A Gift to Our Readers

It came to my attention today that in 100 select AMC movie theatres across America, you can purchase a pass for $30 to see all five Best Picture (AMPAAS) nominated films in one day. From Cinematical:

The event is happening at about 100 AMC theaters in 42 U.S. and Canadian cities (here's the list), and the cost is $30. For that you get all five movies, plus unlimited popcorn all day long. The schedule is the same everywhere. You'll start the day at 10:30 a.m. with a serving of Milk, then follow it up at 1:05 p.m. with The Reader. That takes care of all of the day's nudity, leaving you free to focus on other things. At 3:45, you'll see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, then watch Slumdog Millionaire at 7:15, and wrap things up with Frost/Nixon at 9:45.

Readers here will remember that I have seen these films (ok, haven't watched Milk), therefore I wouldn't be interested in paying to see any of them again. Neither, do I believe, would any of you. However, I think I might be interested in competing with AMC and offering the same deal, all five movies scheduled similarly, for ABSOLUTELY FREE! You see, I am a privvy journalist and have therefore made it my business to make these films available to myself, and now they can be available to you.

Thus, if anyone is interested, I could totally hook this up one day. The five best picture nominees, unlimted popcorn (or whatever the heck else, why not corndogs, chips and salsa, beer?) all in one day all for nothing. Time and place TBD. RSVP in the comment section.
Boy, I am generous aren't I?

Friday Batman

Things haven't been all that great lately. The economy is rough and Obama with the Dems in Congress wants to hemorrhage money to "stimulate it." The Dark Knight was refused the respect it deserves from the academy. And I personally have been hitting a lot of road blocks on my highway to awesometown. Actually, I'm kind of stalled out in a rest stop right now. The point is, there are plenty of reasons to be blue right now, and no one sings the blues like Batman:



For those of you who habla Español:

Emergency Post

First, thanks to Tuce63 aka Lee for the help...the Free-Lancer is now searchable. You are a scholar and a gentleman, sir.

Second,
If you weren't already aware of the huge mistake America made in electing President Obama and allowing an overwhelmingly Democrat congress to persist, the the trillion dollar "economic stimulus package" ought to wise you up.
Yes, dear readers, the sinking ship we call our congress voted yesterday to pass the bill that Obama has been pushing since he took office, and which has received no bipartisan support (change we need). I am sure you are familiar with the bill, its the one that cost over 800 billion and allocated 350 million of that for contraceptives to "stimulate the economy." On top of that it has provisions for low income singles and couples to receive between $500 to $1000 worth of tax rebates--even if they didn't pay any federal taxes. Even though virtually no Republicans voted for the bill in the house, it passed unopposed, as it is likely to do in the Senate. Obama hopes to sign the bill into law in mid-February.
Just to be clear, this is a bill intended to "stimulate" the economy by pumping a trillion dollars of money that doesn't exist into sectors of society that do not generate economic growth. The Dems argue that they are trying to keep more people from losing jobs. Great, because bankrupting an already debt-burdened nation is the best way to do just that.

Many people mused rather naively during the election that "nothing is really going to change" when Obama takes office; "It will be more of the same old, same old." I agree in a general sense, as politicians always do stupid, counterproductive things. However, the foolishness and arrogance of the Obama administration only two weeks in is already reaching Soviet levels. The President himself said, after refusing to make any changes the Republicans asked for in the bill (namely reduce or remove all of the spending measures and leave only tax cuts) is quoted as saying,
" I understand that and I will watch you on Fox News and feel bad about myself."
He then threw a COCKTAIL PARTY, which is exactly the change we need.

There is good news though. Fox 2000 has picked up the Narnia franchise after Disney unceremoniously dumped it, and they hope to have The Voyage of the Dawn Treader out in theatres by next Christmas. Read Here.

Post Limit

It appears as though I am nearing my self-imposed post limit for the month of January, and since I must save room for Friday Batman and leave open an emergency slot for new Fail-Out vote, posting will grind to a slow halt until February. There will be one last "From the Vault" and then you're on your own.

Trust me though, Feb. will be quite the month (Oscars, Valentines, Black History) so never fear. I promise to finish my run down of the Oscar nominated films before the ceremony that we are boycotting. Until then, be content with the myriad of material available to you in the archives. I wish I was smart enough to have a search feature, but I don't. Anyone want to help me with that?

Makes More Sense than Calculus

The Thing

John Carpenter's The Thing was one of a handful of movies I saw as a kid that really scared the poop right out of me and turned me off to horror films altogether. When the one guy's chest opens up and bites off the other guys arms, I nearly had a heart attack. That entire sequence still gives me nightmares. After many years, I manned up and watched the film again and fell right in love with it. I saw the corny 1951 original (in glorious black and white), and I bought and played the heck out of the awesome video game on the original Xbox. Now, some insane Frenchmen have recreated the movie in six minutes using GI Joes and stop motion. The music is lame and annoying, but the video itself is utterly incredible.

