Amazingly, upon a second viewing I didn’t care for Woody Allen’s Manhattan nearly as much as I remembered. Perhaps its status in the canon has retroactively enhanced my opinion. But it still inspires as a big, fat, sloppy kiss to my city, and a poster of Woody & Diane beneath the Brooklyn Bridge hangs on my wall.
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King Kong (1976)
About the only saving graces of this piece of gorilla dung are: A) Jessica Lange actually does a pretty good Marilyn Monroe, and B) Seeing the movie now provides some unintentional emotional oomph: Kong is actually drawn into Manhattan by the primal lure of the World Trade Center.
Whose idea was it for Kong to walk upright? Would it have been too much work for the guy in the suit to hunch over and drag his knuckles a little? And he throws like a girl.
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The New World
Why didn’t I know better? Although I stand apart from nearly all (it seems) critics and fellow cineastes, I disliked Terrence Malick’s Badlands, Days of Heaven, and Thin Red Line. And The New World is, of course, more of the same.
The problem isn’t necessarily the pacing, although it is indeed punishingly slow. It’s partly the storytelling technique of mumbled interior monologues of inarticulate characters grappling with giant issues beyond their comprehension, in voiceover over admittedly gorgeous nature photography.
Sample sequence from Thin Red Line: shot of stream running over eroded boulder. US Grunt: “Why… are… we… KILLIN’… each udder… in duh jungle…?” Shot of pelican. Repeat.
And this was a screening of The New World Director’s Cut, with twenty additional minutes! Arrrrrgh.
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Nine Songs
Michael Winterbottom’s Nine Songs is explicit in more ways than one. Surprisingly, the theme is pretty much spelled out in voiceover in the first sequence: A man reflects on a past relationship in terms of concerts they went to together and the arc of their sexual life. I can only speak for myself, but those are exactly the kinds of mental landmarks that mark my past relationships.
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Fantastic Four
Did they learn nothing from Spider-Man 2, clearly the pinnacle of the superhero genre (and I will fight a Marvel Team-Up with anybody that dares disagree with me)?
Fantastic Four is an aggressively stupid series of one missed opportunity after another. It just narrowly escapes one star by making me laugh a handful of times.
And another thing. Jessica Alba’s glasses don’t help her pull off a line like “The space cloud has fundamentally altered our DNA!”
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Spam Poem No. 3: “General Flood”
Please enjoy “General Flood”, the third in our ongoing series of flarf (spam poetry), assembled from the nonsense I find in my spam folder.
General Flood
thank god I’m back now
Important question
did you hear about this
general floodyou won’t believe this
bereavement
entering the line of
populations if leftafter flooding is
it, Will it work out?
conditions will be
hard as nailsA spell by ballistics
shrewd may aim some
hey girl gunfight uproarious
Ten Minutes to Your Lifeif we’d had the time
Save your house
Get what you need
plays on the small -
Only in New York, Pt. II
INT. COFFEE SHOP – DAY
Crowded Upper East Side coffee shop. A older male patron enters and approaches a hipster with a laptop.
PATRON:
Excuse me, is this seat taken?
HIPSTER:
Uh, my friend is coming…
PATRON:
Well, don’t worry, I have a small ass which doesn’t take up too much room.
And… scene.
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King Kong (1933)
The original 1933 King Kong gets points for being so drenched with subtext you can swim in it. But whenever Kong isn’t on screen it’s dreadful.
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Only in New York, Pt. II
INT: POST OFFICE – DAY
A bustling morning at the Post Office.
POSTAL EMPLOYEE:
“Next!”
A PATRON walks up to the counter.
PATRON:
“Christmas stamps, please.”
POSTAL EMPLOYEE:
“Do you want the religious or the other ones?”
PATRON (with great conviction):
“I am a Catholic!”
And… scene.
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Willfully Ignorant Design
A profoundly depressing statistic from today’s New York Times:
“According to a CBS News poll last month, 51 percent of Americans reject the theory of evolution, saying that God created humans in their present form. And reflecting a longstanding sentiment, 38 percent of Americans believe that creationism should be taught instead of evolution, according to an August poll by the Pew Research Center in Washington.”
The New York TimesFifty. One. Percent. And yet, a voice of reason from the least expected source:
“The Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin, voicing strong criticism of Christian fundamentalists who reject his theory of evolution and interpret the biblical account of creation literally.”
News.com.auMy head is spinning. It used to be so easy to blame the old Italian guys in silk dresses for Western fundamentalism. We’re now officially living in an age when the Vatican is more rational than Bush, who believes “both sides” should be taught in schools.