Holi (pronounced ho-lee), also known as Phagwa, is marked at the transition from the Hindu months Phalguna to Chaitra. The Hindu calendar being lunisolar, this date changes every year. In 2010 it fell on March 1st. Besides India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, it is observed by the South Asian diaspora in all its regional varieties throughout Europe, America, Canada, Australia, in New Zealand, South Africa, and of course, Suriname, Trinidad, Mauritius and Fiji which are notable countries where South Asians were brought for labor and now constitute a significant proportion of the population.

Background.

Vaishnava

In a timeless past of the Satya Yuga, a ruler from a race of giants, known as Daityas, held power and riches unrivaled, except by his own attire. Thus, he was known as Hiranyakashipu, or, ‘Golden-robed’. After performing austerities (tapas) and being granted a boon by Brahma which had made him nearly invincible, the ‘Demon King’ attacked the Heavens, lorded over earth, demanded people worship him, and squandered his wealth on destruction and his own greatness, even challenging Lord Indra.

This all was at odds with his own son, Prahlada, a pious devotee of Lord Vishnu; a Vaishnava, whom sought to correct his father in the right virtues of a Maharaja and to guide him in Bhakti realization of the Supreme Soul by renouncing avarice and absorbing his thoughts on Him. This only made his father furious,

[T]he daitya ruler daunted upon seeing how the attempts ran futile, devised with determination for a variety of ways to kill him. Crushing him with an elephant, attacking with the king’s poisonous snakes, with spells of doom, throwing him from heights, conjuring tricks, imprisoning him, administering venom and subjecting him to starvation, cold, wind, fire and water and with piling rocks upon him, was the demon unable to put his son, the sinless one, to death… (Srimad Bhagavata Purana, 7.5.42-4)

And yet, the boy through his devotion to the Lord was protected from his father’s persecution time and time again. At long last his father’s wrath brought him before the court, and challenged to see this God who could challenge his own deific powers. He would try to kill his son himself this time, but before the boy’s head could be severed by his father who scoffed that no one could save him, God made his omnipresence known to all assembled from a pillar. The universe cracked open, and a cacophony of sounds and kaleidoscopic dimensions could be seen; the omnipresence of God within everything.  Narasimha, the fourth avatara of Vishnu, a hybrid with man’s torso and lion’s head then appeared from this pillar and mauled the Demon King Hiranyakashipu to shreds. The king had used a boon from Brahma gained by devotion for evil; thus God had to manifest himself in earthly form to correct this terrorizing and subjection of earth and heavens alike.

Among the schemes Hiranyakashipu hatched against his son was when he asked his sister to have Prahlada to sit in her lap in a bonfire. Hiranyakashipu’s sister had received a special boon that gave her immunity to fire. However; she was burned to death and Prahlad saved. There are numerous accounts as to the reason for this, but suffice it to say, the sister of the king died and good triumphed.

Hiranyakashipu’s sister was named Holika, from which Holi is believed to derive. It is this event that Holi celebrates in Holika Dahan (the burning of Holika), in which bonfires are lit, primarily in North India, the day before Holi. Originally these included effigies of Holika, but in most parts this is now replaced by a simple pyre. Comparisons to their fellow Aryans’ (if only common traditional heritage; I have no intent of opening the Aryan Invasion Theory can of worms here) celebration of Cheharshanbe-Souri in Iran and indeed, bonfire spring festivals in Indo-European cultures throughout Europe, are readily seen. The triumph of light over darkness.

Shaivite

The main story as recounted and summarized above, can be considered by some to be a Vaishnava polemic, with Hiranyakashipu representing Lord Shiva. As such, given where you are, an alternate account is of Kama and Shiva.

As recounted in the Saura Purana, there was another daitya called Taraka whom had achieved a boon from Brahma after severe austerities. He asked for the boon of being invincible to the gods; and like Hiranyakashipu, effectively immortal. Of course, Brahma thought this too much so asked for an exception. The wily Taraka made the condition that only the child of Shiva could kill him. Shiva was doing penance and lost in himself after losing his first wife, Dakshayani (which is the subject of another famous myth which is the source of the practice of sati; Sati being another name for Dakshayani), therefore Taraka had reasoned that Shiva would be unable to produce a son.

Of course, Taraka does what demons granted boons of immense power by Brahma do, he terrorizes the universe of gods and men. He battles Vishnu for 30,000 years alone, but Vishnu has to retreat in confusion and hide. Beleaguered, the gods meet with Brahma, who tells them of Taraka’s weakness. They hatch a plan.

Parvati, who had realized she was the reincarnated Dakshayani from a young age, and had performed severe penances for Shiva’s hand in marriage, was put before Shiva. The only problem, is that Shiva was absorbed in yogic asceticism, having renounced the world after the loss of his first wife. So, Kama (yes, as in the Kama Sutra; and, counterpart to Greek Eros; Cupid) is enjoined to put lust into Shiva and wake him from his trance to produce the progeny that will defeat Taraka.

But, when Shiva awakens from his meditation after being immovable by either Parvati or Kama, he sees Parvati there, and then, sees Kama with his five flowered arrow drawn in its bow and aimed at him. Shiva’s third-eye shoots forth a fire accumulated in his tapas and incinerates Kama by its own power independent of Shiva’s will. Parvati is now distressed, and rebukes Shiva. It is now that she asks for her boon from him, having suffered as an example to all yoginis past and present. She asks that Kama be revived. Consenting, Shiva replies, “Let [Kama] be without a body in order to please you, lady with beautiful eyes. In that form he will be able to shake the world.”

Long story short, Shiva and Parvati beget Skanda (the Hindu ‘Ares’), who destroys Taraka. In South India, Holi is thus referred to as Kama Dahanam. But of course, the larger lesson was the victory of love, for now the disembodied Kama, with his wife Rati, could flit from one corner of the earth to another like the wind. In this context, Holi is like an Indian Valentine’s Day.

Radha Krishna

In this spirit, the Ras-Lila is celebrated (literally, ‘Passion Play’ and quite different from the Christian form, of course!); particularly in Mathura and Vrindavan, where Lord Krishna (the eighth avatara of Vishnu) was born and the place of the Ras-Lila, respectively. The Ras-Lila is the all-famous tale of the gopis’ (milk maidens) love and adoration of the perfect youth Krishna, who playfully teased them mercilessly in the 10th Book of the Srimad Bhagavata Purana (not to be confused with the Bhagavad Gita of the Mahabharata), and the tryst between him and Radha, whom is never actually named, in chapter 30, where she is only a mystery woman held in awed jealousy by the pining gopis who follow the couple’s footsteps into the forest. This story with elaborations is a staple of bhajans and Indian poetry, drama, and naturally, today’s transmitter of myth, Bollywood (here’s an example).

