Three Reviews: The Animus Inside Weeps
I would just like to take a moment to confess that this week, the writing did not exactly flow freely, and I had a hard time getting these six reviews out and done. Just today, I realised exactly how much I've been making myself write, that when you actually put the entries, with all the HTML code, into a word processor like WordPerfect, they come out to four, nearly five pages, each; I've been writing everything in Notepad and aiming to write "a full page," which meant a window full of text with Notepad maximised—which, up until this week, didn't feel like that much. Perhaps, now, I will consider putting my goal length at something a bit shorter, so I don't die, or, more than likely what the case would be, push myself to write so much I burn out and don't feel like updating anymore. Anyway, here are the three reviews I just know you all have been on pins and needles for all day…
Pixar does a notoriously fair job with the whole "CG Animated Feature-Length Family Film" deal, and Cars is not really an exception, here. The premise: a cocky and showy race car gets in a threesome with two other hot, sleek Lamborghinis—er, I mean, a threeway-tie for the racing season championship title, The Drunken Redneck Budweiser & Chicken Wings Cup or somesuch, and there is to be a plot device to teach the son of a bitch how to be a better person-car-guy-thing—er, tie-breaking race in California. On his way to the Big Racist Sporting Event—er, Big Race, whacky circumstances occur (Jinkies!) and he ends up waylaid in a piss-Antz town at the end of the status quo establishment—er, in the middle of nowhere, arrested, tried, and found guilty; the punishment: death by lethal fuel injection—er, I mean, he has to repave their street that he fucked all the hell up with his speedy hijinks. There, Steve McQueen—Er, "Lightning" McQueen (the fancy racing-type car, voiced by Owen "The Ugly, Whiny Brother" Wilson) meets a hot-ass bitch—er, a sensitive, self-actualised and independent female role '05 model, Sally Carrera (the automative puns never stop, folks; voiced by Bonnie "Who?" Hunt), and befriends the slobbering retard—er, I mean… wait, yeah, slobbering retard, Mater (the joke: Mater, like tomater, 'cause he's RED, ya know, like a tomater; voiced by Larry "Makes the Other Three Blue Collar Comics Look Smarter" The Cable Guy); other characters in Radiator Springs include: Flo, the obligatory fat and sassy black-sounding lady-car (Jenifer "Not Queen Latifah" Lewis); Sheriff, the, uh, sheriff-car (Michael "Where Did I Come From?" Wallis); Ramone, the dirty hippie-sounding stoner-car (Cheech "Who Else?" Marin); Sarge, the angry, impotent—er, militant jeep (Paul "Not Lee Ermey" Dooley); and Luigi and Guido, the greasy Italian jobs (Tony "Monk" Shalhoub, and Guido "Guess Who I Voiced" Quaroni). They all own various, silly businesses, but I imagine I should leave somethings to be discovered by the viewer. One of the two directors, Joe Ranft, makes the noises of Red the Obvious Victim of Child Molestation—er, Firetruck, as well; he also voices "Peterbuilt," but mentioning that would require me to remember which character that was.
This is actually a pretty amusing movie, a lot better than I was expecting. The plot progresses, life lessons are learnt, McQueen realises the dark, nasty secret of Doc Hudson, the grouchy and incontinental elder-car (Paul "What Do You Want From Me?" Newman), bonds are formed, love blossoms, the Architect incoherently explains the world, the Machine is contronted, Neo is crucified—er, I mean, and everyone lives happily ever after, except Mater, who falls out of a helicopter and dies tragically (fade to white), bringing everyone together in a moving scene of coming to grips with the harsh reality of death (SPOILER ALERT: I'm a liar). Oh, right, and there's the whole "championship-determining race" between McQueen, Chick Hicks the dick (Michael "I'm the Goddamn Batman" Keaton), and The King… that's right, they race-off against the creepy, plastic-faced Burger King mascot… no, actually, they race-off against Richard "I ACTUALLY DRIVE A RACE CAR, WHOO!" Petty. Guess who wins? Cole Trickle, that's who.
