seretogis

Sometimes a film springs up which tries too hard to become a cult hit. Otto is one of those. Perhaps it is simply the director Bruce LeBruce’s style, but simply mixing some hardcore gay porn with a zombie chewing on roadkill and making fun of a pretentious indie film maker doesn’t mean that you, yourself, are not a pretentious indie film maker.

Otto was certainly interesting, though the ideal audience is really an incredibly narrow demographic. Count yourself out if you aren’t a fan of all of the following: gore, penises, lame dramatic moments, penises in the mouths/asses/chest-wounds of other men, poultry butchering, overdone-yet-still-half-baked ironic jokes, poor cinematography and audio work.

Luckily for me, I still like a few of those things.

I rate Otto; or, Up With Dead People 3 out of 5 homosexual zombie orgies.

The first movie of this weekend was Saturn in Opposition, an Italian issue-film disguised as a sappy bisexual soap-opera. The characters, even the ones you’re supposed to dislike, are likable enough and pretty well acted. The main event — the young protagonist in a coma — is straight out of the soaps, as are the endless supply of pretty people.

Rating withheld because the theatre was evacuated 5-10 mins before the end, likely because of some retard pulling the fire alarm. Honestly though, I probably would have given it something in the mid-range. I’m not going to buy it on DVD or pay another $8 to see the end.

I cheated. I read The Stranger’s review before I saw this film and went into it with low expectations. Thankfully, Annie Wagner apparently doesn’t know her ass from her elbow. In the review she openly displays her ignorance of practically everything the movie is about, and clearly invested no effort in understanding it.

Ben X is a Belgian film about an autistic boy who is tormented by a majority of the below-average students he is forced into sharing a school with, and works through problems with the help of a MMORPG. Throughout the film there are cuts to and blending of that RPG world with the real-life world which are very helpful in portraying what Ben is thinking and how he is attempting to come to terms with what is occurring.

One thing that is easy [for me] to take away from the film is that public schools are ill equipped to deal with (and I’d argue simply incapable of dealing with) anything but the lowest common denominator. The instructors are powerless, the administration inept, and most of the students ruthless in their sadistic desire to destroy anyone different than they.

While I wouldn’t say I “enjoyed” Ben X, it was definitely worth the price of admission and I’d recommend it to anyone else who is subtitle-tolerant, would appreciate the MMORPG references, and is patient enough to watch yet another film about someone with a handicap.

I rate Ben X 4 out of 5 rare items.

Andrew Sullivan defends something stupid:

That tells me that counting Michigan and Florida would disenfranchise a large number of voters who did not vote, because there was no campaigning and/or the voters there thought the contest would not count and so did not bother to vote.

So, voter disenfranchising now extends to voters who don’t vote? In that case, what about the 50% of the vote-able populace who don’t vote for Republican or Democrat candidates? Surely THEY are being disenfranchised as well, right?

I’ll humor this line of thinking with a counter-argument.

If voters being disenfranchised really mattered to Mr. Sullivan, I think he would examine this beyond the OMG-OBAMA-IS-TEH-WINNAR context. Clearly there is a massive percentage of people who do not find Democrat or Republican candidates to be worth the time to vote for them. Why is this, and what can be done to change the trend?

When Jesse Ventura ran for Governor of Minnesota he was a clear underdog but awakened a lot of non-voters who voted him into office. Unfortunately he was a failure of a Governor for a variety of reasons not related to his party affiliation, but the point was proven that there is a serious possibility of bringing “new” voters to the table by offering a clear and different third choice.

No 2008 Democrat or Republican candidate entertains more than roughly 25% of the voteable populace. Starry-eyed singing of “yes we can” and talk of “bringing people together” makes for a good campaign ad, in reality that 75% opposition is not going to budge.

This morning I saw Nocturna, which was alright. It’s a fairly typical euro-kiddy animated movie, with a little freaky City-of-Lost-Children stuff thrown in. I’m not sure how a child would react to it, but the unfortunate lack of androids and jet-powered robot-mech-suits was a little disappointing to me.

I rate Nocturna 3 out of 5 sleepy kitties.

Tonight I also saw Vexille which was great. It is a Japanese(?) anime sci-fi film which manages to incorporate some major aspects of The Matrix, Dune, and Bladerunner into a fresh new film-thingie. The animation looks pretty, too.

I have only one complaint in general, which is that there are a couple of snicker-inducing moments which kind of break the mood. An unfortunate side-effect of less-than-superb editing I suppose (along with some subpar translation with the subtitles which can be excused.) All in all, it’s great and definitely worth a watch. I even bought the DVD for my dad when I got home from seeing it.

I really don’t want to ruin anything by divulging details other than suggesting that if you like androids, jet-powered robotic suits, and anime-hair, you should definitely check it out. It’s not a stinker like Advent Children, I promise. Cross my heart.

