Film Review - Tekkonkinkreet

By Dr. Johnny Fever

Also, for those who prefer written reviews - 

Tekk...............................................................................................................too hard to say... A+

Film Review - 2001: A Space Odyssey

By Dr. Johnny Fever

Also, for those who prefer written reviews -

2001: A Space Odyssey: Hal has personality traits, but he's a jerk... A++

I Just Wasn't Made For These Times

By: Henry Melville

American International Pictures (lead by the one and only uber-producer Roger Corman) defined the short-lived beach party genre with the 1963 release of Beach Party. The genre was washed out by 1965 with the release of the seventh and last straight-forward beach party film, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. Recently I’ve managed to track down these seven beach party classics and realized the state that the modern comedy is in today. Before I get to that, I’d like to briefly address why the beach party genre is the pinnacle of teen comedies.

Nostalgia is defined as a wistful or excessive yearning for a return to an irrecoverable past or condition. So it is not a personal nostalgia that these movies have such a hold over me because, I feel, it’s impossible for me to feel nostalgic for a time I’ve never experienced. I can’t miss something I've never had.

Is it the aesthetic of a film lost to technology? The magic of Technicolor and wonder of rear screen projection? Partially, yes, it is. The world stands out from reality and creates an unbelievably warm and perfect slice of Americana. In that sense, we all do yearn for the impossible perfection of a replaced, forgotten style. The polka dot, one-piece bathing suits explode, pop. Where’s the wonder, the mystery, the classiness of the now expected, obligatory nudity in a teen comedy? We have become desensitized. Our definition of standard, of normal has changed to the point that what was once attractive and sensual in the 60s is innocent. The attraction, the sexuality still exists, if one’s standards aren’t modern.

Perhaps it’s the innocence of the time that makes the beach party films stand alone in teen comedies. However, the film is chock-full of innuendo and suggestive elements. When did the change occur that took us from playful insinuation to shock-for-shock’s-sake explicitness? In the films, we don’t get Zack Galifianakis getting a blowjob or Seth Rogen making out with a vomit covered Anna Farris. Instead, we get a teen making out with two girls off-screen and returning covered in lipstick. We get Annette Funicello singing about waiting until marriage to the comically bereft Frankie Avalon. A girl knocking guys off their feet with the invisible and unexplained power of her thrusting hips. The cameos were of Vincent Price, Bela Lugosi, not Ron Jeremy or Hugh Hefner. The villains were Beatle’s parodies and the aloof, harmless biker gang, the Rats, led by even more aloof and harmless Eric Von Zipper. Not a flasher, naked Asian man or someone trying to bang the girlfriend. When did male nudity overtake prop gags and double entendres as “comedy gold”? 

Don’t overlook the classic comedies because you think they’re not funny or boring. They’re teens dancing to Dick Dale and the Del Tones, maybe you’re boring. It’s Frankie Avalon using helium in his ski suit to win a ski jump competition for his girl, maybe you’re not funny. 

AIP revealed their strategy for teen exploitation films called “The Peter Pan Syndrome”:

“a) a younger child will watch anything an older child will watch;
b) an older child will not watch anything a younger child will watch;
c) a girl will watch anything a boy will watch
d) a boy will not watch anything a girl will watch;
therefore-to catch your greatest audience you zero in on the 19-year old male”

The formula hasn’t changed.

Film Review - Kill Bill

By Dr. Johnny Fever

Also, for those who prefer written reviews - 

Kill Bill: That movie sure as heck didn't start at the beginning... A+

The Tree of Life Poster (Poster Series #2)

Finally, here is the second in the series of film posters I am creating. This is based on a scene from Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.

-The Hatbox Ghost

Subconscious Film - Criterion Collection - Onibaba (1964)

These essays are specifically for reading after ones personal viewing

        

        I fell in love with Kineto Shindo after his mesmerizingly-fantastique, Kuroneko. He instantly became my favorite Japanese director (specifically for the purpose of me not having one yet, despite having seen a fair share of Japanese films). I quickly gathered myself after watching Kureneko during the Annual 31 Days Of Horror Fest, and clicked the Wish List on each of the films that followed his career in Criterion. A friend and fellow writer of The Seafarers, reached his purchase before mine was even shipped; apparently, I wasn't the only one in on this fixation.