Ah, random cameo by George "You'd Think Inappropriate For Family Films" Carlin as the voice of sleazy but lovable sponsor, Fillmore, there's always room for George-O; because Pixar clearly owns his soul, John "My Last Name Is More Awesome Than Yours" Ratzenberger provides the voice of Mack the Kni—er, Truck, which leads into a rather amusing re-envisioning of all previous Pixar films he was in, as placed in the Cars universe, at the end of the movie ("You're a TOY CAR! A TOY CAR!"). All in all, I was quite satisfied; another bang-up job by John "I Write and Direct All These Pixar Films" Lasseter and Pixar Studios. Failure Rating: 12%.
Not so much a movie as a highly controversial video slideshow—it's been called a PowerPoint Presentation by many, including Jon Stewart, but I prefer to imagine he didn't use PowerPoint—Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is an informative and interesting presentation of the Global Warming issue; an issue which has been called everything from "Cause for Alarm" to "Liberal Hoax." It's funny, to me, to see how this has sparked up the conservative end of the spectrum to put back on their anti-environmentalism (not called as such, but that's the basic notion) and spouting off about how it's all a conspiracy to challenge civic freedoms or somesuch—been awhile since I heard terms like "treehugger" in the news. I'm a registered member of the Green Party of Virginia, you don't have to show me a fancy video to get me to go, "Oh! This is problematic!" I've been reading and following the issue for years, and my biggest thought on the matter is this:
It's mostly debated from the entirely wrong angle. Global Warming isn't a scientific issue, it's a political issue—or, rather, it is based on science, but the importance of the issue isn't of a scentific nature, it is of a sociopolitical one. Al Gore used very legitimate scientific studies in Inconvenient Truth; I'm not qualified to contest the validity of his data, and I don't think most people who do are, either. It seems like a simple correspondence: more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere equals a higher greenhouse effect. Thus, every other aspect of this debate aside, we do not want more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than necessary—I don't like one hundred degree temperatures in the summer let alone, say, all year long. Indisputably, industries spew out CO2 gases; internal combustion-based, gasoline-burning and coal-burning engines spew out CO2 gases; if we do not want a ton of CO2 gases in the atmsophere, then these things that produce the carbon dioxide need to not produce so much, eh? It's that simple: we know carbon dioxide is problematic, we know what is producing an abundance of it, let us work to curb the production.
I don't really care if the global warming effect is entirely manmade, or if it part of a natural cycle—most of the scientific community does agree that we are entering an era of a level of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere that is higher than ever in history—the dissenting scientists there are few and hard to find; Republicans and conservatives, or anti-environmentalists of whatever creed, do find them, of course, which leads to needless bickering in political journals and on the news and so forth. FOX News, of course, is content to put entirely unqualified people on the air who call Global Warming a complete hoax, that it doesn't exist—I saw this, with my eyes, and just felt saddened. This muddles the issue: this is not an important point. Our civilization is not accustomed to dealing with the effects that the predicted climatic changes will induce, whether or not it's ever happened before, hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago is moot: if it happens now, we're fucked. Not Earth, the Planet… no, no, I don't mean we have to "Save the Planet," here—I do think that's a good idea, but that's not what I'm specifically referring to in this instance… We need to save ourselves; we need to make sure we don't incur massive destruction, huge loss of life, and possibly global catastrophe. Whatever happened to the axiom, "Better Safe than Sorry," folks?
