Part of growing up...

is deciding you like crunchy peanut butter.

Short Story Idea

Had an idea for a possible science fiction short story. We know that chimpanzee DNA is the most closely related to Human DNA at 96%. What if a scientist discovered a micro-organism that had an even higher percentage of DNA similarity to humans?

An interesting what-if at least. I'm not much of a writer, so don't count on seeing this fleshed out further by me. Maybe one day when I'm bored.

Bravo Barack

This is not a political blog so I'll keep this short. Good for Obama for putting his foot down when it came to the recent McChrystal fiasco. I don't know why it was even a question over whether or not this guy would keep his job. Seeing comments in support of McChrystal made it apparent to me that a lot of people don't understand that being critical of your commanding officer in such a manner IS NOT OK. Life in the military is not life as a civilian. He's lucky this is America or else losing his job would be the least of his worries.

World's Greatest Dad

I just saw this movie on Netflix streaming on a recommendation and I'm going to go ahead and forward that recommendation to anyone reading this blog. One of the best dark comedies I've seen in a while, World's Greatest Dad stars Robin Williams as an unsuccessful writer/high school English teacher with a son who is, quite possibly, the most miserable human being on the planet. When Robin Williams finds his son dead in his room one night (the victim of an unfortunate auto-eroto-asphyxiation accident), he makes it look like a suicide and writes his son's suicide note. Hilarity ensues when the note becomes the only thing the Dad has ever written that people actually like.

Great movie that seems to have gone under the radar for the most part.

Mortal Kombat movie reboot?

What's this!?

Seeing as how all video game movies suck I'm not expecting too much, but this 8 minute short used to pitch the idea to Hollywood sure does look awesome.

Danger

Youtube link

I'm not a huge electronic music fan, but if you watch this video and don't immediately think, "AWESOME!!", I think there's something wrong with you.
Apparently, Danger is a French DJ/artist who takes a lot of inspiration from 80's movies and arcade games. It shows.

A Question of Etiquette

I take the bus into work everyday, and recently I've been wondering about good manners when it comes to public transportation.

If someone gets on the bus and it's too crowded to get a seat by themselves, they sit next to a stranger for the ride. I've noticed some people, once the bus empties enough that there are free seats, will then get up and move to a seat away from the stranger they were sitting next to. Now, people do this because they are uncomfortable being so close to someone else they don't know, but would this be considered rude? If I am sitting next to someone and they get up and move to a different seat part of me, at least, will think that there was something about my person that made it unbearable to sit next to me. I'm sort of insulted.

I'd be interested to know if there is a right or wrong in this situation.

An American Werewolf in London

I'm no connoisseur of werewolf movies. In fact I believe this may be the only werewolf movie I've ever seen. It seems to me that this sub-genre of monster movies isn't generally that well received, seeing as the only other one I've heard of is The Howling.

I suppose Teen Wolf counts but that isn't really a horror movie.

An American Werewolf in London works on several levels. Obviously, it works well as a body-horror movie. The scene where we witness the transformation is pretty difficult to watch. Being a werewolf sounds cool until you realize that the sudden rearrangement of your bones and organs is going to be excruciatingly painful.

On the other hand, this is also a supreme example of a dark-comedy. An American Werewolf in London was directed by John Landis, who you may remember from the classic, Animal House. While certainly not a pure comedy, there is a good deal of wacky stuff that you can pick up on in the midst of the chaos, and similar to Animal House, this is a movie about the experience of young, college-aged adults in a world that is new to them. For this reason, An American Werewolf in London is a classic movie.

Sounds like a good place for a drink

At the beginning of the film we are following our protagonist, David, and his longtime friend, Jack, as they backpack through the northern England countryside. It's safe to assume that these two are freshly graduated from either high school or college, enjoying a summer abroad before real life picks up. They are young. Not children but not yet adults. They lack the responsibilities and the experience that comes with being an adult, and in their youthful foolishness, they ignore the advice given to them to stick to the road, realizing their blunder far too late. For these two young men, even when the shit hits the fan it appears that the seriousness of their situation doesn't dawn on them. They continue to kid each other even as they are aware that they are being hunted by something in the night.

And then they are attacked. Jack is killed, David is wounded and the werewolf is killed by the local townsfolk. This werewolf attack marks the beginning of what becomes a coming of age story in which transforming into a werewolf acts as a metaphor for the transformation into adulthood.

Let's look at what happens after the attack. I'll stick to the relevant bits.

