Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts

Friday, 16 October 2015

Dreams of a Life (2011)- Movie Review in Prose: Who were the presents for?




Directed by: Carol Morley
Written by: Carol Morley
Starring:         Zawe Ashton
Distributor:     Dogwoof Pictures
Released:       16th December 2011 (UK)
Length:           95 minutes
Language: English
Box office: £187,513


'Dreams of a Life is a 2011 drama-documentary film, released by Dogwoof Pictures, directed by Carol Morley and starring Zawe Ashton.'

'It tells the story of Joyce Carol Vincent, whose body was found in January 2006 decomposing in her bedsit in Wood Green, North London, after she apparently died unnoticed in December 2003, surrounded by unopened Christmas presents with her TV still switched on.'

'The film interviews various friends, acquaintances and former partners to try to tell the story of Joyce, who is played in reconstructions by Ashton.' (Info from Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreams_of_a_Life


REVIEW:

A sad tale, looking for reasons behind the lonely death of a pretty girl, it was three years before anybody noticed, and I watch, judging everybody, forgetting about the editing decisions, the manipulation that is documentary, the lady never attached, the jobs, relationships, began, but never progressing.

I can relate.

She died alone, surrounded by Christmas presents: Who were the presents for? Her family, perhaps? Four sisters, and her father, do not appear in the documentary. Just work-friends that laugh at her being a cleaning lady before she died, poverty stripping her dignity, they are middle-class, and laugh at the image of her scrubbing floors, ha ha, work ‘mates’ do not care, a truth, it disturbs.

Two boyfriends interviewed. One with career/status rejected her. Other boyfriend is the ordinary man, not exciting, she rejected him, he still cries, the first boyfriend doesn't particular care, he's moved on and his life is fine.

Her isolation part choice, part failure.

Documentary pushes the idea of bad boyfriend abuse, it doesn’t stick, fails to convince. This is about personal choices, and a failure to connect, to plan for the future.

I do not see a victim here, just great sadness, a sadness at the heart of the towns, cities, routines and business that makes up our lives. Nothing extraordinary, it's the mundanity of life where real horror exists. A wave, a smile, fading into head down, scurry, a life off the rails, falling apart, sitting on a park bench, a face so pretty, now forgotten.

Documentary ends with a sad zoom of her face in the crowd, at a Nelson Mandella speech, it works well as an explosive documentary technique, she appears disinterested, apathetic, unmoved. An interesting lady, not into race politics or hero-worship. I probably would have liked her, but the lingering memory of the piece, a question remains: Who were the presents for?


Rating: 7/10 (The lack of input from surviving family members makes it all a bit speculative and contrived, but 'Dreams of a Life' is emotionally engaging, and worth watching as a social commentary piece about urban isolation and a failure to connect)


Friday, 28 August 2015

Captain America 3- Civil War: The Choice is Between Collectivism & Human Emancipation





Article by: Mark. A Pritchard (aka Rorshach1004)
Date: 28th August 2015


The original Civil War arc in Marvel comics (written by Mark Millar) was all about the registration of superheroes. Captain America was against registration. Iron Man was for it. Cap thought it was anti-freedom. Tony Stark argued that it was needed in order to protect the people. It’s the old argument, fear versus freedom. We all know how that went in the real world (NSA, Patriot Act) don’t we?

In Marvel comics (SPOILER ALERT) it goes pretty much the same way. At the end of the Civil War Arc Captain America meekly surrenders and fear wins over liberty. It’s a terribly depressing ending, and is carried on in the new Civil War arc (by Charles Soule) that is part of the current Secret Wars event in Marvel comics. Quick note, get the book, it’s great.

So, in Marvel comics all of the superheroes must be registered with the government, and everything they do is monitored in order to 'keep them safe.’

In other words, it’s a soft tyranny, centrally controlled and enforced with a legal mandate over the use of coercive violence.

It’s France, it’s England, it’s America, and it’s every country in the west. All are enslaved underneath the loving, caring eyes of big brother government. And how do they get away with this soft tyranny, both in the comics and in the real world? Through the use of a heavily propagandised, relentlessly programmed ideology called ‘Democracy.’

Democracy has no regard for moral truth, individual liberty, or spiritual enlightenment. You vote for a master, and that’s exactly what you get. Democracy is about tyranny, order following, centralised control, collectivism, ‘sacrifice,' death for the system, joining a cult, becoming a brick in the wall, a cog in a machine of human enslavement. You better join it, or you will be punished for your failure to assimilate. I should know. That’s why I’m writing on my own personal blog, and not for some crappy comic book website.

Here’s a definition of the Borg from Star-Trek:

‘The Borg are a collection of species that have been turned into cybernetic organisms functioning as drones in a hive mind called the Collective, or the hive. The Borg's ultimate goal is "achieving perfection".