Slumdog Millionaire

Firstly, I will not be writing a traditional review. I saw the film some weeks before it won all those globes and then went on to get a respectable bevy of Oscar nods. However, I never felt the need to cover it or recommend/deter anyone from seeing the picture period. I liked the movie overall, thought the direction was skilled and inspired, the cinematography vivid and exciting, and the story excellently paced and interesting enough (the central conceit of the gameshow answers coming from the protagonist's life experiences is a brilliant one even if it is cheating.) However, Slumdog is essential a lame love story with a music number at the end.

The interesting thing to me about Slumdog Millionaire is all the attention is has received, both positive and negative, despite the fact that the film is relatively ordinary and, quite frankly, empty. Yet, there are many writers out there absolutely falling over themselves to praise the British-made picture. Recently some mouth-breather named David Gitten wrote an article for the UK online publication The Telegraph in which he postulated that Slumdog Millionaire is the "first film of the Obama era." To quote the article,

The first striking thing about this British-made film is its even-handed, generous spirit of universality. It is set in India and it's about Indians. There is no hint of Merchant Ivory decorum, the predicaments of rich westerners far from home, nor any notion that Boyle and his team were engaged in a David Lean-style imperial adventure in what was once one of the pink regions on the globe. Refreshingly, there is also no white character to "explain" the story (which needs no explanation) to western audiences.

"No white character." This is part of Gitten's reason for believing Slumdog is part of the "Obama era." Why? Because Obama is (half) black, of course. Back to race, (even though Obama has unfied us and removed race from the equation, right?) Has Gitten already forgotten about City of God, a far more honest, and even less "white" film that dealt with almost the exact same subject matter (favelas of Brazil instead of Slums in India) without any of the lame love story crap thrown in? Slumdog may not have a white character in the film "explaining" the story, but nearly the whole movie is in English! The English parts of the movie aren't even narratively motivated. The film just, whenever it feels like it, switches from Hindi to English to ensure that "white" audiences are thoroughly "explained" the story. Gitten goes on to further state,

It does not have an ironic moment. It is utterly devoid of cynicism. Instead, it is bright-eyed, optimistic – idealistic, even. To generations reared on a drip-feed of corrosive cynicism, the elevation of greed for greed's sake and weary disillusion with our leaders and our institutions it feels almost shocking.

Gitten has the audacity to say that 1) Slumdog is devoid of cynicism and "greed for greed's sake" despite two of its key characters being cynical, greedy villains who are neither redeemed nor condemned by the film (the brother and the gameshow host), and 2) this optimistic, idealistic tendency is the hallmark of the "Obama" era. According to the addlebrained Brit, there were no movies made before Obama came along that exhibited optimism. Had Gitten been simply watching all of the Iraq War movies that Hollywood liberals pushed out, he may logically be forgiven for such an ignorant observation, for the entire tenor of the Democratic Party, Obama's party, is and has been one of cynicism specifically in regards to A) The War B) George W. Bush and C) America's position as a world power. It isn't that optimism has been missing from filmmaking during the past few decades, it is that the optimistic films have been ignored. How in allah's name was The Dark Knight not optimistic? In that film Batman literally battles against the cynicism of the Joker in a showdown whereby two ships full of people refuse to blow each other up to save their respective lives. Batman's faith in Gotham at that moment stands in stark, optimistic opposition to the cynical view of the Joker that everyone is simply watching out for numero uno. But no, that film cannot be the first film of the "Obama era" because of its staunchly pro-War on Terror standpoint...that and it is full of white people.

Back to the issue at hand; Slumdog says nothing new. Though being set in India and featuring Indian characters, it offers very little insight into modern Indian society and in fact, according to the Indians themselves, hides the truth behind a cinematic sheen; a veneer of movie magic if you will. The statistical wizards who create such things say that 9 million people out of the 20 million that are packed into Mumbai (Bomaby for those who don't speak PC) are below the "poverty line" and live in slums. Slumdog Millionaire brushes this statistic over and merely uses the slums as a reference point (look how far he has come!) in the framework of what is essentially another "American dream" story where the poor boy, through wit and determination becomes wealthy and along the way gets the girl. Even the most compelling part of the movie, the depiction of child abuse by gangs in order to extort money, is marginalized into a convenient plot point (that damsel has got to be in some kind of distress).

