Everybody was Kung Fu fighting

So, I thought that street gangs only danced in Manhattan, when Jerome Robbins was doing the choreography. And I certainly didn't realize that other dancing street gangs were axe-wielders. Learn something new every day.
This movie made me so happy on the inside. It was somewhere between an awesomely bad kung-fu movie and an awesomely epic parody. I do believe that my favorite part was the Looney Tunes-esque chase scene. I mean, it doesn't get much better than watching humans go Wile E. Coyote on one another. (Reference #2) And the "Lion's Roar" thing? I mean, how much sillier can you get? Karate chopping a bell to crack off the top and make a megaphone of doom intended to amplify the Lion's Roar to a point that it would make the bad guy's head explode? (Ok, so it didn't, but I'm sure that was the intent.)
There are so many references in Kung Fu Hustle that counting them might actually be impossible. As a class, we found: The Godfather, West Side Story, Looney Tunes, The Matrix, Blues Brothers, and every Kung Fu movie ever made. And as a theatre major, I'm ashamed that I didn't realize this one earlier: Casablanca. "This could be the end of a beautiful friendship," as spoken by the last of the masters to go up against the Blues Brothers. Gah. In your face, and yet I completely missed it. Moron.

I think it would be very silly to enumerate all of the references, but suffice it to say that there are plenty of them. Yay postmodernism and blank parody.

There were a few moments that confused me, so I'll muse about them. The One ends up getting his face swollen to hell, ends up in a stoplight, and beats the crap out of it from the inside. And this fixes his wounds? And he doesn't remember it? What's that all about? And the other one: if the Landlord and Landlady can fix up The One, why didn't they try to fix up the three masters? They did, after all, save the village. Wouldn't it be logical to try to save their lives?

Yeah, so, that's my rant.

Mulholland Drive-a-Nail-Into-My-Skull-Plz

Some time in the near future, I will be creating a picture that shows the warped and twisted web of characters and how they relate. It's kinda messy, so I'm not quite ready for it. I'm thinking that strings of varying color and thickness will need to be used.

So...Rita isn't Rita, she's Camilla. And Blonde Camilla is someone else. And Betty is actually a dead woman (Diane) who was in love with Rita, but ordered a hit on her because she was shtupping the director. And the crazy old lady from down the hall was the same person as the swamp-monster thing behind the restaurant who owned the blue box of doom. So...wait, what? Does this make any sense at all? Like, even a little?

So, that's basically all I got out of the movie. Well, that and "BOOBIES!" which was pretty awesome in and of itself.

The article only cleared up one or two things: Betty/Diane and Rita/Camilla were the same person, and not just played by the same actors. And that's about it. Oh yeah, and the blue box is some interdimensional portal thing that brings Betty and Rita into the world of Diane and Camilla. Beyond that, I was so confused that I thought my head might just explode.

So is the Betty and Rita storyline the real one? Or is it the Diane & Camilla storyline? Are Betty/Rita and Diane/Camilla really the same person? Are they the main characters, or is Hollywood itself the main character? Why did we see Betty practically humping the creepy old dude if nothing else was going to come of it? Why did Rita don that god-awful blonde wig? Did they disappear into nothingness because of the box? Was there a box? Was there a key? WTF is going on here?!?!?!

There is clearly some commentary about Hollywood and the practices therein. The mob guy forces director man to hire Camilla...who may or may not actually be Camilla...who turns into Camilla...who ends up possibly engaged to the director...yet still makes out with chicks...in front of her old girlfriend...who clearly still loves her................ Yeah, totally making me rethink my major. Thanks.

Wharrrgarbl.

Gods, even this disjointed brain-vomit makes more sense than that movie. I truly had no idea what was going on. I was greatly enjoying the mystery of trying to figure out who Rita really was, and then the characters miraculously switch places. At least the article made me notice that Diane was paled and Camilla was in extremely vivid color. I probably wouldn't have made that observation myself. But yeah, I...I don't...she went.

