The Flavor of Pathetic

Catfish.


What to say about Catfish? This movie creeped me out for what seemed to be unintended reasons, as far as the makers were concerned. In this film we experience the blossoming of a host of relationships between a very hairy young man in his late 20's and a family of seemingly creative and exciting individuals existing thousands of miles away. The film, made by a brother and a friend of this hairy young man if I recall correctly, did a pretty heavy-handed job of landing its twist and negotiating the revelation of the truth of the facebook associations at its core.

I would have a hard time saying the following things about this movie:
1) This was a good movie
2) I would recommend that you see this film
3) I found this movie coherent and relateable

And yet, something about it did make me squirm and get uncomfortable and feel like I ought to go out and do something. Also, I feel bad "spoiling" it, because sometimes at the height of its discomfiture, the footage that finds its way into the film is potent to the tune of "the land of silence and darkness".

Historically, I have not been the sort of person who interacts or transacts socially through media in the hopes of finding novelty. I will interact with people in these contexts only insofar as it relates to things that we're doing together in three-dimensional flesh-space. These guys, and the relationship(s) they strike up on facebook are wildly divergent from my behaviors in the context of the great blue-windowed content horde that now encapsulates all the busybodies and relatives I, frankly, would rather marginalize by way of only occasional face-to-face contact. But this is their film, and these folks seem to feel like they've hit some kind of digital motherlode of cultural capital in the Michigan family they'd somehow be-faced. The story begins with a kind of zeal that suggests that we're going to see a straight rehash of "My Kid Could Paint That".

In the end, and I must refrain from describing it, these guys make a movie, and the relationships, for all we know, are dissolved. I guess my point is that mediated people are fake, especially if your imaginary for them consists entirely of facebook jetsam. While the shock of discovering deliberate misrepresentation is surely a curiosity, the question for me remains one of why these young fellows from a huge urban center don't make friends with any one of the thousands they daily pass wordlessly and without a glance.

The title of the film comes from an anecdote related by one of the characters that the filmmakers track down, and is a really janky metaphor aimed at redeeming or softening the weirdness of the character(s) who form the core of the revealed deception that is this film's major object. Catfish keep the cod sharp, we are told; thus, they keep from losing their flavor on long shipping runs. If I'm experiencing their film correctly, I take this to mean that the filmmakers have been sharpened up by an exemplary token of this variety of uncommon human. This wrap-up leads to two conclusions about the intrepid filmmakers: they are astute and conventional american-audience marketeers and/or obtuse in the extreme.

I'm Still Here

2010
Director: Casey Affleck
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs

Plot: Documenting Joaquin Phoenix's transition from the acting world to a career as an aspiring rapper.

I'm Still Here is presented as a documentary about a tumultuous year in the life of Joaquin Phoenix, in which he retires from acting to start a career as a hip-hop artist. The movie is in actuality a mockumentary, afterall it seems unlikely that Casey Affleck would make a movie showing his brother in law doing tons of drugs, treating his few friends like shit, and excitedly talking about smelling the assholes of the call girls he's just ordered. But the movie is rarely comedic, unless maybe you are a personal acquaintance of Joaquin's and the whole movie is one big inside joke. Instead its a serious portrayal of failure and self implosion, presented earnestly as a real documentary. And for the most part Joaquin Phoenix "acts" quite well and we believe in his earnesty, so much so that many reviewers believed it was a real documentary. And its precisely this confusion of "what exactly am I watching?" that really detracts instead of adds to the film. Why was it necessary for Joaquin to embody this character so publicly, announce to the press that he was retiring, and generally act like a total dick in all his public appearances if it was all a character? Surely it was apparent that this little joke might cost him future acting jobs along with any kind of positive public image. In fact its distracting how much the film tries to make you hate him. There's a lot of boring melodrama where Joaquin endlessly berates a friend he suspects of telling the press his hip-hop career is a hoax for the movie. And see there it is again, by bringing up the the rumors that the documentary is a hoax we are repeatedly brought back to wondering what the hell is going on. Maybe if you go in knowing its a mockumentary all my bitching will be for nothing, then again I would not be the least bit surprised if a year goes by and Joaquin tells everyone it was actually real, but the footage turned out so embarrassing they decided to try and pass it off as a mockumentary, ZING!

