Pain, Pain, Go Away

My personal life continues to deteriorate apace, with the universe offering promising hope and then snatching it away.  The struggle is eternal.  Symbolically, right now it is raining outside so hard that the frogs are trying to get inside.  I kid you not.

Anywho.

This is the second to the last substantial post I am doing for this blog.  Not only must I focus on other things, I've just gotten tired of writing about mere entertainment.  I am weary.

Before I go though I figured I would do one more crappy list, and not a usual one.  Instead of doing my Favorite Films Of All Time, I figured I'd give you two: my Most Overrated and Most Underrated Films Of All Time.  And since I have always believed in getting the negative out of the way first, I'll start with the former.  Please note that this does not mean that I necessarily *hate* the films in question (although a good amount of the time I do), I just feel that their reputation is undeserved.


The Most Overrated Films Of All Time:

Gone With The Wind (1939) - I *DO* hate this movie.  Not only is it extremely racist and an offensive portrayal of the Old South (and keep in mind that this is coming from a white southerner), the characters are all really, really annoying and the melodrama gets old really, really fast.  Why people idolize this film or the people in it as "classic" is beyond me.

Citizen Kane (1940) - This one is just overrated, and it has to be, being proclaimed by many as THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE.  Any film getting tagged with that moniker has to be at least a little overrated.  Everyone oohs and ahhs over the techniques that Orson Welles employed in this, but German directors such as Friz Lang had been doing it a decade before.

The Godfather, Part II (1974) - This one is just a mess, and nowhere near as good as the original.  This is the most overrated sequel of all time, actually.  Splitting the film between two stories should have been a cool gimmick but just doesn't work - Coppola should have just stuck to making a prequel, as Michael's story just isn't as interesting as Vito's.  Watching the young Corleone fall into evil in the first film is more dramatically captivating than watching him simply be evil in the second.  And Diane Keaton's line "I HAD AN ABORTION!!!!" is so overracted ("OSCAR CLIP. OSCAR CLIP. OSCAR CLIP) that I laughed the first time I heard it.  DRAMA!!

The Star Wars Series (1977-1983) - Prepare for the flamers to which I say "HA! This blog is ending soon anyway, motherfuckers! Besides, maybe I can actually get some readers before it dies!"  And yes, I know it is an entire series and not one film but I had to get this off my chest.  This series of space fantasy films (they are *not* science fiction) are not awful per se but neither are they great cinema... or even *fun* cinema for that matter.  Give me The Thief Of Bagdad (either the 1924 or 1940 version) for pure wonder or Conan The Barbarian for pure adventure over this stuff any day.  The original is just Flash Gordon meets The Hidden Fortress with bad dialogue.  The Empire Strikes Back is better but tries to work in ham-handed "philosophy" along with plotholes so big that if you think about them they'll make you go mad (ex: with it's hyperdrive out, how is the Millennium Falcon able to travel from Hoth to Bespin on presumably sublight speed?  It should takes years and years to get from one star system to another and yet at most the story of the film takes a few months.  See why I said that these are not sci-fi?).  Return of the Jedi is a commercial letdown with teddy bears and an ending so perfunctory that it's laughable.  Acting in all three is abysmal to merely decent with dialogue that will make you shudder.  And all of this wouldn't bother me so much except for the fact that these are some of the most revered movies of all time.  Fans of these movies have basically made a religion out of them.  If you admit that you don't like them prepare to be burned at the stake for heresy.  Well, I guess I'm gonna burn, baby, burn because I think that they are ridiculous. And before you say "you've lost all sense of wonder and fun from your childhood!", a) I am an adult now and have moved on from most of my childish tastes and b) I devoted an entire month of this blog to a series of movies where men in rubber lizard costumes beat the shit out of each other so there.  Yes, I think Godzilla is more awesome than Star Wars.  Flame away.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - Speaking of George Lucas....  People love this one.  Me not so much.  Other than Sean Connery this entry in the franchise doesn't have much going for it in the originality department.  Indy fights the Nazis *again*.  He searches for a biblical artifact *again*.  He teams up with Sallah *again* (and don't get me wrong, I like Sallah).  This combined with the fact that they made Marcus a bumbling moron and that John Williams lays on the syrup too thick in his score means that I actually prefer Temple of Doom to this one.  Yeah, I just went there.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996) - See?  I can do Star Trek too (but not Star Trek II... badum ching!).  A lot of Trekkies love this one but to me it's just IV with ACTION instead of comedy.  You have a threat in the future, the Enterprise crew has to travel to the past to fix it and all sorts of hijinks ensue with the denizens of the time period.  But instead of witty banter with San Francisco marine biologists you have Captain Picard gunning down Borg with a tommy gun whilst screaming like Sam Kinison.  And that's something that has bothered me about this movie since I was kid by the way:  didn't Picard get over his hatred of the Borg and his desire for vengeance back in the season 5 TNG episode "I, Borg"?  I know.  NERD!

The Avengers (2012) - Flame On!  Sorry, wrong Marvel comic.   But seriously, more flames for me!  The sad fact is that Joss Whedon is simply not a good director.  Serenity sucked (and I would have included that movie on this list except that even a good number of Firefly fans didn't like that movie) and I have never warmed up to any of his TV shows.  He can write witty dialogue but that's about it.  Other than that (and some of the acting performances) this is just another superhero movie with more plotholes and contrivances than you can shake a (soul-stealing) stick at.

Interstellar (2014) - Zing!  Knew I would do it!


And now on a more positive note:


The Most Underrated Films Of All Time:

All Monsters Attack (1969) - I know I said this back in 2013 for my review of it, but this movie was made for little kids. Lay off, Godzilla fans.

Moonraker (1979) - Listening to Bond fans you would think that this is called Moonraper.  Come on, it's a Roger Moore Bond film, what did you expect?  Turn your brain off and enjoy the ride.

Conan The Destroyer (1984) - This *is* an inferior follow up to the awesome Conan The Barbarian but it's not as bad as people would have you believe.  Some of the characters and unorthodox casting are interesting to watch (Grace Jones!  Wilt Chamberlain!) and there's less sex and violence than the first but this is a decent little fantasy film from the eighties.  As long as you don't expect the (occasional) brilliance of its predecessor you will be alright.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) - This one is like The Motion Picture (which I covered a while ago) in that people like to crap all over it.  Could it have been better?  Hell yeah.  But it's still fun to watch and for all its flaws you can sense the potential in it.  William Shatner is actually not that bad of a director, he should try it again sometime (stop laughing at me).  Oh, and the Jerry Goldsmith score rocks.  Of course.

The Star Wars Prequels (1999 - 2005) - No, these are not good movies.  They have nonsensical stories and wooden acting.  Buy you know what?  They are not that much worse than their predecessors (let a whole new round of flaming commence!).  If the kids like 'em, let them like 'em.  You should be doing something to contribute positively to the human race anyway instead of telling youngsters why their entertainment sucks.

Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008) - Again, people take this shit waaaaaay too seriously.  It's not that bad.  I'm not even mad with the whole "nuking the fridge" thing or the space aliens. You have to laugh, because the people who had no problem with the Ark of the Covenant burning peoples' faces off and an evil cultist manually ripping hearts from chests and the Cup of Christ being able to heal bullet wounds suddenly find nuked fridges and space aliens to be "unrealistic".  These are fantasy films for a reason, people.  The only thing I *hate* is the fact that Shia LeBeouf is in it with predictable results (yuck).

