March 25, 2013
When horror movies demonise entire jobs

I take it some of you have never seen the movie Peeping Tom, but for those who haven’t, let’s just say it depicts the entire profession of photography in a bad light.

You know how I’ve been known to be shy of taking anyone’s picture at all because they don’t want to be photographed, so I end up with a barely used DSLR camera I’m terrified to pull out in public for fear of being labeled a creeper? This movie is why my creeper label fears are entirely inflamed.

Photographers get a real shafting in horror movies. They’re depicted as creepers or perverts that stalk you and or otherwise try to murder you somehow. If I was head of the Photographer’s Guild or whoever represents the photography industry I would have sued the pants off the guy who made this for defamation of the entire profession.

I didn’t spend the last four years of college learning a Photomedia degree so horror movies could trash talk people of my skill set by labelling them as serial killers and perverts. Part of why you go to college to learn photography isn’t just the glitz and glamour of a possible fashion career, you learn the ethics and legal stuff of the trade for the exact reasons this movie, Peeping Tom makes abundantly clear. In fact street photography privacy laws are set up so this kind of shit can be avoided.

March 22, 2013
This is my face after watching Lena Dunham’s film Tiny Furniture. And I had no idea just how good her HBO show Girls was in comparison to this crap which wasn’t even sound mixed properly. I guess this is why they call mumblecore that, and also whyGirls isn’t mumblecore. BECAUSE HBO WARRANTS SUFFICIENT SOUND EDITING SO YOU CAN FUCKING HEAR THE CHARACTERS SPEAK.

To say nothing of the story. I’ve seen many bad films in my time, some of which had some moments, but when your movie is getting into Richard Hell’s Blank Generation territory, your movie is dead in the water because at least Blank Generation had a cameo from Andy Warhol. This movie on the other hand had NOTHING. I had no attachment to the characters, and the jokes weren’t funny. Lena Dunham was not ready for prime time here and the success of her new show Girls proves how far she’s come in spite of this terrible movie.

This is my face after watching Lena Dunham’s film Tiny Furniture. And I had no idea just how good her HBO show Girls was in comparison to this crap which wasn’t even sound mixed properly. I guess this is why they call mumblecore that, and also whyGirls isn’t mumblecore. BECAUSE HBO WARRANTS SUFFICIENT SOUND EDITING SO YOU CAN FUCKING HEAR THE CHARACTERS SPEAK.

To say nothing of the story. I’ve seen many bad films in my time, some of which had some moments, but when your movie is getting into Richard Hell’s Blank Generation territory, your movie is dead in the water because at least Blank Generation had a cameo from Andy Warhol. This movie on the other hand had NOTHING. I had no attachment to the characters, and the jokes weren’t funny. Lena Dunham was not ready for prime time here and the success of her new show Girls proves how far she’s come in spite of this terrible movie.

March 21, 2013
Artists of the world, you need to up your game

I have repeatedly made statements about my problems with HBO programming like Sex And The City and Girls being used as pop cultural propaganda and a glorified tourism ad for New York and the arts snobbery lifestyle that comes with it.

Artists of the world, in any medium, you need to up your game.

The argument that the arts cannot prosper outside of New York is hard to take seriously when one considers the massive achievements by foreign directors in the medium of film alone, Akira Kurosawa, Ozu, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Fernando Arrabal, Guillermo del Toro, Fritz Lang, Ruggero Deodato, Pasolini, Fellini, the list goes on and that’s just non-English speakers.

Literature casts an even wider net of great stories which are unfairly ignored due to their not being translated, but I assure you, in one specific case I think you’ll agree: if William Shakespeare managed to change the English language without so much as a college degree, I doubt he needs New York’s help. Your English teachers are all the publicity he needs.

And as for the poor fools who after reading my dissertation on why New York arts snobbery is overrated, especially those people in my street art lectures considering moving there after graduation… have you not read the news?

Talking to these people it’s like Hurricane Sandy never happened, they’re so naive that they’ll make it that they don’t even look up how tough it is for the underclasses in Harlem who already live there. I am aware of the Australian cultural cringe, but surely considering we have actual health care and a safety net here Sydney and Melbourne look pretty good when compared with America which is downtrodden by recession and misery.

I’m out, peace.

March 16, 2013
Watching Three Colours: Blue right now. Is it true what Cracked said about sad movies making depression easier to bear? Maybe they were right.

Watching Three Colours: Blue right now. Is it true what Cracked said about sad movies making depression easier to bear? Maybe they were right.

March 12, 2013
Conversation with my film school grad brother

ME: So I was watching this John Irving video on YouTube where he was talking about whether writers should like the movies and he said “I like the movies but a good movie seems to happen by accident rather than what deserves to happen and it made me have empathy for you as a film grad guy…

HIM: I’m trying to download my game and my girlfriend will be here soon.