The problem is there are powerful forces that don't want change, progress, advancement toward a cleaner burning fuel and to a cleaner environment as a whole, so they intentionally obsfucate the nature of the issue and keep the public as uneducated as possible, or plant stupid ideas in their heads like: "Global Warming does not exist. These are not the CO2 gases you are looking for." They wave their hand and steal our shit while we're mesmerised. While there's still oil in the planet to harvest and exploit, overpriced gas bills to hand out, cheap and dirty industrial practices to maintain low-cost, high-profit endeavours, the Powers That Be will not want to see things like electric cars, hybrid cars, hydrogen fuel cells, effective solar power, etcetera, etcetera. So, let's take the message of a movie like An Inconvenient Truth and let's skew it all out of whack until people just laugh and go, "Oh, that Al Gore, what a silly hippy." There is a problem with our corporate and industrial practices in this country, and it stems from too much freedom with too little thought, this selfish attitude of "Let 'em do what they want, it's their right." No, this isn't a natural, human rights issues, as businesses are not people: this is not what Jefferson meant by life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—what they do harms everyone else, whether or not they're cognisant of it.
I've, apparently, hijacked this review and turned it into a political rant, huh… The movie itself was well-constructed, although the little sentimental pieces about Gore's life were kind of unneeded and felt a bit like emotional pandering; the bit about the 2000 election was superfluous, as well, and just diluted the point of the movie, making it more about Al Gore and less about Global Warming. What I've heard and read is Gore did not want to include these parts, but his producers pushed him to do it—ah, marketeers, always there to sell, sell, sell. People will continue to use this as a reason to lambaste Gore due to their petty, political grudges, of course, and people will continue to miss the point, that we should change no matter the real motivation. In the end, the point remains: trees are awesome. Failure Rating: 13%.
Muse, a British rock band heavily influenced by classical jazz, is one of those gigs that you either really get behind or sounds too pretentious and "artsy" for your tastes, akin to other bands such as Mars Volta, Fugazi or Spiral Architect; these bands are usually labeled "progressive," which really just means they're doing something atypical and creative, and one's enjoyment of can be dependent on having an acquired taste. Their big, big radio hit last year, "Our Time Is Running Out," earned Muse a spot on the billboards, in movie soundtracks and on the bad TV drama commercials, and was probably the most easily digestable track off of Absolution—a fucking brilliant piece of masterful work. Blending the sound of Jazz, Rock, and old-school British Pop, Muse is spearheaded by Matthew Bellamy, the amazing vocalist, lead guitarist and frequent pianist, whose voice is a wonder to behold, as bizarre as it is beautiful, with Chris Wolstenholm backing it up with the driving bass line, and, finally, on the ever-essential drums, Dominic Howard, making sure everything stays rhythmic.
Blackhole & Revelations is a bit of a divergent endeavour by the band, the sound having more in common with older album, Origin of Symmetry, than the previous one, Absolution, which was an epic torrent of monumental-sounding songs that built on each other; Blackholes returns to a format of more self-contained songs, independent with differing feels and textures of their own. The track which lyrics wherefrom the title is derived, "Starlight," is reminscent of older songs like "New Born," vast and "space-age"; the first single cut off the album, "Supermassive Black Hole" (which you would think is where the album got its name), reminds me a lot of the band Self, and is the easy radio hit. "Map of the Problematique" and "City of Delusion" continues in the same vein as Absolution, with a highly charged energy of a Biblical proportion—har, har, that's a pun 'cause they use a lot of Biblical imagery and metaphors in their lyrics. "Soldier's Poem" is your usual dose of the slow and romantic fare, which you always find one or two examples of on every album, along with "Invincible," a rolling, melodic tune, another very sweet song. Track number one, "Take a Bow," and later on the album with "Assassin," Muse throws in some fast tempo, throbbing tunes for the kids to jump around to; the least remarkable cut is, in my opinion, "Exo-Politics," which would stand out in the repertoire of most bands, but not Muse—I just expect more from them, as it reads like a less interesting version of their other works. "Hoodoo" is a strange song, calming and soothing but, yet, motivating and pulsing, another trademark of Absolution, leading into what is the perfect, awe-inspiring bookend to the album, "Knights of Cydonia," which departs from any other song they've ever done. "Knights" proves to me that Muse would be the band I'd hire to compose a soundtrack for my quirky, medieval fantasy slash science-fiction movie if I were to ever make one; this is a song in the same league as "The Hope Overture," by the Kroonos Quartet, that requires listening to understand how compelling and immersive it is to hear.