Well, there you go.  The rain has stopped in the time taken to write this.  Hopefully my metaphorical rain will leave soon too.  But even if it doesn't at least I can still count on one thing: some things in this life are going to be overrated by people, and some things underrated.  The trick is to find what works for you and to disregard everyone else when it comes to your entertainment.

Unmutual!

I couldn't stay away, but I won't be here long.  Too much personal stuff in my life, my slipping emotional sanity and the mind-numbing quest for an actual life mean that not only have I not written for this blog in a long time but that I won't be writing for it again ever come the near future; I am near done and we are approaching the end of line.  I truly mean it this time.  Cross my heart.

I didn't start up this blog again for the death of Leonard Nimoy, I didn't do it to commemorate Christopher Lee.  No, I am doing it today because today is American Patriotastic As Fuck Day, and as a Patriotastic American I feel like saying on this day celebrating the birth of "The Greatest Nation In The World":  It's a Sham.  Freedom is a myth.  You see, I have finished re-watching what is probably the Greatest Television Show Ever Made, and I had to come onto the internet, on this day, after a prolonged silence, to talk about it.  And it's British.  Ha.

1967-1968

Director: Basically Patrick McGoohan

This is a classic show.  If you haven't seen it, go watch it now.  Don't expect me to do a review in the classical sense and use it to decide whether you want to watch it, I'll just tell you right now.  Watch it now.  Now.

Now.

(17 hours later)

Okay, back?  Good.  Awesome, wasn't it?  And really fucking confusing too, I'll bet.  There's a lot of stuff in this show that makes you think, and makes you think about stuff that's not that pleasant.  Individuality vs the Community is only one facet.  I believe the overall conflict of the show is Freedom vs Control, or alternatively, Order vs Chaos... which ties into the Individual vs Society.  Of course Society stands for Order and Control... without control there would be no order, there would be chaos... and human beings cannot stand pure anarchy.  This is all Sociology 101, but the way The Prisoner star and creative force Patrick McGoohan handles it all is brilliant and nuanced.  From the tone and plot of the show you would expect The Prisoner (I refuse to refer to him as Number 6, after all HE IS NOT A NUMBER) to be the unabashed hero and the controllers of The Village to be absolute, unadulterated evil, but this is not always the case.  The Prisoner can sometimes be just as rigid and uncompromising in the name of the individual as the Village can be in enforcing Control -only near the end of the show does he stop flailing about in self-righteous rage and start to beat the Villagers at their own game. And while the antagonists do some pretty evil stuff in the course of the show it is made plain on a number of occasions that many of them are just as much prisoners as the main character.  You can actually sympathize with some of the Numbers Two (most notably Leo McKern's).

And in the end of course (literally) The Prisoner shows that you will never be free; if society is not trying to control and limit you then you yourself are.  The struggle is never over; we are doomed to conflict with ourselves and each other until the end of time... .. wait a minute, is this show British or German?

And that's why I say what McGoohan once said: freedom, or at least absolute freedom as imagined by most Americans, is a myth.  It has to be.  Or society would just fall apart.  In America you are only as free as you can afford to be.  Or as free as the powers-that-be will let you be.  Or as free as your family, friends, neighborhood or community lets you be.  The United States is no different.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I love living in the US.  As a (barely) middle-class American I enjoy a roof over my head and food whenever I need it (good, affordable medical care on the other hand....).  I am "free" to express my opinions about my government and not be jailed in a gulag somewhere but make no mistake... true political dissenters and undesirables are monitored covertly and often, and those deemed dangerous to the state (whether they are dangerous or not) are dealt with.  Scratch the surface of America's "free" exterior actually, and you'll find a surveillance and enforcement system that resembles a certain Village control room....

The United States (and other western countries) have done some very nefarious things to protect the community and its "freedom", many of them done during the decade The Prisoner was originally made.  Things that were just as nefarious as the "evil" Communist Soviet Union or third world brutal dictatorships (some of which we helped set up and/or maintain).  The East and West were not that different during the Cold War (something the show touches on).

So given the show's message and the state of the world it's all pretty depressing, right?  There is no hope.  Well, no.  The trick, and this is the beauty of McGoohan's message, is to despite all this never let them make you think of yourself as a number (which is difficult today, isn't it, with your Social Security Number, Driver's Licence Number, etc.).  Also, you have to *fight* for the rights you most want and cherish.  Don't let them take everything.  You should learn to compromise, but never just roll over and play dead.

All this coming from a Brit, no less.  Wait, actually, Patrick McGoohan was born and died in... America.


Go America!  Woo!

Happy Fourth.

The Motion Never Stops

Before I get to my special theme for this month which I'll post in a couple of days, I just wanted to take a quick opportunity to note the passing of Ray Harryhausen, special effects pioneer extraordinaire.

It's a shame we don't have visualists like him around anymore - I have never really liked CGI, I think that 99% of the time that computer graphics will never look as good as a real physical object... even if the computer image is excellent and the physical object is kinda cheesy.  I just don't think that we can make CG that looks real yet.  And I realize when I say this that computer programming and graphics are hard work, but I just don't think that the FX of today can stand up just because it's too *easy*... a director and an effects supervisor can just sit down at a computer and bash out what they want with none of the painstaking labor and craftsmanship that used to be put into movie visuals... by people like Mr. Harryhausen.

His movies occupy a special place in my collection.  I have always enjoyed fantasy and science fiction films (no!) and I remember watching some of Harryhausen's movies like Jason and the Argonauts whenever they would come on TV.  His fantasy movie collection also happens to be one of the oldest DVD boxsets that I own, having got it as a gift close to ten years ago now.  I have had ample to time to enjoy the fruits of his labors, again and again and again and again.

And in this age of home video thankfully everyone can.  So here's to you Mr. Ray Harryhausen.  I would say I hope you go to heaven if there is one, but I don't think they have any cool monsters there.

Ghost Writer In The Sky....

Roger Ebert died today.  It's kind of weird when you think about it.  Sometimes we get so used to certain people being around it's so damn... strange when they no longer inhabit our plane of existence.  I had the same feeling after James Brown died... I suddenly lived in a world without James Brown, and that seemed both bizarre and unacceptable at the same time.  But, you say, James Brown was a creator, an inventor - he basically invented funk music, he was the Godfather of Soul, he influenced whole musical genres in addition to artists with his music.  Roger Ebert was a film critic, his whole job was just to analyze what other people created and tell an audience whether he thought they should see it or not.  How can he be considered special?

Well, Roger Ebert actually worked on a couple of movies himself.  No he wasn't a director or actor but he was a (surprise) writer, writing a couple of movies for Russ Meyer in the 70s, one of which being the infamous Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls.  Both of these movies were very, very bad (but in a laughable, fun kinda way).  But the point is, Ebert *did it*.  He actually participated in filmmaking, understood the process.  When Roger Ebert criticized some movie for being bad, he would know because he wrote some bad movies himself.  This is more than most movie critics could and can do.  Nowadays your average film critic is just some hack who took writing and film courses in college and thinks that they know more than you will ever know about film just because they studied it in school.  The sad truth is that anyone who can pick up a book and read or sit still enough to watch a movie for a couple of hours can write a half-intelligent movie review.  But few can write movies reviews well and with  true knowledge of the craft, and Ebert was one of them.

