July 30, 2005
July 29, 2005
I finally lost control
I tore my tuck & roll
Upholstery
Where my baby sits close to me
Upholstery
That's supposed to be
What life is all about!
Land of the Dead tonight. My first Romero movie on the big screen. I've seen other zombie gore movies at the movies (28 Days Later, Dawn of the Remake, Shaun of the Dead, Gates of Hell, Return of the Living Dead, Night of the Demons 2, I'm not counting Army of Darkness though) but Romero is special.
Not special like our clients at IHC, but special nonetheless.
And I'll have a small army of friends with me. WOO HOO!
July 28, 2005
A question about people who talk loudly and constantly while sitting behind you during a movie
Is there a law against killing them?
July 27, 2005
Hulk smash puny comments!
Many of the loyal fans of additiverich.com blogs have noticed that comments are not working, and have emailed to express at how upset they are at not being able to bow down and worship at our alters.
Never fear, friends! As I type, mysterious sex dwarfs are in the additiverich.com basement, building a new comments machine out of broken bicycles.
Stay tuned...
July 26, 2005
From the "nobody cares (or even understands)" department
Holy crap! I just found out that Francesca Neri is the daughter of Rosalba Neri!
What's more, Francesca is even more gorgeous than Rosalba was at the same age!
NO WONDER Tim Lucas & Stephen Bissette went apeshit over Hannibal!
July 25, 2005
Disney bought Corman
From the "you don't even care" department:
Disney have apparently bought Roger Corman's entire movie library - that would be pretty much everything he's produced since the early '70s, every New World film, every Concorde film.
Supposedly they bought the lot just so they could get the rights to Death Race 2000 for Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, Aliens vs Predator, etc) to remake. Gah.
So I guess we can now expect to never ever (ever) see uncut DVDs of Corman's unrated movies, 'cause Disney refuses to release unrated movies. This is one of the reasons why Miramax wanted to get out of the Disney stranglehold - they wouldn't be able to go ahead with their upcoming uncut release of Kill Bill, for starters.
Additionally, we can look forward to another smart, funny & satirical '70s drive-in classic being remade by a buck-toothed fucking moron.
It wasn't me, honest!
Every time I walk past former mayor and current National Party candidate Mark Blumsky, the thought crosses my mind that I'd like to punch him. I've told more than a few people about this sinister urge over the years. More worryingly, a few times he's given me a look back which suggests that he knows what I'm thinking.
Then, this happens:
Blumsky beaten, bruised, bloody, boom!
So I just thought I'd clear my good name right here & now. It wasn't me.
Hey - I think my comments are broken!
Stare-y stare-y night
How do women deal with being stared at all the time?
If I see a woman and I think she's attractive, I'll often stare at her without even thinking about it. Sometimes if she notices me I'll get embarrassed and look away, but not always - sometimes I'll keep on lookin'. Only later will it occur to me "Gee, that was kinda rude."
Medical research* has indicated that most guys stare at women in similar ways (except for a small minority who stare at other guys instead).
So ladies, how d'ya deal with it?
Just one of those things I've always wondered about, but never asked anyone.
*meaning "I have a feeling somewhere between my groin and my gut that this is true"
Kitchen Sink on dvd
Hi all
Alison MacLean's superb horror/surreal short film Kitchen Sink is now available on local dvd, courtesy of Madman's Director's Suite series.
The dvd is for MacLean's debut feature, Crush. The music is by the JPS Experience, and they never released it on an album so that's another drawcard.
MacLean has been making tv in America for years, but her early NZ work is great and her American movie, Jesus' Son, got very good reviews. Most recently she co-directed the highly regarded documentary Persons Of Interest, about the detention of American Muslims in the wake of 9/11.
If you're really patient, maybe you can be bothered trying to watch Kitchen Sink at Atom Films.
