Jesus Camp

I know it's been forever since I last updated this blog, but this is something I needed to rant about.

Jesus Camp (2006), a documentary following the lives of some fundamentalist families and their children while attending an evangelical camp, caused a something of a stir when it came out, and I wanted to see it then - but being that it wasn’t a movie theater release and wasn’t available in rental stores in the area I lived in then, I didn’t get the chance. Having finally gotten a hold of it recently, I had to wait until after the hustle of the Holiday and settling in back at home to watch it, and I have to admit, I felt weird watching it.

 During the opening, following footage of a Christian political radio show, children in darkly colored face paint dance to thumping music, waving rods during a choreographed number. I could see how some might see the scene as a bit ominous - but having grown up attending musical events at my own church, I could see the other side of the situation as well. I was fine up until the point they showed a couple hundred kids, hands in the air as they reached for God, being cried to to open their mouths and start speaking in tongues. It was creepy to say the least.

    Now, I don’t have an issue with people who speak in tongues - a Christian who speaks in tongues is told in the scriptures that the gift of tongues is a blessing and a sign of true faith. Tongues and convulsions as a result of spiritual ’God’ possession are phenomena that appear across cultural borders, both in some forms of Christianity and many instances of Voodoo or tribal witchcraft. What I have a problem with is Children - kids, immature human beings who have no perspective regarding spirituality - being pressured to accept radical ideologies without being given a choice or perspective.

Ink

Thank Frith for Hulu.

Between school, work, personal projects and trying to keep track of friends and family I rarely have the time to really enjoy TV, much less keep up with series shows. However, having recently started browsing the movies section as well, I came across this peculiar gem.

Note these two posters for the same movie - in one the image overlaying the focal point (The character Ink holding the hand of the girl child Emma) is of a man and woman, apparently in bed, happy. In the other, ominous figures with glowing eyes stare down as though threatening attack.

In many ways these two posters, and the feelings they arouse, sum up the movie very well.

Ink (2009) is, to be completely blunt is just fantastic. According to imbd,

"No big studio picked up the film for theatrical and home distribution. Double Edge Films pitched the movie directly to independent cinemas and to the DVD, Blu-ray and online distribution by themselves. After the release it became the most downloaded movies in file sharing torrent sites more accurately 400,000 times in a single week and exposed the film to a large audience, leading to higher DVD and Blu-ray sales in return. The independent filmmakers wrote in their newsletter that they had "embraced the piracy" and are "happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure." imbd page on the movie

This relatively low budget movie (as compared to James Cameron's Avatar at $237 million) with funding in the low/mid thousands gets every bang for its buck utilizing a talented cast, excellent writing and a sweet, often sad and yet energetic soundtrack which subtly steers the overall mood with effective strains and pacing. Attention to detail in both minor and major moments give an otherworldly sense to a familiar setting (work, home) in a very Neil Gaiman fashion.

The visual effects budget clearly went for the most part into the handful of delightfully choreographed fight scenes but despite leaving less for effects in other places (the latex application for Ink's face in particular is glaringly unrealistic) the overall combination lends itself beautifully to the world that the creators of this movie tried to spin into new life.

That is, our world - at least that of our dreams.

(The storytellers and Pathfinder (in the hoodie) searching for Emma)

The movie Ink centers on a small group of beings connected in strange, deep ways, all centering on the child Emma. Fighting for her soul are the Storytellers - beings that cannot be seen by those awake, and give us good dreams - as well as Incubi, disturbing creatures that plunge our sleeping minds into nightmares.

Ink, the title character, has taken Emma's soul from her body, and is attempting to bring it to the Incubi in order to gain entrance into their assembly and become an Incubus himself. In the process, however, Lieve (Jessica Duffy) - one of the more warrior-like and respected of the Storytellers - becomes involved, and while following to assure Emma's safety, continues to remind Ink he still has a choice. In the meanwhile, another group of Storytellers and a pathfinder (beings who sense the flow of cause and effect as song) try to locate them, while in the waking world Emma's distant father copes with his daughter falling into coma as well as major business decisions that may give him everything he's ever wanted in a career, unaware that he too is of key interest to the Incubi.