Oddly enough, those poor Indians who actually did see the film think its a pure Hollywood fantasy, a betrayal of the true hideousness of the beggar gangs in Bombay, and a crock o' crap in general (don't you dare call it Bollywood). The actual slumdogs are effectively rioting in the streets and attacking cinemas in protest--mostly because they don't like "dog" being in the title.
To quote the Times Online,

"Referring to people living in slums as dogs is a violation of human rights," said Mr Vishwakarma, who works for a group promoting the rights of slum dwellers. "We will burn Danny Boyle [the film's British director] effigies in 56 slums here."

They are upset, because unlike America and Britain, people in the rest of the world don't think dogs are cute and take offense when called such. I think their ire is inconsequential, and a bit stupid, but the disconnect between Gitten's retarded article and reality deserves to be brought to light.

Happy Australia Day

In an odd twist of fate, today is not only the most important day in Chinese culture, but also the most important day in Australian culture.


Today, January 26th in 1788 the First Fleet of convicts sailed into Sydney Cove and began what would become the nation Down Under. The Aussies put on a big shindig with tall ship races in Sydney Harbour, with reenactments, with barbies (Lamb Chops!), and with lots of drinking.


Happy Australia Day. I for one with having a go with some a lamb and a stubby. Cheers.

Happy New Year

"What scene? The scene is about emotionality. Where is it? Now it's time to flip the script! We'll get to Chinese New Year waitin' for my man to cry" --Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.)

Today is the Chinese New Year. I hope Tug Speedman is crying. How do the Chinese celebrate their new year? Why, by dressing up in gold track suits and rapping with children, of course!


That big guy is supposedly the most popular "singer" in the Greater China Area.

Free-Lancer Military Update

From the Vault: The Art of B.S.

I mainly earned my college degree by writing papers that had the veneer of intelligence, but really didn't say anything. Many, actually most, times my papers would be custom tailored to the professor essentially expressing exactly what I thought that individual believed or would want to read in a paper. The university system is a wilderness of liberalism, and I being the young-white-male-conservative-Christian that I am was often forced to write papers in a voice and style that expressed views entirely contrary to my own. Yet, its all about that "A" in school these days so I did what I needed to. Of course, at the end of my run I decided to buck the system and ended up proving my point that dissenting views (read conservative) are punished in today's colleges. You can read up on that whole rodeo HERE.

As I was going through the vault today, I dredged up a piece of crap I wrote for some hippie femi-Nazi in an American Film History class that I eventually dropped due to nature of films I was being forced to write on (Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Titanic?...nigga please.) In honor of President (gag) Obama, here is some classic B.S. I churned out on race in Night of the Living Dead. Before you read the piece understand that I hate that movie and don't believe a single thing I wrote (for the most part.) It got a solid "A" though.

In film, as in literature, genre pieces are often discounted as commercial devices and seldom examined on their own merits as works of art with any serious application. Arguably, this is most true for the horror film which belongs to a genre which, if taken seriously, must be passed through a sizable sieve in order to separate the myriad of components from the monster films of the Thirties to today’s Japanese new wave and their remakes. The films that would pass the sieve and broach areas worth studying would be those, such as Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (Dead), which carry within them a form of recognizable social commentary. Dead was a product of the Sixties and served to turn an expressionistic lens onto the problems and concerns of that generation.

What is immediately evident in the commentary offered by Romero through his film is the challenging of filmic archetypes with the presence of a sole black male protagonist. Reflected in the protagonist’s struggle are the Civil Rights issues that were exploding on a nation full force during the films production and release in a year, 1968, that saw the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It is not difficult to see the resemblance of the final scenes featuring red neck gun-toting militia and their hounds to lynch mobs, leading up to the final and somewhat inevitable execution of the protagonist.

The conflicts of the characters within the film sting with racial commentary as the hero, portrayed by Duane Johnson, refuses to submit to the authority of the “man” and be sequestered into a cellar. Pertinent to the critique of race relations in the film is the manner of death of many of the characters; those who side with Johnson are killed via outside forces i.e. zombies, which could represent society, and those who side against him are killed from within i.e. the family tearing itself apart. Strengthening the commentary of such scenes is the absence of acknowledgement of race by any of the characters involved in the film; each character is accepted on their own terms leaving the audience to be implicated in the race game.

Whereas racial issues of the Sixties color (pun intended) the immediate, it is the Vietnam War and its subsequent social unrest that permeates the entirety of the film. Dead was not the first zombie picture to be made but at its release it was the most violent and graphic of nearly any film to that point prompting a barrage of negativity from critics and movie-goers alike. Many were put off by the gore and explicit images, particularly when the film was bundled with “kiddie pictures” through a gross marketing error by distributor Continental distributing. Yet the film gained and retained popularity because it exposed a violent unrest that defined the late Sixties/early Seventies culture; a culture that saw an easy correlation between the images of the senseless killing on the screen and the war images on the television.

