Friday ramblings, including TWO movie reviews I actually managed to watch two movies yesterday, simply because a) I got home earlier than expected, b) the movies were short, and c) Gary didn�t feel like being social, as he had a bad day, and felt more like creating pixilated mayhem on his computer game. Gary has been having bad days on a regular basis lately but there�s really nothing I can do about that, as I have said before. Other than be supportive wife, and sometimes being a supportive wife means encouraging the hubby to be antisocial. It�s interesting how the communication process works sometimes. I also had a boatload of Mary Kay show up yesterday, which had to be labeled, filed, catalogued, and otherwise fawned over � 14 new colors of lipsticks and 10 new lip gloss colors!!!! Yippee!!!! And some REALLY nice colors, too. I�m gonna have to try them all. I first watched a little gem called �Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins� or something to that effect. It is somehow loosely based on the animated series that many of us know and love from the highly edited versions that have been shown on Cartoon Network for years and years � Goku and his Grandpa and Bulma and the rest all in search of these elusive Dragon Balls and the hilarity and kung-fu fighting that ensues. This was, however, a live-action version that was more reminiscent of the �Drunken Master� Kung-Fu series that we all used to watch (if you are of a certain age) on Saturday afternoons. You know, the old Bruce Lee flying through the air with badly dubbed dialogue and lots of �slap slap� and �woosh woosh� noises while screaming �Hah! Hey! Hay! Hah!� (Dodge, turn, parry, ha, spin, ha, dodge, thrust) Goku, in this version, is known simply as �MonkeyBoy� and lives in the woods with his adoptive Grandpa, and they have possession of one Dragon Ball � which are known as �Dragon Pearls� for the purpose of this movie, although the title specifically states �Dragon Ball�. Go figure. A large fellow in a blue rubber suit and his henchman and woman (who wear lots of sparkly armor and makeup) are terrorizing a village (referred to as being in IRAQ) for their Dragon Pearl, and Blue Guy sends out his henchmen to locate the 6 others. You need 7 in all, to summon the dragon and make any wish you desire. MonkeyBoy and Grandpa have a nicely done fight, with lots of flying through the air and odd little dances that appear to be a �rock, paper, scissors� competition. MonkeyBoy goes to collect a crocodile for dinner. Along the way, he runs into a girl named �Seto� who is searching for the Dragon Pearls herself using an invention of her own making. Several comments are made referring to her bosom as MonkeyBoy has never seen a girl before (Goku�s na�vet� comes through soundly in this feature as well) and then they are beset upon by the henchmen. Grandpa goes missing along with the Dragon Pearl. On the way to locate him, MonkeyBoy and Seto find �PigFairy�, a lascivious mensch who is terrorizing a girl who happens to be from the village in Iraq where Blue Guy set up shop. After an odd fight, MonkeyBoy and PigFairy find out they�re related somehow from far back (a branchless family tree, I presume). It turns out PigFairy can change his appearance at will, as long as he performs this dance that is a cross between an Oktoberfest slap dance and a Curly from the Three Stooges routine. So now they�re the nest of friends, and then they pick up this bloke named �WestWood� (or something, I was more interested in lipsticks at the time) and his amazingly annoying talking Cockatoo, Fred. No that wasn�t his name, but it works for me. WestWood is scared of girls, like totally terrified of them, but this doesn�t stop Seto from attempting to hang all over him and drool on his white Lycra outfit with gold lame� cape. They all set out to this island where �TurtleMan� lives. Now I really like this guy. He�s also a lascivious mensch who wears jams, brightly embroidered t-shirts, and a huge turtle shell on his back. He also dances quite interestingly, like the guys I used to date after they�d had about a dozen rum and cokes. Anyhoo, the henchmen show up, there�s a fight, and the henchmen end up with six of the seven Dragon Pearls. Who has the last one? It turns out PigFairy has had it this entire time. The crew sets out to help young Iraqi girl save her village from Blue Guy. There�s a lot of explosion action and bazookas here. PigFairy spends most of this time shirtless, and since he has the build of the guys who routinely pull the pigs out of the pit at luaus, it did nothing at all for me. For whatever reason, Blue Guy has SWALLOWED all six of the Dragon Pearls, and Grandpa, who has been Blue Guy�s hostage all this time, deduces that if they force him to swallow the last Pearl, he will explode with the force of the dragon. There�s actually a kind of fun scene under a blue filter with all the dead villagers converging on our hapless heroes like a band of zombies, with their arms out in front of them and all like Frankenstein�s Monster. MonkeyBoy shoves the last Pearl down Blue Guy�s