The Lost Boys (1987)

Corey Haims untimley passage promted me to view The Lost Boys: a movie I havent seen since it's videorelease sometime in 87 or 88. The movie is a horror/comedy, and while quite watchable today it is not at all the great film it once was.

Yes, these are the badguys.

It is said that The Lost Boys started the 'new' vampire trend where vampires more often than not are sexy, cool and smart - and no longer Bela Lugioso-style nosferatu monsters. I doubt the movie 'started' anything - but to be one of the first to pick up on the trend (demand?) of eternal youth is indeed something.

Another interesting thing with this movie is that it only has one nubile woman - but lots and lots and lots of very hot, very cool boys and young men. Targeting teenage girls and gays I guess, not unlike that fad of the last year or so... namley Twilight.

I did'nt notice the lack of girls as a teenage boy. What I did notice, and which holds true even today, is that the music of this movie is truly excellent and sort worth the effort of watching for the soundtrack alone.

Guts by Chuck Palahniuk

I am reading through what in popular opinion is one of Norways best blogs -- www.virrvarr.net -- in hopes of bettering myself and haffing some ffun at the same time. I will be back with more on this later - but right now I would like to share one little treasure the authour has pointed me to:

Guts by Chuck Palahniuk

It is the first thing I ever read by this acclaimed author - allthough I've been wanting to read him ever since I saw the filmatic adaption of his novel Figth Club. Guts, aparently, is best known as the short story that makes readers pass out while reading it... and it is positivly the most gruesome piece of writing I've read.

It is a wonderfull description of the sexuality of boys; and it is so well written it is hard not to belive it is'nt autobiographical. Enjoy! (But not right after dinner, plz.)

Osamu Tezuka's Buddha 1-3

The series who originaly ran from september 1972 til desember 1983 has been revived in the west by Vertical inc.'s publishing in 2003-2005 - winning the prestigious 2004&2005 Eisner (comic industry) award for best foreign (not US) comic. (An award that has been won by Norwegian Jason for the last 3 years running...)

4 of 8 books have now been published in Norwegian by publishing mastodont Gyldendal; and having finnished the first 3 volumes I eagerly await the rest. The translation by Bjarne Robberstad Johnsen seems close to perfect - although it is quite unclear wether he's using the english translation or he is going to the japanese roots of the thing.

It is always difficult, it seems, to print from japanese left-to-right and into the western right-to-left and there are a few (2-3 that I found) printing errors. As I am assuming Gyldendal has based their publication on the Vertical inc. version - thats simply not good enough. But it does'nt destroy the reading experience - it only marrs the perfection of the thing.

Osamu Tezuka was originaly a medical doctor who devoted himself to the art of manga; and is (until now) perhaps more reknown for the manga superhits Astroboy and Phoenix. His vision of the Buddhas life is a fantastic mix of the holy and the profane, and he uses his skill as a comic writer/artist with great success. It is an amazingly easy read; and you will feel as a better person for the experience.

It might not be the best piece of litterature to study the life of the Buddha or the path to enlightenment - but to instill curiosity in the Buddha and to nurture the universal longing for the well-beeing of others we all carry... Osamu Tezuka's Buddha is the perfect gift for children 10+ and all adults.

Crank 2/RIP Corey Haim

Crank [1] had the most genious plot for an action movie, probably ever. The hitman Chev Chelios (played by Jason Stratham) is poisoned by the chinese triads and the only way to escape death long enough to get revenge, is to keep on a constant adrenaline high. What ensues is 90 minutes of hardcore action, mindless violence and drugs.

What do you, for example, do if you feel your heart is stopping of pure boredom while beeing pursued in a 100km/h+ through downtown Los Angeles by the cops? The answer is obvious; you sverve your car into a shopping mall, et fucking cetera.

Crank 2's plot is'nt quite as good. Chelios who falls out of a helicopter and presumably dies by the end of the first movie; is picked up by the triads in the beginning of the sequel so they can harvest his superpowerfull godlike heart for their boss of bosses.

He escapes the brothel/harvesting surgery with a mechanical heart operating on electrisity. Chasing his "cherry tart" (his heart) violence ensues while he continously needs to charge himself with electrisity. What the sequel lacks in plot it tries to make up for with god-of-war like mayhem and purebred action.

If you like that kind of thing it's truly recomended. If you don't; Crank 1 is worth seeing just to know what a b-action movie looks like by the end of the first decade in the 3rd millenium.

Left, Corey Haim. Right Amy Smart. Rodney and Lemon :)

Also look out for one of 80's star Corey Haims last roles as the looser who is dating Chelios girlfriend who, for good reasons, thought he was dead. I hope he had a good time playing that role; cuz if he hated it it would be a sad way to leave us. RIP, dude.

