Rock of Ages

Well, without digging too deeply into the ideologic-socio-political dimensions of Rock of Ages, here's a brief snapshot of what happens.

A beautiful young girl (Julianne Hough as Sherrie Christian) travels from Oklahoma to Los Angeles in the hopes of becoming a singer. It becomes clear early on that the odds are stacked against her but she's fortunate enough to catch the eye of a barback (Diego Boneta as Drew Boley) with similar dreams who finds her a job at the prominent nightclub (The Bourbon Club) where he works.  

In less than a week they've developed a strong emotional bond.

Known, as love.

Legendary demonic alcoholic singer Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) and his band Arsenal are scheduled to play their last collective performance at the Bourbon Club, and the sultry studious astute Constance Stack (Malin Akerman) of Rolling Stone hopes to ask Mr. Jaxx some sharp related critical questions beforehand.

After three or four minutes she's prancing around in her underwear.

She does still publish a vitriolic article later on.

But by the end of the film she's carrying his baby.

Meanwhile, the clueless adulterous Mayor Mike Whitmore's (Bryan Cranston) religious wife Patricia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) hopes to put an end to the Bourbon Club's cult and is crusading against Mr. Jaxx as well.

The only man who ever made her feel like a real woman.

By the end of the film she's back in the audience, hoping Stacee will notice her once again.

Sherrie and Drew break up and she finds a job stripping while he gets stuck in a boy band.

And another monster rock ballad is sung.

I'm not really looking to complicate this film or anything, but it does present politics and feminism as hypocritical meaningless endeavours whose initiatives crumble beneath the seductive gaze of the established subterranean patriarch.

In this case, the political initiatives are invasive and counterproductive but if they function as a foil for such initiatives generally they can be considered belittling and grossly disproportionate (there is no alternative political option presented).

I prefer grassroots music to that manufactured by market based research but it's not as if classic rock isn't alive and well.  

It's nice to see gay characters given a strong masculine structural role within, not in terms of encouraging anti-feminist apolitical activities, but in regards to taking risks in order to establish an integral celebrated entrepreneurial identity.

I can't think of any other things to say besides the fact that the film's soundtrack contains some songs that I like.

Rock of Ages. 

Rollin' along.

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted

Well, I haven't seen the first two Madagascar films, but Europe's Most Wanted makes it clear that at some point the loveable animal stars spent time in a zoo in New York City.

And are hoping to return.

Their penguin and chimpanzee acquaintances ditch them at the beginning to fly to Monte Carlo and make a fortune gambling.

Frightened of having to spend the rest of their lives in Africa, they follow.

How they travel to Monte Carlo remains a mystery (it's possible that they swam).

After they discover their whereabouts, they accidentally fall through a glass ceiling, thereby simultaneously reuniting while interrupting a lavish spending spree of Europe's elite.

Which engenders a confrontation with the law.

As represented by a rather determined feminine figure.

From which they escape by posing as circus animals and finding refuge in a hostile yet hospitable train.

The penguins then buy the circus from owners who are eager to sell only to discover that it suffers from a serious lack of talent.

And that things need to be competently restructured in order to impress an American promoter who may finance a tour of the United States.

Starting in New York City.

Even though our heroes have no circus experience, they have lived in an American zoo where they acquired transferable do-it-yourself-know-how, easily applicable to any situation.

And the characters from Africa, who prefer life in a zoo to their homeland, teach the struggling Europeans how to dazzlingly manage their showcase, thereby enabling a tour of the U.S.A.

The revitalized Russian tiger is heard to utter 'bolshevik' instead of 'bullshit.'

Labour laws in France apparently only require two weeks of work a year, a subtle indirect (annoying) elevation of the 50 week work year.

A Platonic mode of political production is partially at work insofar as the wise penguins use the spirit of their inspirational lion, zebra, hippopotamus, and giraffe to reconstitute the European appetites, even after said appetites find out that they've been convincingly lied to.

In the interests of entertainment.

Can't say I'm disappointed that I missed its predecessors, nor that I find the title Europe's Most Wanted amusing.

Suppose a kid's film about the state of the American economy wouldn't be commercially feasible.

"God only knows it's not what we would choose to do (Roger Waters, Rick Wright)."

Tip Top

Clouds are rolling over,
a beaver's swimming by.
Metamorphic boxspring,
left by glacial tides.

Birds can be heard a chirping,
the shore erupts in song.
A breeze gently shares its cooling breath
while turtles saunter on.

A heartfelt tender posting,
inaugural astute sparks.
Shimmering reflections,
restrained star gazing park.

A pioneering bunch of daisies
has found lodging in a gap.
Audaciously derailing
the shallow supine crack.