Full of action, whimsy, good acting and a wonderful plot twist, this is 102 minutes of quality fantasy you won't want to miss. A movie with a hear felt moral and a skillful execution, Ink is easily one of the best, most underrated and unheralded movies of 2009.

Official Trailer

Meme mi mi...

The meme.

I enjoy these a lot. I really do. I'm part of a group on facebook that basically does nothing but compile these things (in the form of de-motivational posters), the majority of them being original creations by members of the group - and the number of images grows exponentially. What is a meme?

Well, according to the Urban Dictionary, the meme is:

"1. meme
(noun)

1 : an idea, belief or belief system, or pattern of behavior that spreads throughout a culture either vertically by cultural inheritance (as by parents to children) or horizontally by cultural acquisition (as by peers, information media, and entertainment media)

2 : a pervasive thought or thought pattern that replicates itself via cultural means; a parasitic code, a virus of the mind especially contagious to children and the impressionable"

Well that's all well and good, but what does that mean to the average person? You've seen tons of memes. In fact, my posting of a definition was probably totally unnecessary. The internet meme is basically any image, sound, phrase - anything - that gets passed around, via emails, links posted in forums, blogs, etc.

Anyone with access to the internet since 2000 or earlier has seen their share of memes - here are some of my favorites over the years.

A Salute to Sesame Street

(This post is nearly two years old now if not older, but I just found it in my drafts so I'm posting it. Enjoy.)

Munching instant noodles, gulping Aloe Drink and watching basic cable this morning, I had an extremely morbid thought concerning the residents of Sesame St. (And by the way, when did Conan O'brian start doing bits on Sesame St. ...? Truly frightening.).

Even as a kid, I only watched the show sparingly. Something about a vampire that counted things freaked me right-the-hell-out - by the time I was 4 I'd already seen enough horror flicks (yes I was watching scary movies at 4 years of age) to know what vampires did. I didn't want one counting at me and then laughing.

However much certain characters have evolved - Elmo has his own segment sort of like when Joey from Friends moved on, Cookie Monster kicked the habit of his "sometimes foods" (cookies gave him type 2 diabetes - I'm not joking, look it up.) and has picked up the healthier "anytime foods" (veggies and fruits), Bert and Ernie are nearly out of the closet about their relationship - they've all remained more or less the same.

I watched with mixed feelings as two characters I'd been familiar with since childhood – baby bear and telly monster - took nearly a full minute to read a 6-word book title - "The wild adventures of Action Dog."

Let's take a moment for that completely harmless scene to sink in.

Now, I know, I know - this is a children's show. There are pop culture references and spoofs of adult programs in order to encourage older family members to watch the show with children instead of turning Sesame Street into a "TV babysitter," and I know that doesn't neccissarily mean that the show has to make sense or be realistic in any way.

But while characters seems to come and go - the episode I sat through this morning, Big Bird was no where to be seen, but there was a new "child" fairy character, and "Baby Bear" (around for at least a decade, what's going on there) both made major appearances. The point of all this rambling: Live action characters on the show grow old, move on, and leave the show. The puppets, being puppets, don't. But if they are presented as real, living characters to the children watching the show, why is it that they never get older (though they can have children) and evolve like the human characters do? God forbid a puppet die (though maybe one did and I've missed this, I'd appreciate any messages on the subject) and teach children about that life event (though there's an HIV/AIDs character in Africa!).

The simple act of reading that title - done by a supposedly 'adult' monster, depicted as an adult since I was a kid - frightened me. They never change! They never develope! What the hell happened to the citizens of Sesame Street?! Were they labotomized?! Or is it that they are part of some horrible government expiriment and the "live" people are there to monitor them...? Maybe it's all part of some psych ward inhabitant’s hallucination! You never know! With the bright colors, music and sometimes nonsense logic followed by a volley of spelling and numbers, the show is sort of reminiscent of a bad trip - think about it. It's a lot more entertaining when you view it that way.

In any case, my salute to Sesame Street - here for your viewing pleasure, other people's parodies of Sesame Street. Yes, I am that lazy.