In the hospital, David flirts, and falls in love, with his nurse, Alex. He goes to stay at her flat once he has been discharged and they make love. David becomes a man, in the sexual sense. Certainly, I may be making a bit of an assumption that David hadn't already reached this point in his life, however, it's never stated whether or not this is the case and it's sort of implied early on that Jack may be a virgin and since Jack and David are such good friends I am assuming they are practically interchangeable at the beginning.

After being left alone in the apartment, we witness the most iconic moment of the film. The transformation.

Oh god. It's happening again!

As I said earlier, this scene is NOT for the squeamish. This may not be the first time that the werewolf transformation was presented in such a manner but it was certainly the most affective. I'll just say, they earned that Oscar for best makeup. In fact, they created the category because of this movie. So, anyways, David endures an excruciating transformation into a werewolf (metaphorically, he becomes an adult) and goes out in the night and brutally murders and eats six people. Likely for the first time in his life, David's actions have real and lasting consequences.

In the end, David takes responsibility for what he is and what he has done and dies so that his victims can rest in peace. Some people may also think this is a bit of a stretch but I like to think that he purposefully gets himself cornered, and, at the very least, knowingly moves to attack Alex as she is pleading with him so that the police kill him instead of possibly trying to capture him.

This film stands out as a great darkly humorous horror film, but also as a story about being forced to grow up. Great fun to watch but with further meaning underneath the surface, and I recommend everyone see it at some point.

Kick Ass

Out of boredom the other night I caught a late showing of Kick Ass. Based on previews and what people were saying it looked like it would be pretty good, and while parts of the movie were certainly entertaining I thought overall it was a slight let down. The premise behind the movie, for those of you not in the know, is what would happen if superheros existed in the real world.

The answer is gratuitous violence.

One of the people I saw it with really didn't like the movie at all. He complained that the film really couldn't decide whether it was going to be a comedy or a serious movie. I think this is a valid criticism. My biggest problem with the movie was the third act where there was a lot of potential for exploration of some pretty big themes involving justice and childhood innocence which was thrown out in favor of a higher body count. I actually thought the movie was really good during the first two acts otherwise.

Despite the disappointing end, there were some redeeming qualities. I was quite surprised at Nicholas Cage's performance. As the vigilante ex-cop, Cage was easily the best part of the movie. He was masterful as the caped hero, Big Daddy, living up to the film title whilst channelinng the spirit of Adam West from the old Batman television series.

Oh, child...

Ultimately, Kick Ass is a movie that loses focus towards the climax but overall was a fun flick. It relies a little too much on getting a laugh by having an eleven year old girl be incredibly vulgar and violently murder anything in her path (it's funny because she's so young. Get it!?) but as far as child actors go, I thought Chloe Moretz did a good job as Hit Girl, Big Daddy's daughter. For those of you who haven't seen it yet, I'd recommend waiting for it to be on Netflix. Not worth $10 to see it in the theater, but worth seeing I'd say.

What do predators do when they aren't hunting your ass?

They dance.

"You are one ugly mother fu-"

When I was younger, like elementary school aged, one of my favorite movies was Predator. My friend who lived down the street and I loved this damn movie so much in fact that we would watch it at least once a week. I'd ride my bike over to his place and we'd pop in a crappy VHS home recording of the movie that he had taped from TNT. Naturally, being a cable network, it wasn't quite the same film that I now own on dvd. Carl Weather's death in particular is quite a bit less graphic in the version for daytime television. And I have to give props to whoever had to sit through and censor out or change every single "fuck" (believe me, there's a lot). Despite the changes, this movie was still completely and totally awesome for a couple of pre-pubescent boys. Hell, I still think it's pretty damn awesome. I'm not going to waste everyone's time by telling you things you already know (Arnold is kick-ass, Jesse "The Body" Ventura made me want to chew red man so damn bad, etc.) No. Instead I'm going to take a look at the deeper themes behind this king of 80's action/sci-fi. Prepare yourselves because this blew my mind when I first read these ideas and I fully expect it to do the same to you.

Predator as commentary on 80's action films

Schwarzenegger and Stallone were at the top of their game in the 80s with films such as Commando and First Blood: Part 2. In both of these films, the All-American hero mows down scores of nameless brown enemies all for truth, justice, and the American way. The charm of Predator, besides having an almost unheard of level of kick-assery, is that it takes these archetypal invincible American bad-asses and puts them into the role of nameless cannon-fodder.

At the beginning of the movie it is established that Dutch(Arnold) and his squad of ultimate bad-asses, have come to the jungle to royally wreck some shit. And they most certainly do, in the most violent way possible. Within minutes of encountering the enemy encampment all semblance of stealth goes out the door. Dutch lifts a truck and sends it careening into the center of camp signalling the rest of his squad to massacre everyone within in true Rambo/Commando fashion. A job well done.

