Welcome to the Universe

"The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible." ~Arthur C. Clarke


I recently jumped feet first into the realm of Blu-Ray. I bought the latest and greatest player by Samsung (and still can't figure out the fucking remote) and a 1080p TV from Wal-mart (I hope I don't regret it in a year), but had failed to add any Blu-rays to my collection. Until now. My first personal Blu-ray was none other than Stanley Kubrick's science fiction mindfuck masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Wow. I forgot how fucking weird this movie is. (My next viewing requires copious amounts of LSD.)

The movie is divided into four acts. Act 1, the Dawn of Man, shows a group of hairy hominids cackling and shouting in apemanese at a different group of hairy hominids, scaring them away. Then after a long night of tick-picking and cuddlefucks, they awaken to the awesomeness of the SPACE DOMINO.

This megalith from beyond the stars telepathically teaches our good hairy hominid clan how to use an old femur to bash in the fucking ape-brains of bad hairy hominid leader. (I'm pretty sure they went on to sell car insurance.)

~"Try to get MY pubes off the bar soap, you hairless fuckwad."~

Act Two jumps forward a few MILLION years (without a montage song too) to the flight of Dr. Haywood Floyd (William Sylvester). Apparently a group of lunar geologists were digging around and discovered the SPACE DOMINO. This act is where we get our first sputterings of dialogue. Thirty  goddamned minutes into the movie I might add. So, after telling everyone there is definitely not a giant black crayon box on the moon, the group of scientists go touch the SPACE DOMINO only to have it burst their fucking eardrums apart with its sheer awesomeness.

~Haywood Jablowme~

Act Three is the meat and potatoes of the movie. Taking place another 18 months later, we get introduced to  our sidekick / villain HAL 9000. Oh, and some peeps -- Dave and Frank. This act, in fact, has a plot. HAL is the supercomputer aboard the spaceship Discovery with our human friends heading to Jupiter because apparently our SPACE DOMINO sent out a radio signal to the giant ball of gas. Now, HAL informs the peeps about the communication satellite going kaput in a few hours. No big deal, right. Except a HAL 9000 on Earth ran the same diagnostic and found no such malfunction. Since HALs are always right, one of em must be wrong. 

~He looks trustworthy to me.~

The peeps decide to disengage HAL, just in case he's a psychotic killer computer. HAL decides to kill the peeps because he's a psychotic killer computer. There's where the conflict lies.

Act Four is where you're hoping the acid REALLY kicks in,  because astronaut Dave from Act Three encounters our SPACE DOMINO, entering a psychedelic space warp into the very point where time and space and tacos combine to, to, . . . Ok, I'll admit. I have NO fucking idea what Act Four is about. Dave flies through the air. Then he's in a room as an old man eating. Then he's on the bed dying. Then he's the fucking spacebaby. Yes, spacebaby. 

~"I can taste the purple in your soul."~

Hey, I don't get it either, but it was the Sixties. Maybe Kubrick was hanging out with Timothy Leary a little too often. Or not enough. Either way, this is regarded as the first serious science fiction movie. It's the grandfather to every decent and otherwise space movie since. This is what George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg were jerking off to in Film school. 

And yes, this is what I was jerking off to last night. 

Raising Kane

"Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far." ~Jean Cocteau

What is the greatest movie ever? If you answered The Big Lebowski, you would be wrong. If you answered Magnolia I would have sex with you, but you would still be wrong. If you answered Casablanca, you would get a B+, and i would accuse you of being a kiss-ass. And if you answered Twilight: New Moon, I might just have to dropkick you in the fucking throat before ripping out your little glitter-infatuated heart and eat it. 

No, according to film historians, academes, scholars, and other smug dillweeds whose opinions I shouldn't give two shits about, but actually do is Citizen Kane. Some might even call it the Citizen Kane of all movies.  

Wait, that's redundant. 