In fertile soil they've prospered
where they've never grown before.
A versatile amendment to a
torrid lofty core.

Somehow their seed was scattered
to a receptive latent home.
Their resultant tactile manner cast in
multicaring chrome.

And all across this dark sky reserve
their settlements have spread.
To brighten its nocturnal poise
with a sublime starlit stead.

On the Rocks

Calisthenic cascade
sweltering granite
deciduous addendums
solar sojourns
jet stream dissipating
rhythms resounding
odonatan sentinels
polymorphous plunge
constructive current
coruscating.

Prometheus

And a group of scientific diplomats and their escort departs on a trillion dollar mission financed by Weyland Corporation towards a planetary alignment discovered by a team of archaeologists upon several ancient culturally isolated works of art.

In search of those who brought life to their home world.

But their investigative proclivities awake volcanic slumbering behemoths whom are intent upon annihilating their planet.

Which has functioned as their laboratory for millennia.

In the end, only a devoted non-denominational Christian (whose faith still burns) who at one point initiates a self-inflicted abortion and a brilliant amoral android who was responsible for infecting her husband with the fertile extraterrestrial virus, remain.

Still determined to make contact.

Still driven, to carry on.

Ridley Scott's Prometheus has its moments but on the whole functions like an amorphous geyser, patiently stratifying different levels of neuroses before startlingly expelling their searing undulations.

Several approaches to handling the unknown are precipitated, each exemplifying differing degrees of prohibition.        

Thereby carnally creating within a paranoid social constellation.

And intergalactically quarantining exploratory consonance.  

Snow White and the Huntsman

A wicked Queen who loathes men kills her husband due to her blind fear that he will cast her off when her beauty fades and then takes psychotic steps to insure that it will remain forever.

But when his daughter whom she has kept prisoner comes of age and it becomes clear that she is even more beautiful, she immediately seeks to put her to death.

But Snow White (Kristen Stewart) escapes and her purity and innocence help her to make her way back to the forces who fought for her father and will still nobly battle for his seed.

A Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth), seven dwarves, and many others assist her during her journey.

Her innocence would likely have not been so pure had she not spent her entire youth locked inside a cell.

Unfortunately, unlike the creators of Mirror Mirror, those responsible for Snow White and the Huntsman seem to have never escaped from the cell in which they were nurtured, and are still struggling to develop genuine tension, emotion, and plot.

At no point throughout this film does it seem probable that Snow will not succeed. Her young curious yet cautious inner light intuitively and instructively guides her steady improvised actions.

As if she was born to lead.

But the film sets up another tired opposition between naturalistic and fabricated extremes with the King's only heir exuding divine rights with every instinctive calibration.

Snow's rallying cry when she's reunited with the resistance lacks depth, character and ferocity.

I really wanted to like Muir's (Bob Hoskins) omniscient observations but they were just too much.

The Huntsman predictably abandons Snow but only for two to three minutes.

And William (Sam Claflin) doesn't hide his feelings at all upon being reuniting with her, going so far as to actually display them.

It just doesn't make sense.

The Huntsman and William do form a pseudo-Jacob/Edward dichotomy for Kristen Stewart which brings in a little Twilight.

But this really only makes things worse, although in the end it seems that she desires Jacob, which is, of course, the correct preference.

However forbidden.

John Carter

Was surprised by the internal dynamics of Andrew Stanton's John Carter.

Within, one finds a disengaged despondent protagonist, John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), refusing to take part in any unnecessary interpersonal relations because his family was murdered by the North during the American Civil War.

He's searching for gold in the Arizona Territory.

After escaping from regional military authorities, he finds himself in a cave where he is accidentally transported to Barsoom (Mars).

On Barsoom, he winds up in a typical scenario where one side of a bloodthirsty jingoistic 'might is right' community (Zodanga) is using a weapon of unlimited power, given to them by godlike beings (the Therns) who want them to rule the planet, to defeat their ancient enlightened enemies (the citizens of Helium) who are on the brink of discovering a method of harnessing an infinite source of energy (the Ninth Ray) whose secrets have been manipulated by the Therns for millennia.

A third party, whose political structure and cultural activities are somewhat Romanesque (the Tharks), are avoiding the conflict.   

Helium can end the war if Tardos Mors (Ciarán Hinds) marries his daughter Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) to Zodanga's leader, Sab Than (Dominic West).

However, the resourceful, fierce, and brilliant Dejah refuses and escapes with the serendipitous assistance of Mr. Carter.

The Tharks provide them with sanctuary until their curiosity proves sacrilegious.