A word of warning. To suggest anything unchaste about Radha, or to reduce Krishna to a Casanova, to suggest anything sexual at all beyond romantic metaphor, is extremely offensive to devout Hindus; particularly Vaishnavas. It has an invective history with the Christian missionaries and continues to this day on Christianist supremacist websites. Having said this word of warning though, of Holi, the entry in A Dictionary of Hinduism says,

A spring festival dedicated to Krishna and the gopis. It took the place of an earlier kind of Saturnalia, ‘the survival of a primitive fertility ritual, combining erotic games, “comic operas” and folk dancing’. Some of the earlier elements remain, such as the singing of suggestive songs, the throwing of coloured water, and jumping over bonfires, the ashes of which are believed to possess magical powers.

Indeed, I tend to take this view, and see the other myths as later accretions or adaptations to an earlier Indo-European fertility festival, as do I see the Radha-Krishna relationship a sublimation of an earlier myth. During Holi, caste distinctions are suspended, and the sexes may mix freely; likely customs surviving from the ubiquitous “safety valve” many early cultures observed at least once a year -- just as modern ones do to this day.

Playing

In a 7th century play, Ratnavali, it was said,

Witness the beauty of the great cupid festival which excites curiosity as the townsfolk are dancing at the touch of brownish water thrown from squirt-guns.

They are seized by pretty women while all along the roads the air is filled with singing and drum-beating.

Everything is coloured yellowish red and rendered dusty by the heaps of scented powder blown all over.

This is the first recording of Dhulhendi, the day of Holi most recognizable today. Let me set the scene. You know nothing of Holi, you are a visitor in India. This delightful scenario is played in this scene from the 2006 film, “Outsourced”:

Instruments of Fun:

Abir and Gulal -  colored powders

Originally made from natural dyes, some with Ayurvedic properties, there has been concern over toxic ingredients in recent years, and a move towards organic products. The symbolism with spring, of course, is self-evident.

Pichkari -- soaker type of syringe

While many of these still retain their traditional design, many more kids can be seen with super soakers and custom pichkaris with Bollywood actors and actresses, cartoon characters and other themes, even in shapes like elephants or one designed as a bow and arrow (like the ancient Hindu heroes).

Bhang

Bhang, made from grinding cannabis leaves and flowers into a paste is mixed into chilled drinks and munchie snacks alike. The signature drink of Holi is thandai, a milk based drink flavored with pistachios, almonds, and, of course, marijuana! But, a bhang lassi can also be whipped up, as seen above. Oh, and if you happen upon a sadhu in Varanasi, see if they will pass the chillum. This is one of a few times where social use of marijuana is acceptable, though generally not by women (patriarchal societies’ ‘designated drivers’). Watch this Bollywood song with the information and vocabulary you have just gained!

Hola Mohalla

Although not widely celebrated in Pakistan, in India Holi is now a secular holiday celebrated by all: Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Jain, Christian, Jew, Parsi, Sikh, atheist, etc. The day after Holi, as well, is the closely related Sikh holiday of Hola Mohalla, most visible in the Sikh homeland of Indian Punjab. In warrior-saint Guru Gobind Singh’s martial tradition, Sikhs will mock fights, sing, play music, recite poetry and kirtans, and eat communally, as is per Sikh practice.

So, alas, to explain my title. It is common to say “Holi hai!” which means “it’s Holi!” as a greeting. Unfortunately, due to timing, I fell off on writing this, and thus added the Hindi ‘was’, tha, to reflect the belated nature of this article.

To end with, I only chose one Bollywood Holi song among a plethora of possibilities, as this one clearly lays out several elements outlined herein and brings it to life! (plus my crush on Rani Mukerji didn’t hurt the selection process)

Holi Mubarak! -- Happy Holi!

In his latest editorial at the end of Friday’s Real Time, Bill Maher put out a poignant plea for the public’s understanding and sympathy toward Hollywood’s big, self-promoting pat on the back that’s known as the Oscars. That one, special night, says our lad, is deserved, because – well, because Hollywood is just about the one major industry which is productive and successful in America these days. (Never mind the fact that it was a foreign film which won ‘Best Picture’ last year, or the fact that foreign actors regularly go off with a gong, or even the fact that quite a lot of films are made outside Hollywood these days.

But Bill wouldn’t know that, would he? I mean, considering the fact that he rarely ventures outside the Hollywood bubble, except to slide into various cities for one night only, check into a hotel room, deliver 90 minutes of stand-up and then depart for the West Coast, yet again, by private jet, no doubt … but we’ll forgive him, because he’s our lad and speaks for those of us on the Left, so we won’t worry too much about the extra carbon footprint. Hey, we’ll be magnanimous and global and extend the same sort of licence to be hypocritical to Mr and Mrs Sting and Bono too. This trio has the art of preaching virtues to the little men of the world, whilst enjoying the greatest and most gluttonous of excesses themselves … because they can.

Bill calls the Oscars’ night ‘Hollywood’s Prom.’ And we should allow our hard-working and overpaid celebrities one night of libertine fun, because they work so hard for us, entertaining us, whilst pocketing our hard-earned dough that we can ill-afford to pay – either to catch the latest Clooney flick or even to pay close to a hundred bucks to see Bill say the same thing he’s said countless times before on Real Time for ninety minutes.

I don’t begrudge Bill his success. I suppose he’s paid his dues, in addition to being in the right place at the right time; it’s not my problem, but his, that he – like countless others – has appeared to have forgotten his antecedents once he’s tasted success. Ne’mind … I had the same problem digesting Margaret Thatcher’s use of the royal ‘we’, choosing, instead, to remember that she, like Cardinal Wolsey, came from pretty common stock.

What I do have a problem with, in relation to Bill, is the fact that he continues to present himself as a voice of the Progressives in this nation. In fact, in this latest editorial, he refers to himself as a Progressive.

I am sorry. I dispute that.

On the episode which aired on October 2, 2009, Bill remarked to his guest, David Cross, that he favoured the death penalty. Bill’s said this countless times before, and on this occasion, remarked, “I always say, if you get’em once with the old death penalty, they sure as hell won’t kill again.”

Do we know any Progressives who are in favour of the death penalty?

On a tweet rendered in late December, after the successful capture of the Underpants bomber, Bill tweeted that he was in favour of racial profiling at airports, because “little, old, white ladies were not terrorists.” (Hey, Bill … don’t give the terrorists any ideas).

On a program which aired March 13, 2009, Bill enthusiastically remarked how much in favour he was of Obama’s slapping down the teachers’ unions, and he went on to rant about how much he disliked unions in general. Later in the year, he reiterated this again. So, he’s anti-union. How many Progressives are against the concept of collective bargaining and union representation?

And, finally, on the penultimate program of Real Time last season, he admitted to no less than Bill Frist that he didn’t want the government to have anything to do with his healthcare. This was after making a brilliant analogy for single-payer by comparing government-controlled healthcare to be as efficient as the government-controlled Post Office.

I know, I know … the Post Office isn’t really that efficient, but Bill’s a bit of a Luddite when he’s caught unawares. He’s probably not even aware of the cost of a first class stamp. He just knows that when he writes a letter to his sister in New Jersey on Monday, she has it on Wednesday, two days later. That, in this day of e-mail and conference calling, is just a gratuitous Saturday Evening Post moment, but it served its purpose and Bill pushed the single-payer envelope for the rest of the season … until Bill Frist appeared and unsettled him.