Overall, there is little complaint from me here, but I still think Absolution is their masterpiece. Blackholes and Revelations is a great ride though, and well worth time and money. Failure Rating: 1%
[TIA;TY]
Cars
Pixar does a notoriously fair job with the whole "CG Animated Feature-Length Family Film" deal, and Cars is not really an exception, here. The premise: a cocky and showy race car gets in a threesome with two other hot, sleek Lamborghinis—er, I mean, a threeway-tie for the racing season championship title, The Drunken Redneck Budweiser & Chicken Wings Cup or somesuch, and there is to be a plot device to teach the son of a bitch how to be a better person-car-guy-thing—er, tie-breaking race in California. On his way to the Big Racist Sporting Event—er, Big Race, whacky circumstances occur (Jinkies!) and he ends up waylaid in a piss-Antz town at the end of the status quo establishment—er, in the middle of nowhere, arrested, tried, and found guilty; the punishment: death by lethal fuel injection—er, I mean, he has to repave their street that he fucked all the hell up with his speedy hijinks. There, Steve McQueen—Er, "Lightning" McQueen (the fancy racing-type car, voiced by Owen "The Ugly, Whiny Brother" Wilson) meets a hot-ass bitch—er, a sensitive, self-actualised and independent female role '05 model, Sally Carrera (the automative puns never stop, folks; voiced by Bonnie "Who?" Hunt), and befriends the slobbering retard—er, I mean… wait, yeah, slobbering retard, Mater (the joke: Mater, like tomater, 'cause he's RED, ya know, like a tomater; voiced by Larry "Makes the Other Three Blue Collar Comics Look Smarter" The Cable Guy); other characters in Radiator Springs include: Flo, the obligatory fat and sassy black-sounding lady-car (Jenifer "Not Queen Latifah" Lewis); Sheriff, the, uh, sheriff-car (Michael "Where Did I Come From?" Wallis); Ramone, the dirty hippie-sounding stoner-car (Cheech "Who Else?" Marin); Sarge, the angry, impotent—er, militant jeep (Paul "Not Lee Ermey" Dooley); and Luigi and Guido, the greasy Italian jobs (Tony "Monk" Shalhoub, and Guido "Guess Who I Voiced" Quaroni). They all own various, silly businesses, but I imagine I should leave somethings to be discovered by the viewer. One of the two directors, Joe Ranft, makes the noises of Red the Obvious Victim of Child Molestation—er, Firetruck, as well; he also voices "Peterbuilt," but mentioning that would require me to remember which character that was.
This is actually a pretty amusing movie, a lot better than I was expecting. The plot progresses, life lessons are learnt, McQueen realises the dark, nasty secret of Doc Hudson, the grouchy and incontinental elder-car (Paul "What Do You Want From Me?" Newman), bonds are formed, love blossoms, the Architect incoherently explains the world, the Machine is contronted, Neo is crucified—er, I mean, and everyone lives happily ever after, except Mater, who falls out of a helicopter and dies tragically (fade to white), bringing everyone together in a moving scene of coming to grips with the harsh reality of death (SPOILER ALERT: I'm a liar). Oh, right, and there's the whole "championship-determining race" between McQueen, Chick Hicks the dick (Michael "I'm the Goddamn Batman" Keaton), and The King… that's right, they race-off against the creepy, plastic-faced Burger King mascot… no, actually, they race-off against Richard "I ACTUALLY DRIVE A RACE CAR, WHOO!" Petty. Guess who wins? Cole Trickle, that's who.