Even when he was wrong.  I remember reading a negative review of his on the original 1954 Godzilla.  I was nearly foaming at the mouth and proclaiming that Ebert wouldn't know a good movie if it came up and bit him in the ass.  But you know what?  I had that reaction because his opinion *mattered*... because he wrote well.  Most other reviewers (few can actually be called true critics) don't get that kind of response out of me.  I read their shit and say, "Hmm", and forget about it a minute later, even if I find their viewpoint contentious.  Ebert made you care with his opinion, and that is rare in modern film criticism, where most writers are just trying to impress you with their writing "talent."

I actually have no pretenses to Mr. Ebert's job.  I am not a film critic.  I am simply some dude on the internet ejaculating forth his opinions because it gives him an excuse to write, to hone his composition skills.  If someone comes along and engages me on something I wrote, that's great but it's not my purpose.  The point to all this is, Roger Ebert was a true film critic and I am not, but I'm writing this tribute anyway because... I want to.  It's not some gushing from one professional to another but some honest thoughts from someone who enjoyed reading his stuff.  Even if no one else sees this I want to write how much his film reviews and writing in general meant to me.  Even if he was dead wrong sometimes.

And that was the fun part.

Ars On The Ides Of Mars

This month on Netflix I happened to watch two biopics about two artists, both based on novels, produced ten years apart, depicting men who lived roughly 300 years apart and who made two different types of art.  I hadn't actually intended to do this but once I watched both I started to draw some parallels and make some comparisons - as well as think about how one could be so good and one could basically suck.  Today I give you a short, badly written essay on a comparison and contrast of Magic Fire and The Agony And The Ecstasy, or "How To and How Not To Do a Biographical Movie About An Artist".

Magic Fire is about the life of Richard Wagner (whose bicentennial is this year, incidentally) made in 1955 by Republic Pictures, which by that time was on its last legs as a viable film studio.  The Agony and The Ecstasy is a film about Michelangelo Buonarroti and his painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling produced in 1965 and starring Charlton Heston as the tortured artist and Rex Harrison as the warrior pope who commissions him to create the great work.

The difference between the two is like night and day.  Magic Fire is a cheesy biopic which tries to compress the entire life of the most important and influential composer of music next to Bach and Beethoven down into two hours and achieves in telling us nothing about the man or how monumental his work is and how it affected all of the art of the nineteenth century and beyond.  To director William Dieterle, the whole thing is just an exercise in showing how Wagner could be something of a vain egotist while making some pretty music and pining after a series of women, instead of showing how truly radical his ideas were, while maybe even showing some of the man's truly dark tendencies and his genuinely complex relationships with the other human beings in his life.  This movie could have been an opportunity to show the paradox of the artist and the dichotomy between what a man is and the art that he can produce.  But alas, Dieterle just gives us a shallow, melodramatic two hours of nothing.  There is no dramatic point to this massive cheese-beast.  The film zooms along from one point in Wagner's life to another - it all feels so scatter-shot.  The actors don't look like the historical personages that they are supposed to portray.  There are historical inaccuracies (a given in any historical picture).  Even the music, which should of course be a highlight is arranged by Erich Wolfgang Korngold in a choppy "best of" manner which never even lets us hear a whole selection before it's off into another cornily played bit from another opera. Oh well, at least it was filmed on location in Europe so some of the backgrounds are accurate (and pretty).

The Agony And The Ecstasy attempts to do the opposite - give us just one incident in the life of Michelangelo and build a dramatic conflict and exploration of an artist around it.  Directed by Carol Reed, this movie accomplishes what the last film does not.  We are presented with real questions - what drives an artist to create?  How far will he go to do it?  How does one find one's purpose in life?  How does the relationship of one person to another affect their work or vice versa?  What is the true impact of our lives on this world?  What the answers to some of these questions are of course will be up to the viewer which is the beauty of this movie - everything is not laid out on a platter and the viewer must find their own meaning.  The direction and the acting are better, too.  Charlton Heston gives a great account as Michelangelo, making him both sympathetic and infuriating, sometimes all at he same time.  Rex Harrison is of course basically Rex Harrison for the duration of the movie but manages to portray both Pope Julius' violent arrogance and surprising humility in the face of true art and beauty.  The interplay between the two is classic - this film works as a character study in itself in addition to the qualities I have mentioned.  They even manage the illusion of the Sistine Chapel being in the process of being painted, which must have been truly challenging.  The only things I didn't like were the tacked-on semi-romantic subplot (standard in movies of the 1950s and 60s but thankfully not overdone here) and the twelve minute art history lesson in the beginning.  It's rather clunky and unnecessary - I know who Michelangelo was and what his major works were, thanks.

In the end the recommendation is obvious - The Agony And The Ecstasy is a classic film worthy of any Netflix queue, whilst Magic Fire should be viewed by die-hard Wagner fans only, and only if they feel slightly masochistic... while getting a few chuckles from it over how corny it is.  And to all the directors out there not reading this I say:  when making a bio film of a great artist, try to focus on one work or point in their life and how it affected them and the world and try to give us some real drama out of it, instead of trying to cram the totality of their life and work into a short time-span, making everything empty and pointless.  

Ah, who am I kiddin'. 

Sayonara Anime

All three readers of this blog may have noticed that I haven’t reviewed or written about any anime for the past four months. Why is this so? Well, for one I have been busy with other things in my life (fewer blog posts, period) as well as watching other things in my life (mostly watching horror movies for some strange reason recently). But the biggest reason is simply that I haven’t been watching any new anime. Oh sure, I re-watched Martian Successor Nadesico recently, and I got the new DVDs of Project A-Ko and Galaxy Express 999, but I don’t like blogging things I’ve seen before, and I would really have nothing new to say about A-Ko and 999 – there are only so many ways to say “this movie is fucking awesome” before it gets repetitive.

But I have not watched any new anime. In fact, I’m rather burned out on anime right now. There is simply nothing right now that interests me that much. About the only thing that I can think of that I might want to get is the Dirty Pair TV Series but I can wait on that (no money). I even ran into a very cheap copy of the complete series Last Exile at the used bookstore, and I didn’t pick it up even though I was somewhat interested in viewing it about a year ago. I don’t feel like committing myself to a whole series anymore – I just don’t *care* that much anymore. I just can’t bring myself to rabidly watch entertainment intended for Japanese teenagers anymore. Even if that entertainment is very good, which nearly everyone says that Last Exile is.

This isn’t to insult Japanese teenagers, or teenagers in general, or even adults who watch young adult or children’s entertainment (hey, I enjoy a good Looney Tunes cartoon every once in a while). It’s just that maybe, I want something a little more… adult from my animation. And while a lot of anime aimed at teenagers has some crossover appeal with adults (the original Mobile Suit Gundam was aimed at teenagers but found an audience with college students who liked it’s complex world-view, for example) most is just too limited for me to enjoy that much anymore. I even sold off a whole bunch of my anime recently – even shows I really enjoyed but realized I would never watch again, like Nadia the Secret of Blue Water and Twelve Kingdoms.

