Change Your Image
OzSekhmet
Reviews
300 (2006)
Utter Rubbish!!!!!
I know that my comments on this movie will be about as welcome as the presence of a French atheist at a White House prayer breakfast, but I cannot let this one pass easily.
This has to be one of the worst movies of the 21st Century, and that's saying something when one compares it to trash like "Apocalypto" and "The Passion of the Christ." Don't try to analyse it as either documentary history or as a piece of drama. "300" is a self-propelling video game for insecure peri-teen males in the First World, racist and homophobic, heavy on the gore and with a simplistic morality of "Good" versus "Evil" that would gladden the heart of both Neo-cons and red-state pulpit-pounding preachers alike.
Not only will testosterone flushed youths enjoy this movie; there will be adults who will applaud it too, on the grounds that "if it gets that nut job in Iran all bent out of shape more power to it."
The trouble is that "300" is not merely getting up the nose of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but insulting the history and quite impressive culture of nearly seventy million people, a fair percentage of whom doubtless share the aforementioned opinion of their president mind you, their antipathy to the "nut job" will not save them from being bombed back into the stone age as punishment for their devious "crime" of secreting our oil under their sand.
Some will try to alleviate the "guilty pleasure" of enjoying this movie with the platitude that it might encourage people to look into the real history of the time period. Fat chance!!! The infinitesimal number of people whose viewing of a "historical" movie actually inspires them to study history are soon marginalized and eased out of the cultural discourse of their community unless, of course, their study confirms existing prejudices. In my country, those whose reading of history leads them to question the official narrative are characterized as "latte drinking/chardonnay sipping, Volvo driving elites, out of touch with the ordinary person." I imagine that the situation elsewhere in the "Anglosphere" is little different.
"Hollywood" is not about truth (otherwise Leonidas would be killing a slave, not a wolf, as a rite of passage). Hollywood exists to wrap the ideology of the US ruling classes in a glitzy package called "Entertainment" and present the status quo as the best of all possible worlds. When it comes to History, Hollywood depicts reality not as it was, nor even as we remember it, but as we would like to remember it.
Given that the Spiderman movie, to name just one, was held back because it showed the World Trade Centre, the really interesting question is why "300" was released precisely at this point in time, given the likelihood of another "Coalition of the Willing" smashing its way into Iran.
NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service (2003)
A Magnificent Series, but... *WARNING ... SPOILERS*
I normally watch the US series NCIS to drool over the delectable Pauley Perrette, who plays Abby Sciuto, the show's Goth Forensic Medical Officer I keep waiting for Abby to "come out" and start a steamy on-screen affair with Caitlin Todd, the other female character, played by Sasha Alexander, or with Ziva David in the latest series (who is a self-confessed bi-girl).
However I guess my dream will never be realized. I was saddened by the most recent episode which involved the murder of a young female naval officer in a copycat of a "cold case," in which the victim had been raped and had a trident symbol carved into her neck. The contemporary murder was committed by the victim's lesbian lover she had stolen a sample of the original perpetrator's semen and inserted it into her dead lover to make it APPEAR that the perpetrator of the first murder had returned. However she tripped herself up what she didn't know was that the original "perp" was dead. Hmmmmm, rather artificial it seemed to me!
What upsets me as a lesbian is how we are always portrayed on the screen as crazy, with our life-options limited to suicide or homicide, but never happiness. The idea is to make us "repent" of our "sins," either through religious conversion or psychiatric treatment before some disaster overtakes us and all around us. It is interesting to speculate why this cliché of the Dead/Evil lesbian is so urgently impressed into our psyche.
Lesbianism is treated differently from male homosexuality. Gays are now 'acceptable' to many people, especially to straight women, for whom they have long been conscious or unconscious allies in the 'battle' against the grossness of the average straight male. Gay men raise few eyebrows as sympathetic protagonists, or even as the "heroes" of movies and TV series.
Yet, lesbians are still personae non gratae. Why is this so? It seems to me that lesbianism actually strikes a DEEPER fear in our society than male homosexuality. After all, we know that men are disgusting creatures who will stick their members into any and every available hole. Therefore, male homosexuality has become a somewhat harmless peccadillo, a case of 'boys will be boys.' Women, however, are the 'seed-bearers,' both physical and cultural ... for a woman NOT to want to be a straight wife and mother seems to be quite frightening to mainstream society indeed it is felt to challenge the very nature of the Universe. Any inclination toward such a choice, therefore, has to be suppressed at all costs.
To this I might add that we lesbians have few allies straight women fear us, and straight men either regard us as rivals, or as "lost souls" in need of "conversion," especially by them. EWWWWWWWWWW!