Ah, random cameo by George "You'd Think Inappropriate For Family Films" Carlin as the voice of sleazy but lovable sponsor, Fillmore, there's always room for George-O; because Pixar clearly owns his soul, John "My Last Name Is More Awesome Than Yours" Ratzenberger provides the voice of Mack the Kni—er, Truck, which leads into a rather amusing re-envisioning of all previous Pixar films he was in, as placed in the Cars universe, at the end of the movie ("You're a TOY CAR! A TOY CAR!"). All in all, I was quite satisfied; another bang-up job by John "I Write and Direct All These Pixar Films" Lasseter and Pixar Studios. Failure Rating: 12%.
An Inconvenient Truth
Not so much a movie as a highly controversial video slideshow—it's been called a PowerPoint Presentation by many, including Jon Stewart, but I prefer to imagine he didn't use PowerPoint—Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is an informative and interesting presentation of the Global Warming issue; an issue which has been called everything from "Cause for Alarm" to "Liberal Hoax." It's funny, to me, to see how this has sparked up the conservative end of the spectrum to put back on their anti-environmentalism (not called as such, but that's the basic notion) and spouting off about how it's all a conspiracy to challenge civic freedoms or somesuch—been awhile since I heard terms like "treehugger" in the news. I'm a registered member of the Green Party of Virginia, you don't have to show me a fancy video to get me to go, "Oh! This is problematic!" I've been reading and following the issue for years, and my biggest thought on the matter is this:
It's mostly debated from the entirely wrong angle. Global Warming isn't a scientific issue, it's a political issue—or, rather, it is based on science, but the importance of the issue isn't of a scentific nature, it is of a sociopolitical one. Al Gore used very legitimate scientific studies in Inconvenient Truth; I'm not qualified to contest the validity of his data, and I don't think most people who do are, either. It seems like a simple correspondence: more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere equals a higher greenhouse effect. Thus, every other aspect of this debate aside, we do not want more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than necessary—I don't like one hundred degree temperatures in the summer let alone, say, all year long. Indisputably, industries spew out CO2 gases; internal combustion-based, gasoline-burning and coal-burning engines spew out CO2 gases; if we do not want a ton of CO2 gases in the atmsophere, then these things that produce the carbon dioxide need to not produce so much, eh? It's that simple: we know carbon dioxide is problematic, we know what is producing an abundance of it, let us work to curb the production.
I don't really care if the global warming effect is entirely manmade, or if it part of a natural cycle—most of the scientific community does agree that we are entering an era of a level of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere that is higher than ever in history—the dissenting scientists there are few and hard to find; Republicans and conservatives, or anti-environmentalists of whatever creed, do find them, of course, which leads to needless bickering in political journals and on the news and so forth. FOX News, of course, is content to put entirely unqualified people on the air who call Global Warming a complete hoax, that it doesn't exist—I saw this, with my eyes, and just felt saddened. This muddles the issue: this is not an important point. Our civilization is not accustomed to dealing with the effects that the predicted climatic changes will induce, whether or not it's ever happened before, hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago is moot: if it happens now, we're fucked. Not Earth, the Planet… no, no, I don't mean we have to "Save the Planet," here—I do think that's a good idea, but that's not what I'm specifically referring to in this instance… We need to save ourselves; we need to make sure we don't incur massive destruction, huge loss of life, and possibly global catastrophe. Whatever happened to the axiom, "Better Safe than Sorry," folks?
The problem is there are powerful forces that don't want change, progress, advancement toward a cleaner burning fuel and to a cleaner environment as a whole, so they intentionally obsfucate the nature of the issue and keep the public as uneducated as possible, or plant stupid ideas in their heads like: "Global Warming does not exist. These are not the CO2 gases you are looking for." They wave their hand and steal our shit while we're mesmerised. While there's still oil in the planet to harvest and exploit, overpriced gas bills to hand out, cheap and dirty industrial practices to maintain low-cost, high-profit endeavours, the Powers That Be will not want to see things like electric cars, hybrid cars, hydrogen fuel cells, effective solar power, etcetera, etcetera. So, let's take the message of a movie like An Inconvenient Truth and let's skew it all out of whack until people just laugh and go, "Oh, that Al Gore, what a silly hippy." There is a problem with our corporate and industrial practices in this country, and it stems from too much freedom with too little thought, this selfish attitude of "Let 'em do what they want, it's their right." No, this isn't a natural, human rights issues, as businesses are not people: this is not what Jefferson meant by life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—what they do harms everyone else, whether or not they're cognisant of it.