Lame girl

Some readers might have noticed a slight increase in movie reviews the last couple of days. It is not really part of my long time blog strategy; just a result of the boredom of Wyff going on a two day field-trip combined with me beeing to old to use the opportunity to go on a two day hooker&drugs bender.

Repost: Shes pretty, yeah!

Some might wonder how a looser like me got a lame girl like her. Well, thats eaaaasy: I played this song here - and like all of her sex she was completly unable to resist the combination of a boy with guitar, some fancy wine and a most glorius sunrise.

Lame Girl

text/music by Mats Hanssen

C--G--D--G

Lame girl come over here, can't you feel our chemistry?

let me untame you, come on girl, just one smile

Lame girl, Lame girl; why don't you hold my hand tonite'?

let me unwind you, lets share some fancy wine

//You know you want it, let me give it, let's make love to 'nite//

Why don't we leave this party, go to my place, dim the lights

I'll look into your eyes, while the sun slowly rise

Lame girl, Lame girl; in your heart you want me too

here and now theres only you, so lame girl; be true

//You know you want it, let me give it, let's make love to 'nite//

Lame girl drop your act, I've seen your true soul here tonite'

come on baby, let's love to nite', drop the fight, whats right is right

Lame girl, Lame girl; come tomorrow I'll still respect you

Lame girl, come home with me; lets make love tonite'

Lame girl, come home with me; lets join our family trees.

Surrogates

I did'nt realize until after the fact that Surrogates was a Walt Disney flick - if I had, I guess I would have been forewarned. It starts out as a great sci-fi/action/police-story but completly looses it in the end. God damn it! What is up with the dystopian technoangst? You guys? Really!

!!!Spoiler alert!!! [Under the pic]

And that whole thing with leting Bruce Willis pull the plug on the robots? Thats as stupid as the whole pulling-the-plug-on-the-internet plotline (not this movie, others). Really, please, the whole point of the internet was to make a information-structure that could withstand armageddon-style nuclear blasts.

Although the first 4/5 of the movie is really quite good - must say Not Recomended; a waste of your time and intelligence.

District 9

District 6 in Soweto, South Africa is one of this earths many hells; when you put aliens instead of africans and jews in the Ghetto there is bound to be some controversy.

Before I get to that: District 9 was produced by Lord of the Rings-filmmaker Peter Jackson - and because of that I was a little loath to see it. I'm not proud to be one of those wankers who insists he has'nt done anything good since Bad Taste. But there you are, I am.

After having seen it I must say it is a refreshingly different film. It's been said of the film that the sci-fi/action-genre seldom or never gets this good but I just have to mumble aliensmatrixbladerunnerblabla for you to get that thats just hype. 3/4 rewviews on the international movie data base praises the mocumentary effect and says you don't notice when the movie changes pace and becomes a classic 3rd person narrative. I disagree, it might just be me, but I do notice. It just does'nt matter. (There were a lot of Canadians involved in the making of this film - one would assume they are inspired by Canadian comedy/social comment masterpiece (atleast the first few seasons) Trailerpark Boys.)

The Trailerpark Boys. The dude in the background is the ghetto Don - you never see him outside of jail without a drink in his hand. He is the canadian version of scandinavian criminal mastermind Egon Olsen.

As to the controversy: Some people have gotten all angry and upset like because of the apartheid connotations. Others have been all happy and uppety. All of them were bleeding heart liberals. The South Africans themselves seem to be mostly proud. So I guess thats ok; allthough the aliens (the prawns as the derogatory term in that reality is) are certainly portrayed pretty closely to what a insensiticed racist probably would view the ghetto people.

The place where the movie has created the most controversy is actually Nigeria where the movie is banned and there aparently even have been public burnings of the dvd. This because of the nasty protrayal of the Nigerian gangs operating in District 9. In an interwiew with the co-writer she regrets ever putting the word "nigerian" in the script, but I do think Nigeria - instead of banning the movie - should take a long look at themselves and ask why they are becoming an international joke - much like the estados unidos.

From xkcd. The mouseover text reads: "We live in a world were there are actual fleets of robot assasins patroling the skies. At some point there, we left the present and entered the future."

Another thing, that admittedly is'nt much of a controversy since I'm the only one worrying about stuff like this (on the whole of the internett), is that this is probably the worst portrayal yet of imagined human/alien-relations. If I were alien I would certainly never go near humans. What if, one day, we do encounter aliens - and even more realisticly - we do manage to create an artificial intelligence... looking at our culture (that is, movies like this and the rest) they would be quite justified to wipe us out. Boom, like.

