Oct. 28, 2009
Don’t miss The Faculty TONIGHT @ 10PM at The PIT | Free

WED. OCT. 28TH – THE PLAYLIST PARTY

THE PLAYLIST PARTY
Presented by Revive Music Group // Media Sponsor TONE


HERE TO INVADE YOUR PLAYLIST!!!!

f/ LIVE PERFORMANCE BY:
PHAROAHE MONCH w/ Live Band – THE CYPHER
MELO-X
NYLE
THE CROWD
SOUL UNDERSTATED f/ MAVIS SWAN POOLE

WHEN: WED. OCT. 28TH
WHERE: LE POISSON ROUGE 158 BLEECKER ST.
TIME: 10-2AM
ADMISSION: PRE-SALE $8 // $12 ADVANCED // $15 DAY OF

GET YOUR $8 PRE-SALE TIX HERE

I just don’t get it. I’ve tried to figure it out and I’ve tried to become a fan. That fact is, vampires have become a bore.

Many people would immediately disagree. Within themselves is a love for Buffy, Anne Rice, True Blood, or the Twilight series. When confronted with hostility, fans will immediately lash out at you. Why would you think vampires are boring? Twilight’s awesome. Robert Pattinson’s hot! Edward’s a complicated character and knows how to treat a lady, duh! Look at the huge audience who has embraced it. So for you to say vampires are a waste of time makes you an idiot… apparently.

But when is too much too much? The CW needs to ask themselves this. Will The Vampire Diaries build off of Twilight’s fame? Or will everyone see it for what it is, another girl meets vampire soap opera? Only time will tell.

Other than that, here’s my big bump with this series: What man has a diary?

This is why the series is not aimed for men. I can’t relate. Even though I’m a writer, I’ve never had my own little, bitty, stupid diary. I write, bloggers write, to an audience. We want people to read our words. People who write in diaries want to keep their thoughts to themselves. It’s rather creepy when you think about it.

This guy doesn't know how to use a computer? Please!

But our main vampire Stefan Salvatore (played by Paul Wesley) doesn’t want to be creepy. He’s the main love interest. He needs to be a tad sexy, a little  mysterious, with a dash of demonic thirst. All so that he can come off as a damaged hunk looking to be loved by someone who’ll accept him for who he is. Gross.

Back to the diaries, the only grown men I know who use them are old captains of ships, scientists, etc. Not vampires. Stefan uses his journal to express his thoughts of love and desire. I don’t think many captains or scientists picked up their quill to document love. I could be wrong.

And what does Stefan use to write his feelings down on? Paper. PAPER?! Why doesn’t he use a computer. (Which brings up an interesting debate, would a vampire use a PC or Mac?) Some might say Stefan is over a century old, so he’s used to writing the old fashioned way – just like my Grandma. Well, my argument is if someone has a keen sense of fashion and knows how to look cool (the leather jacket, the slicked hair) then you know how to use a computer. Period. If Stefan was wearing knee high socks, I might give him a break.

The sad fact is Kevin Williamson (Scream, The Faculty) is doing a lot of things right here. Our main character, Elena (Nina Dobrev) is a compelling and flawed protagonist. She’s way more interesting to watch than Bella. Williamson is also hitting all the right story beats. If he wants to stay on the right track, he needs to create a mob to go after the vampires. After three episodes, and a handful of dead, bloodless corpses, people in this small city need to find out why these malicious attacks are happening. If they don’t go on this search than this show is a bust. I’m gone. I’m out.

Wait, I should already be out. This is marketed towards women, or the Twilight crowd. A world where the independent girl with family issues falls in love with the bad boy who defends her from those jerks on the football team. Once he’s done that, he can open up and show her that there’s a complexity to him… he drinks blood.

And that’s the view from my basement. If you think you’ll like The Vampire Diaries, click here to view the pilot.

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DOWNLOAD THIS CD

Aug. 5, 2009
9/9/09 @ 09:09



















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July 29, 2009

June 10, 2009

May 27, 2009
Ptolemy’s last show for a while.

Battle Royale (2000)
Dir. Kinji Fukasaku
Starring Tatsuya Fujiwara (Shuya Nanahara), Aki Maeda (Noriko Nakagawa), Taro Yamamoto (Shôgo Kawada), Takeshi Kitano (Kitano-sensei)

First off, let me say that I’m feeling a bit scatter-brained at the moment, having worked all weekend, but hopefully I will be able to stay coherent. I apologize if I ramble.

