Tuesday 28 July 2015

Whiplash

Also Known As:
Unknown
Version:
Language:
English…
Length:
107 minutes: Uncut
Review Format:
DVD
Year:
2013
Country:
United States…
Predominant Genre:
Music
Director:
Damien Chazelle…
Outstanding Performances:
Entire Cast…
Premiss:
A promising young drummer enrolls at a cut-throat music conservatory and is mentored by an instructor who stops at nothing to realize a student’s potential.
Themes:
Alienation | Coming-of-age | Communism | Corporate Power | Courage | Curative | Destiny | Emotional repression | Family | Identity | Individualism | Loneliness | Love | Materialism | Narcissism | Nostalgia | Personal | Personal change | Political | Political Correctness | Sadomasochism | Schizophrenia | Self-Esteem | Sexual Repression | Snobbery | Solipsism | Stereotyping | Totalitarianism | White culture | White supremacy
Similar to:
Full Metal Jacket (1987)… Red Shoes (1947)… Rock School (2005)…

Caucasian Cultural Mediocrity

Can Extemporization Be Taught in an Homogenized Culture?

Summary: Whites pretend talent can be college-manufactured - with predictably-dismal results.

A typical peculiarity of White culture is the belief that talent can be taught rather than being the result of desire, need and self-motivation. Like the difference between the employed and the self-employed, the employed have to be pushed (to be of economic value) in their need for bosses to give them a reason to get out of bed in the morning; while the self-employed are either self-motivated or they do not get paid.

The music tutor, here, is a facsimile of Lee Ermey’s US Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant in Full Metal Jacket: The tail must wag the dog in order to produce anything of at least mediocre esthetic value. Force is not used against soldiers to make them better, but to make them obedient in risking their lives for reasons that might not be rational. A similar system operating in other areas of human activity makes far less sense.

The usual White educational quota-system wherein students are recruited - even if they are not very good - because the number of educational places varies little, from year to year, while the number of talented people does, is very much in evidence here: Like the Oscar for Best Picture being awarded to something, anything - every year - no matter its quality, simply because it is the best of an often-bad, White-produced bunch. Any admission of a decline in quality is evaded to preserve the delusion that quality can be taught.

This decline of White culture goes hand-in-hand with the White desire to create factories of excellence (which they call colleges) that merely produce the bland, the derivative and the average - as opposed to the passionate, the self-taught and the imaginative. Whites believe being accepted by a top college (in such a self-defeating system) makes one the best, when the legends in any field are most-often to be found outside of an educational system that stifles the very qualities that are allegedly being taught: Individualism.

Such an attitude can only result in the destruction of anything worth achieving, since it wastes time in not looking for talent but, instead, takes the easy path in trying to create it from nothing. Yet, you cannot be great from being pushed, but from pushing yourself - talent cannot be conjured out of thin air and it is better to let musical forms die rather than flog a dead horse and keep them on life support. The musical form in this case is Jazz, an obsolete Black form that the White tutor here so desperately wants to survive, despite his being inevitably unable to find many good practitioners because of its very obsolescence: Like trying to find a good thatcher in a world of slate roofs.

Whites need to control all of production so that they can take the credit for all of it - yet, in the real world, they produce such weak work that even they avoid it and seek artistic inspiration from other cultures. Either that, or as here, pretend that they possess the wherewithal to mimic the greatness of others in the hope that this will be conflated with an understanding of such greatness; implicitly requiring that everyone else learn from them, otherwise never succeed - despite what Whites allege they teach not springing organically from their culture. Much like those Whites who claim You’ll never work in this town again, before you have ever had your first job.

There is also a sense here of White teachers who cannot do berating those who can or might be able to or, more likely, are just as mediocre. The anger at not finding any student worthy of his attentions spurs the teacher here not to look for the best he can find, but to merely attack the mediocrity that his own anger produces. A simultaneous belief in worshiping one’s alleged greatness by attacking the mediocrity-in-oneself in others. But, what could a great man achieve by attacking the not-so-greatness of others?