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999)
Disappointing (WARNING: SPOILER)
Law and Order: SVU was once a superb programme, but the latest episode shown here in Australia proves what willing pawns TV studios will be in the moral Crusade of the Ratbag Religious Right in the USA and its clones. It comprised an hour of the most vicious anti-lesbian propaganda I have seen in quite a while, all contained within an ostensibly "even-handed" story about a girl with two mothers, who was so relentlessly bullied that she finally hit back and attacked her tormentor.
Let's see what came up:
A young girl lives with her biological mother and her mother's lesbian lover. This fact per se puts her in "moral danger" as far as the mother's parents and the child's school is concerned the mother's lover is the cliché Evil Lesbian who is responsible for "perverting" the mother;
The girl is constantly tormented by a boy of her own age who tells her that her mother's lifestyle is "against the law of god" and that her mother and mother's lover will "burn in hell." He even physically assaults the girl to the extent of cutting her hair a punishment that US religious loonies would feel appropriate for "perverts" and which Europeans felt appropriate for those who collaborated with the Nazis;
The boy is supported in his cruelty by his parents, a sanctimonious mother who "prays for" the girl, and a vicious animal of a father who refers to mother & lover as "bitches" & "whores" (If he came into MY court, I'd send him to a max security prison where he'd find out from one of the "bruthaz" what it was like to be a bitch and a whore);
The girl's mother is in psychiatric care no doubt the constant harassment did a lot to put her there so she is obviously the cliché Crazy Lesbian;
The mother's lover is legally unable to be the girl's guardian. Yet this is presented as "cowardice" when the CEO of a construction or drug manufacturing company refuses to take responsibility for the misery they cause, this is totally understandable to the Americanized mind, but a lesbian
? COWARD!!!!
The lover is not only a "coward" but also a "paedophile" she is taking naked photos of the girl! And I thought we'd got over the "baby-on-a-bearskin-rug" scandal of the 80s and 90s! Her contention that she is trying to give the girl a sense of her own beauty does not hold water with the sleazy male detective after all, a girl with a positive self image would not be susceptible to the blandishments of such as him, whose primary images of women are probably Mother, Wife & Whore;
When the girl has finally been pushed beyond the limits of endurance and retaliates by attacking her tormentor, HE and his holier-than-thou Christian family become the victims, and the entire coercive apparatus of the State swings into action to avenge the crime against them.
So there you have it lesbians are bad parents and Crazy or Evil (or both) to boot. Shame, Law & Order, shame! Yet I suppose I'm being too harsh until US society digs itself out of the miasmatic sewer called Judaeo-Christian (and Islamic) morality, homophobia will be rampant in our media.
Tipping the Velvet (2002)
A True "Pearl" of a Series
As a lesbian, I am sick and tired of being portrayed in movies and on TV as a sad person, forever vacillating between suicide and homicide, but never destined to find happiness?
If, like me, you are fed up with Hollywood's anti-lesbian propaganda, you'll breathe a sigh of relief at this delightful offering from the BBC. Nan Astley is the daughter of an Oyster-house restaurateur who "wonders why she can't feel the way she should about Freddy" (one of the local lads who has his eye set on her). She falls and falls hard for Kitty Butler, a male impersonator with a visiting theatre troupe. Nan accompanies Kitty to London as her dresser
Not everything that happens to Nan is pleasant in this story, and some of the things she does are not squeaky-clean either - but she will win your heart, and her story of love triumphant will leave you with a beautiful lump in your throat at the end.
If you are a lesbo-hating macho man or a homophobic housewife, or some brand of religious fundamentalist who believes that homosexuals should die and go to hell, this series is not for you. But if you have a heart, and you believe in love, you will cry at the end as much as I did!
The Ten Commandments (2005)
A True Flop!
True Religion hits the spot, hey? Poor ole Moses never has a clue in this clunker, even when he's chucking rocks at his best mate and best mate's "friend" who have committed adultery and murder. And then after he orders the faithful to massacre those who worshipped the Golden Calf, he potters off like a constipated monkey, muttering, "But I was only taking orders..." A mass-murderer is a mass murderer, whether he kills in the name of Hitler, Stalin or I AM WHO I AM!!! And before you accuse me of anti-semitism, think again. I rate Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" (shown here on "Good" Friday as "The Ten Commandments" was shown on Sunday/Monday) as one of the most vilely anti-semitic crap-fests I've ever seen!
Wolf Creek (2005)
Not the BEST Horror Movie in the Video shop!
In my grandparents' day Horror Movies were different. Tougher censorship laws, and finer sensibilities at least one hoped that sensibilities were finer, but it may simply have been greater hypocrisy meant that whatever gory things may actually have happened were never shown on the screen, and the movie had to rely on the building up of suspense for its effect.