So, Bill Maher, Progressive:

1. believes in the death penalty

2. believes in racial profiling

3. is anti-union

4. and doesn’t want the government to have any say in his healthcare.

Because I’m a tolerant person and because I genuinely like Bill and like my heroes to have feet of clay, I’ll be nice and say that sure as hell sounds like a Blue Dog to me; but to others, it might just have a whiff of a closet Republican about it.

Either way, Bill Maher is no more the voice of any Progressive any more than he is the voice of the middle classes, whose fashionable plight he was pushing on Friday’s show.

If Bill were to spend one month in either the South or flyover country, living the life of a middle-aged middle-class man, on an average wage, with credit cards and bills to pay, a mortgage and a clapped-out second-hand car to maintain, without the security guards or an available Whole Foods … if he were to rise to that challenge and do that and THEN presume to speak for the middle classes, I might give him the kudos and plaudits I’m witholding.

But I’d still say he was a Blue Dog, politically.

And maybe a Republican … but until then, most definitely, more than a little bit of a hypocrite.

I came across this a little while ago; couldn’t keep it to myself. BEST IN HD

http://www.vimeo.com/9679622 

http://aerofilm.blogspot.com/2010/02/sandpit-short-film-by-aero-director-sam.html

I read an article the other day that Miyazaki is producing a film, called Karigurashi no Arrietty, due to come out in 2010. I can’t wait!

You haven’t heard of him? That’s OK. A lot of people in the U.S. haven‘t. I bet in some way, some how, you‘ve brushed past his influences, at least if you have kids or grandkids.

Let me tell you how I got introduced to Miyazaki.

When I was living on the Oregon Coast in the early 90s, me and a friend heard of a movie playing at the Newport Entertainment Centre (A very trippy avant-garde theatre right off Nye Beach) called “Akira.” It was a Japanese movie from about 1989. It blew …. my … ass. … to … smithereens. It was three solid hours of, “Oh … my …. God.“ I had never seen anything like it. It is to this day quite possibly the Most Violent Movie I’ve Ever Seen. (It’s also been redubbed, which is a relief.)

Well, Miyazaki didn’t make Akira, but that was my introduction to Anime. I loved it. I rented a ton of Anime movies over the next several years and I discovered that …

… about 90 percent of Anime really, really sucks. A lot of it is, well, just plain dopey. Too many robots and ditzy big-breasted women. I guess it’s fine for teenage boys, but none of it measured up to Akira. I liked Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo (incredibly violent) and a show called Paranoia Agent, but that’s about it. I can’t get into Blood, or Death Note or Ghost in the Shell.

Anyway, about seven years after that, I was in Seattle and they were playing a Japanese Anime movie at a big downtown Seattle theatre on 4th Street called “Princess Mononoke.” It looked cool. I decided to check it out. It … did … NOT … blow me away. In fact, it annoyed me. It didn’t make sense. The plot didn’t make sense. The characters didn’t make sense. It was quite literally annoyed throughout the whole flick. Most of all, I was really, really, really annoyed with Billy Bob Thornton, who provided the voice for a character in the movie.

That was my first introduction to Hiyao Miyazaki. Princess Mononoke was considered his masterpiece. It was a huge hit in Japan. It was an even bigger flop in America. People just didn’t get it.

I came to eventually figure out why. More on that later. (Actually, Billy Bob Thornton had something to do with it.)

Many years later, I read about another Miyazaki film playing at an art house theatre called “Spirited Away.” I had a 5-year-old daughter at the time, just old enough that you could take her to movies, so I took her on a daddy-daughter date.

Well, Spirited Away was rated PG, but quite frankly, it should’ve been rated PG-13. I found out the hard way that for a 5-year-old child, it is absolutely, unequivocally TERRIFYING. A little girl’s parents are turned into pigs and she is left all alone at a mysterious bathhouse surrounded by strange spirits and monsters on vacation. (Really, I can’t make this stuff up.). 20 minutes into the movie, my daughter was in my lap, with her head buried in my belly. I asked her a few times if she wanted to leave, but she didn’t. I told her a few times, “OK, this part isn’t scary,” and she would bravely peer at the screen.

I felt terrible. I was yet again, for the umpteenth time, The Worst Parent Who Has Ever Lived, but after the movie, to my abject surprise, my daughter wanted to see it again and again! To this day, one of her nicknames is Chihiro. Spirited Away later that year won Miyazaki an Academy Award for best animated film. He absolutely deserved it.

I got her a DVD of the movie, and then the following year, after she had watched “Spirited Away” 100 times, I got her a collection of Miyazaki movies — “The Castle of Cagliostro,” “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind,” “My Neighbour Totoro,” “Kiki‘s Delivery Service,” “Laputa: Castle in the Sky,” “Porco Rosso,” “Princess Mononoke,” “Spirited Away” and “Howl’s Moving Castle.” (Since then, I have gotten her “Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea,” so she owns 10 Miyazaki films.)

While reading the liner notes to this collection of movies, I realized Miyazaki was the lead animator to a 1969 version of “Puss in Boots,” and I thought, “Oh, my God!” I remembered this movie from when I was a little kid, and I remembered how cool it seemed when I was 6 years old.

My daughter chewed through those 9 movies in less than a month, and after she was done, she told me … “I want more…” In our household, these 10 movies have probably been played a couple of hundred times. I also got her the 2,500-page Nausicaa graphic novel that it took Miyazaki 13 years to complete. It’s much darker and the character of Nausicaa is much more complex than in the movie. Miyazaki’s complex political and spiritual views come out toward the end of this looooong novel. She’s twice dressed up as Miyazaki characters for Halloween — Chihiro two years ago and Nausicaa last year.

She’s getting more … in 2010.

What makes Miyazaki so damned amazing? For one thing, he’s 70 years old, and he loves children, and he remembers what it is like to be a child. His movies literally reek of wide-eyed innocence. Most of Miyazaki’s movies are all still cel animation. There’s a bit of computer animation in some of his flicks, but it’s 95 percent or more still drawn by hand, with Miyazaki providing all the main animation (apparently all the way up to Porco Rosso.) With the exception of Howl’s Moving Castle, all of Miyazaki’s movies are based on his original stories as well. He is an old-fashioned auteur, who handles the writing, direction, design from beginning to end.

Miyazaki’s style is also dramatically different from most anime. His characters don’t have giant eyes like in much anime, and his women don’t have ridiculously huge breasts. His style is pretty unique and all the movies made at his Studio Ghibli use similar style. A Ghibli film called “Grave of the Fireflies” (definitely NOT a kid’s movie) is one of the most powerful and depressing movies you’ll ever see.

Miyazaki used to be an avowed Marxist, but he mellowed a little in his old age and now says he is a socialist. His films contain very strong anti-war themes. One thing that drives people a little crazy about Miyazaki films, (this was especially a problem in the U.S. for Princess Mononoke), is that his films (and the Nausicaa novel) don’t contain particularly black-and-white characters. A character that might be shown to be a “bad guy” is often later portrayed as having positive attributes.

