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I’ve been getting a heaping pile of culture lately. I’ve seen a few movies, plus the play God of Carnage (with Jimmy Smits! And Annie Potts! And two other people who were also excellent, but who’s names don’t do the same rhythmic thing) and Avenue Q again (still one of the bestest musicals ever, especially if you grew up with Sesame Street as a child). One movie I saw is called Intimacy, and it is, well, very European. I’ve always said the French truly know how to make sex look terrible, and here they succeed with flying colors. The film, directed by Patrice Chereau, is about a guy who looks like a woeful elf (Mark Rylance) and has left his wife and family and lives in the crappiest house in London (I could smell it through the television, and it smelled like mold spores and old books and sour milk) and there’s this woman who looks like a normal Plain Jane housewife (Kerry Fox) and she comes over every Wednesday and they go at like raccoons in your backyard next to your trash bin. There are no words exchanged, we don’t know how they met, they just pant and claw at each other and bump their pale bony British uglies and she leaves. He develops an interest in knowing stuff about her (like, I don’t know, HER NAME), so one day, he follows her and he learns about her husband and her kid and blah blah. In the end, because he knows about her life and develops feelings for her, they can no longer rut like pigs and their relationship dissolves. Here’s the deal: the movie (which is actually very good, but only if you like long depressing discussions about the emptiness and loneliness of life, which I don’t) got a great deal of press because the actors pretty much have real actual sex. And it is so not sexy. I would actually prefer to watch raccoons mating beside your trash bins. I definitely much rather watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A7uFSbRJ5w

This was the kind of movie I watched a great deal of in college and then had to write papers about. Now that I am not in college and not forced to do that, I try to avoid films like this like the plague. So I saw another film that I liked very much, and that was:

Monsters vs. Aliens!

Yeah, I’ve come a long way since college. I didn’t have very high hopes for M vs. A, but the voice-over actors were all ones I like (Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Hugh Laurie, Rainn Wilson, Stephen Colbert, Will Arnett), and the plot, while not really super-fleshed-out, was believable and it was a good time. There are monsters, kept by the government in a secret prison! But then there’s aliens, bent on attacking the earth and taking it over! So the government releases the monsters, and they fight the aliens! It’s made by a not-Pixar movie studio and it’s no Pixar film, but not every animated film has to be. Sometimes they can just be fun and funny. So if you have a choice, avoid the sad gray intercourse and go with the brightly-colored animated characters.

Yeah, so I saw the movie. Alas, it was meh. I realize the book only has ten sentences, does the movie only get ten sentences too? Here’s a personal thing: I actively dislike movies with copious amounts of poignant staring. You know, the actors just looking, attempting to evoke emotion while gazing at someone or something for what seems like hours. WTWTA was chock-full of that. This would have probably made an excellent short film, like thirty minutes long. I wanted to smack Max as well, he was such an ideal candidate for Aderall or Ritalin. I mean, if I bit my mother because she was on a date, my mom would have pulled a Boo Radley and locked me in the basement until all my melanin went away and I relied on sonar to get around. The monsters were amusing to me because they were Jewish New York monsters. Really. Two of them were named Judith and Ira, and they were all neurotic and emotional. It was like watching my family (except with less hair! Ha ha! I have a furry family! Eastern European heritage can be sucky. But I digress.). In the book, they really don’t talk and kind of just express emotions through yelling and running and gnashing teeth, where as in the movie, it’s like a damn group therapy session. James Gandolfini is a terrific voice actor, so that was great, and there were these two side characters named Bob and Terry that were amusing, but other than that, it felt like kind of a slog. I think if I had rented it, I would have turned it off partway through.

So this weekend was very meh. I did a bunch of stuff, none of it was particularly memorable or exciting. I saw a bunch of movies, they were all uninspiring, and I tried to draw a bird’s nest, but it didn’t turn out how I wanted it to. One movie I did see was Ponyo, the new Studio Ghibli film. Studio Ghibli does anime films, the two most famous of which are probably My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. The first Studio Ghibli film I saw was Princess Mononoke in 1997. It was my first anime film and when I saw it I was like, “What the huh? Nothing makes any freakin’ sense.” And when I spoke to other people, they all huffed and chuffed at me, I didn’t understand the finer nuances of this Japanese art, I needed to appreciate that they constructed stories differently then the way Westerners were accustomed, etc. So I tried to open my mind and embrace this anime thing, I really did, for a decade. After seeing Ponyo this past weekend I have come to the conclusion that the Japanese are just nuts and there is no plot line in the Studio Ghibli films and I quit. Recap of the story (big chunks pulled from Wikipedia):

