Pocket reviews continued
Jul. 7th, 2008 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaMother of Tears [trailer]: was frogmarched (along with others) to the midnight showing of this by G, who was horrified that I hadn't watched any Dario Argento films. Boy, the script was cheesy. XD Cheesy like those cheese-filled pastry balls I overdosed on after four days in Brazil and never want to see again. Was also horrifically amused at recognizing locations from my own vacation photos in the background while the brains of badly made-up Japanese goths were spilled in the foreground. Tried to decide whether there's a misogynistic element to the violence - the bit with the lesbians was especially queasy - but in the end came down on the side of benefit-of-the-doubt, if only because the male characters were so ineffectual. Horror is catharsis of feminine anxiety, and here it's the female principle cleaning its own house; Asia's character really didn't represent any kind of submission to the patriarchy, the way a Catholic exorcism would have.
Liked the dialogue-less short film that preceded the main feature (apparently all involved are cult favorites of Italian horror cinema). I always tend to like short better.
What We Do Is Secret [trailer]: I first learnt about Darby Crash and the Germs from this list, which is the first link returned if you google "rock and roll premature deaths". As Ced pointed out afterward, the movie was pretty lighthearted for being about a band so purportedly crazy they were blacklisted from every venue in L.A. and whose frontman killed himself via intentional overdose at age 22 (none of this should be a spoiler going in). There wasn't even any gay angst! ...Well, there was angst about the bf character being kind of a dickhead but that's not the same thing. XD; Was confuzzled for ~30s thinking I was flashbacking to editing the last SSBB issue; I mean I could have Wiki'd before watching the biopic but where's the fun in that.
Ultimately it was about friendship and fan communion and the DIY spirit, not unlike 24HPP's take on Joy Division (which I prefer to Control's). Maybe about how youth assumes purity is incompatible with progression, or fails to imagine the latter.
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In other news I started uploading my Brazil photos to Flickr! The incomplete set is here. The Ubatuba pics (not yet up) are the most idyllic but I think São Paulo is pretty too, in that modern big city way.
Liked the dialogue-less short film that preceded the main feature (apparently all involved are cult favorites of Italian horror cinema). I always tend to like short better.
What We Do Is Secret [trailer]: I first learnt about Darby Crash and the Germs from this list, which is the first link returned if you google "rock and roll premature deaths". As Ced pointed out afterward, the movie was pretty lighthearted for being about a band so purportedly crazy they were blacklisted from every venue in L.A. and whose frontman killed himself via intentional overdose at age 22 (none of this should be a spoiler going in). There wasn't even any gay angst! ...Well, there was angst about the bf character being kind of a dickhead but that's not the same thing. XD; Was confuzzled for ~30s thinking I was flashbacking to editing the last SSBB issue; I mean I could have Wiki'd before watching the biopic but where's the fun in that.
Ultimately it was about friendship and fan communion and the DIY spirit, not unlike 24HPP's take on Joy Division (which I prefer to Control's). Maybe about how youth assumes purity is incompatible with progression, or fails to imagine the latter.
***
In other news I started uploading my Brazil photos to Flickr! The incomplete set is here. The Ubatuba pics (not yet up) are the most idyllic but I think São Paulo is pretty too, in that modern big city way.
