johnnyhongkong says…

I’ve never seen an episode of MTV’s The Hills and since I’m not 17, have no idea why it is popular but this little ditty comparing The Hills to the ouevre of Michelangelo Antonioni is too delightful to pass up. 

4. Modern architecture as shorthand for moral emptyness/alienation. The Season 3 premiere was unlike most episodes of The Hills, in that it took place entirely outside of Los Angeles, but imagery of that city is so integral to what The Hills does that helicopter shots of the West Side as glittering grid make up the bulk of the opening credits and set the background for most promotional materials. An average episode makes ample use of establishing shots of LA buildings, which sometimes rival Audrina for screen time. Often we’ll see long montages of exteriors around where characters are meeting, and almost every episode ends with an image of LA represented by a shot of silverly skyscrapers blurring into the hazy blue sky. In representing congested Los Angeles as the “unnatural” environment that supports and breeds “shady” characters like Spencer and Heidi (as opposed to idyllic oceanside community Laguna Beach, glimpsed in the very beginning of the credit sequence to remind us from where Lauren was spawned), The Hills is maybe more dedicated to drawing an urban landscape as petri dish for ennui than anything since…

Antonioni film that this is JUST LIKE: …L’Eclisse, which comes to its own non-resolution (see Item 3) with a famed city montage.

You ever wonder what the definition of genius is?Well, wonder no more.  It’s simply interviewing the legendary Jean-Claude Van Damme about his oeuvre, which the Onion’s AV Club did and killed.  Or rather, JCVD killed.  Whatever the case, the definition of genius has been killed.  Defined.  Over.For example, JCVD on scene stealing in Breakin’:

I didn’t know the difference between medium, high, and low budget. So I was trying to win the scene: I was behind the lead actor in the group, and I was jumping as high as I could, and doing a flip in the air. But of course they cut that, because I was eating the screen with that fantastic jump. 

Playing “Gay Karate Man” in Monaco Forever:

They asked me to play a guy driving, I believe it was an MG or a Ferrari, on the road of Mulholland Drive. I took a guy that was doing hitchhiking on the road, and I took a guy in my car, and I play a homosexual, and I was trying to take advantage of him in that car. And then he came off and wanted to fight me. I did some kicks above his head, and blah, blah, blah. It was funny. Very small, low-budget, independent type of movie.  

On the theory of improvisation, or what they call playing “Inspector Gangster” in Belgium:

No, I didn’t take any acting lessons, but I was playing with guys of my age over in Belgium. We played Inspector Gangster. We met in a room. We were like, “Okay, you’re going to come into the living room, okay? You’re going to play a guy coming in for a deal. Right? You’re going to sit down there and we aren’t going to agree about that deal, then we shoot at each other.” You know, like game stuff. I was like 13, 14 years old. So, the guy comes in the room, and I’m: “Oh hey. How are you? What’s your name?” all that stuff. It was kind of like rehearsing without knowing.  

On “acting” especially like the kind that Daniel Day-Lewis does (you better watch your ass DDL):

Later in my career, I understood something from a good director named Ringo Lam, who directed me in Maximum Risk, In Hell, all those movies. He said “acting doesn’t exist.” If we start to act, you’ll see the guy “acting.” I believe we really have to go into a character. I only understood that now, my last couple of movies. You have to go into something and invest your mind into that specific person. You have to prepare; you came from which family? How did you behave before the events of the film happened? You have to build something into your mind to lose the Jean-Claude Van Damme, and to become, for example, Jack Robideaux [fromThe Shepherd: Border Patrol]. The problem is, when you don’t have very deep scripts, when you play the very simple characters, you know, the revenge and this and that, it’s very difficult for a guy like me to believe into my role. So I just play the physical guy, with my kicks and my punches, and I follow the story. 

On playing identical twins in the great Double Impact, where he famously doubled the Van Dammage: 

[It] was not too difficult, since I am bipolar in nature…The only thing different between Alex and Chad was the silk underwear. Mr. California, Mr. Silk Underwear. It was kinda funny.

Proppers must go to Joey Jerusalem who sent this in. 

It struck me last night that the Iowa caucus is political world’s equivalent of Memorial Day, the traditional beginning of the summer movie season. 

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the tentpole, big budget releases, John Edwards is the There Will be Blood type of independent film, and the rest of the field make up the film festival circuit. 

That, got me thinking about how about a decade ago,the  marketing departments of the major movie studios began heavily practicing contextomy, where bad or tepid reviews are taken out of context for commercials and newspaper ads. 

As the “opening weekend” has become so important for the success of a movie, it has become a really common PR/martketing tactic.  In fact, it’s gotten so common that whenever I see a blurb for movie that reads “…a miracle…,” I immediately assume that the original line is “It’s a miracle this movie got made,” or a pullquote that reads, “I loved every moment…” my brain fills in the blanks: “…of my life before I saw this movie but now possessed by its horrific badness, I am going to kill myself.”

Contextomy became a scandal on the Great White Way this fall when the NY Drama Critics launched a commission to look into its seemingly pervasive use.  Be on the lookout for “The Magic Blurb Theory” wherein a single, pristine blurb is used multiple times to explain the success of the dreck now on Broadway.  

Anyway, it seems like Barack Obama’s people are getting into it as well.  In his recent commercial about his healthcare plan, he not only uses contextomy to make his plan sound better than it actually is but also a bunch of other PR and spin tactics:

It attributes to The Washington Post a line saying Obama’s plan would save families about $2,500. But the Post was citing the estimate of the Obama campaign and didn’t analyze the purported savings independently.