The plot is centered on a fish girl who lives in an aquarium in her father’s underwater castle with numerous identical tinier versions of herself. Her father, who is human-ish, is some kind of sorcerer trying to keep the world in balance. When her father takes her and her tiny doppelgangers (let’s call them Ponyo’s sisters) on an outing in his four-flippered submarine, she is driven by a desire to see even more of the world and swims away. She ends up stranded on the shore of a small fishing town, and is rescued by Sosuke, a five year old boy who lives on a cliff by the sea. He cuts his finger and the fish-girl licks the blood. She also eats Sosuke’s ham out of his sandwich. Sosuke names her Ponyo and promises to protect her forever. Meanwhile, her father, Fujimoto, is looking for his daughter, upset that she ran away. He calls his wave spirits to return Ponyo to him. Ponyo and her father have a confrontation, where Ponyo refuses to let her father call her “Brünnhilde”. She declares her name to be Ponyo, and voices her desire to become human because she has started to fall in love with Sosuke. Since she has tasted human blood, she can now turn into a human. Her father silences her with difficulty and goes to summon Ponyo’s mother. Meanwhile, Ponyo, with the help of her sisters, breaks away from her father, and uses his secret magic golden fluid that he keeps under lock and key to make herself human. This causes her sisters to turn into giant blue fish made of water. They thrash around, making a huge storm that threatens to flood Sosuke’s fishing village. Running on the backs of the giant water-fish, Ponyo goes back to visit Sosuke. Lisa (Sosuke’s mother), Sosuke, and Ponyo stay the night at Sosuke’s house, hoping the storm will be over, whereupon Lisa leaves the house to check up on the residents of the nursing home where she works. Ponyo eats more ham.

Ponyo’s mother, Granmammare, who some kind of giant glowing sea goddess, arrives at Fujimoto’s submarine. Fujimoto notices the moon has come out of its orbit and the satellites are falling like shooting stars due to the imbalance of the world. Granmammare declares that if Sosuke and Ponyo pass a test, Ponyo can live as a human and the world order will be restored. Sosuke and Ponyo wake up to find that most of the land around where the house has been covered by the ocean. Lisa has not come home yet, so with the help of Ponyo’s magic, they make Sosuke’s toy boat life-size and set out to find Lisa. While traveling they see ancient extinct fish swimming, such as the Gogonasus and Licosus. They also encounter a baby in a canoe who is grumpy and who may or may not have a cold. Ponyo develops narcolepsy and falls asleep suddenly. After landing and finding Lisa’s empty car, Ponyo and Sosuke go through a tunnel. There Ponyo loses her human form and resumes the form of a fish. Sosuke and Ponyo are taken by Fujimoto into the ocean and down to the protected nursing home covered with a giant jellyfish dome, where they’re reunited with Lisa and meet Granmammare, both of whom had just had a long private conversation. Also, all the humans can breathe water in this dome and all the elderly wheelchair-ridden people in the nursing home can walk. Granmammare asks Sosuke if he can love Ponyo even if she is a fish or mermaid. Sosuke replies that he loves Ponyo in all forms. Granmammare then allows Ponyo to become human once Ponyo kisses Sosuke on the surface. Ponyo is placed in a bubble and everyone goes back to the surface, where Ponyo becomes a human. And most likely eats ham.

See? See what I mean? I’m not exaggerating any of that. Maybe it really all deep and meaningful, maybe it’s people ashamed to not understand Asian films and having a whole “emperor’s new clothes” thing, either way, I don’t care anymore. Frankly, the Japanese and I have been having a falling-out for a while now, this was just the final straw. The Japanese have given us such fine things as this:

But they have also given us this:

And let’s not forget the Japanese-invented genre of porn dedicated to schoolgirls getting raped by octopii and squid. So Japan and I are going to take a little time-out until they can stop this tomfoolery. I am going to a Japan street fair in a week and a half, hopefully my frustrations with that distant island will have ebbed by then.

Addendum: Here’s a review of Ponyo from someone who didn’t mind the non-linear not-based-in-any-reality-anywhere style. Just to give you a different perspective. Heads up: some expletives are used.

http://fourfour.typepad.com/fourfour/2009/08/ham.html

But first, I saw They Might Be Giants again! I wasn’t planning to, but they were playing near my home (Tarrytown Music Hall) and it was only $28.00 for the ticket, so I thought “wot the ‘ell” and went. B. told me they had rewritten “The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas” and sho’ nuff, TMBG performed the new version. Turns out they got all the facts for the song (song lyrics here) from one of those 1950s Golden Books everyone had as a kid. And, it also turns out, that in the 1950s, the scientists were wrong about a lot of their sun information. So the new song is sung as “The Sun Is A Miasma Of Incandescent Plasma”. I still like the original better, so even though the information is outdated and incorrect, I will continue to sing it and I hope TMBG will too. At least they have other informative songs, like “The Mesopotamians” and “Mammal” (where I learned the term ‘monotreme’ – Go Echidna!).

