Newt’s School for the Urban Youth
Hi, I’m Newt Gingrich, current Republican front runner and the man most deserving to be your next president. I’m the smart one. You remember the nineties, right? I totally nailed it. I should have been president ten minutes after Bill whipped his little Willy out, right? It’s like I always say “Keep searching until you find the kind of wife who’ll do what go to a mistresses for,”—that’s what keeps a marriage sacred. Life’s short and you should never wait. Right, Marianne, er, Callista?
Anyway, I crap more ideas than Einstein’s diarrhetic. I’ve written books. True to life tales about how Abraham Lincoln was the original Republican segregationist. The original American. How Lincoln could with just a few letter swaps, be the undeniable reincarnation of Jesus ‘No Taxes’ Christ. Read “The True Lincoln and How Obamacare Rapes Children” by me, Lord Newton Q Gingricher to find out more. Every word is 110 percent true. Although you might wanna take it slow, there’s a lot of three-syllable words.
Some of my opponents, I won’t name names, believe in some foreign, weird Gods. Unamerican Gods. Joesph Smith, that’s just some crazy made-up stuff, right? I mean, how can you trust a man in purple itchy underwear? Real Americans wear silk and like Rambo, go commando. Always.
Oh yea, ideas, that’s what Newton is all about. Giant electric border fence—mine. Amnesty for Republican foreigners—mine. New wars against Iran, Syria and North Korea—that’s me, baby. These are the kind of ideas that’ll keep the economy humming like a blond Fox anchor after happy hour. Hey, what’s that on the ground? Oh, it’s just an idea I had. Look here, I just solved (blank). I could tell you what blank is, but you’re just going to have to vote for me to find out the rest of this Madlib. It’s really good. I mean, Einstein crappingly good.
Recently, the liberal media went after me after some comments I made in Des Moines. I said—very factually—that poor, inner city youth don’t know how to work because their lazy welfare-sucking parents are too busy draining the economy to show up to a job. Of course, the liberal media (cough) pussies (cough) took the actual tape and played it in it’s entirety totally missing ANY context. Latte swilling, small headed idiots.
I didn’t want to release my idea yet—everything should be done on The Matrix’s schedule, you know—but my comments were really a pretext for my plan to save education. I know what you’re saying, “Dammit, Mr. President, another do nothing Washington plan that’ll cost kajillions! No way!”
Well, first, kajillions isn’t a real number. You’d know that if you were as smart as me. Not possible. And second, this idea is 110 percent free to my tax-paying base supporters.
I present to you—Newt’s School for the Urban Youth…(wait for applause)…It’s an all encompassing plan fully paid for by America’s true heroes—those hard scrabble idealists at Walmart, Nike, Peabody Electric, The US and Chinese Army, British Petroleum and The Bank of America. After I’m appointed President, on day two, all inner city schools and schools in rural or democratic areas will be demolished, the refuge hauled away by our sponsors for environmental reallocation.
Then the education begins. As my daddy’s chauffeur, who is colored, once said, “You’re never too young to learn the value of work, boy, now pick up that soiled diaper and have the maid get you a new one.” Inspiring words and that’s just what I want every underprivileged boy over the age of six months to do— pick up that dirty diaper of laziness and get to work.
Their first year of school will be dedicated to rebuilding their own schools. Think of the pride they’ll have in building their own schools, finding the lumber from the nearby landfill. Repurposing the previously used materials they find for everything from chairs to food. A hard day’s work with the payment of learning a trade. These are dividends that keep on giving. But school isn’t just about learning how to use a lathe without losing the important fingers, it’s about education. Every student will learn the five hundred-plus phrases they’ll need to succeed in life, be it in fast food OR landscaping. Phrases like, “Right away, sir” and “It’s on the house” and more complex phrases like “I’ll do it when you leave, so you don’t have to see me work.” Plus, the students will know what the phrases actually mean.
And isn’t a cash register nothing but math come to life? The more industrious students may graduate into a white collar lifestyle, learning how to deal with real Americans on the phone and helping them with their customer’s needs. A truly gifted program that doesn’t waste the true tax-payer’s dollars.