Speaking of changing, his characters often change forms and identities, and sometimes it takes two or three views to figure out what’s going on. In Spirited Away, a boy is also a dragon, but he is also a river god. A “no face” spirit suddenly becomes a cannibalistic monster, then returns to being No Face. In Ponyo, a fish becomes a little girl. Don’t get me started on Howl’s Moving Castle. Two characters change form constantly throughout the whole movie.

Miyazaki is also fascinated by flying. Most of his movies involve some sort of flying machines. Some people have actually built flying machines based on his designs and discovered that some of them actually work! He is also fanatically pro-environment and many of his films carry environmental messages. Miyazaki also refuses to make sequels to his films. He has been offered a lot of money to make a sequel to Spirited Away, but he won’t do it.

If you ever rent any of these flicks, watch them with kids. It makes me much more fun. A word to the wise, most of his films are designed for kids; if you don’t like kids’ movies, you probably won’t like Miyazaki. Another interesting thing about Miyazaki’s movies is the age range they’re designed for changes dramatically from film to film. I also suggest watching them in the original Japanese with subtitles. Unlike much anime, some of the dubs have been done well, but the Japanese and English languages do not mesh well, and the English at times comes out stilted or rushed.

A brief rundown of his flicks.

Castle of Cagliostro — 1979
A Lupin III movie. I really, really hate Lupin III. I think it’s just flat stupid. This was a TV show that ran in Japan for about 10 years and these were considered the first “adult” cartoons, but really they’re for 10-year-olds. Quite silly and stupid. Castle of Cagliostro was the first theatre treatment for Lupin III and Miyazaki, who had been one of the animators for the TV show, was chosen to make it. Still the animation in this movie is amazing.

Nausicaa — 1984
His first self-funded film. It’s a seminal movie, made somewhat on the cheap, but you can still see lots of gorgeous animation. Miyazaki hated the ending of this movie, which he felt was too corny. He has said he would like to go back and remake it with a different ending. His Nausicaa novel is completely different from the film … the movie takes up probably the first quarter of the book. They released this movie in the states as Warriors of the Wind, but chopped about a third of the movie out and included an atrocious dub, so it ended up making no sense. Miayazaki refused to allow his movies to be shown in the U.S. for years because of this debacle. The movie got fixed in the U.S. after Spirited Away was a hit. This is a big, broad epic of an anime, made a few years before Akira.

Castle in the Sky — 1986
Another movie with lots of flying. Miyazaki returns to his anti-war themes he explores in Nausicaa.

My Neighbour Totoro — 1988
Probably his first movie that got much attention in the U.S. A very sweet movie for very young kids, maybe 4 or 5 years old.

Kiki’s Delivery Service — 1989
Another movie with lots of flying. Again, for very young children. Any kid over 10 will be bored by this movie.

Porco Rosso — 1992
One of his more obscure movies. I actually didn’t like Porco Rosso at first. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of a pig fighter pilot (while everyone else in the film is human). The more I’ve watched it, the more I like it. Some of the flying scenes are done extremely well. The pig in this film is based on Miyazaki himself, who thinks he looks piggish because he has wide nostrils. This is a good movie for older kids.

Princess Mononoke — 1997
His epic of epics. A huge movie, almost three hours long, with complex hand- and computer-generated animation. It was a flop in the U.S., because people couldn’t figure out the themes of the movie (again, bad guys becoming good guys, good guys playing both sides, etc.) I also believe this film was badly hurt by Billy Bob Thornton’s horrendous voice acting. It’s painfully bad. You MUST watch this movie in its original Japanese. Since its U.S. flop, this movie has gained a big cult following. This is Miyazaki’s only R-rated movie. It is extremely violent.

Sprited Away -- 2001
Miyazaki’s masterpiece. An absolutely amazing film with an amazing story. Think Alice in Wonderland on acid. Scary, scary film for small children (It scared ME!) It has a very corny, sappy ending, but most Miyazaki movies do. It‘s part of the deal. This was his first big hit in the U.S., especially after it won an Academy Award. This movie has a scene that kids love that will remind you of Mr. Creosote in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. Miyazaki announced his retirement after this film.

Howl’s Moving Castle — 2004
Another anti-war epic. Again, the characters are difficult to understand. This was Miyazaki’s first film not based on his original script. It’s from an English children’s book. This movie might have the best English dub. Miyazaki announced his retirement again.

Ponyo — 2009
After a few movies for older kids, he returned to making a movie for small children. When we went to see this, my daughter was bored because it was too young for her. Instead of flying scenes, this movie has a lot of scenes of creatures swimming underwater.

I thought I would add some scenes from the movie, but in looking at YouTube, I found that some very talented people (with apparently too much time on their hands) had made a number of music videos to Miyazaki films. I thought some of these were cute, so I included them instead:

Spirited Away

Creepy video of Spirited Away

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

Princess Mononoke

Porco Rosso

Totoro (The movie is not really this creepy. I just thought it was an interesting video.)

(with apologies to Salvador Dali)

I am bothered by movies, such as “Saw” and “Hostel”, that, to me, serve no purpose other than to depict the extremes of human pain and cruelty. I confess to having never watched a film from either of those series, nor have I watched a Hannibal Lector movie, or a Chucky, Freddy Krueger or Jason movie (which, I imagine, at this point seem almost quaint in their depictions of cruelty), so it is not only what is depicted on the screen, which I haven’t even seen, that disturbs me. It is the very fact that such movies exist, and that they pull in audiences. To me, they are a depraved sub-genre of moviemaking that elevates torture to their prime, even sole, raison d’etre (indeed, they have been dubbed “torture porn” and “gorno” by critics), and that bothers me. Are people really entertained by all that blood and gore? And if that is not the right word, what IS the experience that they crave, as they settle their butts into aisle seats? As to the people who make such films, why on earth do they spend precious hours of their lives depicting demoralizing, black spectacles of the last things that any of us would wish to experience, or even wish upon our worst enemies? Oh, believe me, I know the obvious answer to my question (they DO make money after all, and frankly, how hard can they be to make? We all know what we don’t wish to experience; all one has to do is pick up a camera and film that!), but is even money worth the de-humanizing that I feel must go on in the process of creating such films?

 I am not arguing against the presence of violence in films. Indeed, some of my personal favorites, such as “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas”, contain numerous scenes that are not for the squeamish. If push came to shove, I could probably even be called upon to defend Wes Craven’s notorious, ultra-violent 70’s sleeper, “Last House on the Left” ( which took its plot from Bergman’s “The Virgin Spring” and borrowed heavily from Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange”). One might well ask, what’s the difference? Well, in the case of LHOTL, this was an amateurish film by a freshman director, depicting amateurish villains who epitomize the dumb, self absorbed, amoral, societal outcasts we can easily imagine committing the atrocious crimes we see onscreen (and read about in the papers). They are not the incarnations of sadism one finds in slick gorno movies, creatures right out of our nightmares who are intelligent and irredeemably evil, sparing no expense to devise the most ingenious and horrific methods by which to dispense with their victims, for no other purpose than the pleasure that they get from doing so. To arrive at an understanding of the villains of the gorno movies, to place them in any sort of context, we need to go back to a French nobleman from the Age of Enlightenment whose writing was so over the top that he provides the very name for the “ism” that is out and out cruelty toward another living being.

