#wewatched

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Filmic Murmurs and Toothpaste

My mind scrapes with great pain and difficulty for the next word to write. And when the scraping sounds of mashed up syllables leave through the eyes, ears, nose and very rarely the mouth, I am left with incomprehensible sentences, phrases that speak to me but are codified in the perspectives unique to my own snowflake-y life.

Worse is when I rake through memories to just recall the films I may or may not have seen just days, maybe weeks ago. These films, commonly mediocre and forgettable, hide in a purple haze of inspiration that rears its lopsided head only when external forces seek them out. 

“What did you last watch?”

And I will always respond, “that’s a good question,” because it is in fact a good question. Despite my love of the film medium, it is as full of thick, grey pudding as any other entertainment. Those movies that I would arrive at the theatre just for the satisfaction of the air conditioning and some comfortable seats. By the time I pass through the exit I wonder to myself “I’m certainly exaggerating right now, but I have nearly forgotten this film already.” By the time I hit the pavement, the process of evaporation is complete.

That’s a good question! It’s as good of a question as “what did your toothpaste taste like yesterday?” Each and every day I go through multiple events involving toothpaste, namely the brushing of teeth. Each day that toothpaste is placed on the brush and shoved into my mouth. Scraping against plaque and teeth, the toothpaste froths into a minty foam that I occasionally refer to as a “party in my mouth”.

Isn’t it surprising that there are a finite amount of toothpaste flavors, of which I probably have tried four (the latest is chocolate mint, which has only been found in dentist care packages much to my chagrin), and a question about what my toothpaste tasted like yesterday might be perplexing?

Each and everyday, with nearly the same toothpaste flavor. Was it green mint? Was it the blue mint? I don’t remember the act of toothbrushing most days. It’s part of the robotic skills that I have accrued over two decades of careful practice, right next to showering and masturbation. I do it as if I was possessed by a witch doctor that only wanted the best for my dental hygiene. 

What did I last watch? Gee, I just paid 12 bucks to stare at a big TV, why are you asking me such skewering questions! I could tell you the last movie that I really liked, but last watched? Save it for the court.

Just like the toothbrush, my passion isn’t “watching” the movie. It’s having experienced a great film. Otherwise there are black holes of time in my life that I wish I had gotten back. And when I remember those films that waste my time, the ones that lurk in the back of my mind, mocking me for my bad decisions, I will make hell for them. I want my memories, money, and time back. I have only so much of each one.

-dom

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We Watched: Kingsman: The Secret Service

A satisfying balance of low brow humor and fancy accents and outfits make Kingsman an unexpected film of 2014. Based on a comic book co-created by one of the creators of Watchmen, Dave Gibbons, Kingsman is violent and touches on class issues and overpopulation solutions that have become increasingly prevalent throughout the past century of philosophical debate.

Of course, it’s still a movie that wants people to have fun with their $12-15 tickets, so it doesn’t get too far into that. Instead it plays with classic spy and villain tropes by developing a bad guy residing in a moral grey area to employ his overall plan of saving the world. Samuel L. Jackson employs a lisp to his postmodern awareness of the world; he truly does have a unique voice to explain his way of thinking.

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We Watched: Tokyo Godfathers

In a world enraptured by Miyazaki-mania, Satoshi Kon’s Tokyo Godfathers is a breath of fresh air, focusing on a small drama about families instead of over-reaching fantasies. But fantasy still pervades in the forms of religion and occasional action scenes. In fact, the smallness of Tokyo Godfathers makes otherwise ordinary film plots extraordinary: a small clash of Tokyo gangs becomes a turning point for the primary characters as they are sent off to different locations to piece their plots together.

As with most of Satoshi Kon’s work, Tokyo Godfathers is obsessed with films and filmmaking. References are found in the dialogue; editing and cinematographic-based tricks sometimes remind the audience that they are watching a film, and in fact watching a fantasy, no matter how ordinary it seems. 

The film’s exploration of family trauma and drama became a near tear-jerker for me. The biblical inclusions of the baby and the three “wise” “men” (one is transsexual and the other is a teenage girl) create a relatable narrative for a Christian-derived secular world, and for myself recalled the emotions felt in Alfonso Cuaron’s “Children of Men”. For some reason I very much enjoy using a small child as a catalyst for character development.

-dom

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We Watched: As the Gods Will

If the Japanese manga series this movie is based on is of similar quality, then "As the Gods Will” directed by Takashi Miike is a franchise that stinks in two mediums. The film starts off to the point and promising, but right when a traditional toy head starts talking with its CGI lips, I am turned off. The pace of the film further slows to a crawl. The dialogue flails, attempting at rousing inspirational realizations about life and whatnot and some half-assed special effects and gorey violence that could have at least made up for this film.