throat, he explodes and a dragon (actually a puppet on a stick) appears in the blue-screen sky and grants Iraqi girl�s wish, to restore her village and her people. This happens, yippee, happy ending, and MonkeyBoy and WestWood go on to fight another duel. The end. Available at Blockbuster.com. Rent at your own risk. If you�re a HUGE DB fan, well, you�ll probably hate it. If you�re a big fan of goofiness, then you�ll probably enjoy it. After dinner I went back to the TV to watch �Gummo�, a film written/directed/produced/edited/boom opped/craft serviced by Harmony Korine, who also did �Kids�, which I haven�t seen yet. �Gummo� is an odd flick, and if I had to condense it down to summary, I�d say it was a �series of vignettes revolving around rednecks, deviant behavior, and the mentally incapacitated.� It starts out as explaining itself as a story about the aftermath of a tornado that nearly destroyed Xenia, Ohio. We�re led to believe that it takes place thereafter in that town. It was actually filmed in Nashville, although I don�t think that matters. As far as a time stamp, I�d have to say no earlier than 1989, as the song �Like a Prayer� by Madonna is featured. The clothes are at least very early 90�s. As far as deviant behavior, let me tick some things off � Two young boys kill cats with air rifles and sell them to the local grocer for $1 a pound. They also torture the cats and desecrate their corpses. These same boys visit a fellow who is prostituting his Down-syndrome wife, sniff glue, and ride their bikes around town. Two of a trio of sisters put duct tape over their nipples and pull it off quickly to make them larger. One of the sisters is played by Chloe Sevingy, who can always be counted on to take her clothes off for a role. The youngest sister squeals with delight at this and also dons a mask of Burt Reynolds while chanting �I want a moustache, dammit!!� over and over. There are several �interviews� with town inhabitants who discuss their dislike for African Americans, their love and breastfeeding habits of their doll babies, and how one would pay money to touch Patrick Swayze. A group of drunken, shirtless men have an arm-wrestling contest which later dissolves into a table and chair destroying contest. Make sure you count the butt cracks in the room. The younger of the two young boys, Solomon, is also featured shirtless (now you look at that young man�s physique and tell me there�s not something WRONG with him) as he lifts weights made of flatware, while his mother tap-dances around him and yells while brandishing a gun �Now you smile, or I�m gonna KILL you!� Actually, this was my favorite scene. Solomon is also shown later taking a bath while he eats spaghetti, a chocolate bar, and milk. It�s one of the more disgusting eating scenes I�ve known, but frankly, I was fascinated by the fact that there was a strip of bacon taped to the wall. What the? BACON? I can understand the naked Barbie dolls hanging from the shower organizer, but bacon? Taped to the wall? Then, there is the Bunny Boy, a young man wearing jams and bunny ears. He plays the accordion. I�m guessing that he�s a sort of Greek chorus, except he never speaks. He does spit on cars from an overpass, though. There is also the greatest amount of home filth I have ever seen dedicated on celluloid. These people live in homes that are like the worst Goodwill ever exploded. One scene shows a young boy (with what looked like bug bites all over his legs) moving pictures on a wall to make them hang crooked, and I swear NESTS of roaches went scatter as he moved those frames. It was like the soot creatures from �My Neighbor Tortoro� but much MUCH scarier. What was this movie about? Not sure. I don�t think Harmony Korine wanted it to be ABOUT anything, necessarily. He was more interested in showing little snippets of life somehow loosely tied together by the fact that these people are at least acquaintances. Or are the same town inhabitants in this great thing called LIFE. It�s obvious that many of the people in this film are non-actors, and even Korine states that he gave himself 45 minutes in a local slaughterhouse to cast this film. Yup. There is Chloe, of course, and the young man who plays Solomon is also an actor who has been in several films, but the rest is a sort of conglomerate of true-life-ish story telling. Actually not story-telling, but glimpses into these pieces of lives. It somehow is appealing because I think most of us have this latent exhibitionism/voyeurism thing going on. How else can you explain the appeal of shows like Survivor, Nanny 911, and Dr. Phil? We want to see other people�s misery in an effort to make ourselves feel so superior, and people put themselves on those shows to, well, let others see their skeletons in the closet. Many of the shows do have value, don�t get me wrong, I�m talking about the slew of �who�s your baby�s daddy� Maury Povich-type ilk of programming. We love that stuff, obviously, because there�s so DAMN MUCH of it out there. You love it. You know you do. I do.
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