Kill Everybody In The Whole World

Transgender Day of Remembrance

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 22:33:00 +0000

Another day to remember the dead. The official dead, the ones we'll never know about, the ones who were driven to suicide and the ones who've had their lives irreparably destroyed even though they're still technically alive.

There's not a lot for me to say. A lot of better qualified and smarter people are saying it. Stay safe out there.

Faded Glories, The Motion Picture.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Fri, 16 May 2014 00:16:00 +0000

I didn't watch Eurovision so I just caught up with Conchita Wurst's performance and all I could think was "Hmm, that sounds a lot like a Bond theme to me." Then I started wondering if a trans Bond Girl would be a step forward, a step sideways or simply a tragic example of assimilation and sexualization. Which made me realize that I need to finish up these reviews and get this franchise out of my head once and for all. Seriously. It stopped being fun a long time ago.

Having said that, they really should get Wurst to do the next Bond theme.

So on with A View To A Kill, a film which caused a faint bleached sadness to consume me. At this point, the producers were desperate to try to make Bond feel up to date and relevant (without spending any more money) while realizing that nostalgia was the main reason people still watched them. The result is a plastic eighties gloss that has dated very badly. Blacklight and Spandau Ballet were both lucky to get fifteen minutes of fame before everyone realized that both were serious migraine triggers. Why did the mysterious forces of pop-culture insist that a women needed to be at least 20% hair to be an acceptable heroine? It was a strange time and the worst is that we're moving into an era that I dimly remember but can't quite believe I actually experienced. Because real people never actually look like the ones on film, the eighties is one of the few periods in which reality actually looked better. Still I can't see the bubble perm making a comeback.

Remembering that recruiting cast members from The Avengers had worked well for them before, they got Patrick Macnee in a supporting role, presumably to find someone who looked even more past it than their star. This may have backfired a little as he contributes to the feeling of better days past they were trying to avoid and he seems enthusiastic. Which is a lot more than could be said for Roger Moore who apparently hated the film, hated being older than his leading lady's mother and is visibly scared of Grace Jones during their sex scene together. Grace Jones is pretty much the film's sole virtue. Her line readings are terrible but so is the dialogue and she's always enjoyable to watch. She and Christopher Walken are superhuman but sociopathic products of a Nazi breeding experiment to create uber-babies by injecting pregnant mothers with vast amounts of steroids (no, this would not work). He has a plan involving a microchip that's been hardened against the Russians setting off an EMP pulse (pay attention, this plot point will recur in later films) and flooding Silicon Valley to get a monopoly on said microchips. This feels like a bit of a comedown, what happened to the crazed villains who wanted to destroy the world?

Almost everyone in the film looks tired, grumpy and like they just wanted to get it over with (as indeed do I). I shall cheer myself up by looking at photos of the spectacular hotness of young Christopher Walken before moving on.

Grace Jones' career as an aerobics instructor reaches it's inevitable conclusion.

Tears of a clown.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 02:57:00 +0000

No matter how hard they try, camp always leaks back into the Bond films. In this case, by naming the film Octopussy and making the title character a beautiful jewel thief and head of a cult of amazon circus performers, camp doesn't so much leak as gush back into the series. Also Roger Moore defuses a nuclear bomb while dressed as a sad clown (literally).

This is one of the Bond's where the theme song doesn't try to incorporate the film's title, although it is pretty bad. Octopussy herself starts out as a villain but has a thing for Bond because he let her father kill himself. There seemed to be nothing that Bond could do that the screenwriters wouldn't see as a reason for women to fall in love with him. Despite her apparent strength, she suffers badly from love interest incompetence. She seems to be doing quite well until Bond is nearby, at which point she becomes helpless and needs saving. I thought I'd seen her somewhere before and I had, Maud Adams was also in The Man With The Golden Gun as the girlfriend Christopher Lee murders. Fun fact: Octopussy was originally supposed to be Indian but the British film industry couldn't actually pull up more than two Indian actresses at the time.

The finale sees the Octopus Cult (non-religious) storm the baddies palace using a mixture of belly dancing, circus skills and the best in early 80s ladies kickboxing. It's not as much fun as it sounds though. By this point, the creative team were aware of the film's destiny; to be watched by bored families on Saturday afternoons when there was nothing else on. There's a strong feeling of pre-nostalgia that's oddly heightened by having Bond bring Q into the field for no better reason than to give the people more Desmond Llewelyn face time. Despite being in direct competition with the unofficial Bond, Never Say Never Again, it still managed to make a bunch of money but not as much For Your Eyes Only. It was clear that it wasn't just the creative returns that were diminishing.

Nobody loves an axe wielding clown.

The eyes are fine but what about my ears?

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 01:59:00 +0000

The 1980s were not kind to Bond. For over a decade the Bond films were the biggest thing going but now Hollywood was doing the same thing but bigger. As delightful as I find Moonraker's miniature shots, they did look static and old-fashioned next to Star Wars. Indiana Jones was directly inspired by Lucas and Spielberg wanting to do Bond but more fun and they pretty much succeeded. For better or worse, the modern effects blockbuster had been born and next to them the Bond films looked kind of shabby, more like an upscale episode of Dempsey & Makepeace than the kind of spectacle America was producing. It would take a decade to catch up, a decade of terrible soft-rock theme songs.

For Your Eyes Only is notable for two things. It's the first time the Russians are actually the bad guys. Despite the series reputation as a Cold War artefact the Russians are almost never the bad guys, it had always been SPECTRE in the early films and a series of billionaire mad scientist after them. You could actually make a case for Bond as anti-capitalist as evil billionaires are the most common type of Bond villain, right up to the Daniel Craig years.

More importantly, it's the only Bond film where the titles actually feature the person singing. Shirley Bassey didn't get honoured that way. Tina Turner didn't get honoured that way. Yet Sheena Easton singing the most hideous piece of treacly 80's sentimentality this side of Whitney Houston gets immortalized amidst the bubbling water, spinning guns and silhouetted nudity that was already a much parodied cliché by this point. Come back Lulu, all is forgiven (actually no don't, it isn't).

Having realized they'd gone as camp as they could get away with last time, the producers softly reboot here and try to make Bond a serious secret-agent here but they decided not to recast, which makes it a fairly hollow attempt as Roger Moore is inherently camp. The idea that all young woman want a sophisticated father figure to treat them like a little girl and introduce them to boning was still a cultural meme at the time and the incredible creepiness of this viewed today makes me realize how long ago the 80s really were. I can't quite believe I lived through this era but apparently I did. Otherwise the film is a boring attempt to recapture the early days so you can almost believe your watching From Russia With Love, Thunderball or On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Mostly though, the emphasis on "exotic" locations makes it look like the kind of holiday programme that has thankfully died out in the modern era. But it made a ton of money so the series chundered on as must I. Courage friends, not much longer.

Sadly, this is as Thunderbirds as it gets.

