C'est Non Un Blog

Tell me if this makes any sense: I was told that I can’t attend a reunion of my friends because a certain person I don’t want to see is also going to be there.

Well, let me clarify that statement, lest anyone misunderstand what I’m saying.

-A bunch of my college friends are meeting around Bard.
-I was told under no uncertain circumstances that my ex WILL also be at this meeting.
-Under no circumstances do I ever want to see that person again.
-Therefore the logical conclusion is that I’m going to make the choice not to go because I don’t want to see that person.

What the hell? Does that make any sense? I mean, these are my friends and I want to see them while they are all in one place. Am I really so petty that I’m not going to see them just because someone else that I don’t want to see is also going to be there? That doesn’t really make me sound so cool. At the same time though, why should I have to see that person if I don’t want to? I mean, I didn’t fuck up that relationship. They did. Why should I be punished? And yet, why should I punish myself?

As you see this is all pretty confusing. And I’m still not really sure what I’m ultimately going to end up doing. I know some of you are saying, “Grow up, Ben.” But really, would you choose to hang out with the last person in the world you ever wanted to see again? I mean, first of all, awkward. But then how do you expect to have any fun in that type of situation? Gah! It makes my head hurt.

I write this to vent, of course, but also to see what other people’s opinions on this type of situation might be. Feel free to comment away! I’m open to all sorts of ideas and suggestions.

Of course if this all takes place during a weekend there is no problem, since I can’t get out of work for that anyway. I’m sure fate will sort it all out.

Standing on your feet for eight straight hours is not fun. I learned the fundamentals of not standing on your heels all day Saturday when by the end of the day that day I had pain shooting up my foot and leg upon offering it even the slightest pressure. God, that hurt. It’s not much fun either. Sunday I fared a little better by shifting my weight to the front of my feet, but three days later and my feet still hurt. Of course this wouldn’t be such a big deal except for that fact that tomorrow I go back to work for my first forty-hour week. God save me that I don’t collapse in a complete heap of pain before Sunday. Hopefully dollar signs will keep my eyes on the prize, as it were.

I other work related news I worked with a few people this weekend, and I think I might actually get my first TV sale and Lifestyle sale this week, which would be awesome. Selling a Lifestyle system would totally boost my selling ego. Also, if I can sell it with the second zone I get $25 bucks, which would be sweet!

Also, my dad just excepted a job at Taconic so he is no longer unemployed. Yeah!

LINNEA QUIGLEY’S HORROR WORKOUT (1990):

The Queen of Scream chainsawed the fitness craze with this fleshy lampoon that promised to be the “scariest exercise video ever made.” It’s definitely the zaniest. Ms. Quigley begins her regime in a familiar place — the shower — and is soon off for a nice jog (in full valley girl regalia) where she’s accosted by staggering hordes of the living dead. Beckoning them with her screams, the B-siren lures the ghouls back to her pad for some pool-side zombiecise. There’s also the requisite slumber party footage featuring lingerie-clad babes losing weight an arm, or leg at a time. All this wacky mayhem is punctuated with some of Linnea’s personal home movies and best outtakes.

——Beach of the War Gods——

(A-)

Jimmy Wang Yu may not be a very impressive martial artist, but damn does he know how to stage a great action sequence. The entire second half of this movie is made up of one gigantic sword battle between the Chinese and the invading Japanese armies. People are fighting everywhere (and not that fake “I’m just in the background” play fighting either) and when someone is about to do something cool or kill another fighter the action goes into slow mo so you can see every gritty detail. After that it goes right back to more fighting though. People are fighting and dying all over the place. It’s awesome.

Although the characters feel the need to add in “those dirty Jap bastards!” to each and every sentence they utter, what is really ironic about this movie is how much Jimmy Wang Yu owes to the samurai movies of Kurosawa. Certain shots at the beginning are eerily similar to those in Yojimbo, and the movie owes heavy debts to Seven Samurai, from the similar way the final battle in the town is staged to the fact that each of the heroes of the story have traits similar to the heroes in Kurosawa’s movie (including having “the guy with the knives” that James Coburn made so famous when asking for a part in the Magnificent Seven).

