a Chip off the old 'munk?

By Challi

I'm all for the upcoming wave of live-action movie remakes of old cartoons. They're great for nostalgia value and good fun for the adults who grew up on them to take their kids to so that they can wonder why the hell their parents liked crap like this. It's also a great distraction for Hollywood to give to the moviegoers until they can actually come up with something original. I can't wait to see how Hollywood have remade Speed Racer, Tintin and The Jetsons using their own unique adaptations which are still somehow loyal to the original show in some way.

However, I do have some sort of dignity and, although I know I should never judge a movie by its poster, I think I'm going to have to try to avoid the following movie. I think it speaks for itself:

May God have mercy on us all.

-C

philosophy and 'Tales From Earthsea'.

By PJK



Few would argue against Miyazaki's film making genius. But does it run in the family? Studio Ghibli's latest offering is not by Miyazaki but in fact by his son. It's called Tales from Earthsea, and like Howl's Moving Castle, it's based on a book by some lady I've never heard of. Not that it matters. By the way, just a warning for anyone who, like me, was expecting a plurality of 'tales' throughout the movie: there is only one tale, the title is erroneous.

By their usual standards the movie was pretty average. You can be sure that, being Studio Ghbili, the artwork and visuals will be as amazing as you've come to expect. Quite frankly though the story is disjointed and its telling is overly dramatic, at times cringe-worthy. Yet the movie does get one thing very right: its philosophical message. After the dragons and sorcery of the first half of the film, the last thing I expected was to be confronted with philosophy in the second half. But sure enough, there were sections of dialogue that sounded hardly dissimilar to something by Albert Camus. I don't want to spoil it for those who have yet to see it, but the movie ultimately deals with the exact themes I discussed in my last post: death, fear of dying, eternal life, and ultimate meaning.

The message is not one of despair but one of hope. As humans, we are the only beings aware of our own mortality. Faced with this knowledge, we should neither by burdened by the immense weight of it all, nor should we take for granted the 'unbearable lightness of being' and in so doing dismiss its value. Whether the promise of eternal life comes from science or from religion (or, in the fictional world of the movie, from magic), it makes no difference: the promise is an empty one. A life without end would be like a song without its final chord, or a story without the last, poignant words of its closing chapter.

Death makes life poetic. Surely we might better embrace life by accepting death?

kung fu action swords!

By PJK

HEY!! I'm LOUD!!

Did you read the text in capitals louder in your head? You should've, it was intentional. It represents me shouting at you. LISTEN TO ME!! Are you? Excellent.

Rarely do I frequent the cinema as my major source of amusement. If my brow were any higher, it'd be levetating above my head. But I did see Fearless recently — it's a movie — and of course one of the great things about martial arts films is the insane martial arts they do! People get smashed, grabbed, knee-ed, kicked in the shins and so forth. All that is awesome, and sometimes they even use deadly weapons when fighting. But that's not actually what I love most about martial arts epics. My favourite thing ever is just the whole visual motifs in these films, the aesthetics if you will. The sets, the costumes, the landscapes. This is where asian cinema excels.

Talking about movies critically in this way is not my vain attempt at being avant-garde. I don't even know what that means. For I, dear readers, am a student of Screen Studies, and this is all part of my plot to destroy Hollywood! ... I kid. Except not about the Screen Studies part. I am actually doing it (so is Challi, my co-conspirator for this weblog). It's one of several arts subjects I'm taking this semester, along with History and Philosophy (I'm starting Law next semester). But now I'm straying from the topic and we can't have that. Back to film. So what you find with Screen Studies is, surprise surprise, there are a lot of very pretentious people doing it (including moi of course). Unlike them however, I'm not that much of a movie snob. Mainly because I haven't seen nearly as many movies as most screen students. I hate the same crap they hate, but when it comes to naming directors, I find myself at ClueFactor Zero™.

For this reason, Screen Studies has been my least successful subject, grades-wise, this semester. I'm trying to better that though, because I really do enjoy my weekly dose of screen. The lectures are fun and the screenings are a good chance to see some classic films with an appreciative audience. It's also fun to do some "homework" on your own — I've been renting films from the directors/genres/eras we're studying to try and get a better grasp of the subject and I'm already starting to feel the snobbery begin to bulge like rippling biceps of pretention! It's fascinating, and contrary to what I thought, it's not actually ruining my experience of going to movies (quite the opposite in fact).

So back to Fearless. Though it is a joy of a film to watch (got that one from Margaret and David, yoink), it didn't have the same depth as say, House of the Flying Daggers. I think one thing we can all agree on however: it would totally suck to own a restaurant or teahouse in a martial arts movie. You just know what's going to happen! Why did I buy those vases, oh why?!