The story revolves around the death of a newspaper tycoon, Charles Foster Kane, played by Orson Welles. Upon his deathbed, his dying words were "rosebud," and the dirty rotten newspaper scoundrels go out and interview everyone who knew Kane to find some insight into who or what rosebud was. That's it--the plot of the Best Movie Ever. 

SPOILER ALERT

I could marvel at the technical perfections of CK. At the way the timeline jumps forward and backwards non-linearly, to make you constantly question what year you're really in. Imagine a Tarantino movie, except all the characters are rich, all the weapons are replaced with newspapers, and instead of talking about madonna songs (cuz, you know, she's still 40 years away), they talk about . . . NEWSPAPERS!

~"You gonna bark all day little doggy, or are you going to talk about our editorials on dog bites?"~

The cool part about this movie is the controversy behind its creation. See, Charles Foster Kane is really . . . drumroll please . . . William Randolph Hearst. Just the most important newspaper man to probably ever live in America. He invented yellow journalism, almost singlehandedly creating the fervor behind the Spanish-American War. Hearst went out of his way, spending millions to try to stop the production of this movie. He was able to smear Welles reputation, or exacerbate Welles own destructive habits, and able to have him almost blacklisted in Hollywood. Ironically though, Citizen Kane has survived the test of time, and Hearst's story has been deduced to a grumbling rich man-boy spending his whole life masturbating to the memory of his fucking sled.  And that my friends, is the GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL FUCKING TIME!

~"Where's my sled, Mama?"~

Orgasmo

"Women might be able to fake orgasms, but men can fake whole relationships." ~Sharon Stone


Ah, a movie about New York. And divorce. And love. And neurotic men. Must be Woody Allen.

Wrong

No, I'm talking about When Harry Met Sally..., you know, the movie where the smoking hot Meg Ryan purposefully ignores Billy Crystal's sexual advances for a dozen years. Until she doesn't anymore. Actually I remembered this movie as "the Meg Ryan orgasm" movie for years, or "the one without Tom Hanks," after that OTHER romantic comedy came out about New York. And breakups. And love. And neurotic men. . . but i digress. 

~"I'd never fake it with YOU."~

Upon giving it another viewing, I've decided this is really a smart, funny, romantic movie about how men and probably women really are. Now I say probably because I've never been an expert on the ways of Vagina Club, if you get my drift. But, yes, men will have a date with a girl, have sex with the girl, leave the girl, and repeat the process the next day with the next name in the phone book. Women use sex more sparingly. Kinda like "If you want the goods, and I know you do, you have to wait for it.....wait for it.......wait for it." Our biology at work, my friends. We can't change our wiring, we just change our techniques.

But the question at hand, the question burning in the backs of the minds of every Harry and Sally, the question that this movie is REALLY about is this:  Can Men and Women just be friends? I really think so. Harry thinks it isn't possible because men, being the horny bastards that we are, are always thinking about sex....with Meg Ryan......

~Need I say more~

anyway . . . because of this fact, men can never befriend a woman. Perhaps. But sometimes, as this movie so eloquently points out, if we just put our dicks away, reveal our true capacities as a caring human being to another caring human being, the journey can lead to wondrous places. 

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(Trivia Bite: The woman who, after Meg Ryan's public fake orgasm, says "I'll have what she's having," turns out to be Rob Reiner's mother.)

Family System

"Death ends a life, not a relationship." ~Robert Benchley




Ordinary People (1980). Extraordinary movie about a family coping with the worst of tragedies, losing a child. Conrad (perfectly played and worthy of the Oscar, Timothy Hutton) is the little brother who, after witnessing the death of his brother, tried to commit suicide. His mother Beth (a cold Mary Tyler Moore) is rejecting all emotional connection while trying to save face in front of all the country club friends and neighbors. Calvin (Donald Sutherland) is a patriarch torn between the two people he has left.

At first I was a little iffy about this one. For starters, the movie begins AFTER the death of Buck, and we only learn about his demise through the flashbacks of Conrad. A good rule for movies is flashbacks don't work. In this one though, It helped us reveal the guilt and resentment he was fostering towards his much cooler older brother. 