What about all the teachers of these formerly failing schools, you ask. Of course, I have the answer. No stone is left unturned, not only a personal motto, but also the motto of my prototype school, Detroit’s PS199, The John Galt School for the Unexceptional.
All teachers will be rehired by our sponsors. This is as mandatory as Parent/Worker night. (I’m thinking Saturday night to help cut down on shenanigans.) The rehired teachers will work alongside empl–students, as middle management, if you will. Good thing about middle management, no communist unions and only 39 hour weeks to avoid the hassle of full-time benefits. They won’t have as much lesson plans to plan or class room teaching to do, as the students should view them in a supervisory manner. And since this IS America, all teachers’s compensation is based on meeting the various quotas or “Daily Student Goals.”
They say that you learn everything you need to know by age six. That’s certainly true for me, but I want to give the kids more. At Newt’s School for the Urban Youth, every student will be ready to enter the workplace by age ten, fully able to actively contribute to disciplines as varied as maid or car wash attendant or bartender or even kill floor supervisor.
That’s over nine years of full-time, year-round education. Free, fully paid for and vetted under the watchful gaze of our beneficent sponsors.
It’s like what my dad–the third smartest person I know–once said, “Old enough for object permanence, old enough to get me a drink.”
Of course, if I told you all the details of this exciting new opportunity, your eyes would glaze over and you’d probably drool all over your blouse shirt, just trying to comprehend the genius. Trust me, daddy knows what he’s doing.
However, you can read about some of my, frankly, super-genius ideas in my new book, just out on Neo-Con Press, called, “Free at Last: Lincoln Solves the Unemployment Crisis, Education Kerfuffle and Finally Gets Laid.” It’s got pictures so everyone can understand it. And a dog.
I hope this talk clears up any misunderstandings you have had about me. And don’t forget to ‘vote’ this, uh, November. Have a good evening and keep working hard for a better, richer America.
(Off mic) Carmelito, this drinkee-poo needs a topper….
Cropsey (2009)
Back in junior high in Norfolk, Nebraska, the other kids used to talk about how the old mental asylum was haunted. Never mind, the building was still operational and remodeled. It was on the edge of town, back in the woods and, well, seemed creepy. One fall night, we got into an older kids car and drove out there to look for ghosts. I remember being a bit scared. At the time, I read a lot of haunted house books and was really into it. Amityville Horror was my favorite book. I got twenty feet from the car when an older kid jumped out and scared me, I might have spent the rest of the evening in the car. Nobody even got close the the hospital.
I’m not really sure. Memory, especially mine, is a fuzzy affair. I don’t even know where the legend that the mental hospital was haunted and why. I never got any details on the story. I probably made up a few new details.
Every town has haunted spots filled with legends and mis-remembered ‘facts’ about why it’s haunted. It’s just in our nature to fill in the blanks in our knowledge with something, anything.
Cropsey is a documentary about an urban legend that becomes real then spins back out into folklore.
Staten Island is a dumping ground—for NYC’s garbage, for mob bodies and for a short time in the 70′s and 80′s for mentally challenged dead children.
Parents used the all-purpose boogeyman Cropsey to keep kids away from Staten Island’s wooded areas and abandoned buildings. Cropsey took kids. Teenagers ran with the story and Cropsey became a man with a hook or a mental patient or homeless man. He may have set any number of fires or belonged to the Satanic Church. A local boy scout group spread the legend up and down the Eastern seaboard. A lot of towns have their own Cropsey legend, but few have an actual person to pin the legend on.
Albert Rand was picked up in 1987 in connection with the disappearance of Jennifer, an adorable 10 year old girl with Down Syndrome. Suddenly, Albert Rand, a homeless man who lived in the woods near Willowbroook, an abandoned mental institution for children, suddenly became the real Cropsey. There was never any physical evidence tying Rand to the girl, but there were lots of stories. And when Jennifer turned up dead, after he was in custody, Rand eventually went to prison for kidnapping (but not murdering) the girl. And Cropsey’s legend spun out to the disappearance of up 12 other children, mostly mentally handicapped, over a 15 year span. And Rand became tied to many of them, even though there was no physical evidence.
