The Battle of Algiers 1966, 2003, 2007 responses

I read a New York Times article from September 3rd 2003, about the movie “The Battle of Algiers.” I also watched the NBC Nightly News report from, December 11 2007, about two bombings in Algeria. The New York Times brought up the question of how ethical torture is when fighting terrorism, and how do you fight against a foe that uses guerilla warfare tactics? The Times did not condemn the practice. In fact they said that what the French did in Algeria was not as bad as what the Front Liberation Nationale (FLN) did to interrogate people. The way the French took out the FLN was by getting the names of people in the organization and then arresting them and getting more names from the new arrestees. They got the names by "enhanced" interrogating suspects, the Algerians. Nowadays, marine biologists can tag sharks. I think tagging could also track a terrorist (It might be possible to literally tag a suspect with out them knowing, but I mostly mean in a metaphoric sense). Steak-out teams could get the names of everyone the suspect knows. The second question: how do you stop guerilla warfare? That is easy. Total war, is the solution. In total war, soldiers are ordered burn or kill everything. The terrorists used “camouflage” to look like civilians. This would not work if the terrorists knew their home city would be firebombed until all the sand literally (and this is not just another over use of the word “literally”) turned to glass. It is the most primitive and simple way to fight. Nobody should take pleasure in it, but we should not be above it. I think only people who: are terrorists, hunt terrorists or are combat vets, should have their opinion on the topic of war taken seriously. If you disagree with my opinion, then that is something we have in common. I have no experience so I am not qualified to give a valid opinion.

Chinatown

The plots of the film noirs have been too complicated. Chinatown is the same way. It is hard to follow or summarize the plot of Chinatown. I can summarize the plot of Lord of the Rings easily in one sentence: (The evil dude made an evil ring that can only be destroyed in a volcano, and Frodo found the ring and needs to get to the volcano to destroy it.) Is it possible to summarize Chinatown in one sentence? Jake Gittes private detective who investigates a man to uncover any adultery, and Jake finds out that the woman who hired him is not the man’s wife after the guy turns up dead. I could go on, but that would be a run-on sentence. The spark note version of the spark-notes on this movie is more than a full complete sentence, which tells you something about how the plot is too complex for a simple movie-going audience to follow and enjoy. Watching movies is how I turn my brain off. I do not like movies that make me turn that horrible thing back on.
Speaking from the standpoint of one of those nuts that likes that type of movie, now. I thought the plot was very cleaver and interesting. The twist in the plot made you think back on earlier events in the movie and say to yourself, “Oh yeah that makes sense.” The title of the film made it even more intriguing because only the ending of the movie takes place in Chinatown. It is hard to give specifics because I do not want to give away the ending. One of the new revisionist aspects of the movie that I noticed was the surprise versus suspense. Kiss Me Deadly had suspense in it. Specifically, the popcorn attack. Mike Hammer is being stalked by a guy for a little bit before the stalker attacks the Hammer. He throws popcorn in the stalker’s face, causing him to be incapacitated, then the Hammer nails (I know it’s a bad pun!) the stalker with his fist of furry (who here did not realize that I misspelled fury until this parenthetical?). Be honest. Gittes is often surprised not suspended. Gittes goes to a place and as he is on his merry way he gets shot at from out of nowhere. The movie did not even show the shooters aiming (how did they miss?) before the shots were fired; it was a total surprise.

Kiss Me Deadly

It is good that we got to see a B-movie in art of film. I know reading bad books in literature class was not as fun, but I enjoyed the things that made this movie medeocre. It was not boring just poorly done in some places as well as cheesy. The detective's name is a good start. "Mike Hammer" is almost as cheesey as that world poker tour guy who goes by Chris Moneymaker. In the scene that takes place at the gym, the Hammer and some other guy are looking at a boxer, but am I the only one who noticed that the eyes of the two people did not go to the same place? How hard would it have been for the director to say, "you two are both going to be looking at the boxer in this shot, so both of you should look at that object." The characters were over the top like Mr. Vavavoom. I think his name was Nick. None of these things in the movie made it boring which is the most important thing in a movie. The second most important thing in a movie is to make it not be annoying to the audience. That SNL sketch with that girl screaming "RICK!! RICK!!" every damn second fails the most abysmaly at this goal. Kiss Me Deadly was successful until the very end when this loud shreaking sound started to dominate the scene. By this point though there was not much left in the movie and the audience was on the edge of their seats plugging their ears.

