Christmas Gripe: Wham - Last Christmas

Christmas Gripe:


When the only reference to christmas in your song is the title of the song, repeated at the beginning of each chorus, you're cheating! Wham cheated!

As good and catchy as the song is, it's barely a christmas song. I cannot prove this, but I'm pretty sure they just took a regular ol' single they had up their ass, stuck the word 'christmas' in it, and shipped it off as a christmas song, because there is nothing christmas about the subject matter of the song. The song is about getting your heartbroken by someone, and then this year, not letting it happen again. What is christmas about that? Nothing, except for the fact we are told it happened last christmas. They could've said it happened whenever! The song could have been called Last Year, or Last Time, Last Ramadan for fucks sake.

Nonetheless, it's catchy as fuck, and now that I think of it, what they did was genius. By turning this single into a christmas song, they made it so it would only be listened to at a certain time each year... which means it can never get old, because if you only listen to it in December each year, it's impossible to get sick of it. Fuck Wham for being smart cheaters!

Aguirre, the Wrath of God: Descending the Mountain (Part II)

Descending the Mountain (Part II)

What do we know about the morality of out adventurers? They've conquered and plundered the Incas, which tells us that they see nothing wrong with murdering and stealing. How do they justify this evil? Later, we learn that they are Christians, traveling with a priest. This tells us that through their personal interpretation of the Bible, their actions are justified; that stealing, murdering, and enslaving (we learn later that they are traveling with slaves in tow) is justified as long as they are the ones doing it. They believe they are superior, because they have interpreted the bible to say they are.

Herzog does not want us to know this about them yet, though. He could've explained it in his written introduction, or possibly shown them coming down the mountain in garish clothing, standing out from the mountain background, in order to convey how superior they feel to the world around them. Instead, he chose to dress them in colors that appear naturally on the mountain:







Until we see them at the lowest point of their trek, they look less like people and more like part of the mountain shifting. This conveys the objectivity of the situation-- that our adventurers are objectively no different than the natural world around them, other than that they are heading downward in an organized fashion. The adventurers represent mankind, and this shot conveys that what sends us downward is delusion, greed, and the perpetration of evil.

This concludes my analysis of this portion of the scene.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God: Descending the Mountain (Part I)

In this entry, I will show how a portion of the first scene of "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" serves as a synecdoche for a major theme of the movie.

In my previous entry, I said there wouldn't be any spoilers in this one, but I didn't explain what I consider a spoiler. Since everyone has their own barometer of what constitutes a spoiler, I'll give my definition. I see a spoiler as anything the director intended to be a surprise during the first viewing of their movie. If you agree, read on. If not, see the movie first.

Descending the Mountain

The camera tilts down as we follow a faint line of people descending a foggy mountain;

(Click any shot to enlarge)

we see more of the line,


and then finally, the lowest section of it.


This shot tells us the grandiosity of their trek, and through their downward direction and the tone of the music we hear, a sense of foreboding is conveyed. We know this will be a difficult journey-- that much is a given even if they were climbing up instead-- but what more does this shot tell us?

In the brief, written introduction from Werner Herzog that preceded this first scene, we were told the following:

After the conquest and plundering of the Inca empire by Spain, the Indians invented the legend of El Dorado, a land of gold, located in the swamps of the Amazon headwaters. A large expedition of Spanish adventurers, led by Gonzalo Pizarro, set off from the Peruvian highlands in late 1560.

In short: Fresh off a brutal victory, swelling with pride and motivated by greed, our adventurers are embarking in pursuit of something that doesn't exist.

A righteous journey (a journey towards an objective, tangible goal) can be described as a mountain climb: the climb representing the upward, arduous journey that must be persevered, in order to reach the 'mountain top' reward.

In this tale, the reward the adventurers are in pursuit of doesn't exist, and thus, they will never reach their destination or attain any riches. This is why the film starts with their descent down a mountain-- there is no 'mountain top' for them to ever reach, where they're headed. The Peruvian highlands they control was their only 'mountain top', and they abandoning it on a greedy, deluded pursuit.

In the next entry, I will analyze the color palette of this shot, and what that tells us about our adventurers.

To be continued...

Movie Analysis: Aguirre, the Wrath of God

Aguirre, the Wrath of God


Introduction

I won't be reviewing this movie further than the five star rating I've given it above. Instead, I'll be analyzing key scenes and themes from it, over a series of blog entries. Whether you should read my analyses before or after you've seen the movie is up to you, and how you like viewing movies.

The next entry will be an analysis of the first scene of the movie, which I regard as one of the most beautiful scenes ever filmed. Plot won't be discussed, only the images on screen, so it's spoiler-free.

Really Good Racehorse Names That Aren't Taken

Really Good Racehorse Names That Aren't Taken
by Cody Clarke

Bruce Lee The Horse

Movie Review: Marked For Death

Marked For Death
Directed by Dwight H. Little
94 min.