The passion here is of the technical kind rather than the inspired. There is no sense of an internal emotional conflict that has to be overcome to become the best that one can be - only an external situation that must be defeated; producing the pantomiming-of-talent but not the actuality of it; nostalgically echoing the past to pretend the emperor is still wearing clothes. An odd nostalgia for the glories of the past which focuses on the glories of another culture because ones own has nothing as great to commend it.

A competently told story, about not much in particular, bolstered by superlative performances and flawless technical mastery. But with wafer-thin characterization, the actors must work hard to preserve the illusion of verisimilitude. Worst of all, there is no dramatic analysis as to why White culture is as odd as it is presented here.


Sunday 26 July 2015

GOING SHOPPING
4 Dresses and a Handbag

Also Known As:
Unknown
Version:
Language:
English…
Length:
106 minutes: Uncut
Review Format:
DVD
Year:
2005
Country:
United States…
Predominant Genre:
Comedy
Director:
Henry Jaglom…
Outstanding Performances:
None
Premiss:
A clothing designer tries to save her struggling boutique store by having a tumultuous weekend sale of her shop’s inventory by playing on the shopping addictions of her customers.
Themes:
Advertising
Alienation
Curative
Destiny
Emotional repression
Family
Friendship
Guilt
Identity
Individualism
Loneliness
Love
Materialism
Narcissism
Personal
Political
Preventive
Rationality
Schizophrenia
Self-Esteem
Sexual Repression
Solipsism
Stereotyping
White culture
White privilege
White supremacy
Similar to:
Unknown

You Are What You Wear

Buying the Right Feeling

Shopaholics Synonymous

Summary: Caucasians imagining they can buy their way out of their endemic misery.

Highly-amusing insight into the peculiar shopping needs of White women. The narcissism, the emotional neediness and the materialism, as well as the vacant-eyed and self-fulfilling desire for one to become what one wears, rather than what one is, because one is, in fact, not much in particular.

Such an attitude is the result of psychological laziness and the desire for the instant satisfaction that the superficiality of White culture can never provide. Like alcohol, consumerism provokes the desire while denying the gratification: It is a mere substitute for something that can only come from a life of hard work and effort: Self-respect.

It is almost as if Whites have no emotional hinterland and can only pretend to be someone they are not, so long as they wear the clothes they think fit the image of the person they wish to be - even though they know nothing about the people they wish to be, beyond appearance. (Like people with painted smiles who think that they will eventually become real smiles.) This is emphasized by the Characters of Color speaking like dark-colored Whites in an exclusively-White psychological context.

Personal relationships become impossible in a world where people only choose to relate to each other’s personae rather than their characters - the latter of which, here, are practically non-existent.

This White need to be liked, but not liking oneself enough to know if one is actually likable, hampers personal growth; leading to becoming trapped with those of a similarly-meek disposition because the truly likable people shun you. This is an often-deliberate means of avoiding growing up; leaving one powerless to define ones own identity and, thereby, achieve success through it. The resulting psychological depression is sublimated through by shopping (& talking about shopping) - an addiction that vainly tries to mask feelings of powerlessness.

The distinction between shopping and consuming is not clear, here, so that browsing and buying goods that you do not really need (or can afford) becomes an activity as valorized as it is critiqued. However, the performances are excellent, with a genuine human warmth that reveals real insight into the characters of the women presented.


Thursday 23 July 2015

Deliver Us From Evil


Also Known As:
Unknown
Version:
Language:
English… Latin… Spanish…
Length:
114 minutes: Uncut
Review Format:
DVD
Year:
2014
Country:
United States…
Predominant Genre:
Horror
Director:
Scott Derrickson…
Outstanding Performances:
Edgar RAMÍREZ…
Premiss:
Police officer investigates a series of crimes; joining forces with an exorcist to combat demonic possessions terrorizing a city.
Themes:
Alienation
Atheism
Christianity
Compassion
Courage
Destiny
Emotional repression
Family
Friendship
God
Guilt
Identity
Justice
Loneliness
Love
Personal change
Sadomasochism
Schizophrenia
Solipsism
Stereotyping
White culture
Similar to:
Exorcist Serpico

Banality of Evil

Summary: Lapsed Catholic police officer pursues demonic serial killer.