A Blast "Out of the Past"

Yes, I know I used a stupid pun to title this post, but it would have happened eventually. The movie Out of the Past, was interesting. I can see some parts of the wild western cowboy in the hero, Jeff. Jeff was a private detective who works outside the law, like an outlaw bandit. Jeff also fled from his pursuers beyond the nation’s frontier, like a Wild West cowboy. (Look at a census map; you can see that we still have a frontier that stops at about Fargo’s Longitude). The hero carries that bad boy image that is big in pop culture. As part of that image, Jeff is extremely tough. He shows how he is not just “army strong” when he gets slapped; he is “Spartan army strong.” The coolest martial arts move that I have ever seen in a movie was, when Jeff simply punched a guy out and answered a phone. Jackie Chan could not do that, mostly because now he is a geezer. (Please let me keep my closed minded notion that all fifty year olds are on life-support.) The only other person who could pull of something that cool is Andrew Jackson. Speaking of people who slit their wrists. (If you do not get how that connects to Jackson then you should have paid more attention in history class.).
I did not like how Jeff was all emo. His voice tone never changed during the movie. I am sure Jeff would have worn a black trench coat if it would not have made it harder for him to see against the backgrounds, and he can not see the positive side of things. If I were in his spot, I would have fled overseas (but to an American colony, so I could still practice my jingoism).

Eternally Frodo

Eternal Sunshine was mediocre movie that was held down even further by the actors in it. Jim Carry has lately been doing more serious movies like The Number 23, but I will always think of him as Ace Ventura: pet detective. He is a good actor and was not too tied to that role as Ace Ventura for most people. Aaalrighty then, there is the not so good actor. Frodo is so connected to that role as Frodo in Lord of the Rings, that I do not even know his real name. In Eternal Sunshine, Frodo portrayed a type of stalker that was even creepier than Gollum. The other problem that hurt Frodo was the fact that he is not a good actor. He only has one facial expression. It worked in Lord of the Rings because the character was scared s#!t less all the time. Frodo looked the same way in every shot in Eternal Sunshine, and that made no sense. Why should he be afraid enough to use that dumb facial expression when the best pet detective in the world is on the clock? This movie lumped a bunch of actors together that are linked to their popular characters and made them part of the same story. It was like all of these characters that should not be in the same movie were in the same movie. I felt like I was watching a lost segment of the internet cartoon, The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. This is what I saw when I watched Eternal Sunshine: Frodo, Spiderman’s girlfriend and two guys (who were probably extras in Men in Black) want to erase Ace Ventura’s memory. The movie would have been better if they used no name actors, like the Men in Black guys, instead of Frodo.

His Girl Friday

I could write about the way the shots do not change as much as they do in other movies or how the dialogue is faster in His Girl Friday, but we have already heard that in class. I like the characters. It was funny how they made Walter look like a smooth ladies man. I tried to get my ex-wife to take me back by framing her boyfriend for counterfeiting and having a thug grab his mother, but she was not turned on by any of that stuff. She said I was a beeping creep. Fortunately for me, the jury thought my money was real and the counterfeiting charges were dropped. Walter did the same thing in the movie, but he did not end up looking like a creep.
I also love how everyone is evil in that movie. The mayor delayed a reprieve. The reporters in the news room drove a lady to attempt suicide, and there was that one killer guy that was getting executed.
It does not end happily for anyone either. They are arrested, dead from a car crash, arrested along with loosing their mother and fiancé, dieing in a hospital after a suicide attempt, going to be executed or sent on a honeymoon with Walter in Albany. I would take the execution over any of those. None of those sound at all happy.
I think it would be funny if Lifetime made a remake of this movie. I bet if they did, Walter would not be the charming young charismatic man who’s big blue eyes you could get lost in and who’s- … … (I should take this moment to remind the reader that I am a straight man and I am into straight guy things like muscle-cars and hunting.) Anyway the way Walter likes to coerce people makes me think that a Lifetime remake of this movie would portray him as a creepy stalker that whats her face is escaping from. I do not watch any Lifetime movies, I have only seen the parodies on SNL that I switch to during the adds on ESPN’s hunting programs, televised NASCAR events or that show where hunters do drive by shootings on deer out of muscle-cars.

