Tag Archives: popular culture

SPECTRE

SPECTRE is, without a doubt, the dullest, most phoned-in Bond movie since Daniel Craig took over the part in 2006’s Casino Royale.

How bad SPECTRE, the 24th in the series, really is is a matter of personal taste. Personally, I will always prefer the tone of the Craig films – even the worst (Quantum of Solace, SPECTRE) of them – to even the best of the campy Roger Moore pictures or the silly Pierce Brosnan outings. Given my admitted preference for a rougher and angrier 007, I am still submitting SPECTRE as one of the better (well, Top 10) entries in the franchise.

My expectations going in were high. First of all, I had been dying to order a 007 martini at Cineplex’s VIP Experience ever since it opened earlier this year and had been saving it for this movie. “Oh, that’s the perfect drink for this movie,” my waitress informed me, as if my ordering it had been a coincidence. More importantly though, my eager anticipation of SPECTRE reached new heights once its title had been released.

SPECTRE had always been my favourite part of the old Sean Connery classics and I couldn’t wait to see what the 21st century reboot would look like. Back in the 60s, the organization known as SPECTRE would always be trying to trick two superpowers into going to war with each other. And MI-6, Bond included, would always fall for it for the first half of the movie until the inevitable revelation that would invariably lead to what I consider to be one of the most iconic 007 lines “Of course. SHHHPECTA”.

Because SPECTRE reimagines Bond’s first dust-up with the nefarious organization, I probably should have known that I would not be hearing my favourite line. Which isn’t to say that the latest 21st century Bond film isn’t without its share of silliness. With the success of Casino Royale and Skyfall, the creative team seem more confident than ever and allow themselves licnese to have some fun with the material that Craig’s earlier and darker installments would have never allowed. SPECTRE is a return to Bond’s glory days, featuring exploding watches, secret societies, elaborate torture devices, and unkillable villains.

It’s mostly fun to watch. Craig’s performance, continuing to redefine Bond’s signature charm as a brave face against deep psychological scars, balances the less restrained elements nicely, making it easier to just sit back and enjoy the insanity without rolling our eyes as much. Bond’s close-quarters fight with the indestructable Hinx (played as the strong silent type by David Badista) aboard a train is particularly reminiscent of the best Bond brawls from the Connery and Moore days and was a definite highlight for me.

Unfortunately, director Sam Mendes and company have also taken Skyfall’s success as license to rest on their laurels a bit. The chases too often feel uninspired and familiar, even from – as Jay pointed out – earlier in the movie. Other scenes resort too often to a kind of melodrama that Craig’s earlier films were mostly successful at avoiding.

Still, SPECTRE looks great and is well-cast (although Christoph Waltz isn’t nearly compelling as a Bond villain as Mads Mikkelsen or Javier Bardem were) so is only disappointing when compared with Bond’s best missions.

And the martini was worth the wait.

Gone Too Soon

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I recently sat down to watch 2 biographical documentaries, Amy (about Amy Winehouse) and I Am Chris Farley (about Bob Marley. No, I’m kidding. It’s totally about Chris Farley), that were shot through with parallels.

Fame and addiction don’t have to co-exist necessarily, but when they do, the fame feeds the addiction. Literally: you and I might have to choose between cocaine and groceries, or cocaine and prostitution, but they have unlimited resources. Couple that with a need and want for approval, of being adored by everyone except maybe yourself, and it makes for a really bumpy road.

That said, I Am Chris Farley is not entirely the bummer you might think. This film asks: can you make small-dick jokes about your dead brother? And the answer is: yes. The Farleys can! Chris may have been the star, but the funny gene seems to have been a family trait. His brothers recount their idyllic childhood, and their brother’s quick rise to fame, leap-frogging others from Second City immediately toward the father-like figure of Lorne Michaels at SNL, where Mike Myers points out Chris was an instant favourite. Dan Aykroyd likens Farley to his own friend (who met a similar demise) John Belushi, and Lorne Michaels thinks of him as the love child that Belushi and Aykroyd never had.

I first found Saturday Night Live when Farley et al. were at their height. Babysitting late at night, their reruns kept me company.Farley, David Spade, and Adam Sandler were clearly friends who wrote for each other and worked together all the time, and it was magical to watch them (dubbed “the bad boys of SNL” along with Rob Schneider and Chris Rock). Then they got bigger than the show itself and started casting each other in their movies – Chris appeared with Spade in Tommy Boy, and with Sandler in Billy Madison. Shit blew up. They were all celebrities. I remember watching the 25th anniversary show in 1999, and Sandler and Spade came back to pay tribute to him just 2 years after his sudden death. Those casts are often very tight, and the remembrances are far too many (send-ups to Belushi and Hartman are equally touching).

