Boo-ya

Saturday Purchasing II

So Odd

Jaws Saga Quotes That Work Well In Real Life

In regards to a rather large female trying to accost you in a club - 'We're gonna need a bigger boat.'

In regards to a female with less-than-impressive mammaries - 'She's got tits like a sparrow.'

When you desire to lock lips with a desirable female - 'I have an irresistable urge to kiss you, Ellen Brody.'

When you wish a friend to tell another friend you are mad at them - 'You tell Shelby Overman for me he can take a flying leap in a rolling doughnut on a gravel driveway!'

When a friend tells you he is attracted to another friend's mother - 'You talkin' about the damn shark's mutha?!'

When you want a friend to get you out of talking to someone, but don't want to offend the person - 'Excuse us, please. I want you to come in here and, er, check out this 908.'

When a fellow professional mistakes the killer whale you find dead on the beach from a shark bite as a fish - 'This is a mammal.'

When trying to justify your nerd ass asking out the hottest female in town - 'Sometimes the most beautiful girls are the loneliest.'

When someone tells you something you don't agree with - 'Lens my ass!'

When you are upset your brave young royal friend has been murdered by a thirty-five foot shark - 'PHHIIIIIIIIILLLLIIIIIIIPPPPPP!'

When you see a particularly nice member of the female species - 'That's a twenty footer.'

"Finale"

I'm a big fan of the semi-old style of big sweeping musical endings. I really like the idea of, at least a certain type of film, climaxing in a huge musical statement that echoes - emotionally and philosophically - the film's final meaning. The obvious example for this is THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. That segue into the love theme as Luke puts his arm around Leia and the Millennium Falcon shoots away into a future unknown, scored by the most magnificently tragic and beautiful phrase that turns it into one of the saddest scenes in cinema history. But even movies that aren't so good are sometimes able to manage it. Tim Burton's BATMAN has never been the greatest flick, but the ending, with the camera swooping up the side of Gotham's skyline while Danny Elfman's score builds, coming to a triumphant end statement as the Batsignal shines high over the city and a watching Batman, is just pure cinema.

The man thing that's spurred this entry on is the yesterday purchase of James Horner's soundtrack to THE WRATH OF KHAN, which I've been listening to intermittently between the new New Pornographers and Foo Fighters, both of which on first listen are fine records. The climax of that film, on here as 'Epilogue/End Title,' is eight minutes and forty seconds of symphonic bliss. Starting with a very hopeful yet sorrowful reprise of the film's main theme, scoring Kirk's last entry as he talks about Spock and his death, and his subsequent conversation on Spock with McCoy and Carol, ending in the proclaimation: 'Young. I feel... young!' This kicks off an amazing sweeping movement that takes us away from the Enterprise to the paradisical (real word?) beauty of the Genesis planet, and that final shot of Spock's coffin, giving us not only a visual but an emotional sense of hope, which is capped with the final reading of the 'Final frontier' speech by Spock himself, a great device which was also well-homaged by Bryan Singer in X-MEN 2.

It's such a perfect ending to the film, both visually and thematically, but also musically. It is that EMPIRE factor; an amazing synergy of technical and emotional aspects of film coming together to produce an honestly emotional response. And it's the kind of thing I dream of being able to do as a filmmaker.

Something I Won Yesterday...

Saturday Purchasing








And for Father's Day:



STAR WARS: REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005)

Well, I thought it was finally time to write this.

There's no need to go through my history with this film, or this saga. It's documented. It's done. Anyone who knows me knows my thoughts on Star Wars. Unfortunately, they also know my thoughts on REVENGE OF THE SITH.

The film has a great opening. It also displays pretty much all of its weaknesses in that opening. By the opening, I refer to from the crawl to the crash-land on Coruscant. The first minute is great. Pan down from the crawl to an uber-quiet shot of one of the new Republic star destroyers. It reminds me of the opening of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Serene, calm, but somehow ominous. Suddenly, two Jedi starfighters fly into frame, and as the Force music swells, we follow them along the ship's bow as it pulls back to reveal a massive space battle. This minute is as good as any rollercoaster, and is the finest bit of spaceship action in the prequels, bar none. It leaves a pit in my stomach, and I'm having fun. There is some nice banter between Anakin and Obi-Wan in the fighters, which continues as they fight their way onto a battleship. However, this is where the problems start.