The movie starts off a little slow, but it is all set up for what is to come in the second half. This is a very cool swordplay flick.

——Dawn of the Dead (RM)——

(A-)

Take everything that was cool about the original film and 28 Days Later, subtract the biting social commentaries of both films and add to that a big budget, and what you get is the extremely entertaining Dawn of the Dead remake that almost achieves a classic horror movie status. This movie is really relentless, and some of the best moments happen in the sidelines, watching total and utter chaos erupt around the central characters. A zombie comes out of nowhere and tackles a woman crying on her front lawn, a car barrels down the road at 90 miles per hour only to drive right into another vehicle. The credit sequences on their own deserve an award for being so damn creepy, using shaky hand held camera shots of live news footage or Blair Witch type home videos quickly cut together with awesome music (most notably the Johnny Cash song at the beginning) to make for some really scary, unexpected moments.

The movie actually owes more to 28 Days Later than the original Dawn of the Dead though, which is a shame. About the only similarity to the original film is the fact that most of this movie takes place in a mall. The movie makes heavy use of the shaky, grainy monochromatic digital photography 28 Days Later made famous, the fact that these zombie run instead of lumber along, and the fact that the zombies spread by way of a virus in their bites than by the dead rising. The camera technique still looks awesome, and although I’m a lumbering zombie purist I can excuse the running zombie part, but that last part is inexcusable. What the hell makes them a zombie or the living dead if they don’t actually rise from the dead? They even use the “When Hell becomes full the dead shall rise” line from the original movie, which makes no sense, because the dead aren’t actually rising. What the hell is up with that?

Although this movie doesn’t have any of the attacks on consumerism or the critiques of humanity that made the original such a classic, this is still a very cool and excellent straight forward horror movie, which makes me wonder why the filmmakers felt the need to momentarily slip into the traditional horror cliches from time to time. Like when the camera hovers in a certain place while the music swells and we just know that there is a zombie waiting to strike, and then you have that sudden jump out of nowhere scare. Do we really need that? That was old in the 70’s. And what about the old horror cliché that your main characters have to be complete and utter morons half the time. Honestly, do smart people ever get into scary situations? I mean, what’s scarier: the idea of a zombie apocalypse or the fact that only morons will survive the apocalypse?

Despite its flaws this is still a damn awesome horror movie that I want to see again in the theaters and will most definitely be picking up the DVD to add to my zombie collection.

(The original DotD cameos I noticed were Tom Savini (makeup guy and lead biker Blades), White Cop and an oddly fat and hard to recognize Black Cop as the televangelist, all making their appearances in the news feeds the survivors watch in the mall.)

——Marco Polo (AKA The Four Assassins)——

(A-)

This film is interesting in that it actually features a Westerner in a prominent role, i.e. the Marco Polo of the title who benefits from an extreme retelling of history. The Mongols are standing in the traditional role usually reserved for the Manchus, and Marco Polo has been made an inspector by Kubli Khan to root out the associates of some assassins who tried to kill him. Meanwhile those men take refuge with a master teacher who teaches the four of them the arts of pugilism in order to defend themselves against the Mongols. After numerous training sequences Marco Polo leads the Mongols to the sanctuary where the four men make their stand, and Marco realizes that he’s supported the wrong side.

And damn, does Chang Cheh know how to deliver the goods. The numerous fights feature the same levels of quality he attaches to all of his films and these fights are no exception, kicking more ass than usual. I was impressed. The soundtrack is also surprisingly good. Look for an early appearance from Gordon Liu as one of the villains, before he ever became the Master Killer. A very solid martial arts masterpiece from Chang Cheh.

——Hammer of the Gods (AKA The Chinese Boxer)——

(A)

Yet another kung fu flick in which the title makes no sense whatsoever (there is no hammer or gods), and yet I really do think Jimmy Wang Yu outdid himself with this movie. His kung fu may not be pretty, but damn can this boy construct some awesome looking fight scenes.