"Our love is God, let's go get a Slushie."

Dear Christian Slater,

Stop tormenting me with your bad-boy attitude and your messy rocker hair. And your insistence upon being mostly or entirely shirtless is really making my life difficult. So if you would be so kind, please desist in the making of movies that fit the aforementioned mold.

Many thanks,

Me.

PS: I have no idea how to play croquet, nevermind strip croquet, but now I want to learn. Asshole.

Ok, so I spent half of the movie drooling and hating on Winona Ryder. But that's not the only reason I liked Heathers. Allow me to give you a little insight into my high school experience.

Our "Heathers" were actually combined into one officious bitch named Catherine. When she wasn't mocking the "unpopular" girls for their weight, looks, or lack of Gucci accessories, she was busy offending everyone by proclaiming, "Chill out. I've got peeps in the city, too," on September 11. (My dad worked in the city, and our history teacher was the first one to confirm what had happened. We were in the same class, and for the first time in my life, I broke down in school. Needless to say, the teacher told her to shut up when she complained that I called her an officious bitch.) She was followed by Ynette and -get this- Heather, and every week, they had a new "Veronica". She had to be replaced weekly, because she would always burn out. I think it was the overexposure to lip gloss and hair bleach. That, or they OD'd on bitchery and ran screaming into the night.

Our Kurt and Ram were Robby and Joe. While we didn't have cows to tip, they did take great delight in getting hammered at house parties and sleeping with whatever slutty hot chick would do it. Like Kurt and Ram, they picked on just about everyone, calling geeks "fags" and giving chubby girls nicknames akin to "Dumptruck".

We had the geeks, the rest of the jocks, the nice girls who were liked by the underlings of the school, and even the crazy, hippie-teacher. In our case, however, our hippie teacher was intelligent about getting us to open up and share our feelings. She made us write god-awful poetry and share it with the class...and then had a tendency to send you on down to the guidance office if it offered even the slightest hint of harm, be it self or otherwise.

And then we had our JD. (Apologies for my comment in class; dropping the f-bomb really wasn't necessary, but it kinda slipped on out there.) Our JD was Ryan, and he was a chickenshit little punk, with his closest-thing-to-a-trenchcoat-that-the-school-allowed, his combat boots, and his odd little habit of leering at the girl who was the subject of his interest.

As I mentioned in class, I would have gone along with the real JD's plan. Granted, there were some that I would have tried to save, as my school did have people who were worth redeeming. The "nice popular" girls, who were *actually* popular because they were nice, the better musicians, and the outcasts who were only outcasts because they didn't own a Tiffany bracelet or drive a Mustang. But JD, though clearly unhinged, also had a great deal of charisma. As he said, Veronica believed him about the bullets because she wanted to. He made her want to, but I don't think that even she realized that.

When Ryan suggested that we should try to blow up the school, however, he was completely shut down with a simple, "What, are you stupid? I am not committing a felony on your behalf, and you know that you're not smart enough to do it without me." (It was true, sadly. Boy was a nincompoop.)

So JD manages to convince Veronica to take one semi-accidental murder and make it look like a suicide. It should have ended there. After all, the head bitch was gone, and Veronica was out from under her heel, just like she had wanted. But the paté must have gotten to her brain, as she agreed to go through with another faked suicide. But then again, JD is trying to start a revolution; he wants to change the way society works. It's a flawed system, and it needs to be fixed. What better way to fix something than to start all over? To wipe the slate clean and try again? ("I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.")

Ultimately, JD's plan fails, and Veronica takes over as head bitch. And she starts being nice to Dumptruck. We discussed the thought that the system would still be the same; there would still be the best clique in the school, and it would be led by Veronica. But hang on, real life doesn't work like that. Veronica has the scrunchee. That's good and well, but what's to say that the last remaining Heathers don't just find another obscene symbol of power? Does anyone really think that in a school where jocks get away with beating the crap out of people that the best clique is going to include someone like Dumptruck? I call shenanigans. The Heathers are just going to step up and be the leaders again, and rather than Veronica being their little lackey, she's going to be the outcast, just like Betty Finn.