I've, apparently, hijacked this review and turned it into a political rant, huh… The movie itself was well-constructed, although the little sentimental pieces about Gore's life were kind of unneeded and felt a bit like emotional pandering; the bit about the 2000 election was superfluous, as well, and just diluted the point of the movie, making it more about Al Gore and less about Global Warming. What I've heard and read is Gore did not want to include these parts, but his producers pushed him to do it—ah, marketeers, always there to sell, sell, sell. People will continue to use this as a reason to lambaste Gore due to their petty, political grudges, of course, and people will continue to miss the point, that we should change no matter the real motivation. In the end, the point remains: trees are awesome. Failure Rating: 13%.
Muse's Blackholes & Revelations
Muse, a British rock band heavily influenced by classical jazz, is one of those gigs that you either really get behind or sounds too pretentious and "artsy" for your tastes, akin to other bands such as Mars Volta, Fugazi or Spiral Architect; these bands are usually labeled "progressive," which really just means they're doing something atypical and creative, and one's enjoyment of can be dependent on having an acquired taste. Their big, big radio hit last year, "Our Time Is Running Out," earned Muse a spot on the billboards, in movie soundtracks and on the bad TV drama commercials, and was probably the most easily digestable track off of Absolution—a fucking brilliant piece of masterful work. Blending the sound of Jazz, Rock, and old-school British Pop, Muse is spearheaded by Matthew Bellamy, the amazing vocalist, lead guitarist and frequent pianist, whose voice is a wonder to behold, as bizarre as it is beautiful, with Chris Wolstenholm backing it up with the driving bass line, and, finally, on the ever-essential drums, Dominic Howard, making sure everything stays rhythmic.
Blackhole & Revelations is a bit of a divergent endeavour by the band, the sound having more in common with older album, Origin of Symmetry, than the previous one, Absolution, which was an epic torrent of monumental-sounding songs that built on each other; Blackholes returns to a format of more self-contained songs, independent with differing feels and textures of their own. The track which lyrics wherefrom the title is derived, "Starlight," is reminscent of older songs like "New Born," vast and "space-age"; the first single cut off the album, "Supermassive Black Hole" (which you would think is where the album got its name), reminds me a lot of the band Self, and is the easy radio hit. "Map of the Problematique" and "City of Delusion" continues in the same vein as Absolution, with a highly charged energy of a Biblical proportion—har, har, that's a pun 'cause they use a lot of Biblical imagery and metaphors in their lyrics. "Soldier's Poem" is your usual dose of the slow and romantic fare, which you always find one or two examples of on every album, along with "Invincible," a rolling, melodic tune, another very sweet song. Track number one, "Take a Bow," and later on the album with "Assassin," Muse throws in some fast tempo, throbbing tunes for the kids to jump around to; the least remarkable cut is, in my opinion, "Exo-Politics," which would stand out in the repertoire of most bands, but not Muse—I just expect more from them, as it reads like a less interesting version of their other works. "Hoodoo" is a strange song, calming and soothing but, yet, motivating and pulsing, another trademark of Absolution, leading into what is the perfect, awe-inspiring bookend to the album, "Knights of Cydonia," which departs from any other song they've ever done. "Knights" proves to me that Muse would be the band I'd hire to compose a soundtrack for my quirky, medieval fantasy slash science-fiction movie if I were to ever make one; this is a song in the same league as "The Hope Overture," by the Kroonos Quartet, that requires listening to understand how compelling and immersive it is to hear.
Overall, there is little complaint from me here, but I still think Absolution is their masterpiece. Blackholes and Revelations is a great ride though, and well worth time and money. Failure Rating: 1%
[TIA;TY]
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