst Detective in all of Edinburgh. Robertson is a truly terrible person who extorts, drinks and maturbates as he tries to win a promotion to Detective Inspector as his life falls apart around him. I know it’s all acting but it’s still hard to believe that this is the same guy who plays the young  Charles Xavier and Arthur Christmas.

This was a hard film to watch with it’s dark uncompromising look at the human condition I’m sure there was plenty of things in it that I missed as I watched as it goes back and fourth between reality and Robertson’s hallucinations and while darkly humorous I’m not sure if I would call it a comedy. Still if you have the endurance it’s worth a shot.

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Last Night’s Oscars

by on February 29, 2016 at 12:40 pm
Posted In: Test

OscarcartoonWell I watched last night’s Oscars expecting nothing and enjoying despite everything. I generally don’t pay much attention to the Academy Awards that much generally finding them little more than an aging old boys club that publicly pats itself on the back once a year. But at the same time I frequently find the business of Hollywood almost as fascinating as the art of Hollywood so I find it interesting to guess what little political choices that were being made.

Unfortunately this frequently makes me question the choices that are made throughout. Was Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance in The Revenant that good, or was it a case of “Oh Leo’s been in the industry for over twenty years and while we didn’t give the little whippersnapper anything for some great performances we think he’s due now” or “Sure we gave Ennrio Morricone a lifetime achievement award a few years ago but wouldn’t it be great to give him a real one?” (please forgive my cynicism for that last one, I thought Morricone’s win was the best one of the night)

Which really makes the whole controversy about the all white nominations confuse me all the more. It wasn’t a matter of the racism to me, it was the utter cluelessness. (which to a certain extant almost makes it feel worse than that they did it on purpose.) I have images of certain higher ups staring blankly at the reporters when the question was brought up and say “but Twelve Years a Slave swept the boards two years ago we’re paid up.” It would have been easy to play the usual political tricks of nominating individuals only to not vote for them. The Academy has played these tricks in order to look relevant before.

Still it was fun to watch Chris Rock rip them a new one in his opening monologue and watch everybody try to do damage control for the rest of the night.

As for the actual awards it was really cool to see Mad Max: Fury Road sweep all of the technical awards, though it was a bummer that George Miller did’t win best director (regrettably I’ve found in the continuing quest for relevance Genre films never win), or,  for similar reasons,Inside Out was only nominated for best animated feature and original script. I regret that in my  normal habit of focusing on said genre films I hadn’t even heard of most of the nominees. Though now I might consider seeing The Revenant in the theater.

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Watercolors – Paul & Nancy

by on February 25, 2016 at 1:15 pm
Posted In: Art, Rhapsodies

As a way of getting my watercolor chops back in order, as well as visualizing more realistic versions of the cast, I’ve started doing watercolors of everybody.

To start with here’s Paul & Nancy.

paulnancyWC20160224

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Wednesday Double Feature – Bad Space Operas

by on February 24, 2016 at 9:05 am
Posted In: Test

I finally got around to watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It was about what I expected, stupid and fun at the same time with some good special effects. In short I found myself comparing it to a nice big piece of chocolate cake, very tasty but in the end nothing but carbs.

Nevertheless this inspired me to look into the glut of space operas that tried to cash in on the success of the first Star Wars film.

Space Opera has always been my favorite subgenera of science fiction. Though these films definitely  put a crimp on that.

450px-Galaxina_ver1The first film of my selection, Galaxina, was also the worst. It’s the story of a  the incompetent and useless crew of of the Intergalactic Space Police cruiser Infinity  and the ship’s android, Galaxian. They are sent to a prison planet to retrieve a priceless gem… and other than a few jokes about ugly alien prostates, restaurants with humans on the menu and Harley worshiping barbarians that’s about it.

Galaxina claims to be a parody but anything I found humorous were definitely not intentional and what was apparently intended to be funny were just tired overused tropes. As for the rest of it, The production values and acting was so bad I kept being surprised there wasn’t any gratuitous sex.

BattlebeyondthestarsMy second film,, Battle Beyond The Stars, I had nostalgic memories of the half hour I’d seen in my childhood. This Roger Corman production recreates the Magnificent Seven in space making it different and  much more interesting than most of the boiler plate Star Wars ripoffs that came out that year. (Faint praise I know, but it made watching it bearable.) 

For the most part the film did a good job in the first act of the film gathering all of the mercenaries together to protect the village planet of Akir from mutant invaders, with special mention given to George Peppard as the Space Cowboy and Robert Vaughn almost literally repeating his performance as Lee from Magnificent Seven but after that it falls flat, with the battle for the planet in the second act falling flat.

But all in all the effects were fairly good for it’s budget and it had charm and I suppose my choices could have been worse… I could have picked the Turkish version of Star Wars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiiRLde9WSk

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Tuesday Rhapsodies – Haydn Wood

by on February 23, 2016 at 7:54 am
Posted In: Test

I think I just tapped into a new source for this series in Haydn Wood! This guy wrote nearly as many Rhapsodies as Liszt (okay, I admit that was hyperbole, half, but that’s still plenty to work with!)

So let us start with the Seafarer… A Nautical Rhapsody

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