Unforgiven

The Movie Unforgiven emphasizes how the characters relate to the legend of the old west. Will Munny is the main character, so he gets to be talked about first. Will was one of those legendary Wild West outlaws. He got drunk a lot, started fights and beat people up. These actions mimic the type of pro-football team that I would idolize. Like a pro-football team, Will also had fame and fans that looked up to him. People would scream and go wild as Will would pillage a town, but not the same way people go wild at football games. Like a Viking boat party though, all good things must come to an end. Will stopped killing, stealing and razing, so he could raise his kids. Will does not want to go back to his barbaric ways. He only agrees to take a job as a hit-man, so his kids will have enough money to get through the winter. The kid that tells him about the job is very different.
The kid is like someone who wants to become the most famous jouster in the world, but the only problem is that jousting is not as popular as it was six hundred years ago. This kid does not want to be a jouster; he wants to be a Wild West outlaw. He wants to be the type of outlaw that people read about in books back on the east coast. Those legendary brigands might be more recent than knights, but their era has also passed. This kid is trying to be a part of something that is going out of style.
Fearing that the kid is living in a dream world (like some kid from the suburbs who thinks they is gangsta, yes that comment was directed at you), Will seeks the help of Ned. Ned is Will’s old sidekick and knows what he is doing. Ned also gets the feeling that the kid is a poser.
When the three of them do kill the two people they are after, it is not as glamorous as it was in other movies. There were no high noon showdowns or any battles of strength between the two contenders. The second man that they kill dies on the crapper. This reminds me of a line from Austin Powers 2. Scott says, “If you have a time machine then why don’t you just go back and kill Austin while he is on the crapper!” The kid thought that this would be an adventure like what you see in a James Bond film. James Bond would never sink so low, out side of the opening to Goldeneye. This was not the type of adventure that the kid wanted. He finds that real outlaws carry a lot of emotional stress or are just plain F-ed up.
At the end of the movie, Will turns into his old self again, and goes on a killing spree. It shows just how brutal outlaws really were. On his running riot, Will shot an unarmed man then wounded six others. The real picture of his cruelty did not sink in until will shot two more people with his gun perpendicular to the ground. He left an entire village in fear of his return.

Runtime of Casablanca

You know how in my last post I said, that the difference in the time between this post and that one will be the runtime of the movie Casablanca. I think I should have picked a shorter movie. The movie was not the type of genre that I was into. It was a romantic movie. I hate love movies, but I love the evil characters. Casablanca takes place in French Morocco in 1942, and people are trying to get exit visas to go to America. There is one part in the beginning where a French officer and an Italian officer are talking and they walk by the prefect. The French guy salutes and the Italian guy hiels the prefect. It was just an interesting little conflict that happens in a brief instant and is over with just as fast. Rick is a bar owner in Casablanca. He is friends with the local prefect, lets people trade forged exit visas, never late mailing his bribes, an American and just an all around good guy. I love the way Rick talks with the German major in one conversation. “Now when you invade New York there are some neighborhoods that will give you some trouble,” he says as though he wants to help plan the invasion of the US. (It is impossible to do that because there are more guns than people in the US.) Rick does acts like he does not really care about anything throughout the entire movie. Rick’s character comes off as being so indifferent that you think he is serious about his plan that will land some he knows in a concentration camp. People also mention that Rick used to believe in more than just the fun and excitement of exploiting people for as much as you can by selling them black market goods. In the end Rick starts to believe in “noble causes” again and turns into a total woos. I still idolize the heartlessness that he had. I hope someday I can gain the cold hearted will to backstab anyone of my closest loved ones for personal gain the way Rick would have, but I still have a fragment of something that resembles a shred of a moral. The prefect is another example of a good citizen. He might be a Vichy French dog but he does good things. He sucks up to the Nazi major who is visiting. He tries to impress the guy like he was some parent that ignores him. To take the attention wanting ignored child simile even further, it is hard to get your fathers approval when you spend your nights in a bar. This bar is a classy establishment though. It is lively with a warm atmosphere that makes you feel comfortable and safe taking a bribe or buying an exit visa. Even though the prefect overlooks people illegally helping war refugees flee the Gestapo he still supports the Nazis. He is like a Packer fan. That’s right I just compared Brett Farvre to Hitler, but before the blog Gestapo bans my blog from your class forever let me explain. The prefect is a fair weather fan of the Nazis. He is a committed follower because the Germans just got the French to surrender. It is hard to get the French to surrender. (Think about it, there have been hundreds of wars in France and how many times have they surrendered. NO! That second one you are thinking of actually surrendered TO France and then became part of the country.) The Nazis were on a good winning streak, so you can see why you would want to bet on that horse back then. The Germans even took over Norway meaning the Vikings were loosing back then too! PACKER SUPERBOWL 08!!! WHO HOO!!! Before you lynch me, I want to see the Vikings win some games first.

