School of the Holy Beast.

First, the links: Wikipedia and IMDB.

Second, it’s “Japan’s most famous nunsplotation movie.”*

Third, reviews with sentences like these should sell you:
“Extravagant, surprisingly beautiful, and unabashedly perverse, director Norifumi Suzuki contributes to the nunsploitation genre with this feast of excess.”
“If nothing else, School of the Holy Beast is unlike anything you’ve seen before. ”
“What happens thereafter are some of the most artfully directed scenes of lesbian love, whippings, fights and absurd blasphemy your ever likely to see, all ending with a sinfully sweet climax.”

* Just think on that sentence for a moment.

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John Carpenter made great movies. Combined with David Cronenberg, the pair really seemed to nail the techno-phobia and weird societal shift that the 80s sometimes held onto. And “They Live” is a good example of this.

What other movie can you find ideas referenced — no, taken — by Shepard Fairey (“OBEY”), Evil 9 (their last album was called “They Live”) and Duke Nukem (“I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”*)?

But it’s based on a short story and the plot moves like it. For every great commentary on post-1980 life, class warfare, questioning societal norms, greed, technology issues and general trust issues, there is slow, plodding plot, flat dialogue, absurd fights and nonsensical story. The movie moves as if they only had 45 minutes worth of story, so they told Rowdy Roddy Piper to speak slowly and not do much, lest the story ends in less than the 90 minute run-time. How else to explain the entirely nonsensical 10 minute fight between him and his best friend in the middle of Act 2?**

But if you can overlook the flaws, the commentary the film makes is dead-on and still true today, perhaps more than ever.*** It doesn’t feel dated from that respect, which is slightly depressing. When Rachael and I looked at each other 20 minutes into the film and both said, “How aporopos to today,” something is going on. (Ok, fine, she said it, I was about to. We didn’t totally sync up our sentences by chance. But we were both thinking it.)

(And the use of B&W to show the view through the glasses was an excellent and well conceived art direction choice. Also, the PKE Meter appears in the film, used by the aliens, which made me laugh when I saw it.)

Final grade: B-

* Until I re-watched this, I thought the line was “I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum.” But no, the two items are switched, sound worse in the movie and are actually delivered in the most lackluster way possible. It’s the kind of line that screams for a closeup and a gritty delivery. What you get is a long shot and a flat delivery.

** Wikipedia says that this 5.5 minute fight is a highlight of the film and took 3 weeks to rehearse. I’m calling bullshit on the first part; it felt like they just needed an excuse why Rawdy Roddy Piper was cast in the movie.

*** Last week’s Bill Meyer helped bear this out: much of the show was spent on discussing health care, the ‘threat’ of socialism. My favorite line? He asked when it became patriotic to care more about making a profit than the health of your fellow citizens. Bingo.

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This link (which I can’t ruin by explaining) started it. And then I got passed this link — a NYT article about men who are in love with 2D representations of women.

Yes. You read that correctly.

And it’s just as wild as you might imagine — you know, if you find a grown man who is in love with a pillowcase to be wild. Your mileage might vary.

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The city is caught in a weeks-long fever dream, all of us suffering the same delusion, watching one another sweetly, feeling ourselves shrivel and wither away. I found myself thirsty for a body cool and light as a shadow (mine ticks like a watch, or a bomb). Wanted to keep you warm. Wanted to keep you: a shock of bright and gentle. Breath like a waterfall. An oasis, but I could feel it. Something else entirely.

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Les Lye dying at the end of last week. This guy was a staple of my childhood, back in the days when Nickolodeon didn’t have enough programming, when they went off the air at 8p.m., when they showed Danger Mouse and Bananaman, when Pinwheel was the same damn special every week (starring, actually, Les Lye. And some kids who got abducted by aliens.) “Daaaaa-Iiiiiiii heard that!” RIP Barth – er, Les.

From a month ago, Pizza Hut is now attempting to go by The Hut. I’m not kidding. Not only does this hurt me, but…no, really, it’s too painful to consider.

Speaking of painful, this qualifies. Wow. Can you really be this ignorant? I wan to believe this isn’t real, but something is telling me that isn’t the case.

Need extra battery life for your Mac? Yeah, this should cover you. The largest HyperMac battery looks like it gets you around 24 hours or so, depending on your Mac (and usuage). I needed this years ago; I’m already debating how I could use it today.

Comic Con happened over the weekend. It hurts me; I spent the time this year not lamenting I wasn’t there, but lamenting the Con in general. Back in the mythical days of high school, it was this mystery thing: I knew it happened, I read about it, but I never had the chance to go — I was on the east coast, young and simply didn’t travel. Plus it existed to sell comics. Comics I couldn’t afford and didn’t know enough about. This is no longer the case — now it’s a pop culture showcase and the 2 years I went were about as close to a death knell as I expect to see…well, they were more like last gasps. All the coverage I’ve read this year (which, incidentally, is another issue — the Internet has made actually attending the Con a silly endevour, unless you want to buy art or rare back issues), is less than impressive. I haven’t year read one interesting bit of news from the comcis world — plots, teasers, creative teams…nada. And then to hear how actual comic dealers are being squeezed out of the floor for games, toys and media companies…well, that’s just depressing. Comics have moved on, my friends. And if they don’t make the move to digital super quickly, they are going to cease to exist at all.

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i usually dress up for work. a week or two ago, i wore a t-shirt, which is unusual for me. my favorite underworld tee which says ‘i need sugar.’

and i forgot i had a meeting with external clients. scheduled at the same time as big internal dev meeting.

so i was underdressed for the meeting and had to juggle it with im’s about this other meeting that i was missing.

net result: i appeared as the complete engineering nerd.

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April gave me kudos the other day on sharing this link about accepting things without judgment. It’s very good advice and it’s one of the reasons I shared the post on Google Reader.

It doesn’t stop there though. There is more to talking about good and bad than accepting things as being.* Those two words are unproductive. They shouldn’t be in your vocabulary at all.

When I was back in school, Janeann wouldn’t let us critique pieces using those words. It was an excellent rule and one that was surprisingly difficult to break the habit of. We evenually got there and it was amazing to see people really consider their words when you can’t use such vague, subjective terms.

Same program, the year earlier: I was working on an installation project with a bunch of classmates. The topic morphed into “good vs. evil.” Seriously, this was the theme. And the discussions and debates we had over what images should be used drove the instructor insane. With excellent reason: I played devil’s advocate and decided the letter “a” was good and “z” was evil. Things that were smooth were good; jagged was evil. What is this? It’s nonsense. And we knew it; we were in on the joke.

But the reality is that the words means nothing to anyone but you. They don’t help you communicate anything worthwhile.**

Keep in mind that things simply exist and the judgement you attach to them does nothing to change them. It’s the actions you take. But go even at step further (closer?) and realize that even talking about things in such ways doesn’t help anyone understand you. It doesn’t help anything change or improve. Be explicit, clear and honest. And find ways to improve those things you disagree with.

* For most of my professional life, until sense was somehow beaten into me, I was accused of being negative. In reality, in my head, I was simply pointing out reality. Even worse, I was usually proven correct once the future caught up to us. In the last year or so, I’ve tempered this quite a bit and have learned to pick my battles.

** I have to check my movie reviews to see if I have been lazy by saying, “This movie was good.” I hope I haven’t and shame on me if I have.

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