The documentarian couple who originally set out to research the Cropsey legend then turned their focus to trying to find out the truth against a real life man. Quickly, their problem became evaluating what is true and what is not. And it’s a problem that just never will be solved. Too much time has past, people’s memories change, too many people have worked on the various missing child cases and they all have their own ideas, ideas that become facts to others and still, there’s just nothing concrete. Plus, Albert Rand isn’t helping, he’s bananas, both proclaiming his innocence, but using the power he obtained from pretending (or actually having) the secrets of the case.
During the filming, just two years ago, Rand is brought up again on a missing girl case. Once again, it’s all thirty year old witness testimony from alcoholics and drug users and no physical evidence. I won’t tell you the results, but it’s not surprising.
To the documentarian’s credit, they don’t come out fully for or against Rand. This may be frustrating for the crime docu junkies where guilt (almost always) or innocence is spelled out in a tidy 48 minutes. Admittedly, at the end of the movie, I felt a bit gypped by the “you decide” stance on Rand’s guilt or innocence. There was no bombshell. In fact, their exclusive jailhouse talk with Rand fell through. But that’s the way life just is sometimes. You just can’t know. And that’s the real point of the film, you sometimes just can’t know.
I certainly can see why many parents would want to hang the disappearance of their child on Rand, but the truth is, they’ll never probably know the truth. It’s heartbreaking.
I’m fascinated by how people fill in the gaps in their knowledge and then how they justify this gap as actual truth. Urban legends are fueled by this line of thinking. As is religion. And politics. And emotions.
Technically, the documentary is a mix of the straight ahead crime docs you see on basic cable mixed with a few touches of the more personal, documentarian as participant-style of most indie documentaries. Narratively, the movie is a bit scatter-shot, casting a wide net to emphasize the broadness of the urban legend and Rand’s case. The effect is that there always seems to be something left out, some piece of tying information that would bring the case in sharp focus. Sadly, there just isn’t. There is just interview after interview of people speculating what they think actually happened, much of which just plain has to be untrue because of all the inconsistencies and errors in the case and other people’s stories. Someone could easily come along, omit a bunch of testimony, and make a movie proclaiming Rand a Satanic worshipper who sacrificed children or as a completely innocent man.
One of the most interesting parts of the film was clips from a 1972 Willowbrook documentary from a young rising star, Geraldo Rivera. The shots of the severely mentally handicapped kids, naked and covered in their own shit, warehoused in a gigantic crumbling facility were downright haunting. It was so bad that when Rand was shown the tape (he was an intern there in the ’60′s), he becomes practically catatonic. I guess I have to give Rivera a pass next time he does something sensational and stupid.
Cropsey is on Netflix Streaming and while it has a few narrative flaws is an interesting look at a time and place and how emotion and circumstantial evidence can become accepted truth, how the nightmare duel of urban legends can ignite with some spark of real life.
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Monsters (2010)
It’s nice to review a movie the same day as The AV Club does.
In thinking about my two favorite Sci-fi movies, they share two qualities. One, a strong theme or point of view and two, an attention to detail. I could watch Children of Men and Brazil (what I’m classifying as my favorite sci-fi movies) again and again because I find something new each time I watch.
Monsters is a good-looking low-budget Sci-fi movie that should probably change it’s name. It isn’t about Monsters. The movie isn’t a high-octane thrill-ride or even something like War of the Worlds. You only see about a handful of creatures (the movie only refers to them as creatures). Monsters is just plain the wrong name. A co-worker who also watched the movie last night on HDNet (it’s not in theaters yet, but you can get it on Video on Demand or HDNet) came to work mad because he expected wall-to-wall monster killing or something akin to District 9. The first ‘action’ sequence doesn’t even occur until an hour in the film.
However, District 9 could be Monsters’ spiritual precursor. It’s a low budget, almost documentary style film that has decent effects and approaches the theme as a way to deliver a message. District 9 was not so subtly about apartheid as Monster is not so subtly about immigration.