Thursday’s film was the amazing, the incredible, the horrifying masterpiece that is “Battle Royale”, the plot of which is so simple that I can sum it up in a single sentence:
A high school class is drugged and shipped to a deserted island, where, upon arriving, they are told that the only way to get off the island is to kill absolutely everyone else in their class.
Now that’s a premise.

Last year's winner!

“Battle Royale” was the perfect follow-up to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” as far as our studying high school as the stage where teenage issues are played out in films and television shows. “Buffy”, in my opinion, gives an accurate depiction of the social interactions that take place in North American high schools; no doubt one of the major reasons that the show lasted as long as it did is because people could relate to the subject matter and the issues being discussed. “Battle Royale” shows the audience something different by transplanting a typical high school class from the “safety” of their familiar school environment into a kill-or-be-killed scenario where they must fight for their very survival. In spite of the cultural differences between North America and Japan, the central point remains the same: high school is a struggle, a battle, even, and Joss Whedon and Kinji Fukasaku have transformed this metaphorical battle into an actual battle. There is, however, one major difference between the battles fought on “Buffy” and the battle of “Battle Royale”. In “Buffy”, Buffy is fighting evil, nasty, supernatural creatures (her demons, if you will), whereas in “Battle Royale”, the students are fighting each other.

The student presentation that preceded the film filled in some of the gaps in my knowledge of Japanese high schools. Anita (whose blog can be found here) described the Japanese high school environment as an extremely competitive one, and mentioned that Japanese culture as a whole has a certain competitive streak to it.
Not mentioned in the lecture was the sukeban or “girl gang” subculture that has apparently caused trouble throughout Japanese high schools since the 1960s. According to Oddee.com, sukeban are “girl gangs, known in Japan for committing acts of violence and shoplifting. Sukeban gangs first began to appear in the 60s, inspired by the gangs of boys known as ‘Bancho.’ Always seen in their sailor uniforms, they would wear pleated skirts that went down to their feet, and would custom embroider their uniforms. The largest Sukeban was known as the Kanto Women Delinquent Alliance, which included 20,000 girls.” This tells us that violence is prevalent in Japanese high schools (perhaps to a greater degree than in North American ones), but what I find really interesting about these girl gangs is that Kenta Fukasaku, the brother of the director of “Battle Royale” and one of the writers, went on to direct a film focusing on the sukeban problem, with the unbelievable title of “Yo-yo Girl Cop”. I’m sorry if this is veering off topic, but I simply must post a clip.

“Yo-yo Girl Cop” is basically about an undercover police officer who is sent to a Japanese high school to infiltrate a sukeban group intent on spreading anarchy throughout Japan. Not having seen this film, I can only hazard a guess at the themes shared by it and “Battle Royale”, but both films clearly deal with the issue of violence in high schools.

According to IMDb, “Battle Royale” has never officially been given a North American DVD release, and states that one of the (rumoured) reasons for this is that the subject matter of high school students killing one another was extremely disturbing to the American public. Understandable, since the killings at Columbine had happened only a year earlier. However, I don’t think that the connections drawn between the subject matter of “Battle Royale” and the events at Columbine are accidental. Rather, I think they were intentional on the part of the filmmakers. After all, they used a similar sort of shock-tactic in the preview for the (vastly inferior) sequel, “Battle Royale 2″.

Did you notice anything familiar about those two falling towers at the end of the trailer? I don’t believe that’s a coincidence.

Before I wrap this up (and I have lots more to say, believe me), I’d like to note that “Battle Royale” contains another example of the angry teacher archetype that I mentioned in my post on the similarities between “The Faculty” and “The Breakfast Club”. Interestingly, the teacher character in this case is named after the actor portraying him, Takeshi Kitano. Also, he so despises the students that he has taken on the duties of the coordinator of the annual Battle Royale between the students. Once again, the teacher is happy to see the students in danger. In an odd sort of twist, Takeshi Kitano was also the host of a show called “Takeshi’s Castle”, or, as it’s better known in North America, “Most Extreme Elimination Challenge”. The television show is, essentially, an absurdist battle royale: a series of obstacle-course-like challenges that eliminates contestants until only a single winner remains. Again, because I simply can’t resist, here’s a clip:

Hopefully, once I’m feeling a bit more collected, I will be able to expound upon the idea I have mentioned in my post about “Heathers” – high school as a social microcosm, and talk a bit more about students at war with outside forces and each other, but I’m afraid that I am far too tired at the moment to do so. It will have to wait until tomorrow.