The story is about this misfit who got kicked out of a kung fu school for causing trouble who comes back after learning karate to make more trouble. He kicks all of the student’s asses, but then the master shows up and finally whoops his ass. Defeated he leaves only to come back later with some Japanese karate masters, who proceed to pretty much kill everyone except Jimmy Wang Yu, who is only badly hurt. The lead Japanese guy is hilarious because he’ll just flip out and start busting up EVERYTHING. He’ll jump up and smash the roof just to make a point.

Anyway, Jimmy Wang Yu trains to defeat karate and then comes back to kick some ass. What’s interesting about this movie is that usually the training sequence of a kung fu movie takes up like the entire middle third of the film. In this movie it lasts no more than five minutes. Instead the focus is more on the revenge, and how sweet that is, as in true House of Blue Leaves fashion he defeats and entire gang of thugs in a gambling parlor, only to go outside and fight a bunch of guys with samurai swords in some freshly fallen snow. Finally he goes after the main bad guys, but only after an extremely long series of increasingly cool fights. Spurting blood is also used to amazing effect in here. I’m definitely deeming this movie must see kung fu.

——The Devil’s Backbone——

(B)

While this movie was pretty to look at and really well shot, other than those two things I wasn’t really impressed too much by this film. If it was a ghost story it wasn’t an especially scary one; if it was a drama it wasn’t a particularly moving one. It was good enough to pass the time, but nothing really stuck with me and there was nothing in it that would make me ever want to see it again. It was just, eh.

——The Rundown——

(A-)

This was one of the movies along with Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Kill Bill, among others, that made me feel like last year was signaling a new action film renaissance. While this movie isn’t nearly the best movie ever made, it is an extremely well made and very fun action movie, well worth everyone seeing. I can’t wait to see Walking Tall, and I really hope that The Rock blossoms into the next big action star.

So much of what I find cool about this movie is its style. That’s where it really makes all of its points. Wire-fu is used in the best possible fashion in this movie. I don’t want to see two fighters floating through the air like dancers. When someone hits someone else I want to see that person fly across the room. The Rundown has that in spades. Also, everything you really want to see in an action sequence in other movies is here in this movie. Where they were too lazy to come up with something original, this movie takes pleasure in just giving you the essentials. The Rock plays Beck, a character who hates guns and doesn’t like to fight. What then could be more fun than watching him take down a bunch of guns with guns without needing a gun himself, or fighting a bunch of crazy guerrilla fighters he doesn’t want to fight with? The Rock is just too cool for school in this movie, and that’s what it’s all about.

——Instructors of Death——

(A-)

Why do titles have to be so misleading? The last thing on anyone’s mind in this movie is death. Also, this movie has a little problem with narrative logic. Although I always knew what was going on right now, I had no idea how it linked up with what happened or what was going to happen. All that said though, this movie is fucking amazing. I just realized that the director Chia-Liang Liu (arguably the greatest old school kung fu director) is actually the brother of Gordon Liu (arguably the greatest old school kung fu fighter), and duh, that explains why they made so many movies together. While I have no idea what the hell the point of this movie was, it was still too damn cool for words.

This movie is one of the few old school flicks to have a woman as a fighter, much less a major character, and she is just an amazing fighter with some great crane style work. Also, the fighter from the North is enormously talented. But (as usual) it is the Liu brothers who really shine in this movie, from Gordon’s amazing flexibility, quickness and perfection in style to his brother’s amazingly complex fight sequences (both in technique and staging). It is just amazing to be able to watch some masters in their prime at work. This movie is so damn cool.

——Jackass the Movie——

(A)

I don’t really know how you go about reviewing a movie like this, since it has no plot, character, or structure to speak of and compare it to other films. What I can say is that this movie was really fucking funny. I mean, every single segment had me in stitches. That doesn’t exactly make this movie art or anything, but if you enjoy watching grown men hurt themselves in various hilarious manners, then you can’t go wrong with this movie.

That only happens in Bad, BAD situations…

Your True Nature by llScorpiusll
Username
The quality that most appeals to you:	Courage
In a survival situation, you:	Outsmart your attacker
Your hidden talent is:	Pragmatism
Your gift is:	Genius
In groups, you:	Are the center of attention
Your best quality is:	Your protectiveness
Your weakness is:	Your overbearing nature
Created with quill18‘s MemeGen 3.0!