Even taking into account from the beginning that this is a mockumentary, the whole movie still ends up feeling really pretentious, arrogant and confused. Is this a movie questioning what happens when a person takes their life and career and turns it into a fictionalized character for the sake of film? or is it about failure under the pressure of fame? Its got too much of both to discount one or the other as the main intent. If it was about life as film there wasn't anything really groundbreaking in this movie, in fact a follow-up documentary depicting the ramifications and consequences of this hoax on Joaquin's real life would have been much more interesting. If it was about the destructive quality of fame, others have done it better, particularly I have in mind the documentary Overnight (2003), documenting the rise and ego-maniacal downfall of Troy Duffy the writer and director of the Boondock Saints. There we had a genuine story, where it really was Duffy's life and career on the line. But in I'm Still Here we know Joaquin Phoenix is pretending as if he had a breakdown, and the fact that he threw away his real-life career for a movie feels self-righteous as though he knew all would be forgiven. The take home message seems to be then that Joaquin Phoenix is a dick, or maybe that Joaquin Phoenix wants you to think he's a dick. Because despite there being some sympathetic scenes in which we see him portrayed as someone desparately floundering, its all an act and I can't help but wonder how much in real life he bemoans being a famous actor. Doesn't it seem weird that under the pressure of fame in the movie business Joaquin's decision is to quit acting to seek fame in the music business? Maybe that sole story point was just intended to break the ice and make us laugh at Joaquin's rapping, but its so ludicrous that it detracts from the supposed realness of the film. I don't know, it was really a noodle-scratcher. Casey Affleck stated that he didn't think of I'm Still Here as a hoax, that they just wanted the audience to really believe what they were seeing, which unfortunately I think is the last possible thing the audience could think. Afterall, even my beloved Roger Ebert, who believed the film to be a documentary, still felt the need to start his review discussing whether it was possible I'm Still Here was a mockumentary. Also if you haven't already guessed this movie is a major bummer, making Mr. Moneybags go from a bit fussy to full-on cranky after watching this on a Saturday afternoon. There isn't anything inherently wrong with a bummer of a movie, but hopefully it should be interesting, and the novelty of Joaquin Phoenix being an ungrateful asshole wore off after about the 20 minute mark.

Cats and Dogs: Revenge of Kitty Galore

2010

Director: Brad Peyton

Actors: Bette Midler, Nick Nolte, Chris O'Donnell

Plot: The ongoing war between the canine and feline species is put on hold when they join forces to thwart a rogue cat spy with her own sinister plans for conquest.

The original Cats & Dogs (2001) is a pretty superior movie, and although you don't have much new going on in this sequel, if you found dogs operating overly complicated spy equipment amusing the first time, you are probably going to find it amusing the second time. At least I did. Now that the evil Mr. Tinkles has been locked up, another evil cat, Kitty Galore voiced by Bette Midler, takes the reigns of generally pissing off dogs and people alike. She holds some sort of grudge against both dogs and man but to be honest I think I missed this development during an early movie bathroom break, but the important part is she's got evil plans. The specific plan is to use a satellite to transmit a signal that causes dogs to go crazy. It's not a detail heavy plan but dogs are, as we all know, easily alarmed. This plan is in fact so nefarious that cat agents from MEOWs (due to editing or lack of motivation the acronym was never explained) join forces with the dogs to take down Ms. Galore. Personally I found the portrayal of all cats as dim-witted psychopaths a large part of the original 2001 film's charm, especially the dog training video depicting cats whipping egyptians into making the pyramids. Unfortunately, we are now lead to believe that most cats are good, and although they generally hate dogs, most do not want any harm to come to humans. I missed why dogs going crazy was going to really harm people, or more importantly why humans, cats and most mammals were to be impervious to the insanity-inducing satellite signal. Its almost like they used a formula to make this movie and didn't worry about the details. To be fair I doubt a lot of children watching the movie were wondering how the satellite signal was species specific, and for those adults watching there are movie references thrown in, the most amusing and inappropriate being the Silence of the Lambs type imprisonment of the earlier film's villian, Mr. Tinkles.