After a superb night at The Princeton; Juliet and I decided to take our nightly swim. We jumped in the pool with Coors Light bottles in hand and recapped the weekend and the bachelor party antics we were a part of.  After a beautiful rendition of “I Want It That Way” we took a look at the water.  It was fate, we met a turtle! We drunkenly played with the turtle until we realized he had had enough of us and against our own intuitions we released him into the wild.  As the excitement faded, Juliet found something new to play with -a disgusting alien of a slug who must have been born in the pool because the instant he was out of the pool went into shock and died.  The slug will remain in his death spot, right outside of the pool to remind Juliet and I of how good life is ( until the sun shrivels him up of course).  As I see it… the slug has it way worse than me. Oh yeah, the slug reminds me of the movie The Faculty – anyone know what I’m talking about? -Kelli

In our last class we talked about the fact that the cast of The Faculty had made an ad for Tommy Jeans after shooting the film and that Hilfiger clothing had been used in the wardrobe of the main characters in the film. One of the students, in class and later in his blog (http://sosayeththewatcher.wordpress.com/), expressed concern about the fact that the film itself centered around characters who, with two exceptions, spend the film rebelling against conformity, while subsequently becoming “turncoats” by promoting a popular brand name. He concludes that the contradiction can be resolved by realizing that “individuality in today’s youth is defined by what brands you identify with.”

I agree that this is a strange contradiction, and thought I would try to delve a little beneath the surface on the subject of clothing branding in films. In doing so, I found an interesting New York Times article from 1998 entitled Pass the Popcorn (And the Khakis) [http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/31/style/noticed-pass-the-popcorn-and-the-khakis.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1].

In the article, author Linda Lee writes that “major clothing manufacturers have decided that, in their quest to remain hip with youth, they want to associate with those low-budget films that everyone talks about and almost no one sees.” Some of the examples she gives are sponsorship of the prison drama Slam by Perry Ellis, sponsorship of an independent film festival by Dockers Khakis, and the tie-in between The Faculty and Tommy Jeans, which included joint sponsorship of a $10 million advertising campaign (the film hadn’t been released yet). In the article she quotes Andy Hilfiger, the company’s public relations director, as saying that the expected audience for The Faculty is the ”exact age demographic as our jeans customer . . . It’s a great marriage.”

This jives exactly with Naomi Klein’s thesis in No Logo in the chapter “Alt.Everything” that, starting in the early 90s, the youth market became a “sought-after” market after the major cultural industries realized that it was youth, not baby-boomers, who were doing most of the buying. She describes how “advertisers, brand managers, music, film and television producers raced back to high school” in order to determine what was ‘cool.’”

In light of this, it makes sense that films targeted towards youth would be more prone to have product placements and tie-ins.

Having said this, I wanted to reflect on some of the pros and cons of clothing branding in films. Arguably the only “pro” is that these kinds of tie-ins help producers raise more money to make their films, which I suppose is generally a good thing, as films require major bucks.

However, this is offset by a number “cons.” The most worrisome is that the sponsor might influence the content of the film, rendering it artistically questionable. Of course, if the film’s script is already completely influenced by the desire to pander to its audience, then perhaps a little clothing branding isn’t going to hurt the film that much. However, if the film has some kind of artistic integrity to begin with, the sponsorship could compromise this. I was surprised to read in the New York Times article quoted above, for example, that Perry Ellis had also sponsored the opening of a documentary about the U.S.’s largest maximum security prison. With regard to the The Faculty, it turns out that Hilfiger did exert a little artistic control – the company was allowed to cast one minor actor, Kidada Jones (in some kind of poetic justice, her scenes ended up on the cutting- room floor.) This in itself is minor, but it is possible to imagine scenarios where the sponsoring company would be able to “call the shots” much more.

The other “con” I can think of relate to the fact that audiences could be subliminally influenced to dress like the characters they see on screen, especially if they are not aware of the branding – a point raised by our teacher in class. The film thereby becomes a different form of advertising for corporations, further encroaching on the already limited and steadily decreasing “unsponsored space” described by Naomi Klein.

As a supplement to our viewing of “The Faculty”, we were assigned a reading titled “Alt. Everything: The Youth Market and the Marketing of Cool” by Naomi Klein and were instructed to take a look at the following ad:

For some reason, I skipped past the reading and viewed the ad first, and was immediately struck by what I considered to be hypocrisy on the part of the actors. I saw the alien invasion of a high school in the film as an allegory for conformity (a thinly veiled one, at that), and the protagonists – most of them living on the fringe of high school society, and except for Delilah and Stan, not popular kids (Stan is even planning on leaving his popularity behind by focusing on his studies instead of football) – spend the movie rebelling against this conformity. But then I watched this ad, and thought “What turncoats these actors are! They make a movie about defending individuality to the death, and follow it up with a commercial advertising a popular brand name.”

