Well, I had planned to watch The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure this week for the Deep Hurting Project, since the library's still only open for curbside pickups. Unfortunately, while the other two movies (Husbands and Marnie) are ready for pickup, Oogieloves is not for whatever reason, despite there being two copies available. So, in lieu of that, I've decided to watch another film: A Certain Sacrifice. It's best described as a coming-of-age/horror/rape-revenge movie. Well, technically, it's a student film shot on a very low budget (the only number I can find is the female lead, Louise Ciccone, got $100 to pay for her rent) over two years. The only reason it got a release is because, a few years after it was made, said female lead wound up being the most popular singer on the planet: Madonna. For what it's worth, she doesn't sing, but does get nude. So, to capitalise on her fame, he slapped what he could together, released it on VHS (with a few theatrical screenings,) and almost immediately got slapped with a lawsuit from Madonna and an offer from her to buy the rights for $5,000. The director offered to show her the finished film around this time, and apparently, she watched the film in horror, eventually telling him "fuck you." The director still has nothing but kind things to say about her, for what it's worth. 

• 0:18: So, why is Stephen Lewicki trying to sound like a Mexican Wolfman Jack?
  
• 0:45: Well, at least there's one point in this movie's favour: he actually knows how to pronounce "Dashiell" properly.
  
• 1:10: What the fuck is this third-tier Public Image Ltd. shit?
  
• 2:25:This might be a semi-decent imitation of John Cassavetes, except the music should be less polished, done by someone with some actual talent, and over one of the less dialogue-heavy scenes.
  
• 3:16: This is the worst fucking rendition of "Pomp and Circumstances" I have ever heard.
  
• 4:23: The score is starting to remind me of Wendy Carlos' score for ACO, except far worse. This is the worst score I've ever heard for a movie.
  
• 6:00: Is that the only reason he's in the movie? To drop the title?
  
• 6:20: He says he doesn't want to be normal, except he doesn't act like anything but a normal teen. Except maybe for the scene where he was trying to shoot himself in the beginning.
  
• 8:56: This scene of Stephen and Madonna frolicking in a fountain might have been more charming if not for the fact that it's shot in such a claustrophobic way, that this is the first time we meet her and there's no dialogue whatsoever (so we have no idea who she is besides her being a bad girl named Bruna), and that half the time, you can't tell whether he's trying to fool around with her or commit ADW. Or who's trying to commit ADW on who.
  
• 11:54: For some reason, Lewicki's idea of a cool new look is to dress like Sarah Silverman in drag with tinted shades, fur collars, and a crucifix lapel for some reason.
  
• 12:02: Okay, so we get a full name for this guy: Raymond Hall, which implies he's an important character. And he has this scene where they talk in a diner and for most of the length of the scene, the characters' dialogue is overshadowed by their fucking utensils.
  
• 13:41: Okay, so now we hear what he has to say, and he's bewildered at the existence of black people. You know, the sad thing is I knew someone like this at  my autism support group.
  
• Also, Dashiell's apparently a philosopher. I forgot the time stamp.
  
• 18:07: Holy Hell, this scene has gone on for a third of the movie so far.
  
• 21:56: Final score: that scene was just over 10 minutes. Close to half of the movie so far. And a bit less than a sixth of the film's total length.
  
• 22:39: This would be a Hell of a lot sexier if I knew what the fuck was going on. Instead, this is just Madonna and her "family of lovers", a man, a woman, and a transvestite? And for about a minute, it's basically like the Ecstasy of the Gold scene from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly if Sergio Leone had never held a camera before in his life before one of them screams and they just start fighting and fucking.
  
• 23:22: So, the guy takes a knife, while the girl and the cross-dresser hold Madonna down and they... cut a lock off her hair?
  
• 24:04: Well, that nudity was disappointing. For what it's worth, there's a hell of a lot more explicit material from her online and you don't have to suffer what may be one of the worst movies I've ever seen to deal with it.
  
• 26:35: Is the sexual violence supposed to mean something or is this just his way of admitting he has no idea how to portray eroticism on film so he has to mix it with fight scenes?
  
• 29:24: Is that the first note of "Centerfold?"
  
• 30:04: Well, I'll be damned, there's a decently performed scene of sensuality. It had to follow 3 1/2 minutes of a poorly-written scene of Bruna trying to explain her "Family of Lovers" while the TARDIS tries to materialise off-camera for half of the scene.
  