Blatant and rather mediocre rip-off of The Exorcist, but without the genuine sense of the genuine existence of genuine evil as a genuine force in human life. Instead, we have Christian fundamentalism rather than a full exploration of the nature of evil.

Without a story, the audience is left with a set of repetitive scare moments based upon electric light and even candles not working most evenings - when they are most needed - rather than any real, non-perfunctory, fear of what might happen next. While the world’s energy supplies thus run dangerously low, the stygian cinematography burdens the film with the absurd sense of an evil that only lurks in shadows - preying on fears but never fully-exploiting them; never offering any clue as to the purpose of evil nor, indeed, the purpose of good.

The generic contortions inherent in this hybrid of police procedural and demonic possession thriller fail to work, since neither serves the dramaturgical interests of the other; preferring, instead, the stark simplifications of good versus evil; light versus darkness; love versus hate.

The movie tries to have it both ways by pretending evil is both crucially-dependent on human agency for its effectuation; while also existing independently of humans. The former proves evil can never be all-powerful since it depends on flawed humans for its realization; the latter suggests evil actually would have a purpose in a world where there were no humans - without suggesting what this could possibly be. But since evil is a profoundly-human concept, acontextual evil makes little sense since ruling just the animal kingdom would be all-too-easy and, thus, not much of a proof of absolyte power. Evil divorced from human agency is a cliché in horror movies, but makes no sense in the real world in which evil only exists because humans do. The movie cannot decide whether it is a crime drama or a horror story - and neither can the audience. (Alien, for example, was clear that it was a horror movie and not much of a science-fiction narrative; making it easier for the audience to know (& enjoy) what it is watching.)

A terrible blandness - paradoxically springing from a (needlessly-)convoluted screenplay - overcomes this unremarkable film because the characters are not so well-written that they engage the audience enough to make them care - despite the above-average performances. The film’s poor pacing and its over-length makes this situation worse by exposing the movie’s thematic weakness and sense that the filmmakers do not really understand the story they are telling well-enough to know what to edit out.

There is a good story here about the personal phobias that hold individuals back from achieving their full worth; while leading them astray from the path of goodness with false promises of shortcuts to success (& resultant lack of personal fulfillment) - but this is not it. Instead, the audience is presented with a time-passing movie of weakly-explored themes, unoriginal horror-movie tricks and under-written characters.


Sunday 19 July 2015

Straw Dogs (2011)


Also Known As:
Unknown
Version:
Language:
English…
Length:
110 minutes: Uncut
Review Format:
DVD
Year:
2011
Country:
United States…
Predominant Genre:
Thriller
Director:
Rod Lurie…
Outstanding Performances:
Entire cast…
Premiss:
Writer relocates with his wife to her hometown. Violent tensions soon build between the couple and the love-starved local males.
Themes:
Alienation | Atheism | Christianity | Coming-of-age | Courage | Curative | Destiny | Emotional repression | Erotophobia | Gynophobia | Identity | Individualism | Loneliness | Love | Narcissism | Nostalgia | Personal | Personal change | Political | Religion | Sadomasochism | Schizophrenia | Self-Esteem | Sexism | Sexual Repression | Solipsism | Stereotyping | White culture
Similar to:
Straw Dogs (1971)…

You Can’t Go Home Again

Shitkicker Heaven

Summary: Sexually-repressed Caucasian males rape a White woman married to a man more economically successful than themselves.

Engaging attempt at exploring White lower-class resentments - as well as the educated being hated by the uneducated - within the context of a White trash Hillbilly environment in the United States.

The predatory nature of White culture is exposed in the hunting of wild animals for no real reason; in rape as a form of allegedly-painless and healthy sexual-expression; & in hunting each other at the climax of the movie. Here, White cultural exclusiveness even extends to other Whites.

