Filed under: Comedy, Fashion, Film, Gadgets, Graphics, Music | Tags: wes anderson
If you can’t tell, I’ve been utilizing Singapore’s high speed internet quite a bit recently, since I’ve also been down with the cold from eating too much heaty durian. Anyway, enough of confessions.
I like Wes Anderson. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is one of those typically offbeat films that’s right up my alley. It stars Bill Murray in the lead role as Steve Zissou, who’s probably based on Jacques Cousteau. He’s the captain of a ship that makes film documentaries of their adventures, which involve many fantastical sea creatures and mysteries of the deep blue. At the start of the film, he’s depressed because his best friend and first mate, Esteban, gets eaten by the elusive Jaguar Shark. His recent work has also been panned by the media and critics and he’s in a bit of a life crisis.
A man who claims to be his son, Owen Wilson’s Ned Plimpton character, manages to reignite Zissou’s drive somewhat and he is determined to find the creature that ate his friend. He rallies his crew, which includes his wife and the brains behind Team Zissou, Angelica Huston’s Eleanor, Seu Jorge more or less playing himself as Pele, Willem Dafoe’s Klaus, who sees Zissou as a father, Cate Blanchett’s pregnant reporter hottie as well as a token Indian guy, a token Japanese guy, a token Russian guy, a token Italian guy and a token script girl who’s usually topless. Jeff Goldblum plays Zissou’s nemesis, Alaistair Hennessey and there’s also a producer with lovely octogonal glasses, a “Bond Company Stooge”, a bunch of interns on the ship and Filipino pirates to complete the large-ish cast.
We get to see their adventures, which seem like a blend of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea with a mockumentary style. There’s the cutaway side view of the boat, where you get introduced to the various partitions. One particular scene is quite memorable as you see Zissou and Ned walking through the whole ship, which includes a “science lab”, a recording studio and a spa. Oh there’s also 2 homing dolphins that accompany the ship plus a helicopter and have I mentioned they have their own private island with a killer whale?
Much like The Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic is filled with tons of minutely detailed, unique to the film stuff. These manage to help create a very vivid picture of a world with imaginary places, filled with color and character. Its a romantic idea of the old world time of exploration and adventure, before cold hard science eliminated the idea of magic and fantasy and kids really believed in Santa Claus.
Standard issue on the boat, the Adidas Zissou edition Rom, which was part of a failed internet campaign to get Adidas to reproduce it. Plz excuse shitty lace job.
I loved the costumes and the identity design for the film. Zissou’s insignia was a big Z in baby blue over a white background, with 2 smaller Zs at the top left and bottom right. They also wear similar baby blue tracksuits and red beanies as well as sweaters with a Z stitched in white. Its like a tacky sort of Scandinavian Navy/Star Trek uniform concept. Even Zissou’s nemesis, Hennessey, had a white and gray H logo amidst a psuedo gay concept seeing as his ship is full of boys with swept back blonde hair wearing shorts.
The music is superb, with work from Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh mingling with Sigur Ros (perfect match for that scene) and Seu Jorge’s Portuguese covers of David Bowie songs.
I think the film is one that definitely appeals to the boys. Its chock full of boy concepts like deep sea adventures and cool gadgets and funky uniforms and harpoons and glocks and shit. Missed/repressed childhood x missing patriarchal connections status. Quirky for sure, and makes you wish life really was like that. Pure escapism at its mocking best.
Eagle Vs Shark is about 2 nerds that fall in love. Eagle is Jarrod, played by Jemaine Clement of Flying Conchords fame. Shark is Lily, played by Loren Horsley who has appeared in one episode of Xena: Warrior Princess.
Lily is nuts about Jarrod, despite the fact that he’s got a really horrid mullet and wears a Member’s Only jacket. He’s obssesive about all sorts of paraphenelia, including his collection of candles, amongst which you’ve got a Twin Towers one, which he’ll sell to the Muslims and an Osama one which he’ll sell to the yanks. He’s also driven on by a desire to exact revenge on his former high school tormentor, Eric. So Lily and Jarrod travel to his hometown to perform the mission.
There, the plot slowly unravels the issues behind Jarrod’s insecurities, largely because he never feels he’s quite as capable as his uber athelete brother who died some years ago. His family thinks he’s a loser and quite frankly, he is. He reckons if he manages to beat up Eric, he will restore his own honor, and maybe get his dad to like him a bit.