In order of how funny I think they are.

Dave Chappelle's take on Sesame Street.

A surprisingly funny "unnecessary censorship" video of Sesame Street clips.

Mad Tv's "Tickle me Emo" (0.o)

Mad TV's depiction of Bert as an Online Predator

Well, I warned you. I think.

Being too lazy to check, I'm just going to assume that one of my first posts contained a warning that at some point I might use this blog to record any dreams I found particularly interesting.

Last night's was one of these. So, unless you like reading the strange dreams of others, feel free to disregard this post.

The dream started more or less with a man (who looked strangely like a real life version of "Quagmire" from Family Guy) wearing construction worker's clothing, in the middle of some sort of massive attack on the planet earth - the sky was red, flaming rocks were falling from the sky, people were screaming, etc. etc.

His wife - a teacher - was trapped down at the school and was trying to call his cell phone, so he could find and save her. He was panicking, but a friend ran up to him and told him, "Vince! Calm down! You're not helping her by freaking out! Now go!"
Vince, typically "Vinny," suddenly understood what his role was - and took off towards the school. While visually stunning, the sequence of him running half-way across a quaint southern town really didn't interest me that much so I won't describe it.

When he arrived at the school, it was half crushed by falling debris and damaged by missile fire. He forced his way inside, and found his wife trapped in the auto-shop. He rescues her, and suddenly the dream shifted direction.

I was watching from my own body now, rather than the movie-goer's omniscient third-party point of view, and hiding behind a piece of machinery, because while it was still the same room, it wasn't the auto-shop in a school under attack - no, it was the auto-shop in an abandoned high school, the building was in ruins, and the couple embracing so tenderly across the room from me was no longer Vince and his wife (though they looked the same) but a couple involved in some sort of sordid affair. I was hiding not because I didn't want them to see me, but because I didn't want the axe murderer sneaking up on them to notice me and possibly shift his attack. When I was sure he wouldn't hear me, I ran -
-straight down a hall that hadn't been there before, to a door outside. I wasn't being chased, I was trying to catch up to a group of friend who were going to a local anime-convention that I didn't think I'd be able to attend. There was a long line to get tickets, and the costumes looked great this year. I looked around trying to find my friends, and spotted some of the guys I've met playing Dagorhir, dressed in their gear. They took off, Jared - the leader of a guild - calling me to chase after.

I followed them at a run down halls and up and down stairs, having to stop and look around every time I turned a corner because they'd disappear into the crowd. I figured out that if I shouted "hail," he'd respond with "here" before taking off again, and so I eventually caught up, but only once they'd stopped to get lunch at an indoor food court where the convention was being held.

...And suddenly the axe murderer came charging out of the crowd after me, so I turned and ran again, this time as a young farm-boy named Tom, and I dashed through a door into some sort of under-ground home, like that in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 movie. Dusty, dirty, and full of unpleasant things. I continued running until I hit some sort of parlor, which was actually pretty nice and had a large-screen television. There was a decorative iron stove, a huge one, and hearing someone coming, I climbed inside and closed the door.

The door opened and - this is the funny part - EVIL Ben Franklin walked into the room. He looked around (I was watching through a crack in the door of the stove) and he spotted something wrong about the stove. I held still as I could, but he started towards me, picking up a poker, and as he was about to open the door, I kicked it open myself and jumped out and ran to the other side of a large table nearby, clutching a length of wood from by the stove.
He laughed, dropped his poker, and picked up a length of wood as well, saying something about playing fair. There was some short verbal exchange, and we circled the table - and suddenly a rattle-snake that had found its way into the parlor bit his leg, and he started screaming and jumping around. I thought about attacking him while he was distracted, but realizing that evil Ben Franklin was too big and strong for a small 9 year old farm boy to fight, I, as Tom, ran again - the door opened back into another part of the nasty areas of the under ground home, and seeing a drainage hole, I jumped in. It was a bit of a tight fit, but I managed to shove myself through just as I heard him coming after me. I came out the other side in dim sun light, and heard him trying to come after me - and realized that due to his size, he'd get stuck. So I ran back inside with the length of wood, thinking I could beat him up while he was still stuck, but as soon as I got back inside, he was coming back into the parlor, and I hid again by standing as still as I could on the other side of a very large cabinet, hoping he wouldn't see me again. He was swearing about the bite on his leg and approaching my location when, with my eyes shut so tightly, trying to control my breathing,

I shifted into consciousness.


