Tales of the Dead Dreamer!!

That's right, more strange dreams! Haven't posted one of these in a while, mostly because I haven't felt like it, but I thought these were vaguely interesting and not-too-personal to post! These were all last night/today...

Had a dream where for some reason I had large, wonderful breasts that I sat and played with in the mirror.

I wrote an awesome graphic novel series drawn by an acquaintance of mine that was an apocalyptic/cyberpunk/horror type thing drawing heavily from music (which is not unlike something we're discussing doing IRL), and got in an argument with the publisher because I was insisting that the first volume (which used Alice in Chains' Dirt as its 'background') be printed on some kind of hard cardboard-like stock and have the pages of one of the stories be intentionally made to look filthy and smudged like they were badly printed. And I won!

Also I started my lifelong dream of directing movies, which included some vaguely fetishistic (but not to the extent I'd have expected from my mind) CGI movie that had to do with someone being shrunk in a Victorian setting, followed by a live-action remake of A Goofy Movie with Jim Carrey as Goofy and John Goodman(?) as Pete and the two of them just wearing crappy little mask things with fake ears not unlike what the Beagle Boy in this video wears:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmpAx8Z5z40

Who makes the rockin' world go 'round?

Want to know what grinds my gears?

People who are assholes about big girls. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. It's as if a woman has no value as a human being to all these shallow shitty men if they can't successfully masturbate to a picture of her. And then because so many women are catty bitches who, despite claiming independence, seem to allow their lives to revolve around shallow glamour-and-beauty standards set by shallow shitty men - and if another woman decides to be content on the outside of that line, then, well, you know how some women are when they're hellbent on making another suffer.

Let me set something straight: I like large women. I have since I was first interested in women, and I can't imagine myself not having that attraction.

Now, if this were simply a difference in opinion, then no harm, no foul. Unless it involves causing harm to an unwilling partner or a child or something, I don't care what you're attracted to. It's not something that can be helped. People who base every aspect of their existence around their fetish, like some furries, can be annoying and discomforting, but I have to respect people who simply have their attraction "out there" if it goes against what's mainstream. I can relate to that; people like to make other people feel bad about what they're attracted to if it's anything other than what you see being pushed on TV or those wretched magazines you see in the supermarket check-out. I did for a while, but why? Why should I feel bad for what I'm attracted to, especially if it's not even all that "out there" (regardless of what comedy writers who think it's hi-larious for guys to want to fuck fat chicks will tell you)?

But no... It goes beyond opinions. I cannot tell you how many conversations I've had where an outsider intruded to say something shitty, uninvited and unwanted about a larger woman/her clothing/her self-image (oh no, she doesn't hate herself for not being able to attract douchebags!) and if I say anything about, I dunno, not being an asshole and not telling other people what to be attracted to, I get yelled at for "forcing my opinion down their throat" or "infringing on their right to be attracted to thin girls." When I start coming uninvited and attacking people for discussing thin women in a positive manner, then maybe you'll have a case, but as is? No. Stop being a shithead.

But, I'm getting somewhat off track... What is it about the stigma that's been violently forced into our anuses by popular culture that it's impossible for a woman with extra on her to be attractive? Some scant progress is being made regarding the whole "badonkadonk" thing, but society's ass is still bleeding and infected; the damage has already been done and will take a lot of work to undo.

Well... Fuck. I had more I was going to say but I'm all flustered about something unrelated and I forgot what it was. I'll be adding to this topic in the future... Until then, have some Beth Ditto.

Film Review - "Ichi the Killer" (2001)

Ichi the Killer
2001
Takashi Miike

This movie is completely impossible to classify to any genre through any traditional manner. It has elements of horror, dark comedy, drama, thriller, and romance (and romantic comedy)… Oh, did I mention that the movie is about the yakuza, sadomasochism, and brutal vigilante torture/murder? It’s absolutely absurd, and that’s the way I like it.
The plot is that somebody killed a yakuza boss and took his money, and his masochistic right-hand-man/lover, Kakihara, takes over and begins an arduous and lengthy search for his master’s killer. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Japan, a vigilante deals out justice for victims of rape and violence… Unfortunately, he’s so unbelievably unstable, sadistic, and mentally dysfunctional, he usually ends up raping and/or mutilating the victim (and not necessarily in that order) as well as their attacker. Kakihara catches wind of this, and, having become lonely since there’s nobody around who can ‘hurt me like the boss could’, seeks out this mysterious sadist in hopes of, essentially, finding love.
Everything in this movie is so over-the-top… The gore is about as messy as I’ve seen it get, but in a very silly way reminiscent of Dead-Alive. Over-the-top comic book gore is a characteristic of several of Takashi Miike’s films, but even this is pushing it. There are all kinds of unsavory and absolutely grotesque activities going on here, but that’s what makes the ‘romantic comedy’ aspect even more amusing. There’s some really, really disturbing stuff in here that even got to me (such as the whole scene where Kakihara took out his ‘cheek-rings’… That freaked me right the hell out), and then some stuff that’s dark and freaky as hell but hilarious (like a particularly hilarious scene where, to make amends for torturing an innocent person, Kakihara immediately takes out a pocket knife, cuts off about a fourth of his own tongue, drops it in a jar of formaldehyde, and presents it to the victim – all while they’re staring in shock. Then, his cell phone rings, and he answers it, tongue mutilated and bleeding everywhere. The person on the other end asks why he sounds so weird, and, deadpan, he lisps, ‘I cut my tongue out’).
In the end, this is a hideous yet beautiful tale that cannot be missed by anybody who has a strong stomach and is looking for something unique… It’s an essential Miike film, and one of the most unique movies out there.