Chris Farley had a huge heart and is clearly still missed today. Interviewees are choked up recalling his problems with drinking and drugs and it’s hard to watch the regret on their faces. Farley didn’t want to die. You don’t go to rehab 17 times because you want to be this way. But his addictive personality was strong and his self-confidence weak, and he died alone on his kitchen floor at the age of 33.

Amy Winehouse died when she was 27. She was messed up before she was famous, she made her fortune on a song that mocked rehab, and it was probably not much of a surprise, but no less a tragedy, when she passed the way she did. Newsweek called her “a perfect storm of sex kitten, raw talent and poor impulse control” while paparazzi documented her wasting away in front of us, in clear emotional and physical distress. It was hard to watch at the time, especially knowing that the people who should have been caring for her were instead treating her like a meal ticket.

In the documentary, all the people in her life come together to speak on her behalf, and theirs – and we’re talking about people who clashed over her in life and defend themselves and their actions since her death. You really get a sense of what a tangled mess her life was, but it also manages to be tender. It’s just a story that you wish didn’t exist. This woman with an enormous voice and huge talent poisoned herself to death with alcohol in the end, and everyone was too busy trying to make money off her to notice or care. That’s the tragedy. She was a lost little girl insulated by her money and success, and it killed her.

Housebound/Creep

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2 scary movies for the price of 1! (actually I bought Housebound from Amazon for $5 and watched Creep on Netflix, but anyway.)

Housebound: Kylie faces a fate worse than prison when she’s arrested for stealing to feed her addiction: house arrest, with her mother. Sober, presumably. Exactly the reason she did crack to begin with. But we pretty soon see that it’s not just her Corrie-loving mother and silent-as-a-stump stepdad she’s avoiding – there’s a fourth presence in the house, and lately it’s making itself known. The visiting psychologist has a thing or two to say about this of course (it may land her in a psych ward if she’s not careful) but the dude who’s monitoring her ankle bracelet is more keen – turns out, Amos is a bit of a paranormal savant.

Housebound is given to us by way of New Zealand, which means it’s a horror-comedy hybrid, and it actually delivers on both fronts. Gerard Johnstone is a newbie director and he’s not too flash but he’s got all the creepiest angles down pat.

Creep: God-damned found footage. I wouldn’t even have attempted this one if it wasn’t for the charming Mark Duplass, who has cast his spell on me ever since I first came upon him on The League. There are two actors in this movie, but since one is behind the camera, this is really Duplass’s show, and it succeeds on his performance. Having placed a Craigslist ad for a cameraman’s services for the day in order to record some words of wisdom to his unborn son before cancer takes him away, the two men find the transaction not going quite as advertised.

Patrick Brice, the guy behind the camera, is in fact the director, and the two wrote (or improvised) the piece together. It’s truly minimal, low on blood but high on creep. I won’t say much more because it’s good to go in blind, but this is not exactly horror, so much as…unease? Anxiety? Terror? Something like that. Something interestingly outside the genre.

50 Shades of #BlueAboutGrey

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Fifty Shades of Grey is a sad testament to the dumbing down of America. The source material was written by a middle-aged woman who read books meant for teenage girls about twinkly vampires. The boy vampire was such an under-aged thrill to her, she started writing erotic fan fiction about him, and other bored housewives were so titillated by her stories that for copyright reasons she changed the Edwards to Christians and before you know it, one underachieving trilogy had spawned another.

It’s garbage. It was embarrassing enough when grown adults read books found in the youth section, but now we’ve got women lining up to glorify an abusive relationship. Because the thing about the sex in 50 Shades of Grey is that it’s not really consensual. She’s a very young girl, and a meek one at that. He’s older than her, and a very powerful man. She’s intimidated, and he’s manipulative. He makes her sign a contract that he of all people knows is meaningless. Meanwhile, he stalks her, plies her with alcohol, and even though she’s constantly expressing doubt and stress, he violates her boundaries to get what he wants.

This is not my opinion, by the way. This is based on scientific research that’s been done in the wake and the fall-out from these books. But even real-life practitioners of BDSM don’t like the book because they feel it depicts an abusive relationship too, and colours their lifestyle negatively. S&M may have a healthy place in some people’s bedrooms, but they insist that this series confuses BDSM with abuse, and uses dangerous techniques. Researchers meanwhile, are concerned about the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) in the books and movie. The study finds that almost every interaction between the two leads is emotionally abusive in nature, including isolation, sexual violence, and the circumvention of consent. Meanwhile, Ana, the young woman in question, exhibits classic symptoms of an abused woman – the constant perceived threats, the stress, the altered identity. There is no equality in this relationship. We’re talking about a controlling narcissist and a vulnerable, insecure woman. This is the breeding ground of the worst domestic abuse.