So how much anime for adults is out there anyway? The answer: not much. A lot of defenders of the art form will say, “Unlike in the West, where animation is something only for children, anime is made for adults too!” This is false. *Some* animation is made for adults in Japan (i.e. it is not completely nonexistent ) but the vast majority of anime is made for children (and there have been *some* attempts at adult animation in the West, but... well, read below). It’s just that most of it doesn’t make it over here to the US (or the UK, or Canada, or….) because we already have animated programming and movies for children. The next largest group of anime is anime made for teenagers, and this is the group with the largest exposure in the West because it fills a niche that Western Animation does not. Animation for teenagers and young adults has been traditionally nonexistent over here for a long time, the reasoning being (as far as I can tell) that when children hit a certain age they’re supposed to “grow up” and stop watching cartoons. Well, in Japan the attitude is that when teenagers become full adults that they stop watching cartoons and “grow up.” What most western anime fans don’t realize is that regular adult watchers of anime in Japan are in a small minority, and anime is not in the adult mainstream. The vast majority of anime that *is* made for adults is hentai – porn. So what most westerners say about anime is ALMOST true – all anime is either kiddie stuff or porn. I say ALMOST because unlike here in America there *is* a minute amount of animation that is made for older *adults* that is not porn. Now, most of this is crap – Sturgeon’s Law states that 90% of *anything* is crap. And most of it, in an attempt to be “adult” and “edgy” employs a lot of sex/nudity and massive violence (not unlike “adult” animation from the US and elsewhere in the west, where “adult” means puerile animated movies with loads of gratuitous nudity and/or gratuitous violence – Heavy Metal and the works of an execrable animator-that-shall-remain-nameless-but-whose-initials-are-RB come to mind). Not that I mind nudity or sex or violence, but one can have adult entertainment without great amounts of both. So, with that in mind, is there any anime for those like me, who want good, adult animation from Japan without the Boobs and Blood? Or, at least, anime made for older teenagers with enough crossover appeal and enough maturity to interest discerning adults?

Well, yeah, although it is few and far between. Note that this list cannot be complete as I have not watched every anime known to man (or woman).

I have already dealt with a few such anime on this blog – Memories, Labyrinth Tales and Planetes – so I won’t go into them again here except to say read my previous reviews for them and watch them.

Cowboy Bebop is a famous “gateway” anime TV show (i.e. it is an anime that gets people into watching other anime, although it does also feature warp-gates) and was really popular back in the late nineties when it first came out. It’s about a group of bounty hunters in THE FUTURE who travel around the solar system and, well, hunt criminals. What makes the show so refreshingly adult is the way the characters are treated and the way the situations resolve themselves – everything does not always work out for the best. And yeah, there is a cute kid along with a cute dog in here, but they are also treated (relatively) realistically and are there (usually) for comic support. And while this *can* be a violent show, it is not excessively or unnecessarily so.

Wings of Honneamise is a great anime movie from Studio Gainax (their first project, actually) about the first steps by human beings into space – in an alternate world. This is great because it not only depoliticizes the story and the human achievement of space travel but gives the animators the chance to invent a whole new world – which they do beautifully. Everything in this world is different from ours – down to the silverware – but it is never truly alien… it is recognizable as human, and the characters in this world gain our sympathy by being like us. The art and animation are spectacular (especially for 1987, which is when this came out) and the story is absolutely gripping. There is a controversial scene involving sexual assault, but it is not gratuitous (despite what some claim) and is not meant to be arousing in any way. Wings of Honneamise is what other anime films should strive to be.

Millennium Actress is a film from Satoshi Kon, a director I really need to see more of (hence the reason there are no more films of his on here). It details (in a very fluid, stream-of-consciousness manner) the life of a movie actress of the 50s and 60s and her lifelong search for a love from her youth. While it does get overly sentimental at a few points, the story is solid, and the imagery is superb. This is a well done, creative, dramatic film from a director that died way too soon.

Speaking of directors, my favorite anime director is Mamoru Oshii (who turned 60 this week by the way – happy birthday, Mr. Oshii). He’s the one anime director who has put out the greatest deal of quality animated material for adults. Some of it does have an excess of Boobs and Blood (*Cough* Ghost in the Shell, *cough*) that will not be dealt with here, but he’s been responsible for not only some of the best adult anime films but best anime films period.

Angel’s Egg is an awesome experimental film from Oshii, but it is unavailable in the US (had to watch it on Youtube – YUCK), so I will highlight the best of his body of work by talking briefly about his two Patlabor films.

Yes, they are movies with giant robots – but they are the two greatest giant robot movies ever made. The reason for this is… are you ready?... they’re not really about giant robots, especially the second one. Oh sure, the first Patlabor movie is nominally about giant robots going berserk because of their operating systems, but you could have replaced the Labors (as the mecha are called) with anything – any machine or tool. The film is all about progress, about whether it is a good or bad thing as well as the status of technology in modern society; you know, fluffy stuff like that. It’s also a good detective movie with a cool twist – we know who is responsible for the crime in this story, but not how he plans to carry it out… and the villain dies in the very beginning, so the whole movie details the protagonists efforts to stop the diabolical plans of a dead man. Brilliant!

Patlabor 2 is even more brilliant on a filmmaking level, although I personally like it a little bit less because it’s not as fun as the first. It also deals with heavy issues like the role of a military in a modern society (especially a society like Japan that has formally renounced war), terrorism and the complicity of citizens in modern democracies with violence in the third world. This is anime that makes you think, and it’s a damn shame that there isn’t more anime like this. The story, the acting, the visuals are all superb. If you were to stick a gun to my head and make me name the greatest anime film ever made I would probably name this one, although again it’s not my *favorite* (there is a difference).

Although he didn’t direct it, Oshii did write Jin-Roh, a fascinating drama set in an alternate 1960s where the Germans won World War II and occupied Japan. I won’t go too much into the plot – it gets pretty twisty – but I will say this this is a well done anime film made squarely for adults. There is quite a bit of blood but it never approaches stupid levels, and there is no cheap titillation or fanservice. If you watch this movie and still think all anime ever made is either for the kiddies or porn then check into a mental hospital because your sense of reality is seriously skewed.

Well, there you go. Some adult anime for your enjoyment – without the buckets of sex and violence. Because you shouldn’t need sex and violence to enjoy something made for adults, right?


Next Week: Sex and Violence.

Why Can't All Movies Be This Awesome At Thirty?

It was thirty years ago this month (on the 12th to be precise) that Raiders of the Lost Ark was first released to theatres.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my favorite movies ever. In fact, if you stuck a gun to my head and made me name my absolute favorite movie of all time, I would waffle between this and Ghostbusters until you blew my brains out. But what is it about this globetrotting adventure film that makes me love it so? What makes it superior to every other action/adventure movie ever made? Well, today I’m going to try and answer those questions while imparting just how much I love this freaking movie.