Howl's Moving Castle
Miyazaki's latest is entertaining, but not one of his best. I'd put it somewhere around the level of Castle of Cagliostro and Kiki's Delivery Service, far below the giddy heights of Spirited Away or Laputa: Castle In the Sky.
The animation is wonderful and that main character, Sophie, is very well done. As is typical in Miyazaki, noone is truly evil and the cute sidekicks are genuinely endearing. The castle itself is a magnificent invention, organic/metallic-looking and constantly farting steam as it runs along on chicken legs.
The problem as I see it is with Howl himself, who is a very thinly-drawn and uninteresting character. But hey, this is still a very good cartoon and a pretty good movie.
July 23, 2005
Batman returns to the beginning
Just saw Batman Returns. Quick thoughts:
Good movie. Bad dialogue, but delivered so well it doesn't matter. Great acting from Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Christian Bale, Liam Neeson and Rutger Hauer, pretty much in that order. Action scenes were just OK, but the movie was good enough to get past that.
Katie Holmes still looks 12 years old, and thus makes an unconvincing assistant DA. Her acting was OK, she was just miscast. Cillian Murphy is great as The Scarecrow - he also looks much too young (he looks much younger here than he did in 28 Days Later) but he's got a Terrance Stamp-ish quality that compensates.
Tom Wilkinson is less than his usual brilliance as Carmine Falcone, and is hardly Italian-American enough.
The elderly woman sitting to my left seemed to enjoy it very much. A small child somewhere in the theatre asked loudly "When's Batman starting?" at about the halfway point.
The romantic interlude at the end was kinda bad, but seemed like sheer brilliance when compared to a similar scene at the end of Spider-man.
All in all: liked it.
All tomorrow's parties
Hi
If you know me well enough to already know where I live, you're invited to a party at my house on Saturday Jul 30 at approx. 9:30pm.
If you don't... email me.
July 22, 2005
weird news awakening
surreal morning report awakening today. maggie barry instead of sean plunket; new theme music; and two very odd major news items: labour accuse national of being funded & having policy written by a major american concern; and another terrorist bombing in london, this time fortunately a non-lethal attack.
so labour have come right out and accused national of being pawns of the devil. i wonder if it's really true? i wouldn't be surprised - the great santa has meddled in 3rd world affairs before, and i doubt washington views nz as being much different... but i also wouldn't put it past labour to just make that shit up.
do these most recent 4 tiny explosions in london seem a little suspicious to anyone else? what are the odds that all 4 would fuck up in the same way? pretty high i guess, if they were all made by the same loser... but i still can't help but wonder if it was really a terrorist attack, or just a sick prank.
luckily, i have rick james on my side.
| adopt your own virtual pet! |
July 21, 2005
Ha ha typical
My first day back on the blog and what happens? I get my first spam attack in months. Fuckin' rubberheads!
July 20, 2005
July 18, 2005
Paranoia Agent
Holy crap, I finally found an anime series I like!
Each episode of Paranoia Agent follows a different character. They will be going about their generally unhappy lives, when out of the blue a little creep on roller blades will bean them with a golden baseball bat. The show is a LOT more interesting than that description sounds. I've tried writing half a dozen different plot summarys, and they all come out like that.
It's all really obviously made by Satoshi Kon, the genius behind Perfect Blue, Millenium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers. Episode 3, starring the teacher with Multiple Personality Disorder, is a dead giveaway - it's very much in the style of Perfect Blue. This can only be a good thing, because PB was the first anime feature I liked.
As usual Kon is able to get us into his characters' heads, no matter how fucked-up they are. In fact the more fucked-up the head, the deeper we get into it.
I cannot guess where the show is going. This is a very good thing.
I've been watching it in Japanese, which can be tough going (a number of times I had to pause to be able to read all the subtitled dialogue AND subtitled signs) but is infinitely preferable to the English dub.
Just a question: when anime is dubbed into English, do they actually hire mentally deficient children to voice all the female characters? Or does it just sound that way?
