Last week, I went and watched the new version of the movie “Get Smart”. I had fond memories of the show when I was a child and it was on Nick and Night, but since nostalgia has burned me before (think the latest Indian Jones movie, Star Wars, Catwoman, oh, damn, lots of them) I went in slightly wary. The movie itself was sort of a mixed bag, and I had to chew on it before I could intelligently make a point on it.
Spoilers below the fold:
(more…)
I’ve never seen Sex in the City. I’ve heard it’s good, but not brainwashing, sex-zombie-creating good.
I guess something in the ending credits reminds you not to talk about that bit. And it almost worked.
You can only watch Samantha Jones bed so many gorgeous guys before wondering if 4-inch heels and sky-high confidence would allow you to do the same.
At least that’s what happened to “Lisa” (not her real name). She got hooked on “Sex and the City” when she was a 14-year-old growing up on Long Island, N.Y. It was the same year she lost her virginity. She soon graduated to ordering cosmopolitans at bars she snuck into and cheating on her boyfriend with up to seven other guys — in one week.
Not that this article is saying that Sex in the City turned Little Lisa into a Teenage Sexbot in the City (“To be clear: “Sex and the City” can’t be blamed for creating a generation of sluts.”) but…
Lisa left her “Samantha” ways behind at 19, when she moved to Utah, became a Mormon, married a man within the church and gave birth to two children. For the first year of her marriage, her husband forbade her to watch “Sex and the City” for fear that it would lure her back to her habits of sex, drugs and one-too-many cosmos.
“I had to sell my DVDs on eBay,” she said. “But now it’s OK. It took a while to get here.”
Hmm, troubled teenager raises hell for five years, then in three years manages to find religion get married and have two kids. Well, I’m convinced. I’m ready to take her word on pretty much everything. Nothing fishy going on here. I suppose she could at least give SatC credit for teaching her efficient time-management skills, at least.
So is there really danger here? Let’s ask Perfectmatch.com’s Dr Needspublicity:
“It did have some impact given that it was a sea change in how women talked about sexuality and what was shown on a network — full frontal nudity, talking about affairs, vibrators, etc.,” said Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociology professor and relationship expert for Perfectmatch.com. “If it’s not permission giving, it at least demystifies and normalizes what goes on in women’s lives in a more than snickering way.” (emphasis mine)
Ah, I see. Can’t have that now, because the day women learn to admit they cheat as much as men and vibrators are freely available in all 50 states is the day our society drowns in a sea of fuck-me pump wearing cosmo snorking child whores. Not that I’m saying this will happen if Sex and the City reaches number one in the box office, but basically we’re doomed. Doomed.
That’s what Angela Hwang, 24, found when she started watching the show in cable syndication, after it went off HBO. She and her girlfriends routinely compare their experiences to “Sex and the City” episodes.
“My girlfriends and I, every single guy we’ve been with we can relate to one of the guys on the show,” she said. “We’ve all had Samantha moments. We’ll say, ‘Remember the guy I saw last week? He was exactly like the guy in episode 15.’”
Oh, my God: women are identifying with the characters and situations of a well-written show. We’re all going to die. And since I’m not a SatC fan, maybe I’m unaware of this, but do these fabulous young fans of Samantha and Whatshername actually refer to the episodes by a single number? Is it possible someone’s making quotes up here?
But Dr. David Greenfield, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut’s School of Medicine, believes there’s danger in taking “Sex and the City’s” so-called lessons off the small screen and applying them in the real world.
“With teenagers and young adults, there’s a certain degree of role modeling that goes on. There’s a certain ‘if it’s done on the screen then it’s OK, it’s normal,’” he said. “You watch ‘Sex and the City,’ you see these women go out for dinner, come back, and wake up in satin sheets with a gorgeous guy. Who wouldn’t like that? But it doesn’t show what goes on under the surface in real sexual relations. Sex is an extraordinarily complex, emotional process. No one wants to talk about that. They’re not going to see the reality.”
And the circle is complete: we are now back to the bullet theory of media consumption,meaning that Sarah Jessica Parker has actually torn the fabric of space and time, and the 1960′s are leaking into today, and soon we’ll all be burning cheap sweaters from Steve and Barry’s for warmth before death comes for us all. Great fucking job, Samantha.