Here’s a quote from the hive-mind Borg themselves:

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg_(Star_Trek)

Does all of that sound familiar? To me, it sounds like the neoliberal, mainstream corporate hive mindset of TODAY.

If you fail to comply with the neo-liberal corporate (mainly Marxist), politically correct consensus then you are a thought criminal, to be ostracised and accused of crimes against the perfected, progressive collective. This is particularly true when it comes to today’s comic books. These politically correct vehicles of neo-liberal corporate consensus feature narratives that explore every single facet of identity politics, but fail to touch any of the vital, underlying issues of our times.

But what about the racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, Islamaphobic right-wingers? Their very existence disproves what I am saying here, right? They might not dominate the comic book industry, but look at Fox news and all of the other racist, right wing bigots in the mainstream. If the media really were so ‘neo-liberal’ as I suggest, then Fox news and all of the other right wing ‘bigots’ wouldn’t exist, right?

No, not really. I’ll explain why.

Are all of the people that identify themselves as ‘right-wingers’ primarily concerned with freedom, liberty and individualism? No, of course they are not. Some are, but they are in the minority. The vast majority of those on the ‘right’ of the political spectrum just want to get what they can from government, just like the left. They want to use the power of the state to line their own pockets. As the state has a monopoly over violence it’s natural that both left and right wingers would be doing all they can to influence it, and make it serve their own needs. Makes sense, right?

The main difference between the left and right is that the left wants to suck off the state, whilst the right wants to pay-off the state. That means that they both have one thing in common, that being the state.

The left sees the state as Mommy, and the right sees the state as Daddy. Mommy protects, and Daddy corrects. Both are wrong. The state is neither Mom, nor Dad, it’s coercion through violence, always has been, always will be. The left knows this, and so does the right. They know, and that’s why they both support the violence that is the state, as long as that violence benefits them, of course.

In America (and the EU) today there is an alliance between the collective left, the collective right and the state. The state and large business collude, and as a business grows it can afford to pay off those working within the state apparatus with bribes/donations. As for the left, it needs the state like a baby bird needs his Mommy.

The state feeds the baby left, funnelling money into welfare handouts and their intellectually vacuous educational institutions that teach reliance on the state and victimhood to mythological oppressors like evil white men and patriarchy. The state is happy to do this as it keeps the left on the plantation, dependent upon its largesse and unable to identify the real oppressor, which of course is the state itself.

It’s not a particularly complicated equation. The collective right uses the state, and the collective left desperately needs the state. The distinction between the two collective ideologies of left and right blurs into one ideology, that being the ideology of collectivism under state control.

The end result is what we have today, a handful of large corporations paying off the state to ensure they maintain a monopoly over the world’s resources, a bankrupt intellectual class of leftist fools, and millions of people dependent upon state handouts. The mainstream political class in the west then is reduced to a choice between left and right collectivists, all reliant on the state, all supporters of the state. There are plenty of wannabe Iron Men, whilst Captain America doesn’t even get a mention.

Social control of the masses under collectivism is easy.  The status quo is maintained through a divide and conquer left versus right identity politics strategy relentlessly pushed from the aforementioned government sponsored collectivist left and their mainstream educational programs, and their right-wing ‘foes’ on channels like Fox news. This divide and conquer strategy is funded by the collectivist right in big business and the collectivist left in government. The young are taught all about identity politics, but know nothing about the big violent ape in the room.

That ape has a gun, and his name is Collectivist Statism.

Democracy in the west is exposed as a lie, and is nothing more than a combination of left and right collectivism that is funnelled through the violently coercive power of the centralised state. It is legitimised by something called ‘democracy,’ where the slaves on the plantation get to vote between left fist or right fist every few years or so.

This illusion of choice ensures that nothing of major importance ever changes. The only change allowable within this current system of soft tyranny is the race, gender and sexuality of the oppressor. This is exactly what Marvel and DC comics are all about in 2015, and that is why they say nothing and mean nothing.

The problem isn’t that businesses are getting too large and powerful. You should be rewarded for success, that takes hard work, that takes creativity and drive, and it moves the human species forward as your competitors struggle to keep up, and even overtake you in their hard work and innovation.

The problem is that the wealthy are the only people that can afford to pay for the violent protection of the state, a state that has given itself a monopoly over the use of legal violence. Their competitors cannot afford to pay, so they end up failing, not because they didn't work hard enough and not because they weren’t good or innovative enough, but because they couldn't pay for the violently coercive gorilla state that has been given a monopoly over the use of violence.

If you can pay the Gorilla, great, if you can’t, tough luck kid. The end result is a minority of obscenely rich individuals who own and control everything as they can afford to pay off the state, and the 99% of the rest of us fighting amongst ourselves for the scraps that fall from the table of the lucky few.

