Four of Them

Have you ever watched a movie where a character just spoke to you? Might've been the lead, might've been an extra, but somewhere, you see a character and just think: Yo.

I introduce you to Julian:

Julian? Julian is the assistant to the writer whose wife was so infamously raped by Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his droogs. He showed up, and I knew I liked this guy. He just stands there when shit's happening, in his hipster glasses and his whatev-bra attitude.

He was played by David Prowse, the future Darth Vader (aka the only one that matters, thank you very fucking much, Christensen).

Enjoy.

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Have you ever reached a point, dear readers, where you've read so many damn reviews of a movie--usually a new movie, one you may or may not've seen opening weekend--that by the time you sit down to review it yourself, you find yourself at a loss for words? Not just because everything that can be said of it has been, chances are several times, and not just because you'll puke if you have think about the legacy of the director one more fucking time, but because you simply have nothing to say about it that you yourself would want to read?

-That question asked, if Martin Sheen was not mistaken one more time, I was gonna throw my shoe at the screen.

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It was in the $5 bin and I didn't buy it. What's wrong with me?

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I, gentle folk, am a twin. An identical twin, to be exact. Which means that, in The Womb, I was but a single fertilised egg that went rogue and split in two, thereby creating two seperate people who happen to have the same DNA. But if you asked the greater cultural area, we are Siamese in all but vital organs.

All my life, people have asked me if I've ever switched places with my sister to take a big test. The answer is no. Because this is fraud. Which is illegal. Also, it's stupid. Fucking stupid, in fact.

People always ask why we don't dress alike. Listen: most of the time, twins stop dressing alike the minute they develop personalities enough to pick their own clothes. Until then, parents are dressing you, and parents don't have time to be tailor dressing you. It's the same clothes with different colors. Most twins, by the time they're six, will be dressing differently.

People want to know if we're close. Sure we're close. As close as any other set of non-twin sisters are. There is no spiritual connection. There is no special twin language. There are no sympathy pains if one gets hurt.

People always ask if we're the exact opposites. One is a 'girly girl' and one is 'bookworm'. No. We have similar interests, and we have seperate interests. We do not inhabit the stereotypes sitcoms perpetuate.

People ask if we'd have a threesome. No. We're sisters. We're related. That's incest. What's wrong with you? That's fucking disgusting. Would you ever have sex with your brother? Fuck you. Go stand over there.

The summer Star Wars: Attack of the Clones came out, people threw shit at us at camp and screamed "The clones are coming! Get them!"

Thanks to such TV shows as Sister, Sister, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, various teen sex comedies, and the Olsen twins (who are fraternal, thanks very fucking much), this is the shit I've got to deal with every day. We're two seperate people who happen to have the same birthday and have reasonable doubt in any DNA-based murder trial. Just because TV tells you we're inseperable dopplegangers doesn't mean we are.

Thank you for your time.

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-Margot Kidder stars as a French-Canadian model haunted by her former Siamese twin. Jennifer Salt is a reporter who witnesses said twin commit a gruesome murder, and goes on a spree to prove it.

-Brian de Palma as he voyeuristic, sleaziest best. Clever and trippy and sometimes really trippy.

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Starring ME! and DANIELLE! (my sister).

ME!: Recently, me, my sister, and my Parental (not present) went to see The Trip, a six-part miniseries (edited into a 2 hours-or-something film). Here's me and sister dear discussing it. We, of course, have somewhat diverting opinions.

So, Danielle, what did you think of the movie?

Danielle: Fuck that shit.

Me: How long was it again?

Danielle: Really fucking long.

Me: I liked it. Except I'm trying to write a summary of it, what was that other guy's name?

Danielle: WHO GIVES A SHIT!?

Me: Anything else?

Danielle: These guys think they're conversations are more interesting then they are. Like, who gives a shit about 40-year-olds being 40?

Fuck you for making me sit through this shit. I could've been off getting high with people from my own age group. Fuck you, I don't give a shit about a bunch of old fucking old people eating food! Fuck that food! Fuck England! Fuck you!

Me: I quite liked that scene in the car where they were talking about that movie where they rise at dawn or whatever.