Miniature perfection.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 23:32:00 +0000

Moonraker is clearly my favourite Bond film by a long way because it knows what it's main draw is. Long, lingering close-ups of stunningly beautiful models, lit and filmed with obsessive love to produce the most ravishing images possible.

What kind of model were you expecting?

If you've a weakness for old-school effects work, Moonraker is an almost indecently enjoyable film.

THUNDERBIRDS

ARE

FUCKING


GO!!! Oh god yes!

If you're a fan of original storylines however, the film is a dismal failure. The bad guy is a rich megalomaniac who wants to wipe out humanity and repopulate the world with his carefully chosen minions and WHERE HAVE WE HEARD THAT STORY BEFORE? Could it have been the film immediately before this one? Yes, yes it could. As the novel had nothing to do with space travel and Star Wars had been a big hit, they just recycled the plot of The Spy Who Loved Me but in space instead of underwater. This is also where the series collapses into puns so bad that they're not even puns anymore: "Look after Mr Bond, see that some harm comes to him." THAT'S NOT A PUN.

At least this villain remembers that he'll need breeding pairs to produce a new master race of genetically perfect humans. The film has a romantic montage were we see these couples flying into space, smiling tenderly at each other. I remind you that all of these people are OK with genocide on a scale the Nazis never even tried for.

I realize I forgot to discuss ableism in the series with regards to Jaws, the giant henchman who gives fatal hickeys with his alarmingly blunt looking metal teeth, continuing the series correlation of physical difference and evil. His Wile E Coyote impression had been so popular in The Spy Who Loved Me that they brought him back for this one and had him converted to good by the love of a bespectacled Alpine maid.

Worried that I might be frightened by him when I first saw this film, my mother hastened to reassure me that he was "a gentle giant in real life". As a child I believed that anything alliterative was true and anything said by my mum was true. So this was like double true. As result, I grew up thinking that anyone over six and a half feet tall must be kindly and sweet-natured. Apparently I wasn't the only one. When Richard Kiel did in-person appearances in the 80's he often had trouble moving due to the number of small children who attached themselves to his legs.

We also have an evil Japanese henchman who tries to kill Bond with his evil Kendo, in a morally neutral glassblowing museum because what else would happen in such a place?

Feminism was just on the cusp of it's influence before the backlash so we get an only slightly wooden Lois Childs as one of Bond's most capable heroines. She's Bond's CIA counterpart and their hooking up seems to be mutually regarded as the spy equivalent of a fling at a business conference. Her skills are just as vital to the mission as his and she actually looks old enough to have them. She's Bond's equal in more ways than one.

I can fight as stiffly and awkwardly as any man.

As this is a Bond film she's still stuck being called Holly Goodhead but you can't have everything. Titles are full of dry ice and trampolining women and the song is mostly memorable for being a tender ballad sung by Shirley Bassey. It's like hearing a gong try to croon.

This marks the end of the Thunderbirds Are Go period of Bond. The series would never be this enjoyably camp again (camp yes, but not enjoyably). Shit. This is only the halfway point. I've still got another 11 of these fuckers to write and I haven't even watched Skyfall yet. Why did I think this was a good idea? I feel very cold.

Transgender Day Of Remembrance.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 23:06:00 +0000

It's a bitterly cold night out which seems appropriate. Another long list of people who are dead now and shouldn't be, killed mostly by ignorant bigots who don't know how much they're letting their dysfunction show and reported by media with a startling lack of anything resembling decency. IS the list shorter this year? It can never be short enough and it's always incomplete. It doesn't include all the people who are harried into the grave, who kill themselves in despair or die from neglect and poverty. We will never know how many have really died. I don't believe in blessings or prayers but I say them anyway because.

Love was a euphemism in the seventies.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Sat, 16 Nov 2013 05:13:00 +0000

It's disquieting that this blog has spent the year preoccupied with something as crap as Bond films, it was never meant to take this long. But it's too late to go back my darlings, that way lies only madness, the abyss and toupees. We must go on.

On to The Spy Who Loved Me or to give it's full title, The Spy Who Loved Me Five Times In One Night If You Know What I Mean And I Think You Do. This is where the series penchant for innuendo comes to a gushingly wet climax. I thought the theme song had a double meaning but listening to it properly it really just has a single meaning. It's just short of three minutes of Carly Simon swooning over Bond's magic sex powers which have ruined her forever for all other lovers, contriving to sound as if he only just got finished. The titles accompany this with "tastefully" naked woman cavorting in soft focus with big, hard guns that could go off at any minute.

Feminism was becoming a force in pop culture at this time and the Bond films responded with a mix of self-determined woman and soothing sexism. It doesn't matter that Major Anya Amasova has her own back story, motivations and character arc. She's still codenamed Agent Triple X, she still doesn't really get any action of her own if you don't count occasional druggings and she's still going to have to fall in love with Bond, even though he killed the man she loved literally a couple of days before they meet and spends most of their time together patronizing her rigid. At the films climax she is forced to don a skimpy cocktail dress and tied to a chair till it's all over. Barbara Bach is convincing when annoyed and less convincing when required to be in love. She would later describe Bond as "a chauvinist pig who uses girls to shield him from bullets".

This is the consolatory fantasy Bond offers the nervous male ego. Yes, there will be woman who are intimidatingly intelligent, capable and maybe even full on asskicking but even if you must kowtow to them in real life, your fantasy alter-ego can still be incredibly condescending to them and still get them to fall for him and forget this silly nonsense about being independent because really, they're lost without you. Woman are not just strong but also soft and disposable, like high quality toilet paper.

The condescending thing is interesting as Bond ends up sounding extremely catty. In fact, this film represents heterosexual camp at it's most flaming culminating in the comedy version of the theme song that plays over the credits, making it sound like he took some time after exhausting Carly Simon to pleasure the cast of It Ain't Half Hot Mum. Racism levels remain moderately high with almost the entire population of Egypt played by white people.

Fortunately the film contains all the things I like most in a Bond film. Terrible puns, fabulous old school effects that don't quite seamlessly integrate models and live action,

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!

and a mad scientist trying to destroy the world so he can establish his perfect underwater society which wouldn't last long as he doesn't seem to have any woman on staff.

TSWLM also has lots of my favourite thing of all: Roger Moore trying to fight. Watching him do this is a joy that will never stale for me. His physicality is that of a man too embarrassed to tell his much younger wife that he's no longer up to doubles tennis with the Barrington-Smythes. It's not really an age thing, I doubt Roger Moore could ever have been accused of being rugged. Those early knitwear adverts took their toll.

Actually, I'm vain because the song really is about me.

I've achieved a thing.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 22:59:00 +0000

I've now done more posts today than I did in the whole of last year. Admittedly this one is kind of cheating but still.

Isn't gold too soft a metal for effective ballistic use?

