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Even our mass entertainment can be politicized nowadays as this review alludes to.  One wonders how E.T would be received these days: leftist propaganda showing an innocent boy harboring an illegal alien!!  Curse you lefty (a.k.a Jewish) Hollywood!  Of course maybe because the bad guys are scientists instead of Marines they may not mind, but who knows, it's really hard to understand patriotism in the anti-government crowd. 

Anyhow, when a movie about basic goodness, reverence, and decency is declared Marxist propaganda you know that someone has lost touch with their inner child.   Because really, that's all that is being expressed.  I once saw a bumper sticker that declares, 'the earth is not my mother.'  I thought of that bumper sticker during the movie when Netyri tells Jake Sully, the young marine, that he is 'like a child.'  Indeed, it takes a real childish personality type to declare oneself separate from the earth.  But she eventually schools him.

As far as the other criticism that this is anti-soldier, that is preposterous.  The director has given us some of the best action sequences of all time, and has used marines as heroes.  That he comes around to identifying the destructive nature of war is a reality no director could dismiss while making a film that resembles reality and not glorified war propaganda.  Furthermore, if you pay attention to the plot, you know that the marines that come in at the end are mercenaries hired by a corporation, not government soldiers.  This is anti-Merc, anti-Blackwater (Xe)  anti-privatization of our armed forces.

On the left, the criticism is more valid, but with equal tunnel vision.  The notion that this is like the old colonial tales, masquerading as an anti-colonial tale is interesting, and the most valid notion in the article when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar.  However the emphasis on race and white-guilt blocks the writer from taking in any other themes.  Yes, this sci-fi fantasy is allegory, what sci-fi fantasy isn't?  In this allegory we deal with actual issues, and yes, race is one of those, but it is not the ONLY issue.  The exploitation of resources, our connection to nature, and the possibilities of technology are summarily dismissed in the writers obsession with all things racial. 

All this aside, I really enjoyed this film.  It is  the best event movie since the Lord of the Rings.  It has been criticized for being overly simple, but these are archetypes, mythos, not complex characters.  Being overly complex would confuse the point.  Also some say a lot of the dialogue is dumb.  Why?  I sense a certain ethnic condescension in this point.  Certainly the new-age mythology can seem hokey, but no more so than it did in the Lord of the Rings.  Is it somehow less hokey when inspired by Anglo-Celtic mythology rather than Afro-Indigenous mythology?  No, they are equally hokey, and interesting, and a lot of fun.  This was a very fun film, a beautiful world to get lost in, and the most life-affirming blockbuster since E.T.

Iron Man II

I rarely get super excited about movies. Don't get me wrong I get excited and I can't wait to see movies. However most of the time I am dissappointed as they usually don't live up to the hype.

I put off Iron Man and didn't see it on the big screen. After a few months of release on DVD/Blu Ray. I broke down and rented it.

Now I am a huge closet comic book guy. Done laughing? Okay, I usually see every comic book themed movie. I am a nerd like that. In sixth grade I spent most of my free time creating super heroes for a role playing game spawned by Marvel. Lets just say I believe Stan Lee to be a genious!

Recently, with the exception of Batman, and Iron Man comic movies have been ho-hum if not down right terrible. Of course X-Men brought the genre back from laughable. Then we had Fantastic Four, and well, suffice to say it's an up and down thing.

Back to my renting and later viewing of Iron man: I loved it! I loved it in the way a little boy opens a gift at Christmas and inside is what he had been dreaming about for 11 months since the last Christmas. Maybe it's Downy Jr. or maybe it's a well crafted yarn of suspense, action, and humor.

Bottom line, dissappointment or not, my arse will be in line to get a seat at Carmike to see Iron Man II. Two words.... Mickey Rourke!

Roger's little rule book

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/10/eberts_little_rule_book.html

The Gimmicks That Changed Cinema

...we delve into the stranger side of movie innovation by Michael Adams

Part 1

Part 2

Black Dynamite

I caught this film at the Clinton Street Theater in Portland last night, it will remain their until tomorrow, but is certainly worth seeing on the small screen when released.  It was everything I thought it would be, and less, or more or less.

This is the movie that the remake of Shaft should have been.  It wisely doesn't try to update anything, it stays rooted in the seventies, a decade which, like blaxploitation flicks, is more about style than substance.  It doesn't matter what the plot is, what matters is how it's told. The film, while a loving homage to Blaxploitation flicks like Dolemite, and Black Gunn, it's actually more of a spoof than I thought it would be.  It opens with a bunch of kung fu.  Why Kung Fu?  Well the blaxploitation pride website states, "you will notice Kung Fu movies on this site as well. What does this have to do with Blaxploitation? Well, the more action packed Blaxploitation films did not just street fight. Oh no.....they thought they were Kung Fu Masters. Chinese martial art movies gave a sense of invincibility to these actors."  So there you go.  The fight is called for a close when Dynamite is called by his Auntie who gives him the standard plot of the dead brother on drugs, her best line 'If your momma was alive she'd role over in her grave.'   Cue the soul music.  You see, the protagonist must have a brother (or sister for Coffy) dead or dying from drugs. 

This is extremely funny.  The movie wisely plays up it's humor and doesn't take itself at all seriously, or purposefully takes itself too seriously, I'm not sure which.  It does an amazing job, my date was convinced it must have been made in the seventies.  It does such a good job spoofing cheaply made, and occasionally bad films it comes of as a cheaply made and occasionally bad film.  But that's part of its charm.  It actually reminded me of Pootie Tang, a little bit.  Though rooted in it's era it makes more sense to have ladies man that gives Bond a run for his money, and big Dirty Harry style guns.  Also Dynamite is a Vietnam vet, where he saw horrible things fighting the Chinamen (you read that right.) 

This simply wouldn't work in this era.  I'll glaze through the 'plot' here because I don't want to give away any more jokes, but I will return to this theme.  Umm, he vows to help this socially conscious lady clean up the streets and get the orphans of the smack, and eventually unites a posse to stop shipments of a malt liquor that contains an ingredient that's secretly a white conspiracy to...oh never mind, I tried.  I'll just say that if you've seen some of the flicks it's spoofing, it's really funny, and the film had me grinning ear to ear.  They are great films, especially Coffy, and Foxy Brown.  But, when his friend Cream Corn drops him off at the White House and calls it the 'Honky House' we know we're lovingly looking back on the past.

And that's great.  As I was laughing though, my mind began to wander to two things.  One:  Black Dynamite is really hot.  Two:   The film was missing a vital ingredient to the original genre.  The films were cool, but we must remember that the original films of this genre were extremely angry.  To view them is not just to be blown away by how cool they are, but to be exhilarated by the primal anger exhibited in these stories.  There's nothing in this film to rival the moment in Brotherhood of Death where the racist sheriff kills the non-racist sheriff, or Black Caesar where he forces the racist bad guy into blackface to sing Al Jolson while beating him to death, or the unsettling finale of Watermelon Man.  The rage just isn't there.  Maybe it's a sign of an era passed, maybe it can't capture the same feeling of that era.  And perhaps this is a sign of progress.

Still, I'd love a sequel with a Pam Grier type.  Hell, they could use Pam Grier.