PATRIARCHY, CIVILIZATION, MILITARISM, AND DEMOCRACY...

Here is the first part in a 5-part documentary made by the Canadian Historian, and commentator, Gwynne Dyer. Very informative, and lots of fun. Enjoy!

THE TAO OF SEX

I have had a number of conversations and debates as of late about the state of modern filmmaking; my position being that they rely too much on flashy camera work and an appalling sense of pace, and this all urged me to write about the Tao of Sex, because the filmmaking process, is a lot like sex.

How we approach lovemaking is like good filmmaking, you want to take your time, don’t go for broke right away, as it can have a numbing affect. You want to hold back giving your audience what they want by dancing around the sweet spot for as long as you can, then when the tension is at it’s greatest, BAM! you go for the tender areas. Filmmakers like Michael Bay have one mode, 11, and they never let you get a breather, leaving you to feel like you’ve been bashing your head against the wall for 2 hours. It’s, in a word, annoying.

Imagine, if you will ladies, what it would be like to have sex with Michael Bay, if his lovemaking techniques were anything like his films? Would you not be left feeling sore, and angry?

In fact the over-the-top films we get today are similar to a bad case of premature ejaculation.

Furthermore, the use of the shaking camera, an effect that can only occur in nature when you are looking through a lens, just screams “I’m watching a film!” and not, “I’m participating in a story!” Seriously, when, other than when you look through a lens do you see camera wobble? Even if I stumble home drunk my vision carries more clarity.

When you lay down on your partner, do you flail around like you are having a seizure, in the hopes that your berserker enthusiasm will give your lover pleasure? What sounds more sensuous, a paint shaker, or a slow unwavering hand?

I have always felt that being steady, controlled, and accurately focusing on your goals was the way to give pleasure. The filming of a sequence is no different.

It’s also imperative that you not rely on the same techniques over and over. Everyone will respond differently when certain buttons are pushed, so that the more varied you are, the greater the likelihood you will stumble across the ones that your partner, or viewer will respond the most to.

Film is not the only thing that can be approached in a sexual manner, in fact anything that requires precise and accurate control can be thought of as sex, and thus utilize similar techniques.

I hope this little diatribe encourages you to expect the same quality out of your daily life that you expect to get out of the bedroom.

Which reminds me. It’s almost time to make dinner...

A FEW DOCS TO CHANGE THE WAY YOU SEE THE WORLD...

I found these documentaries a while back and decided to share them with the rest of whoever is paying attention to this blog.

All the links below are by a Documentarian by the name of Adam Curtis, who works and produced all of the below at the BBC, and has won numerous awards. The running thread in all these films is how elites have used various theories to pacify, and control the masses to either success, failure, or sparking unforeseen results.

I dare you to watch them...

The documentaries are all free to download through a great site called Archive.org, which you might want to check out as it's full of neat stuff you won't find elsewhere.

First up is The Trap: What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom?
This is one of the most recent, and thus most timely of the docs, and very enlightening.

The we have The Power Of Nightmares. This one is a personal favourite, and will pick up what you think of islamic terrorism, shake it about, and kick it in the trash.

Next is The Century Of The Self. A great four parter that shows how psychology has been used to get you to buy things, and to obey the government, or they try...

The Way Of All Flesh is a freaky one episode doc about how they replicated a woman's cancer cell 50 years ago, and over time, now weighs over 400 times the woman's body weight! (If you put all the cells in one place that is).

The Mayfair Set, shows how the elite of England tried to use economics to remain an important player in world affairs after the end of WWII.

The Living Dead is not a zombie film, but a documentary about how history can be used to trap people into repeating it.

Pandora's Box is a great big 6 part documentary examining the unsuccessful attempt to use science to find a rational means of ordering society after WWII.

Well there you go, I hope you enjoy them.

BIRDS WITH NECKTIES...

Well boys and girls, another Monday night is coming, and along with that, the last Alfred Hitchcock double bill at the Mayfair.

On Monday night of the 27th, starting at 7 PM is The Birds. It's a fun little story about a multitude of birds that swarm a seaside American town. I can't see what the fuss is all about, being chased by birds can't be all that bad...

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Then at 9:15 PM is Frenzy. One of Hitchcock's last great classics, and considering it was his second last film, it' really is amazing that he still had it in him to put out such a twisted, great, humorous, tense, and engaging thriller.

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I hope you can make it out, and treat yourself to some of the greatest films ever made.

DIZZYING NIGHT OF MADNESS!!!

Okay boys and girls, another Monday is almost here, which means that another night of Hitchcock movies is coming to the Mayfair theatre.