And even though JD was a psychopath who wanted to blow up a few hundred teenagers, we want to love him. We want him to be the hero. We need him to be the hero. He's the "black horse", the villain with the heart of gold, the rebel that falls for the girl and makes the girl fall for him despite his being an outsider. I was so desperately hoping that he would be the Will Scarlet character from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I just wanted him to be the bad guy who turns around and is the good guy in the end. But he couldn't be. The only thing that could change, aside from his locker combo, was him. Schools will reflect society and society will remain the same, with the nice guys finishing last and the cream rising to the top - along with the scum.

Throughout the movie, particularly in the suicide scenes, I thought the happenings were merely a figment of Veronica's imagination. She had hoped for Heather's death, written about it in her diary, and gone to sleep. After she falls asleep, the rebel pops into her window and uses a strangely poetic phrase to explain his entrance. They play strip croquet and end up killing Heather. The camera angles and the colors made me think that it was all a dream, and that Veronica would wake up at the end, shake her head, and end up back in the same old rut. When the jocks were killed, I expected the same thing. The only time that I was right about the whole dream-sequence was for the actual dream-sequence...which I half thought was some sort of delusion brought on by the stress of the second Heather's actual suicide that Veronica had actually failed to stop, despite the fact that we saw her stop it.

One of my classmates mentioned that it seemed like JD might be an alter-ego for Veronica; that he was a personality she created to do the horrible things she wanted to do without actually having performed the deeds herself.

Ok, I was going somewhere with that, but it's closing in on 1am, and my brain is beginning to shut down. I shall have to come back to this at a later time.

"They say this cat Shaft is a baaaaaaad mother--" " Shut yo mouth!"

I've always thought of a "gangster" as a man in a pin-striped suit, wielding a tommy gun and "whacking" people. I've always thought of a "gangsta" as a head-thumping mutha with the crotch of his pants between his knees...or lower. Shaft had the 1970s version of both. And then it had Shaft himself.

This man is so smooth, he could probably get "Dubya" in bed if he really wanted to. He's a tall, broad-shouldered, imposing man who appears to have a heart of gold. He doesn't give up on rescuing a woman, despite the fact that she's the daughter of a very not-good man. He gets his old hustling partner compensation for the gangstas he lost in a gun battle simply because they used to work together. And despite the era's general dislike for black men, he's friends with a white lieutenant who proclaims, "You ain't so black." (He "ain't so white, either.")

I almost have to agree with the people who felt that this was less a blaxploitation movie and more a movie where a black man was molded into a white man's position. Sure, Shaft has the jive feel to him, and walks on both sides of the law, but the white cops aren't the bad guys. In fact, one of them (Vic) is clearly Shaft's friend, and the only "bad" white people are the gangsters. And I think just about everyone will agree that the mafia are not the best group of people ever.

I kind of want to look at this movie as a way of saying that there is no difference between black and white men aside from the color of their skin. A slick white man can get in bed with as many women as Shaft. A white man who is loyal to his friends would fight for their rights the way Shaft did for Ben. And who would pass up oodles of money just because the employer is a less-than-nice person? Not many people.

Then we get to the point of sex and sexuality. Shaft is bedding...how many women? I stopped paying attention after the one woman put Ben in a small girl's bed and thoroughly emasculated him by telling him that in her house, he would watch his mouth. Clearly, he can handle his women strong, and he likes his women a whole damn lot. (Bow-chicka-bow-wow) Yet when he's being BLATANTLY hit on by a gay bartender, he doesn't react negatively. I can't imagine a movie these days showing a big manly man being hit on by another man without the situation ending in violence. At the very least, the gay man is going to get shoved. He might get decked or worse, depending on the movie. But Shaft, woman-lover that he is, just smirks and continues on with his night. So either Shaft holds some affinity toward men, is secure enough in his sexuality that he doesn't feel the need to get uppity, or is just so chill that it doesn't affect him at all. I think it serves to reinforce that Shaft is a bad mother (shut yo' mouth!) with a heart of gold. He doesn't need to show his machismo by beating the crap out of innocent people. Hell, the only actual violence he shows is toward the gangsters, and they truly deserve it. I think this shows that he really is a good guy at heart, and does his job well. He's simply not afraid to blur the lines of legality to get his job done.