        Quite close are the themes in both films: the two main characters are a lonibaba mother, whose lost her son to the war, and her lonibaba daughter-in-law. The sexual repression is steaming from the moment we enter the film. The women sleep with their chests bare, due to the sweltering nights of Japan, that enslave their sexual fantasies and heighten the sense of deliriousness to those famished by small rashons of war. And we are constantly presented with fantastic shots of wheat, waving like a mother wanting back the son she's lost.

      As the younger gets involved with the returned samurai, the sweat and anything leading up to that sweat, is a metaphor into the mothers lost and wanting womb: beating clothes on logs and licking lips, licking chickens as a form of flirting. Not that I don't love the metaphors and cinematography - the young woman meeting the samurai through the wheat field and their outlines becoming only bodies, later used for the satisfaction of lust - but the tediousness does settle in a bit with the mothers progression of jealousy. And it's until she decides to do something where we find ourselves again, lost in the folklore of Shindonibaba.

        This mother has been enslaved by her lonibabaness, if the girl runs off with the samurai, she'll have nothing. After seeing the couple together for the first time late at night, she runs out to a large and thick tree and throws her arms around it - crying and wanting the lust of this tree to repress her thoughts of loneliness, like it does for the young couple. 

        I liked Onibaba. I think you can see the progression through Onibaba, to Kureneko and how much Shindo had grownibaba'd. But Onibaba leaves you satisfied during the strong hits of release upon the mask of torture. And when the mask is removed, all the sins are presented to us, not in the afterlife, but upon the earth that stirs up its hate. 

Always,

The Seafairy

theseakubrick@gmail.com

        

Subconscious Film - Broken Flowers (2005)

These essays are specifically for reading after ones personal viewing

      We don't know much about Bill Maury's character, Don, but latch onto his lazy and seemingly un-caring characteristics to find out why he's the way he is. We find him in the first moments of the film being left by his girl friend, who's reason for leaving is she can't go on alone, could only explain carelessness of his character so perfectly. Some might find this trait of character uninteresting or annoying. But I find myself curious with his nature and watch to wait for a development in his character or a purpose at all for any motivation. 

        Don has a next door neighbor who's also his best-friend and is married with plenty of little kinder. Don doesn't seem to be jealous of his kids, but so much sadness surrounds Don's face we know his unhappy life could only be worsened by those who surround him. But his friend Winston truly loves his friend and motivates Don enough (almost forcing him) to go on a journey. 

        I love the subconscious personal elements of the interaction between people Jarmusch presents to the audience: while Don is sitting waiting for his plane, he notices a pretty girl sitting to his left about two seats away from him. They look at each other, without absolutely any knowledge of that other persons personal experiences in life or reason for traveling, other than what they can see with their eyes. Tilting their heads, peripherally-flirting, and constantly wondering who this person is, where they're going; knowing they will never see each other again, and never knowing of things that once could be between them. Thinking about that aspect of lost relationship in their mind, while tingled eyes glair at rims of skin. 

        There were most definitely irks. One in particular of a tilting 90 degree shot of a plane landing overhead that for some reason made me want to turn the film off. I think it was because I just was so mad at how bad a shot it was that I couldn't feel Jarmusch would actually put that in his film, and personally feel he didn't... A cliche - turn the T.V. on and see the plot happening  in the movie - sequence made me do a little eye-roll, and the dream sequences, although complemented with great editing and color, felt empty to any meaning of development in story. But those were just little annoyances I felt were necessary to explain my overall feelings toward the movie. I dislike when people talk about things negatively for the purpose of being negative, when focusing on the positive can be a much more satisfying and progressive force. I'm speaking of these small problems on a technical outlook and wish to not leave my readers with questions about my criticisms; to why I feel the way I do.

        There's a scene where Don visits and delivers flowers to one of his ex-girlfriend's gravestones who he recently, because of this journey, found out she'd passed away. This is the first time we get to experience compassion with and for Don. Finally learning that things in his life have actually meant something to him, or maybe they always do and he just hides it. Or maybe it's this one person in his life that left such an impact on him, he's the way he is now. Not having to actually travel to the graveyard where she's buried, Don goes there anyway to give his condolences. As Don puts the flowers down whispering a sweet but sad, "Hey there, beautiful," we sit with him by the tree and our eyes swell with bits of rain slowly starting to descend. The scene ends a little short but Jarmusch doesn't want to toy with tearjerking emotions.

        We see a similar look in Don at the end of the film and remember why we followed him through this journey, and with small, supportive talk of philosophical advice, Jarmusch ends his story with swirling cameras reflecting thought.

Always,

The Seafairy

theseakubrick@gmail.com