…by the way, Yoanna won America’s Next Top Model and I couldn’t be any more pleased.

And yeah, I have no idea what that all means.

Well, she is damn hot. That MIGHT have something to do with it.

Damn the elements! How come whenever I have to drive somewhere at night the sky decides to open up on me? Both Saturday and Sunday nights coming home from work all sorts of precipitation came raining down on me, making visibility almost nil. Fun stuff I tell you. Then I want to go to the movies on Tuesday to see Dawn of the Dead because that’s bargain night, and of course it starts snowing like crazy. Man, Nature, what the hell did I do to piss you off?

Also wonderful was the fact that I woke up with a cold Friday morning. I’m off work for six whole days and when do I get my freakin’ cold? That’s right, the first day back to work. I just popped pills and cough drops and that seemed to get me through my days, although by the time I got home I was extremely exhausted and didn’t want to do anything. (Remember, add being on my feet for eight hours to having to drive almost an hour to and from work, multiply that by having a cold and having to drive home in white out conditions, and you’ve got one tired Ben.)

So then for my federal taxes I decided to eFile, since as the IRS put it, “It’s as easy as 1-2-3!” 1-2-3 my ass. Maybe as easy as 1-2-3-…1,000. It took me almost two hours to fill out a stupid form for the fucking measly 900 dollars I made last year. What the hell, right? Then I got an email last night saying that the IRS rejected my application because the number I put down for last year’s average gross income or whatever was incorrect. LAST YEAR’S!!! Gah, what the hell!? Fucking IRS. So I went back in to that same stupid webpage, waded through links for a good half hour until I finally got to the one place where I had made a mistake, one number being off. So I corrected that, told the stupid computer ten freakin’ times that, yes, I really did want to eFile, and finally put that through. Hopefully the IRS isn’t going to tell me it is wrong again.

Work went well though. My first weekend on the floor selling and I didn’t do half bad. Sold four Wave CD/Radios, an Acoustic Wave, a pair of 301s, some Tri-ports and put on four shows. (To find out what all that stuff is, or just to check out awesome Bose products, go to http://www.bose.com .) I also bought myself my first Bose product, the FreeStyle system:

(Note: That’s not actually a picture of the FreeStyle, but one of the 3-2-1. The FreeStyle is actually a product they are discontinuing, and thus must no longer be webpage material. The FreeStyle comes with the exact same speakers and base module though, just not the media center. I also got a free Onkyo DVD player as part of this weekend’s promotions though, so just imagine a regular DVD player in that picture instead of the media center and you’ve got a good idea of what I purchased.)

This thing freakin’ sounds awesome. Even though there are only two speakers there are actually two drivers in each speaker firing in opposite directions for Stereo Everywhere sound, and there is technology in the base module that converts 5.1, stereo and mono signals into 5.1 so it sounds amazing. It’s like having an entire home theater system with only two speakers. I’m so pleased with it. It even made one of my crappy kung fu DVDs sound good.

And then I found out the day after I bought it that when I get this month’s bonus it should pay for the entire system and then some. I don’t have to worry about monthly payments or anything. Sweet!

OK all you Dawn of the Dead fans, I have a question for you:

How many cast members of the original Dawn of the Dead did you find in the remake, and who were they?

(I counted two; please let me know if you found more.)

——Dawn of the Dead——

(A)

The new DVD of the Romero original is just amazing. The image is so crystal clear (it says that it was remastered in HD) that you’ll notice all sorts of little details that you’ve never seen before. Of course some of effects are made to look more cheesy because of that clarity, but then what do you expect when all you need to be a zombie is some blue makeup? Cheesy effects aside, this new transfer really draws attention to how well directed this film really is. Romero’s quick montage style editing gives the film a documentary-like feeling, enhancing the horror by constantly displacing us in the setting as well as by making the film seem more real. Also amazing are some of his compositions. Frequently the camera is placed in a corner at an odd angle, giving the feeling of an objective security camera watching the events unfold. Perhaps my favorite shot is the static shot of Flyboy and Pregnant Lady lying in bed together (presumably after sex) and yet completely alone, as the camera slowly zooms out. That’s where the real terror of this movie comes from, from that loneliness these people feel from having everything and yet having nothing to do or live for. And if to make things more tragic, these people are not defeated by the zombies but by other people, making not only the point that we are consumer zombies but also that our greed will be our downfall. Interestingly, it is the humor of this film that really drills that point home. The overly heroic musak that plays when Black Cop fights his way to the helicopter is so hilarious that it really makes us wonder, what exactly is it that he is fighting for? The ending is fittingly ambiguous: as they fly away from danger into the rising sun, in the back of our mind we know that they don’t have much gas left. How far will they really get?