KA-BLOWIE!

"My pile shakes as I hit 80 on the open road."

It might surprise you to know that your psychotic blogger friend once owned a minivan. A beautiful bucket of bolts in the process of being turned into a wheeled pirate ship, Das But was a Dodge Grand Caravan. That vehicle was not made for speed, but one grand night, near the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania, where there is no speed limit, two friends and I decided that it was time to see what that baby could do. 110mph and a quarter of a gas tank later...

"The need for speed" and "the open road" are two huge American dreams. Everyone wants to drive really, really fast, and everyone wants to get the hell away from everything. So hop in your car and ride. But driving really, really fast and getting the hell away from everything isn't as easy as we might think. After all, the roads are made by the government. But the government does some things to make it seem like you get the open road. According to our article, several versions of the Robert Moses Parkway have been made specifically to seem like it's non-governmental. They're built to exclude trucks and to include lots and lots of trees.

Kowalski wanted nothing more than to drive stupid fast, win a bet, and maybe get high in the process. No tail, no murder, no real mayhem, save driving stupid fast and pissing off the cops. So really, he's not a bad guy. He helps a deranged old snake wrangler get to his coffee supplier, he provides a blind man with some really fantastic radio material, and he makes a naked biker really happy on his trip. And he's been handed the shitty end of the stick a whole damn lot. But to blow himself up rather than go around the bulldozers? What?

Ok, so long story short, I didn't get the point of the movie at all. Every blonde chick looked basically the same. They repeatedly hammered Kowalski's driving experience into our skulls. Somehow, Super Soul had some kind of brilliant psychic connection with Kowalski. Other than showing that Americans want freedom and the ability to drive at eleventy-billion MPH, what was the point? WHARRRRRGARBL!

Hahaaaaa, Dangly parts.

NOTE: This is not the finished post. I just wanted to jot down a few things that are rolling around in my head before they fall out.
The actual airplane that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the B-29 Superfortress. That particular plane was named "Enola Gay". If wikipedia can be trusted, the US maintains about 5,500 nuclear bombs. However, between 1945 and 1990, 70,000 nuclear weapons (in varying destructive sizes) were made. As of 1996, $5.8 trillion had been spent on the warheads themselves, and an additional $365 billion was spent on disposal. That adjusts to about $7.85 trillion and $494 billion today.

A 10-kiloton nuclear bomb (like the one dropped on Nagasaki) can and will vaporize everything within a 1/2-mile radius of the bomb center and completely destroyed everything within a 1-mile radius. There was rumor of a 50-megaton nuclear bomb developed by the Soviet Union. (The validity of this is unknown) If this bomb were dropped on Chicago, its destructive power would be felt in Minnesota and Michigan. My (extremely squiffy) source claims that the aforementioned nuke, named The Tsar Bomb, was originally to be made at 100 megatons. That's a whole mess of TNT, folks. The nuclear weapons that the bombers were supposed to deploy were each 50 megatons. Contemplate.

Factual crap aside, let's move on to the penis jokes. "Man walking through turnstyle sideways going to Bankok." Ah. That's out of my system. But in all seriousness, Dr. Strangelove was just one penis joke after another. From the president who completely lacks a pair to the cowboy pilot riding an enormous phallus to his death, and several shots in-between, we have nearly non-stop crotch references. Upward angles that appear to be shot from the lap, a man sitting in the lap of another long after his fall there, missiles, midair refueling, and a series of people in charge that can best be described as ineffectual and impotent. And a mostly-naked secretary. I mean, really. (Was anyone else expecting Mel Brooks to pop out from behind a curtain with a cigar and a jacket with "GOV" on the back? Because I sure was.) [Semi-related sidenote: a classmate just came across a picture of a too-friendly lifeguard in a coloring book. He has a whistle. The whistle itself is dangling at ball-level. The strap for the whistle looks vaguely penis-like. Just so you know.]