Right on the heels of Marc incisively questioning the distance between progressive rhetoric and action. I bring you… movies! yaay!
I saw Prince Caspian a couple of days ago. It wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t great. Mostly, it failed to make an impression on me at all beyond wondering who these people are, and why there is a movie about them. More vodka was clearly necessary.
Oh, and there were bits that irked the hell out of me, which I shall assume were just replacements for scenes that would not have irked the hell out of me. Like these! (All apologies to Maia, who does this better.)
Just saw Speed Racer. It was as colorful as I could have imagined. The end race sequence was exciting enough to get me to forget I spent the first 3/5 of the movie bored out of my skull. The casting was excellent (thanks for not using Keanu as Speed Racer. I know it must have been tempting)
I want to love you, really I do. Stop being douchebags.
Love,
Kyso K.
PS: I love being the only person in the theatre.
Me! (Sorry, the pull of alliteration was too powerful to resist.)
No, seriously. I am feeling alone, humorless and strident. Often the fate of the feminist yeti, that oft-sighted, hairy-legged, man-hating creature of legend (tragic sigh).
I have now read lots and lots of reviews of Iron Man, and many of them appear to fall into one of two categories: (1) Not a sexist movie and (2) Not any more sexist than your average summer action movie. I still don’t agree, with either! but I thought I’d broaden my scope and comment on why I think that is in more general terms.
…and I have two reviews for you.
Um…why would one person have two reviews…well, as it turned out, I had divided neatly in two by the middle of the movie–I metamorphosized from Lisa the singular healthily integrated human being into two Lisas. Specifically, Lisa the techno-geek engineer science fiction fanatic and Lisa the borderline misanthropic atheist feminist, both of whom immediately locked horns in a battle to the death. Since I wanted to finish enjoying the movie I made them both shut up or at least keep it subliminal so I could finish watching the thing with some semblance of concentration and adrenaline. However, they now both demand their say, so I am presenting them with twin soapboxes and letting them have the floor.
WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS! Of course I’m not gonna do anything like describe the ending in minute detail, but I may give more of an impression of the movie than you might want to receive prior to viewing it yourself. It varies. Some people scream SPOILER! at a broad plot outline, some don’t. The point is, proceed at your own risk, but also keep in mind that I do not get my kicks out of taking the fun out of other people’s moviegoing either and therefore will be trying my best not to reveal too much.
I’ve read the article twice now and it appears to be a mishmash of confusion and bitter longing for he knows not what, except that it has something to do with erect penises. Help me out here..!
Don’t feel like you gotta be subtle, man, just tell us how you really feel.
The appearance of Jason Segel’s genitalia in the romcom Forgetting Sarah Marshall had American critics crowing about how the film has courageously broken one of the last taboos in mainstream cinema. Yet Segel’s flaccid member looks pathetic and laughable, especially because it’s attached to a body that is doughy and pallid. It can’t seriously be accused of being capable of anything, let alone of breaking a taboo. So obviously devoid of sexual intent, it symbolises not so much his character’s abject emotional condition at his girlfriend’s rejection of him, but the sorry state of masculinity in American movies today.
Goodness. What little we women know about what it is to be a man. So, do you guys have to shoot by the bathroom mirror in a flat-out sprint on your way to the shower every morning so you don’t catch a glimpse of your pitiful limp wanker? Is every time you hit the urinal like a knife through the heart, having to touch that sluggish tube of flesh? Do you ever scream YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUSLY ACCUSED OF BEING CAPABLE OF AAAAANYTHING!! at it in a paroxysm of shame and bitter mockery? Do you ever give it a few points for at least being the conduit of pee from your body?
It’s white rich asshole movie day on the cable TV, today, apparently. While I was plugging away on some projects at home, both The Squid and the Whale and Friends With Money were on. I hate The Squid and the Whale; it’s conceited and hollow, though Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels watchable. I’d never seen Friends With Money, but it’s got everything you’d expect — wealthy screenwriters who bicker over adding a second story, the poor friend who gets treated like a mascot, lots of beautiful kitchens. It also features that oh-so-tiresome end to the typical couple’s fight scene:
Man grabs jacket/keys/whatever.
