Brokeback Mountain

it's utterly impossible for european ears to judge whether these actors are getting their coached american accents right (esp. if one of the accents is texanian). so while i thought this was an ok movie, solving the accent question kept me pretty preoccupied during the screening.

by all means, i'm not the target audience: "Brokeback Mountain" has been banned from selected theatres in utah, hooray!! (gay? cowboy? movie? first the marlboro man gets cancer, and now he's gone gay as well!! omg.). some intensity over there.

and here? i recently discovered that there actually ARE people in MY environment that suffer from homophobia (ok thats comes down to one sort of men having problems with another sort of men). honestly (have to be careful here), i had to laugh, couldn't take it seriously cause it's such a past issue; even for my mother it took less than 15 years to lose prejudice and to grow up.

Jarhead

now here comes a blockbuster taking on the gulf war, telling its story from the perspective of US marine swofford who's really been there. i don't know a thing about mr swofford as i haven't read his book, but the way jake gyllenhaal as swoff is being introduced makes it clear: he's the good one. he's not as dumb as the rest of his unit (reading albert camus on the toilet); he's good at heart (loves his girl but oh she treats him so bad); and, ah yes, he's the best sniper around as well, bound to kill, if only his superiors would let him.

even when jake's stationed in the desert, going slightly mad, he doesn't lose his beauty. while a voiceover tells us about the obstruse acts of occupational therapy the marines go through in order to fight the boredom of not having to kill somebody yet (well, you name it, it's not a very inventive list, every second point being masturbation), the camera holds still on jake's face who shines like little innocent jesus in the dark.

the dilemma of this movie: it's an interesting portray of explicitly unpolitical marine soldiers. it has failed to sort out it's own politics, though.

i wasn't a big fan of michal moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11", but it certainly transported unique knowledge about soldier/army psychology in the context of the real gulf war. that's not jarhead's objective at all. it is fast-paced storytelling (fast-paced in the sense of history: the war has been 15 years ago, hey let's make a movie!). it uses the gulf war as a wrap for an action buddy movie.

it's not even an anti-war movie. it's absolutely perplexing that the strongest anti-war moment of the film emerges from the scene where the soldiers, not knowing yet they'll go to war, are being screened a copy of "Apocalypse Now" (the helicopter scene, in particular). the audience fiercely celebrates every comrad, every military aesthetic on screen. the soundtrack of francis ford coppola takes over (the only decidedly strong sound element in the movie, btw). at climax, the screening breaks off, and via loudspeakers, the soldiers are being sent to war. 'go on and get some, soldiers!' frenetic rejoicing.

some links:
the most critical Guardian article on this movie... there are more positive ones, but the authors don't seem to be sure why to like it, so basically they tell back the whole movie to us... the Timeout one...

Asia Extreme

The hills are alive with the sound of screaming! - Miike Takashis's "The Happiness of the Katakuris". Very funny, very surreal, almost a family comedy. His "Ichi the Killer"? Great. And: I had to take refuge in aestheticism ('just how did they do this to make the pain look that real'). My flatmates moaned and left or sat it through.

Movies McLuhan dreamt of

This little gem (starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue) just flickered across our crappy screen, making us laugh a lot. Entertainment would have been worse, had the telly been better... (remember all that McLuhan? Hot medium, cold medium, the gaps you have to fill in get you engaged...)

Psychotronic Cinema

Picked up a flyer yesterday from the ICA, in December they'll be having six
'psychotronic' films. This looks great, hope I'll make at least one of them...

(Tony Oursler? Hello?)

Is everything illuminated?

No! They took this marvellous gorgeous lovely intelligent and challenging book and gave it to a cardboard cutout kid to act out.

Talking to Customers

From blogspeak to corporate speak: "No-No-No-I-won't-say-'tall'!" That's me in a Starbucks, ordering small coffee. Quite pathetic. I've become obsessed with them - I am trying to find at least ONE employee who won't correct my verbal mis-order. I already feel like I was employed with Starbucks as well - like an internal quality revisor, I am placing my order, waiting: will he/she perform, or not?

Maybe this guy has found me the one: "Starbucking is a documentary film now in production. Follow the bizarre story of Winter, a man who has dedicated his life to visiting every Starbucks in the world."

Illegal image

Nice: my camera didn't like the bottom line (line - dot - space - dot were a screened 'Thank you'...)

German Film Festival in London...

... and there's really only 1 nazi film! 25th Nov to 1st Dec 2005. Here's the program

Going to the Movies to watch TV

I really believe TV can be a social experience. Really, really, really. It's just that I can't take it. You've got these nice minutes with your flatmates, have a laugh, share some food. Then the conversation gets gaps, comes to a halt. Something on screen is drawing everybody's eyes, shutting everybody's mouths, and usually that's a commercial. I'm running out to get some bad entertainment.

I really like bad entertainment. Bad, as in: bad mainstream movies. Diesel, Schwarzenegger, Mortensen, no problem. I will pay for them, at the Blockbuster, at the Cinema. The last Cronenberg, "A History of Violence", was the most perfect TV-at-the-Movies experience ever.

Designer Kino

My first Designer Kino happened in Zürich. One of the Tomatoes gave a talk, hadn't prepared, had to reboot the system. Ping. Pong? (sorry, cheap bootleg, startup sound, then Mac Os9). An auditorium full of students sat mesmerized, watching smiley boy coming up. We watched John mousing til he got the right content off the right ZIP disk. Nobody chattet. Nobody laughed. But it was absurd!

Last week, a student was playing GTA to entertain us while waiting for the latecomers to arrive (London Metropolitan). Designer Kino had changed it's focus from staring to discussing 'what's the PC version for shoot him'? At least, people were chatting and laughing!