• 30:40: I'm sure there's someone this reminds me of. I wish I could put my finger on who.
  
• 31:39: Andrew Dice Clay, I think that's who it is.
  
• 32:08: I don't know if he's saying "Demon" or "Penis" anymore.
  
• 34:12: Why is this old lady shot like she's being raped?
  
• 35:14: So, that's three scenes in a row with no apparent connection with one another.
  
• 36:09: So, he's hassling a bag lady over her stealing his jacket, which he promptly discards again?
  
• 36:30: Make that four.
  
• 37:20: So, the thrust of this scene is a black guy trying to bum off a quarter from a guy in a cowboy hat that I only just now figured out is supposed to be Raymond Hall.
  
• 39:12: So, he's grabbing Bruna through this open window that's apparently just there on the door of the ladies' locker room. Well, at  least we've got one transphobic talking point debunked: if a man wants to go to a ladies' room to assault a girl, they don't have to pretend to be a transwoman. They can just do it without even bothering to present as female.
  
• 39:46: Well, someone's nasal membranes had a bad reaction to that cocaine they just snorted.
  
• 39:48: Sadly, that line would have been much improved by being delivered by a talking penis.
  
• 41:59: Why would walking around garbage help Bruna after getting raped?
  
• 43:06: So, he's apparently asking Bruna to help ensnare the man who just raped her? Do you think you could save the whole "victim confronting her rapist" thing for after he's been successfully subdued and she can finish him so she's less likely to get triggered and bollix the whole thing up?
  
• 45:00:
  And how can they afford a limo? You know, maybe you could have used that Hombre Lobo Juan voice to fill in some of the details. Okay, fun fact: Andrzej Zulawski made On the Silver Globe in 1977, and, after about 80% of the film had been shot, the production was shut down because Communism. Eventually, about a decade later, he got the chance to go back to the footage already shot. And since it wouldn't do to have scenes were the actors are suddenly 10 years older (or maybe 5 because actors age slowly, due to their vanity), and he probably couldn't get them anyway, he decided to try and narrate what happened during unshot scenes while showing footage of contemporary Warsaw. It helps make it slightly more coherent. This approach might have actually helped this movie.
• 45:14: And now it's a sample from "Like a Virgin?"
  
• 46:42: There's a porno called "Hard Soap"?
  
• 47:29: You know, the sad thing is I can imagine that someone could get away with a kidnapping in broad daylight in New York at that time.
  
• 48:20: "Shut the Fuck Up!" Said to something we could barely hear because the dialogue was overshadowed by the Star-Spangled Banner for some reason.
  
• 49:20: Is there a point to making Raymond Hall watch him workshop this one-man minstrel show?
  
• 51:00: I'm starting to think this may be worse than Disaster Movie.
  
• 51:20: I'm starting to regret not watching Midsommar.
  
• 52:00: So, apparently, this scene is supposed to represent their unique way of dispatching Raymond Hall. Well, you know how the movie's called [i]A Certain Sacrifice[i]? Well, this is it: a human sacrifice. To Satan. And it comes straight the fuck out of nowhere.
  
• 54:33: Your patience has reached the last hour? This scene is reaching its third minute and you've focused more on performing your dress rehearsal for this shitty rock opera than doing anything. It goes on for three more minutes and we barely see much of the actual sacrifice.
  
• 58:32: So, he's smearing her with V8?
  

Well, at this point, the only thing that's keeping me from saying this is the worst movie is my niggling doubt that this even counts as a movie, since it looks like it's clearly unfinished. But, then again, the director did put this 60-minute abortion together, and even put it in theaters, so I guess it helps.

‘An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn’. Indescribably brilliant. 9/10.



Boru

Richard Jewell


9/10

A great insight into the problem of "justice" by mass media and the court of public opinion.

Watched Ad Astra - fucking boring with two shitty actors that never could act.
Then attempted The house that Jack built.
Made it to about twenty mins in - fucking boring.

This week in the Deep Hurting Project, the 1999 animated remake of The King and I.

• Okay, maybe they changed the overture music for the first film, but did the original overture have this much emphasis on long orchestral chords.
  
• So, this is new: it opens on a storm on the voyage to Siam, and somehow, the boat does not match with the surroundings at all.
  