RATING: 8.5/10

Film Review - "Conspirators of Pleasure" (1996)

Conspirators of Pleasure
1996
Jan Svankmajer

This is a fucked up movie, and Svankmajer is a sick puppy. If you know the stuff I expose myself to on a regular basis, you would know that this means a lot coming from me. But anyway…
Conspirators of Pleasure is a dark comedy from renowned experimental Czech animator, Jan Svankmajer. It’s an ensemble film about a bunch of sleazy motherfuckers who, rather than simply going and getting laid (as it is shown in the film that each one wants the other), go through extremely elaborate, almost Rube Goldbergian masturbation techniques… And that’s the movie. Oh, and did I mention that there’s not one word of dialogue? Yeah. That’s pretty much par for the course for a Svankmajer film, isn’t it? And, as is also usual for this guy’s works, there’s a lot of disturbing stop-motion and Lynchian mindfuck surrealism.

Let’s go through the characters, shall we? We’ve got a swingin’ bachelor (*cough*sleazeball*cough*) who spends the majority of the film constructing a giant papier-mâché chicken mask and a pair of wings, which he takes out into the woods and wears as he terrorizes a stuffed dummy made to resemble his neighbor. Then there’s the neighbor, a sultry older woman who takes a stuffed dummy of the bachelor out to a hidden altar, performs a black magic ritual to bring it to life, and then spends the day raping him, beating him, and engaging in all kinds of brutal acts of domination against his will, before killing him. Then there’s the creepy older guy, who apparently enjoys soft things, and thus goes about making some makeshift massage toys (I found this to be the least compelling character, and due to the lack of dialogue, I spent half the movie thinking he was building a set of prosthetic breasts to wear). Then there’s his neighbor, a TV news reporter who is turned on by having her feet submerged in a tub and nibbled by fish, all while she’s on the air reporting. Then there’s the shopkeeper, a Danny Devito-esque man who has a massive hard-on for the reporter lady, and his current project is to build a multi-armed robot to massage him and jerk him off at the same time while he watches his favorite news program. And, finally, there’s the cutest postal worker in Czechoslovakia, and her poison is rolling bread up into tiny little balls and then snorting them up her nose through a rubber hose (and at one point, sticking a funnel into her ear and pouring a bunch of them in there as well). I am dead serious; you can’t make up shit like this.
I was apprehensive about watching a 90-minute film with absolutely no dialogue, but I found these feelings disappearing within minutes once I actually started watching the movie. There are all kinds of bizarre, surreal bits of humor, and several laugh-out-loud moments. Also, you’ve really got to hand it to the actors, considering that they do such a phenomenal job expressing their respective character’s personality, motivations, and so on without ever opening their mouths to speak – you barely even notice that nobody talks in the whole movie. The body language is just that good.
There is some brilliant satire, and the subject matter, like it or not, is universal – everybody’s been there at some point in their lives (though in most cases not to the same extremes as the colorful characters in this film). The stop-motion is awesome… It’s creepy, hilarious, and everything else you could want from it – after all, were are but humans, and sometimes, there are just no greater pleasures in life than to witness a cheaply-animated man with a giant chicken mask and a cape sliding across the ground in a static pose at high speed while orchestra plays.
This film is definitely not for everyone. If you’re not paying attention, it can be confusing, and even if you are, it’s full of David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowsky-style abstract storytelling, which can be extremely off-putting for some. If you’re feeling very experimental (ha-ha) and open-minded for a wild new experience (hee-hee), check this out. It’s a great little gem.