——Blow-Up——

(B+)

While this film is certainly beautifully shot, I wasn’t quite sure where the whole thing was going. Unlike the films that we inspired by this one (The Conversation and Blow Out) there isn’t any resolution to this story. Did he really witness a murder? Does it even matter? That aspect of the film left me a little cold, and as I’m unsure of what it all really means, for me the jury is still out on this movie.

——Irreversible——

(B)

Interestingly, this movie is a lot like The Passion of the Christ: both films could have been really great if not for the director’s egotistical forays into the extreme and excess. Irreversible is one of the most disturbing films I’ve ever seen, if only for the sequence where Monica Belluci is brutally anal raped for fifteen minutes in one continuous take. Things like that are just really unnecessary. Also the filmmaker has adopted what I like to call “drunken midget cam”, in that the camera work half the time spins around for no real apparent reason without any cuts in between segments, which is quite hard to watch at times. It’s as if the filmmaker is trying to warn anyone who can’t sit through the rape sequence way ahead of time to get the fuck out while the going is still good. At times it feels like he is trying to shock us for the sake of shocking us, in that like Mel Gibson he is trying to “show it as it was”. It’s bullshit really, pretentious bullshit.

That said there is a very interesting film in here. The film unspools backwards like Memento, with each cut happening at the end of each long continuous take. You see the retribution for the above mentioned rape, and then get to see everything that led up to it. The technique is actually quite effective, as all of the happy scenes that happened before the rape are made extremely tragic because what happened before in the film is still lingering with the viewer. Certain actions or phrases jump out at the viewer, and the film’s title, “Irreversible”, is always in the back of your mind as you realize that like a Shakespearean play the actions of the plot are irreversible. The main tragedy of the film comes from the knowledge of knowing that the events of the film could have been preventable, but because of the character’s actions it isn’t. This is a flawed, but very interesting film.

——Swingers——

(B+)

Wow, do you all remember that brief period of time in the mid-90’s when swing dancing was actually in? When NHL 96 for the Genesis was THE game? Man, that seems like so long ago. Anyway, this movie is a nice piece of screenwriting about getting over past relationships and moving on, in Hollywood. I was never really wow-ed by the film, but I did find it extremely entertaining. Sometimes you wanted to smack Vince Vaughn if he said “money” one more time, or Jon Favreau for being such a shmuck-ass, but otherwise it was pretty fun and funny, so I was happy. Shame, shame for trying to copy the slow mo walking scene from Reservoir Dogs. In this movie it just looks like total shit. Pretty decent movie though.

——Tarzan——

(A-)

This is definitely one of my favorite Disney movies, if not the favorite. Watching this movie and then watching clips from Home on the Range during ABC’s Disney whoring during the commercial breaks makes you realize how far Disney has really fallen and why computer animation is all the rage now. I mean, Home on the Range looks like total shit. The animation is extremely unspectacular and the store is weak, not to mention the fact that the jokes are extremely lame, even by little kid standards. It won’t surprise me in the least to see this movie do shitty at the box office. Tarzan on the other hand has some spectacular animation (combining computer animation with hand drawn animation in the tree surfing segments to phenomenal effect), original ideas (like the tree surfing: something that sounds really lame but looks spectacular in execution), and a style all to its own (Tarzan’s physique looks exactly like how you would expect, and his gorilla father just looks amazing). And hey, the story is pretty fun too! Sometimes the movie does get a little too Disney cute (I’m looking at you, Rosie) but otherwise this is a really fun movie and an amazing piece of animation. I love it.