Essentially, Dead is an attempt at modern allegory which seeks to intentionally subvert a volatile culture of inequality and injustice. Whether or not the film succeeds in its critique is a question that could only be answered thirty years ago. The problems that fuel the film have passed and new problems have arisen, many of which have also been dealt with in later Romero films—not least of which being American consumerism. However, during its day, Dead provided a stylized portrait of modern times painted with Romero’s own brand of acerbic insight.

Chicken or Egg?

You know, like that commercial:

Friday Batman

Ever heard of the People's Choice Awards? Me either. However, it exists and those "people" who choose things weren't pretentious snobs with their head ups their butts (i.e. the Academy) and they gave The Dark Knight all the Awards they could:


Also, I think the Golden Globes this year might actually have gotten some things right, like giving Heath the globe (and Colin for In Bruges...)


Batman will unfortunately have to be satisfied with these accolades, because the tool-box that is the Oscar voters just can't see the big picture.

Boycott the Oscars....For Batman

It is official, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is irrelevant. It is a safe bet that the Academy doesn't even watch movies anymore. They wait a little while around Christmas time for the "important" movies to come out, and then they slap together the most pretentious list they can come up with.

Many good articles have been written today following the release of the '08 Oscar noms, such as THIS ONE at Big Hollywood by Andrew Leigh, or THIS ONE by William Goss over at Cinematical. Both writers come from different ends of the political spectrum and both agree that the Academy has turds for brains for snubbing The Dark Knight (and The Wrestler, but I don't think that one really deserves a Best Pic nod.)

Leigh postulates that the Oscars this year will be the lowest rated ever, and I agree. I think, to help things along we should all boycott them by not even turning our TV's on that night (not as though any of you had planned to watch the show since the highlight the past two years has been Will Ferrell and Jack Black's musical numbers HERE and HERE.)

I liked Benjamin Button, but I don't think it deserves any of the awards it was nominated for except Cinematography and Direction (because, darn it all, Fincher deserves that statue). Sure its nice that Heath got a nod, and Downey Jr., but The Reader? Frost/Nixon? Milk? None of those films even come close to the near-perfection that was The Dark Knight.

Oh well, you always have Friday Batman to look forward to.

Free-Lancer Scientific Update

Early Morning Elitism

I don't want to be one of those "gun-jumpin" journalists, but it looks like the Academy Awards nominations are up (via a list on Yahoo news). Very few surprises, ladies and gentleman. Of course The Dark Knight got shut out of the the three majors: no Best Picture nod, no Best Director nod for Nolan, and no Best Adapted Screenplay nod. Such an affront is reason alone for me to write off the Academy entirely, but you must remember these are the tools who thought Crash was the best picture of, well 2004 specifically but of anytime is retarded. Of course Milk gets a Best Pic nod, wouldn't want those Oscar voters to appear homophobic. Frost/Nixon is there as well, for political reasons because anyone who saw that film knows it is painfully stagy and had the production value of a late '90s TNT original.

When the list is officially announced (by someone other than Yahoo) I will do a complete breakdown. The biggest "surprise" of sorts is all the nominations that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button received. In any event, this year is shaping up to be as lame as the last five or six....actually, last year wasn't too off, but still...

From the Vault: The MPAA and You

I have a lot of genius-ness stored away on my hard drive in the form of school assignments, late night ramblings, and unmailed angry letters to the producers of Gilmore Girls. I plan on getting some of the gems out of the chest and onto the Internets so that years down the road someone will accidentally read one while searching for sources to cite for their paper on how Lorelie Gilmore changed the modern perception of feminism in literature, and hopefully have their universe shattered on the spot.

Bring it back you heartless Nazis!

The following piece was an "Application Assignment" for some Media Industry class I destroyed with my awesomeness:

Like a friendly neighbor who stands in your living room with your remote and chooses your channels for you, the MPAA has done research into what movies you, and millions like you, prefer to watch so that the only films that get made are exactly those that you want. According to the conveniently placed “frequently requested statistics” on their website, you don’t like R rated films because “consistent with 2005, PG and PG-13 films accounted for 85% of 2006's top 20 films.”

Great! Now you don’t have to worry about those pesky R’s or G’s, because you, the public, have spoken and Hollywood will listen. But wait, you say, how does Hollywood know what kinds of movies sociographically and demographiclly I want to see so that those are the only films released in theatres? Well, your friendly neighbor the MPAA and their helpful statistics tell studio producers, of course.

Are you an African-American? No? That’s too bad, because apparently black people rank as the highest attendees of films at an average of 9 movies per year. The question you are asking yourself is, does this affect the kinds of movies made? Let’s take a look. The list of top grossing films of 2006 included Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Cars, Da Vinci Code, and Superman Returns, which all contain overwhelmingly white casts; hardly a single person of color to be seen. What then can be said about these films? What age person enjoys pirates, cars, superheroes, and Tom Hanks? You guessed it, hooligans.