If you never read the manga, why’d you watch the movie? I saw that Takashi Miike, a director I have much respect for since 13 Assassins, helped develop the film. The magazine-thing Variety also said “Hey if you like Battle Royale and gore stuff you’ll love this!” Where’s the gore? Sure it had “death game” stuff, but this is no Battle Royale.

This film looks as if it was made cheaply to get some easy money from the manga fans while giving them some pretty young Japanese actors to provide fan service. Also weird treatment of women. The vagina is the main source of the film’s PG-13 gore. It’s cheesy and maybe I’m too uncaring of the details of Japanese culture around the oversexualization of women. Why no penis violence? Why cut the women’s clothes in provocative ways? Is this 70s/80s action? I wish.

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Gone Girl Response

I personally didn't see the gender issues brought about by Sarah, though she explained herself well enough. Gone Girl is a character study of a woman known by everyone else in the Gone Girl world as Amazing Amy. Amazing Amy had everything actual Amy did not. Amazing Amy achieved everything Amy could not. To Amy, her book alter ego was always one step ahead of the real thing.

Since the invention of media formats such as photography, television and film, we are constantly bombarded by images of what we should be, what we are, and who others are. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then those thousand words are inescapable when one reads through magazines, the internet, and newspapers. From an early age these thousand words within images shape our views. There is a language in the unspoken, and that is Amazing Amy.

Amazing Amy was a scripture of texts that pigeon-holed Gone Girl’s protagonists into a corner of mile-high expectations that he and she could not fulfill. For him, Amazing Amy demanded that he was the perfect man. He was to fulfill the realization of Amazing Amy’s accomplishments and dreams as a partner. He was to fulfill a reality dictated by images instigated by a book series. For her, Amazing Amy dictated that she was the perfect woman. She was to fulfill the reality created by images instigated by a book series.

Then she disappears. Now the physical reality of Amazing Amy was missing, and only the image was left. Perfect Amazing Amy. Now the media has to know: just how perfect was Amazing Amy and her perfect Amazing Husband? Reality is not so perfect like the media is. Reality cannot be summed up in photos, text, or a segment of audio. Reality is unromanticized and undefinable.

While Amy is away, only Amazing Amy exists, and the perceptions about Amazing Amy only remain. He cannot fulfill the expectations instigated by a book series. He has cheated, and he has quirks. These quirks are ignorance about how to handle Amazing Amy. Amy has a handle on her alter-ego. She knows how media works. But he doesn’t. He does not know that he should not smile for the cameras when they flash in his face. Quite a quirk.

Amy knows. She was born into media, raised by the media, and is forced to live for the media. The “cool girl” she speaks of is not about gender. The “cool girl” is an image, just like “cool gamer” or “cool musician”. It is a definable and imaginable set of images in one’s head due to an unknown language created by images forced into us every day. For Gone Girl, “cool girl” is a concept, not a gender.

Gone Girl is the process of fulfilling expectations dictated by the media. Amazing Amy must have an Amazing Disappearance. She does, in which an old high schooler infatuation kidnaps her and forces her into his Amazing House and forces her to do horrible, Amazing Things. When Amy returns to her Amazing Husband, the media sees Amazing Amy and her Amazing Return. He calls her a bitch in her ear in front of the cameras, but that’s not part of the thousand words the media portrays. It is a couple reunited after an Amazing Catharsis of truth about the husband’s extramarital affairs.

What does this say? That “media is mean”? Just a satire of CNN witch hunts? We like to believe we are fully aware of the effects of media on ourselves. We enjoy the cynical notion of thwarting the efforts of product placement in television shows or the self-defeatism concluding marketing’s dictating of mass thought.

The general themes seen within Gone Girl scream to have gender issues discussed. From the title down, the film looks to uncover society’s discomforts between the two genders. However, there is always a level down from politics that reflects upon how we cope with our circumstances. Sixty years ago, only analog image and text could mythologize a human being, but now a digital world has allowed every person with an internet connection to mythologize themselves through any type of media, from social networks to video sites to photo sites. We are all agonizing on being our Amazing Selves.

The digital world is defined by 1s and 0s, not by gender. -dom

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John Wick

It's simple: A wife dies and it's all part of the plan, one small dog dies and everyone loses their goddam minds. John Wick is a revenge story that is on no level with Sergio Leone but a fun, calculated action movie in a time of fast-cut boring shit.

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Some More Things We Watched

We saw The Conformist, a Bertolucci film about fascism and gay thoughts. It was good. I liked the part when that guy got stabbed. Badass man. Sarah saw The Great Beauty again, another great Italian film from last year. I wanted to go see the Hunger Games to get another fix of my last does of PSH, but I'll wait.