The basic plot is, as they say in video game parlance, an escort mission. A photojournalist has to escort his boss’ daughter through an infected zone to get her back to America.
You see, six years ago, a US space capsule crashed in Northern Mexico containing life from outer space. The space creatures then proceeded to grow and take over the whole top half of Mexico. They’re basically 100 foot walking octopuses who seem to thrive on electrical things. The US built a giant wall along the Rio Grande (hmmm, familiar idea?) to keep the creatures out. Does it work? Well….
However, take out the occasional Monsters and you have a romance/road picture about the photojournalist and the already engaged daughter. The twist in this movie is they are the only real actors in the film. To save money, the director used real Mexican locations and regular folks to fill out the rest of the cast. For the most part, this ploy works and strengthens the docu feel. Only the two principals seem like they’re ‘acting’ in some of the scenes among the more stoic Mexican cast. The writer/director also did all of the creature effects and he certainly knows the best way to cover up any flaws is to have nighttime attacks—the monsters look credible, better than any Syfy production.
The script is pretty strong, only bringing out the Message Hammer ™ in one scene on top of an Aztec ruin. That scene could have easily been cut, we get it, the US sees immigrants as monsters. The giant wall in the back ground drives that point home. Otherwise, the plot moves pretty organically, albeit a bit slow for what the title suggests the pace should be. In fact, many might see the ending as anti-climatic, but I liked the wonder of it and thought it served the romance aspects of the film well.
Back to what struck me most about the film, the details. Lazy movies, especially Sci-fi, will trot out a character to explain what the monster does, how it acts and how we’re responded to it. Monsters doesn’t do that, everything you need to learn about how the world has changed is all in the back ground of this devastated third-world Mexico. Signs, news reports, cartoons, graffiti, implied and overheard conversations, it’s all there. Children of Men and Brazil (and District 9) excelled in this sort of world building, as does Monsters. It’s always nice when a movie doesn’t treat you like you’re dumb.
Monsters isn’t the best Sci-fi movie or as good as District 9, it can be a bit heavy-handed, but it’s nice to see the genre open up and incorporate other genres using the Sci-fi elements as background. However, the most encouraging aspect of Monsters is that truly, really, a gigantic budget isn’t needed to make a quality monster movie. I may like the film more for what it represents than for what it is.
Oh, but really, change the name Monsters. There were more actual Monsters in the Charlize Theron movie Monster than this Monsters.
One possible suggestion for a sequel—Mexican cartels. How do they get all that marijuana north of the border now that giant octopuses roam the land?
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The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009)
Dear The Girl…. Movies,
Not all balding middle-aged white men are pedophiles. Yes, many are, but some pedophiles/rapists are younger or have a full head of hair. Or are of another color. Please keep this in mind when making the upcoming The Girl Who Dies of Cancer From Smoking Too Much.
Thanks,
A not quite middle-aged, not balding, non-pedophile/rapist male (white).
The Girl Who Played With Fire suffers from Big, Dumb, American Sequel syndrome. Yes, it’s a Swedish film, but it so badly wants to be an American thriller like The Firm or some such nonsense. Too bad, because the characters are interesting, but the plot and plot points are a bit generic and uninteresting. This is the same complaint I had with the first movie, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, also on Netflix streaming. Interesting characters, boring plot….
The good, who doesn’t root for the punky, chain-smoking, distant, bad-ass lesbian? No one that’s who. Yea, she’s a tech genius (which has become a crime procedural cliche) and she had a horrible childhood. The first film had so much rape and torture of our heroine, Lisbeth, that it felt less like a tragedy and more like a lazy way to let Lisbeth do what she wants. You see, she hates men (understandably) who are mean to women. She commits all sorts of felonies in her pursuit of bad men. Classic vigilante plot line, however in a weird way, it feels lazy. The actress (Noomi something) is so good that it’d be nice if she had a story to match.
The second lead, the older male journalist, also is interesting and complex, but in the second film, he’s three steps behind Lisbeth instead of collaborating. There’s just not much for him to do. So, there’s basically two plots going on simultaneously, one much more interesting than the other. Both plots come to the same conclusions in solving the mystery just by different means. The two main actors are only onscreen in the last scenes. You could almost do the whole movie from her point of view.