In the 1960s and 70s, the horrors of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights struggles made Americans realize that they too could be ghouls, mass-murderers and war criminals. What began as an attempt to atone for past acts of violence by depicting it in its full horror in films like "Soldier Blue" soon backfired. "Blood 'n' guts" became an end in itself, as attractive in its own right as the spectacles of the Colosseum, and movies began to wallow in the gore that had been released into the mainstream of life. The FX guys were there at the right time, and so we got blood spattering everywhere, disembowellings, slit throats and messy exit wounds in any number of historical epics and cop shows, and the stream has not abated yet. Gritty and realistic, yes, but definitely emetic too!
The "Horror Movie" genre was ideal for this sort of graphic illustration, and these days we are offered vivid portrayals which rarely have us leaping up out of our seats, but more often throwing up out of our seats, as eyes are plucked out, innards removed and heads roll across the stage. These modern day gore fests particularly enjoy and draw their greatest audiences from the explicit depiction of rapes, mutilations and murders of attractive young women (To paraphrase Warren Farrell, in 'The Myth of Male Power,' "the murder of a man is not 'horrible' enough to make a movie into a "Horror Movie"). And all this in a country where the cinematic display of a female nipple causes a major scandal!
There is a scene in a John Wayne movie I think it is "The Searchers" where Wayne describes his discovery of the mutilated body of a young woman simply by saying, "Do you want me to draw you a picture?" I guess the modern gore-gogglers would want it shown in living colour, with a flashback of the events beforehand!
We in Oz (Australia) have by and large absorbed US cultural norms from our days in the cradle, and so we can get "Wolf Creek" being billed as a "triumph" of the Horror Movie Genre. Only partly true, I'm afraid there is very little tension in the movie, very little to make you jump. What there is, however, is the story of an extremely sick and sociopathic individual who enjoys torturing and murdering entire families and the ghoulish depiction of how he goes about disposing of two out of three hapless backpackers. The fact that the character is a pastiche of several real persons who have committed similar crimes in Australia in recent years yes, there are psychos here too hardly makes his story worth telling, especially since it is done in the pseudo-amateurish style of "Blair Witch." There are two factors which raise the Australian product over its US counterparts, however. Firstly, the backpackers are victimized and the females killed even though none of them has actually had sex it is a cliché of US "Horror Movies" that those who die are those who "do the naughty." Secondly, the killer does not meet any "just desserts" and the implication is that he will repeat his crimes.
OK, so I'm a snob I just think "Wolf Creek" eschews suspense in favour of cheap thrills. The fact that it has made a lot of money is a sad commentary on a society which prefers to watch "Big Brother" rather than well-plotted and well-acted drama.
Helen of Troy (2003)
Better than "Troy" (MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS)
Having seen both this movie and "Troy," I much preferred this one. It is closer to the Iliad and more probable historically. I know that "Byzantium" is anachronistic, but I imagine it was easier than trying to explain to the punters who the Hittites were.
There were a few creaky plot devices (the churlish way in which Achilles kills Hector, for example), but at least it accords with the Greek legends better than "Troy" - the sacrifice of Iphigeneia isn't sidestepped; Agamemon is murdered in revenge for this, rather than for any thing else the swine does; Menelaus and Helen actually survive, as we learn from the Odyssey.
On the other hand, "Troy" makes a better fist of the Battle for the Ships, and Achilles' boiling anger over the death of Patroclus. Both film treat this with kid gloves, because of the homosexual element (If I remember, Patroclus doesn't even appear in "Helen"), but the Iliad's first word is "wrath," making it clear that this is an essential element of the story.
Finally, even though both movies tend to be anachronistic on armour, that in "Troy" was, if I remember, a bit more accurate, at least for everyone else but Achilles. Oh, and why do the producers assume that the Minoan style of column (supporting the roof) was general everywhere?
Supernova (2005)
A Truly Disgusting Movie
Not only was the astrophysics absolute crap, but the film was utterly offensive to Australians. A quick summary of errors - the accents, of course (Yanks never get them right - though the producers get half a point each for one New Zealand accent and one semi-Afrikaaner); Sydney populated by Yanks and Brits, and the odd black West Indian; Aussie vegetation the same as that in Colorado; what looks suspiciously like Table Mountain - which overlooks Capetown in South Africa - "to the west of Sydney"; a serial rapist and murderer, imprisoned in a US-style prison in Pretoria (that's actually in South Africa, guys!), condemned to death by lethal injection - we don't have the death penalty here in Oz - escaping overland to Sydney for revenge; Sydney cops driving 1.5 litre toy cars... Need I go on?
When the outside world is actually the empty lot of a studio in Hollywood or LA, with a few home movies cut in for "authenticity," it's no wonder that most Americans know nothing about the rest of the planet, care less, and regard other countries as their private playground. Now THAT'S spiteful!