Heavy Metal

It turns out it's more than the greatest musical genre of all time.

I just recently watched this movie called Heavy Metal. It's really crazy. It's all done in animation in the same style as the comic book by the same name. I hadn't heard anything about this movie except that it was parodied in South Park. Little did I know that this is actually a powerful movie that evokes almost every emotion capable of man.

Its story is simple: a malevolent glowing green ball is the f

orce of all evil known as the Loc-Nar. It breaks into the house that a girl is staying in and, after trapping her in a corner, forces her to witness a number of scenarios where the Loc-Nar has corrupted and killed people. 

The bulk of the movie consists of these shorts clips accompanied by a soundtrack of fantastic heavy metal music. The short stories range widely in their topics. Futuristic cab drivers in one, medieval volcano warriors in another, world war 2 bomber plane in the next, and alien court tribunals on board a space station. Some of

 them can get pretty brutal, with lots of bloodshed. Others feature rampant sexuality. Anything goes when the Loc-Nar is involved. 

This movie is particularly amazing because sometimes the characters are corrupted by the Loc-Nar's power and are killed in the end of the story, and some other characters learn lessons and get away with greater wealth or benefit than they had before their experience with Loc-Nar. 

The episode of South Park that parodies this movie is about an epidemic of drug use - vivid hallucinations induced by cat urine. Every time one of the characters in the episode gets high, they trip out and see fantasy scenarios play out that are very similar to the stories in Heavy Metal.

Compare Kenny on board this strange looking bird with the poster for the movie. Definitely parody.

Here's a clip of one of the examples of the Loc-Nar's evil power. The clip is in spanish for some reason, but the dialogue isn't very important.

Science Fiction

Science Fiction. Where does it all come from?

Until recently, I thought it was pretty much pioneered by Star Wars and the only people that like it are nerds and geeks and such. When I think of science fiction, mostly thoughts of fast-paced lasers and spaceships and cheesy dialogue spring to mind. Then I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, which you could sort of say is the original sci-fi film. It features none of the aforementioned genre characteristics. The only laser is a powerful radio wave that makes you trip out if you get in its way. The only spaceship is by no means fast-paced. And dialogue is minimal but intense. Then you have to keep in mind this is the work of Stanley Kubrick, the ridiculous mind behind Dr. Strangelove, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and a Clockwork Orange among many others.

What shocked me about this movie wasn't just how ridiculous and awesome it is. I realized how this movie really is like the original science fiction movie that many other stories in the genre have borrowed plot ideas from. For example, one of the characters in 2001 is an artificially intelligent supercomputer.

Stanley Kubrick: not exactly sane

This is Hal. He sees with red camera eyes and speaks through the ship's speakers and radio. The astronauts on board talk to Hal in plain English and trust him to take care of the majority of the ship's functions, such as recycling oxygen and caring for the "hibernating" astronauts, which proves to be a bad idea in the end. This kind of over-powering intelligent computer that turns evil has been used as a genre motif and is generally depicted with the same red camera eye.

This is a scene in WALL-E. The space cruise ship's controls are operated by an over-powerful AI steering wheel that watches the captain's actions through a red camera lens that is oh so similar to Hal's own red eye (shown on the left in this picture). Anyways, this sort of thing has also been parodied in comedies like The Simpsons and Futurama.

Hal isn't the only part of 2001 that has been borrowed heavily by sci-fi writers, just one example that I noticed. It's a really good movie and really intense. It's like something you can really call a "film" and not just a movie or a blockbuster.

For more info on 2001, check it out at IMDB.com

Oh, and check out this really intense scene where the last living human on board shuts down Hal.

first movie blog

This is my first blog about movies. I've always liked movies. Movies are pretty cool. But I've always critiqued movies based on their entertainment value; never for editorial technique or cinematics or anything like that. That is, until starting Art of Film class.
Take, for example, the movie City of God. I've seen it three times. The first two times were years ago, the third time was a week ago. The first times I saw it I really enjoyed the movie. The third time, I noticed more about the movie and how it was done the way it was and got into the movie in that way. The very beginning showcases this well; the opening shot is only about a second long, and so are the subsequent shots after that. Editing seams together numerous shots into one harmony of chickens, knives, and people in a poor marketplace. The first times I saw this, I would be thinking how my attention was caught and the movie's lookin pretty good. The third time I saw it I just blurted out, "what a montage!" and thought about the effect each shot has in creating the scene.
Basically, now I'm starting to notice the things directors do to make a film have the effect they want, rather than just experiencing the effect. Which is cool in a way, but at the same time it kind of robs from the experience because it loses some of its mystique. Also, taking notes while watching a movie completely kills it all. Particularily in foreign films when looking away means missing the subtitles to a key piece of conversation. But even in regular movies, taking attention off the movie and onto whatever's being written about the movie is like a lurch in the movie. To stop your attention briefly and then return loses information and then you have to catch up on what happened while your attention was turned. And then you have to catch up on what happened while you were catching up on what happened. and etc. Like a strong lurch that slowly smooths itself out. Mix numerous "lurches" into one film and quite a bit of film is being missed.
and I would say that's totally weak.

blogs are really lame.

it's true.