Now I'd like to discuss the absurdity of the movie. So I will. While I'm sure sentiments were different back then, what with the actual possibility of nuclear warfare, it's surprising to me that *anyone* would take this seriously. The names are all descriptive of the actual characters - Major King Kong is the inwardly sensitive all-American cowboy. General Turgidson is cheating on his missus and has rather the (dare I say it?) cocky demeanor. General Jack D. Ripper - I mean, come on. Does it get any more obvious? How could anybody think that these characters are anything but a walking euphemism? Yet, as the article implies, some people actually took it seriously, thinking that there was a real call for a doomsday device, underground bomb shelters, the works. And to this day, we toy with ideas involving nuclear devastation and the aftermath thereof. Remember the 1999-2000 fiasco? Y2K! The world will end! All of the computers will fail and nuclear weapons will be deployed and everyone will die! These ideas make people do crazy, crazy things like stockpiling bottled water and spaghettios, getting rid of cell phones and computers, and figuring out how to reuse tampons. It was during this debacle that I first saw bits and pieces of Dr. Strangelove, though my father refused to let me watch all of it for fear that I might go into a blind panic and insist that we stock up on spam and canned oranges. So while I never saw Strangelove's speeches, the ending, or the shooting scene, I knew a few things coming into the movie. Mostly that it was silly.

But let's contemplate this for a moment. Mutually Assured Destruction. While I had never known the actual term for it, I certainly knew how it would happen. There's even a silly flash cartoon about it. The US has literal stockpiles of nuclear weapons...somewhere. China, France, Russia, India, Israel, Pakistan, and the UK also have nuclear weapons. All it takes is one psychopath with access to the proper codes, one clumsy ass janitor, or a major mechanical malfunction, and we have a serious problem. (See also: War Games) In this case, we have a psychopath who somehow manages to use a Presidential override and block the president from being able to stop his nuclear attack on the fluoride-using commie bastards from stealing his precious bodily fluids. ...Yeahhhh...About that... Regardless of his psychosis, he starts a chain reaction of death that, in Dr. Strangelove's opinion, would force the people underground.

In theory, this might work. I suppose I could understand people thinking that it's possible to live underground and not risk irradiation. But food would be scarce, surely. Not so! We can build greenhouses! (Uhm...where's the sun coming from, pal? That's kind of important for the greenhouse idea to work.) Animals could be bred. (And what would you do with their waste? How would you feed *them* as well?) 10 women to every man to sustain the species. (Great plan. So you can pop out a whole mess o' babies and strain your resources.) You've certainly got that one all worked out, mein Freundin. But what about water? Didn't think of that one, did you? Can the American people honestly think that underground greenhouses and mass breeding would work? Ok, fine, we're gullible. Let's go ahead and buy that one just for funsies. But water is really important, and as most of the water is on the surface of the earth, it's going to be irradiated. But wait! Interplay figured that one out and gave us a great game to go with it: Fallout.

Aside from the absurdity of the plan that will sustain humanity, there's the whole bombing situation to begin with. The concept that any man in his right mind would even attempt to ride a nuclear warhead is just plain silly. And seriously, being dropped from a plane, at any altitude, is going to cause significant wind resistance. A person would not likely be able to straddle a giant bomb for any length of time, nevermind whoop and holler whilst brandishing a cowboy hat. And the pilot is just that- a pilot. He flies the bird, he doesn't work on the mechanics of the poop-chute. Perhaps the guy flipping the switches might now how to hot-wire the doors into opening, but even that's a stretch.