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 22:51:00 +0000

The Man With The Golden Gun is where I started to relax into the sheer stupidity of the Moore-era Bonds. The bad puns, the ridiculous plots, the model shots, the incredibly stiff fight scenes, it's all a soothing balm to my nerves. They continue to be problematic to put it mildly but I'm now having fun with it. The most notable thing about this film is it's theme song, the worst so far and a strong contender for worst ever. This was an era in which Lulu was considered acceptable in a way that she never would be again.

As for the rest, we've got Christopher Lee and his third nipple, an unwelcome reappearance by Sheriff JW Pepper and a return to Asia as You Only Live Twice was really popular. The difference between Japan and Hong Kong is one the filmmakers are a bit hazy about. The important thing is, it's exotic. My attention was drifting at this point and I mostly viewed the film through a haze. The thing I remember most clearly was trying to work out who the hot bad guy at the evil martial arts school reminded me of. Eventually I realized it was Josie Long which is strange as she's not male, Asian or a skilled martial artist and assassin. At least as far as I know.

There's actually quite a few cute guys in the background, that and a couple of karate expert nieces and some lovely model shots was enough to make the film sort of fun for me.

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!

I realize that I've not talked about one of the key elements of Bond films, mainly chronic ableism. The general attitude of Bond films to the disabled is that although it's sad, the best thing is to humanely destroy them before they can become the henchman to a supervillain. Here it's the 3'11" Hervé Villechaize as Nick Nack who is given all the dignity the name implies.

Which member of the cabinet pays a small fortune to recreate this scene in a brothel on Chelsea Road?

White man's burden.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 21:51:00 +0000

I think my resentment of Connery's Bond is that he's a local boy so I've both known and disliked a lot of guys who were like him if he hadn't become rich and famous. It's a little embarrassing that we've made a national hero out of someone whose gone on record with his belief that slapping women around is just fine and dandy.

Which may be why I prefer Roger Moore. Sure, he's a disgusting old Tory but he's also a perfect gentleman. You sense that he's never even punched anyone and attempts at making his Bond a cold-blooded killer never quite convince. Underneath the debonair façade there's an undercurrent of both faint embarrassment at his lack of physical conviction and gratitude that he hasn't had to resort to seducing old society ladies to make a living.

Onto the film which is the most racist thing still being regularly shown on Saturday afternoons. The film thinks a group of black people just standing around is worthy of an ominous musical sting and that we'll be stunned with surprise when a black man turns out to be a CIA agent and not evil after all. He will help Bond save his poor, weak-willed peers from themselves. There's a bitter irony about depicting seventies-era CIA agents trying to prevent drugs from flooding the inner cities.

At the end the villain is punished for both his evil and sleeping with white women by being inflated and popped like a balloon (Bond has already made off with his girlfriend). This effect was the first done on the series by Derek Meddings who was at the time best known for his work on Thunderbirds. He would go on to do the fabulous miniatures in the rest of the seventies-era Bonds as well as Superman, Krull and Batman. What I'm saying is that this isn't his finest hour. Or anyone else's.

Actually this was originally filmed for a public information film on the dangers of circular breathing.

Boys Beware.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 21:00:00 +0000

No amount of weed would make me happy about having another Connery Bond to get through but never mind. Diamonds Are Forever is the first semi-reboot of the series and they pulled out all the stops to try and get back to what people wanted from Bond films so in addition to Connery we get a theme song sung by Shirley Bassey, a title sequence that could appear on Indifferent Cats in Amateur Porn and not one but two evil homosexual assassin duos. An increasingly frowsty Connery slouches through the film with a slightly annoyed expression like an ageing primate who knows that someday soon a younger wannabe alpha will challenge him for his harem. Although not really younger but we'll get to that.

The film starts with Bond, annoyed at the murder of his wife hunting down Blofeld again. I think Bond films gave an entire generation an unrealistic view of plastic surgery. By this point, Blofeld's had his face done so often he should look somewhere between Jocelyn Wildenstein and late period Michael Jackson but instead he looks like Charles Gray who doesn't seem to enjoy the role as much as Donald Pleasance and Telly Savalas did. Blofeld has a plot to use a bunch of diamonds to build a solar powered death ray in space and the ropey old school effects still bring joy to my shrivelled little heart.

Turned out I'm not the first one to make the crazy diamond joke.

This is one of the more misogynistic Bond films. There's less rape but every women in it is devious, untrustworthy and self-serving which might at least suggest they had some agency if they weren't also dimwitted bimbos. Even Bambi and Thumper the faintly lesbian coded assassins who have a strange scene where they beat the shit out of Bond but he then easily defeats them. This is one of the earliest examples of women doing a bunch of needless acrobatics during a fight scene, I made a note for my unwritten paper Fight Choreography for Female Action Characters in Western Cinema.

The film suffers particularly badly from the series main problem, people demand a gritty, serious Bond film but actually mostly like a silly, campy Bond film. DAF tries to be both by switchbacking between the two modes so fast the audience gets whiplash. It's not very successful (artistically, the film made plenty money).

But I have yet to discuss our main evil homosexuals, the genuinely creepy Mr Wint and Mr Kidd. They are pretty much every homophobic stereotype at once, the film doesn't have time to show them preying on young boys but the audience is pretty sure that's the sort of thing they get up to offscreen. Fortunately for Bond, while they're great at sneaky violence, being sissies they're hopeless in a fight (unlike lesbian gymnasts) and can be humiliatingly and painfully despatched at the end. The heterosexuals win and Connery sees out his time as Bond with maximum smugness. Actually he did the unofficial Bond Never Say Never Again a few years later but I couldn't be arsed watching that. Frankly that's one toupee again I never want to see again.

At least I have the dignity of a warrior's death.

There's something about chickens.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 11:24:00 +0000

I greeted On Her Majesty's Secret Service with relief, knowing that Sean Connery wouldn't be in it. Sadly, he's back in the next one but for now we've got a new Bond, George Lazenby in his one and only outing. Revisionist types sometimes try to make an argument that he was really quite good although this is a tricky argument as he's terrible. So terrible he's actually quite endearing.

The Lazenby Bond actually reminds me of some sporty, upper middle to upper class boys I used to know. Rugby captain at school, rowing at uni and now a regional judo champ. Basically sweet-natured but totally oblivious to his own privilege and the needs of others so will eternally vote Conservative. Best talked to kindly but firmly. With his plentiful chin and smart-casual wardrobe there's more than a faint hint of Alan Partridge as well. The films absurd plot involves the villain using innocent débutantes as bioweapons under the pretext of curing their allergies. Bond, of course, sleeps with as many of them as possible to prove what a stud he is. Unconvincing bedroom farce ensues.

Happily after scoring a success by casting Honor Blackman in Goldfinger, the producers decided to cast the next former Avengers cast member that became available so we get Diana Rigg who brings needless amounts of complexity to her portrayal of the poor little rich girl who steals Bond's heart. She even gets her own fight scene, mostly because she's Diana Rigg. This is the most convincing action scene in the movie as, unlike the others, it hasn't been sped up by undercranking the camera, a technique that audiences of the time were familiar with from The Benny Hill Show.