 Sade’s “libertines” (one should not refer to them as  “villains”, when to him they were heroes) were precisely the kind of monsters we see in todays horror movies. Smarter and more powerful than their victims, they operated without restraint, and with no other purpose than to inflict pain. In Sade’s stories, the only way to escape victimhood was to allow yourself to become corrupted by your torturers, to become just as merciless and sadistic as them. These were the only triumphs he would allow in his nightmarish fables, that some would “liberate” themselves from any moral or empathetic impulses, which he insisted came from society, the real “villain” he himself was at war with. One can read Sade’s stories and accept them as he intended, as all-out assaults on society and civilization, on anything that limited individuals from behaving exactly as they themselves chose to. But that would naturally lead one to ask, if people could do anything they wanted to, why would they do that? Looking deeper, I believe that one can find a more pathological motivation, one which is readily on display in today’s torture porn movies as well; a deep seated hatred of the human body.

 Oh, Sade loathed bodies!  He wanted them sliced, diced, beaten, pulled apart, you name it. The one thing he didn’t want was for them to keep their original, native form, to be allowed to go on about their ways in peace. To him, an intact body was a challenge, perhaps even an affront, to his aesthetic. He treated them with nothing but the utmost disdain. And yet, it is telling that for all the descriptions of cruelty he filled page after feverish page with, he was particularly vicious toward the parts of the body that give birth to and nurture other bodies. Although there is no question that his writings and ideas have spiced up the sex lives of numerous couples throughout the years (and hey, whatever gets you through the night…), in the works themselves sex was anything but a life affirming, life celebrating activity. Genitalia, breasts, pregnant women, and fetuses are mercilessly tortured and destroyed by Sade’s libertines. The family itself is attacked viciously. In his stories, fathers rape their daughters, and corrupted daughters do unspeakable things to their mothers. The very reality of biological life seems to infuriate him.

 What’s going on here? In the face of such depravity, one naturally searches for answers. Even if the knowledge goes nowhere toward ending man’s inhumanity to man, we strive to somehow make sense of things so dark and twisted they seem to defy explanation, for the sake of our own sanity if nothing else. My belief is that we see in Sade’s writing a psychological phenomenon that has its roots in the very nature of our sentience. It is the mind’s hatred of the body, because it can suffer, and take the mind along with it as it does so. 

 It is hard to imagine anything more painful than being eaten alive from the hind legs forward, and yet this is a fate that befalls thousands of our fellow creatures, in forests and savannas, every day. The vast majority of human beings will come to far more benign ends, but the important distinction is that we are well aware of what could happen to us, if we are not careful, or just plain unlucky. The fact is that, unlike animals, we can think about things happening to us that are every bit as frightening and unwelcome as the things that are shown in the torture movies. It is with our minds that we think about them, but it is our bodies that we imagine experiencing the suffering. We are the only species that has a distinct separation, a schism even, between mind and body. We can actually live lives, of a kind, outside our bodies. No other creature can. We can daydream, create stories, make songs, paint pictures, have sexual fantasies, relive memories vividly, conceptualize, invent, etc. We can easily imagine a life involving no body at all! Indeed, we have created science fiction stories where our minds are placed inside computers, thereby living eternal, pain-free lives. People who are stricken with cancer or other long term, debilitating and painful illnesses frequently describe themselves as “prisoners” in their bodies. What I am positing is that there is an element of human consciousness that chronically feels this way. Sade was expressing this, first and foremost, I believe, though he himself was perhaps unaware of it and presumedly would have denied it. It is ironic that he, due to his atrocious behavior as well as his writing (which outraged the Emperor Napolean), spent much of his life as a prisoner, in jails and mental asylums, creating through his mind an outward experience of the very thoughts that drove his writing. 

 The mind is frightened by the amount of pain, seemingly limitless, that the body it is merged with can experience. Although our central nervous system has evolved the sensation of pain to keep us from burning or bleeding or freezing to death, this impeccable biological system renders us horrendously vulnerable. So averse to its demise is our body that it keeps pain sensations active even as we lie helpless, and crushed, under the rubble of an earthquake, or trapped inside a burning room, on the off chance that we will somehow manage to get ourselves out of our predicament. Isn’t it plausible that our minds, aware of the stubbornness of the body, and its survival-at-any-cost imperative, would develop resentment against it? Why can’t we shut the pain mechanism down when we want to (apparently some yogis have developed this very ability, but it takes years of rigorous training)? When there is no hope of escape? Every king, dictator, Grand Inquisitor and mafioso throughout history has exploited this “flaw” in the body’s design. In fact, it is impossible to imagine the worst forms of government even existing without it, as such regimes are propped up by the fear they induce in the common folk. All of that suffering, down through the ages; no wonder the mind is pissed!

 And so, the mind acts this out, through the mediums that it has developed, the “art” that is Sade’s writing and today’s gorno movies. Each time the mind, represented by Sade’s libertines or Hannibal Lector, or any of the demonic, merciless,ingenious psychopaths who fill our screens as well as our nightmares, gleefully tortures to death somebody else’s body, it has its revenge, momentarily. That’s the experience viewers are after, I feel. Though I am disturbed by such movies, and by the large following they have, I ultimately see them as merely symptomatic, and don’t expect them to go away. They, or some similar manifestation, will be with us so long as we have the ability to contemplate, and fear, our fate.

The Razzies just announced their nominations for Worsts of 2009, among their nominees:

For Worst Film:

All About Steve
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Land of The Lost
Old Dogs
Transformers 2: Revenge of The Fallen

FYI, until Avatar came out, Transformers 2 was the highest grossing movie of the year. So what does it say that a film that no one argues is an awful film is also the 2nd most popular film of the year?

Sort of the McDonald’s hamburger dynamic.

Now movies that are just plain bad are hard to watch but movies that are  unbelievably bad, can be hard to take your eyes off of.

There are the bad “classics” like Plan 9 From Outer Space and Reefer Madness. More contemporary ones like Showgirls and Battlefield Earth. Then there are the annual crop of stinkers.

What other bad movies were out there this year? The heralded Watchmen was unWatchable. Angels and Demons was hell. Bruno was brutal. Funny People wasn’t.

What are your favorite bad films of 2009?

I love quotes from great scientists, philosophers and even politicians because they give you a little insight into the mind of those people. Literature aside for a second I have to admit many of my favorite quotes are from movies. Many times when my wife and I talk to each other when we are with other people we get strange looks because we have almost created a mini-language based on movie references. There are a few films like “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” that we can probably quote from beginning to end. Here are a few great scenes with those famous quote from movies you might remember as well. Feel free to add any of you favorite quotes from movies, television, or any other source for that matter.