What we need to do is to level the playing field, and the only way to do that is to abandon the empty lie that is our programmed devotion to the violent, destructive, inhumane, coercive force of the state.


How do we do this?

We remove our consent. We stop voting, for anybody. We stop supporting violent coercion, and we stop supporting the monolithic oppressor that enslaves us all.

Our oppressor is collectivist statism, and we need to stop legitimising it through the ballot box. A violent revolution is not necessary. What is necessary is peaceful, non-compliance with our collective, Borg oppressors.

I can already hear the fear kicking in:

‘What will we do without the state?’

‘How will we protect ourselves from ISIS, or whatever new bogeyman that crops up in the msm next week?’

‘What about the roads?’

What about the children? Somebody think about the children?’

What we will do is evolve. We will talk it out, come to arrangements, make deals, choose for ourselves, defend ourselves, do things for ourselves. We are smart people, and we will adapt. Yes, the beginning will be difficult, but nothing worth having is ever easy.

The number one goal for all liberty minded individuals in the world today should be the abolition of the state. Let’s get rid of it, and let’s start living our lives as free human beings.

Before I finish off, and because this article is supposed to be about the new Captain America 3 ‘Civil War’ movie from Marvel, here’s a quick message for all of the comic book fans looking forward to that movie.

Let’s join Captain America and leave the Iron Men collectivists in the dustbin of history where they rightfully belong. The era of enslavement to the state is coming to an end. People are looking for something new, and that something new is a world where the power of the centralised state no longer dominates our lives. Don’t be scared, don’t give in to fear, as you already know, the only thing to fear, is fear itself.

Take care of each other, and spread the word. Change is inevitable, let’s make it real change this time. A new age is dawning. It’s an age free from the violently coercive power of the state, and free from the robotic, machine-man, destructive ideology of collectivism. It’s a world based on liberty, free choice, morality and respect for the individual. We can have this world, if we want it, but the first barrier that we need to clear is the barrier to human emancipation that is the modern, democratic, centralised, collectivised left/right state.










Tuesday, 26 May 2015

Boycott the new Fantastic Four Movie: Race-Baiting as a Marketing Ploy



Read about the ‘controversy’ here:
https://uk.tv.yahoo.com/michael-b-jordan-racist-reactions-000700333.html

Fantastic Four movie Wiki Page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Four_(2015_film)

Fantastic Four Wiki Page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Four



The one thing that this recent controversy, surrounding the casting of a black actor to play Johnny Storm in the new Fantastic Four movie, has taught me, is that white people finally appear to be getting fed up of being called ‘racists.’

The new Johnny Storm
Perhaps the movie’s use of race-baiting as a marketing ploy is going to be a watershed moment, the moment when mainstream media race-baiting finally gets kicked to the curb for good? Could we be witnessing the dawn of a new era, an era of real hope and change?

The hope and change I’m talking about here is not rhetoric designed by a PR team to get a shyster politician elected. No, the hope and change I’m talking about here is that the pernicious era of political correctness is finally going to come to a much deserved and unlamented end.

What after all is political correctness but self-censorship, a mind-block of Orwelian proportions that stops people from saying what they are thinking, and to feel bad about even thinking it in the first place?

Pretty insidious, don’t you think?

But let’s get to the details of this latest PC controversy. Long-term comic book fans don’t like the fact that Johnny Storm is to be portrayed by black actor Michael B. Jordan. Johnny Storm has always been white you see, and now he’s black, and if you question this odd decision, well apparently that means that you are a racist.

Cool poster.
Johnny Storm isn’t a new character by the way. He’s a character with over fifty years of comic book history, and he’s always been white. He has a white sister as well, and their relationship is key to the whole dynamic of the FF team. But now he’s black, although his sister is still white, and if you say anything about it you are racist.

Sounds pretty daft, don’t you think? What the producers of the FF movie have done here is deliberately created a race controversy to sell their movie. They’ve made their decision, and you better like it. If you don’t, that means you are a secret member of the all-powerful KKK.

Questioning bizarre decisions is now racist. You have to accept it, and like it, and if you don’t that means you are racist.

Racist, racist, racist, racist, racist, racist, racist.

Can you see why this might upset people who aren’t actually racist?

When you are not racist it gets a bit annoying when people keep insisting that you are one. It would be like calling a Manchester United fan a closet Manchester City fan, day after day, after day, even though he goes to Old Trafford each week and has a Manchester United tattoo on his neck and calls his pet dog ‘Giggsy.’

The original comic from Nov 1961.
You can only do this nonsense for so long until people finally get fed up with it, and it appears that the line has finally been crossed with this new FF movie. People are getting fed up with being called secret racists, and the whole media generated culture of political correctness and white guilt race baiting is finally being called out for the BS that it actually is.