MAN
[stone cold]
I’m going out.
“I’m going out.” People leave in the middle of fights all the time, but who says that on their way out? Nobody. Ever. Unless they’ve been subjected to this cliche so many times onscreen that they think it’s what you’re supposed to say when you bail to go to the strip club/your mistress/lonely driving scene.
All writers have poured out countless cliches onto the page, I’m sure, and probably the best we can hope for is that we catch and delete most of them before anyone else catches a glimpse. And hey, at least Friends With Money didn’t have the wife throw something at the guy that hits the door as he leaves. But the rest of that scene makes me want to pound on my steering wheel at night with two hands while dramatic music swells.
Tom Hanks. Julia Roberts. I figure those two would do just about any film as long as it paid well enough and gave them the contractual minimum of 3 Oscar moments*.
Aaron Sorkin. Mike Nichols. Them? Not so much. …Okay, maybe Nichols at this point, what with his late-term resume of stinkers like Regarding Henry and The Birdcage. But he’s still got some hangover cred from The Graduate, Catch-22, etc. And Sorkin’s a known lefty, not to mention a guy who felt politically competent enough to pretend on NBC that he knew how the country should be run.
Why on Earth, then, would a Sorkin script shot by Mike Nichols result in a trailer like this?
The trailer leaves us with 2 distinct possibilities:
1) It’s designed to get the war-loving rowdies into the theater and then hit them over the head with how best intentions go wrong and we always think we can control this stuff when we can’t.
2) We’re actually witnessing the impending release of a film expressing patriotic nostalgia for our bungled covert military actions that trained Osama bin Laden and eventually led to Taliban rule.
I’d say (hope?) there’s at least a 51% chance of the former. There almost has to be some “we thought we knew how to help but we didn’t” message. Except we did sort of help keep the Soviets at bay, and I’m marginally terrified the film will celebrate that. Don’t put it past citizens of the US to make a movie waxing poetic about fighting a covert war 20 years ago in a country in which we’re losing an explicit war today that nobody even remembers is going on.
Freedom Prophets
*Oscar moments are defined as “cinematic speeches and/or extended reaction shots of no less than 30 seconds in which a stiff upper lip is (barely) kept in the face of tremendous emotional stress and a swelling background orchestra.”
For reasons which now escape me, I looked at an advertisement for “Fred Claus” in my alt-weekly paper, and in the corner I saw a little dove. Why, I thought, is my soap company stamping approval on crappy movies made by Jen Aniston’s rebound?
Turns out the Dove Foundation has little to do with soap; this Christian (oops, I’m sorry, Judeo-Christian) media-rating group is there to help parents who feel that the MPAA’s rating scheme, while helpful, is not prudish or detailed enough. It’s not enough to know why parental guidance is suggested, I need a list of every salacious thing that makes Fred Claus or Bee Movie a potential occasion for sin. First, let’s review a sampling of their simple 0-5 scale:
Sex: 0: none
1: on-screen acts of romance
2: infidelity; implied pre-marital sex or secondary lead characters with consequences
3: inappropriate sexual relations without consequences
4-5: graphic sexual activity is heard and/or seenLanguage: 0: none
1: few utterances of mild crude language
2: few utterances of mild obscenity
3: crude and obscene language used throughout the story
4-5: any Biblical profanity (GD, Jesus, Jesus Christ) and any uses of gross sexual languageNudity: 0: none
1: baby’s behind; shirtless men, low cut shirts, short skirts seen occasionally on women
2: rear nudity that is not suggestive such as skinny dipping from a distance; cleavage
3: sexually suggestive and revealing clothing or underwear is common throughout
4-5: frontal nudityOther: Lead characters that exhibit disrespect for authority, lying, cheating, stealing, illegal activity, witchcraft or sorcery
0: non
1: mild-moderate with consequences
2: moderate poor behavior
3: moderate-heavy behavior with no consequences
4-5: extreme portrayals, condoned or excused
A score greater than 2 in any category means no dove for you!