I rate Vexille 4 out of 5 SWORDs.

Film #2 of siff was a disappointment.

Dream Boy is billed as a “coming of age story” involving two gay adolescents who wrestle with their feelings, etc etc. Instead, it is a crybaby story of a miserable teen who is incapable of growing a spine and dealing with his various issues — particularly being molested (at 15-16..) by his father. Instead, he runs to his own demise. He doesn’t “come of age” — he doesn’t grow as a person, he learns nothing and is not a better person at the end of the movie than he is at the start.

I don’t want any gay teenagers to see this movie and think that it is uplifting or in any way a representation of how they should react to pressures and obstacles in their lives. You fight, you don’t flee with your wrists open. You stomp on the faces of people who wrong you, you don’t whimper and cower to them while they rape and beat you to death.

Horrible characters aside, the acting was bad, and the music was awful and overpowering (though perhaps that is more the fault of the weak film than the music, as likely any music would overpower it..)

I rate Dreamboy 1 out of 4 QQs.

UPDATE: I just read The Stranger’s review, which is on-target:

To reduce coming-of-age drama Dream Boy to its base parts: Shy Boy meets Country Boy. They make out. Then they go camping with Country Boy’s homophobic friends. Surprise! The friends are only homophobic because they’re self-hating gays, and secretly also want to have sex with Country Boy. Then there’s violence, and the movie is over. Shy Boy is Nathan (Stephan Bender), who spends the film staring at his shoes and wandering through endless montages involving cottonwood trees and alt-country banjo numbers. Country Boy is Roy (Max Roeg), who spends the film saying folksy words like “yonder” and looking conflicted about liking guys. Clumsy and clichéd from start to finish, this is one to miss.

Tonight I saw my first film of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) over at the Egyptian Theatre, which was a midnight showing of Epitaph, a South Korean horror film.

Yes, another horror film from Asia. Yes, it had a scary dark-long-haired girl. It also had a slew of weak Pscyho-esque sound effects which elicited a fair amount of inappropriate giggles from some already-plastered members of the audience. Aside from the cheese and clichés, it was very well done. Three separate stories interweave to form a cohesive and thoroughly creepy / disturbing vision.

Definitely worth seeing, and I am going to say no more in hopes of not ruining it. It’s only a matter of time before Jennifer Love Hewitt is cast in a horrific American remake of it.

I rate Epitaph 4 out of 5 terrified squeals.

This past Sunday I saw Latter Days. It has 7.6/10 on IMDB, 77% RT community rating, and has won three indie film festival awards. It is the pinnacle of gay cinema.

But it is still awful.

The movie begins with an introduction to Christian, a wannabe actor in L.A. working as a waiter. Sound cliché yet? Also he’s gay, and an absolute slut. A group of Mormons move in next door to him and his coworkers bet him $50 that he can’t manage to sleep with one of them — a bet which he takes, but later regrets when he falls in love with one of the Mormons.

Latter Days is 90 seconds of soft-core porn wrapped in 106 minutes of eye-roll-inducing garbage. The only emotion it evoked in me was pity for the guy who highly recommended the movie to a room full of us who were so obviously hating it.

I imagine that the target audience is not people who want to enjoy a quality film, but those who want to be reassured that the too-pretty guy who cheated on them with eleven other people will some day learn what it is like to be in love, and chase after them at the airport.

I rate Latter Days 1 out of 5 homophobic Joseph Gordon-Levitts.

It is practically unavoidable to read on the intarwebs today without running into posts on the Obama/Clinton primary race. Often these posts rely heavily on opinion polls, sampling, and well thought-out grouping of individuals to gauge their interest over a set time period. These are the tactics and tools of marketers, not servants of the people, and most certainly not of grand leaders.

It’s disturbing how many people have been sucked into the notion of a presidential candidate as a product, packaged brightly for consumption by the largest target market possible. We no longer are Americans, we are Black Americans, White Americans, Female Americans, Male Americans, Poor Americans, Rich Americans, Christian Americans, Jewish Americans. We are market-segments, not individuals. We are consumers of a product, not voters of a leader. The insurgence of marketing into politics, our perfection of its methods, and the dumbing-down of the general populace all work hand-in-hand towards the goal of the annihilation of personal liberty and individual thought. The dumbest 51% will hold all of us in shackles, as the lowest common denominator will rule over us.

In the free market, if a product is put forth people either buy it or don’t. If no one purchases it, the product is a failure. Imagine if our currency were our votes, and if the product that is already being marketed to us could be rejected by our saving our vote for a better product. 25% of the population (half of the voting populace) would no longer be able to buy a shoddy product on behalf of the rest of us who choose not to waste our money. No more could clinching narrow market-segments mean victory or defeat — a candidate would have to appeal to ALL Americans as individuals.