The bottom line of course is whether or not the movie makes any money. If it does, then political correctness wins, but if it doesn’t, that means that things are changing.

A low box office for FF will mean that people are finally getting fed-up of political correctness and being labelled as a racist just for questioning anything to do with skin colour. Time will tell whether or not political correctness gets a kicking here, but it’s up to us now. We can send a strong message to the producers of the movie by boycotting it. Don’t watch it, it’s as simple as that.

Boycott the movie, but not because Johnny Storm is black. Boycott it to send a message. That message is ‘enough with the race-baiting nonsense.’ If you keep calling all white people ‘racists’ then eventually they are going to get fed up with it. This movie is using race baiting as a promotional tool, so we need to send them a strong message of disapproval. Boycott FF, and let’s give political correctness a long overdue flaming torch boot up the ar**.








Thursday, 4 December 2014

Planet Terror: A bad review of a movie that I couldn’t be bothered to watch.


Released:  April 2007

Directors/Producers: Quentin and his mate Rob

Stars: Josh Brolin, Bruce Willis and Rose McGowan

For more info on this cinematic masterpiece (if you care) Click link below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Terror



I tried. I really did, but I could only make it into the twentieth minute of this movie before I was so bored that I couldn’t stand watching another second of it.

I know that the politically correct feminist liberal geek crowd (who hate me anyway) will dismiss everything that I say about this movie, but what can I do? I try things out, but if they completely and utterly suck how do you expect me to react?

Ho-hum
Am I supposed to waste two plus hours of my life and squirm, yawn and sleep throughout the entire movie? Am I supposed to treat it like a bloody film school project and write an essay about it? What’s the point?

You might not believe this about me, but I actually have a completely worthless BA in film studies from some crappy UK university, so I know all about sitting through boring movies in order to write essays about them. Battleship Potemkin and the stupid bloody steps anyone? Anybody up for a marathon session of Hitchcock analysis focused on his creepy obsession with blondes and his seagull metaphors? Thought not. I’ve been there, and let me tell you this sad truth- the boredom factor that comes with analysing what has already been analysed to death is only matched by the abyss inducing pointlessness of it all.

Anyway, talking about useless film degrees and yawning middle-class students, let’s get back to the world of Quentin. Twenty minutes of fake grainy movie, deliberately bad acting, testicles being crushed up and a crying stripper is too much for me in 2014. I can’t even be bothered to talk about Quentin film student boy and his references to references to references. Yes, we know, he liked crappy old movies from the 70’s. Yes Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs were really cool when they first came out, much like Fatty Smith and his Clerks stuff. I’m boring myself now by even referencing these things, and that’s the problem. It’s just references to dead things, references to a dead past, there’s no connection to what is happening now.

I noticed that one of the characters in Planet Terror was doing something on the Internet. It looked weird, out of place, like the director had stuck it in there by mistake. It was like seeing a digital watch in a movie about Roman gladiators. It takes you out of the moment, you remember it’s just a silly movie, and the magic is gone. I thought this was set in the 70’s? Oh, it’s not? Why does it look like it was set in the 70’s then? This is confusing, and silly, and worthless, and why am I wasting my time here?

There was something painfully fake about the movie as well, and yes I know it’s supposed to be fake, but where’s the enjoyment in watching gross out scenes and bad acting, but all done with a Hollywood budget of millions of wasted dollars?  There’s something depressing and grotesque about the whole vanity project, because that’s what it is, a vanity project from an already comfortably successful man.

I like Bruce
The whole feel of the project was just too jarringly inane for me to enjoy. If I were some kind of stumbling comatose old drunk, then perhaps it would be watchable, but I don’t drink. Why the Hell would I want to watch a purposefully bad homage to low budget movies that some guy has overly romanticised from the distance of his uninteresting suburban childhood?

I’ve heard that Tarrantino is going to retire after his next movie and I don’t blame him. He must have a big mountain of cash by now, so why stay on the stage when you have run out of material, when you have nothing left to say? I give him credit for that; at least he knows that it’s time to go.

But as for Planet Terror, I can’t sit through this movie. It made me so sad to see Bruce Willis in it. Oh dear, that’s not cool, or retro, or whatever, it’s just sad. I don’t want to watch something that is just going to make me feel sad, and not a good sad in a Bambi or Bicycle Thief kind of way, just sad in a politician lying to get us into their latest corporate war kind of way.

I warned you that this would be a bad review, and I wasn’t lying was I? And yes I know that Robert Rodriguez was credited as director, but this movie has Quentin’s sweaty paw prints all over it. And yes I know that this review was terrible. I give myself a lazy and low 2:2 for it. I’m sorry, but I can’t put the effort in to actually watch, and then do a proper movie review of something as pointless as Planet Terror. There’s no fun to be had here, no fun at all.

Movie rating: N/A