Here is a breakdown of the stock jokes that are needed to make a Cats & Dogs movie (ranked in comedic value), if you don't find at least two of these points amusing I'm doubting you'll like either film.

1. Dogs and cats operating outlandish spy equipment such as jet packs, jet cars conveniently located under most dog houses, plastic explosives, james bond style collars etc.

2. Evil cat masterminds forced into degrading/demoralizing outfits by their owners (Mr. Tinkles into a bonnet and Ms. Galore into a bunny costume)

3. Dogs and cats, and in one case a pigeon, speaking with ethnic accents.

4. The fact that dogs have an elaborate secret society to keep humans safe...which they keep secret from humans by pretending to sniff each others butts while having strategy planning sessions.

5. Dogs really hate cats

I should importantly note that I did NOT have the pleasure to view this movie in 3D, and obviously the 9 year gap between the original and this sequel suggests cashing in on the 3D fad was the large motivation for this film. In case you are thinking about skipping Revenge of Kitty Galore, think again, because with the escape of Mr. Tinkles in the final sequence there is likely to be a third Cats & Dogs that intricately builds and elaborates on the complex themes of the earlier two films.

Doblada Roundup

I wrote this in April and never came back to it, but here it is. It's sad to read it now, but only because Ninjavideo is down.


So, I've been out of the loop, like way, way out of the loop. Not in theatres, not online, not following scnsrc, the Pirate Bay, EZTV or even Ninjavideo. I am actually surprised when I return to populated areas and look at movie posters. I would probably have a fit if I were to go to Apple.com right now (supposing I had a good enough connection to even load images, much less video) and browse through their trailers. In fact, the only film watching I've been doing lately has been of movies dubbed in Spanish and of pirate DVD's that could easily have been made from some of the poorest rips currently residing in the ruins of the second kingdom. Sadly, most of the films I've watched in this fashion(usually while taking hellishly long bus rides) were trash, things I'd seen before or things that David and I had been unable to sit through no matter how "bored" we were or how fast they'd downloaded. But there have been a few gems, which I will now summarize, with little regard for chronology, in what I have decided to call the Doblada Roundup.

The first film I watched after landing in Ecuador was Anaconda, a movie I vaguely remembered as being terrible and from the mid-nineties. Anaconda benefits, or at least for me benefitted, tremendously from being watched on an extremely loud bus while a man with a huge bottle of yellow-colored cola and a bag of chips walks up and down the aisle sugaring and salting the captive audience. Forget about your uncomfortable seat, the insane traffic outside, the overactive air conditioner that seeks to turn you into frozen jerky in one extended breath: this is a film packed with action, major actors, digital snakes, brash sexual innuendo and Jon Voight, for Christ's sake. And every male character, as is customary in the translation process of overdubbing, is read with the gusto, machismo and ridiculous emphasis of the most hammed-up Robert Goulet impersonator imaginable, with slight nuances added for gay, skinny and black characters. Jon Voight, Ice Cube, Jennifer Lopez. I laughed for two hours straight, and I could barely make out the translations. A+, thumbs up, great dub.

Subsequent films seemed to follow this pattern of either intense, action-packed violence or lady movies. I got to watch Mandy Moore freak out about marriage and relationships with Diane Keaton and Piper Perabo in the Peruvian desert. I got to watch Stone Cold Steve Austin kill other prisoners to survive while riding through the Argentine Pampas. And also Kate Hudson. And also Jason Statham, Sylvester Stallone, Liam Neeson the list goes on and on. We did also see two or three children's films including the frog princess (which was somehow conducive to sleep), the squeakual (I couldn't stare directly into this) and some movie with Richard Gere, Jason Alexander and a fluffy white puppy (which had a faulty disk whose defect I had the pleasure of explaining in to an extremely skeptical woman).

One of the weirdest films I saw in Dub style was a Jonathan Demme movie with a big cast, but primarily featuring the woman from Alice in Wonderland who plays the White Queen (which I saw in 3d, in Quito and Dubbed! out there 3d still costs $4) as a recovering drug addict whose sister is getting married to a black man. The whole family is crammed together in a fit of upper-middle-class angst that seems extremely un-relatable given the comforting elegance of their home and their possessions in contrast with the material poverty surrounding the bus and the fact that we have been explicitly asked not to defecate in the toilets on our bus.