July 15, 2005
Charlie & the cHOcolate Factory
Will this movie make people forget the fucking awful musical adaptation with Gene Wilder that made me so furious as a child for its corpse-raping of my then-favourite book?
Or could it be even worse?
The Tim Burton who made Beetlejuice would have been perfect for this movie. The Tim Burton who made Big Fish, I'm not so sure about.
Is Johnny Depp going the way of Nicolas Cage - has he said to himself "To buggery with being one of the most interesting and watchable actors in the world today, I want to be boring in stupid movies"?
Depp's only got one more Jerry Bruckheimer movie to go in order to equal Cage's total, a bad sign indeed...
July 14, 2005
The ultimate fucking blasphemy
Tony Scott is remaking The Warriors!
Argh!
And... Walter Hill is doing a George Lucas on the original version.
AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
Warriors, come out and play-ee-ay!
All of our sins have been forgiven!
God wants us all to have a good time again:
No mention of a Swayze, but hopefully he plays the uncle. Otherwise we should burn down any theatres which dare to play it!
July 13, 2005
Life-affirming song lyrics
Hip-hop: music of champions. Who could possibly be offended by these charming young men and their poetic musings?
Society, they wanna see me dead, I stick out
You see me in public, I'll probably pull my dick out
- "Stanley Kubrick", R.A. the Rugged Man
I hope God forgives me for my sins
It probably all depends
On if I keep on killing my girlfriends
- "Any Man", Eminem
This is how I'm servin' them, no need for medic attention
I just murder them... pussy, I just murder them
- "Chains", Masta Killa
And if you can’t fuck, that day, baby
Just lay back, and open your mouth
Cause I have never
Met a girl
That I love
In the whole wide world
- "Ain't No Fun (If the Homies Can't Have None)", Snoop Doggy Dogg
July 12, 2005
No More Drugs
No more speed. No more E. Not ever.
Saturday was fun, but not fun enough to make Sunday worth it.
July 11, 2005
I met her in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine
I've always wondered about that line from Darling Nikki. Did Prince mean that Nikki was masturbating with a magazine, or that he was, or that they met because they both were using the same magazine? Did he mean she/he/they were masturbating while looking at the magazine, or actually using the magazine to masturbate with?
None of these things occurred to me while watching the movie Purple Rain, because it was such a good movie. I honestly don't believe you can fully understand '80s pop culture and fashion without watching it. The music is brilliant, and goes hand in hand with the movie - some of it was recorded for specific scenes, some scenes were designed around the songs, etc.
The acting is amateurish, but that adds to the movie somehow, especially knowing that almost everyone is playing themselves. Morris Day & Jerome are hilarious, even when doing a corny re-write of Abbot & Costello's "Who's on first?" routine.
It's a movie starring & scored by the guy who was far & away the best thing that happened to pop music in the '80s, it's based on his own life, and it seems warts-and-all - Prince has no problem with showing himself in a VERY bad light on numerous occassions.
Not just highly recommended, it's essential. No opinion expressed about Prince is valid if it's delivered by someone who hasn't seen Purple Rain.
July 8, 2005
July 7, 2005
It just struck me
Goths are to town like bogans are to the Hutt.
You all probably knew this years ago. I am a little slow.
So what the fuss
Woo hoo! Thanks to Mike for telling me about Stevie Wonder's new single. IT RULES! It's not like Talking Book good, but it would have fit comfortably on Songs In the Key of Life (except that Prince & En Vogue would have been awful young to appear on it).
Go here & search for Stevie to hear it. (Assuming it's still there.) Or better yet, buy his new album!
Missy Elliott's new album is due out here on Monday. It's her first without Timbaland as her main producer, not sure if they've had a falling out or she just wants to go solo. The leaked track On And On (produced by fellow Virginians The Neptunes) was tres cool.
If you don't give a shit about Stevie or Missy, to buggery with you. Or sodomy, or gomorrahy, or whatever your particular vice is. (Felching? Squicking? Sploshing? Plate jobs? Used tissue eating? "What's your pleasure, Mr Cotton?")