Not only is the Dove Foundation more prudish than the MPAA, but they’re also more consistent and transparent, providing a rundown in each catagory of exactly where filmmakers went wrong. For example, Fred Claus contains:
Drugs: You see Frosty’s Tavern but a sign says eggnog is served.
Nudity: Cleavage; some sumo wrestlers are briefly seen.
Other: A lady gives birth but it is not graphic; a man accepts donations under false pretenses; a character lies to his girlfriend; the shredding of a Christmas wish list; elves abandon their posts for a time.
Seinfeld’s Bee Movie is not without sin:
Drugs: A lady has a drink in a glass which looks like apple juice.
Nudity: None
Other: A joke about B-Gandhi, B-Columbus, and B-Jesus which the filmmakers could have done without.
But don’t be fooled, these Christians are no sticks-in-the-muds! Just like all Americans, they enjoy a good joke or a sophisticated plot device as much as anyone, provided it doesn’t conflict with their values in any way, or even reinforce their values but in too graphic a way. Other than that, rock on, Hollywood!
It also has scenes such as a teddy bear being opened up and the stuffing popping out. However, it is quite humorous to hear “Jingle Bells” played as a dirge! (Nightmare Before Christmas, 3D)
Bees shouldn’t be able to fly! Their bodies are too big for their wings, and yet…This is a cute film which kids will love. It has a few lines for the adults too. Who wouldn’t love a newspaper headline which reads: “Frisbee Hits Hive!” *** (Bee Movie)
This film is consistently funny and should propel Steve Carell further up the Hollywood ladder of success. He plays Dan Burns, a widower raising three daughters. The daughters alone set up some potentially humorous moments as one is seventeen and pushing her father to let her drive. The middle daughter believes she is in love with a boy and that her father simply doesn’t understand that it is the “real” thing. This sets up a great scene as the boy comes to visit, and when Dan answers the door, the boy explains he is there to see Dan’s daughter. When Dan learns it is the middle daughter and not the oldest, he says, “Come back in two years!” and closes the door. (Dan in Real Life)
Christmas carols (secular, of course) played in a non-jolly way? Zany! Benign newspaper headlines? What will they think of next! And what about kids these days? Don’t tell me, I’ll tell you!
All right, so they wants to rates the movies. Fine with me, but why is this niche group pandering creeping into the mainstream ads? Who gave this moral watchdog group the patina of legitimacy? Whose fault is this?
In 1991 The Dove Foundation began promoting family-friendly entertainment. Our standards and criteria are based on Judeo/Christian values, free from the pressure of commercial interests. We believe in a positive approach of commending high-quality, wholesome movies rather than condemning filmmakers for not meeting those standards.
In the summer of 1990 a group of fathers began looking for a way to identify movies that were compatible with their families’ values — The Dove Foundation was born…(2005) Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment began to include the Dove “Family-Approved” Seal on all nationally marketed Dove approved DVDs.
Fox, I should have known. The same empire that gave us Married With Children back in the 80′s and Family Guy today in television and Farm Sluts, What Happened in Vegas…. and The Transporter on screen is concerned about your family’s values. God damn, those guys are good at playing all possible sides. Sex and violence sells, and getting panties wadded up over sex and violence sells. Two, two, two profitable markets in one!
***The assertion that bees can’t fly is only true if you use the linearized hydrodynamic equations and assume fixed wings; if you use the non-linearized ones with the proper assumptions about the wings, they can in fact fly.
So I finally got around to seeing This Film is Not Yet Rated and while it is full of very disturbing information, I was pleasantly surprised and relieved to find out that Stone and Parker were well aware of how excruciatingly bad that uncut puppet sex scene was. I always heard that they’d made it ridiculous to screw with the censors, but until now I’d thought they were pleased with it nonetheless. Hey, my roommate is their target demographic and he thought the whole thing was brilliant.
An international cartel of Paramount global marketing executives and focus groups decided to give a rather malicious “fuck you!” to remaining WWII veterans by giving G.I. Joe a P.C. makeover for his new movie, something previously unheard of in the whole honorable history of the iconic “action figure”*.
At least, that’s the lens that Devil’s Advocate choses to view life through.