Why, even mother Beth liked Buck better. Mary Tyler Moore, you are great at being an emotionally-stunted, cold-hearted, money-grubbing bitch.

~"Of course I loved your brother more. He was cool."~

And poor Conrad. Unable to connect with any of his old pre-suicidal swim team friends, he quits the team (only to get ostracized more), he confides in an old hospital friend (only to have her kill herself), have to describe the pains of suicide on a date (only to have her break out in awkward laughter), and find out he hates his mother from his new shrink. Well, that's one positive. 

Robert Redford made a strong directorial debut with this intricate, heartfelt mosaic about the fragility and strength of the family unit. Honestly, I never would have watched this movie had it not been on this list, and for that, I am truly grateful. 

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

"All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity." ~William Shakespeare, Hamlet




I have a soft spot for Disney. I wish I could write up some diatribe about the evils of Disney, with their blatant misogyny; their recycled story lines, characters, and even whole animated sequences; or even their weird obsession with orphans, but i cannot. I was a Disney kid. Thanks to the Magical World of Disney, I set sail around the world in search of flying elephants, ostrich-riding island children, and BDSM. It was a joyous time indeed.

 ~"You've been bloody naughty. You deserve a proper spanking."~

SWOON!

So I jumped at the opportunity to re-view one of the best, The Lion King (1994). It is the retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet on the Serengeti, with a pride of . . . LIONS! That's right, Disney doesn't want to confuse the children.  Let's see here. The story centers around Simba, the new cub (voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas of Home Improvement fame, oh and apparently the wall of my girlfriend--she obviously had bad taste from an early age) to King Mufasa (voiced by Darth Vader James Earl Jones.) Our conniving uncle Scar (brilliantly voiced by Jeremy Irons) concocts a double-assassination attempt with his hyena friends to initiate a   coup, allowing both lion and hyena to coexist in fascist harmony. Seriously, have you noticed the not-too-subtle visual references to Nazi Germany.

So Spoiler Alert after Darth Vader Mufasa dies, Simba is ran off by the Hyenas into the wilderness. What got me, even as a child, was the hyenas used the word "KILL." I don't believe that movie had ever been uttered in an animated Disney classic before. Another first is, THE FATHER DIES. Seriously, in every other fucking Disney classic, it's the mother who gets whacked. Bambi, Snow White, Cinder-fuckin-ella, each had their mothers ripped away. I suppose you can't have a Hamlet story without a dead father, the male lion is where all the action is. Even if they are a bunch of lazy fucks.

~Look at my noble nuts, bitches.~

So the newly orphaned, newly homeless, still-fucking-maneless Simba befriends the comic reliefs of Timon and Pumbaa, and learns all about the carefree life of taking care of numero uno. They even have a fucking montage song. (They seriously sing that song for about 2 years.) 

But it's Disney. They like music. This time, they opted to have a real rockNroller into the Magic Kingdom, Sir Elton Fucking John. *bows* No one can write a ballad like that ball-licker. (And I mean that with the utmost respect, Sir Reggie.)

~Disney's Liberace~

Then there is the long-lost love thing, the monkey-whacking thing, the "oh fuck, i'm my father!" thing, the back from the grave thing, the kill your uncle thing. But you know, with whimsical talking animals and shit.

The Downward Spiral

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live." ~Charles Bukowski




"People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden." So began Fight Club (1999), quite possibly the most quotable movie. Ever. Period. Our protagonist (Edward Norton), whose name is never given, is an insomnia-stricken automobile recall specialist who finds inner peace (and sleep) when he begins frequenting support groups. A good cry equates to a good sleep. All is swell and proper until Marla Singer (an exquisitely crazy Helena Bonham Carter) invades the support group circuit.

~Crazy never looked so good.~

Marla's lie reflected our narrator's lie and insomnia ensued. 