RATING: 8.5/10

Film Review - "The Man Who Fell to Earth" (1976)

The Man Who Fell to Earth
1976
Nicholas Roeg

The novel that this film is based upon is my favorite sci-fi novel of all time, I love David Bowie, and Nicholas Roeg is considered one of the best ‘artsy’ directors ever (Criterion sure loves the guy, so that must be saying something), so I was ecstatic about this film. Perhaps that’s why I feel a little bit let down… Oh, who am I kidding? This movie was just plain disappointing. I feel like Criterion owes me my money back for their overpriced release of this dud.
The plot is awesome… David Bowie plays TJ Newton, an alien from a dying planet who comes to Earth planning to become a mega-billionaire by putting patents on his super-advanced alien technology, and then building a ship to shuttle his people back and forth from his planet, so they can disguise themselves as humans, occupy positions of power, and then stop the dumbass humans from using up all the Earth’s resources and nuking themselves like Newton’s people did. However, along the way, TJ hits several snags, such as that painful, confusing thing called love, and discovering his fondness for alcohol and carnal pleasures… To say nothing of the government, who’s watching him very, very closely.
David Bowie was the perfect choice to play TJ Newton – he was Ziggy Stardust, man! However, it is Bowie’s presence in the film that brings up one of the things that annoyed me the most: if some random guy had been playing TJ and not a rock-&-roll sex symbol, I doubt Mr. Roeg would have felt the need to film rather graphic, really long sex scenes. Sure, we get to see Bowie’s dick, which is very nice, but it just slows the film to a crawl. And I suppose the scenes would be there no matter who played the role, since other characters have these hyper-extended pseudo-porn scenes as well (really, I do not need to see Rip Torn in the nude, no matter how experimental I’m feeling).
Another thing that irritated me is how confusing the movie is; if I hadn’t read the book first, I would be completely and utterly lost on what’s happening. And even having read the book, I was still terribly fucking confused. Things like irritating camera work (pointless zooming in and out during dialogue scenes) and huge jumps in the timeline from scene to scene with no indication that any time has passed just make the movie a chore to watch at times. Also, though Bowie kicks unholy ass, there’s some pretty cringe-worthy acting from other people here.
One thing that is important to note is that apparently, upon its initial release in the USA, it was heavily cut, and ended up over half an hour shorter. I must say, as disjointed as the movie already is, I would hate to have been one of the poor fools seeing the movie in an American cinema back in 1976…
I was extremely let down by the flaming wreck of a movie I was presented with. Criterion, you guys can do better… The only other movie I’ve seen from Roeg is The Witches, which I rather liked, so I’ll probably watch another one or two from him just to make sure I didn’t land on a creative slump with this one.

RATING: 4.5/10

Film Review - "I Spit on Your Grave" (1978)

I Spit on Your Grave
1978
Meir Zarchi

This is one of the big boys – one of the most notorious exploitation films in the world, infamously brutal, and famously beaten down hard by Roger Ebert. Yessir, that must be it – the film that has gone under about a dozen different names, but is most famously referred to as I Spit on Your Grave (or, as Joe Bob Briggs says that you’re supposed to pronounce it based on the trailer, “I Spit… on Your Grave”).
The plot is pretty much standard rape-revenge fare: Jennifer Hill, a New York feminist writer, moves out to the country so she can write the great American romance novel. Once there, she is eyed by a gang of chauvinistic rednecks, and soon enough, they’ve chased her down and are raping her in what holds the record as the longest continuous rape scene in motion picture history. Left for dead but still barely alive, she plots a violent revenge, and sets out to distribute some serious poetic justice.
Though many have accused this film of being dangerously misogynistic and glorifying rape, when viewed closely, it is actually a very feministic movie. The film quite obviously ‘sides’ with Jennifer, and the disturbing length and intensity of the rape scene served (at least in my eyes) as a way of making us despise the antagonists (who happen to be the only male characters in the movie) even more so that we’re excited to see them get their ironic comeuppance.
One of the things that sets this film apart and ups the levels of creepiness is that it’s filmed like a documentary. There’s no music anywhere in the film, the colors look very dull and depressing, and so on.
The actors are mostly good here. Camille Keaton, who plays Jennifer, seriously deserves some kind of award for her performance. She doesn’t speak much, but her facial expressions and body language tell us exactly what the character’s thinking. The rapists are made very easy to despise, thanks in no small part to the actors being particularly nasty with their roles, although the actor playing the retarded guy tends to overact and go all Jerry Lewis, which kind of takes away from the film overall (but I admit that it does make for a few laughs now and again).
The special effects deserve a special mention here. Oh, wait… What special effects? That’s right; the minimalist form that defines most of the film is about as low-budget as it gets, but it works for the most part far better than any special effects ever could have in some scenes (like the especially well-known castration scene, which is undoubtedly the cheapest ‘effect’ in the film, but is also the most powerful). Sure, this is kind of wrecked when we get some hideous attempts at make-up effects at the end of the film, but they still aren’t crappy enough to take back all the awesomeness from the rest of the movie.
This type of movie can be hard to defend in an artistic sense; most of the time, they are just as their detractors call them: sleaze. It’s all just a matter of taste. However, I must say that this one definitely stands out as being somewhat deeper and thus deserving more serious credit than most movies like this. Just go see what Joe Bob Briggs had to say about it – he gets it across a lot better than I ever could. But anyway, this is one of my favorite revenge-exploitation movies, and it helped me to develop my love for said subgenre.

