Hidden Camera!

So, I sold my obsolete Sony Digital 8 camcorder on ebay a while back (did I mention that?) with the intention of buying a new miniDV camera. I had set my eyes on the Panasonic PV-GS300, because of the superior picture quality provided by its three ccds. I'm not clear on exactly what ccds are, but supposedly they affect the look of your videos immensely and most consumer cameras only have one. Anyway, come to find out Panasonic has essentially discontinued their existing line of three ccd, miniDV camcorders and all Best Buy and Circuit City locations in the state had already sold their inventory. Long story short, on a whim I rolled into the Best Buy in Castleton yesterday and they had one left. It was an open box/ returned item deal, but I figured that if the waranty was still in effect, it didn't really matter. Plus, I got a $50 gift card for buying an opened item. Hopefully pretty soon I'll start getting some video up.

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Better on the Page Than On the Screen!

The Notorious Bettie Page

(2005)

Back in the earliest days of "adult" entertainment, performers and promoters alike decided that success was less about the strip and more about the tease. Revealing too much, they thought, was far less effective than revealing just enough to whet the appetite, so to speak. I don't know how true this theory was, but the "less is more" model has certainly worked out well in the case of Bettie Page. Forget about faces, Bettie Page had the most recognizable body of the fifties, but ironically little was known about her personal life. Despite this fact (or probably more accurately, because of it) Bettie Page has gone on to become one of the most enduring icons in American pop-culture. In The Notorious Bettie Page we are given a look into the life of a legend, but because the cultural condemnation of the time is portrayed as quaint and backwards it's difficult for the audience to care about Bettie's predicament.

There's no denying that Gretchen Moll was the perfect choice, physically, to play the role of Bettie Page. There's just something about her appearance that puts you in mind of 50s fashion and glamour shots. But at the same time you can tell that Moll was not simply content to look like the cult icon. It's obvious that she studied the behavior of the model (who appeared in many silent film reels) and did a superb job at emulating her sultry yet whimsical mannerisms. In fact, while her performance falls flat on many occasions interacting with other characters in the film, Moll is at her best portraying Page's appearances in Irving Klaw's dialogue-free burlesque films like Varietease and Teaserama.

Director Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho) has offered up a very beautiful film with The Notorious Bettie Page. Early scenes are in black and white, while later, color scenes are reminiscent of Technicolor films from the '50s. But while the look of the film is suburb, the tone is all wrong. Instead of depicting the "moral zealotry" of the time as a real and immediate threat, Harron has gone the route of depicting it as simply quaint. Even the scenes featuring the Kefauver Hearings, which essentially ended Klaw's career and seriously threatened to do the same for Bettie, fell flat and failed to evoke any emotion.

While I would suggest checking out this film to anyone looking for an advanced course in visual style, I would hesitate to recommend it for folks simply looking for a solid, entertaining story. In fact, I honestly believe that I was more interested in Bettie Page before watching this film than I was after. It's not that she didn't have an interesting life. She really did, but the director really fails to hook the audience and keep them emotionally invested in Page's story.

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iDead

Steve's iPod Shuffle
2006-2007

Tragedy struck today as I finished up my workout at the Grant County YMCA. It began with a click, click, click. I fiddled with the controls a bit and got things back on track.. for a moment. Then... click, click, click. I didn't know it at the time, but it was the death rattle of my beloved iPod Shuffle. Sure there are bigger and better mp3 players out there. For crying out loud it was the 512 MB version! But to me it was awesome. Every night, I'd throw together a little mix for the next day. It was part of my daily routine and I'm really gonna miss that little guy!

It was still (barely) under warranty so, supposedly, Apple is sending me out a new one. I actually hope that it isn't one of those new dinky ones either. I'm kinda partial to the albino, Juicy Fruit design of the original.

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"Suffer the little children ... "

Children of Men

(2006)

What if, right now, all progress in the world were to come to a screeching halt?
What if every trend or cause or fight were allowed to continue to spin on to its natural outcome, but there were no more improvements?
Can you see that future?
I saw it today. It played out on a screen at my local movie theater. And it wasn't pretty.