There's also Irma Bunt, an older female character whose essentially Klebb-lite, she's just a battleaxe and not a bitterly sadistic old lesbian. She does get to be the one who fridges Diana Rigg at the end though and she doesn't get tracked down and killed by Bond in the next film for doing it although that was because Ilse Steppat who played her, died four days after OHMSS was released.

Rounding out the film's meagre pleasures are Telly Savalas having a very good time playing Blofeld and more beautiful alpine scenery than you can shake a stick at. Also chickens feature heavily in the villains evil plan, I can't quite remember why.

Ms Rigg displays the contract negotiation skills she learnt on The Avengers

A piranha tank is a useful conversation piece in any home.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 09:07:00 +0000

Finally a Bond film I actually enjoyed. It's not that I want to live in a world of heavy sexism and offhand racism but I do want to live in a hollowed out volcano complete with piranha tank. Not really of course, I disapprove of having minions on political grounds and a hollowed out volcano is an unreasonably large living space for one person. As for having your enemies skeletonized by vicious carnivorous fish in a nightmare agony of flesh-ripping horror, I can't help feeling that it's in rather questionable taste. It's just fun to pretend. It's the more Garth Marenghi part of Bond that I like, as you could probably tell. I like it when it's silly and the bad guy is some incredibly rich nut job that wants to take over or destroy the world.

The title sequence is very keen on letting you know that the film will take place in Japan. The theme song is pretty decent, Nancy Sinatra was a good choice. There's also some wonderfully dinky model shots and back projection, hinting at the "Thunderbirds Are Go" joys of the 70s Bonds.

What would Freud make of this I wonder?

The rest of the film gave me a chance to ponder how attitudes change over time. When it was made, this would have counted as surprisingly liberal for a mainstream film. Bond has interracial relationships and Japan is portrayed as an admirable culture with a bunch of clever chaps who we could learn a thing or two from. Unfortunately the film thinks Japan is admirable because it thinks Japan is a misogynists wet dream of a country where "men come first and women come second" (even I know that's not how heterosexuality works). Although some of these women may be badass it's always and only in service to the men in their lives. At one point Bond's fake wife is killed which causes him some momentary annoyance before she is replaced with another one with more or less identical characteristics, including servile devotion to the man she's assigned to love.

Also putting Sean Connery in yellowface and sending him to ninja school is a tactic that has not aged well in acceptability. Whether it causes rage or hysterical laughter may depend upon your temperament.

I see your women are as exotically beautiful as they are utterly interchangeable.

Underwater love.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 12:28:00 +0000

Am I the only one who thinks Thunderball sounds like either a horrifying parasitic disease or an uncomfortable sex act performed by Hell's Angels? It gets off to an irritating start with the series first evil transvestite who promptly gets strangled by Bond with a fire poker. Remember, anyone in a dress who doesn't have a vagina is automatically evil and deserves death. Then we have Tom Jones singing about Bond's unpleasant alpha male qualities and how he apparently "strikes like Thunderball" which suggests the parasitic disease theory may be the correct one. The title sequence has a lot of scuba divers and this is something the film returns to at tiresome length. Underwater cinematography was new and exciting so we get a lot of diving scenes where if you're not paying attention it's easy to lose track of whose in what wetsuit.

I wasn't paying attention. After an early scene where Bond is nearly killed by bad guys who show up at the spa he's staying at (apparently by complete coincidence), he then blackmails the (actually blameless) nurse at the spa he's staying at into sleeping with him. For Bond compliance is every bit as good as consent and neither is terribly necessary. He does finally pull a move though and gives her a massage with a mink glove. Which made me wonder, is Bond a proto-furry? Would a mink glove massage actually be relaxing? What other kinds of massage would be relaxing and what men would I like to perform them? As I was thinking of these matters I kind of drifted away from the film and every time I drifted back it was just scuba diving.

I remember that this is the first film where Bond's magic penis fails to turn a woman to the side of virtue. This is implied to be because her red hair makes her so extra evil. Goldfinger was a redhead too. Bond films are anti-redhead. Bastards. Anyway, I rather liked her. That's all I can remember, except this film seemed to go on forever. This is the one that had the unofficial remake Never Say Never Again which I stopped thinking I'd watch after I'd seen this one on the grounds that life is finite. I ended up sticking to the Eon Bond films only.

This probably wasn't 93% of the film.

Whimsical musical stings and other horrors.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 11:30:00 +0000

So on with Goldfinger. Or as Shirley Bassey likes to say it, GOOOHHHLD THING GRRR. Am I the only one who thinks the trombone bit after that sounds like the grown-ups from the Peanuts cartoons? Maybe they're the backing vocalists, they're only slightly less brassy then the dame herself. If you've ever wondered what "belting out a song" means, here's your answer. I give it an unsubtle 7 for the song and a 6 for the title sequence which is a lot like the last one but the girls are painted gold and playing dead. Not very imaginative.

We have another evil lesbian in this one, unfortunately she's played by Honor Blackman in her prime and therefore she is reformed via Bond's magic penis. Yes, this is the Queen Mother's beloved classic, the Bond film that's supposed to be everybody's favourite and it has corrective rape as a plot device, presumably making this the Queen Mother's favourite rape scene. Had you noticed there's something terribly wrong with the world?

As the scene plays out, Bond comes onto her, she says she's not interested, he grabs her and they judo flip each other accompanied by the orchestra doing the kind of noises you associate with competing fairy godmothers doing something silly in a Disney film. Bear in mind that this is a woman trying to fight off a sexual assault. He eventually pins her, she struggles, the orchestra changes to a love theme and she decides that she really likes it. She likes it so much that this hardened mercenary who was quite comfortable devastating the world economy a moment ago suddenly decides to turn herself in.

So that's the horrifying example of rape culture taken care of, how are we for racism? We're doing pretty well thank you, the character of Oddjob is a classic example of the "exotic" type of stock minor villain, complete with constipated facial expressions and hat of death.

I know it was a different time but why are we still showing this stuff every Saturday afternoon? Couldn't we show kids something with less dubious messages, like À l'intérieur?

Anyway I didn't find the rest of the film that memorable, it's mostly Bond as aspirational entertainment. This was when the films really started to diverge from the dour tone of the books, in terms of camp value it's uphill from here.

Sadly they turn it off.

I have succumed.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Fri, 31 May 2013 23:33:00 +0000

I have a tumblr for my photos and general weirdness. I've been taking a lot of pictures for some reason.

I ♥ Evil Old Lesbians.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:40:00 +0000

This blog really is cursed. As I was starting to write the last post, my chest started to hurt and within hours my light cold had become a mild flu. I hurt, yet I write, I write for you. Assuming you're one of the people who read my blog because we're friends, not one of the many who drift in looking for Batgirl rape which is still my top search term which has helped motivate my current prolific output.