Casablanca

Everyone who I know that has seen the movie Casablanca tells me that it is a classic and I should see it. I reply by saying, "quite frankly my dear, I don't give a damn!" but I think I will finally see Casablanca tonight. Is it a coincidence that the time difference between this post and my next post will be the exact runtime of the film? or am I just that irresponsible? It is a retorhical question, do not answer, but please feed my ego with comments!

Coach of the Stageness

Over the weekend I asked my grandparents about the movie Stagecoach. The remembered it very well. The blur on John Wayne’s big entrance was something my grandmother was able to recall. She also told me how the movie Notorious ended, but that is for a different blog. I liked the movie Stagecoach. I hate the music that they put into old movies. I think that is really the only thing that modern movies do better though. If only they could have made me the folly artist. I have the music from the Wild West level in the game Time Splitters 2 on my iPod. Would it have been so hard for them to use that mp3 file when they made that movie? The music in those movies is way too strong to the point of making it cheesy. They try to intensify the suspense way too much. It is like the time my uncle got really mad at my cousin for destroying a bucket of water with a boat bomb (little spinning firework, ask me in person why I call them “boat bombs”). His anger was so great that he was funny when he yelled at my cousin, not scary. That part of the film where they showed the stagecoach and then the Apache biker gang is an example of over doing emotion. The panning and the music shift are just too sudden. If the pan was more gradual and the music transitioned into the generic Indian theme of doom, it might have been better. Sounds in other old films as well are poorly placed. Star Trek had some of the most annoying sound effects that I have ever heard. Overall though it was a good movie and my list of complaints is short enough for only one blog.

Great Phrases in History

"Beep... beep... beep... beep" -Sputnik
"You plan to sail against the winds by lighting a bondfire in your boat. Do not waste my time with such non-sense" -Napoleon on steam power

The cane from Citizen Kane!

This movie was a really well done drama or what ever genre it is. I do not like this genre of film. Hopefully somebody will comment and tell me what I do not like. Watching Citizen Kane was not at all painful though because it was very artistically done. The placement of the lighting was so precise that the only way it could have been better would be if Dick Cheney, Lord of Shadows, himself commanded the darkness to move about the frames. The Shadows that cover faces at times are no accident. Kane’s face gets covered whenever he starts to “turn to the dark side” for lack of a better word. The new Star Wars prequels did not even cover young Darth Vader in shadows, and they should have. The audience would have loved to see less of that actor. Kane also had a more realistic looking crowd at his campaign speech for governor than Queen Amidala had at the galactic senate. It was amazing what they did with less technology in those days. Not to go off on too much of a tangent but, Film making, rail roads and retro-videogames are examples of my view on progress “The better the technology, the less effectively we use it.” This movie embarrasses all modern film makers.

Patton

Patton interested me because it was the story of the famous World War II general George Patton. My friends are huge fans of the general. He is lass vulgar in the film than he was in real life. Other things that I did not like about the film include the setting for the opening. Patton gets up in front of a giant American flag as a slightly low angled camera take just one long shot of Patton addressing a crowd behind the camera. At one point he talks about how he does not want his troops holding their position. My copy of the book the Art of War has that exact quote. “The only goddamn thing you should be holding onto is the enemy’s balls!” However the movie character said “we want to grab the enemy by the nose and kick them in the teeth.” I did not like the director toning down on the cursing even when the movie was already rated R.
One of the best parts of the movie happens in the beginning when Patton has a showdown at high noon with one of Rommel’s tank columns in North Africa. It is suspenseful in the beginning when the shots switch from showing the close-ups of Patton and his officers and the advancing battalion. The long shot of the landscape along with an officer saying “they could be anywhere” builds the suspense by showing just how many different directions the tanks could come from. Then the camera goes back and fourth. Each shot progressively gets closer to the advancing panzers and shows more and more of what they have. The suspense ends when the gunfire starts. The winner of the battle turns out to be… (Why should I take away the suspense?)
The battle of the bulge montage was also interesting. It plays shot ping pong again. The shots go back and forth between Patton in his office “strategerizing” and the Germans starting their last offensive. Patton talks about how it is impossible for the Germans to mount an offensive strike in the winter for a while. Then the camera cuts to the shot of a few panzers rolling into a small town as this intense military overture music plays. Then the camera cuts back to Patton talking about more “strategery.” It switches off like that until Patton finally says, “the Germans have never been able to mount a winter offensive since some medieval guy, and that is why we should expect one now.” I heard that Patton was better prepared for the battle of the bulge and more informed than Ike, so that montage confused me until the end when he said that.
The movie is insanely long. That is my only compliant. It has an intermission, but it is not like in Lord of the Rings where there are parts that still should have been cutout for the extended edition DVD. All of it was entertaining even though it takes three sittings to get through.