As in all sequels, the stakes are upped. Basically, Lisbeth is accused of crimes she didn’t commit. Yawn.
Now, I’d forgive the plot for being generic if it didn’t fall into so many bad and cliched narratives.
Example. You want to get in contact with someone you only know their PO Box. So, you, obviously, mail them with the ‘Lottery Scam,’ tell them they’ve won a big prize only if they’d meet you in person and answer some questions. And you’re a relatively smart pedophile, so yea, you fall for it and meet them. Who does this? People who still believe a Nigerian prince has a lump of cash they just need to send a small amount of money to collect?
Ok, later, you still need to find yet another man who just has a PO Box address. So, naturally, you camp out in front of the post office and wait. Now, even though you’re wanted and on the run, no one notices you and second, the person you’re looking for is looking for you and is also super busy. But of course, not so busy, as to drive twenty miles to go pickup their mail. Like an hour after you set-up.
Dumb. The movie, although very slick and Swedish, is filled with these little plot cliches. Unnecessary car chases, a giant blond henchman, super hacking, it’s almost like a Bond movie recast with a Goth kid.
I’ve been watching a lot of Swedish films lately, and most of them have been interesting, with small plot cul-de-sacs and weird turns, but these Girl movies are the ones Americans will think of, especially with the American remake (I can only imagine the extra stupid in the remake) on the way. This and Let the Right One In (which was good with a kind of weak ending).
The takeaway from this review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire are overrated, especially if you’re a fan of the thriller genre. The acting, look and characters are top-notch, but not enough to overcome the plot. Like the first film, the more I thought about TGWPWF, the more annoyed I became.
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The New York Ripper (1982)
Last weekend, Shells out of the blue wanted to watch a horror movie. That’s one of the reasons why I love her. So we settled in with Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween 2. His first Halloween wasn’t fantastic, but certainly had a great 1970′s look and struck the right tone. Zombie, after four movies, has developed a nice grind house style. I remember reading a bunch of negative reviews of Halloween 2 when it first came out, maybe the horror press has grown tired of Zombie, but I thought Halloween 2 was a fine sequel–a lot of nice cameos, the Zombie look, interesting pacing and a bunch of twists over the original (which disposed of the original’s plot after the first fifteen minutes). No new ground was broken, but I do enjoy how most of Zombie’s so-called good guys are not much better than the bad guys. Basically, I’m a sucker for his look. He knows when to pulp it up and when to pull back.
So, I realized Halloween is on the way and I’m feeling more in a horror mood. October is easily my favorite month of the year. Hopefully, I can load up on a bunch the next two weekends. After combing all the movie channels, there’s not much playing I haven’t seen already (although AMC is making a good run at it this year), so it’s off to the dark reaches of Netflix streaming. (The Roku box does have a few all-horror channels, but they’re pay and the movies are mostly Z-list. More research is needed.)
The best thing I liked The New York Ripper, an Italian slasher film, is all the shots of New York City circa 1982. I was in NYC in 1985 and the film looks like how I remember the city—The Staten Island Ferry, the grimy graffiti-covered subway, the sleazy porn district, the weird peeling apartments. And of course, just the clothes and hairstyles of the people who live there. It’s strange how we remember places we only been to years ago. It’s like Brooklyn still looks like it does in Do the Right Thing. It doesn’t, but memory messes with you.
Plus the high-def transfer of a low grade film made all the griminess pop more. Maybe I should go back and watch After Hours.
The New York Ripper has many of the trappings of Italian horror of the time, the overdubbed English, narrative cull-de-sacs, eye gouging, many suspects, graphic violence and plenty of full frontal nudity.
So, out of the gate a win. Director Fulci made one of my favorite horror movies of all time, The Beyond, so while Ripper didn’t live up to the gore and strangeness of that film, it is a pretty decent Gallo with heavy sexual underpinnings.