Yep, saw the Star Trek movie. In the IMAX, no less. And it was explosionalistical to the max. I was concerned when I went to go see it, because I am not a Star Trek fan of any kind. I know very basic rudimentary information on the show, and here is the length and breadth of it.

James T. Kirk is Captain of the Enterprise.

He’s got a doctor on board named Bones who says, “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a (something)!”

Kirk also has a guy on board named Scottie who’s an engineer or something, and says, “I’m givin’ it all she’s got!” in a heavy Scottish accent.

There’s a nice black lady named Uhura who Kirk kissed and it was the first interracial kiss on TV, I think.

Them there’s Spock, who’s a Vulcan and doesn’t have emotions and has pointy ears.

Also, tribbles.

Aaaaand that’s it. So when I went to go see the movie, I was justifiably wary. I think I caught all of it. Here are some things of note:

- Anybody else think the Romulan ship looks like a Bloomin’ Onion as interpreted by Geiger?

- Speaking of Romulans and They Might Be Giants, the actors playing Romulans has prosthetic foreheads on their real heads. Which caused me to sing the chunk of the song ‘We Want A Rock” by TMBG (Lyrics: Throw the crib door wide / Let the people crawl inside / Someone in this town / Is trying to burn the playhouse down / They want to stop the ones who want / Prosthetic foreheads on their heads / But everybody wants prosthetic / Foreheads on their real heads). See, I never got that song. Obviously it’s about Romulans coming and destroying your planet. I understand now.

- Kirk makes out with a chick who’s completely normal-looking, except she’s painted bright green from head to toe. COME ON. Really. She looks exactly like Elphaba in the musical Wicked. There’s no reason for her to look like that, it’s distracting and stupid. She could have at least had funky scales, like Mystique in X-Men.

- Uhura and Spock are clearly gettin’ jiggy with it, which doesn’t make sense for two reasons. One, why would you want to have intimate relations with someone who doesn’t really express emotions? And two, isn’t Kirk supposed to be romantically involved with Uhura?

- I LOVE that Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) played Scottie. Have you seen Shaun of the Dead? The first half is absolutely fabulous. So, yay, Simon Pegg.

That’s all I can think of. I don’t really get the whole Star Trek obsession, but it was a nice film that had lots of neat-o special effects, and that’s pretty much what I was looking for.

I saw Coraline. I know, SHOCKER, but I found out some cool stuff about it and I wanted to share. Whilst at the Final Cut Pro class, I happened upon a magazine called Post. It had an article all about how Coraline was made. First of all, I didn’t particularly like Coraline. It had brief moments of awesome-itude, but the story as a whole was lacking, in my opinion. This is a constant problem for me with fantasy and science fiction. Since you could make anything up, I feel the author has to work much, much harder to keep me involved. For example, Coraline has to find three sets of eyeballs so ghosts can be set free from eternal bonds. But she’s also really conveniently given a green triangular ring that when she looks through it, she can see where the eyes are. To me, that’s too easy. That problem was too easily solved by a random object invented by the author. Too simple. Something interesting about the film was that it was so distant for me and I was so not into whatever the characters were going through that things that would normally freak me out didn’t bother me at all. I am scared of little-kiddie-related stuff, like dolls and xylophone toys. There’s a ton of that in this film, as well as people with buttons for eyes having their faces stitched into permanent smiles, and I didn’t even flinch. However, there are moments of extreme beauty and exquisite design, and it’s worth it for that. Also, there’s a man upstairs with a jerboa circus. What’s a jerboa, you ask? It is a hopping kangaroo rat type thing. Lookit:

http://www.hawar-islands.com/blog/media/blogs/kuwait/Lesser-Jerboa.jpg

I desperately want a jerboa circus. Nay, I NEED a jerboa circus. But enough of that. I read a couple things in Post that were interesting. I will now quote:

In Coraline, the character’s replacement heads are molded in a computer-controlled 3D printer that allows for precise gradations and nuances of expressions. Mouths have teeth in them, and tongues, and more. …Computers also erased rigs used to support characters and erased the faint line that exists in a replacement head where the head’s lower half (which includes the mouth) meets the character’s upper head. …Back on The Nightmare Before Christmas, the lead character, Jack Skellington, had around 800 different sculpted facial expressions. As opposed to Jack Skellington, Coraline has over 205,000 different possible expressions.

B. had commented on how impressed he was that there was no dust on the set in the final film, and I’m now thinking that if there was dust, it was taken out later with computers. I would love to see an exhibit of the sets and models one day. Hopefully they’ll come out with a book on it soon.