I’m going to go about this glowing tribute (hey, no one said that this would be an impartial analytical essay) to the Greatest Adventure Movie Ever Made by comparing Raiders to For Your Eyes Only, the twelfth James Bond movie and the fifth starring Roger Moore in the role of the famous secret agent (wait, shouldn’t that be an oxymoron?) 007. Why For Your Eyes Only (FYEO)? Well, to start out it is in the same genre as Raiders (Globetrotting Action/Adventure… a rather specialized category, really). Secondly, it was released at roughly the same time as the first Indiana Jones adventure (roughly two weeks later on June 24th, meaning it also turned 30 this month) making it a good example of a contemporary competing movie. Third, FYEO is a good example of a movie of its type as the Bond movies had been setting the standard for nineteen years prior in the action/adventure genre. And last but most importantly, the James Bond franchise was a major influence on the Indiana Jones franchise (along with all those old adventure serials of the 30s and 40s). In fact, James Bond has been called “the father of Indiana Jones” by Steven Spielberg no less (and in a side note, Sean Connery would of course play Indy’s dad in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). So it is interesting to compare the movies of both the “parent” and “child” franchises back to back and show how Raiders basically blew away the competition back in 1981… and all of the years after, actually.

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Before I begin I want to stress that I am not going to mindlessly bash For Your Eyes Only in order to lionize Raiders and I don’t hate the film. In fact, it’s one of my favorite Bond movies and a vast improvement to the franchise after the horribly goofy, over-the-top MST3K fodder that was Moonraker. Director John Glen really brought the series back to earth (haha) and toned down about 90% of the silliness of the previous Moore outings (it’s still Roger Moore though you are still going to get some stupid moments). FYEO is my favorite Roger Moore Bond movie and one of the best in the Bond series. The fact that Raiders of the Lost Ark is a superior film does not reflect badly on For Your Eyes Only; on the contrary it just goes to show how extraordinary and sublime Spielberg’s magnum opus is.

Oh, and I’m not even going to worry about spoilers with either of these movies. If you haven’t seen For Your Eyes Only, go out and rent it – it’s a good Bond flick. And if you haven’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, crawl out from whatever rock you’ve – ah, you know what? If you’re reading this then you are both a member of a sufficiently advanced modern society and above the age of six, in which case you have seen Raiders of the Lost Ark.

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Let’s begin our movie comparison by starting with our main characters: James Bond and Indiana Jones. First up: Roger Moore as James Bond in For Your Eyes Only. Moore really is too old to play Bond even by this point but it *almost* works in this film (it would become ridiculous with the succeeding Octopussy and his last outing A View to a Kill in which he looks positively *mummified*) as he plays 007 as someone who is about one year away from retirement. This reflects in his performance: Moore comes off as an experienced agent with a reservoir of knowledge and wisdom as well as an almost avuncular demeanor. Watch the scene where he persuades Melina Havelock to postpone her vengeance on the killers of her parents so he can find out what’s behind the whole plot and help them both. It just might be Moore’s best bit of acting ever; he comes across not as some playboy secret agent trying to talk his way into a young woman’s bed (like he normally does) but as a concerned man trying to prevent another human being from being hurt.

A lot of people like to hold up Sean Connery as being the greatest Bond ever but I don’t think his 007 could have pulled this scene off; he was too cold, ruthless, and horny (and keep in mind that doesn’t mean that Moore is my favorite Bond, in fact far from it). But, you say, what about badassery? Being nice to grieving girls is nice and all, but James Bond has to kick major ass or he’s just a government employee who gets to travel a lot and eat nice food. Well, Moore gets his biggest badass moment in his entire run as 007 when he kicks a car off a cliff – with a despicable criminal hitman inside.

Badassssss!

So there’s that. Overall a very good movie for Roger Moore, even if he is too old to be playing a British super-spy.

In contrast Harrison Ford in Raiders comes off as having just the right mix of youth and experience as archaeology professor cum globetrotting adventurer Indiana Jones. Even though not a spry young man (Ford was in his late thirties when he made this) he doesn’t seem to be ready for retirement either – remember, “it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.” Ford convincingly displays Indy as a perfect mix of the physical, tenacious, intelligent and academic, as a man who can teach a college class one minute and jump off into the deserts of Egypt to battle Nazis the second (actually, how the hell has he not been fired from his teaching job by now?). He can be both tender and hard, sometimes towards the same person: notice how he’s barely apologetic towards a woman he is implied to have deflowered while she was still underage.

Even after she hits him.

Even though one of the “good guys” his whole career revolves around robbing the sacred treasures of multiple groups of people for the intellectual profit of the Western World (although this admittedly is what archaeology basically was back in the 1930s). He kicks major ass like Bond but messes up too. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Indiana Jones is portrayed as a fleshed out, flawed human being in contrast to the nearly perfect invincible superhuman James Bond (who really has no foibles except indulging in too much casual sex, which is not portrayed as negative by the movies and actually shown as a positive thing). In addition, Harrison Ford has a screen presence that Roger Moore doesn’t have. Now, it’s nowhere near the level of Toshiro Mifune or Klaus Kinski (oh god, no) but it is there. You can see why he went on to stardom.

"Trust me."  Wouldn't you trust him?

Howsabout the leading ladies? Well, FYEO's Carole Bouquet is certainly lovely as Melina Havelock, and has a great combination of intensity and lethal determination to kill the murderers of her parents: just look at the look on her face right after their assassination scene. Electric! However, she can be a little stilted at times and she doesn’t have much of a personality outside of the whole “rampaging revenge” thing. She only smiles genuinely twice in the entire movie. She has some chemistry with Roger Moore, although with his age and more avuncular personality in this installment it comes off as more (haha) of a platonic friendship, which is nice… until the very end where they’re kissing each other and skinny dipping with it being suggested that sex is going to happen later. Argh! They had a chance to do something different with a Bond movie and they fell back on “Bond has sex with the lead Bond Girl at the end” crap. Was it that imperative to keep up tradition (TRADITION! Uh, sorry, although Topol *is* in this movie, people. Had to be done!)? It really does make the woman a reward for Bond saving the day, which is just outdated and sexist and… screw it. If I start to talk about sexism in James Bond movies I’m gonna be here forever. Speaking of which Bond of course beds more than just Carole Bouquet in this movie, although it is only one and someone is closer to his age. Oh, and I can’t talk about For Your Eyes Only without pointing out that James Bond is sexually assaulted by a fifteen year old girl. Which is freakin’ hilarious.

I love the look on his face too.

Awww.

Raiders of the Lost Ark, of course has Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood who sizzles in her scenes with Harrison Ford. Allen does a better acting job than Bouquet (although it could help that she’s a native English speaker) even if she does get whiny at a few points (although nowhere near as bad as Kate Capshaw in the next Indy movie, Temple of Doom… uuuugh I’m getting shivers just thinking about it right now). Although Marion doesn’t have the driving motivation that Melina does, she makes up for it with more personality. And she’s cute too! Karen Allen is my favorite Indy woman (and a lot of other people’s too, which is why she returned for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, in which she is still cute).

A hero is only as good as the villains he faces, and – ah, you know what? Screw it. No analysis is needed. Raiders wins hands down. It’s the Nazis. It’s the fuckin’ Nazis. You can’t do any better when it comes to movie villains than the Nazis. Greek smugglers/Soviet agents don’t even compare to the Nazis. You could make the protagonist of a movie a baby-raping, cross-burning, puppy-decapitating cannibal lawyer and the audience would still root for them if they were beating the crap out of Nazis. On an interesting side note, Julian Glover who is the main baddie in FYEO went on to play the main baddie (who like Kristatos in FYEO starts out seeming like a good guy oddly enough) in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, who collaborates with...