no new ideas in movies!

What is with all of these remakes of movies. Horror movies have especialy gotten unoriginal. The Invasion - Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Disturbia - Rearwindow, Vacancy - who knows probably public domain, Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1975ish. You are more likely to die from a heart attack than in a cool way like getting hacked limb from limb by a guy in a hockey mask. If you want to see a true horror film, watch Modern Marvels: deadlies weapons or WMDs on the History channel (that is where I learned that the Russians sold Death Star plans to Al Queda). That Al Gore doomsday movie was also a real seat soiler. I became an opsesive light switcher offer after I saw that. Inspiration is not just something that is gone from the horror movies but action movies also do not have any it seems. Bourne 3, Die Hard 4 and Transformers were some of the new ones. That means sequil to sequil, sequil to sequil to sequil and was a kids show were some of the most original thoughts that these people could come up with. At least it is a step up from past war movies or adapted from books. The worst one is Resident evil 3. A sequil to a sequil of a movie named after a video game. Have we run out of Ideas?

Reveiw of Die Hard IV review

Review of Die Hard IV review
Kyle Smith in his review said he hated Die Hard IV. The entire plot was cheesy and unoriginal. Some of the one-liners that I did not notice when I saw the film seemed to bug him, but the ones I do remember help to get a sense of what the characters are like. A Die Hard movie is not a Die Hard movie without senator McClain saying “yippee cay ye mo fo! ” I also enjoyed the French terrorists, but this reviewer though that the film should have wasted time on creating a back story for the French thugs. They are nameless thugs that happen to be French; that is all the biography that I need. Another thing that he did not like about the film was,
“The average Mac [in the film] contained a secret cache of TNT waiting to be detonated by just the right code sequence.”
Again would a “1337 h4ck20r” or “elite hacker” use the “average Mac?” no! The reviewer also thinks that a truck is unable to outmaneuver a jet, but some jets have turn radiuses of up to half a mile. It is funny to think about the fact that the many missiles that were shot at the truck wily-Nelly each cost tens of thousands of dollars more than the truck.
I do agree with the reviewer that saying this “virtual terrorism plot” is not that scary. A terrorist destroying our technology does not sound that bad. If the escalator at the mall breaks down, then I will not wait for rescue. The same type of thing would happen if I developed an allergic reaction to the BS that the blog thing threw out, I would fall back on better technology to publish my texts. In the movie the hackers hack into the traffic center in Washington DC and make all the stop lights turn green. I think all the traffic lights in D.C. turning green would not be a problem if they went back to traffic cops. I also like the reviewer bad mouthing mission impossible three. The super spies talk about Tom Cruises’ marriage as they are getting in a firefight. Lame! MI3 sucked big time, yet he compared it to Die Hard. Blasphemy!
There are other things that I find funny about Die hard films that this guy did not mention. Like how John McCain would have died many times if there was falling damage in Die Hard. Why do the villains need to kill the guards after the guards let them into a place and have no suspicions or any idea on what to look for? Heroes always have aim hacks. Aim hacks are when you alter a videogame in a way so you always hit other players even when you are off by 180 degrees. I find those goofs in movies to be funny and make me like the movie more. It is like the free fall animation in a video game happening when a character gets wedged between two rocks. Fractured physics and impossible bullet dodging make it even more fun.
I thought Die Hard four was the best Die Hard since the first one. The thing that really helped was that the fourth one did not mention the events of the other three movies. It was also good because it was made in a different generation from the first one and could not leech off the popularity of the first one. Die Hard four was the first Die Hard that I saw, and that is what got me to watch the other three.

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