If one thinks of Zodanga's aggressive warlike colonialist activities as representing an ideology far to the right, Helium's feudal yet scientifically and socially progressive practices (women can be just as strong, intelligent, and successful as men and science isn't being used exclusively in the manufacture of weapons) as one that is left of centre, the Tharks as having adopted a neutral approach whose internal ideological dimensions are still far to the right (the non-voting uncritical receptors of Republican pop culture?), the Therns as a powerful interventional technologically advanced group seeking to maintain their immemorial monopoly, and John Carter as a jaded nihilistic entrepreneur only seeking to return home, then the altruistic effects of the following denouement could possibly play out.

Sab plans to murder Dejah after their wedding thereby uniting the cities while eliminating the feminine scientific element. Carter overcomes his individualism, decides to fight for Helium, and uses his influence with the Tharks to secure their aid. Together they out maneouvre the Therns and Zodangans leaving the door open for the people of Helium to develop constructive means of utilizing the energy of the Ninth Ray to bring about a more sustainable perennial planetary infrastructure whose enduring surplus could break down the dominant feudal structures preventing the Tharks, Zodangans, and citizens of Helium from forging a united front capable of shielding themselves against the Therns's meddling.

And their preference for brute force.

And general smugness.

Tim and Eric's Billionaire Dollar Movie

Enjoyed Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie.

Some of the jokes aren't the greatest and one situation almost made me retch, but these guys are undeniably flexible in terms of producing sustained awkward oblivious carefree traumatically endearing comedy, nostalgically nuanced with a 1980s commercial naivety, and overflowing with nimble bad judgment.    

In search of a billion dollars.

Chef Goldblum's (Jeff Goldblum) transitional introduction sets the stage.

The hysterically fruitful job interview where Damien Weebs (Will Ferrell) devotedly demands that Top Gun be played a second time keeps things flowing.

Taquito's (John C. Reilly) epic battle with the mall wolf invokes tragedy.

And Katie's (Twink Caplan) indiscretion cannot tear Tim and Eric apart.

They've been taught what to expect from life and how to approach it from television and the movies, and, as a consequence, haplessly proceed with limitless confidence.

No matter what situation they face.

Ignoring the ways in which everything around them is crumbling and decaying, they manage to not let a little financial instability get them down.

While forging a strategic plan.

And unerringly living the dream.

Bear Sighting

Saw a black bear grazing in the back of a field between Sudbury and North Bay a couple of days ago.

Bears.

Men in Black III

The clandestine Men in Black security force is back to monitor Earth's alien activity in the franchise's third instalment, Men in Black III, fully loaded with neuralyzers, inexhaustible technological and knowledge resources, a law enforcing odd couple, and monumental temporal distortions.

Just in time for Summer. 

If the darkness is literally thought of as a nocturnal limiting force within which means of generating light must be creatively produced in order to enable vision (fire, candles, electrical lights), and this literal example is then metaphorically transferred to the domain of patriarchal construction (Men in Black), then perhaps this film is saying that one of the ways in which the male traditionally tends to visualize attempts to quarantine the unknown (the feminine, difference, egalitarianism) is by interminably equipping solid and steady agents of cultural homogeneity with flashy gadgets and binary intergenerational banter which provides the elder with a stubborn and taciturn way of expressing himself (he's seen everything before and seeks to waste no time discussing things) and the younger with an endless supply of frustrated curiosity.      

In Men in Black III we find Agent J (Will Smith) and Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones/Josh Brolin) at work preventing the public from preserving extraterrestrial information. Traditional heteronormative difference is supported while gender bending is not. Of the two most prominent female characters, one is motherly (she has a prominent position in the present but doesn't directly take part in the action), the other, a criminal (who dies early on).  Agent K, who reads the entire menu every time before ordering the same thing, is the more elderly of the two (while the options have multiplied, he remains resistant to change). After Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) heads back in time and kills him, Agent J's present turns into a war zone as aliens invade to destroy the Earth. After travelling to the past to save his partner, Agent J is pulled over because police officers are stopping every African American driving a nice car. Agent J has stolen the car and is African American. Now, he has stolen the car to save the perseverance of an unyielding content permanency in order to prevent the Earth's destruction. Meaning that if the side effects of this permanency had been successful in the past they would have resulted in their own annihilation (Agent J escapes).  Yet those very same side effects are indirectly legitimized by Agent J's actions. Which also include monitoring difference to ensure that its multidimensional presence doesn't have a disruptive effect.  

The Men in Black films do directly acknowledge and imaginatively fictionalize the existence of well funded secretive agencies designed to prevent the public from learning, but don't seem to recognize that this is problematic, since they're made to look fun and hip yet rigid and combative.

Like a euphemistic police state.

Which isn't very bright.