Nazis!

Visual effects, too, is a no-brainer. You have Richard Edlund melting the heads off of, you guessed it,

Nazis!

Music… screw it, I don’t want to write about this either. John Williams’ score for Raiders is one of the greatest ever written, a timeless rousing piece of music you want to listen to over and over again. Bill Conti’s “score” for FYEO is a piece of dated disco dreck.

Which leads me to the biggest reason that Raiders of the Lost Ark is a superior film to For Your Eyes Only, and every other adventure movie for that matter… it’s timeless. When you watch FYEO you can tell when it’s been made – it is obviously a product of the early eighties. In fact it practically screams this at you from the get-go, with Sheena Easton wailing the title song over the by now standard credits (I think Maurice Binder gave up on actual creativity after the sixties – “Okay… naked babes, and guns, more naked babes, more guns… shimmery things, more babes… aaaand done.”). This is actually a fallacy of nearly all Bond movies, actually. Using popular singers of the day will inevitably date your movie (except of course for Thunderball, Live and Let Die and Goooooldfingaaaaaaaah!). The opening to Raiders by contrast is, well, timeless… simple and effective. It doesn’t stop the movie for three minutes to force you to read credits (and look at naked chicks)… it plays the credits while already getting you into the story. And that leads me into the next biggest thing that makes Raiders superior… it’s not forced. It feels very organic, very natural… it flows well, from one situation to the next.

FYEO feels like a series of set pieces strung together with plot, each talky story portion serving to link each stunt and action sequence to the next. Not that this is a horrible thing, after all the stunts and action scenes in Bond movies are usually very, very awesome (and there is no exception here). And admittedly FYEO’s plot is a very good one, involving intertwining themes of vengeance, betrayal and deception. But the execution just seems to be a little… choppy compared to Raiders.

Although it does have a really cool Citroen car chase.

And maybe this is what also what helps make Raiders timeless… there’s no dated style of filmmaking here. Yes, it followed from the blockbuster style of the seventies (which Spielberg helped to invent) and itself influenced the action movies of the eighties… but the final product is one that is hard to pin down to one time period, at least for me. And this isn’t just nostalgia talking, because I can look to some of my other favorite movies from the time period and point out how dated they are. Ghostbusters (which I mentioned earlier) was obviously made in the eighties. Ben-Hur is very obviously a fifties film. Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of a handful of movies (a couple of other examples being The Empire Strikes Back and Alien) that are truly non-dated and timeless.

So, with all of the trumpeting of how superior Raiders of the Lost Ark is over For Your Eyes Only, does the Cold War adventure of Agent 007 manage to do anything better than the classic tale of the search for the lost Ark of the Covenant? Well, yes. I have to admit that the stunts in Raiders, while very, very good aren't quite as good as the ones in FYEO. Look, the stunts in Raiders are awesome – the shots of Indy crawling under the truck and being dragged behind the truck are classic and makes me say, “Woo! This is awesome! I’m having so much fun watching this!” But the first time I watched the part of FYEO when Bond is climbing up the side of Kristatos’ mountain fortress the palms of my hands literally sweated and I had a death grip on my chair. When Bond is kicked off the cliff by a henchman and falls about two hundred feet on his rope, I think I forgot to breathe.

I also winced in pain during the “keelhauling” sequence where Bond and Melina are dragged on a rope by the villain’s boat through shark infested waters (this sequence is actually from the book Live and Let Die). Every time Bond broke off a piece of razor-sharp coral with his body – ouch.

Well, anyways, happy birthday, Raiders of the Lost Ark (and you too, For Your Eyes Only!)… you are truly one of the greatest films ever made and one of my absolute favorites. I will always thrill to your spectacular action scenes, boo your despicable Nazi villains, marvel at your awesome special effects and laugh whenever Indy shoots that Arab swordsman guy.

Hahahahaha!

Next Week: Something different.

Hey, I'm Writin' Here!

It has been a long time since my last post.  I’ve been focusing on looking for a job after quitting my crappy retail job (which in retrospect was a stupid, stupid move), and then my grandmother died at the end of last month. She was my favorite grandparent, and my very good friend to boot. She was the one I could go to and vent at whenever life got me down – she was there to talk to me and sympathize with me, listen to and gently criticize me. She was never judgmental or condescending or unkind. She could be really stubborn though – and I think she had an unhealthy addiction to QVC (I shudder to think about what would have happened had she been let loose on Amazon; thankfully she was never interested in learning about computers). The weird thing about her death is that I have been pretty calm about it all. I didn’t cry when I found out that she was dead and I only came close to tears once during the funeral; the only time I cried my eyes out was when I visited her in the hospital and saw her near the end, barely conscious and hooked up to a ventilator. Maybe I was forlorn to see her in such a state; maybe I could sense her impending death and let my grief out then. I don’t know. I do know that she wasn’t very happy for a few years leading up to her death because it got so difficult and painful to move around and do stuff sometimes(she could not and did not drive, so I got to drive her around some). So maybe I’m not so torn up now that she’s dead because I know that she’s not in pain anymore. Or maybe I’m just numb and the momentousness of her passing hasn’t hit me yet. I don’t know. I do know that my life is going to be very different from now on. I’m going to miss my Nana. So why do I bring this up now when I said in my first post on this site that I wouldn’t write about Real Life in a fluffy blog about movies? Well, in addition to needing the opportunity to get some things off my chest (therapy is expensive), I thought I would do a blog post today (after such a long time) in memory of my recently departed Nana. You see, today I’m going to review her favorite movie.  Here’s to you, Nana, because in your honor today on the Pharonic Fantasy Theatre I’m going to review

Film, 1969

Director: John Schlesinger

You know, it’s funny. Whenever I tell people that this was my grandmother’s favorite movie of all time, they look at me with a funny expression and say, “Oh, my God. Really?” I guess they figure it weird that someone with no predilection towards such things would pick an X rated film as her favorite. Well, first of all I don’t think she was as straitlaced as others thought she was and secondly, Midnight Cowboy isn’t even really an X movie; it’s really an R movie that got rated X unfairly back when it was released. In fact, it got re-rated only a few years later and now says “R” on the back of the DVD box. So there.

In truth, there’s very little material in this film that is truly X worthy. There’s no full frontal nudity or graphic violence (if you want that in a mainstream X-Rated movie, go watch A Clockwork Orange). I would guess that Midnight Cowboy probably got slapped with an X originally because it actually dared to portray homosexual characters in a *gasp* somewhat sympathetic light. The plight of gays in the sixties is actually portrayed very sympathetically here. Most of the supporting homosexual characters in the film are in the closet and very self-loathing. There wasn’t the same degree of tolerance for homosexuals back in 1969 as there is today, and that’s saying something as gays are still discriminated against even in this day and age. John Schlesinger, the Director was actually gay so that might explain a lot of the content of this movie (not just the homosexuality itself but the overall story of two outcasts living outside of normal society). Apparently having a compassionate view towards homosexuals or even just not portraying them as harmful, predatory monsters back in the sixties was too much for the film ratings board.