I think this is probably a good movie in English, albeit a serious downer, but dubbing had a really pleasant alienating effect on my experience of watching this film. I was having enough trouble keeping pace not only with the translation but also the weird predicaments that seem to befall Latino voice actors trying to give depth to their overdubs of African American speech, some kind of weird musicality that was part of the film, and the fact that I was crammed into an escalating series of absurd positions designed to negotiate semi-supine comfort with the fact that the air-conditioning vent above me was peeing onto my face, chest and lap.

Most of the films that we watched on the buses were watched with complete, rapt, silent attention, or ignored just as completely. A notable exception to this was an extremely serious film concerning good friends Cuba Gooding Junior and Horatio Sanz, and their experience of accidentally booking passage on a gay, not a straight, singles cruise. I have personally experienced no better way of musing on the question of machismo than to watch the reactions of captive holy week travelers as they confront the height of homosexual stereotypy as brought to you by seasoned SNL alumni and Cuba "Radio" Gooding Junior. This being an American film things eventually got all straightened out and by the end everyone had a properly balanced family based on the ideal relations of capitalist love production. This movie had Roger Moore as well.

To conclude, let me say that while I don't think having a great cinematic experience would be any reason, in and of itself, to ride buses all over South America, if you do happen to find yourself bouncing down a road with your knees impaling the seat in front of you as you are also impaled by some knees, certainly take your opportunity to enjoy some yellow cola and chips and see film in a context and technical style (really shitty tv and insane sound) that is transformatively provocative from the get-go.

(for another blog that updates semi-infrequently and more information on this trip I was on, allow me to plug ---> TrotamundosSA.blogspot.com)

Back to the Blog with Eden Lake

2009

Director: James Watkins

Cast: Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender and Jack O'Connell

Plot: Refusing to let anything spoil their romatic weekend break, a young couple confront a gang of loutish youths with terrifyingly brutal consequences.

Well its been some time since we, your muchachos, have found time to discuss our latest movie viewings. I blame our watching of Gary Marshall's gorey love-fest Valentine's Day but that's debatable...

Luckily we recently viewed a movie so vile and upsetting that it begged for a blogging. For some time we had Eden Lake on our queue of movies to watch but somehow the timing never seemed right; I'd heard it was scary and disturbing but nothing to make it stand out. The plot of this UK movie seemed straightforward, couple goes camping, encounters some rowdy youth, things go unspeakably wrong. I think we may have originally picked it up since it has that adorable Michael Fassbender as the leading man. Eden Lake is scary, terribly dark, unrelenting and offers some unique perspectives on what appears to be a rather ordinary horror plot. There are obvious connections to the French film Them (Ils) where another couple is harrassed by teens, but unlike Them, Eden Lake gives motive and conscience to its dark teens. Sure they start out vicious and completely apathetic, but when things start going really badly, and their psychopathic ringleader indicates they'll have to kill the couple, most of the kids visibly squirm at the idea. When they are forced by their leader to take turns torturing poor Fassbender, equalizing the guilt of the situation throughout the group, you have one of the grossest horror movie scenes I've ever encountered. Not only are we scared as Fassbender faces his torture and the plans of the disturbed ringleader, but we are also scared for these kids doing it, one of whom is so upset he closes his eyes and clumsily thrusts a boxcutter into Fassbenders mouth. The end result was a movie that both scared the crap out of me, and also made me feel like I watched a really disturbing pyschological drama (Mean Creek came to mind since it also includes kids stumbling into homicidal situations). This gross-out feeling goes along with almost any of the newly genred "torture-porn" horror movies, but there is much in Eden Lake that Eli Roth's Hostel's could learn from. Its the idea of torturing someone that's disturbing, not showing gorey close-ups of the torture happening. And again its the dual point of view of the victims as well as the kids, who cringe and even cry as their bully orders them to finish what they started. I literally had to watch Arrested Development to get into a happier frame of mind after watching this movie, because if this plot didn't sound dark enough, wait until the ending!