[Miscellany]

I am the proud owner of a "Hoyts Reward Card",  that feckless piece of plastic that you hand over so that 19 year old popcorn machine operators can monitor the movies you watch.  Every so often you accumulate enough points to warrant a free popcorn from the Candy Bar or (joy!) a $10 movie.  Since going to the movies costs about $19 these days this is a quite welcome present.

The other day I decided to log on  to my account for the first time since I got the card. My first thought was "wow, I go to the movies a lot".  My second thought was "wow, I pay to see a lot of shitty movies".  Since I have a rather self-inflated perspective on what you think about the pop culture I consume I thought I might share them in a completely inept move review format for you.





Okay, okay so it's not as funny, genuine or even as interesting as Bridesmaids.  Sorry folk, but that comedy ship has sailed.  Now that we've seen a bride defecating in the middle of a busy road the land of girl comedy has changed forever.  I like a buddy flick.  I like a female buddy flick and this one pushed a lot of boundaries and I like that about it.  It fell short on a lot of different levels and perhaps Bullock isn't quite up to the task of handling this kind of comedy and that unfortunately made the acting feel a little forced.  This wasn't the best thing I've ever seen but I laughed... like... a lot.

3.5 stars.






If the merit of cinema was based on rape jokes, pissing and vomit then this movie would win all the Academy Awards and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.  In the real world however the CGI Angels of Death in this POS film do a more believable job of conveying a semblance of real emotion than the actors do.

1 star.







How can two guys who've had more barely legal pussy than Ron Jeremy and Bieber combined be so far removed from what the young hipsters are into?  Apparently they are hazy on what www.google.com actually does. Well boys, in case you didn't know Google is the search engine you use to find that mountain of midget porn you've been watching.  Uh huh.  That hole in the storyline aside it wasn't that bad.  It wasn't that good, but... it wasn't that bad.

2.5 stars.








Henry Cavill is hot.  The movie is shite but he is hot.  That's all you need to know.

2 stars.







I'd actually forgotten I'd gone to see this THAT'S how forgettable this movie was.

2 stars.







It's visual eye candy.  Pity about the lack of an interesting and cohesive storyline though.  It had some funny/exciting moments but ultimately this movie falls down as the typical 3rd movie in an overcooked series that should have begun and ended at the supremely awesome #1.

3 stars.







I liked it.  Somehow that little kid from About a Boy (Nicholas Hoult) makes zombies seem sweet and lovely.  After all, they're really just misunderstood, socially awkward people stuck in the bodies of decaying brain eaters.  You just want him to stop being so Autistic and just get the girl (just like in any other Rom Com).  Cute movie, lots of funny bits - it doesn't take itself too seriously and neither should you.  Don't be dick and start comparing it to Shaun of the Dead and realising it comes up short - duhhhh - no, it's not even in the same league, get over it.  Just enjoy.

3.5 stars.




Brilliant!  Bravo!  Edge of your seat kind of storyline.  A movie that is not quite as it seems.  Very clever and will charm the pants off you.

4 stars.






I'd love to say it was so bad that it was good (that was my aim in seeing it) but I'd be lying.  It was so bad that I actually took out my phone and started playing Candy Crush Saga about a quarter way through it.  The whole movie was a WTF moment.  The "climax" takes place in Cernobyl.  Yes, THE Chernobyl.  Explosions happen a the power plant.  Seriously?  Yes, seriously.

I doubt they let any human anywhere near that place even 27 years on.  Meanwhile all the characters are parading about in t-shirts and swimming in the radio-active water.  At the same time (nuclear? Does it matter?) bombs are being detonated left, right and centre.  Surely someone should have let the costume department know about including 'protective suits' in the wardrobe.

They really should have all gotten the "Yippie Kay Oh" out of there, as I wish I had about 20 minutes in.

1 star.





Meh

2 Stars.




And now for some non Hoyts movies...



Dark as hell but also incredibly touching (How?  Who the fuck knows, just go with it).  Loved it! What's his face can actually act... okay, the jury is still out on that but he did a fine job.    Fine job indeed.

4.5 stars.






Like watching the dream sequence from Twin Peaks without any of the other storyline.  David Lynch WISHES he could dream up something this fucked up.  Visually stunning and stylistically wonderful.  As always, the mood is in the silences and lack of dialogue, but WTF man?  I seriously felt like I was on shrooms watching it.  In fact I wish I'd had some shrooms.

