Posted by panchmaster from host-148-244-221-155.block.alestra.net.mx (148.244.221.155) on Monday, November 11, 2002 at 6:35PM :
...Not Too Bright People.
Thatīs what they turn out more and more of. Could by the reason "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Blair Witch Project" and now Michael Mooreīs latest film are such hits. Weīre starved for something real, for real people, with real concerns, made by real people.
The other night I broke down and agreed to watch the remake of the Mummy. Iīd already been snookered into watching a part of Mummy II but walked out on that one. The kids love to trap me and they know the best way is to say it compares favorably with the original, in this case the real original with Karloff. That mug shot of his with the fez and the wrinkled skin you just KNOW is clammy and cold scars me still...cause itīs BELIEVABLE!
Okay, Brendan Frasier is cute, but so am I...big deal. Movies like this one, and more and more of them are a non-stop ridiculous festival of sensationalism...one implausible event after another are unsatisfying but addicting at the same time because all they are is icing and since that never satisfies your hunger, youīre left eager for more. I mean we always knew Hollywood was being highly arbitrary and selective when it chose to end some fights with one punch knock-outs while others involved prolonged brawls with everything from tables, doors and horses being smashed over peopleīs heads...leaving them all able to grin and kiss or drink whiskey right after. Iīve been in fights...no one wins, you all ache and all over and you never ever want to kiss anyone for several days...and it hurts to grin...and thatīs nothing like what we see in the pictures.
I remember in Kuwait once playing cowboys with BB guns. I had the new hand held kind and we made a rule to only shoot each other below the waist...right. I snuck up behind one guy and, just like in a hundred films Iīd seen, I smacked him from behind over the head with the pistol...it must have hurt like hell cause he let out a ferocious yell and ran right home and wouldnīt play with me or my brother again. I expected him to faint, mildly, and wake up unfazed when the game was over.
Movie heroes have become so laughably unbelieveable that I doubt anyone relates to them at all. And if they do...get them counselling right away. It was always possible to relate to Robin Hood, or even Davy Crocket. Okay maybe with a LOT of practise you too could split an arrow while smiling out the side of your saucy mouth...or drill a plug over another guyīs plug (did these guys know each other?). By the time just one bad guy beating up on just one good guy got to be old hat...and then three bad guys being routed by one good guy got boring...to be followed by two good guys singlehandedly laughing their way through a gang of one hundred cutthroats...it got a little excessive. These were obviously not people like you and me...or like we could ever be. Not only that but most of us wouldnīt know how to get thirty guys all gunning for us at one time...downtown, in broad daylight, without at least one of us getting a parking ticket.
Now I see two guys being shot at by every sort of conceivable weapon as they traipse through life...bullets going off everywhere, plaster chipping, pillars falling, airplanes colliding, and still they make it through make-up in one piece and arrive in time to make a pithy observatiopn, a cool joke, and kiss the girl anyway, or if itīs a progressive movie, the guy.
Whatīs a kid supposed to want to emulate let alone admire, let alone aspire to...what...a masterful mass murserer? And the ploy of first having the villians rape the wife and daughter, then eat the family dog, just to make you despise them and approve in advance every vicious thing the hero will do them in return...that should fool no one and itīs the cheapest form of manipulation of them all.
We all know we have to suspend our disbelief in theatres...the reason the church fought them so aciduously...only god was supposed to be unbelievable. But to feel you have to check your brains and morals and liver and guts at the front door is a bit too much of a price to pay for addmission. There isnīt a damn thing to talk about after either...what, "did you count how many times they missed him"? You just sit your ass down, unplug your brain...shutter your eyes, try to be cool and tough while wave after wave of nothing remotely connected to your own boring and insipid life, at least by comparison, comes across your brain for two or three hours.
Maybe thatīs why we think war is a war game? maybe? Nah..."go back to Kabul, you anti-American traitor.
Weīre breeding our own terrorists...even while we educate them abroad and provide advanced training. That way we get full value from those who will "save" us.
Letīs hear it for "Homeland Screwing Bill". They want to blame everything on Clinton?
-- panchmaster
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