Odd dream.

Silk

...

...get your mind out of the gutter.

(The front of the DVD case on the right here claims that "The realism of WHITE NOISE with the sheer terror of THE EYE" is what you'll find in this movie. Realism being quack -scientific terms being thrown around in the hopes that no one knows what they're talking about, and sheer terror being a bizarre story line that leaves you wondering what the heck is going on between the living and the dead, with one creepy-ass little boy wandering around reenacting his death)

I just had the time and interest to view "Silk" otherwise known as "gui si," a 2006 Taiwanese horror about a team of scientists and a sniper ("Tung," pictured on the left in the poster below) hired by the government to work with them in studying a ghostly boy using a new protein in the form of the "Menger sponge," a structure that acts like a black hole sucking all manner of energy into it at a microscopic level, somehow allowing you to see ghosts when it is put into a liquid then sprayed into your eyes (apparently embedding itself permanently in there - can you say cataracts?)

(Chang Chen as Tung, Yosuke Eguchi as the bitter scientist Hashimoto)

The movie is well reviewed and summarized here - with more skill and effort than I could possibly muster in regards to this flick - but long story short, "Silk is one overstuffed film. It tries to be a ghost film, a supernatural thriller, a character drama, and even a pulse-pounding action flick, complete with a familar-sounding score from Peter Kam (Purple Storm, Tokyo Raiders). There's also some unexpected humor, and even some effective heartbreak involving Tung's relationship with his comatose mother. It's all a bit much, but Silk manages to string things together thanks to an involving storyline, well-developed tension, ace production values, and Chang Chen's charismatic central performance. Chang has always been an actor to watch, and Silk is worth seeing if only see this veteran of Wong Kar-Wai and Hou Hsiao-Hsien films stalk all over Taiwan shooting ghosts with Menger Sponge-enhanced bullets. Yeah, it all sounds a bit silly, but this is clearly a commercial film intended for international appeal, and it achieves its aims in an efficient and entertaining manner. It's not scary, nor is it really that conclusive, but hey, it's also not bad. (Kozo 2006)"

It's stuffed to the gills with completely bogus sounding pseudo-science and strange lighting, freaky-looking ghosts in the tradition of the Ring, Grudge and Eye, but if you're looking for a good time with a scary movie that's more thought than jump-tactics horror, have 108 minutes of spare time, and if you don't mind sub-titles, I think you'd enjoy seeing "Silk."

Here's a taste in the form of a partial English, partial sub-titled preview. (I apologize for the horrible sound quality, but this isn't my video)

Warning: Reading this may cause harm to innocents.

...So why the heck are you reading it?

(warning, the following post contains spoilers of the movie "Untraceable")
I'm assuming it was because you were curious, or just blew it off as a creative title (which it really isn't, but the intention was to get your attention.) However, the idea is, people really don't seem to get it. "It" being the internet, and the profound effect it has on how we - we as people, we as a nation, we as a race of sentient beings - behave.

Yes, I'm a little behind on the curve to be writing about this movie now, but just today, I finally saw "Untraceable" with Diane Lane. (If you're wondering why I waited so long, it's because there's a theater in my area that charges any where from $0.50 to $1.00 to watch a movie, when they show it long after it's been released.) In case you didn't see it, the movie follows the efforts of Agent Marsh of the Cyber Crimes division of the FBI, and her partners as they work to stop the actions of the mastermind/killer behind the website "www.killwithme.com," a site that streams live the videos of his victims deaths. Snuff? Yes. Typical? Not quite - the murders are all set up in such a way that if no one watched, nothing would happen. However, the more people who visit the site - thus boosting the numbers on the hit counter - the quicker the death mechanism goes off. The people of the internet - as revealed in the movie, actually just the people of the US - literally become the killers themselves as every hit to the site causes the deaths of the victims.