More on protesting
On Siobhann's great blog, she says at one point in this particularly good post:
"Now, the local paper is full of “Anarchist Riot!” Headlines."
This highlights another problem with protests, which I've long thought and mentioned elsewhere, but never here. It's often said that a big part of the point of protests is to raise awareness. Media coverage is the biggest part of this awareness-raising obviously - it's all most people in the world will see of it.
Media portrayals of these sorts of protests seem to fall into the "irresponsible people are running amuck" column more far often than they fall into the "people are exercising their right to legitimate protest" column. When the media portrays protests in a negative light - and perhaps more importantly, when the protestors already know that the media are going to do so - doesn't that make the act of protesting counter-productive?
Yes Virginia, the media is all about selling advertising through sensationalism.
The road to Hell being paved with good intentions and all.
I actually do have positive suggestions and comments for a future post. I'm not 100% sourpuss. Some parts of me are quite sweet. (And some are spicy, and most of you will never get to taste them, nyah ha ha.)
July 5, 2005
Comment on Morgue's blog
If someone can find a way for me not to be banned from commenting on Morgue's blog approximately 90% of the time, I'll join in the mainstream of comments over there. Meanwhile, this goes HERE:
Cal writes:
"Sometimes the voluntary organisations set up to work in the community are just part of the structure, or a structure within the structure that allows poverty to exist."
I agree in the sense of, as re-parsed (by me):
"There's no need to do anything about poverty here, because noone's at serious risk of starving to death, thanks to things like homeless shelters and food kitchens."
And yet I also agree with Matt:
"It's kind of like the placebo of political action."
Which reminds me of my friend Brian saying that real political activism died with the advent of television; now we can yell at the government from the safety of our own homes and feel we've done our bit.
And if you think Brian was exaggerating of being silly, think of all the times when you've bitched to a friend/relative about an unfair situation at work, school, where ever. The friend might say "You should complain about it!" and you might say "Yeah I should," but deep down you know you won't because you've ALREADY complained about it (to the friend) and subsequently you feel better about it - not completely better, but better enough that it doesn't hurt. Or at least, it doesn't hurt so much that you're brave enough to complain.
Meanwhile, the unfair situation continues. And this is similar to how I feel about protests.
"Yup, I've done my bit for the third world by going to that protest. Now, to Rebel Sports to pick up those sweatshop sneakers!"
(Yes, I do believe that people use doing something good as an excuse to do something bad. Like when someone on a diet says "I can have a cream doughnut because I had low-fat milk and artificial sweeteners in my coffee!")
Tee hee
Pearce has put up a rather amusing parody of the National Party billboards over at the blog he started last July and never put anything on until today.
This is the good stuff
Over at Morgue's blog, he's been making some pretty interesting posts about the G8 protests.
They're (in chronological order) here, here, here, here, here and here.
Some of it reads a little propagandaist, but it's good stuff nonetheless and shit I'm fond of spouting a little propaganda myself.
July 4, 2005
The heat death of the universe
Here is a review of a show where Patti Smith and Alan Moore (among others) pay tribute to William S. Burroughs, courtesy of a friend I am very, very jealous of (because she was there).
July 1, 2005
Sex without commitment
Want it. Need it. Very very soon.
...
So, what are you doing this weekend, random blog visitor?
FYI
This man is fast becoming my hero. Judging from what he's written in the above link, he must have been on more drugs than I've taken in my entire life!
Player of the Year!
I've now seen The Mack. It was like finding a vital piece of a jigsaw, one which allows me to see more clearly what the eventual picture will be - the picture in this case being of hip-hop culture. Snoop Dogg owes his entire career to this movie, and particularly to Max Julien as Goldie, the main character. The entire genre owes much to this movie, its iconography, its characters, its language.