Ok, so I know most of this stuff because my brother was a pilot. Most Americans during the cold war probably didn't know half of this crap. Hell, most Americans *now* probably don't know half of this crap. But doesn't some of it seem...fanciful? What military commander would give vital (probably confidential) information to a secretary? What secretary would shout across the room to her boss? What pilot would leave his damn seat mid-flight without a copilot taking over? WHAT PLANE WOULD TAKE TO THE AIR WITHOUT A COPILOT?!?! (There may have been one. I don't really remember; I do remember Kong getting up more than once and not seeing someone take over the controls or hearing him tell someone to take the controls.)

I guess my point is that this movie is clearly not made to be taken seriously, yet it seems that some Americans did just that. To me, that's just like watching History of the World Part I and thinking that some of those shenanigans had actually happened way back in the day. Rabblerabblerabble.

Water baby OMGWTFISTHAT?!?!

If you have ever witnessed, firsthand, the birth of a cow or seen a recently-born cow, you might notice that the most amazing part of that calf is a pair of huge, brown eyes. They're glossy, yet perceptive, taking in absolutely everything that comes within its sight range. When I saw the icon for Window Water Baby Moving on youtube, I thought that I saw one of those beautiful warm eyes staring back at me. I had no idea what that cow eye could have to do with a window or a baby, but I accepted it. And then I saw things that cannot be unseen.
I've got to put it out there - I am bisexual. I have a vagina of my own, and have seen other ladies' lady parts. But man, I was *not* expecting what I saw on that screen in the middle of the library with Jen Werf. First off, the vagina is a weird-looking bit of flesh. I don't particularly like looking at mine in real life, nevermind seeing someone else's blown up on a computer screen to approximately the size of my head - even if it is being artistically shown with pretty fantastic lighting and camera angles. In fact, it was that lighting, the simple-yet-complex crisscrossing pattern on the woman's stomach, that made it bearable. And then I saw it: my calf eye. But it wasn't a calf's eye. It was a baby shoving it's way through a rather pained-looking woman's hoo-hah. I preferred my theory, so I went with it. Strangely enough, Brackhage's essay seems to imply that this is a good idea. Observe:
"...squint, give the visual objects at hand their freedom, and allow the distant to come to you..."
Sidenote: I'm about to be pretty crude.
The one thing that bothered me most about the film was the major continuity...thing that I saw. In the beginning of the film, preggo hops on into the tub sporting a bush reminiscent of one in the final scenes of the movie Waiting. (If you haven't seen it, count yourself lucky. If you have, just think about Naomi and "It's so angry!") However, shortly thereafter, she enters the tub again, this time clean shaven. From 1970s crotch-fro to pornstar smooth in seconds flat. That was just odd to me.
Speaking of continuity, I watched Mothlight immediately following Window Water Baby Moving. There was almost a continuity between the two. The red wash, the veins of the wings mimicking the veins of the (incredibly squelchy) afterbirth, the somewhat jarring switch from one image/shot to the next, and the (apparent) repetition of images all seemed to flow nicely. I'm sure that wasn't Brakhage's intention, but it was just one of those odd things.
Also in the article, he says, "Nowhere in its mechanical process does the camera hold either mirror or candle to nature." I could be dead wrong, but I feel like that says something very telling about his work. The three videos I watched were exclusively nature-based: trees, butterfly/moth wings, and childbirth. While the camera angles, lighting, and (artificial) coloration can influence the way we feel about these subjects, there's no way that the camera itself can create such an image. It's completely real, yet entirely artificial for us - we aren't there to witness it, thus it's open to our interpretation. But isn't that what he wants?
I'll be honest; Brakhage's article confused me a whole lot. If the videos were somewhat perplexing in their choppiness, the article took that to the "Nth" degree. So there's a whole lot of "bwuh?" going on in my head.
And since I've already referenced Ryan Reynolds, I'll do it again.
"Birds of a feather flock to *vagina*."