Now they are changing G.I. Joe into a multicultural soldier with no American affiliation. Yes, Hollywood limousine liberal idiots are exceeding my patience. I can handle their unabashed socialism, even their global warming insanity, but when they attack G.I. Joe, enough is enough.
No! We’re not exceeding his patience! Things are very serious, indeed. He may be forced to write an even angrier blog post if things continue in this vein. Possibly photoshop could be involved. What crawled up DA’s ass and died? I guess the idea that making an American-soldier-kicking-ass-and-taking-names movie isn’t going to go over so hot overseas, so they turned the Joes into Team America: World Police but without the marionette scat scene.
Paramount has confirmed that in their new movie, the name G.I. Joe will become an acronym for ““Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity” — an international, coed task force charged with defeating bad guys. It will no longer stand for government issued, as in issued by the American government.”
Advocate might want to de-bunch his panties, because The Real American Hero has a long and distinguished history of being brought to heel by the forces of the Limousine Liberals:
1) G.I. Joe has been at least nominally co-ed since the 80′s, when the creatively named Lady Jaye (could have been worse, ask poor Miss Marvel) was the most kick-ass female character available on afternoon TV.
2) G.I. Joe responded to the Civil Rights era by introducing the first of many token characters (in this case, a black man) as early as 1965, which is probably a coincidence that had nothing to do with the events of that year.
3) G.I. Joe was already an international task force by 1966, he also conquered space that year.
4) Add another item to the Iraq/Vietnam Parallels list:
By 1970, in the wake of the Vietnam War, Hasbro sought to downplay the war theme that had initially defined “G.I. Joe”. The line became known as “The Adventures of G.I. Joe” for a time. G.I. Joe was now cast as the leader of the “Adventure Team”, an adventuring/spy-like organization with the goal of rescue missions and fighting evil. The look of the doll was also changed in 1970 with the addition of a flocked beard (an innovation developed in England by Palitoy’s for their licensed version of Joe, Action Man). A retooled African American Adventurer was also introduced around this time.
5) The nineties found Joe fighting…fighting for the environment. Go Planet!
It’s clear that us liberals have been systematically deballing Joe since he stepped out of the military magazines and into the global marketplace. It’s a little late in the game for Devil’s Advocate’s solution:
Evidently, they are worried that the rest of the world would not accept an American soldier movie. Well, if we look at the facts, the rest of the world would be controlled by Nazis if it were not for the G. I. Joe. So if they do not like it, don’t make the movie. This is disgraceful.
Now that’s a jingle I want to see Paramount actually try: “Geee-Eyeeee Joooeeeeee!!!! If it weren’t for us you’d all be speaking Gerrr-maannnn!” Because if there’s anything that will get European children’s asses in seats, it’s reminding them that the grandparents of the people who financed and produced the movie offered crucial assistance to their great-grandparents in a war that was already over for half a century before they were born! Also, you’ll completely fail to piss off the parents of those kids with your mind-boggling assholery. Some people seem to forget that we had a bit of a hand in creating the conditions that lead up to WWII in the first place, so now that the initial flush of post-war euphoria is a half a damn century in the past, maybe we don’t want to brandish that particular sword about too often seeing as Europe is rebuilt and even let Germany into the EU and everything.
Clearly, Hollywood has forgotten the, “Real American Hero.” G.I. Joe originally symbolized the American WWII soldier and our greatest generation. Now Hollywood celebrities are going to turn him into a politically correct Feminazi. Isn’t anything sacred to these people?
What do you do with a grown man who is willing to work himself into such a lather because a fifty year old toy is failing to honor the past the way we expect our pop culture icons to? No, GI Joe is not fucking sacred to anyone, not any more than the X-Men or even Batman. This is not a travesty of historical revisionism, hell, it’s not even worth the kind of sputtering mouth-foaming that would be more appropriate for discovering a Starbucks in the middle of the National WWII Memorial. It’s just a new version of GI Joe that is designed to do what GI Joe was always designed for -to bringing money to Hasboro Toy Inc by the barrel full.
*Not a doll, goddammit. Not even the ones that are the perfect size to prong Barbie. Not that mine ever did.
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