Oh, yeah and there’s drug use (hey, it’s the 60s).

Every 60s movie is required by Federal Law to have at least one tripping scene.

Oh, a quick diversionary note before I proceed any further: I’m not going to do a standard review with plot synopsis, pictures section, etc. For this little review/essay I’m going to assume that you’ve seen the movie and therefore must warn SPOILERS AHOY!

Okay, back to my rambling.

I can see what my grandmother liked in this movie. It’s a dark but very funny look at a very unorthodox friendship between two very different men. Joe Buck is a *very* naïve but very charismatic and handsome Texan “cowboy” who moves to New York City

while Rico “Ratso” Rizzo is a grimy and crippled conman who is sleazy and dishonest but a hell of a lot smarter than Joe.

Together they manage to survive with little money at the bottom rung of society’s ladder in a city that doesn’t care. Each has his own dream: Joe wants make a living whoring himself to rich, lonely women while Rico wants to move to Florida to …hang out? I don’t know. The goals of the main characters in this movie are vague and rather fantastical, which is one of the points of the whole thing.

And… shit. I realize that I just basically gave a plot synopsis when I said I wouldn’t. Oh well. I lied. I deliberately lied to you. Get over it. Moving on.

"My God, I'm in Black and White.  How did that happen?"

Yes, their goals are rather far-fetched and flimsy. Joe’s whole dream is to be a prostitute – what the hell? Who *chooses* a life like that? “Well, let’s see – looking at all of my job skills and taking into consideration where I am in my life right now and where I want to be, I think I’ll pursue a career in whoring.” Although I guess he does say at various points in the film that “loving” is all he’s ever been good at so…? Rico’s dream is purely hedonistic and lazy: hang out in the Florida sunshine all day and not work. In the end Rico refuses to see a doctor about the ailment afflicting him through the whole picture and dies on the bus on the way down to Florida – his stubborn pursuit of his shallow dream is what kills him. Joe in contrast gives up his goal of “hustling” while stuffing his cowboy outfit in the garbage during a rest stop in Florida and looks to get an honest job; he lives to the end of the movie. So maybe there’s a lesson here about pursuing goals here, eh? Don’t stubbornly pursue hollow dreams. It’ll kill you.

I remember Nana telling me that what she liked the most about Midnight Cowboy was the friendship between the two leads. “Some people see Dustin Hoffman as just exploiting Jon Voight but I saw him as his friend who was trying to help him.” Well, yes and no, Nana. Rico does con Joe in the beginning and uses his talents for his own ends, but Joe needs him for his skills just as much. It is a symbiotic relationship, and one that turns into genuine friendship.

I know it sounds funny, but the relationship between these two characters actually reminds me of the relationship between the two leads from The Producers (made the previous year, in fact). In that movie, Zero Mostel’s washed up Broadway producer character convinces Gene Wilder’s timid accountant character to launch a scheme: produce a sure flop of a musical to make a shitload of money (since then there would be no profits from the sales to give back to the backers. Just watch the movie to see what I mean, it’s hilarious). In the end, Gene Wilder gives a speech about how his relationship with Mostel’s conman has given him actual confidence and his first true friend. The end of Midnight Cowboy kind of reminded me of this – Joe ends up a better person because of his relationship with Rico (although at a horrible price). So I guess you can really say that Midnight Cowboy is the serious version of The Producers.

"I'm telling you, Springtime For Hitler just might work!"

Yes, I just went there.

Well, I’m going to stop now before I ramble to much more. Watching this movie clued me into what kind of person my Nana was. The fact that her favorite movie ever was about the close friendship between two people and the fact that she saw good in that friendship that others would dismiss as exploitative shows me that she was at heart an optimistic woman who saw good in most people.

I’m sorry I wasn’t that coherent. I guess I’ve been sort of knocked off my stride. This probably isn’t the best tribute I could give to my Nana, but oh well. It’s what I have on my mind at the moment and that’s what’s going down   Next time I will hopefully be in a better state of mind and do something a little more upbeat.

Pictured: Something Not Upbeat.

Airing Out More Dirty Laundry

That's right, I'm publishing more of my shitty college history class essays from the deep dark times of... eight years ago?  Anyways, today's my birthday and I'm too lazy to do a real article (too much cake to eat - mmmmm, cake), so enjoy these two craptacular essays from History 393.  Both were supposed to address how successful two movies that we picked were at depicting American foreign relations.  I picked Patton and M*A*S*H because, hey, both were from 1970, made by the same studio (20th Century Fox) and dealt with the same subject (war).  Why not?

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An Analysis of the Failure of M*A*S*H as a Foreign Relations Film

Robert Altman’s comedy film M*A*S*H (based on the novel by Richard Hooker) portrays three Army surgeons defying authority and goofing off in a Korean War army field hospital. The film received mostly positive reviews when it was released in early 1970. The movie was intended as a criticism of the then-current Vietnam War, however it has little to no value to students of American foreign relations.

Initial reviews for M*A*S*H were generally good and enthusiastic. One exception though was Roger Greenspun’s New York Times review which accused the film as “the first major American movie openly to ridicule belief in God—not phony belief; real belief.” However the reviewer does credit the movie with being humorous. The International Film Guide praises M*A*S*H for the performance of its actors but states that the movie portrays war as a “boy’s night out” and criticizes the shenanigans of the main characters. In great contrast Newsweek reviewer Joseph Morgenstern applauds, “As you sit watching M*A*S*H you can only be swept along and occasionally under by its glorious madness.” He praises M*A*S*H in almost every way, remarking on the acting, direction, realism of subject matter and more importantly the main message of the movie: the “lunacy of war.”

M*A*S*H was released at the same time that the United States was fighting its protracted and ravaging war in Vietnam. One of things that made M*A*S*H popular was that besides being a funny comedy, it also reflected popular opinion about the war in Vietnam at the time, and that most Americans were tired of war in general. The same issue of the New York Times that carries the movie review of M*A*S*H also has a story about the question of the use of biological and chemical “toxins” in warfare, the question being whether America should use these weapons before or after it is directly attacked (presumably by the Soviet Union). Interestingly enough, the other big topic besides Vietnam in the copy of Newsweek that reviews M*A*S*H is pollution, with the front cover devoted to it. By the early 1970s Americans were becoming aware of the damage that heavy industry and automobiles were doing to the environment. One advertisement in that same Newsweek is for a car with better gas mileage!

Later film historians have not dwelt on M*A*S*H. It is mentioned only in passing in texts dealing with history in film. Therefore an analysis of M*A*S*H reveals that it is not very important to the study of American foreign relations for the simple reason that it does not deal much with American foreign relations. The movie does not study the reasons for the Korean War or American diplomacy with the Koreans and/or Chinese. The only aspect of foreign relations the film does study is the effect war (foreign relations taken to one extreme) has on the men who serve in it. That effect, according to the movie is to cope in any way possible. For the surgeons at the 4077th MASH that means playing practical jokes, indulging in numerous acts of extramarital sex and getting into trouble with the Army establishment at every turn. Doctors “Hawkeye” Pierce, “Duke” Forrest and “Trapper” John McIntyre have no respect for the Army; they just want to get their jobs done and go home.