• So, there's this guy who's watching her boat on this Stargate-looking thing, and apparently, this is the Kralahome, the guy who did nothing in the original except walk around without a shirt and temporarily shock the Leonowenses. He's the villain now.
  
• Does he even need evil plans for the westerner to think the King is a barbarian? Shouldn't the culture shock and imperialist mindset take care of that? And why, if they were convinced that the King was a barbarian, do you think they'd keep a Thai person in charge and not, say, have themselves take it over totally, like they did with India?
  
• So, why is that dragon's fire circling and not, you know, striking the boat directly?
  
• So, "Whistle a Happy Tune" is used in the most bizarre way: the boat's being attacked by a black dragon whose fire circles around the boat and Anna sings the song to try and suppress her fear and this song somehow defeats it.
  
• You know, one of the biggest flaws with the original (besides the fact that the original play was based on a novelization of several memoirs that sometimes either played fast and loose with the truth or just took hearsay and treated it as fact; the whole Tuptim subplot was an example of this) was that the Asians all speak in this weird broken dialect, even when they're alone, and this kind of ups the ante by adding several more characters that are more stereotypical, like, for instance, Master Little, the Kralahome's sidekick, who speaks in a voice that sounds like a cross between a stereotypical Asian accent, a stereotypical Mexican accent, and a bad Patton Oswalt impression. He's blatant cringe, especially given that, beyond his accent and his job, his most defining trait is that he runs into things and his teeth fall out. This happens 3 times in the first 15 minutes. As dodgy as the portrayals of the Asians in the film are, at least Hammerstein had the good sense to not fall TOTALLY into stereotyping. At least they tried to create fully realised characters and not just offensive cutouts. If they can try that in 1950, what the fuck are they doing in 1999? That said, the Kralahome at least speaks perfect English.
  
• Why does Tuptim fall in love with the Crown Prince in this version?
  
• Why is "Getting to Know You"  the equivalent of those random-ass animal fights that sometimes dominate the talkier parts of Chick Tracts? Wait, is this their attempt at turning it into the montage of the von Trapp children going to town in The Sound of Music? Did they know in advance they weren't going to get the chance to do another animated Rodgers and Hammerstein movie, so they inserted some of that in there?
  
• If "Whistle a Happy Tune" wasn't bizarre, "A Puzzlement" is itself a Puzzlement. It just has to be seen to be believed:
  And no, the statues are never hinted at being alive before this, and they never come back to life.
• How does she not know what the Crown Prince looks like?
  
• Wait, did Anna ever promise the King that her head would never be higher than his? Even in the original, she never promised this. In this version, it's barely even mentioned. This may be a function of a play that's over two hours being compressed to an hour and a half with added horseshit. 
  
• Wait, the Hot Air Balloon is unnatural for the British in 1862?  Maybe 80 years prior, but while the Wikipedia page is silent on the history of the balloon between 1794 and 1960 for whatever reason, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they would have been familiar with it for decades before that. 
  
• ... does The King's balloon have a fucking propeller? Are you that fucking unfamiliar with the history of air travel?
  And the blatant anachronism aside, what purpose would a propeller serve on a hot air balloon?
• Please tell me Tuptim didn't survive going down a river of lava unscathed...
  
• Well, dancing with a lit sparkler doesn't seem safe, especially when you're doing it to celebrate a regicide
  
• And of course the movie fakes us out for thinking The King is dead. Of course.
  
• And why are there still 15 minutes left in the movie?
  

‘The Old Guard’ (2020). A surprisingly engaging Netflix original with Charlize Theron as a 2500 year old axe wielding Scythian warrior who leads a small band of her fellow immortals fighting what they decide are the bad guys. Apart from a few cheesy lines, the inevitable plot holes you get in action films, and a rather ham-handed lead-in to a sequel, I kinda sorta liked it. 6.5/10.

Boru

(July 11, 2020 at 8:41 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: ‘The Old Guard’ (2020). A surprisingly engaging Netflix original with Charlize Theron as a 2500 year old axe wielding Scythian warrior who leads a small band of her fellow immortals fighting what they decide are the bad guys. Apart from a few cheesy lines, the inevitable plot holes you get in action films, and a rather ham-handed lead-in to a sequel, I kinda sorta liked it. 6.5/10.

Boru

this movie should be adapted in to a tv series in all honesty. the film sets the stage for later films (even better if they turn it in to a netflix series). merrick was just enough of a threat to progress the film. He was the villain the film need.