This group of the toughest dudes that the 80's had to offer seem invincible. Earth's finest. Which is why an intergalactic hunter has set its sights on them.

One by one this squad of seemingly unstoppable American heroes are cut down like their South American victims before them. They have become unidentifiable blobs of heat on the Predator's vision much like how the South Americans had been nothing but indistinguishable brown men, each one practically identical to the last.


In the end, Dutch literally becomes an unnoticeable brown human. Covered in mud, it is ironic that in order to defeat the Predator, Dutch must become what he has slaughtered mercilessly in so many iterations of the same film.

After the final showdown in the jungle we see Dutch emerge from the crater a broken man. Who has defeated who? Dutch, once war's ultimate champion, finally sees the futility of it all. No one wins.

Honestly, Predator would probably have been successful if the whole movie had just been a rehash of Commando in a different setting. By switching the roles of hunter and hunted, however, it was able to reach cult status. Which leads me to the second theme of Predator.

Predator as a Feminine Threat.

As discussed in the previous section, Predator could be considered something of a bookend to the action genre of the 80s and in that regard it also serves as a backlash against the rampant masculinity inherent in such films. And what is more masculine than a squad of muscle-headed special forces operatives with huge guns blasting their way through the jungle? These men show no restraint, they tackle their enemies straight on and emerge victorious.

Look at these men and their huge... guns!

The only threat to their masculinity is a mysterious alien force which is the antithesis of such "manly" tactics. The Predator is deceptive. Using it's cloaking device and voice imitation to get the drop on our heroes. Deception, I will note, is a stereotypically female trait

The one scene I keep coming back to when I consider this interpretation is the scene immediately following Jesse "The Body" Ventura's death. In a fit of rage, the entire squad unleashes the full extent of their fire power into the brush. What effect does this have? Absolutely none. All they manage to do is graze the Predator. A commentary on their impotency? The idea that they were practically 'firing blanks" in more ways than one is appropriate.

Following this impressive, and totally worthless, display of male impotence, Dutch finds some of the Predator's blood on a leaf. I'm reminded of an earlier scene where "The Body" exclaims that he "ain't got time to bleed". Of course he doesn't have time to bleed. He's a man. Noone in the squad has time to bleed. But the Predator does. Menstruation imagery perhaps?

The Predator has established itself as the superior force and in the end, the only way that Arnold can even come close to matching it in combat is to himself adopt deceptive "female" tactics. Eventually, the epic struggle devolves into a physical, masculine exercise in fisticuffs between Arnold and the beast. Uh oh! What's so feminine about this you may ask? Nothing. But in order to stop us from becoming confused and to drive the point home, the filmmakers reveal that the Predator literally has a vagina for a face! Vagina dentata in the literal sense. If you think I'm stretching here, I'll go ahead and refer you to Predator 2, in which Danny Glover goes so far as to spell it out explicitly when he calls the Predator "pussy face".

Yep.

This feminization of the Predator really blows your mind when you think about it in context of the incredibly popular cross-over franchise: Aliens vs Predator. A race of space penises vs a rival race of space vaginas with humanity stuck in the middle. Yea, I know, it's crazy.

All in all I don't take this all that seriously. I just think it's fun/funny to think about. Thanks to the Something Awful forum goons for coming up with the majority of this. I just wanted to put it into a coherent post.

Monstrosity

I decided to touch up the picture of the double down I posted yesterday.

The grease must flow!

Only in America

Thousands of years of human progress has lead us to this:

The KFC Double Down

I think someone at KFC has been taking 30 Rock a little too literally.

Iron and Wine: The Shepherd's Dog

Iron and Wine has the status of being in the rotation for my current favorite artist. After discovering him on Pandora Radio a few months ago I've been listening to his albums The Shepherd's Dog and Our Endless Numbered Days practically non-stop.

Iron and Wine (real name: Samuel Beam) is a singer/songwriter out of Austin, Texas who released his first album in 2002. Since then he has released three other albums. His third album, The Shepherd's Dog, was released in 2007. The album sounds like a modernized hybrid of old fashioned rock and roll, folk, and country music with enough energy to go around.

The Shepherd's Dog hits the ground running with "Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car" and doesn't let up except for one or two breathers throughout the album. Beam's voice is soothing and easy to listen to without putting you to sleep and his compositions are complex enough to hold my attention throughout without becoming self-indulgent.

I frankly think it's impossible to not like this album. I highly recommend it.