Trade Federation surfer dude. Comedy battle droids. Comedy super battle droids. Count Dooku flipping about like Jet Li. And Count Duckula, sorry, General Grievous. The Dooku fight is way too short. Grievous is a joke. A snivelling coward I could have dealt with, but not with a sub-Lugosi accent and just a horribly written character. There's no point to him. He isn't half the badass he was in the Clone Wars cartoons, and everything he does could have been done by Dooku, which would have been more satisfying, especially since it would have left Christopher Lee with more than five minutes screen time.

The problems with the film is that there are moments in the film that should come naturally, and should have been stupidly hard to get wrong, but just don't work. Palpatine's snarling Emperor, finally revealed. THE DUEL. Anakin killing Padme. The Jedi purge. That last moment works, but not half as powerfully as it should. There's a scene where Anakin is brooding in the Jedi council chambers, and Padme is in her apartment, and both go to the windows and look out onto Coruscant, seemingly looking at each other. It's a beautiful moment, and one wishes the rest of the film could have had such tender and considerate care as that had.

The acting is much improved, and there were some tears. McGregor's end speech is great. Even Christensen works. But you still feel this is a George Lucas-directed film, and these are nothing more than walking-talking special effects, avatars for his self-expression, and nothing more. The moment of Vader's revelation, which we've all waited for, works great as a FRANKENSTEIN homage, but ends with an exclaimation that would send most audiences in hysterics.

Christ. I really liked some of the film. And as I stepped out of the theater at three in the morning, I was expecting to experience the post-midnighter euphoria, as usually happens. But it wasn't there. Instead, I was dejected. Depressed.

Broken-hearted.

I saw the film the next day, and since none of the bad things were a shock, I enjoyed it a bit more. But I don't want to see it again. I've barely thought about it since. It's a shame. The saga ends in a sea of misery, with the Empire triumphant and the galaxy in shreds, but it's final image is that of the binary sunset we all know, illustrating that despite all the evil, there is still hope for the future.

But I don't feel that hope.

New Work Digs

I started work on monday. Call centre stuff. It's training, so it's all pretty light, but I like it so far. The people are all cool, and it doesn't seem as spirit-crushing as previous jobs I've had. Then again, it's early days.

My writing's kinda gone to pot right now. I got up to page sixty of my zombie script, and it reads well I think, but I just have a total mental block. I was working on a Batman/Superman deal too, and that seems to be going nowhere. My body clock seems to be sorta getting back on track, but I dunno. I'm still way not confident in my ability. There's a film festival on friday that I've submitted two pieces to, run by my college. I'm not sure if they'll be chosen to be shown though. I'd like them to be, as I'm proud of both of them, but I don't know if the folks who choose it share the same sentiment. Oh well. We'll see what happens.

Fluke, Thy Name Is Charlie

I don't get a lot of luck, so whenever any comes my way, I'm pretty grateful. Today's luck comes in the form of me fluking an exam. Basically, a month or so ago, I was told there would be an exam, and it was in three days from that day. On Communications, or some shit. Part of the additional credit deals I have to do to complete my course. So I go along, and they sit me down. On the screen says three words.

APPLICATION OF NUMBER.

My face says 'WTF?' The thing is, I've been doing this additional maths thing too, but I had forgotten about it. But this is it, the maths test is in front of me. So I'm not sure what to do. I haven't studied for maths. I haven't looked at a maths book since last year, mostly because I hate the subject. So I just think, 'I'll just do it, and when I fail, I'll study up and do it again.' So I ask for a pencil and start hitting random answers, as it's a multiple choice test. I leave, and meet up with people who said they just got up and left when they found out it wasn't right. At the time, I wished I'd done that, but oh well. So I chat with my tutor, and she said they screwed up. Oh well.