In bringing up these thoughts in our class discussion, I was reminded by a classmate that “The Faculty” is, after all, a Hollywood film and like any Hollywood film, product placement is just another part of what makes a big-budget movie a big-budget movie. And although I could see the point he was making, things didn’t really become clear to me until I did the reading and found these quotes:

“Selling out is not only accepted, it’s considered hip.”
- Jeff Jensen, reporter for Advertising Age

“[Today's youth are] used to sponsorship. If a kid went to a concert and there wasn’t merchandise to buy, he’d probably go out of his mind”
- John Roberts, Woodstock promoter

Of course! It all made sense now. After all, how many popular brands advertise themselves with slogans like “Be somebody” or “Express yourself”? Individuality in today’s youth is defined by what brands you identify with. Essentially, you are what you wear. So, in the case of “The Faculty”, it makes perfect sense that the cast of young, hip actors could play characters who rebel against conformity, and then advertise a popular brand. They’re pandering to their audience, their fans. If you want to be rebellious, an individual, just like them…well, all you have to do is buy some Tommy jeans.

Thursday’s lecture focused on character archetypes prevalent in teen films. From studying other film genres in the past, I’ve learnt that these archetypes are essentially the building blocks of a genre: they are the semantics of a genre, and through them we can learn more about the syntax of said genre. The teen movie character archetypes that were outlined in class are as follows:

- The Jock
- The Nerd
- The Popular Girl
- The Outcast/Delinquent
- The Rebel

The film that the professor used to demonstrate these archetypes was the John Hughes classic “The Breakfast Club”

An arrangement of archetypes

Just looking at the poster, you can tell which character fits which archetype; the jock in his letter jacket, the rebel with his fingerless gloves and menacing pose, the milquetoast nerd with a morose look on his face, the outcast clad in black and curled up in an odd position, and the sultry popular girl lying out in front of them all.

While this sort of thing may seem obvious, it is very important when studying genre. Like I said before, these kinds of archetypes help to define a genre, and the reason they seem so obvious is that they appear really, REALLY frequently, as you will see in the film we watched on Thursday…

The Faculty (1998)
Dir. Robert Rodriguez
Starring Elijah Wood (Casey), Jordana Brewster (Delilah), Clea Duvall (Stokely), Josh Hartnett (Zeke), Shawn Hatosy (Stan), Laura Harris (Marybeth)

“The Faculty” is, in a nutshell, “The Breakfast Club” meets “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. A group of teens who all attend the same high school and normally don’t associate with one another find themselves surrounded by an alien menace that is taking over the bodies of the people at their school. This alien parasite starts with the faculty (hence the title), then begins assimilating their classmates, and it is up to our ragtag gang of heroes to save the day.

Similarly to “The Breakfast Club”, it is easy to see which character fits which archetype. (Captions are taken from Thursday’s lecture)

The Jock: sensitive, steeped in masculinity

The Nerd: Change or perish

The Outcast: Lashes out against students and teachers

The Popular Girl: Need to fit in while simultaneously being an individual

The Rebel: Refusal to conform, need to maintain individuality, and in the case of "The Breakfast Club" and "The Faculty, associated with drugs

After watching “The Faculty”, I noticed another character archetype, although this one may not be as common as the others. The oppressive, angry teacher:

The Angry Teacher: Sees students as "young punks"

In both “The Breakfast Club” and “The Faculty” we are presented with a teacher (in the case of “The Faculty”, the first teacher to become infected with the alien parasite) who clearly has some anger issues. He sees the students as “young punks” and has several aggressive confrontations with them. It should be noted, however, that the teacher in “The Breakfast Club” does not turn into an alien the way the teachers in “The Faculty” do…

Rrrraaaaarrrgghh!!!

As well, “The Faculty” includes another character archetype – one which may or may not be as common as the other character archetypes in teen films (more research will be needed to determine this) – the new girl:

The New Girl: just trying to fit in...and turn everyone into alien slaves...

What is interesting about the character of Marybeth is that not only does she not fit in to the popular character archetypes that we discussed in class, but (SPOILER ALERT!) she turns out to be the villain in disguise. Watching “The Faculty” as an example of character archetypes in teen movies with the prior knowledge that Marybeth was the alien queen in disguise, it was easy to draw the connection: the one principal character who didn’t fit any of the archetypes we studied was the villain all along.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this entry, these archetypes will be of great help in studying teen films as a genre, and while every archetype may not appear in every movie, there will always be one or more in any given film. In my last post I listed some of my favourite teen movies, so I thought it might be fun to list a few of them again and include sub-lists of the character archetypes present in these films.