From Russia With Love is where we start to get more of the Bond stuff. We get our first Bond theme, first title sequence with scantily clad women, first scene with Desmond Llewelyn as Q, first totally convincing rubber mask but most importantly, we get our first evil gay character. And it's my favourite evil gay character, the murderously bitter old lesbian. This one's called Colonel Rosa Klebb and she's played by the wonderful Lotte Lenya, best known otherwise for her work with Kurt Weill. With her lemon and onions facial expressions, her perving over the female lead and her forthright approach with a poisoned toe knife you can either be offended by the homophobic stereotype or you can spend the whole film rooting for her.

She is hamstrung by working for the crappiest evil organization ever. SPECTRE's main raison d'être is to get the Soviets and the west to fight and they can't even manage that. At the height of the cold war, they launch a series of insanely overcomplicated schemes that are all defeated by a mangy date rapist. No wonder Klebb looks like someone's pissed in her cornflakes.

Speaking of rape, watching the old Bond films has really helped clarify why our culture can't get a grip on something as simple as what constitutes sexual consent (someone saying they want to have sex with you and really meaning it). Connery's Bond is supposed to be the ultimate ladies man, no woman can resist him and this is partly true. No woman can successfully resist him, they'll try but he'll smack them around a bit till they give in. The level of casual violence against women is really quite jarring, it's strange that they still show these films as Saturday matinees on ITV.

The Bond Girl in this one has been conned by Klebb (which I admit to finding pleasing to say) into pretending to defect so she can be a double agent for Mother Russia only she'll really be reporting to SPECTRE. Fortunately Bond is there to shag her, rough her up a bit and then shag her again. This treatment results in both love and a desire to defect for real.

So that's the brutal misogyny taken care of, how are we for racism. We have a stereotypical Gypsy (ie brunette) camp. Does it have quaint wooden caravans and dark, tempestuous women with heaving bosoms? Of course it does.

This one had a decent budget and it looks terrific. The famous train fight scene still holds up well, it actually conveys better than most contemporary action films that a life or death fight is an exhausting, terrifying struggle. The catfight in the gypsy camp is simultaneously pure titillation and surprisingly close to how people I see fighting drunk on a Friday night go about things.

Sadly, when it comes down to it, there's only so much a poisoned toe knife can do for you. Klebb's defeat is certain but luckily she isn't young and photogenic enough for Bond to rape her to the side of good so she gets the dignity of being treated as a serious threat and killed. But I'll always remember her as she was; bitter, manhating and venomous.

She was the people's evil old lesbian. She was the evil old lesbian of our hearts.

The bikini that built an empire.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 22:27:00 +0000

The first thing I noticed about Dr No is how cheap it looks. The sets look like painted plyboard (almost certainly for a good reason) and not much happens. I don't get this worship of Sean Connery. He mostly smirks, punches people and uses the same facial expression to express anger, exertion and disquiet. It's also either his O face or the face he makes while straining on the toilet.

The famous bit where Ursula Andress rises from the ocean is remembered for a reason. It's the only really memorable bit in the film. You'd think the bulldozer with a flamethrower on it that incinerates Bond's islander sidekick would be memorable but it's not. It's painted to look like a dragon so all the natives believe that it really is one because people who aren't white are stupid. Except when they're evil. The film's set in the Caribbean and this was prior to the civil rights movement so it's about what you'd expect in terms of ambient racism. I think there's some reason that a Nordic blond woman in her late twenties is being portrayed as a wild girl of the islands. I mean a plot reason, the real reason is so that the audience can indulge in vicarious fantasies of sex with childlike savages without the main romance of the film being a mixed race relationship.

Also I got really sick of that bloody song about the mango tree. We never seem to get past the first verse and it's really irritating.

I always get her confused with Britt Ekland.

Oh god, it's a New Year. Why does this keep happening?

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 21:44:00 +0000

If you're reading this, it means we both made it through 2012. I'm slightly surprised. How did you manage it? And do you have any tips for stopping times nightmarishly swift course?

My method involves herbal medicine and espionage. I've had a certain fascination for this ever since I realized that the Moscow Rules are the ideal survival guide for the queer teenager (I may write more about this later) and it turns out that, in certain mental conditions, spy nonsense becomes strangely fascinating to me. Unfortunately, I'm allergic to just enjoying myself so I decided to attempt to study the cultural significance of the James Bond films. In order.

Why the hell would anyone in their right mind want to do that? Well firstly I'm not in my right mind but secondly, the Bond films have been running since 1962. They're like a time capsule of how political movements and world events have shaped popular culture in the last fifty years. The civil rights movement, feminism, the fall of communism and the rise of the internet, all can be viewed through the lens of the Bond movie. You can also see how the language of cinema has changed in that time. Getting toasted was necessary in order to sit through and write about them though.

I'm cold, I'm hungry and I have only the most tenuous grip on reality. It's time to WRITE!

Can I meet the challenge?

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Can I write more blog posts this year than last year?

Probably not, but with this one I break even. That's a bit crap though. I shall embed a youtube video to make up for it, as all very lazy bloggers do.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 22:09:00 +0000

It's the time of year again when we take time out to remember everybody who's been murdered for being trans. I'm also thinking about those like Fernanda Milan and Cece McDonald who are punished for surviving. I don't have words. What the hell is wrong with the world. Not just the pathetic killers and rapists and torturers but the bastards who are actively trying to prevent transfolk from having any refuge at all.

Here is a video that includes photos and names of as many of the victims as possible. It's not exactly easy to watch but watching seems like all I can offer the dead. That I will see their faces, read their names, mark their passing and write this, praying to nothing in particular that next years list will be shorter. Safe winter everybody. Stay warm, keep going.

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2012 from StormMiguel Florez on Vimeo.

If I had all the weapons I needed, you'd need new kneecaps.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 21:21:00 +0000

Writing this was like trying to pass the biggest, stankiest, greasiest yet most unpleasantly-dry-and-full-of-partially-chewed-brazil-nuts-est shit ever WITH MY MIND! I feel like my brain has haemorrhoids. I've seen a lot of so bad they're good films and even more that are so bad they're horrible but this is the first film I've encountered so bad that it's actually evil. This film shreds your critical faculties while you watch it. This film reduces hardened feminist critics to inarticulate rage. If you still haven't guessed it rhymes with Trucker Funch, which, by a curious coincidence, is the only sexual act that can still bring Zack Snyder to orgasm.

Snyder's here. We need a pint of engine oil, a lubricated chain, a full English breakfast that's been left in an airing cupboard for 3 weeks and get the girls to glue boar bristles to their noses. Remember, it's OK to vomit.