The theme of the internet being a method of death has been explored in past movies already, either as having no way out without solving some sort of puzzle under a time limit (fear.com, pulse) or being a method of meeting the killer through a chat room or luring them in some other way, like a predator meeting a victim (the movie Hard Candy), but it continues to find new ways to scare us. The internet, with its easy anonymity and utter vastness, can easily evoke fear: especially in those who have little to no idea of how it actually works, making it seem literally like magic with information and resources pop up on your screen.

But I digress.

The point I was trying to make was that people of all ages, from the very young to the very old, tend to abuse the ability to access the internet because of how easy it is to interact and effect others without ever having to show your face or say what your real name is. During this day and age, it functions under a very "wild west" sort of law system. "Inappropriate" or malicious posts - viruses, malware, etc - are held loosely in check by a system of private site admins, viewer votes and PC protection software. As a result, the internet is able to run rampant with the things we as humans seem to demand the most - sex and violence, and very often, a mix of the two.

The movie Untraceable received only a %15 approval rating at the popular review site www.rottentomatoes.com, and was reviewed as being only "run of the mill" when it came to thrills, shock, and horror tactics - a sad truth that people today are so used to such a thing being entertainment, as many scenes depicted graphic gore and death. However, was it realistic? I'd have to say so.
While I can't attest to how many super-hackers there are out there capable of taking on the FBI head on with nothing more than a few towers and gadgets in their basement, being a self-proclaimed troll in my own younger years, I definitely say that yes, the depiction of viewer response was highly realistic.
A forum window, available besides each depiction of torture, allowed viewers of the site to discuss the deaths and what was happening - while you did have the "YOU'RE KILLING HIM!!!!" protest posts, you did have such posts as "HAHA he needs better sunscreen" (death by heat lamps) or "what didn't he kill her" and "I tuned in for this?" comments revealing disappointment when the killer showed footage of Marsh's daughter, but didn't harm her. While these were all just part of a script, they were spot on when it came to the sorts of responses shock videos tend to receive.

Untraceable was a movie about - in the simplest terms - viral videos. Videos about killings, rape, violence and disturbing sex acts spread at an amazing rate among people who seem to be so amazed by the footage that they simply must show all their friends. The footage of Saddam's execution, caught by a video phone at the scene, was online and on youtube within minutes, and from there, to the news worldwide. Goatse, tubgirl, and most recently - two girls one cup - (shock images and videos) get picked up and spread like an epidemic, purely through email and word-of-mouth. There really isn't any purpose to them except to cause a reaction, and you don't gain anything from seeing them. No one, at least not that you'd know it, is hurt by their being viewed. But even if they were, people would click the links and tune in. The official fakeout promotional website for Untraceable offers an interesting bit of information on this - if you follow the link above and follow the buttons provided, you'll find that %89 of people still clicked "yes" that they would like to enter the website, even when warned that entering may cause harm to someone. It's possible that many people decided that it was simply a promotional website, but other websites - www.killwithus.com, for instance - thoughtfully provide real-time counters that show that, even as privately run websites that depict torture (fake, but real looking nonetheless) directly linked the viewer, they will still get an astounding number of views.
Forums that provide sickening images - animal and human torture, death, abuse - show that many people, with no apparent risk of being tracked down and forced to defend their comments, will praise these things as highly entertaining, joke about them, and post their own images to add to the stew that makes up the garbage of the internet.

I mentioned that I was troll myself at one point - in some ways, I still am - but I no longer actively search these sorts of things out any more. I just don't find them entertaining in the way I used to. But that being said, while I could link you to all sorts of horrifying things used as entertainment on the internet found during my surfing, I'll instead leave you with this:
No matter how bad things get, not matter how disgusting the content, no matter how sickening the imagery - whose choice is it to view it? It's not forced on anyone, and there wouldn't be so much of it if it wasn't in demand. Think on that.



...Well! After so much depressing ranting, here's something following a lighter track of mind - some kittens frolicking! Make sure to watch to the end. It's worth it.