M*A*S*H takes place during the Korean War but more resembles Vietnam War era America. One noticeable clue that this is so is that the main characters’ hair is cut in early seventies style. The main point film is to be to be a denouncement of the Vietnam War, so the only time the film draws attention to the fact that it takes place in Korea is in the very beginning with a scroller caption. Otherwise the movie could be set in Vietnam, the focus of its anti-war message. That message is blatantly displayed without any subtle hinting in its gruesome operating room scenes. These scenes convey the results of war in all detail, with blood spurting from the wounds of dying people.

Another main point of M*A*S*H is to ridicule of the military, especially those in that establishment who take themselves and it too seriously. Chief Nurse Major “Hot-Lips” Houlihan annoys them with her stuffy adherence to army protocol and inability to understand their “strange” behavior, so they set out to humiliate and punish her. Those who take religion too seriously are criticized also. Major Frank Burns is pictured as a religious nut, praying in his bunk and trying to teach the local Korean houseboy to read the Bible. Hawkeye and the Duke poke fun at him and effectively call him a child. This scene may be the basis for the New York Times review of the film to call it “atheist.” However, the point being made is not that Hawkeye and Duke are atheist, it is just that they are not religious. Religious fanaticism is seen in M*A*S*H as being for the simple minded (even the Catholic chaplain at the 4077th is not as religiously fervent as Frank Burns).

The interaction between the main characters and native Koreans is kept to a minimum. Most of the action takes place inside the hospital. Only on rare occasions does the director take the audience to another location. Near the end of the movie Trapper John and Hawkeye travel to Tokyo to work on a congressman’s son. While there they spot a group of Japanese and maliciously mimic their way of speaking. This shows not only a bit of bigotry on their part but the attitudes of Americans in Asian countries (that they can make fun of the natives as they wish).

Ultimately M*A*S*H fails to be a valuable resource for those studying American foreign relations. Its main focus is denouncing warfare and ridiculing the military establishment. This makes it a good anti-Vietnam movie (or anti-war in general). However, M*A*S*H is best viewed in the end as a comedy film.

An Analysis of the Success of Patton as a Foreign Relations Film

General George S. Patton was one of the more colorful (and controversial) Generals of World War II. In his 1970 film Patton (subtitled “A Salute to a Rebel”) director Franklin J. Schaffner attempts to portray Patton and his complex personality. The film was a success for 20th Century Fox when it was released, in part because of the ambiguous nature of the message of the film. In addition to being a good biographical picture, Patton is also a good resource for students of American foreign relations.

Patton is a very confusing picture. It can either be viewed as an antiwar film (showing upper-level military officers as brutal and psychotic) or as a pro-war film (showing Patton’s successes in North Africa and France). Many reviewers of the time were of the opinion that the movie was of the latter type. Even while praising the performance of George C. Scott in the title role and the cinematography, New York Times critic Vincent Canby maintains that the makers of Patton are sympathetic to the main character. Similarly, Newsweek reviewer Joseph Morgenstern proclaims Patton as “the muddled glorification of a madman.” Many moviegoers and film analysts did not understand the films subtitle and asked what Patton was a rebel against. This is a valid question, as General Patton, being in command of many Army Divisions was a symbol of authority and the establishment itself.

Later film historians have treated Patton for the most part as the initial reviewers did in 1970. In his book Guts & Glory : the Making of the American Military Image in Film Lawrence H. Suid illustrates how the making of the film itself is instrumental to the view that it could be pro-war. He points out that the battle scenes are filmed on very wide and far shots of beautiful landscapes, thus failing to show combat on a more personal level. However, Suid also states that a movie viewer could possibly see this as an antiwar film. It’s all about the preconceptions they hold when they enter the theater: “Some went to see a major antiwar film, others to learn how war should really be fought.”

When Patton was released in early 1970 (surprisingly enough at the same time as the comedy film M*A*S*H, and by the same film studio) the United States was still involved in the war in Vietnam (the invasion of Cambodia was only months away). President Richard Nixon, who had been elected in 1968 on a platform of promising to end the war was trying to implement his policy of “Vietnamization.” This policy called for the lessening of US military activity in Vietnam and for the South Vietnamese forces to take greater and greater responsibility for the defense of their country. This would mean gradual US troop withdraws while Americans instructed tactics and gave supplies to ARVN units. The February 5th issue of the New York Times (the same issue containing the Patton movie review) has amongst its articles one which deals with the support (or lack thereof) of members of Congress for Nixon’s plan of Vietnamization. Other problems facing the nation at this time were pollution and America’s Youth. The front page of the Newsweek reviewing Patton poses the question of what should be done about the young people in the country’s High Schools. The front page article contained therein details the rising drug problem and juvenile delinquency associated with it. This problem faces America even today; it is interesting to note how little has changed since 1970.

Patton is not only a valuable insight into the workings of a (possibly insane) military mind and the military culture surrounding it but of foreign relations as well. The obvious subject of foreign relations in Patton is war itself, which is a very negative aspect of foreign relations that arises when all other more peaceful options have been exhausted. But the less obvious subject is the war Generals themselves. When one advances far enough in rank in the Army Officer Corps, their job becomes one not only of strategy and combat but of politics and (surprisingly enough) diplomacy. The Generals in this film are depicted true to life as bickering and self-centered; British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery and General Patton are shown to argue all the time about how certain operations are to be conducted and so on. Only the diplomatic skill of Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower is able to keep them all in line and productive to the war effort. Interestingly enough, Patton is shown in Schaffner’s film to have diplomatic skill himself: after the infamous “slapping incident” in which he slaps a shell-shocked soldier for “cowardice,” Patton is ordered to apologize to that soldier and his entire unit. He does so with dignity and grace. The General is also shown engaging in relations with foreign dignitaries and rulers. He is portrayed speaking excellent French in an address praising French allies, accepting honors from the ruler of Morocco while watching a parade of Royal Guards in his honor, and orating at a gathering of British ladies in the English town where he is staying. However, Patton’s diplomatic shortcomings are revealed as well: his stated eagerness to attack the Russians after the fall of Germany and his public views about the Nazi Party (he remarks that it is like any other party, including the Republicans and Democrats).

It is interesting to note that in 1970 the same year saw the release of two films by the same studio but with seemingly different views on war. M*A*S*H is a blatantly anti-war comedy while Patton is an ambiguously pro-war film (even the makers of the film professed confusion over the subject). Even with all of its ambiguities about its subject matter, Patton stands as a good resource for a student of foreign relations. One important message of Patton, as stated near the end of the move is that Generals cannot simply be soldiers; they must be peacekeepers and politicians as well.

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I love how in my essay on Patton I talk about the "still current" problem of America's Youth.  Panic!  Panic!  Okay, okay, it was about DRUGS IN SCHOOL but still.  Also, I forgot to say in my M*A*S*H paper how misogynistic that movie is.  You notice how in that movie all of the nurses exist for sexual conquest and the only way that Hotlips is redeemed from her stuffy ways by the end is through the power of Duke's penis?   I mean, it's still a funny movie, but damn.  Sign of the times, eh?

(As we all know, there is absolutely *no* misogyny in movies nowadays)


Well, there you go... more examples of my spectacular writing from my college days (ahh, college.  I miss college).  

At least I can take solace in the fact that my writing has improved since then, right?




...right?