The New York Ripper is crazed madmen who slashes pretty young women while quacking like a duck. The killings start out as standard TV fare with a hard boiled detective trying to track down the killer with the help of a college professor. Kind of yawn. But after the first third, Fulci starts to follow other, almost random characters, a creepy hustler and a sexually dangerous rich woman. Suddenly, there’s a live sex show, the worst place to put a broken bottle and toe sex. Lots of anonymous stranger toe sex.
Then the red herrings start piling on and the movie turned into a full-blown mystery by the beginning of the third act, the point where the detective thinks he has the right guy. The killer at this point could literally be any character still alive.
Of course, by the end, all is explained and the killer’s motive ends up being pretty unique. He quacked like a duck while he slashed young ladies FOR A REASON. Neat.
If you’re not a fan of Italian horror, especially Gallo, The New York Ripper won’t make you a fan, but if you’re a fan of late ’70′s/early ’80′s slasher pics, the Ripper should satisfy the itch, bad English dubbing and all.
Kind of Black Christmas meets Serpico.
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Casino Jack and the United States of Money (2010)
In November of 2008, I developed a sort of political amnesia. All of the bad stuff of the past 8 years somehow just seemed forgiven and in the past. It wasn’t because I thought the new Obama administration would be extremely good, he was just Not Bush. He’s the political equivalent of the rebound girlfriend. America just needed two or three bland presidents to reset the stage.
One trope about life, especially American life, is that you can always have a fresh start, completely re-invent yourself if you want. Well, remnants of the past are always there, lurking in the back ground. You may spend a life dodging the past as the past worms it’s way out in strange ways. Our political system is ripe with old corruption and problems that are not only systemic, but encouraged by not only the wealthy, but the unwitting public who’s bought into the free market myth.
Casino Jack and the United States of Money, the new documentary from the guys who did Enron, The Smartest Guys in the Room, follows the rise and fall of uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The film connects him to all the major Republican power players of the last thirty years, but more importantly reinforces the point that lobbyists are the real legislation engines running the country.
This isn’t a wonky film, but a breezy one, clearly laying out a life of small corruption unchecked until he was finally caught and what his capture and modis operandi means for American politics. It’s a spy movie masquerading as a political documentary. While many on the right would call it a polemic, I didn’t find Casino Jack to be overtly politically bias toward the right, they were just the current set of douchebags in power.
If you followed the news, you probably know about Jack Abramoff bilking Indian Casinos in the mid-2000′s. However, it’s the story before that one that’s so interesting. Abramoff represented the Russian mob and sweatshop owners in a tiny American pacific island country. He basically got legislators to rubber stamp illegal Chinese immigrant abuses in sweatshops on US soil. That’s the value of the true free market.
The documentary is mostly comprised of Republican interviews, some who saw no harm and others who do have regret. Abramoff helped to create the revolving door of politics and lobbyists in the last thirty years. He truly believed government can and should be bought. It’s pretty horrifying.
See this film. It, oddly, isn’t a downer nor a polemic, but does highlight a problem-the lobbyist problem and how it buys access to power. Obama last week was complaining about the anonymous 503 PAC groups giving to the Republican party. This is how lobbyist control candidates. A modern politician is nothing but a 24/7 fundraising machine to keep his campaign alive. These PACS outspend Democrat by a measure of four to one, but Democrats are not immune. They just aren’t as successful as Republicans at raising money.
I have a simple voting rule. If an issue is on the ballot and one side carpet bombs the TV with ads and there’s almost nothing on the other side, I cote for the side that didn’t spend money. If someone has to spend that much money to convince me, it’s probably not in my best interest to vote for it. The same goes for candidates. We could fix the political system in 20 years if we eliminated money from the process, but that just ain’t gonna happen. For every Abramoff that’s caught, another hundred lobbyist are working within the law doing 90 percent of the unethical crap he did.
Now, I know why I developed political amnesia. It’s just plain better for my day to day happiness.