The implicitly-neurotic wife of the leading character is unable (& does not try very hard) to escape her Caucasian upbringing and learn to stand on her own two feet. Her immaturity is evenly-matched by her cowardly husband, who is unable to beat the local yokels at their own game - so tries to join them. His inevitable failure, given that he does not share their values, leads him to try and use their own kind of violence against them to punish their predation and parasitism.

The White claim that when in Rome, do as the Romans do is always designed to give the pre-existing Romans the right to abuse others - even if one is a Roman oneself. Roman-ness, or otherwise, is never the issue: It is whether or not one is a threat to anyone else’s delusional self-perceptions and unfledged lack of identity.

The usual White conflation of sexual intercourse with masturbation (arising from not understanding the different purposes of either activity) leads to the adoption of rape as a cure for sexual frustration, instead of masturbation (because the latter is deemed humiliating for a White man). Under the brittle social surface, there is no real human warmth nor genuine human desire here: Only suppressed rage, boredom, nostalgia, despair, a morbid focus on physical sensations and a lack of faith in the future.

The emotional neediness of the personal relationships here is matched by both protagonists and antagonists so that everyone is implicated in a whirligig of emotional turmoil whose end can only be violence. Wanting others to compensate for what is lacking inside of oneself is well-reflected in a retarded character being used as an Of Mice and Men metaphor for White emotional incontinence and inadequacy.

A thrilling piece of work fleshed-out by a superb cast, but lacking an honest analysis of why Whites are like this in real life and why they shy away from the truth about their real selves in works like this.

Tuesday 14 July 2015

Greatest Story Ever Told


Also Known As:
George Stevens Presents The Greatest Story Ever Told
Version:
Language:
English…
Length:
191 minutes: Uncut
Review Format:
DVD
Year:
1965
Country:
United States…
Predominant Genre:
Historical
Director:
George Stevens…
Uncredited:
David Lean… Jean Negulesco…
Outstanding Performances:
Jose FERRER… David McCALLUM… Telly SAVALAS… Max VON SYDOW…
Premiss:
The life of Jesus.
Themes:
Alienation | Art | Christianity | Coming-of-age | Compassion | Courage | Curative | Destiny | Emotional repression | Empathy | Friendship | God | Grieving | Humanity | Identity | Individualism | Justice | Loneliness | Love | Loyalty | Mankind | Materialism | Narcissism | Personal | Personal change | Political | Political Correctness | Preventive | Rationality | Redemption | Role modeling | Sadomasochism | Schizophrenia | Self-Esteem | Solipsism | Totalitarianism
Similar to:
King of Kings (1961)… Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)…

He is not the Messiah – he’s a very naughty boy.

Summary: Passionless, two-dimensional retelling of the life of Christ.

Portentous, literal and rather leaden attempt to bring Christ’s teachings to a Hollywood epic - in the style of a filmmaker who only understands the words but, like a child, does not understand their meaning. The film takes itself very seriously, stifling any opportunities to explore or infer both character and story. It is both sincere and un-ironic in its reverence which tends, thus, to lean towards self-parody. Only Max VON SYDOW’s Jesus’ other-worldliness offers nuance in a film weighed down by the literalness and the stiffness of the dramatic interpretation.

Really little more, then, than a collection of cinematic tableaux vivants that, unsurprisingly, inspired much of the parody of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. The religious poetry is nullified by the movie’s religious fundamentalism aimed at the childish who cannot see the flaws in The Christ’s ideas: The narcissism, the Death worship, the schizophrenia, etc. (A modern-day psychiatrist would, most likely, have The Anointed One confined to a lunatic asylum.)

The lack of numinousness in this telling also saps much emotion from the drama; leaving behind a beautifully-photographed parade of some of the finest acting talent struggling with an apparent commandment to deliver their lines as if slightly drugged. Lifeless, stagy, melodramatic & unconvincing - yet a sumptuous wonder to look at with too-few fine moments of real feeling. A technically-accomplished, but artistically-flawed film; a great story, poorly told; characterized by good intent but little subtlety or imagination. (It was almost an act of Christian charity to give this movie a rating as high as 60%.)


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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.