It was then we are introduced to Tyler Durden (pre-tabloid Brad Pitt). After our narrator's condo explodes, he goes to live with Tyler and the two of them start Fight Club. Oh the anarchy, the sweet anarchy. 

What started as an underground fighting club grew into an elite militaristic troupe of Space Monkeys causing chaos and mayhem all around, eventually leading to an intricate plan to blow up the credit card companies. When BitchTits Bob (Meat Loaf) is shot in the head trying to destroy a piece of public art, our narrator thinks it has gone far enough, and tries to stop Tyler. 

And this is where the movie gets really fucked up! Our narrator and Tyler Durden are . . . the same fucking person. It's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on 'roids.

~(and by 'roids I mean tea and crumpets)~

Fight Club is a satire of the consumerism of America. We are at conflict with our two halves everyday, our consumerist self (eating, working, spending) and our animal self (fucking, fighting, killing). Our homes are broken, our spirits are broken, our vision is broken. We are all misguided orphan bastards with spear in one hand and briefcase in the other. We don't know where are we and we don't know where we're going. This movie at least tries to find the hope in hopelessness, the faith in faithlessness, and the comfort in the fact that the bottom is only as far down as your imagination can go.

Again I Go Unnoticed

"Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it." ~Confucius.

Look Closer. These words are not just the logline of American Beauty (1999), but also echo our own voyeuristic nature. It opens with a beyond-the-grave narration from our protagonist, Lester Burnham, (played exquisitely by Kevin Spacey, earning him his second Oscar in 3 years), foretelling his own death within the year. His lovely, yet highly anal-retentive real estate wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening, Oscar-snubbed by gender-bending Hilary Swank) obviously wears the pants in the relationship, emasculating Lester on a daily basis. Daughter, Jane (Thora Birch) is dealing with body-image issues while saving up for breast augmentation.

New neighbors move into the empty house next door. homophobic Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper) his reclusive shell-of-a-wife (Allison Janney), and their drug-dealing videographer son Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), who has more than a modest crush on Burnham's Baby Jane.

Lester awakens from his comatose life when we encounters Jane's cheerleading friend, Angela (Mena Suvari), practically nutting in the bleachers. Oh, and just so we're on the same page here--Lester is 42, Angela is 16. Yep, our protagonist is a an ephebophile (yeah, I had to look it up too.)

 

So now Lester makes it his mission in life to bang Angela. Maybe not the noblest of goals, but a goal nonetheless. He blackmails his boss, grows a pair concerning his wife (who, might I add, becomes a gun-toting adulterer), and  starts a $2000/oz weed habit. 

Things get really bat-shit weird when Colonel Fitts throws Ricky out of his house after witnessing a drug deal with Lester and assumes his son is top-of-the-line cocksucker. Afterward, the Colonel visits Lester......for some man-on-man liplocking (WTF!......That explains SO much!)

Don't worry folks, when Lester is thrust into the itty-bitty titty committee, the father figure reawakens and the audience doesn't feel completely icky for rooting for the pervert. All seems to be well and fine in Lester's world until . . . 

~"I would like to thank the Academy."~

So the question still remains

Who killed Lester Burnham?

(My vote is the CIA, but I'm a conspiracy nut.)




The magic world of American Beauty is the brainchild of mastermind Alan Ball (who afterward went on to create the BEST SHOW EVER, Six Feet Under.) In this story, we are witnessing not only the sexual reawakening of a lonely, emasculated man, but also his rebirth into humanity. By the end of the movie, Lester has broken free from the chains that bind so many of us down. He finally knows who he is and what he really wants. It's true that none of these realizations are able to be brought into fruition, but tragedy is a part of life.

The message is a hopeful one--Embrace life tightly with both arms, because you never know who owns a gun.