In 2005 over half of movie attendees were between 12 and 29 years old and the percentage continues to increase towards young viewers as old white people take to DVD players and Netflix, because they can afford it and because theatres are filled with "those darn kids and their rock n' roll and jujubes". As you can see, it is a chicken and egg scenario. The numbers are pretty good no matter what gender you are, as long as you come in under the age of twenty; 59% male and 56% female (wait, MPAA statiticians, that's more than a hundred percent!) How does this all add up? Ole Mr. MPAA says that the movies that do well, the ones you want made, need to appeal to black hooligans and be PG or PG-13 with lots of white people in them.

That leaves me in a pickle, because I don’t seem to fit into the intended social demographic. Granted, I am a hooligan, but beyond that my needs aren’t being met. I like R-rated films with lots of black people in them, and they still haven’t made a sequel to Still Bout It (the sequel, of course, to Bout It).

Clothed in Foolishness

I am sure many, if not most of you, are privy to the embarrassing phenomenon of idol worship that has arisen around our (gag) new President, Barack Hussein Obama. During the time leading up to the election, and even now for some time after, I would see Black women wearing large earrings featuring Obama's face. Then of course there are the t-shirst, the stickers, the coffee mugs. Yesterday Cracked.com compiled a fine list of the 18 most absurd Obama related pieces of merchandise. I encourage you to take a peek, if your hearts and minds can stand to suffer the agonizing truth of what our nation ultimately consists of: materialistic, hopelessly lost, morons.

One a more human level, I bring you this tale:
My Mother is and has been for 24 odd years a nurse in the labor and delivery ward of a prominent hospital in Savannah, Georgia. From time to time she will regale my family with stories of the daily insanity perpetrated by the Black youths who come in around fourteen or fifteen years of age to have their second child. More often than not, those stories revolve around naming absurdities (Oxygenia, Nitrogenia, Plaxico) yet the other day she brought word of a more troubling development involving an employee of the hospital.
The incident in question involved the young black secretary of my Mother's boss. She, like all good children of Ham, was (is) head over heels in love with Obama and wanted nothing more than to reach out and extended her love personally, so as to be rewarded by the kindness that Barack and his family would certainly extend to her....you know, because they happened to all be Black.
Thus, the young girl in question took several hundred dollars of her earned income and purchased material and cloth. She then spent several hours of her not-earned time to transform that material into two dresses. These dresses, you see, were meant for the daughters of Michelle and Barack, Malia and Sasha, whom our heroine no doubt felt were like her own daughters/sisters/cousins. Not only were the dresses sown specifically as gifts for the two First Daughters, but they were even more specifically sown for the girls to where on inauguration day.
The naive Black secretary believed with her whole heart that if she made these dresses and mailed them to DC, not only would the girls where them at the ceremony but Barack himself would be so grateful that he would personally invite her to stand on stage with him and his family. To this end, the secretary packaged the finished dresses and paid three hundred dollars to overnight them to the Capital.

Needless to say, the girls did not wear the dresses to the inauguration. The secretary was not personally flown up to the ceremony by Obama himself. Further, the last my Mother had heard the package was sitting in the DC distribution center after having been refused by UPS to be delivered. Do you suppose, dear readers, that this event at all dampened the adoration of our misguided protagonist? I invite you to ponder.

What Did All That Money Buy?

Aretha Franklin's appearance fee? That absolutely ridiculous hat she had on?

Maybe it should have gone to getting BHO some elocution lessons. He and Roberts could have split the bill. I bet no small chunk of change was dropped on Biden's teeth whitening, and I guess they had to pay for the rights to whatever Dr. Seuss book Joseph Lowery quoted in his "benediction."

I'll give it to Rick Warren, he said what sounded like a heartfelt and meaningful prayer and Yo Yo Ma certainly seemed to be enjoying the heck out of himself.Oh, and Cheney wore an awesome fedora. Biden's got nothing on Dick.

Epic Fail

Today, Tuesday January 20th marks the end of the second term of the presidency of George W. Bush. For all his faults, he was still a much better president than the alternatives and The Free-Lancer wishes him well and thanks him for all he did in service to our country.
Now that he is gone, the polls at CNN and elsewhere would have us believe that as Barack Hussein Obama steps up to place his hand on the Bible and be sworn in, an overwhelming feeling of hope exists.
Yet hope in what? All I see is a whitewashed tomb and all I hear are the empty promises of a politician arrogant enough to believe one man can save the entire country.
What we are about to witness on this day is nothing more notably historic then the first (half) Black man instated into the presidency. What we are about to witness is, in fact, the beginning of the reign of a man who ran the most expensive campaign in history about to be sworn in during the most expensive inauguration in history all the while clicking his tongue and warning of four more years of economic recession.