THE END

March 6, 2013

Videodrome isn’t just a movie, it’s a warning, in the form of James Woods where the character he plays is this huge car alarm trying to make you not become That Guy. We all know That Guy, in the sense I’m talking about That Guy, I’m bringing to light the existence of That Guy who tries to hunt down the goriest, most depraved videos you can imagine, just so he can laugh at the absurd cruelty of something like A Serbian Film or Vase De Noces which are infamous in one way or another. That Guy does this because apparently “horror films just aren’t disturbing enough” so he ends up renting Cannibal Holocaust cause he heard it’s messed up enough to make him feel something, anything at all. In the past three years I thought I’d slowly become That Guy but considering the purpose devoid of irony I have for hunting down weird art house and exploitation fare (OFLC related censorship in Australia and a general, somewhat naive interest in oddball cinema, like some like collecting weird or obscure music or comic books) - I’m not as worried about this as I used to be.

March 1, 2013

Saw Django Unchained at the cinemas with my lady friend of colour, the whole time she was stage whispering “WHIIIIITEEEEEY” whenever an evil white guy was on screen, and pointing at me because I was white. Considering she didn’t grope me during the whole screening she was well behaved all things considered.

I was kinda disappointed not with the content of Django Unchained, I rather enjoyed it, but rather people’s reaction to it. I’m Australian, we don’t generally allow white people to say the N word but hearing it doesn’t really cause us to raise eyebrows.

Let’s be real, Kanye West has been using the word on rap albums for years, and Ice Cube/NWA before that. The shock value is long gone, whiny-baby sensitive new age enlightened white people be damned.

Speaking of cry-babies, was I the only one who felt that the dogs-tearing-apart-a-live-man scene in Django was a bit of a letdown? Tarantino’s gotten a bit soft, this was heavily implied dog-tearing at best. My lady friend who was covering her eyes during that scene probably didn’t feel the same way, but keep in mind I’ve been balls deep into reading Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho at this point, Tarantino’s little slave revenge movie just seems a bit quaint to me now. I should also mention that my friend said I was staring at the screen with cold, dead eyes. So yeah.

She did think it was hilarious when I said the moral to the story was “And all the white people died, white people are over!” though.

It was fun. I liked it.

February 27, 2013
End the OFLC’s stranglehold of censorship on the Australian arts and LGBT content

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/End_the_OFLCs_stranglehold_on_the_Australian_Arts/?crkzicb

This right here, libertines and LGBTQ men and women, Social Justice Warriors, artists and enfant terribles alike, we must unite against the OFLC’s continued practice of banning/censoring LGBT content along with other, less political things like Mortal Kombat games and films like Caligula.

Here are the facts:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4540102.html

The Melbourne Queer Film Festival was due to exhibit the film I Want Your Love at its screenings, which is an LGBTQ film regarded as “pornographic” by the OFLC due to a five minute sequence. In Australia, the most extreme rating that can be offered to legally sold and screened films is R18+. Pornography is effectively banned in Australia under the X18+ and Refused Classification ratings (RC) which not only ban pornography for legal sale in Australia, but apparently certain works of art also fall under this “pornographic” category.

This effects all kinds of content, some of which isn’t even that violent, sexual or graphic to individual eyes and ears. It doesn’t make any sense and it makes Australia the laughing stock of the Pacific. I’m not saying that the banning of this film is the only reason why I wish to end the OFLC’s iron fist over Australian arts and film, video game content etc, but if ever a time Tumblr deserved to get angry about how LGBTQ/LGBT content is treated by government agencies that decide what you’re allowed to watch in your own home, it’s now.

Please sign this petition and make sure the dinosaur of censorship never gets the Jurassic Park treatment and stay extinct forever.

February 12, 2013

Was listening to The Nerdist Podcast where they were talking to Warren Ellis, and he perfectly outlined why John Carter flopped, I’m paraphrasing here, but here’s the gist:

“John Carter flopped because it was up against The Hunger Games. An early 21st Century audience can’t relate to a story where a white guy takes a nap in a cave and hooks up with a Martian princess compared to a story where a girl is forced to fight other children her own age to the death so that her people can have good to eat.”

Suddenly my inability to withstand Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan or John Carter Of Mars, makes total sense. It wasn’t because I wasn’t a nerd, it was because I’m a nerd in the 21st Century who doesn’t need stories where the British Empire are bragging about how excellent they are.

We just have more updated nerd properties modern men and women see themselves in, Tarzan and John Carter are old and busted. Hunger Games is the new hotness.

February 10, 2013

Was watching Brotherhood Of The Wolf and there was this scene where a poet was allowed to read a love sonnet if it was not too licentious. I love that word, licentious, because it makes me imagine these 18th Century poets with Tipper Gore “Parental Advisory: Licentious Sonnets” on their manuscripts.

Coming up with names for 18th Century rappers is fun too, like what if there was this 18th Century French Rapper called 2-Medals who had a hit single called Wenches And Mead, which was banned from the Salons of Paris:

All the wenches in this tavern gettin’ tipsy
Roaming all across this country like a gypsy
Gettin’ wenches and mead
It’s all I need
Even Casanova
Ain’t got shit on me

And then he’s release controversial hit singles like “Fornicate The Navy” because they hatin’ on his piratical, booty snatching ways. His final collection of poems, “Ready To Die At The Gallows For Stealing A Loaf Of Bread” would be his most widely revered work, by a poet taken from Bohemia too soon by a justice system that jacked his swag.

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