 

I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me)

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The Scientist and the Cowboy

Hell, there are no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something. ~Thomas Edison

When film was a shiny new toy in the wee budding years of the Twentieth Century, everyone tried to be a Spielberg. . . and usually failed miserably.  Most of these early shorts are easily forgettable. Two innovators who actually didn't choke on their own ineptitude and made some pretty damn good flicks were Georges Méliès , with his Le Voyage Dans la Luna and Edwin Porter, with his The Great Train Robbery.

Le Voyage Dans la Luna, (1902) ,or A Trip to the Moon, for all you Nationalists, is th first science fiction story, and Melies' most famous work--but after doing over 500 films, you'd hope at least ONE would make it's way into pop cultural history. It's a quaint little movie about a group of scientists who decide to build a cannon and shoot a large bullet into the eyeball of the Man on the Moon.

 

~Science is such a dick.~

Upon landing on the moon, they wield their mighty umbrellas of doom ("This is my BOOMstick!") to destroy the Moon Satyrs. It's your typical Invasion and Conquer story, and has been a great influence for every science fiction film you have or haven't seen. Oh, and music videos....like this one.

(TRIVIA BITE: The directors of the above video were Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the married directorial team behind Little Miss Sunshine.)

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The Great Train Robbery (1903) is considered the first Western, even though it was filmed in Delaware and even though Edison had apparently made some crappy Western 4 years prior. This is another quaint little story about Invasion and Conquest. Just replace the scientists with cowboys....and the moon with a train. This film has the unique privilege of being the first Blockbuster, and subsequently, giving us our first "movie star," Gilbert Anderson.

 

~the Brad Pitt of 1900s~

The greatest innovation each of these films provided was the advancements in editing. yes, editing. Before these, film was pretty much like watching the home videos of people plowing, or waving, or shitting. Yes, i'm talking about you, Lumiere Brothers. These two films utilized different sets, camera techniques, and even used some real fucking actors. Hollywood has come a long way indeed, but owes oodles of inspiration and perspiration to these early pioneers.

Meat Beat Manifesto

There's no thief like a bad movie. ~Sam Ewing


I have been embedded in the cinema experience since I was a wee lad. My first movie was "Coal Miner's Daughter." I was 12 months old, but apparently I liked it. My mother said I only shat once. That day a shitting moviehound was made, and i haven't stopped yet.

I am what many would consider a movie snob. It's true.

I am considerably picky when it comes to fine cinema. I know everything isn't going to be a Citizen Kane or a Being John Malkovich, but it doesn't have to make me want to rip out my fucking retinas and wish to god i had been aborted. Is that too much to ask?

But a great movie is better than sex. The story is emotive and passionate, the players are expressive and approachable, the cinematography and direction are articulate and poetic, with great mise en scene and scope. This is what I live for.

What i wouldn't do to watch the Matrix, Grand Illusion, and Magnolia again, for the first time!

Then I came across this,

and it hit me like a bolt of lightning.

This book was written for me. Not in the way some fucking teenage girl feels after reading Twilight and can relate to the travesty of unrequited love of an immortal. No, Mrs Solomons and Schneider personally compiled this book, and fatefully led me to it with a note stating:

Dear Beloved Wezul,
We know how much of a dick you can be
if you're unable to get your fill of good
movies. Here you go. This should
keep you busy for a while.
Love,
Authors.

P.S. Don't be such a douchebag.

So here's my mission, if I choose to accept it. Watch all 1001 movies and give my thoughts, interpretations, memories, reviews, and ramblings on them. Many of these are tried and true Classics that are already part of my permanent collection (*cough cough* MovieSnob). Some are ones I've always meant to see, but hadn't gotten around to it. Some of these are, dare I say it, CRAP!
Nonetheless, I will try my damnedest to scour all the sources made available to me to watch them all. All I ask from my readers (if I get any) is to be patient with me. I am a full-time student, a full-time employee, a full-time boyfriend, and a full-time parent. There will be times these posts come quickly and smoothly. There will be times that life just has to come before the movies. (I know, it brings a tear to my eye as well.)

So come along, fellow Cinephiles, to the Wonderful, Wacky World of Wezul's FILMECTOMY.