The media is of course playing along, making the financial and economic situation in America sound like a new era of depression so that if during the first four years that Obama is president things do turn around, he becomes the savior. Yet, if things continue to worsen (as the man himself would have us believe) then the fault is due to Bush, and Obama will simply need the next four years to turn everything around. Remember, dear readers, we can never underestimate either the power of Bush to destroy nor the power of the Magic Negro to mend.

I had not planned to watch the inauguration. I wouldn't have watched it if McCain had been elected. However, my workplace is ordering pizza and having a sort of party, and being the man of principle I am I cannot allow free pizza to go uneaten. If the inauguration happens to be playing in the background, then I must endure for the sake of my duty.

Friday Batman

The economic crises catches up with the Caped Crusader:

Naked City: Atlanta

"There are eight million stories in the Naked City....and [here are some] of them."

Earlier Entry Here.

The other day I was walking down the street and a Black woman holding hands with two children passed me in a crosswalk. The children, both boys, could not have been older than five years old and together they were singing the theme song to "Happy Days."

Outside the train station at Five Points, in downtown, a large Black man was standing in the open screaming over and over, at the top of his lungs, "You can't help nobody!"

At Turner Field, the parking lots are designated by colors. The sign for the Blue lot is red.

On many of the buildings in the heart of Atlanta there are small bronze plaques that commemorate the location of historic landmarks that used to stand in place of the modern businesses and offices. Where the Confederate Battery used to stand is now a building featuring a Black barber shop called "Goodfellaz."

Quizno's raised their prices.

Broad is the Way to Destruction

SNL pretty much has sucked since Will Ferrell left, but at times they have cranked out some inspired sketches. The political season last year helped, and they probably have the best cast now that they will ever have again. However, the following skit is indicative of the inherent problem: great idea, funny moments, but no rhythm and very poor timing. The video is worth watching though if only for the blue man group joke. The only question is, did they blue themselves?

Stroke of Genius, or Fowl Play?

In a previous post I wrote that I would be doing encapsulated reviews of the films likely to be nominated for Academy Awards (and at the same time offer my picks for the Free-Lancer awards). Thus far I have managed to cover two films, but trust me, the rest may or may not be coming down the pike. One film I did not mention in that post however, was Valkyrie, and not for the reasons you might think. Valkyrie does not suck, and is in fact one of the better movies released last year; much better than Doubt, Revolutionary Road, Last Chance Harvey, or Milk.
Yet, those aforementioned (mostly politically motivated) releases will no doubt garner recognition from the academy in some form, if the Globes are to be any indication. Yet Valkyrie will go unmentioned, almost exclusively (I believe) due to overwhelming prejudice against Cruise and against the cut and dry morality (good vs. evil) of the films central storyline. For a good review on that topic check THIS ONE over at Big Hollywood written up by California State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.

I personally enjoyed Valkyrie immensely when I saw it opening weekend (one of the very few films I have paid money to see since Australia) and thought that Tom Cruise did a fine job as von Stauffenberg. A lot of (ignorant) people in the media and elsewhere whined about his accent (or lack thereof) and how they couldn't get over Tom Cruise's real life persona enough to buy the character. Well, those people likely went into the film wanting to hate it, because Cruise threw himself into the performance and only twice did I even pause to think "hey, Tom Cruise" instead of "hey, von Stauffenberg." The accent/language issue was handled beautifully in the film by starting us out in German with subtitles then slowly moving into English as if to imply that we (the viewers) are hearing German as though it were our own language. To enforce this, all the print in the film is left written in the German language and not subtitled. I consider this an inspired decision, but I love Enemy at the Gates and don't have the slightest problem with all of the Russians characters speaking British accented English.

The plot of the film is of course known (unless you don't know your history) but director Singer manages to keep the tension building throughout the entire film regardless with skillful editing that reinforces a superb script by writer McQuarrie. Also, the historical detail in the film is exquisite to the point that very little CG seems to have been used to include all the aircraft seen in the film being real (likely replicas, but real nevertheless.) However, the real treat of the film was the cast that surrounds Cruise--all British character actors of renown to include Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, and Tom Wilkinson (who won the Golden globe this year for best supporting actor in a TV miniseries for his portrayal of Ben Franklin in "John Adams".) At least three of the actors appeared together in the 2nd and 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean films (Cutner, Davy Jones, and Gibbs)....as a side note.

Anyway, all that was jibber-jabber was my way of leading up to this awesome Donald Duck cartoon from 1943 (h/t Cracked.)

That song is totally stuck in my head now. You're welcome.

Journey's End

All good things must come to an end, and a series of amateur video travelogues is no exception. Below I present the final chapter of A Couple of Yanks in Oz. This video came out a little differently than the others, thus I encourage you to click on the video to go to the youtube page. Once there select "watch in HD" from the bottom right corner just below the video window. The clip is not in HD, but it is full quality.