2.5 stars.







I loved this book.  I've loved the movies that came before.  I liked this movie.  All performances were excellent.  The direction was okay.  DiCraprio was really good as Gatsby.  I think it tried too hard to be "roaring twenties".  We get it.  The Great War was over and everyone was set to party.  No need to shove it in our faces Baz, I'm sure we can figure it out on our own, we're not retarded.

2.5 stars.







Really good.  Really, really, REALLY good.  The only thing I need to fault is Cianfrance slipping too much in with too much detail into a movie that already felt a little long.  Usually when people say that movies feel a little long they mean that it was boring but I don't mean that.  It wasn't boring AT ALL, it was brilliant, beautiful, shocking etc. but there were three generational stories here that all felt a little short changed in the transition of story lines - even though I can't think of how else you'd do it and give them all justice.  But now I'm nitpicking.  You'll love it.

4 stars.



So what have you seen lately?

Labels: cinema, film, movies, opinions, pop culture, review, scopophilia

posted by M at 12:59 pm 14 comments

A couple of months ago when I wrote a post about the (lack of) visibility of the penis in contemporary mainstream cinema I never thought that it would be so soon between drinks (so to speak) and I could again be subjected to the same enjoyable spectacle. Yes folks, penis spotting is alive an well in the Sex and the City movie currently doing the rounds at the cinemas.

Funnily enough it wasn't really the penis itself that interested me this time, more that the so called traditional male gaze of the camera had been flipped and twisted for a second into an almost unheard of female gaze. It was a bit of a shock to me that I became so aware of the switch in the first place. I had just assumed that a movie about women and basically made for women would be filmed primarily with a female gaze - god knows the subject matter would probably bore any heterosexual man to a slow and painful death -but I assumed wrong. It seems that the female gaze remains as highly elusive in popular mainstream cinema as it ever was and I don't think this phenomenon is due to any kind of big conspiracy either - it just is that way, god knows why but it just is. The fact is that a female perspective in cinema may exist in so far as subject matter and characterisation is concerned but not in terms of cinematography. Does it even matter? I don't know - does it? Women look at women's bodies all the time - the difference is that while we will, can and do appreciate the female form this is not necessarily a sexually laden gaze - does the male gaze of the camera lens take this concept fully into consideration or is it just all knowing and omnipresent like God? It is all gazes, it is the only gaze, it is supreme and all accommodating? And if this is the case why did I get the shock of my life when I finally recognised the female camera gaze? Hm, why indeed?

The scene in question was the a shower scene where man-crazy Samantha pervs on her neighbour as he takes a naked outdoor shower (as you do in California apparently). The camera moves slowly and lovingly over the man's body, focusing on his heavily defined and muscular back and perfect bum and right down to his strong, tanned and not too hairy legs before it travels back up again to it's final destination - the money shot. If I ever needed a moment to tell me what women see when they are having a good perv that was it. I had become so accustomed to viewing cinema through the filter of the male gaze (camera) that I had to think twice in order to recognise my own. It felt foreign to see something filmed so entirely from the point of view of a woman that I completely disengaged from watching the movie. I remember thinking "oh, now that's interesting" - but it wasn't his body, it was the camera that I found interesting. Also the sudden representation of a female filter by which to watch a movie, one I had naively assumed I had always viewed movies with, was just so strange. The fact that I had just realised then just how strange it was unnerved me - the movie while being female-centric was filmed primarily in classic male gaze form. The point being of course not that this was done in order to exclude women, just the opposite the point is that we, women, are most comfortable in viewing cinema (all art?) in this way. The question of course then is why?

When I have theorised the male gaze of the camera in the past it is always with reference to old movies of the Hitchcockian era (and of course Laura Mulvey) where scopophilia really was a male dominated art form. I'd assumed due to various changes in movie subject matter, the rise of female directors and indeed the societal changes due to the women's movement that cinema had changed too. Ahem - perhaps not.

It's funny that it took *this* particular movie based on a series so obsessed with highlighting the *look we've come so far because now we can have sex like men* cliche, to drum the point home. We women are comfortable seeing ourselves through the point of view of how men see us - and perhaps this is highlighted in many of the female-centric things we partake in
(beauty myth etc) and I don't know that we'd even want to change that if we had the chance anyway. The question for me still is, why? I still can't answer it - it's ingrained there somewhere between why we will willingly pay for the pleasure of ripping the hair out of our most sensitive places and why GW Bush was ever re-elected. Questions I guess that answering will open a can of worms so big it can never be contained. Maybe we need that, I don't know but I do think it's highly fucked up that the so called female camera gaze existed for a grand total of 10 seconds in a movie based on women and made for women. Food for thought.