RATING: 7.5/10

Film Review - "Thriller: A Cruel Picture" (1974)

Thriller: A Cruel Picture
1974
Bo A. Vibenius

Yes! Yes! ROCK! It’s the ultimate Grindhouse film! The legendary bad boy from Sweden that got chopped to hell (and renamed “They Call Her One-Eye”) for its mainstream U.S. run was one of the biggest staples of underground 70’s cinema and a premier piece of 42nd Street sleaze.
The plot is universally recognizable and standard revenge-flick fare. A teenage farm girl (who is now mute thanks to the psychological trauma from being molestered by a creepy old dude when she was a wee one) is seduced by a handsome, mysterious stranger from the city, with his sweet car and hilariously 70’s pre-yuppie jet-setter clothes. The two of them go back to his place, where she is promptly drugged and raped. She wakes up a few days later, at which point she is informed that she is now a heroin addict, and in order to get her fix, she must live the life of a sex slave for Mr. Sexy Pseudo-Yuppie, who is actually a pimp/drug dealer/mobster/all-purpose baddie… Where’s James Bond when we need him? At first, the girl refuses to comply, and so her new boss gouges out her eye with a scalpel, to show her that whoring is serious business. So, she becomes a whore, with her clientele including a weird old guy who just likes to take pictures of her; a big dumb beefcake who enjoys it rough and dirty; and this really intense woman who’s into BDSM. The girl plans with another whore to escape by skimming off the top of their wages, and then, once they’ve saved up enough, making a break for it, getting new identities, and checking into a fancy detox clinic. The pimp finds out about this, and he has the other whore killed (because she’s at least in her forties and pretty haggard, and therefore expendable), and decides to give the teenager one last chance – however, to show that he’s not fucking around, he sends her parents a really mean letter to break their hearts and explain away their daughter’s disappearance (IE, something along the lines of “I hate you motherfuckers and I’m going to live with my new boyfriend, I hope you rot in hell blah blah blah”). The daughter attempts to go see them and show them that she didn’t write the letter, but she’s too late, and they’ve already savored a jug of bleach and joined the choir invisible. So, with this, the pimp has completely crossed the line. For the next [indefinite yet obviously very long period of time], she uses her days off to go train herself in many different forms of combat, from jujitsu to gunplay, and secretly skims off her wages to stock up on weapons and such…All in preparation for the big day when she’ll go see her pimp and terminally fuck his shit up.
This movie is everything that a Grindhouse picture should be; it’s genuinely thrilling, it’s got a defined artistic edge to it, it’s hardcore in every sense of the word, and, above all, it’s incredibly entertaining. There are parts of the movie that are honestly difficult to watch for their intensity; there are super-explicit sex scenes that show us the very meaning of ‘X-Rated’; there are some beautifully staged slow-motion gunfights that are almost like ballets, with the screen as the canvas unto which Mr. Vibenius paints with the most incredible shades of red. The movie just feels downright ‘evil’ in some scenes, but despite being so mean-spirited, the girl getting her revenge just gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling – for a character that literally does not speak a single word in the film, we just connect so well with her that we want her to succeed. We want so badly for her to fuckin’ castrate the pimp and then feed him his cock (and while his comeuppance isn’t as awesomely ironic as that, it’s still satisfying and innovative enough).
The action in this movie is also very well done. I’ve said many, many times before that I am by no means a fan of action movies, because they bore me. Usually, I just kind of zone out when faced with extended sequences of explosions, car chases, gunfights (especially gunfights in which there is absolutely no blood or gore), martial arts battles (especially when it’s lots of unrealistic and gravity-defying moves for no real reason and/or ‘not violent enough’ and just trying to be ‘cool’ – it’s hard to explain, but you know what I’m talking about, right?) and so on. However, on some rare occasions, I am actually thrilled, chilled, kept on the edge of my seat, and all the other clichés, and this movie is one of those great exceptions. The action scenes are kickass – they’re bloody, they’re chaotic, and they actually remind me of Peckinpah in a way, which means instant extra points.This movie is best known for being a big influence on Quentin Tarantino, particularly for his two-part epic, Kill Bill. Because of that, it has been brought to a whole new audience (which I am a member of); Quentin speaks very fondly of this film fairly often, and he’s played it along with some of his other sleazy favorites at his Grindhouse film festivals. So, after having my mind blown (both literally and figuratively – OH SNAP!) by this fantastic piece of cinema, I can only follow suit and recommend this to anybody looking for one of the better Grindhouse flicks; this completely epitomizes everything awesome about Grindhouse, so this should be the first place they go.
RATING: 8.5/10