Over There, It's Summer

As you may or may not know (I've certainly mentioned it plenty of times) I visited Australia a few months back with a friend. I blogged about it HERE, and put up the first two parts of my four part series A Couple of Yanks in Oz, which I filmed using a crappy miniDV consumer camera that was just small enough to warrant toting about. I regret not filming more, now that all is said and done, but I managed to get a few cool things on tape. In celebration of the upcoming Australia Day (January 26th) I present the long awaited third installment of A Couple of Yanks in Oz:


Part four is edited and as soon as I uploaded it, I will link it hither. Cheers.

Blogs are Stupid

Funny Demotivators

Friday Batman

I missed last Friday, but believe that this post more than makes up for it. Behold I give you the unfathomably retarded Adam West Batman dancing in a bar with the beautiful Jill St. John (the Bond babe from Diamonds Are Forever.)
Basically, Batman gets smashed on Orange Juice and makes a fool of himself. Groovy.

Songs and Poems, Poems and Songs

Good friend Lee and I were speaking upon this past eve of the New Year about the decline of poetry since the dawning of the modern era (being almost dead in the postmodern). We both agreed that currently, in today's world, poets are not important people as they used to be. Men like John Donne used to make their living as poets, being employed by the Royal Court for just that purpose. Today poets have been trivialized (I blame the so called "beat generation") into snapping hippie types doing "spoken word" at any of a thousand coffee shops across the nation. However, Lee postulated, and I agree, that truly our greatest poets are songwriters now. The great poems of our time are in our music, just as David wrote the psalms to be sung.

Of all the music I listen too, very little could be considered poetry. Yet there are some artists out their who fit the bill. The band Jars of Clay would be one, I'd argue, and my example is the song "Oh my God" off their latest studio album Good Monsters. Listening to the song nearly breaks my heart every time, but reading the words as print, as a poem, is just as effective...if not more. In such way, I think, is a song truely poetry.

"Oh My God"

Oh my God, look around this place
Your fingers reach around the bone
You set the break and set the tone
Flights of grace, and future falls
In present pain
All fools say, "Oh my God"

Oh my God, Why are we so afraid?
We make it worse when we don't bleed
There is no cure for our disease
Turn a phrase, and rise again
Or fake your death and only tell your closest friend
Oh my God.

Oh my God, can I complain?
You take away my firm belief and graft my soul upon your grief
Weddings, boats and alibis
All drift away, and a mother cries

Liars and fools; sons and failures
Thieves will always say
Lost and found; ailing wanderers
Healers always say
Whores and angels; men with problems
Leavers always say
Broken hearted; separated
Orphans always say
War creators; racial haters
Preachers always say
Distant fathers; fallen warriors
Givers always say
Pilgrim saints; lonely widows
Users always say
Fearful mothers; watchful doubters
Saviors always say

Sometimes I cannot forgive
And these days, mercy cuts so deep
If the world was how it should be, maybe I could get some sleep
While I lay, I dream we're better,
Scales were gone and faces light
When we wake, we hate our brother
We still move to hurt each other
Sometimes I can close my eyes,
And all the fear that keeps me silent falls below my heavy breathing,
What makes me so badly bent?
We all have a chance to murder
We all feel the need for wonder
We still want to be reminded that the pain is worth the thunder

Sometimes when I lose my grip, I wonder what to make of heaven
All the times I thought to reach up
All the times I had to give
Babies underneath their beds
Hospitals that cannot treat all the wounds that money causes,
All the comforts of cathedrals
All the cries of thirsty children - this is our inheritance
All the rage of watching mothers - this is our greatest offense

Oh my God
Oh my God
Oh my God

Feeling Lucky

The entertaining and insightful blogger John "Dirty Harry" Nolte, whose blog dirtyharrysplace.com was a daily stop for me, has moved on to be chief editor at the new sight launched by Andrew Brietbart called Big Hollywood.

Sure to be a powerhouse on the internet, already the site is filled with excellent articles and initiatives. Check it out, I put the link in the side bar.

Awards Season Forecast #1

Appaloosa:
I have already reviewed the film at some length and said this:

Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen are excellent as the leads, which is important because the film is essentially a buddy picture with western tropes. I was reminded of Peckinpah's transcendent classic Ride the High Country. Like Randolph Scott and Joel McRae, Harris and Mortensen were born to be in westerns, and Jeremy Irons as the villain is pitch perfect. The way Irons is able to turn off his accent but still growl in that gravelly basso never ceases to impress. Renee Zell-whatever is the love interest, and the fulcrum on which the balance of the story rests, and as such she is serviceable...but not great. She thankfully doesn't descend to much into her Cold Mountain character, but she never is very convincing.