Damn, and there I was hoping for alien Buddhas and Messiahs; for enlightened artificials and a better tomorrow for all concious and/or feeling life.

Justice League: Crisis on two earths

The League of Justice (Superman, Batman and the rest of the DC A-team) are recruited to help out in a paralell world, where their alteregos are the evil masters of that world, by supervillian Lex Luthor who are the #1 goodguy in that world.

The artwork is cool; its nice to see real(?) drawings again in an animated film and the direct-to-video collaboration between Warner Bros and DC Comics has gotten good reviews. But sadly I must say that the story really does'nt hold up all that well.

They try to make it philosophical; and Batmans evil alterego Owlman is quoting Nietzche but acting like Schopenhauer on drugs. 'Every choise makes an alternative world; infinite worlds. The only real choise is to destroy them all.'

The whole consept plays like a materialistic version of the whole rebirth thingie. You are not born with your soul; but with your body and powers - your personality can be anything. Superman can be the evil Ultraman - Batman easily becomes the twisted Owlman.

Damn, I wish I was'nt born on a world this fucked up.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

An all star team of George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Brigdes and Kevin Spacey makes this BBC Films' dark comedy with the motto "No goats, no glory." one of the strangest (and funny!) comedies of the year.

The movie, which can be said to be about psycic black ops in the US Army, opens by informing us that "More of this is true than you think." Im sure it is. And how can hippies and new age spoonbenders in the army not be funny.

Favorite moment: When they resque Iraqi insurgents undergoing sleepdepravation-torture (involving 24/7 repeatcycles of Barney the Purple Dinosaurs 'I Love U'-song - described by Clooneys character as "The dark side")... "We liberate you in the name of the First Earth Army."

For more info check http://firstearthbattalion.org/

At the end of the credits, where it usually says something like any likeness to any person living or dead is purley coincidental blablabla it says: "Although this film is inspired by John Ronson's book The Men Who Stare At Goats, it is a fiction, and while the characters Lynn Cassady and Bill Django are based on actual persons, Seargeant Glenn Wheaton and Colonel Jim Channon, all other characters are invented or are composites and are not portrayals of actual persons. The filmmakers ask that no one attempt walking through walls, cloudbursting while driving, or staring for hours at goats with the intent of harming them... invisibility is fine."

The Hurt Locker

March 8, the internatinal womens day, was this year celebrated by giving the best movie academy award to a female director for the first time ever. My congrats to Katheryn Bigelow.

I just saw it [The Hurt Locker], and while I must admit I have'nt really followed that particular award-competition this year, and thus don't know what opposition she met, I find The Hurt Locker to be a weak movie-of-the-year.

While a decent war-movie, it is a pussy move to use a bomb tech to portray mans love for war and action. But I guess that explains the academy award. Are they getting war-tired already? It's just been, what?, close to 9 years of figthing. Guys that had'nt turned 10 round 9/11 are out there figthing&dying now. Nothing like a good warmovie to boost morale: and who can dislike a man who disarms bombs for a living?

A far better choise if you want to see some Iraqi war from the american perspective is 2008 miniseries Generation Kill (with Skarsgaard jr. as the Iceman); atleast twice as good as The Hurt Locker.

The prepubescent meets the prehistoric!

In a recent (2nd of march this year) article in thebigmoney.com writer Chadwick Matlin was so upset about US streamingsite HULU (sadly not available in the old world) showing the 1991 flick A nymphoid barbarian in dinosaur hell that I just had to see it. And I guess Im not the only one - it is the most popular film at HULU these days, and its up 25% the last week at IMDB. (To put that number in perspective: at the time of writing this - two days after the academy award ceremonies - the winner for the best movie award 2010 is currently up 16%.)

As for the 'nymphoid' part... the lead actress seems frigid and geeky. You do see a pair of stunt breasts for a second close to the end. But thats really it. If you want sexy sword&sorcery/sci-fi I recomend you to check out the Heavy Metal Magazine, an american remake of french Metal Hurlant.

A nymphoid barbarian in dinosaur hell is probably the worst film ever made - not even worth the time for camp lovers. The intro/trailer (shown here) is kind of worth watching. But the movie itself is just boring; it wouldnt even work as a 'bad movie night'-flick for your local superstoners.

The soundtrack by The Astral Warriors has its moments though...

Favourite moment: When the nymphoid barbarian is trying to figure out an ABC. A for Apple is ok. B for Ball becomes Circle... and C for Cat becomes "Food?". Haha.