Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings

Tax the Rich

 

Movie Monday - some this and that

1. Did you know that Tron Legacy (which was pretty unwatchable to me) made 57% of its gross outside the US and Avatar made 72% gross there? Which makes me want to start researching movie profits (an oxymoron if there ever was one because we all know movies never, ever, make a profit, and that has been well-researched.)

 

2. I know that I promised long, long ago and probably in a different galaxy (nod to Star Wars fans) to review Dogville and Manderly. I still have them recorded, ready to watch; 'cept I'm just not ready to invest the time. It'll happen though.

 

3. I just recorded The Ides of March. It was shown on my movie package last Saturday but I had no "sit down" time then. I did get to see the first five minutes and it looks verbally slick. Perhaps a typical "dark" Clooney movie. I still vote for Michael Clayton as my favorite Clooney movie. I like him best as the dark, slightly/very amoral protagonist.  He has a verbal banter which fits the modern hero's angst.

 

4. Should distributors (or whomever) be able to cut movies for their TV run? I watched A History of Violence on the Fox Movie Channel and I think the violence was intact but not the sex. Getting to the sex (or lack of it in a minute), I love the melancholy music in AHOV since it's the perfect backdrop for this provocative, classic tale. And, I just looked it up, Howard Shore composed the music. Way to go, Howard!

 

But back to the sex. There are two sex scenes in the movie and both are needed because they are thematically not voyeuristically driven. If you know the movie, the cut in the second sex scene is laughable and deadens the message it's meant to convey.

 

Which leads me to to wonder: what's the purpose of cutting and then showing theme-driven movies? OK, you could cut one, two, even three fight scenes from some block-buster CGI favorites and no one would blink, but when a movie is trying to say something worthwhile to an audience, is it fair to streamline the "naughty bits" (and it always seems to be those bits which are streamlined since violent scenes always seem to dodge the cutting scissors)? What's the purpose of streamlining an allegory to the point where it only becomes a piece of gossip? (Did you hear about the shoot out at Stall's diner?)

 

4. If the Chinese are going to lead the world's economy in a few years, they already have their hand in becoming the masters of over-the-top movie CGI. I watched a small part of the Chinese Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame yesterday before I ran screaming from the room. Now Judge Dee is a classic detective story character based on a real Chinese judge from the 600s. Dutch Robert van Gulik used him as his detective in a successful series of books and this movie is a horrible spin-off from all this. Horrible because within minutes, it succumbs into massive  CGI effects. You get to see unbelievable tall structures, millions of extras, spontaneous human combustion..... the list goes on. JHC! Judge Dee solved crimes! He was presented in some very interesting settings; every thing was not rose-colored in the stories but over-the-top CGI possibilities, no way. But this movie can't seem to let go of CGI. Even after the opening fireworks when empress decides she must summon Dee from him imprisonment to help her, our next scene is not she and Dee consulting. Nooooooo, it's CGI at the prison where white-clad women warriors fight with black-clad assassins and a bearded, disheveled prisoner shows his kung-fu chops. Could this be Dee? I didn't stay around to find out.

 

5. HD Net, which is an HD movie channel I get, is showing Robert Pattinson's Bel Ami next Wednesday. It does this once and a while; show movies before theatrical release. This used to be reserved to "movie dogs" but the world of movie distribution has changed and some of those shown are not that bad. (I wish they would make a movie of de Maupassant's Ball of Fat. It's a short story but with a lot of "meat.")

 

6. And finally, again from HD Net, a short review of Emergo/Apartment 143. It's a The Blair Witch Project heir meaning it's another one of those fake documentary films that hinge on the peg that their amateurishness should be overlooked because, hey, we're not real film makers we're real people like you.

 

Emergo is Spanish, short (80 minutes), and one step above average in its genre because it has two strong dialogue scenes mixed in with a lot of paranormal activity hunting in an apartment using all the do-dads parapsychologists need. (Just how much does all that equipment cost?) Unbelievably, it got an R rating!

Leave your rational thinking behind when you watch Emergo but it won't be the worst 80 minutes you spend at the movies. Oh, and don't turn it off too fast at the end because you know this type of movie must have that final everybody-knows-it's-coming coda.