It will be a fun evening as the Mayfair gets into Hitchcock’s classic Hollywood years.

This Monday, on the 20th, will be playing Vertigo at 7, and then at 9:30 comes Psycho.

Vertigo is considered his most personal film, as it deals with obsession -- and blondes...



Psycho is often looked on as Hitchcock’s greatest film, which is probably due to it being his most intensely suspenseful. After over 40 years it still has the power to shock, which can’t be said for even today’s shockers.



That’s all from me, so I hope you can make it out to the Mayfair theatre to see two of the greatest films ever made.

REALLY WEIRD MOVIES...

Last night I had the opportunity to see one of the strangest films I've ever seen. It is called THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN INVINCIBLE. Imagine if you will, a bunch of Australians getting together and said, "we want to make a superhero musical that revives the spirit of the Rocky Horror Picture Show!"

Yeah, I know, it sounds like a good idea. I never expected the thing to be good, but the fact that Alan Arkin plays the titular hero Captain Invincible, and Christopher Lee plays the villain Mr. Midnight, and they both sing. This was too much to pass up. How could I might the opportunity to see Dracula/ Saruman sing an early 80's pop number!

The story is about a super hero who's been fighting for the glory of the united states through the prohibition years and WWII only to be challenged by the House of Un-American Activities and called a communist. Angered by all he's done for the US-of-A, he takes off and disappears, only to resurface in modern day Australia, drinking his way into oblivion. Mr. Midnight begins plans for world domination, and Captain Invincible is called back into action. What ensues is a train wreck so freakish, that you can't help but watch, amazed, that this story was created by a human being, and not by a an alien on drugs.

Don't get me wrong, the movie is awful, but of the kind of special awful movie that rarely gets made. It is so whacked and strange, that the unpredictable nature of it is hat makes it watchable. This is the kind of bad movie lovers of bad movies want to see. It is a perfect, get the guys and galls together with a case of beer/whiskey and laugh your heads off on a Saturday night.

The only thing I wonder is, why on earth did someone not hire Christopher Lee to do more musicals.

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STAR WRECK...

I haven't had a reason to post any new blogs in over a year, but now I came upon one. There's no simple way of saying this, I know it flies in the face of how most people seem to feel, but...

...I didn't like the new Star Trek movie.

In fact I found it shockingly bad, and I'm still sitting in wonder as to how it has garnered so many good reviews. So I thought I would post a review of my own. But first I should warn you if you have not seen the movie yet, my review WILL BE FILLED WITH SPOILERS!!! So if you don't want me to ruin the movie for you, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER!!! But I assure you, J.J. Abrams and company have already ruined it.

First off, adapting any pre-existing property is a lot like cooking using someone else's recipe, and for something as old as Star Trek, it's a very complicated recipe. So what J.J. Abrams and company did was decide to make dinner, and ignore some of the ingredients. Kind of like they said, "Hey, lets make apple pie like Grandma used to make! Let's get some apples and put them in a frozen pie crust we got from the store, and voila! Apple pie!" (But unless you follow Grandma's recipe, it won't be the same). So in part, I think the writers were totally unaware of many of the ingredients that made Star Trek the phenomenon it has become. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised since the people who wrote this, were the same that gave us the two Transformers movies. Yeah, I hear academy awards coming. Real classics.

Last chance to avoid SPOILERS!!

Okay first off there was no point to the movie. It's just a lame revenge plot. Hell, so was Wrath of Khan, but it was mostly about the crew aging, and it was about how "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Since the very beginning, Star Trek was about something. On a weekly basis the original series broke new ground, and was so daring that they came to the brink of cancelation on a weekly basis because of the subject matter they dealt with. The later series, as much as I disliked all of them for not taking on today's touchy subjects, were still about something! It was a 'weak tea' message, but it was still there nonetheless. It is that key ingredient that has kept Star Trek alive for decades, to take that 'ingredient' away is just plain stupid. It's like having a pizza without the cheese!

So, maybe I missed something, and maybe someone can correct me on this, but Nero goes back in time to kill Spock, only to realize that he's appeared 25 years too early. How does he know this? How does he know that Spock will appear in 25 years? Is time travel that predictable?

Oh, and everyone knows at this point that a Black Hole is not a time tunnel, it's a giant cosmic trash compactor. It just sucks things in and crushes it. The time travel/dimensional door crap is stuff they thought up over 30 years ago, so I guess they never heard of a guy named Stephen Hawking? Did a bit of work on Black Holes? Good stuff? No?