I don't think you're stupid if you find Sucker Punch empowering. As a small child, I managed to take a message of gay equality and feminist empowerment from 'Allo 'Allo and you have to push your brain into a very strange shape to do that. Learning to almost automatically extract the meaning you want from the culture surrounding you and firmly ignore the bits you don't like is a valuable life skill for the marginalized, which still mysteriously includes 52% of the human population. If you're able to quarry some joy out of Sucker Punch then I'm happy for you but...

There are really good reasons not many people will share your viewpoint.

I'm not going to critique the cast, they're all terrible but they really never had a chance. The film is glossy but all it's shiny images just remind me of better films they're cribbed from. There's some OK music on the soundtrack. The action scenes are mediocre and manage to make the most interesting things unexciting but I don't think any of this is why Sucker Punch flopped. It flopped because this film is the distillation of everything that's slimy, pandering and dishonest in nerd culture and being so overtly pandered to can make people feel uncomfortable. The nerd backlash against this film may be the result of giving the straight white cis male demographic that it's aimed at a "Naked Lunch" moment. Stuff like this gives masturbation fantasies a bad name.

The opening music video shows Babydoll's mother dying, followed by her wicked stepfather finding that her estate has been left to Babydoll and her sister. He tries to kill them (with rape heavily implied). Babydoll then wins the William Burroughs Memorial Award for outstanding marksmanship when she tries to shoot her stepfather in the head,

misses

and somehow manages to kill her sister who was lying on the ground.

Which is one hell of a trick shot. Unless she'd already been killed by her stepfather somehow. It's only the most important event in the protagonists life that will drive and motivate everything she does so it's understandable that Snyder doesn't want to waste a lot of time here. There's shots of woman crying in fear and/or despair to get to.

Women crying in fear and/or despair for various reasons form an important motif in Sucker Punch and each character gets to do her own variant or "look". This is so you know it's empowering. For example, here is Babydoll doing her best "My sister's been killed and I've been falsely imprisoned in a lunatic asylum".

I'VE NEVER FELT MORE SELF-ACTUALIZED.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. After her sister dies, Babydoll's stepfather has her committed to a hospital for the mentally insane.

At least he didn't put her with the physically insane people. Those guys are mean.

This is presumably because if it was for the criminally insane (you know, people who shoot their relatives), we might question if helping the other girls to escape is a good idea. If the other girls actually exist - but more of that later.

Anyway, her stepfather has conspired with the corrupt orderly Blue to have her lobotomised in a week. While they're quibbling over the details, Babydoll gets to overhear the asylum head Dr Gorski giving another patient (Sweet Pea) a treatment session (curiously, the asylum seems to offer only two forms of treatment, psychodrama and lobotomies). Inspired by Gorski's platitudes about imaginary worlds she can control, as the icepick descends, Babydoll (maybe) creates one for herself.

In this world she's a ingénue sex slave imprisoned in a high-end bordello that also functions as a burlesque house. She's got a week before the fabled High Roller shows up to rape her. Exactly why she's decided to retreat to this fantasy world which is possibly even more depressing than the one she's stuck in (if a bit gaudier) is anyone's guess.

It's important in a film that deals with multiple layers of reality to have some way to keep track of where the story is at any given time. In Sucker Punch, each layer of reality is signified with a layer of eyelashes on the main character. Incidentally, the film does make a point of telling us that Babydoll is 20 so although she's supposed to look like a heavily made-up schoolgirl it's totally OK to want to fuck her. Seriously, the Snyder's down with that.

Ohhhh yeeaaahhh!

Anyway, in the imaginary bordello, Babydoll will have to perform menial chores and attend mandatory ballet class, like all sex slaves.

Lingerie clad ballet is absolutely integral to the smooth running of this hell brothel.

She meets the other girls: Rocket (the nice but spunky one), her sister Sweet Pea (the head girl), Blondie (who isn't blonde, how clever) and Amber (the Asian one). Fortunately, as we live in a post-racism society, it's not necessary to give Blondie and Amber any further characterization.

We look forward to dying on your journey of empowerment, noble white heroine.

The other girls are catty and hostile (as all women are) but Babydoll saves Rocket from being raped by the piggy cook and this gives her an in. Then, when she's nervous at her first dance practice, Madame Gorski (in this world she's a brothel madame who works for Blue) gives her a pep talk that basically amounts to "Empower yourself with your coerced sexy dancing". With this motivation, Babydoll promptly drops into another level of reality where she's a mangaesque ass-kicker by way of Showgirls. She meets an old Wise Man who speaks in clichéd aphorisms (which Snyder seems to find hilarious). He tells her she'll need 5 things: A map, a knife, a key, fire and a mysterious sacrifice (which is obviously going to be her). Then she battles three robot samurai that painfully remind you that you could be watching Brazil instead.

BUT OUR FX ARE TECHNOLOGICALLY SUPERIOR!

This is still the best action sequence in the film, mostly because you might harbour some hope that this means something, some sort of inner demons that she has to conquer or a symbolic representation of her escape plan (spoiler:it doesn't). She comes back up to the brothel at the end and finds that her sexy dancing has the power to completely hypnotize all the men who see it's magic eroticism (no, seriously). We never see this dance but as she was jumping around killing imaginary monsters in her head, I'm guessing it looked a lot like the magically erotic dance of the Star Wars kid.

Now she has a plan to present to her fellow sex slaves. She'll use her ability to do hypnotic sexy dancing while imagining heavily CGI dependent sci-fi/fantasy scenarios, to distract the men while the other girls steal the required items. Rocket, being the nice but spunky one, is all for it. Sweet Pea being the bossy, grouchy one, is against it but reluctantly agrees. Blondie and Amber are not white and therefore will go with the majority, rather than risk character development.

The first item is the map and the scene where Sweet Pea breaks into the office to copy it is in serious danger of becoming suspenseful so we move to what's happening in (maybe) Babydoll's head. She's imagining a steam/dieselpunk version of World War One (or Two, it's unlikely Snyder knows the difference). This sequence is filmed in a stuttering sepia that lets you know that Zack Snyder has seen Saving Private Ryan. There's a bunch of steam powered Nazi zombies and a bad guy who looks like Freddy Krueger dressed as The Red Baron and the girls (women just doesn't seem to stick as a term here) are some sort of strike force sent to grab a map (see it connects, not in any meaningful way but it connects).

Shall we take a moment out to discuss the costumes? Not just costumes; sexy costumes. Babydoll isn't just dressed as a schoolgirl, she's dressed as a sexy schoolgirl.

The slit skirt is for empowerment.

Rocket isn't just dressed as an WW2 infantrywomen, she's dressed as a sexy WW2 infantrywomen.

This is what right-wing men see when someone talks about women in combat.

Sweet Pea isn't just dressed as Joan of Arc, she's dressed as sexy Joan of Arc.

The Maid of New Orleans?

Blondie isn't just dressed as...

Sexy cowgirl? Sexy Biggles?