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OSS 117- Lost in Rio (2009)
Finding a new movie on Netflix Streaming with the Roku box can be a strange process. First, I hunt through my 300-plus list in my queue. I’m almost never in the mood to see any of the movies I’ve put there and that’s why there’s 300 movies there. Also, much of it is for the rest of the family. Then, I go through what’s recently released. Netflix has a strange idea of what constitutes ‘recently’ as some of that stuff’s been in there for months. (Fortunately, the website and iPhone app Instant Watcher is a Godsend for seeing what is absolutely brand new at Netflix streaming). After that, Netflix has a bunch of lists like ‘gritty crime dramas’ and ‘comedies with a strong female lead’ to suggest movies to watch. Honestly, this is where I usually settle on to find something to watch. Also, if I’m feeling antsy, I’ll start two or three movies, watch the first ten minutes and stop before I settle on something I’ll watch all the way through. Most nights, finding a movie takes about 15-30 minutes if there’s nothing new I’m excited about. Sometimes after all that searching, I’ll decide I’m not even in the mood to watch a movie or will only watch the first half.
Yea, it’s a real first world problem. To me, it highlights the new entertainment problem for this generation. It isn’t that we can’t afford new entertainment—the poorest of the poor still seem to have broadband—but that it’s all about maximizing our time with entertainment. Even with the trend toward narrowcasting, the narrow niches are still overcrowded with content. I mean, I just saw someone tweet how excited they were that all of the He-Man cartoons were now on Hulu. Even little kids don’t have the time or patience for ALL the He-Man cartoons. So, now we just know that they are there and that’s like a form of media consumption. Netflix should have a good idea of what I like, I’ve been using the service for over ten (?) years and rating stuff, but still it’s filled with recommendations I’ve seen or have zero interest in.
So, for these reviews, I’ve been trying to go off the mainstream grid more, watching strange old horror movies or foreign films. Just picking shit at random until I stumble upon something good.
I picked OSS117-Lost in Rio after turning down a Bolivian miner documentary (still feeling good about the Chilean miners) and yet another 10 people trapped in a sadistic house torture porn flick.
OSS117-Rio is a French comedy and sequel (hadn’t seen, didn’t know) to another OSS117 movie. It parodies the low hanging fruit of ’60′s spy films like Matt Helm and James Bond. Yea, it’s been done before with the insufferable Austin Powers and half a lifetime of MST3k and Beastie Boys videos.
That said, OSS-117-Rio is pretty agreeable because it’s so aggressively French. They have the clean, campy, split-screen style of the 60′s spy flick down cold. The look is fantastic–plenty of hot bikini-clad girls, bright colors and great locations. The fight scene on top of the giant Jesus that overlooks Rio is genius.
As in parodies of it’s ilk, OSS117′s leading spy is an idiot. On top of that, he’s a misogynist, racist, self-absorbed, vain and over-confident. So, in short, pretty funny. The actor plays it with such wide smile glee that the horrible things he says works in the long stretches of awkward silence. My only complaint besides a few obvious jokes, almost a guarantee in a movie this broad, is that the movie overplays the awkward silence angle too much.
OSS117′s (I spaced learning names) partner is a more stoic female Israeli spy, mirroring Beyonce in those Austin Power movies. The plot concerns OSS117 paying off a Nazi to get a microfiche list of French sympathizers in WW2, so pretty French approach to plot. There’s an American spy whose only English is swearing, a buxom Nazi and an ongoing plot as Chinese assassins try unsuccessfully to kill OSS117 (like the old Pink Panther movies).
There’s not much in the movie that’s ground breaking comedy-wise, but the film is put together in such an agreeable way and played out with such energy, it doesn’t matter much. For example, I’m a sucker for a film that has ten guys shooting at our hero (killing off all the innocent bystanders around him) from five feet away and completely missing him as he picks them off one by one. What’s Up Tiger Lilly did that joke 40 years ago, but it’s still funny.
I’ll probably watch the first OSS117 movie some Saturday afternoon, but I do recommend OSS117-Lost in Rio as a nice diversion for the blues.
Oh, if you’re looking for a great parody, check out Black Dynamite on Netflix Streaming. It’s easily the best 70′s Blacksploitation parody since I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. I laughed my ass off at that one.
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