So Spock accidentally destroys the Romulan homeworld. He mentions it in a very brief flashback/mind meld. Okay, we've had a Romulan homeworld for 40 years. In the Star Trek world, it's like a major character, then J.J. just had it destroyed, practically off screen. If you are going to do something major, like destroy a whole planet that has been part of a story for 40 years, at least spend some time to give it the impact it deserves. But J.J. deals with it like a plot devise, as if he has no respect for the material or the world he's working in. Has he never told a story before? I know this, and I've never directed a big budget hollywood movie!

Now the cinematography was appalling. Every shot was shaking, as if the camera operator had cerebral palsy, or maybe the camera was in a paint shaker. Now there are times when shaking the camera is important to do. Obscuring the image is sometimes a necessary tool in the directors bag of tricks, BUT IT IS ONLY ONE OF THEM!! If you keep using the same ones over and over and over again, it gets stale. When it comes to the shaky-cam, it gets downright annoying, because when the camera shakes, you can't see what you're looking at! The motion blur prevents this. To make it worse, all the shots were too close, so that if you aren't watching this on a TV screen, you can barely see what's going on. Oh, sure you know that Kirk just punched that Romulan. but how did he do it? I don't know, I just saw some movement. Remember back when they had cool fights in movies where the actors and stunt people had moves that made you go, "cool!" But here you can't see what they're doing. It's like they choreographed all the fights in a lame way, and the actors physical abilities were piss-poor, so they just shot it in close to hide the ineptitude.

How about the use of lens flare! Wow I loved how 25% of the movie was a blank white screen because of all the lens flare. Save your money folks, just flash a light in your eyes, and you'll know what it was like to watch the new Star Trek. Maybe J.J. Abrams was hoping that all the lens flare, and camera shaking would hide how shitty his movie was.

Okay, the engineering room looked like a boiler room, I shit you not. It's like, even though they had a budget of $150 million, they decided to save money by not building a set, but do what every low budget sci-fi movie does and head to the water treatment plant to shoot, and pretend it's a spaceship. Also there's no visible reactor in this Enterprise, but we get a mile of water pipes! What the fuck does the Enterprise have water pipes for??? Water pipes? On a spaceship???

There's a part where the writers have obviously written themselves into a corner, because they have Spock Captaining the ship, when they really need to get Kirk in command, so this is how they do it. Spock has just watched the planet Vulcan get destroyed, along with his mom (Yeah they really have respect for the subject matter. Not only do they blast Romulous to bits off screen, but they destroy Vulcan and Spocks mom too. Just for the fun of it I guess), so Spock is naturally upset, so what Kirk has to do is taunt Spock until he gets his ass kicked by an enraged Spock, and then jump up and down shouting, "You see! He's emotionally compromised! He can't be Captain! Give me the big chair!!" I'm sorry, but if I just watched someone's home world get destroyed, along with his Mom, and some jackass comes along to taunt him. I'd be helping to hold that said jackass down while he gets a beating, to say nothing of giving the jackass the top spot. Maybe I'm way off base here, but I don't think real people act that way. Sociopaths, maybe, but do most of us? Really???

Okay, and at the end, when Nero's ship is about to blow up, and Kirk says I'll save your life, to which Nero replies "No! I'd rather die!" So Kirk says, "Okay! fire!" I'm sorry, but even in Star Trek 3, 10 minutes after Commander Kruge has just killed Kirk's only son, he still tries to save Kruge's life by pulling him away from the cliff. If they took Kirk's character seriously, he wouldn't have given Nero a choice, he would have just pulled him out to safety and placed him in jail. It would have made Nero more angry, and given Kirk a more satisfying revenge. So the nobility and morality that has been a part of Star Trek for 40 years was seen to be stale and out-of-touch for today's audience?

But that is part of the problem with what they did with Star Trek. It's like sugar water. It's a formulaic movie that's only goal is to provide instant gratification. You get your hit, and then in seconds it's over. I guarantee you, this movie will be forgotten in a few years. The day after you see it, you won't be still talking about it, because there is no depth to it. There is no way it will be a lasting draw to the coffers of Paramount the way the other Trek films were, and still are.

Star Trek was long overdue for a revamping, but the messages it told about our lives, society, and science was not the problem. The problem was bad writing, inept producing, uninspiring casting, and weak characters. But it seemed to J.J. Abrams that the problem was the Star Trek world itself, so he changed it. No that's not true, he ignorantly picked it up, and kicked it out the window. Abrams has admitted many times that he never liked Star Trek. So why did he get the job?

So sadly we've had Lucas screw up Star Wars with the unholy prequels. Lucas AND Speilberg vomit all over Indiana Jones, and now we've had J.J. Abrams shit all over Star Trek. What other lasting film/tv series will be ruined yet, I wonder?