Actually I have no clue what this costume is supposed to be. But it's supposed to be sexy. Because, for a women, being sexy is the key to empowerment. Intelligence, talent, inner strength; all require a solid basing in sexy.

You may have noticed I haven't mentioned Amber. As the groups pilot, she doesn't get to show off her sexy outfit as much so she gets less to do. She gets a mecha, a plane and a helicopter but these are only cool, they're not sexy.

So there's a bunch of fighting and Babydoll shoots down a zeppelin

Oh the humanity.

and gets the map. that's about it.

Back in the the brothel, Blue wants to put Babydoll on stage. Madame Gorski doesn't think she's ready so we get a scene of him humiliating her. Who's supposed to be imagining this or how it relates to the "real world" where she's actually his boss is anyone's guess. Blue then returns to his office and realizes the map has been copied at which point we realize that everything they're going to do will be noticed immediately. This is the shittest plan ever.

As the girls haven't realized that this is the shittest plan ever, they're gearing up for the next step and we have some character development for Amber after all. She's scared she'll be caught stealing the lighter. Fear of death is a character trait (sort of).

They talk her into it and Amber's rich client is introduced in an annoying music video accompanied by a truly vile track that does terrible things to helpless, vulnerable Queen songs. This is in no way meant to glamorize forced prostitution.

Dehumanising women is just plain wrong.

Babydoll dances and imagines a cod-Tolkein battleground where the gang have to retrieve two crystals from a baby dragons throat that make fire. The mother dragon objects, which actually seems pretty reasonable. It all ends in Babydoll stabbing her in the head. When this kind of thing can happen

without it being even a little bit exciting something has gone terribly wrong with the universe.

As the girls are sitting congratulating themselves on the succesful theft of the lighter, Blue comes in to tell them he knows they took it, menace and rough them up a bit, without actually making them give it back. Sweet Pea wants to stop the plan now but a crying Rocket insists on going ahead. Here she is doing her "I'd rather die than live like this".

Despair and defiance. That's like double empowerment.

Blue has been partly successful as in the next scene the pressure of living a lie has gotten to Blondie. Madame Gorski finds her crying in the rehearsal room doing a very creditable "The fear of discovery is more than I can bear".

I'm not even white!

She decides to confide in Madame Gorski, too empowered to notice that Blue is there as well.

Meantime the rest of them are off trying to get the knife from the cook. Just as the highly recognizable customized lighter was the only source of fire, the only knife in this kitchen that is designed to service all the slaves and clients of a luxury bordello is the one in the cooks belt. Fortunately as well as being a rapist, the cook is also extremely gullible so doesn't question their sudden need to give him a lap dance. This time, Babydoll's imagination has them trying to defuse a nuclear bomb guarded by killer robots on a monorail on an alien planet. What has that got to do with knives you ask? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

My existence was meaningless.

Unfortunately, the radio Babydoll is dancing to shorts out and the cook notices Sweet Pea taking the knife. He's so enraged, he ends up stabbing Rocket to death. As he's also the cook in the asylum, does that mean that Rocket actually has been stabbed to death (this is not real remember)? Blue arrives and gets everyone to the dressing room for dramatic confrontation purposes, where he finds the list of items still on the back of the chalkboard. Presumably because their little womanish heads would've forgotten everything if they hadn't kept it written down in the most obvious place. Empowerment abounds in this scene. Here's Amber's impressive "I'm about to be shot in the back of the head".

At least I had a richly drawn character arc.

Blondie doing "If only I hadn't betrayed myself and all my friends with my dark haired weakness".

This kind of challenging role is why I became an actress.

Even Madame Gorski gets to cry, proving that Zack Snyder respects mature women. A lovely "If only I hadn't collaborated, I was fooling myself all along."

Empowerment for everybody.

None of them can do anything because women are only powerful in dreams. Actually even in dreams they're not powerful, women are only powerful in the dreams they have when they're dreaming.

Blue orders everybody out but Babydoll so he can give in to temptation and rape her. She stabs him with the knife which makes me wonder why her plan wasn't simply 1) Steal knife 2) Get Blue alone 3) Stab him and take his key. She and Sweet Pea leave the bordello but there's a crowd of men standing at the gate. Rather than try to think of a distraction, Babydoll decides to sacrifice herself by kicking one of the men in the groin, providing a distraction so Sweet Pea can escape. Him punching her in the face corresponds to the icepick lobotomising her.

Back (finally) in the real world Doctor Gorski realizes that Blue faked her signature on the lobotomy order and has him arrested as he is about to rape the lobotomised Babydoll. This points up the obvious flaw in the films "your mind can set you free" bullshit, in fantasy brothel world Blue is all powerful and Gorski is his helpless subordinate. In the real world, he's just an orderly and Gorski's the boss and sympathetic to the girls. If she hadn't been so busy with imaginary battles and had just talked to her, Babydoll could have avoided being lobotomised.

Anyway Sweet Pea escapes on a greyhound bus thanks to the kindly driver who is the wise man from Babydoll's dancing trance. The whole thing was in Sweet Pea's head all the time. How does that make any sense? Did we ever find out if any of the girls was actually killed in the real world? What kind of asylum requires mandatory fake eyelashes?

Snyder's die-hard nerd supporters* claimed that the editing necessary to get the film down to a PG-13 rating from it's original R is why it's a mess. In the interest of being fair and finding answers, I watched the director's cut when it became available. There's a few extra bits and pieces, a fight scene in Tolkein world that's better than most of the ones that got left in but nothing special. The really important extra scene is the one at the end between Babydoll and the High Roller. In interviews, Emily Browning had bemoaned the loss of a scene where Babydoll got to "actually take control of her own sexuality."

It turns out that in the film as planned, after being knocked out Babydoll wakes up to find herself in the High Roller's bedroom. It turns out that the High Roller is Jon Hamm doing his best imitation of a pick-up artist. This sterling fellow disavows any interest in forcing himself on Babydoll, claiming that all he wants is "one honest moment". Won over by his eyelinered charms, she breathlessly gives herself to him willingly, in no way coerced by the fact that this is her only way of escape from the hell brothel. The moment he kisses her is what now corresponds to the icepick. Am I the only one who thinks this actually makes things worse.

In Snyder's world, taking control of your own sexuality for a young woman means selling it. I say Snyder's world advisedly because it was the the director himself who finally explained the film to me.

It’s funny because someone one asked me about why I dressed the girls like that, and I said, “Do you not get the metaphor there? The girls are in a brothel performing for men in the dark. In the fantasy sequences, the men in the dark are us. The men in the dark are basically me; dorky sci-fi kids.”

This quote explained everything that's wrong with the film to me. I know I've already mocked the costumes but a simple image search for cosplay shows that lots of people, of all genders, like imagining themselves as problematically sexualized asskickers in impractical outfits. For the films real problem, let's go back to the first shot of the film, Babydoll sitting in the stage set of her room.