The quotes in the battle between King Arthur and the black night in Monty Python and the Holy Grail are just too classic to pass up in a discussion of movie quotes.

Uncle Ruckus from Boondocks.  (if you are easily offended you might not want to watch this compilation).

The famous “Far better place…” quote from a Tale of Two Cities with Ronald Coleman (I know I’m cheating because it’s about my favorite quote in literature as well because it demonstrates the height of human unselfishness in a selfish world).

“I love the smell of napalm in the morning” from Apocalypse Now.  The problem was victory in Vietnam was just as elusive and short lived as that smell.

The most damaging mentality that still prevails in our culture.   The “greed is good” speech from Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street.

One thing that I’ve really been struck by is Hollywood’s near-obsession with American Indians. I have very mixed feelings about it.

The natives in “Avatar” were an extremely obvious allegory for the Indians of the America West. “Avatar” was very corny and hokey … and pretty predictable. It’s also unabashably “love the Mother Earth” granola bar liberal, but I guess I don’t see the harm in that — not when so many movies have bad messages — especially in light of the fact that the theatre was packed with boisterous little kids who don’t realize it’s corny and hokey.

I’ve always thought Hollywood does a really poor job of portraying Indians, because it tries much too hard to be politically correct and has a tendency to “hold the Red Man down,” so to speak by putting him up on a pedestal as a “noble savage.” Indians are people, with all the strengths and flaws as any person, regardless of ethnicity.

Being Metis, the “noble savage” stuff is very much a sore point with me. Seriously, as a non-tribal member Indian, there are a number of cringe-worthy moments for me in “Dances with Wolves” and in “Thunderheart” and more movies than I can name. I can only think of one movie I’ve ever seen that I thought did a  solid job of portraying Indians and Indian issues — “Smoke Signals,” and that was a limited release movie that not many people have seen. I also thought “Flags of my Fathers” did a good job with the story about Ira, though whenever the movie drifted away from Ira’s character, I thought it got boring. Someone once told me “The Jim Thorpe Story” actually had some good moments, but I’ve never seen it. As an aside, if you want to read an awesome book about Indians, you really need to check out “The Real All-Americans” by Sally Jenkins (she wrote “It’s Not About the Bike.”) It’s a fantastic book about the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania and how it became a power in college football.

Anyway, I saw a lot of kids today get some good lessons along with their popcorn … while seeing $400 million of special effects blow lots of crap up.

Oh, and now my kid wants a dragon. Not one of the little blue ones, but the big red one….

The “Oldies But Goodies” Friday night at PPOV post last week got me recollecting about a neat thing that happened this summer. It was something that showed me how music can speak through the generations – when you least expect it to.

I was downtown with my daughter and her Mexican friend,”Anna,” whom we were hosting during the summer. It was one of my first real, actual days off in a couple of weeks.

I had barely seen my daughter all summer, for myriad reasons. It was turning into her “lost summer.” She was having the time of her life – without me being much a part of it. She went to an astronomy camp in Arizona for a week, along with “Anna,” who came up from Monterrey (the two of them had been chatting for nearly a year via an astronomy Web site), then the two of them attended a science day camp at the local university, which entailed field trips to dig for artifacts at a ghost town and to a famous dinosaur museum in Bozeman. Thank God she’s smart enough to get scholarships to these camps, because otherwise, we could never afford them.

Anyway, we had also stumbled unexpectedly into a house out in the country. It happened with extreme short notice, and it meant making a major move with almost no preparation time. It was very stressful. I had to ship my daughter and Anna off to my sister’s in California for two weeks while we made the move, because we felt they would’ve been neglected while we were harried with moving. They spent a week at a beach house with a heap of cousins, went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the California Academy of Sciences, and she celebrated her 9^th birthday – without me – at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, while we pulled our muscles and tweaked our backs moving furniture and gave ourselves migraines dealing with utility companies and our old Fascist property manager.

Anyway, after they returned from California in mid-July, I *finally* had some time with her. I realized I had spent virtually no time with her since the end of school and I was starting to feel horribly guilty.

Now, to digress a bit so this story makes more sense. Anna’s father is apparently very wealthy; he’s some sort of bigwig executive at some Monterrey-based telecom. We kept calling him “The Most Powerful Man in ALL of Mexico.” Anna was interested in attending the Montana science camp after the astronomy camp, and he wrote me asking if we would be so kind to take her in as host parents because she got along so well with our daughter. He then asked if she could stay the summer because she was interested in going to college at Stanford or UCLA and he wanted her to experience America for a summer, and he thought Montana would be good for her, because it was rugged and old-fashioned and she had lived a pampered life and needed to see more of how the “other side lived.” The whole thing seemed a tad condescending, but I also thought it was hilarious that this guy wanted us to be a part of some sort of “sociological experiment.”

We explained we weren’t rich and didn’t have a luxurious home, and we didn’t attend church and were living together but not married, but he said none of that mattered and he repeated that he wanted her to see how working people lived. He also said he would take care of all of Anna’s  expenses. He sent us a ridiculously huge check, and after much back and forth with him because we thought the check was pretty excessive, he announced “I like you and I respect you, senor, but you WILL deposit this check. Thank you for your trouble.” Well, what do you say to the Most Powerful Man in ALL of Mexico? Finally, we talked him into letting us apply whatever was left over to charities after Anna’s expenses.

Anna arrived and the only clothes her parents had given her were fine, frilly dresses, patent leather shoes and a couple of heavy coats (Apparently, her parents thought Montana summers were cold). We realized this would never do. So, we used part of her father’s money to buy Anna a more suitable wardrobe for Montana – a couple of pairs of overalls, shortalls, shorts, jeans, t-shirts and most importantly, tennis shoes. Anna didn’t know what to think of her overalls and tennis shoes and said she wasn’t allowed to dress like a boy. We pointed out to her that all girls in Montana dressed like this and she couldn’t very well dig for ghost town artifacts in a dress and patent leather shoes. She didn’t complain about it again, and I suspect she enjoyed the freedom to be scruffy.

Anna was required to write her parents every day. I got an e-mail from her father one day about “What is this about you turning my daughter into a boy?” Sure enough, Anna had written him, saying, “they’re trying to turn me into a boy, papa!” We explained that Montana being a rough and rugged place, she had to dress for the elements and that all the girls here dressed like this (We didn’t tell him the other kids probably would’ve eaten her alive for dressing like a flower girl.). He responded, “I trust you, senor, and I like and respect you, but just remember if anything happens to my daughter, I am the Most Powerful Man in ALL of Mexico … and I will crush you.”

That was our first run-in with Anna’s terrifyingly intimidating father. We discovered that, either because of language differences or because Anna liked to embellish her stories, that many of her e-mails to her father were like this.