“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”

- Ferris is clearly the rebel, rebelling against authority, refusing to conform, and intent on maintaining his individuality
- His girlfriend Sloan could be the popular girl, but we’re never given much indication of what her social life is like at school
- His best friend Cameron is a sort of combination of the nerd and the outcast, though leaning more towards the nerd

“Back to the Future”

- Marty is the rebel, but not nearly as much of a delinquent as Judd Nelson’s character in “The Breakfast Club”. Marty does, however, rebel against authority, try to maintain his individuality and ride a skateboard (definitely indicative of rebellious behaviour)
- Biff is the other half of the rebel archetype: he’s aggressive and violent, the school bully
- George McFly is the nerd, as evidenced by his love of science fiction, his choice of drinks at the diner (“Gimme a milk…chocolate!”) and his general awkward, nerdy behaviour.

“Stand By Me”

- Gordie is the nerd, though this is only really evidenced by his passion for writing
- Vern is also a bit of a nerd, mainly because of his awkward behaviour
- Chris is the rebel, evidenced by his tough-guy attitude
- Teddy is both the rebel and the outcast: he’s tough and rebellious, but lashes out at other people and is generally unaccepted by society
- Ace is also a rebel, much closer to Bender from “The Breakfast Club”

I’m not as sure of my connections between characters and archetypes in”Stand By Me” as I am of the connections I’ve drawn in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Back to the Future”. I suspect this is largely because “Stand By Me” does not take place in a school.

(all images courtesy of http://www.infinitecoolness.com)

April 29, 2009

I decided that I’m going to post a post of lookalikes because I obviously watch too much TV, and introductions are lame and dull, so let’s just get straight into it.

1.

I don’t even watch American Idol, but I know he’s no longer there or something (or is he? I don’t remember/know/care). There’s always something else to watch on another channel but because I need to do something during ad breaks that isn’t constructive, I had to put myself through the pain of AI every once in awhile. Oh, poor little me. (Btw, that emo/vampire kid’s rendition of Mad World was rubbish. Sorry, Simon Cowell, but I’m going to have to give you disrespect for that one).

2.

I would also add Conan O’ Brien to the list, but that would make things too easy since I’ve already got Dr. Leary up there.

3.

See, my pick for the next Doctor would have been Thom Yorke, but they had to go ahead and ruin it by picking some younger kid without a lazy eye. Oh well.

4.

I don’t watch tennis, but sometimes I see the guy who wins things on men’s razor ads (and I read the news which somehow includes the sport section sometimes). Apparently Jimmy Carr apparently plays tennis too. Also, Federer seems to have lost his title recently which basically confirms my conspiracy theory that Jimmy Carr has gotten sick of playing Roger’s games for Roger so he has to play them himself, hence losing. Because Jimmy Carr wins at everything.

5.

The fact that Katy Perry seems to be some sort of a staple on this blog disturbs me too.

6.

Also, Phil Ken Sebben is voiced by Stephen Colbert. HMMMMMMM…

7.
Anyway, the real purpose of this post:

Awh come on, don’t tell me I’m the only one who thinks so.
I’m hungry.

Someone asked. Well, not just someone, M1.

It’s not all friends.

I love going to see movies with DBBF. And even with my friend D, though he and I don’t really like the same kind of movie anymore.

No, now I’m getting roped into seeing Star Trek in IMAX on opening weekend. Why? Because a friend of mine HAS to see it. But he HAS to see it soon. Like it fucking matters if we wait a week. Next weekend, not this weekend, we’re hoping to see it with this guy I knew in middle school who lives nearby (he was at that party last weekend). I don’t want to see Star Trek twice. Even if it’s okay, I don’t want to see it twice. The era of seeing okay summer movies twice with different sets of friends (I mean, shit, with this first friend, the one from grad school, shit… I had to see Iron Man twice because of him) is long over. It was fine in 1989, when I’d go see Batman and Weekend at Bernie’s multiple times with different friends. It was probably even fine in 1992, when I went to go see Buffy the Vampire Slayer a couple times with different friends. Or 1998–I saw the Faculty a couple times.

But not anymore. And not Star Trek? I mean, nobody wants to go see Redbelt multiple times with me.

April 8, 2009

March 11 & 25, 2009