Danielle: *beaming* "We rise at dawn, but leave my sister out of it!" Yeah, that was the funniest part of the whole movie.

Me: It was kind of poignant--Danielle, how do you spell 'poignant'?

Danielle: Who gives a shit?

Me: You give a shit.

Danielle: I don't.

Me: You do.

Danielle: Oh my god.

Me: What did you think of the whole Steve Coogan-is-really-lonely thing?

Danielle: Steve Coogan is Hades and nothing else.

Me: Where's that from?

Danielle: Percy Jackson.

Me: Oh.

Danielle: Some of that food looked really disgusting. Like, who the fuck eats pigeon.

Me: Can you see the irony in you saying these guys think they're conversations are more interesting than they are, meanwhile, we're posting a whole discussion about it?

Danielle: I'm not the one writing it down.

Me: Hey, this the most substantial thing I've written in months.

Danielle: Cool story, bro. Tell it again.

Me: Hey, this the most substantial thing I've written in months.

Danielle: Remember when that was the funniest thing ever? Oh my good, mention American Gods, I'm so fucking exciting, they've already signed on for six seasons, oh my god.

Me: We're talking about the Trip, let's talk about the Trip.

Danielle: Oh my god, fuck the Trip, I fucking hate the Trip.

Me: I'm sorry.

Danielle: Shut up, I'm reading.

Me: *typing* Shut up, I'm reading...

*end*

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If I wanted my movie fucking dubbed, I'd fucking ask for a fucking dubbed version.

Anyone with any information on getting a non-fucking-dubbed copy of Memories of Murder that requires as little money spent as possible, because what am I, a fucking tree?, if you would be so kind as to say something along those lines, uh, go.

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-Why the fuck do Ingmar Bergman movies always make me hungry? Seriously, when it's over, I just want some soup and a sandwich.

-Anyways.

-Starring Victor Sjöström as Isak, an aging professer who must deal with his past, present, and impending death on the way to getting an Honorary degree from Lund University. Taking his discontented daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin), and along the way picking up a young love triangle on its way to Italy (Bibi Andersson, Folke Sundquist, and Björn Bjelfvenstam), the girl of whom reminds him a childhood love.

-One of those movies that actually makes you think about death and aging. And food.

-For fuck's sake, I'm in the middle of a philisophical breakthough and then someone breaks out the soup and I have to get some fucking food.

-The ending made me happy.

-Well, in general, everything made me happy. A lot of cute flashbacks and old-people-bickering.

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-A store clerk falls in love with a teenaged Mexican boy. Unbalanced relationships of age, language, sexuality, etc, ensue.

-This is an eighties movie. You can tell by the denim jackets and the skinny jeans the 'totally redical, bro' accent on lead Tim Streeter (think Adam Baldwin in Full Metal Jacket, or preferably, the bully from Karate Kid, but less made-up lingo).

-This is also Gus Van Sant's first movie. It's shot in 16mm black-and-white, making everything soft and and gooey and breakable, claustrophobically close-up, like Eraserhead or Repulsion. Of course you get my meaning. Why wouldn't you?

-The characters behave to baffle, only explained by Streeter's voiceover, which I am grateful for, as he says that he's perfectly aware of how creepy his behavior is, and acknowledges the stereotype of American white guys ('gringos', evidentally) thinking their entitled to have illegal immigrants because they're poor and hungry.

-Stil, there's not much nuance here, or ambitious filmmaking. A surprisingly straightforward adaption of a semiautobiographical book by Walt Curtis, with a tendency to dreamily caress Johnny (Doug Cooeyate).

-I'd say there was a love triangle, but it wasn't, really, because only one of the three seemed interested.

-Um. So there's that.

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I still watch Nickelodeon. I mean, there were some years between 12 and 15 when I wasn't allowed to watch it, by my own perceptions that proper teenagers don't watch cartoons (ironically perpetuated by them). And then, at 16, thanks to Hot Topic and the ever-rising geek/nostalgia culture, where mid-life crisis comes earlier and earlier (which makes me worry for my thirties, frankly).

Why do I mention this? Why, because of this:

What. The Fuck. Is this. ?.