Why are real-life women paying to romanticize sexual violence and the emotional abuse of women? Not only is this not a love story, it’s not even “kinky” sex. It’s a bad situation, and if this was your sister or your friend, you would want to get her the fuck out. And the movie? Even worse.

When Christian whales on Ana with a belt until she cries big fat tears of pain and humiliation, finally forcing her to angrily ban such a practise ever again, that’s not romance. RED FLASHING LIGHT: that’s not romance! That’s coercive sex. It’s rapey. It is NOT a date movie and mistaking it for something naughty and fun is dangerous to your own sexual health.

People rushed to theatres on Valentine’s day to see this and were so turned off that the movie suffered the second biggest week-to-week drop ever (only Gigli did worse). But the damage is done. Opening box office was huge. The books have sold in the millions. And the poor theatres screening the movie have had to put up with some really disturbing viewers:

– One woman in Mexico slapped on her own handcuffs and proceeded to masturbate.

– Two women in Scotland got so rowdy and drunk they barfed in the aisles and when they were shushed, they stabbed the shusher with a broken wine bottle.

– In England, a woman was so into the movie she lost control of every last bodily function. Probably made the stabbed dude in Scotland be glad all those women did was puke.

– Foot fetishists in the UK used their own socks to blindfold themselves during the movie. The moans were very disruptive but it was the bad foot odour that lead to the most complaints to management.

These are (I hope) extreme reactions to the movie. But I can’t figure out for the life of me why the reaction is not one of disbelief and disgust. There is nothing sexy to see here (and I don’t just mean the lack of passion reported by people who actually saw it). This isn’t sex. We need to label it correctly and we need to be more responsible about what we as a society consume.

The Maze Runner

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This movie isn’t terribly sophisticated but it’s also not nearly as bad as I was expecting. I suppose coming from me, and my skeptical expectations, that’s actually a bit of a compliment. But don’t get too excited: I’m not telling you to watch it. But maybe rent it for your kids, ahem, “young adults.” You know, if they’re not already sick to death of the genre, having been bombarded with The Hunger Games and Divergent and their like. The kids are well-cast and it’s surprisingly well-acted. The first half of the movie is actually pretty interesting, and then it starts to fall apart. The ending is weak and confusing (guess I should have read the book!) and though it’s clear that this is just another trilogy in the making this particular movie actually feels more like a second of three than a first. You can safely move this to the bottom of your pile.

Dear White People

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This movie tackles race in the microcosm of an ivy league college. The film focuses on four black characters as they live and learn on a predominantly white campus. One of them, Sam, uses her radio show to point out the racist sins of her fellow students – “Dear white people: The minimum requirement of black friends needed to not seem racist has just been raised to two. Sorry, but your weed man Tyrone does not count.”

It is by no means a perfect movie but it does spark a very important conversation, and you may have noticed by now that one of my barometers for a “good” movie is one that provokes a discussion. The film fearlessly points out the prejudice not just of the white students, but of the black students even toward each other. It’s a real meditation on what racism means in American in 2014 and culminates in a big party where white kids are encouraged to “liberate their inner Negro” and boy do they. This is satire and not satire because of course these events have actually taken place on many real campuses, not 50 years ago, but maybe 50 days ago.

Recently, Benedict Cumberbatch has had to apologize for using the term “coloured” in an interview. He immediately took responsibility for his mistake, but this too has opened up the debate. What he actually said was: “I think as far as coloured actors go, it gets really different in the UK, and a lot of my friends have had more opportunities here [in America] than in the UK, and that’s something that needs to change.” His terminology is outdated and offensive, at least to some. But it also highlights the fact that we still, as a society, don’t know the right answer here – because Cumberbatch wasn’t meaning to offend. Dear White People uses the term “coloured” a couple of times, actually, and that may add to our confusion.

At the end of the day, Cumberbatch’s assessment IS correct: Idris Elba, Thandie Newton, David Oyelowo, and Chiwetel Ejiofor have all had more success in the American market. David Oyelowo in particular has just this year appeared in Interstellar, Selma, and A Most Violent Year. The small part he played in Interstellar was not a “black” part, and that’s a step in the right direction. Now we just need about 100 more steps, because the #OscarsSoWhite problem doesn’t start at the Oscars, it ends there (note: Cumberbatch is nominated for best actor for his work in The Imitation Game while Oyelowo was overlooked for his brilliant performance in Selma). The problem begins on casting couches. There isn’t enough diversity on any screen (big or small) and David Oyelowo, coming to Cumberbatch’s defense, said that there was “absolutely” an issue with diversity within the film industry, which Cumberbatch was decrying. And while language is definitely something we should continue to re-evaluate, it’s only one part of the bigger picture. That’s why films like Dear White People are so important, and why Hollywood serves as a scapegoat for society. This stuff still makes us uncomfortable. We don’t always know how to talk about it. But I hope that at the very least, we can all agree that we must keep talking. And it proves why movies like Dear White People have value: as a white person, I want very much to be an ally, but clearly our good intentions need to be steered. I don’t know what the answers are, but this movie helped ignite conversation, and it’s clear that white people need to shut up and do some serious listening.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

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Rudolph is celebrating his 50th year of bringing stop-animation joy into our homes this year. Most of us grew up watching this Christmas classic every year but re-watching it as an adult may leave you with a slightly different interpretation.