However, he keeps messing shit up, even dumping Lily for no good reason and hilariously screwing up the fight scene in an unexpected manner.
Throughout all this, you get some pretty indie pop and people wearing Awesome tracksuits. (As in the brand is Awesome sportswear, by Jarrod’s sister and brother in law.) Some of the more surreal bits of the film play out like a stop motion kid’s telly show, which gives it a touch of a romance without being too soppy. Plus, Jarrod’s hair just wins.
Check the trailer.
Because the last film I watched reminded me of my favourite painter, I thought I’d put up my favourite painting that I first saw in a class some 7 years back. Woah.
The Menaced Assassin 1927, Rene Magritte
Basically a surrealist painter, this is one of Magritte’s earlier works. I like this one because of the bowler hat guys, which is a Magritte trademark. The assassin in question is seen playing the gramophone after he’s presumably murdered a woman, completely oblivious to the 2 dudes laying in wait outside and the 3 peepers behind. Killin’ in steez baby. I like how he painted everything so still, so calm and serene that there’s even a background scene of some snowy mountainscape. Yet, everything is poised on the verge of carnage.
Someone should make a movie based on this and have this exact scene in it, replete with a Portishead soundtrack, shot in color but noir in style, and plenty of blood and guts. Jude Law in the lead role opposite Natalie Portman. Somebody owes me a million bucks.
Smultronstället, or Wild Strawberries, is the name of a song by the Australian band, Pnau. More famously, its the name of an Ingmar Bergman film.
Much like The Seventh Seal, its an existentialist film. However, it is nowhere near as gloomy and depressing. Its a simple story about an old doctor who is travelling to his old hometown to receive an honorary degree. He is accompanied by his daughter-in-law and also picks up some youngsters along the way in their car. At the point in his life when he’s getting worried about the end of it all, he gets tortured by nightmares on the long drive.
The opening nightmare was probably the scene that was the most entrancing. He wakes up alone in a town that’s devoid of sound except for that of his footsteps. The slow tracking camera follows his path until suddenly, he sees the back of a man with a bowler hat on. It looked like a Magritte painting at that point. He taps his shoulder and turns the man around but is revulsed when he finds its some sort of scarecrow with a contorted face. He then glances round and hopes for something, some kind of attachment but only finds a clock without hands, time standing still. Then he sees a hearse approach. The horses are blinded by the blinkers on them so they keep running straight on, only to crash into a lamp post, dislodging the rear wheel and dropping the coffin whilst they carry on. The cover of the coffin has fallen off and we see a hand visible. With dread and fear, he approaches and suddenly, the hand grips him and pulls and he is horrified when he sees that the “dead” man is none other than himself. If you’re gonna watch the film at all, this scene is everything.
Along the way, the old doctor gets more nightmares but none quite as surreal as that. It starts out with a massive fear of death, of the unknown but slowly settles into acceptance and realization that he could just learn to let go, especially at the end, when he realizes he doesn’t want his son to be just like him. Which is old, cold and alone. Shit. Strike 2/3 already for me.
Its a rather optimistic film, one that concludes very peacefully in comparison to how it starts. I think its a good film, even if I was bored shitless at times. (In truth, I was also watching a variety of food network programs at the same time.) I hated all these obstinate, cold as ice characters but thankfully, there were some very pretty girls. I think, in summary that this film has taught me that pretty girls make it ok to watch boring movies.
Pedo Bear status. (Be warned, link is highly offensive!)
Your son, sir, is a moron.
Brian Eno has a music generation app for the iPhone called Bloom, which basically allows you to listen to or create some ambient style music if you’re so inclined.
A similar program is Electroplankton, by Toshio Iwai, which I gleaned off the previous viddy’s comments. This one is for the Nintendo DS and introduces a more varied interface with interesting sandbox style results.
I caught 2 films on the plane, with that shitty little screen that gets all the glare so you can’t really see anything. The first was Burn After Reading, by the Coen brothers, whose previous No Country For Old Men, I enjoyed immensely. The other was Slumdog Millionaire, by Danny Boyle, who has disappointed me with every film post Trainspotting.
Slumdog won some awards and shit. I have no clue why that happened. Implausible, soppy and tiring, it was a steaming pile of turd. I didn’t expect Trainspotting 2.0 but I didn’t want a Danny Boyle remix of a bastardized version of Bollywood either. I’m pretty sure, there’s way more implausible and way more sentimental Indian films with the dancing round trees and one man versus an army fight scenes that merit more than this piece of crap. This one just reeks of colonial reappropriation disguised behind naivete and M.I.A on your soundtrack.