This. This thing. This abomination. This ghastly, Lovecraftian bastard between corporate greed and creative exhaustion. This is the live action adaption of the beloved-by-me-and-everyone-the-fuck-else Nickelodeon cartoon series The Fairly Odd Parents. An epic saga of a boy named Timmy Turner (voiced by the ubiquitous--if you've been an American child of the late nineties-early 2000s, that is--Tara Strong) who, seeking refuge from his evil babysitter Vicky, and the idiot parents who keep hiring her, is granted a pair of fairy godparents, Cosmo and Wanda. It's the greatest television show of all time. Fact.

That whatever just above? It stars Drake Bell from the also-of-my-childhood Drake & Josh, All That, and the Amanda Show. It's apparently a mixture of live-action and CGI. It's about Timmy Turner, fearing losing Cosmo and Wanda after he becomes an adult, goes into arrested development, staying in fifth grade until the age of 23.

Fuck you, Nickelodeon.

Do you know what they did, guys? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY DID?

The studio gluttons went after Ben 10. I remained silent. The took to Avatar: The Last Airbender. I avoided it. Oh sure, the former was from Cartoon Network. Irrelevent.

But this is going too far.

Cartoons are cartoons for a reason, boys.

It's because they're too stupid for live-action.

Or too smart.

Or too brilliant.

Or too weird.

Or too something.

The point is, they're drawn because that's who they are. No amount of CGI and bad acting can fix that little detail, Mr. Executive.

I don't see you turning Spongebob into an actual anthropomorphic sponge, do I? Or is that next? Will he be played by Dylan and Cole Sprouse? Tell me.

Actually, don't. Don't do anything. Stop raping my childhood, you sons of bitches. Stop. It.

(file under Cartoons That Shaped My Childhood)

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I have no poster. I have no thoughts anymore.

Give Fassy the Bond movie and be done with it.

Beast and Mystique made Nightcrawler. Prove me wrong.

Poor black/lady people in this movie. Poor them.

January Jones...you're testing it.

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Naturally, as patrons of this here blogsicle, its your appointed duty to cheer me the fuck up. Or no delightful half-reviews for you.

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-A hitman with an identity crisis (John Cusack) goes to his high school reunion, ostentatiously for a job, mostly to reconnect with his old girlfriend, who he jilted on prom night (Minnie Driver). Meanwhile, he is pursued by hitmen of various creed and legal authority, including a rival who's trying to recruit him into an assassins' union (Dan Akyroyd).

-You know a movie's good when they let Dan Akroyd be funny again. And John Cusack isn't a puffy-faced sadsack. Or he is, but it's tolerable. Also, Alan Arkin. Yay, Alan Arkin.

-Why must they squander Minnie Driver's voice in favor of an American accent? She's Jane, guys. Let her be Jane.

-The dialogue is clever without being precious, the action's incorporated into, rather than rudely interrupting, dramatic/comedic scenes, the supporting cast all get their little moments of awesome, and they actually make the most out of a required eighties-only musical selection.

-There's a Basque hitman who I think was albino. And you know me. I'm a sucker for semi-obscure Eurasian cultures.

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Or not. At this point I'm fairly indifferent.

Oh, and hi 100th follower Leith.aikan (which I'm spelling from vague memory, so fuck off)! How are you? Good? Good! Have a nice day, guy.

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4 young Japanese children, aged 5-12, are abandoned by their mother in a small apartment, with little money, and only one of them can leave for food.

This is one of those movies that likes to go into the grim details of such a deteriorating situation. Where time is measured by how small their crayons get. Where a mother has the responsibility of a child and the narcissistic entitlement of an adult. Where a kid'll hit up the potential fathers of his half-sister for cash.

Go have a group cry with your friends and swear to Xenu you won't suck as hard as that fucking lady.

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Be jealous, motherfuckers. I've got something to look forward to at the end of finals and the suffocating heat that comes with finals (that is, finals being taken in a building with broken air conditioning that they're taking their damn sweet time fixing). HAZZAH!

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Oh, sure, any and all FYC ads I make are made of random pictures I've got in my files, and yeah, I don't update what some pussies would call 'reliably', but dammit, when I do show up, I bring smiles to each and every one of your stupid faces. Get used to it, guy.