So I get an envelope through the post. Open it up, what does it say? APPLICATION OF NUMBER, LEVEL 2 - PASS. Like, huh? So I guessed I hit the right answers randomly. If it was a subject I liked, I'd probably feel a bit bad for fluking it. But seeing how it's maths, I couldn't give a fuck.

BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA

There's been a lot said about the films of Sam Peckinpah. People call him and his movies misogynistic, sadistic, and downright unpleasant. But they are a reflection of times, of life. That is why the characters in Peckinpah's films always seem so real. They've lived life, and they're really fucking weary of it. In BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, Warren Oates plays this attitude down to a T.

Bennie is the kind of anti-hero that certain groups of people really like to see in movies. It's somewhat the same as Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood. People who are effortless in their ways, who always seem to act and look cool, and who don't seem to give a fuck. But Bennie does give a fuck. He cares about the money he's promised after he delivers the titular head, but he cares more about Elita, a lover of both he and Garcia. Even in a world where Bennie seems like he's seen it all, he has these two things to grab onto. And from that, we know it's not going to be a happy ending.

When Elita dies, Bennie goes nuts. He's angry at himself, at the people who killed her, and at Garcia - or 'Al' as he calls the head - for getting him into this. As Bennie's journey gets more and more desperate, we see Al's head as a personification of Bennie's final hold on his life. He's sick and tired, he has nothing to live for but the money he'll get, but he has the head. Even when he delivers it to the middlemen, he won't give it up. He knows they're holding back how much it's really worth, and he's hung onto it too damn long just to give it up like that, so he kills those guys, and takes it to El Jefe, the man who put the bounty because Garcia had made his daughter pregnant. The uncompromising nature of Peckinpah is displayed in the first few minutes, when henchmen under El Jefe's command break his daughter's arm because she won't reveal who the father is.

And this leads to the final confrontation, where Peckinpah juxtaposes the end of the journey for Bennie as he arrives at El Jefe's with a new life, showing the baptism of his daughter's baby, a baby he seems very proud of, despite the fact he ordered the father's death. As the after-party comes, Bennie is led through the garden where there are fireworks celebrating the christening, a sure sign of foreshadowing as you can imagine. Yet when Bennie again refuses to give up the head, it is El Jefe's daughter that requests Bennie kill her father, which he does. In this brutal, but semi-heroic act, he releases the daughter and her baby from her father's reign, and prepares himself for the end. And he dies in a hail of gunfire not dissimilar to James Caan's tollbooth slaughter in THE GODFATHER, and fittingly, the last shot is a freeze frame of a barrel belonging to a gun whose ammo - or life - is spent.

There are some great touches in the film, not least from the direction. There are two bounty hunters who are both in their fifties, but remind me of how William Holden and Robert Ryan from THE WILD BUNCH might have been before they went their seperate ways. Again, they're typical Peckinpah characters. They look cool, they look hard, but it's all effortless. Isela Vega as Elita is beautiful, and there is a wonderful scene where Bennie is getting her up to go on their odyssey. She lies there, naked as the day she was born, and it just seems such an amazingly real scene displaying something that isn't out of the ordinary at all, but you so rarely see in mainstream cinema. Hollywood loves to make a big deal when a girl shows her tits, but here, it's presented so effortlessly real, it's so refreshing. Click here for the NSFW shots from this scene.

But the stars of the film are Peckinpah and Oates. I've read Bennie was based on the director, right down to the sunglasses, and Oates plays him with the world-wearyness that the director's work displays so often. It's a shame that Oates has never really been a star amongst the likes of McQueen et al, but I guess it's the same way Peckinpah is never going to be known as well as Scorsese, left only to be found when people break the mold of the mainstream and discover the world beyond that which can only be described as a film geek's treasure. But here, we see two masters of their work, both working two sides of the same coin. It's always brutal and uncompromising, two words used often in the context of Peckinpah, but at the same time it's lyrical and beautiful, a film Roger Ebert described as 'a sad poem.'

Whatever you call it, it's great fucking movie making.