Yes, it’s tempting to say that Hermey the elf is gay. He’s got snazzy Justin Bieber hair and a lisp that just won’t quit. So is “dentistry” one of the oldest euphemisms for “raging homosexual”? Possibly. But you can’t really tell someone’s gay until they tell you they are, so if Hermey wants to stay in the closet, or is still exploring his options, we’ll let him. Meanwhile, it seems that some of the lady elves have found him to be an excellent dance partner. Sounds like a win all around.

Santa, however, I have issues with. He’s a dick. Definitely sexist. Pretty racist. I mean, he rejects Rudolph on the basis of the colour of his nose alone. He was totally excited about this guy on paper, but red nose? Deal breaker. And he’s a complete ass about the song the elves perform especially for him. I mean, these little dudes slave away all year long for him, and all he can do is criticize? This is not a nice guy. No wonder kids always cry when you plop them on his lap. I will say though that more mall Santas should aspire to his excellent beard grooming. Man’s got some tidy facial hair. Mall Santas always go for the curly bearded look, and I think it’s a mistake. I also enjoyed Santa’s Sherlock hat – who knew he also rocked the deer stalker?

But the best-dressed award goes to Sam, the snowman narrator. Love the tartan vest, the watch fob, his Colonel Sanders tie, heck, his bowler hat’s accessorized with winter berries! Burl Ives pwnd Christmas, y’all.

Yukon Cornelius is a little more lumbersexual, but you have to hand it to him, he’s an inclusive, forward-thinking guy. His sled dogs include a cocker spaniel, a poodle, a Saint Bernard, a collie, and even a little wiener dog. He’s also a champion for immigrant employment. Who else would think that all this time the Abominable Snowman just wanted to dignified work and a decent wage?

I also felt like the Island of Misfit Toys must have planted the seedling of Toy Story into John Lasseter’s brain. Little Johnny would have been about 7 or 8 when Rudolph first aired and he heard a bunch of talking toys utter the magical words “a toy is never truly happy until it is loved by a child.” There was even a cowboy riding an ostrich. Not much of a stretch to Woody, and a dynasty is born.

It’s still a treat to watch this movie though, it takes you back to simpler times, to wearing your flannel jammies and sharing a big bowl of popcorn with siblings while the Christmas specials air. The animation was done primarily in Japan, but the voice work was recorded in Canada. In fact, the woman (!) who voiced Rudolph lived in the same Ontario retirement residence as the guy who voiced Hermey the elf up until her death a few years ago. For many of us, this movie became a Christmas tradition, one that you can honour during the holidays, or you can do like me and totally desecrate it by buying it on DVD and “accidentally” watching the claymation Destiny’s Child video in the bonus features – or worse yet, the Regis Philbin one.

Michelle Pfeiffer’s Still Got It

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Have you noticed on the radio lately that Michelle Pfeiffer has mysteriously reappeared into our collective consciousness?

Vance Joy’s song Riptide makes reference to her – “I swear she’s destined for the screen\ Closest thing to Michelle Pfeiffer that you’ve ever seen.” Which I’m guessing is a hipster compliment.

And then Mark Ronson’s song Uptown Funk (featuring Bruno Marks doing all the hard work) does the same –

This hit
That ice cold
Michelle Pfeiffer
That white gold

So what’s with all this Michelle Pfeiffer worshipping? She hasn’t done anything recently, so I’m assuming there’s a nostalgia factor here, but Michelle’s heyday was arguably the late 80s, maybe early 90s. Bruno Mars was BORN in 1985. Vance Joy? 1987, which means they weren’t even ALIVE when Scarface came out. They would have been in diapers for The Fabulous Baker Boys. They were still pre-pubescent for her Catwoman role in Batman Returns, for christsakes! Even Dangerous Minds is “before their time” and she was already sporting Mom jeans by then. Michelle was born in 1958, which makes her 56, and OLDER THAN MY MOM. And I’m not saying she’s not hot, because, hello.

But the truth is, these random song lyrics are the most relevant she’s been in over a decade. She’s probably not hanging on a lot of dorm walls right now, is all I’m saying.

So, internet, what gives?