The film's "real world" explicitly isn't the real world. Sucker Punch doesn't take place in Babydoll or Sweet Pea's head. The only head this film takes place inside is Zack Snyder's. There's a fourth level of reality we don't see where Snyder is watching this, watching us watch this, and he's got his hands down his pants. Everything in this film, including the constant threats of rape and shots of crying women, is only in it because Snyder wants to see it and wants us to watch as well. He's got no interest in telling a coherent story, let alone artistic truth. If the bordello can't make up it's mind if it's horrific or sleazily glamorous, that's because Snyder can't either so it switches back and forth. This is a film about the value of an inner world that refuses to let it's characters have one, they have precisely the same depth as Snyder's collection of real dolls (which I imagine he owns but never cleans).

I think that's why Sucker Punch got so far up my nose. I've always been fascinated by stories where people carry their own universes around with them in their heads that interact with reality in unpredictable ways and, despite how problematic, silly or poorly realized a lot of them are, I still feel that action heroines have an inherent subversive potential. Zack Snyder has taken both these things and metaphorically smeared his swollen, intentionally pus-leaking, scrotal sac over them. I'm not saying that he gets off deliberately infecting himself with rare venereal diseases then passing them to as many unwitting people as possible

Who could believe such a thing of this face?

just that Sucker Punch is the closest filmmaking equivalent.

Anyway, that was ridiculously long but better out than in and now I never have to think about this film ever again.

Not in this film you can't.

*Nerd supporters are the least flattering underwear ever.

Bikini girls without machine guns.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:14:00 +0000

Dead or Alive is a series of video games famed partly for it's intricate fight mechanics but mostly for it's pioneering of what is known in the trade as jiggle physics. Yes, these games are best known for groundbreaking animation of the characters breasts. It follows that the film adaptation of these games will be...

...surprisingly enjoyable.

I was going to describe it as terribly male gaze-y but then I felt I should actually research what that meant so I looked it up. Here's an extract from the wikipedia entry on Laura Mulvey:

The main idea that seems to bring these actions together is that "looking" is generally seen as an active male role while the passive role of being looked at is immediately adopted as a female characteristic. It is under the construction of patriarchy that Mulvey argues that women in film are tied to desire and that female characters hold an "appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact". The female actor is never meant to represent a character that directly effects the outcome of a plot or keep the story line going, but is inserted into the film as a way of supporting the male role and "bearing the burden of sexual objectification" that he cannot.

In the gracefully titled DOA: Dead or Alive the women may be coded for visual and erotic impact but they are not passive, they are the ones who initiate the plots and drive the story onward. If you are interested in possible routes to transcend the dichotomy between being the active subject of a film while still being the passive object of sexualized interest then you are in completely the wrong headspace to enjoy DOA. May I suggest doing a few beers, bong hits or maybe discreetly braining yourself with a rock. I'll wait.

(I will allow that in DOA the men do not share the burden of sexual objectification. Even the guy playing Hayabusa who's terribly cute. I was mildly vexed.)

But not, sadly, at bikini volleyball.

The plot (although why in heaven's name you would care is quite beyond me) is that there's a secret martial arts contest for the greatest fighters in the world. To get there, you have to do something noticeably badass at which point a sharp and pointy invitation will be hurled at you from somewhere

Perhaps email might be safer? Just a thought.

and after that you'll be on a plane somehow to the secret island that for some reason the contest takes place on. Should you lose a fight, you will have to leave except that actually you'll still be hanging around the place days later. Expect your sleep, bathing and friendly games of volleyball to be interrupted by impromptu fighting, not necessarily with the other contestants. The man overseeing the contest is obviously evil. You will be suspicious of him from very early on but he will still manage to surprise you at the end when despite his painfully awkward movements you will still struggle to defeat him.

People who are unfamiliar with Hong Kong martial arts films assume that they're all either artistic Crouching Tiger/House of Flying Daggers "historical" epics or Jackie Chan's kung-fu Buster Keaton routines. This is not exactly the case. For a while Hong Kong was one of the most active filmmaking centres in the world and churned out dozens of films on a weekly basis. DOA, although made with Hollywood money and western actors was filmed in (technically just outside) Hong Kong with a Hong Kong crew and director and has the traditional shamelessness of the martial arts potboiler.

You might wonder how the invitations are sent out, why ninja princesses aren't allowed to go on holiday, how it is possible to sleep and shower without ruining your makeup

All assassins are trained never to smudge their eyeshadow.

or even why everyone is chummily bonding over volleyball and acupuncture when they're expecting to fight each other in no-holds barred death matches. DOA hears your concerns, looks you dead in the eye and asks "Do you really give a shit?" and it turns out you don't. DOA knows what you want: some niftily choreographed fight scenes, some cheesy humour and some pretty people (let me restate, this film could have done with more objectified men) playing tissue thin but likeable characters. All this is served up with no care for the laws of physics or continuity, and dispatched in less than an hour and half so it doesn't outstay it's welcome and you can get on with what you were doing (probably losing consciousness).

Before the MMA brought in weight classes, this sort of thing used to happen all the time

As to the pretty people, Holly Valance is surprisingly likeable, Jaime Pressly is surprisingly good at fight scenes and Sarah Carter and Natassia Malthe made almost no impression at all I'm afraid. My favourite, though, was Devon Aoki as Kasumi. The closest the film gets to subtle humour is making her character an escapee from an old ninja movie. She's even got the facial expressions down.

The key is to edge as close to looking constipated as possible without ever quite crossing the line.

I guess some people might find her a little wooden but the hilarious deadpan she brought to D.E.B.S is equally hilarious here. When the dialogue is like this...

Ayane: Before I take your life, will you repent for leaving the clan.
Kasumi: My only goal is to find out what happened to my brother.

...it's a genuine surprise to see their lip movements matching the sound perfectly.

I did note that the film contains one of those scenes where a pretty white woman has to fight a muscular black man who is depicted as an icon of repellent masculinity. Also Westerby, who's supposed to be an appealing nerdy sort of character and an audience identification point, actually comes across as a creepy stalker. Also, never cast Eric Roberts as a martial artist again.

But I hear the final concern that DOA does not answer. Does this film, in which conventionally attractive young women wearing skimpy bikinis fight in a drenching rainstorm, contain an empowering feminist message?

No, of course not. Don't be silly.

It's the only question worth asking really.

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:11:00 +0000

Having been given an early release from my vows I was thinking of quitting for good but then I pondered.

It's taken a very long time to clean up the popcorn.

Random pop-culture musing 3

noreply@blogger.com (Dreaded Rhubarb) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:21:00 +0000

When I saw the trailer for Colombiana, my first thought was "Finally someone realizes the danger amnesia poses to high-level assassins."

My second thought is that I've started going to films tactically. It looks godawful but it's the first major action film headlined by a woman of colour since Catwoman so I feel like I should go and see it.