I was worried at the outset that I was in for a "modern"or "revisionist" western along the lines of Unforgiven (an excellent film, don't get me wrong) not knowing what to expect from Harris. My fears were in vain however, because Appaloosa turned out to be very classical in its story, with clear cut good guys vs. bad guys. There was even a little cowboy vs. Indian action thrown in. Also worth mentioning is the soundtrack. All of the recent westerns (The Proposition, Assassination, Yuma) have been outstanding in regards to music, and Appaloosa is no exception. The score is reminiscent of classic westerns, spiced up with a bit of period flare (banjo, baby). Although the Tom Petty song over the end credits was a bit odd...

Suffice to say that this was one of my personal favorites of 2008. I actually waited with anticipation for the release, and when I wasn't able to catch the special showing while in Toronto, I scrambled quickly to the local theatre down the street from me as soon as the film released in Atlanta.
I nominate Appaloosa for Best Adapted Screenplay (from the novel), Best Picture, and Viggo for Best Supporting Actor. I have always liked Mortensen, and his past few films have displayed an impressive range and intensity. He in no way plays second fiddle to Harris, and in many ways he one-ups the director/star.
Choke:
Likely if you are reading this, you did not see Choke. The film was the second onscreen adaption of a Chuck Palahniuk novel, the first of course being Fight Club which is in every way a superior film. The movie is quite funny, but raunchy as it deals with exceedingly odd characters and insane subject matter (not unlike Fight Club). The title is derived from the main character's (played by Sam Rockwell) propensity for faking choking to death to get people to love him.
Rockwell is great in the lead role, and he continually impresses me with his chops-- and has ever since I first saw him on an episode of Pete and Pete when I was a kid (check out The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford last year). Choke is the directorial debut of Clark Gregg, who is an actor who also shows up in the film. As such, the movie is rather blandly shot, with very little style. However, there were some surprisingly profound moments that shine through from the novel that make solid and sympathetic arguments for Christian love and the authority of Jesus Christ, but you'd have to make it through all the gratuitous sex scenes to find them (the movie, to be fair, is about sex addicts.)

Anyway, this one doesn't really deserve any nominations, except for a shout out to Rockwell. However, in a year populated by solid male lead performances, there really just isn't a place for him this year. Maybe in a few, he's still young.

As Awards Season Draws Nigh...

In a short amount of time the Golden Globes will be happening. I don't really care when, so I won't check the exact date. The Golden Globes don't matter. However, some time after that the Academy Awards will take place. Truthfully, Oscar doesn't matter much anymore either. However, films are still made and strategically released with Oscar in mind, and Academy voters have a notoriously short memories. Therefore you may have noticed the bevy of "important" films released over the last few weeks of last year.

I, being the important corespondent for the Free-Lancer, was privy to these films and have had the opportunity to view nearly all of the potential Oscar contenders (barring the foreign stuff) and am here to give you nugget summations of their quality. I would love to write full reviews for each of them, but I haven't the time or will power so you'll only get a full review of Gran Torino because I felt it was worth writing at length about.

I will go Alphabetically over the next series of posts. To be discussed will be:

Appaloosa

Choke

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Dark Knight

Defiance

Frost/Nixon

Gran Torino

In Bruges

Slumdog Millionaire

The Wrestler

Excluded from this list are such fare as Revolutionary Road, Doubt, and Milk. These films are available to me, and may find themselves in awards competition, but I haven't watched any of them. I have no desire to watch them, but in the spirit of fairness I may make it around to giving them a screen (depending on how board I get.) Currently I am slogging through the first part of Soderbergh's Che (and you know my feelings on that monster) and it already feel like work enough.

That Filmic Look

Andrew Tucciarone and Brandon Thompson (Good friends, frequent collaborators, and oft-mentioned characters in Free-Lancer lore) went out with me today and we did some test shots for a PSA that Brandon and Andrew are hoping to secure. The PSA is to be shot for an anti-sex trafficking organization whose campaign focuses on involvement with the fashion industry and is known as "Drop Dead Gorgeous."

Andrew, hoping to get more money for this PSA then they are willing to cough up, wanted to get some hard proof of the quality of image he could bring to the table. Brandon therefore snapped his 35mm lens adapter onto his Panasonic HD cam and we went for a stroll by the train tracks. I, being the most attractive of the three of us, was place in front of the camera to do my best "hey, sex trafficking is bad so give us money" face. I think I pulled it off. Judge for yourself below.
(For better quality on all the videos, click them to go straight to Youtube were you will see the "watch in high quality" at the very bottom right corner of the video window.)
This first one is a medium shot of me with the train tracks behind.

Next we have a close up:

This one was a wee bit underexposed:

And finally, the money maker:

My Holidays Are Very Productive...

Or not.