So, back to mid-July. I hadn’t made any plans for my day with Kiddo and Anna. We were still pretty busy unpacking and dealing with satellite dishes and getting decent phone service (never happened – 50 year old lines. Hopeless.). I took them to a carousel, but they were a little old for that and got bored pretty quick. There were starting to be long, awkward silences. While we were wandering around downtown, Kiddo was definitely starting to act like, “ … astronomy camp, Lowell Observatory, science camp, Museum of the Rockies, Monterey Bay Aquarium, California Academy of Sciences, Santa Cruz Boardwalk – wow, by comparison, dad, you rock. Yawn. DWEEB!” Again, those pangs of guilt hit. They were bored. I sucked. The Worst Parent Who Has Ever Lived had struck again. We had lots of activities planned late in the summer – some hikes and a couple of nice mountain climbs and a big trip to Glacier and Banff – but nothing for a few weeks. I simply hadn’t given it any thought of how I was going to entertain them for the time being. Then, we walked past an old, downtown theater.

And I said, “Oh, my God!”

They were showing a restored 30-year anniversary version of “The Kids are Alright.” I had seen this movie once when I was in junior high school. There was a matinee starting in only half an hour. My daughter whined that she didn’t want to see a movie about a bunch of “old hippies.” (“Old hippies” is code for “you’re a nerd and a dweeb and a geek and you embarrass the bejeezus out of me.”)

“C’mon, it’ll be great,” I told her. “No, it’s just going to be about a bunch of old long-haired hippie nerds. It’ll be boring..,” she said. This is a kid who thinks any music recorded before 1998 is well, just plain stupid.

Finally, I bribed her with promises of popcorn and Dr. Pepper and Bunch a Crunch (We don’t let her eat junk food, normally, but at this point, I was desperate. I had to see this movie.). Anna was indifferent about the whole thing. I never heard a peep of complaint out of her the whole summer about much of anything, frankly.

I went through the same thing with my parents. They were big fans of Eddie Arnold, Porter Wagoner, Slim Whitman, Hank Snow, Conway Twitty, Jimmy Reeves, etc. Basically, if it was awful 60s Country and Western … they liked it. Really, the worst of the worst C&W ever had to offer. They even thought Johnny Cash was a damn hippie. To this day, I can’t listen to Country.

But, Jesus, we were talking The Who! I had *completely* forgotten how much I loved this movie. The Who were a big part of my teenage years, but after The Police, U2, Nirvana and Primus, I had kind of stopped listening to them. How many times can you really listen to “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” But, man, these guys were something back in the day, I was reminded.

Here’s what I remember most about that afternoon, the first real time I had spent with my kid in something like six weeks – when all the awesome things that she was experiencing that summer had occurred with me out of the picture. About halfway into the movie, toward the crescendo of an especially searing 1968 version of “A Quick One While He’s Away,” (It was part of a Rolling Stones Christmas special that never aired. Part of the reason it never aired is because the Who blew the Rolling Stones off the stage and the Stones were too vain to have that aired. True story.),  I sneaked a glance over at my 9-year-old and I swear, she was sitting there with her mouth half-agape watching in … absolute … unadulterated … abject … AWE ….

She had never seen anything like these guys and she was completely blown away. Oh, my God, it was funny. As soon as the movie ended, the first thing she said to me was, “I want more Who.”

“I want more Who” quickly morphed into “I DEMAND more Who!” She fell into a Whomania that lasted into the fall and lots and lots of questions about the Who and did I really see them in the old Seattle Kingdome in 1982 (yes, I did), and what was the real meaning of “Tommy,” etc., which concluded with her announcement at the dinner table one night that she thought Tommy could see and hear and speak all along, but he simply chose not to. I got her a Pete Townshend poster and we found a DVD of “The Kids are Alright” at a local funky record store. I even found a reissue of “Live at Leeds,” which I don’t think I had listened to since about 1985. She is eagerly awaiting the Super Bowl because Townshend and Daltry are playing at halftime.

After that afternoon, I also got in trouble with Anna’s father again. She wrote him one of her daily e-mails after that movie and I got an e-mail back from him, asking me, “What is this about you exposing my daughter to ‘ Ingleses locos?’”

Anna had written him that the Who were “smashing guitars and their drums and blowing things up and beating each other up and spinning their arms around and running around acting loco and they didn’t wear shirts …!”

Oh, boy. I was in for it now. I told him about the movie and how it was a very famous British rock band from the 60s and 70s and yes, they were a little crazy, but everyone had fun at the movie, and most importantly, there were no sex scenes in the movie. He said to me, “I like you senor, I trust you, but if anything happens to taint my daughter, I, the most powerful man in ALL of Mexico … will crush you.”

Well, after that, we started a new Fascist policy that we would get to read ALL of Anna’s correspondence to her father beforehand to prevent any more misunderstandings.

The upshot of the story is, my daughter is now every bit as much of a Who fan as I ever was when I was 14. Anna told her father she had the time of her life and that I was very kind and took good care of her  and did not let the “Ingleses locos” taint her and I received a gift of a huge box of Mexican cigars afterward, which were smoked with much rejoicing. And, my daughter, the latest in a line in our family of Who fanatics, is spending two weeks in Monterrey next summer with them.

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, dig The Who …

“A Quick One (While He’s Away)”

I still cannot for the life of me get these blasted images inserted correctly.

Anyway, any good scuttlebutt that you have heard about Up In The Air is entirely justified.    The movie is in limited release in LA and NY and will be at a multiplex near you shortly.   (My wife gets invited to industry screenings, hence my early taste.)

This might feel like a romantic comedy.   Except.   Except that the dozen or so people that Clooney fires (he is a professional “hit” man, hired to tell whole swaths of companies that they are being laid off) are all real office drones who have recently been laid off.   Except one guy, you will recognize him, he is a character actor who does lots of TV.

These poor souls needed only to channel the impotence, rage, confusion and fear that came with being axed after years of slaving away to give the film a tragic and honest pathos the likes of which you don’t get from Hollywood.

Clooney is all you could ask of him.   A perfect throw-back of the classical Male Hollywood Movie Star.   Plus he can act pretty damned competently.  Vera Farminga is priceless as a fully realized woman, a character as completely written as Clooney’s and a fine foil.   Some serious comparisons to great classic movie couples will come to you with ease as you see them work.  Anna Kendrick is impressive with the depth she brings to what could easily been glossed over.

The wit flows and the pacing is near flawless.   The pain of all involved is a challenge to absorb.   And there is a lot of it.   Astonishingly, there is no feeling of exploitation of the non-actors getting fired.    Reitman is hitting his stride.

I’m sure you will enjoy.

Music has always been a part of film, even while running silent movies a pianist would play in the theater to enhance the drama, comedy or action that was being shown on the big screen.  From the 40’s to the 60’s directors mostly used music as the main theme in musicals or in soundtracks.

Then like McGinty pointed out so poignantly in his post earlier this week on the great 70’s movies, the role of music in movies has been enhanced dramatically every since that decade.  Who could forget the “Suicide is Painless” song in the movie M*A*S*H, the ‘dueling banjos’ scene in “Deliverance”, the Doors “The End” scene in the movie “Apocalypse Now” and the great song parodies from the Monty Python troop films.