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If you've seen Insidious, you know exactly why I won't be sleeping tonight.

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-Ana Torent stars as a little girl living in rural, early-Generalissimo Spain, with her pathological liar sister and her parents, seperated in age by at least twenty years, the mother consumed in a long-distance affair, the father with his beekeeping. When a travelling cinema comes to town with Frankenstein, she begins to search for a monster of her own to befriend.

-This makes it seem much more plot-oriented than it is. Really, this is just a rough outline of a much looser narrative, oozing with metaphors and pretty, pretty pictures, painting the landscape yellow, a tale of a girl's isolation, a country's degradation, etc, etc.

-Torent is kind of amazing. She can't be more than ten here, but she manages to convey loneliness, innocence, maturity, all that shit, with her eyes.

-It's hard to explain in a few paragraphs. To theorize on what director Victor Erice meant--this was made at the tail end of Franco's reign, when the dictatorship had relaxed, but the censors were still alive and well--would require a greater knowledge of post-war Spain that I have. You could say that was the key to every other theory. Is this really so small a story as a little girl looking for Frankenstein, or is she just an avatar for the country itself? Should I be taking anything at face value? The late appearence of a Republican soldier, wounded and taking solace in a shack frequented by Torent in her search, says no, I shouldn't. But I will, because the literal story is as sad and sweet and beautiful as the metaphorical one.

-You've got to watch it to get what I mean, I tell you. Bro. Go. Now. I'll wait.

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As you may or may not be aware, in-page comment boxes are being a new variety of asshole hereforeto unknown to thinking man.

Now you all get redirected to a page if you care to comment. No popups. Because I love you.

Aren't you happy?

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-Ang Lee: doing it better since the dawn of cinema. Bitch.

-Wire-fu so gracefully done--choreography by Yuen Woo-ping (who's officially my new hero, and is perhaps the chief argument for why the Oscars should have a choreophraphy category)--I want to describe it as Edgar Wright did for Scott Pilgrim: a musical where, instead of song, people break out into fights. There's even a love song, between Zhang Ziyi (where did she go? She was kind of big for awhile after Memoirs of a Geisha, and then Hero, but then she stopped showing up or something) and Chang Chen, as a spoiled secret-warrior governor's daughter and a desert bandit, respectively.

-Michelle Yeoh is so badass, it's ridiculous. I mean, here I was, only thinking of her as the flower lady from Sunshine, and meanwhile, here she is. I've gotta look up more of her movies.

-I can't stop thinking of Chow Yun-fat in the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, where his entire presence was so confusing I've grown a general weariness to any further appearences. Which is hardly fair, like, it's not his fault that movie sucked the air out of the room, and he's a good actor, and he's good in this, balancing the zen monk and the romantic hero thing perfectly, but it's like aversion therapy or something.

-Mandarin gives me a headache. I'm trying to learn it, but good zombie Xenu, this movie makes it sound terrifying. I could only keep track of the most basic and repeated patterns in dialogue, and that's not accounting for the actors' accents (Yun-fat, Yeoh, and I think Chen, none of them are native speakers), or any of the dated language, and shit, no wonder China's kicking out asses.

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Your site won't let me comment. As you well know, I am an unrivaled genius in the field of witty blog comments. So I leave my latest masterwork here, in response to this new post in which you announce you're leaving me for fucking ever. And also blogging. But me first. I'm more important.

You're leaving me!? With THESE PEOPLE? Dear god, sir, have you no decency?

I trust that any new site of yours, I will be the first person contacted for amazeballs contributions. On account of how awesome I am. As you'll recall.

The adult world sounds mad depressing.

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When I watchedAt first I was all

And then I was all

But not before I was all

I mean, the writing was so

The acting was kind of

But the Japan tracking shots were

and

But holy shit, if you turned off your brain, it was

Also

That means nothing. You just had to see it.

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It holds no variety of womankind on it's shoulders as it braves the cruel mountains of Patriarchy, but it's still a pretty good movie.

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I've been thinking. Ever since I was bestowed this motherfucker:


I wondered, why, oh why, did you kind folks choose me to be your Goddess of New Humor, over, say, everyone else who is funnier than me? Why?