George Lucas ruined everything

My attention was recently brought to a 7 part review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. This is one of the more entertaining things I've seen on youtube. If you hate the Star Wars prequels but have a hard time articulating exactly why that is, this guy goes into excruciating detail about everything George Lucas just plain did wrong. There's also a side plot where the reviewer is a serial killer or something which you can ignore because the review itself is awesome enough as it is.

"Express elevator to Hell! Going Down!"

I've been on a bit of an Alien/Aliens kick lately thanks in part to an interesting message board thread on the Something Awful forums. The thread began as an analysis of James Cameron's Aliens and how it was the original poster's opinion that it could very well be one of the greatest movies of all time. Without succumbing to too much hyperbole I'll go out on a limb here and say that the franchise on the whole is one of the greatest and most iconic sci-fi/horror franchises ever. In fact, it is my opinion that Alien is one of the scariest movies of all time. This post is about why that is.

Before we proceed I'll just go ahead and let you all know that I don't claim any of the ideas I discuss here as original. Mostly I'm just summarizing what was discussed in the forum thread.

Blow it out the goddamn airlock!

Let's take a look at Alien, the origin of the franchise. What was it about this film that terrified audiences when it came out? Giger's Alien, that's what! Look at that thing. (In fact it's probably because you don't ever actually get a good look at it that it's even more terrifying). Is it made of metal? Does it have eyes?? It is otherworldly to say the least. In fact I would posit that the Alien is less of a creature grounded by reality and more a demon from the blackest corner of space. Space Hell if you will. The Alien does not eat, it does not sleep, it feels no compassion. As Ash put it in the film, the Alien is "unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality". It exists for a singular purpose: to rape and murder everyone.

Wait, what?

That's right, rape. Alien is terrifying because it is a movie about being horribly raped and murdered and it plays up this fear by taking the typical victim of rape, the female, and making her (Ripley) the only member of the crew who isn't. This movie subverts our preconceived ideas about sexual violence, horrifying and fascinating us in the process.

Curiosity killed the cat.

Let's start with the setup. The crew of the Nostromo wake up in the middle of the galaxy because they intercepted a signal of some kind coming from some uninhabitable rock designated LV-426. They set down and investigate. They find an alien spacecraft that appears to have been there for years. Note that Kane, Dallas and Lambert enter the derelict craft through a large opening that looks suspiciously like a giant vagina. Alien is full of weird sexual themes and imagery so bear with me. There's more to come.


Once inside, Kane (played by John Hurt), lowers himself into a vast cavern populated by leathery "eggs or something". He gets up close to one to investigate. Suddenly, an Alien facehugger erupts from the egg and attaches itself to Kane's face, forcing a tube down his throat and literally subjecting him to oral rape.

So Dallas and Lambert bring Kane's unconscious body back to the Nostromo and the infirmary where they attempt to remove the creature but quickly find out that it's impossible without probably killing Kane in the process. Just as a rapist will be more likely to murder an uncooperative victim, so too will the facehugger finish it's task or kill the unlucky host.

Somebody get some Pepto-Bismol!

Before long, the creature removes itself from Kane and he wakes up, seemingly none too worse for wear. Which brings us to the most iconic scene in the film. Enjoying one last meal before returning to their cryogenic slumber for the home trip, Kane begins to act a little odd. And by a little odd I mean thrash around violently before a small alien creature explodes from his chest. You could say that Kane was reverse raped by his own child which itself was the product of rape.

It's no strange coincidence that the full grown Alien is itself basically a giant walking penis. Just look at its head. It doesn't get much more obvious than that, people. So anyways, what does this giant walking penis do? It sneaks around in the dark, jumps on its victims when they least expect it, and forcefully penetrates them with its second mouth which fires out of its bigger mouth with enough force to kill.

It goes on like this for the remainder of the film as slowly the crew is whittled away until all that's left is Ripley and her cat Jones. While it's tempting, I won't go into the implications presented by the fact that the alien is wholly uninterested in the cat. I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions there.

There are plenty of other themes in Alien that I'm ignoring in this post. Maybe I'll talk about them some other time. Really though, Alien is one of the scariest movies ever made because whether you realize it or not, it toys with your fear of being raped and murdered in a horrible fashion.

Alien is one of my favorite movies ever. It's too bad garbage like Alien: Resurrection and AvP had to get made. I like to pretend they don't exist.

Hello World!

Hello internet. I've decided to give the blogosphere a try. In this blog you can expect to find any number of musings by yours truly. My initial goal will be to use this as a repository for a number of media reviews and analyses. Consider me an amateur movie/music/book critic of sorts. Hopefully I'll find time to update on a relatively regular basis when I'm not busy with graduate school. Check back soon!