The world presented in Children of Men is a familiar one.
The TV news is insipid and intrusive.
There are advertisements everywhere.
The cubicles are cramped and cluttered.
The coffee shops are crowded.
And there are bombs.
But there are no babies.

And it's disturbing because it's so plausible.

The world - our world - gets what it wanted all along: control over life and death. But it turns out that we pick death. Maybe not knowingly. But is it that far-fetched? How much value do we really place on a human life now?
Promiscuity is chic. (Nothing special here, I might as well give it up for what little I can leverage it for.) Depression is rampant, and we drown the pain with drugs. (Why try to find the answers when I can just forget the questions?) Selfishness reigns. Abortion is acceptable. Death is routine. Hate is powerful.

There are plenty of things to fear in the world of Children of Men. Chaos spins by on the ubiquitous TV screens, martial law is alluded to, and there isn't even a veneer of happiness, or cleanliness for that matter. And it is a world that sees its own extinction coming. With no births for 18 years, the death of humankind is only a few decades away.
There is terrorism. Fascism. Racism. Nationalism. There is plenty of blame to go around. But there is no hope.

Watch this movie. If you come out unaffected, then I'm pretty sure you're sleeping your life away.

Trailer

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Long Shelf-Life?

Idiocracy
(2006)

The first time that I saw Office Space, I was among the vast majority of people who were amused but not overly impressed by the film in its initial release. Now, it's hard to deny that the movie was one of the most grossly underrated and influential films of the nineties. It was a silly little movie that skewered American culture on the sly. You know, the kind of movie that slants reality so minutely that you are forced to laugh at how ridiculous your own life is. Idiocracy, Mike Judge's long-awaited follow-up, forgoes all subtlety in favor of a headlong attack on American low-culture, and it is this "take no prisoners" tactic that I think is the film's biggest flaw.

Luke Wilson plays Joe Bauers, a slacker in a soldier's uniform, who is enlisted to test a "Human Hibernation" program. Along with a prostitute named Rita (played by Maya Rudolph) he is cryogenically frozen to be thawed in a year's time. After some epic bumbling on the part of government officials, the experiment is forgotten and essentially buried. Five hundred years later the pair defrost in a future where, instead of advancing, the human race has devolved into grunting, tv-addicted louts with no ability to take care of themselves. The regressed Americans quickly identify the "faggy-talking" Bauers as an outsider and attempt to arrest him for crimes he didn't commit. A game of functionally retarded cat and mouse ensues as Joe and Rita attempt to locate a time machine that the populace has long since forgotten how to repair.

Ironically, it's the things that most other movies do quite poorly that Judge gets right in Idiocracy. In lesser hands the convoluted voice-over explanation of exactly how the world fell into stupidity would have brought the action of the film to a screeching halt. Judge, however, uses the narration to catapult the audience into the storyline with a hilarious comparison between the reproductive tendencies of cultured Americans and hillbillies. The premise is a hard sell, but one I bought into with gusto.

Make no mistake. There is much in Idiocracy to laugh at (there are countless sight-gags that had me laughing out loud!), but often the laughs seem to come too easy. In Office Space, Mike Judge exposed the hilarious hypocrisies and inanities of life in the very demographic the film was aimed at. It was a risky venture, but one that paid off in spades ... eventually. In Idiocracy, though, you can't help feeling that Judge is poking fun at "those" people. It's easy comedy, and when you aim for the easy targets certain ethical questions begin to arise. When I see the future's most popular television program, "Ow! My Balls!" I honestly don't know whether I'm laughing at the descendants of WWE loving hillbillies or (now this is scary) WITH them!

In the end, coming out of Idiocracy, I feel a lot like I did coming out of Office Space. Sure it was amusing, but it didn't do a lot of things to impress me. And with this movie, I can't imagine that opinion changing a lot. I dunno... check in with me again in five hundred years.

Here's a movie clip, fag.

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