On another note, almost every (straight) guy I know loathes these women, the series, the whole premise of the show etc. Is it hated because it's subversive or because it's bullshit? I've said it before but when something is hated then it's always because a few buttons are in the process of being well and truly pushed.

What say you? Are there any movies you can recommend that show the female gaze in action? Remember female subject matter/characterisation do not necessarily mean a female gaze..

Sex and the City - do you hate it/them? Why?


And now my musical choice today comes of my female gaze quite happily looking through the filter of the male gaze. Go figure! Here we have the Duck Man performing probably my favourite of all songs I've ever discovered through watching a movie - Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness. A scene I love so much I shared it with my university film class as "a favourite" and a song I love so much I rang Gold FM to request it and was sternly told that "we don't play *that*". Hmph! Here are my two favourite things, movies and music combined. Okay, three favourites: Duckie.
...Apparently he has strong lips. Bless!

Try A Little Tenderness - Otis Redding.

Labels: bodies, cinema, dirty femmo, film theory, gaze, men, movies, musical monday, objectification, scopophilia, sex, women

posted by M at 9:36 pm 25 comments

There isn't a lot of full frontal male nudity around in mainstream movies is there?

The point was hammered home yesterday when I went to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall at the cinema. Yes, yes fine I realise it's not exactly high quality cinema but then again I don't have a stick up my arse about only watching movies that win at Sundance. Anyway, within the first 20 minutes or so there is a rather unassuming and flaccid CINEMASCOPE SIZED PENIS displayed for all to see. Hellooooooo sailor!

Perhaps the copious amounts of xxx porn I consume (What? Who said that?) has desensitized me to all penises -big and small- but I wasn't all that shocked to see it hanging there. In context, sure I realised that you don't usually pay your $15 bucks for penis and popcorn but overall it was pretty underwhelming. This view was not shared by the woman and man sitting behind me who clucked their tongues and she even said "oh my god, can you believe this?" and he replied with another disapproving click of the tongue.

Okay there are a couple of things going on here:

Firstly - Surely "from the makers of Knocked Up and 40 Year old Virgin" highlighted on the poster should have been a big giveaway that this wasn't going to be a deMille classic.

Secondly - I bet if a couple of enormous, plastic surgeried (made up word), blemish/scar free, perfectly airbrushed chesticles with nipples so erect that they could poke a man blind were presented on an actress of anorexic proportions who sported a bush that was expertly waxed to show a "landing strip" and little else then noone but the bible bashers from friggin Alabama would complain. Am I right? Ohhhh, but put a penis on screen for literally one second and everyone is clucking their tongues disapprovingly.

The hypocrisy kills me. I grew up seeing more boobs and bush on television than I saw green veggies on my dinner plate - penises simply don't get a gong on the tele. Why is it okay for the mainstream camera to linger on a naked woman's body like she's being stalked but a penis is rarely if ever shown in any context other than comedy or in a blink and you'll miss it sequence? Pretty much every building in the world is a homage to the brilliant architecture of the penis and every war that has ever been fought is a testament to the mighty power of those dick(head)s, every hotted up red sports car a metaphor for a man who wishes he had one and pretty much every man drunk off his man boobs figures he has the supreme privilege to flash it to anyone who has eyes - and yet penis on screen - oh no, we've gone too far now.

I can think of one type of cinema where lingering shots of the penis are displayed in their glory. Gay cinema. Maybe there's something in that. If gay cinema has the market on the penis then does that mean that mainstream cinema is hetero-sexist?

Is a penis really more offensive than a vulva? Or... Is it too sacred to be displayed in a manner where we can purchase it easily and without embarrassment on DVD like we can with the female body (take your pick of movie, there's millions)? Or can we boil all this down to rampant homophobia on the part of the consumers and studio system alike, thus: a fear of men watching other men's penises in a darkened cinema will turn all straight men gay?

What is it about the penis?

Labels: cinema, men, movies, objectification, penis, scopophilia, voyerism, women

posted by M at 9:18 am 15 comments