OK, so I promised you all like a big post on Friday and never really delivered. Sorry. I got sidetracked going out to see Hidalgo and watching a 7 hour documentary about Myth on PBS. Whatever. I’m here for you now, my babies!

So anyway, driving into work Friday morning was HELL. It was snowing real wet snow and the roads were damn slippery. Definitely the worst driving conditions I’ve ever been in. So to start out I’m going down Pine Valley and although I’m only going about 35 mph things are going pretty good. Then I have to turn out onto Route 7. I make my left hand turn and then…just keep on turning. I end up doing a 270 with the car pointed in the exact opposite direction I’m trying to go. Luckily no one was coming just then, or there could have been some big problems. Since I was right in front of a Ford dealership what I did was pull into their parking lot, turn around, and try again. If I couldn’t make the turn this time I would take it as fate telling me to head right the fuck back up the road and go home. Luckily I made the turn without a hitch.

The drive up was still horrible though. It took me almost twice as long to get to Manchester and I was nervous as hell the whole way up. My hands were just locked around the steering wheel in the ten and two positions. I must have fishtailed two dozen times. It was just awful driving, with me cursing nature the whole way up. At about the halfway point I cursed the snow gods and sheer determination said that I would make it to work safe and sound just to spite them. Take that snow bitches, I even got to work on time!

Work at Bose is good. Friday was my last real training day. Starting this week I’m working just Friday, Saturday, Sunday and I’ll actually have to know what I’m doing now. I should be nervous, but I’m not really. It’s fun work, and I should do fine. I’ve never really been in there when it’s been “busy” though, so I should hold my tongue and wait to see what happens. The first week of April I get 40 hours though, which is going to be sweet! I get time and a half for that. I should be racking in some big bucks then.

You all know the Darkness song, “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”? The crazy chorus of that song has been playing over and over in my head, and I LOVE it. I hate hair metal, but I totally want to go out and buy that CD.

Because of all of the hot/cold weather of late the windshield of my car developed a crack that grew little by little over the past weeks. Then during last Friday’s storm the crack got HUGE and spread across most of the bottom of the windshield. Today my dad and I took it in to get fixed, and thank God my dad’s insurance covered all of it. After the tire fiasco I couldn’t afford to pay 200 bucks for a new windshield and then buy new tires this summer.

At work we just got in some Freestyle surround sound systems, which are pretty much the 3-2-1, but without the media center (want to know more? Go to Bose.com). It was originally designed for video game players, which was kind of moronic on their parts, because what gamer after paying two hundred bucks for a system and then fifty bucks a game wants to then go out and pay $400 plus for some speakers? Needless to say they didn’t sell too hot, and should have been sold more generally for people who already had DVD players and whatnot.

The Freestyle system is pretty much two speakers (which actually have two speakers inside of them each for true surround sound) and a woofer. It sounds great, and is designed to play 5.1 audio with only two speakers. I’m seriously lacking in the surround sound area on my TV (the speakers are already audibly humming because I have to turn them up so loud to hear DVDs) and I can get a Freestyle for only 300 bucks with 6 months no interest financing with payments. So I can pretty much pay the whole thing off at only about 50 bucks a month. It’s not really the greatest timing, since I just started working and don’t really have that much access money to throw around, but I really want to bring these home. I’m conflicted folks, and I don’t know what to do.

SNL was HILARIOUS Saturday. The sight of Kelly Ripa wielding a meat cleaver in Thailand had me laughing so fucking hard.

I didn’t really like the commercials for it, but Wonderland is actually really good and the perfect show for right after Joan of Arcadia. It’s just like Joan, only a whole lot more fucked up. Foxified if you will.

Cracking Up is funny, but not really. Definitely not Arrested Development funny. That show is awesome.

I loved Average Joe. I loved even more Average Joe Hawaii. Now Average Joe: Adam Returns looks to be giving me even more Joe goodness. Can an Average Joe fall for the Average Jill? I can’t wait to find out.

Entertainment Weekly this week has an article on Kylie, with even more hot photos for me to ogle. I am too happy.

To my surprise and perhaps everyone else’s, I actually really love Beyonce’s CD. Besides the groan worthy Luther Vandross ballad the whole thing is just awesome.