Some directors like Martin Scorsese, Quinton Tarantino, David Lynch and carried on the great tradition of using music extremely effectively to draw the viewer into the emotion of their films.

There are a few ways music are used in most films.  Music is employed as the soundtrack to set the emotion of a particular scene like the famous soundtrack from “Jaws” that still gives many people who saw the film chills.  Does anyone remember the trailer from “Jaws” that used the soundtrack music so effectively?

In my opinion the use of period music does more to drag the audience into the time a movie takes place than any other director’s technique.  How could anyone forget a very young Lawrence Fishburne dancing to the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” in “Apocalypse Now”.

Sometimes popular music is used by one of the characters in the film to make their point for them.  Probably one of the best scenes I can remember is when John Cusack played Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” to his ex-girlfriend Ione Skye in “Say Anything”.

Another category is original music or at least never heard before covers that are made to fit into the films theme.  Probably the most famous song ever developed for a move is Titanic, but I confess that I like allot of the songs developed for Disney movies still.

Of course there are films whose purpose is to put music on display as the main event.  I just cannot count the number of times I have seen the film or heard the soundtrack to the “Sound of Music” in my home growing up.

Alas since Hollywood has become more of an assembly line than a creative mecca of film making, music in films has suffered from over commercialism as well.  Now when a movie is made the soundtrack is just part of the branding and promotion process.  Again like in movies and music I have personally looked to more international films and media.  Anime for example uses a great deal of original music to create a unique edge to that art form.

I see fewer movies than ever in theaters. I’ve come to regard it as showing greater respect for a film to go through the hassle and expense of seeing it at a theater as opposed to seeing it on satellite or DVD.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy seeing films in theaters, I do, I just feel that too often I’m just encouraging McDonald’s to increase the amount of cereal in their “burgers” if I keep buying them at all or at full price.

In the old days, there was a more unified audience for films. Today, audiences are fractured into single-serving demographic packages.

Tyler Perry serves one demographic, Twilight movies serve another demographic, there are the “old guy buddy movies”, the “chick flicks”, Judd Apatow “nerds-get-hot-girls” bro-medies, etc.

Studios are run by corporate execs just as American Pork and Sausage Inc. is. And they both like assembly lines and product that tastes familiar and consistent.

Where are the great films?

There are good films that somehow get made despite the corporate and star obstacle course but great films…not so much anymore.

It shouldn’t be surprising that films that appeal to the lowest common denominator and are the least intellectual and emotionally challenging are the most popular and make the most money.

The biggest moneymaker to date this year?   Transformers 2, the Sarah Palin of movies. Flashy, superficial and wholly empty headed.

In fact, this summer, you had a choice between which movie based on a children’s toy you could choose to see (“Hmm…I did like playing with my Transformers but G.I. Joe’s Kung Fu Grip was cool!).

So, what shall it be this holiday season, movies based on toys, comic books, video games, pop culture books, old tv shows or older and better done movies?

The indie filmmaking community is now the only oasis for truly original and inspired storytelling and they’ve been hammered badly by the economy (scarce equity available now) and the changing film distribution business.

The corporate thinking of better technology being better for business has been smothering the humanity in filmmaking. There are now films, including the top grossing film of the year, which are only made to display animated computer graphics. Storytelling and humans just get in the way of using digital cartoons to cynically separate moviegoers from the money in their wallets.

I do like some movies that are mindless fun however, like desserts, on occasion. A diet of all desserts can make one addicted to and crave only sweet, empty calories.

From my perspective, that’s what most entertainment has been distilled down to in this era of corporate owned media (news for that matter as well), what used to be a sumptuous meal is now just the insubstantial instant gratification and lure of Double Stuff Oreos for the main course at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The Internet age has raised the hopes of indie filmmakers that somehow it could result in creating an alternative path to making and distributing their films that doesn’t go through the narrow-minded corporate powers that be.

Until or unless this ever happens in a meaningful way, and like me, you want to support indie filmmaking, see them, rent them, go to film festivals and get the word out to friends if you see a really good one.

Now, as a reminder of the way things were and the way they are, here’s a select list of films from the last golden age of film, the 1970’s, when filmmakers had a lot more freedom to make films they were passionate about making.

Compare this list to this year’s crop of films…and please note how many of the following films were not inspired by Hasbro:

1. The Godfather – (1972)
2. The Godfather part II – (1974)
3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – (1975)
4. Apocalypse Now – (1979)
5. Chinatown – (1974)
6. A Clockwork Orange – (1971)
7. Star Wars – (1977)
8. Jaws – (1975)
9. Taxi Driver – (1976)
10. The Deer Hunter – (1978)
11. Annie Hall – (1977)
12. Network – (1976)
13. Rocky – (1976)
14. Patton – (1970)
15. Heaven Can Wait – (1978)
16. M*A*S*H – (1970)
17. The Exorcist – (1973)
18. American Graffiti – (1973)
19. The French Connection – (1971)
20. Mean Streets – (1973)
21. Midnight Express – (1978)
22. Blazing Saddles – (1974)
23. Being There – (1979)
24. Monty Python and the Holy Grail – (1974)
25. Lenny – (1974)
26. Serpico – (1973)
27. The Man Who Would Be King – (1975)
28. Deliverance – (1972)
29. Barry Lyndon – (1975)
30. National Lampoon’s Animal House – (1978)
31. Alien – (1979)
32. The Candidate – (1972)
33. Dog Day Afternoon – (1975)
34. Five Easy Pieces – (1970)
35. The Last Picture Show – (1971)
36. Nashville – (1975)
37. All That Jazz – (1979)
38. Bound for Glory – (1976)
39. Saturday Night Fever – (1977)
40. Manhattan – (1979)
41. All the President’s Men – (1976)
42. Dirty Harry – (1971)
43. Cabaret – (1972)
44. Bananas – (1971)
45. Carrie – (1976)
46. Day for Night – (1973)
47. Amarcord – (1973)
48. Sleeper – (1973)
49. Shampoo – (1975)
50. The Last Detail – (1973)

Putting the day’s frustration behind me, I am kicking off a Friday night trivia game thread which I hope you’ll all feel free to join in and give both questions and answers. Here’s the rule I’ve come up with after consulting with many of our greatest minds in internet guessing games.

Whoever is first to posts a comment with the correct answer, wins.

At the end of the night we’ll add up who has gotten the most answers correct and they will receive a brand…new…damaged hard drive actually used by PlanetPOV!!! And a Fun Size Snickers!

And please, this is just for fun, no wagering please.

Okay, this is movie dialog from three different movies, guess the actor who said all three sets of dialog:

1. “All right, Curly. Enough’s enough. You can’t eat the Venetian blinds. I just had them installed on Wednesday.
2. “I hate this detail. I hate this fucking chickenshit detail!”
3. “You’re not an idiot. Huh! You’re not a goddamn looney now, boy. You’re a fisherman!”

Good Luck!