This movie kicks fucking ass. It's retarded as hell, and for the majority of the time, wonderfully retarded; counting toothpicks and cards for Tom Cruise like nobody's business. In a few instances though, the retardation hurts the movie, like Samuel L. Jackson's crazy homeless guy fist crashing against his crazy homeless guy head.*

Good Retardations

- The movie is about the Jamaican drug mob destroying small town America and performing voodoo curses on people that get in their way. That's a good fucking plot line right there, I don't give a fuck. Don't act like you don't want to see that fucking movie. Don't act like your brain didn't run tons of possible cool scenes in your head when you read that shit, and quite frankly, if it didn't, you don't need to be reading my movie reviews. My movie reviews are catered to those who when hearing that plot line, there brain immediately starts running cool scenes it thinks might occur, because it can't fucking wait to see it.

- Keith David is Seagal's sidekick. Yes, Keith David from They Live! Holding and using guns again! Fighting people! Is your dick hard yet?

- Seagal's lines, as always. I won't ruin a single one cause those are always best when they catch you off guard. In fact, there's a lot of this movie that I really shouldn't ruin. I'm gonna cut my good retardations list short here. This is one of those movies where you just have to trust me it kick ass, and go see it.

Bad Retardations

- Shitty Jamaican accents. Not quite Jar Jar Binks level, but close to it. Shitty bad guy lines and behavior overall, actually.

"EVERYBODY WANT GO HEAVEN BUT NOBODY WANT DEAD."
No, there were no typos or grammatical errors made by me in that quote. That shit was verbatim as fuck.

I hate it when the bad guys suck in a movie. These bad guys fucking suck. They're stupid as hell. I hate action movies with stupid bad guys. That's why I can't get down with a movie Rumble in the Bronx, which has great action, but bad guys where you'd be surprised if they don't stare at the sky when it's raining and fucking drown. The bad guys in this aren't quite at that level, but they're damn close. These guys are supposed to be the top drug mob? Doesn't make any fucking sense. Takes you right out of the movie, which is never good when you're watching a retarded movie in the first place. Makes you feel dirty. Makes you wonder why you even sat down to watch it, instead of a 'good movie'. Bad retarded fucks a mind up.

- Useless love interest. She does nothing the whole movie, and he doesn't even fuck her. I won't even talk about her more than that. She's wholly forgettable.

- And the biggest bad retardation of all, non-anamorphic widescreen, which means it'll look like fucking garbage on your 16:9 TV. Watch this on something 4:3. Fucking bullshit.

Conclusion

I know you're probably saying to yourself that doesn't seem like a lot of bad retardation, but trust me it is. These bad guys suck, the love interest sucks, so I can't in good conscience give this any more than 3 1/2 stars. See it anyway though, because there's a lot of really great stuff that happens; the kind shit that will make you jump out of your seat and yell and have a good time, which is the reason you're watching one of these movies in the first place. Keep your eyes on the good retardation, and suffer through the bad retardation. I won't be upset if you fast forward through stupid stuff.

*Alright, that movie reference was a little more obscure than the Rain Man one. The Samuel L. Jackson movie I'm referencing is The Caveman's Valentine, a shitty but ambitious movie where Samuel L. Jackson plays a crazy homeless guy trying to solve the murder of a boy. As awesome as that sounds, you don't need to see it, trust me. Also, for the record, I don't even think he punches himself in the head in it. He might at one point, but I honestly don't remember. I chose to reference it because it was the first crazy homeless guy movie I could think of. Now that I think about it though, he was in Resurrecting the Champ too, where played a different homeless guy. He's not self-destructive in that one though, so that wouldn't have worked. Hell, he might not even be self-destructive in Caveman's Valentine, cause honestly I barely remember that shit other than that I didn't like it. Fuck it though, I'm not changing the simile.

Movie Review: Rachel Getting Married

Rachel Getting Married
Directed by Jonathan Demme
113 min.


Fuck this movie. I love the direction, the acting, the cinematography, the sound design, the production design-- but the screenplay is a piece of shit. What we have here is a minimalist storytelling written by a woman who doesn't properly understand what minimalism is. Minimalism isn't just about a low number of brushstrokes; it's about choosing said brushstrokes purposefully and expertly to tell a story the way it needs to be told. That was not done here. The screenplay is a mess, and so what we have here is a piece of shit that Demme has polished (and he's done so very well, hence the 2 stars) but it's still a piece of shit at the end of the day.

There are some scenes in this film I love (solely on technical aspects and/or caliber of acting) but I can't stand the sum of these parts. They're just kernels of sweet corn in the pile of shit that this movie is, as a result of its shitty, first draft screenplay. I don't care how many drafts Jenny Lumet went through to end up with the screenplay that was shot, it's still a first draft. If it walks a duck, talks like a duck, and sucks fucking ass like a duck, it's a duck-- and as such, I won't bother detailing any of the reasons why the screenplay is bad, because fuck first drafts. That might sound like a cop out, since technically this is a final draft since they shot it, but fuck that. There are stupid action and horror movies I review on here with solider screenplays than this, so fuck this movie, and fuck Jonathan Demme too for not knowing how shitty the screenplay was.