"Hey, I don't hafta take this! I'm a rich nigga! I thought you paid these pooh- butts off!" (a pimp objects to being frisked)
The Mack is not your typical blaxploitation flick. It's based on an original script written by pimp Robert J. Poole while he was in jail (supposedly on toilet paper), which was then re-written by Max Julien (who'd just written & produced Cleopatra Jones) and Richard Pryor. It was directed by a documentary filmmaker, and the supporting cast is largely made up of real pimps & hos.
The movie opens with a card saying it is "Dedicated at a Man, Frank D. Ward." Ward was a big pimp (the biggest of a family of big pimps) who put the movie under his protection, and appears as himself. Ward got the filmmakers access to the real pimping world, which is why they were able to include not only so many real players but also such unlikely-sounding real events as the Players' Picnic and the Players' Ball.
"You gonna have a wad of cash so big, it's gonna look like your pockets got the mumps." (advice from the Yoda of pimping.)
One of the major characters in the movie is Goldie's brother Olinga, played by Roger E. Moseley (later of Magnum PI). Olinga is a militant, never specified as a Black Panther but clearly inspired by people like Huey Newton. The Panthers were another profound influence on The Mack - Huey Newton wanted control of the movie as much as Frank Ward did.
Olinga provides balance in the movie, and gives the audience a character to root for who isn't a criminal. The Mack has - of course - been criticised for its main character's occupation, but as Julien points out, do people say that The Godfather should never have been made, and saying "Black people shouldn't make movies about pimps and drug dealers" is impying that black filmmakers aren't allowed to deal with the same subjects that white filmmakers get praise (and Oscars) for.
"You know the name of the game, your bitch chose me. We can handle this like some gentlemen or we can get into some gangsta shit." (Snoop borrowed this for the intro to Pump Pump.)
Another major influence on The Mack was Richard Pryor, who as well as co-writing the script without credit (only Robert Poole is credited in the movie) appears as Goldie's right-hand man, Slim. Pryor is barely in the movie, but when he does appear he is electrifying: funny, on the edge, and very obviously bombed out of his fucking mind on cocaine.
Pryor's role was supposed to be much larger, but he was so out of control that the producer sent him home. It's a shame because the movie would be even better with more of him.
"Listen to me and listen good. I don't give a shit what happened to you. You hear me? Now get yourself together, get back out there and git me my money!" (Goldie to his main ho, who was also his childhood sweetheart.)
As Goldie, Max Julien is... well... he's the Mack. He's got the looks, the cool drawl, the mean-eyed glare, the easy charm... He's very convincing. Snoop obviously studied him VERY closely. It's easy to see why his character has become so iconic, and so looked up to. The stone-cold quote above illustrates where Snoop's "I don't love you hos, I love the dough" attitude comes from.
Watching this movie in the midst of a Cassavetes binge was surprisingly appropriate. While the difference between this and a typical Cassavetes movie is immense, they share a semi-documentary style and improvisational feel. As with Cassavetes, the lack of structure in The Mack will no doubt drive some viewers up the wall.
But if you're interested in the culture - even just a little bit - it's a must-see. Especially on DVD, where it comes with an excellent documentary that I cribbed a lot of the above facts from.
"While Richard Pryor's appearance threatens to elevate The Mack above pure crap, the tired and incredibly offensive story merits virtually no attention."
- Christopher Null at filmcritic.com
Christopher Null isn't a bad film critic. He's actually quite personable if you challenge him on his views (which I've done on several occassions). However I think that he's totally missed the point of The Mack, and I think it's because he's never immersed himself in hip-hop culture. Even for a candy-arsed white boy like me, the importance of this movie is very obvious.
The soundtrack by Willie Hutch is excellent, by the way. It's not quite up there with Curtis Mayfield's flat-out fucking brilliant Superfly soundtrack, but on the other hand The Mack is a better movie than Superfly. So there.
Now I need DVDs of Black Caeser and Hell Up In Harlem. Those movies are the fucking shit.
PS - I am not a pimp.