Burn After Reading, thankfully, was much better. A messy, complicated piece that has got a lot of characters jostling for screen space, it wasn’t quite the Coen brothers’ best but it was still very enjoyable.
Featuring Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton, it’s one of those films where you get these wacky weirdos whose paths cross and interlace and you ultimately reach one final conclusion where everyone’s future is resolved.
Malkovich plays a low level CIA agent, Osbourne Cox, who has just been forced to quit from his job. He decides to write a memoir of his life in his spare time. Swinton plays his wife, who’s verging on a divorce and on the advice of her lawyer, copies some files off her husband’s computer, including said memoirs. The lawyer’s receptionist then mistakenly leaves the CD behind at a gym. This is where Pitt’s dim witted personal trainer, Chad Feldheimer, finds the CD and thinks its classified CIA crap and shows it to his colleagues, which include McDormand’s Linda Litzke. Together, they try to contact Cox, in the hope of getting some financial reward. However a mix of Chad’s stupidity, Cox’s anger and Litzke’s greed turns it into a complex blackmailing instead. Along the way, we also see Cox’s wife having an affair with Clooney’s Treasury Agent character, who’s got a big part to play as well.
From there, each individual’s personal prerogative drive them on towards the finish line. Linda Litzke is driven by some desire to meet a guy with a sense of humour but thinking that she needs massive plastic surgery to do so. Cox’s bewilderment that his memoirs have fallen into the hands of dimwits who somehow represent the mass of stupidity that he no longer wants to protect, defines his holier than thou arrogance that is to be his downfall.
Its pretty funny and you get the contrasts between the high falutin Osbourne Cox with his Princeton alumni status and Chad Feldheimer, with the amoebic intellect concept. Worth watching if you enjoy the idea of watching random particles colliding and the reactions that result.
On the journey home, as usual, I had a torrid time. This time, I got stuck in the window seat. To my right, was the wing. To my left, 2 cows. They were enormous. I reckon it was safer for me in the window seat as my face might’ve been pummeled incessantly by arses the size of the moon every 5 minutes, given the frequency of their desire to leave the tiny space that was their pen. So I stayed in my own for 7 or 8 hours, watching videos to get by. I only suffered the odd, random elbow in the side or crumbs falling onto the floor below me. I think SIA hates me.
Anyway, one film I caught was a documentary by Louis Theroux, called Law & Disorder In Philadelphia, or Killadelphia, as one local in the show called it. Its an interesting glimpse of a city, supposedly infamous for having one of the higher violent crime rates in the US. You get to see Theroux ambling round with police protection, a bulletproof vest, a pair of acetate frames and a British accent. He goes round, interviewing police, drug addicts, street corner boys and even a supposed druglord with a gold chain with his fake naivete, hoping to disarm people with wide eyed innocence and simple questions.
It works to an extent I suppose. At least you don’t see him threatened. With the cops, he gets rather more direct and at these times, he gets completely direct and unambiguous responses. The basic gist you get from the film is this seemingly unending cycle of “thug” life. One dude had “Born” and “Thug” tattooed on his knuckles. His answer, when queried, was one of utter resignation.
In Philly, there’s only really violence in a smaller contained area. Within this area, drugs are rampant, and this is what most people consider to be the real root of the problem. Because the drugs are on the street, you get prostitution, you get violent crime, you get people all trying to feed this industry and it’s not a problem that’s separated by race either. This shit affects everyone and you get to see this in interviews with a family of a guy that just got shot on the street the day before. Or with the prostitute that earns money just to blow it all on dope. Or the only girl in the show who wants to testify against her sister’s murderer.
“Don’t Snitch” is rule #1. If you close your eyes and pretend nothing happened, it never did. I don’t know why people even bother staying there, why the violence gets so ingrained in them that they just accept it. Maybe its the music, like that Memphis Bleek track on my playlist. Its about a corner boy that gets back in the game again, after getting out of jail, saying “But I swear, we all gon be alright”. Or maybe they just don’t want the change because they see something that’s worth pursuing. I think its a combination of both, in the sense that the good people who were there all along see it as home. At the same time, they’re not used to the idea of change, where they’d have to move, plus they’re also really poor so they couldn’t even if they wanted to. Then there’s the allure of the large wads of cash rolling around on the streets and it seems so easy.