I couldn't figure it out. I was baffled. BAFFLED. I mean, ruling out my taletn for witticisms that rivals Sir Oscar Wilde himself, my scathing satire on today's culture diseases, and my astounding discipline when it comes to providing you folks amusing and quality content every single day, I've got nothing.

But that will change. I will earn your love. I will make you laugh.

I'll make you laugh so hard, you'll fucking die. You'll still be laughing all the way out, and won't even realize you're dead until you're in heaven, comparing notes with the hundreds of other new arrivals. You'll reach the conclusion in unison, your halos fitted in silence by the demons Satan loaned God in anticipation of the sudden influx. And you'll look to your compatriots in deaditude, and you will nod to each other. You'll contently enter the pearly white gates. You'll regret nothing.

Oh, yeah. We're in evangelical country now. Be-fucking-ware, my loves.

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Because you fools actually nominated me for something!

Am I saying 'fuck yeah' too much?

Probably.

Then again:

*Google Images High Five*

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Oh shit. Oh shitsicle. Oh shitfucker.

I'm doom'd.

DOOM'D.

I've gotten through The Spirit of the Beehive and Branded to Kill, but I've still got to watch Knife in the Water, Harlan County USA, Ballad of a Soldier, and probably a shitoad of others to watch by the 26th. IT NEVER ENDS.

Meanwhile, reviews of Bridesmaids and a plea in favor of David Bowie/Marlene Dietrich flop Just a Gigolo, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and, uh, other things.

And homework. But that's backseat.

Enough whining. Carry on with your day.

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-A Japanese librarian in Bangkok (Asano Tadanobu) who constantly fantasizes about suicide and a Thai girl (Sinitta Boonyasak), very recently one sister down, retreat to her beachside bungalow for a couple days of moping before she leaves for Japan.

-Take the first half hour or so. This sequence of time-distorted misery in three acts, two parallel and one converging, jumping back and forth between Tadanobu's spiffy apartment/library, every book neatly stacked and labelled but for a collection of random volumes stacked under a noose in the hallway, the fridge only containing the six-packs his scummy yakuza brother offers while inviting himself for a couple months of hiding (he raped his boss's daughter, see), and Boonyasak's sister's place of employ, a bar where the girls wear schoolgirl uniforms, and Tadanobu's brother frequents. It's confusing and unnecessary, this device, as it never really shows any juxtaposing images of their lives or anything. Maybe a stylistic device, maybe to confuse, maybe to show their disconnected lives, maybe some bullshit like that, I don't know.

-It feels like it should be a spoiler, Tadanobu's (this isn't the character's name, I just don't feel like looking up the spelling) brother's assassination by his friend Taneka (or was it Tanada?), hired by wrong'd boss. I mean, it's the cause of the real plot, the kind of thing that would be taken care of in the first ten minutes of any other movie, but here it's at the tail-end of the forty minute opening, followed by Boonyasak's sister's death, then by title. And a scene of him cleaning up after killing the assassin (in self-defense more than revenge. He'll say later that he didn't particularly like his brother), wherein the camera molests a bloody knife, a bloody wall, some bloody books, lots of bloody things. It's all scenery, no talking.

-Right. I also liked how Pen-Ek Ratanaruang/editor/cinematographer/whoever was in charge of such things set it up to look like Boonyasak's sister was going to be the lead female. We first see her looking at a children's book, one shelf away from Tadanobu, who looks on from a gap. It's creepy without intention, the kind of meet-cute conventional movies would've run with.

-Sorry if this is terribly incoherent so far. But I'm a shit reviewer.

-This is a quiet movie. It's a chaste romance, between a two people who don't speak each others' language, but both speak English pretty well. The yakuza comes after them for different reasons, witness elimination and nasty-boyfriend-vengeance. It's lighthearted sometimes, like this scene where Boonyasak's house starts cleaning itself, encompassing the kind of trippiness this movie wants to exude.

-The actors are fine. Play their parts well. Nothing much to say about them. Poor dears.

-There's a thin line between what's real and what the characters are imagining. Hence: the end.

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