It claims that “experts” say Obama’s plan is “the best.” “Experts” turn out to be editorial writers at the Iowa City Press-Citizen – who, for all their talents, aren’t actual experts in the field.

It quotes yet another newspaper saying Obama’s plan “guarantees coverage for all Americans,” neglecting to mention that, as the article makes clear, it’s only Clinton’s and Edwards’ plans that would require coverage for everyone, while Obama’s would allow individuals to buy in if they wanted to.

Sure, sure – everybody does it.  I’m just saying – if he stands for change, he shouldn’t stand for spin.

Obama’s campaign is beginning to look like a bad, big budget movie and that because of the artful use of contextomy, Iowa was his big opening weekend. 

Taking the movie analogy another step forward, hopefully the independent movie that is John Edwards is able to harness the momentum from his second place finish to platform release effectively across the nation.

I’m crossing my fingers. 

John Edwards is also “The People’s Candidate” which means – if you can smell what he’s cooking – that he’s always ready to unleash the People’s Elbow on some candy asses. 

In lieu of America’s Most Smartest Model, our normal Sunday night programming, Mary Milan and I took in The Exorcism of Emily Rose last night on TNT.  It’s a weird movie, half courtroom drama, half horror movie.  It plays sort of like the Scopes Monkey Trial for demonic possession; Inherit the Wind meets The Exorcist. 

About three-quarters of the way through the movie, during the failed exorcism, it struck me that whenever the devil possesses a person in these movies that are “based on true events,” all they do is act scary.  They have scars on their face, flail about, and say some crazy ass shit.

Sounds like an epileptic, schizophrenic, meth head if you ask me. 

They never actually do anything evil or demonic, like open the gates to hell or raise demons from the ground or some shit like that.  That would be terrifying.  Fuck, I’d be happy if they did something just midly evil like bring a plague or steal somebody’s cookies. 

Don’t get me wrong, if I woke up and found Mary Milan all dystonic on the floor looking back up at me and speaking in languages she had no way of knowing, I would be scared as hell.

But after a few hours of being scared out of my mind, I’d probably be able to pool the mental resources to throw a blanket over her, call the police and have her hospitalized.  I sure as hell wouldn’t keep her in the house, like all these fools do after their loved ones get possessed. 

Mary Milan said she’d do the same thing to me if I ever just happen to get possessed.  Emergency plans.  They are important to have.

Last night, at the Century City Apple Store testing out Leopard, a gaggle of 13-year olds ran into the store and took over the iMac next to me.  The queen bee got on her cell phone, “I JUST….WE JUST…CHAD MICHAEL MURRAY…GULFSTREAM RESTAURANT…HE’S SOOOOOO FINE!”

*Squeal*Hang up*Repeat*

She must have done it about five times while jockeying for the center position among her friends in the iSight/iChat that they were trying to initiate.

“I JUST….WE JUST…CHAD MICHAEL MURRAY…GULFSTREAM REST — you’re getting in the way! — GULFSTRE — hey, I want to be in the middle — YEAH, HE WAS LOOKING FOR HIS MOM…HE’S SOOOOOO FINE!”

Later, when Mary Milan and I were walking to the concession stand inside the Century City theater, Matthew Perry sidled up next to us on his way to pick up snacks for American Gangster.  We were seeing Martian Child, one of those dreaded dead spouse movies, because American Gangster was sold out; apparently, being a sitcom star makes you prescient enough to buy tickets online, something we failed to do.

Unlike Murray, Perry did not look SO FINE.  In fact, as Mary Milan remarked, he looked terribly depressed as he bought his peanut M&M’s.

Later, in our theater, Mary Milan excitedly called her sister to tell her that we had just seen Chandler from Friends.

With the exception of the squeals of delight, it was pretty much the same conversation as the 13-year olds.

Seriously.

As I wait for my Amazon order of The New World and the Criterion Collection’s Days of Heaven DVDs to arrive in the next few days, there is news of Terrence Malick’s next movie Tree of Life with Heath Ledger and Sean Penn.

Depending on which incarnation of the script he is working from, it could be:

• A multi-character drama about the Middle East during World War I, sort of like Magnolia meets Lawrence of Arabia.
• AÂ movie about prehistoric times featuring a minotaur.
• Both – as the script was originally intended as Q back in the 70′s before Malick bounced.
• Or none because as we know, a script in Malick’s case usually has little to nothing to do with the finished project.

Since PT Anderson seems to be doing his best impression of Malick with There Will be Blood, I’m hoping that Malick returns the favor and weaves a complex tapestry of life in the Mid-East circa 1915.

I was recently asked to write a little ditty about all the films that prominently feature Los Angeles as a character in this year’s AFI Los Angeles Film Festival (11/1-11/11). One of the films I covered was Lynch, a documentary about – you guessed it – David Lynch.

It begins and ends with references to Bastille Day. In the beginning, Lynch tells the readers of his website that Bastille Day is still months away and at the end of the film, he proudly announces that it is, in fact Bastille Day. The last images of the film are of Lynch building a shrine to the French with pastries, a bottle of wine and a French flag.

When I submitted my interview questions to the filmmakers, even though it had nothing to do with my article, I couldn’t help not asking about the significance of Bastille Day for David Lynch. And since I couldn’t use the quote in my article, here it is:

…Bastille Day is a day for David in which he gets to eat croissants with chocolate and jam in a very special way. David loves the French people and their country.

It’s like a birthday for him where “he gets to eat croissants with chocolate and jam in a very special way.”

It just melts my heart.