Subatomic Brainfreeze

New York Asian Film Fest: RAW FORCE

I am unapologetic: my favorite part of New York Asian Film Fest is the superb trash that the curators find. At last year’s midnight show, LA Streetfighters changed the way I think about middle-aged high school gang members. This year it was Raw Force, a humble martial arts film which-- despite Hitler, cannibals and zombies, all of which appear in spades-- aims only to put some breasts on the screen.

A synopsis: a pothead and a fellow who resembles Hitler guest-starring in an episode of Wacky Races run a successful jade import business by trading kidnapped women for their product on the mysterious “Warrior’s Island”. Now the island is inhabited by monks who eat these women in order to cast a magic spell that animates the corpses of martial artists that cover the island. The monks use these zombies to... well, it’s not really clear why these guys raise martial artists from the dead on a regular basis, because there isn’t anybody on the island for them to fight with until our heroes arrive!

You might think this was a B-horror film, but so little time is spent on that premise-- and its appearance is so abrupt-- that it’s almost besides the point. Our heroes, you see, are unsuspecting Karate Club tourists who board a party boat (really, this movie is about half karate and half partying) which is inexplicably headed for this mass kung-fu graveyard, which everybody is pretty sure is covered in the living dead. And they party!

“When we get together, the way to get by
is pull out the booze and let’s get high!”

Raw Force is a comedy, in ways it means to be and ways it does not. The film’s constant broadsides with ill-timed non-sequitur one liners and the many, even weirder lines hidden in the background of every conversation indicate that someone was definitely trying to be funny. They didn’t quite know how, though, and the film gets even bigger laughs than it was looking for when the scene cuts immediately after an exchange like:

“Do you love him?”
“No.”
“I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to hear that.”

Blurring the “are you joking?” line further are the supremely low production values: the “effects budget” was clearly set aside for a single basket of dynamite and a small army of women willing to get naked on camera. One of the highlights of the film is the bar-fight scene, in which a nude dancer awkwardly continues her dance on the bar as the menfolk throw each other into tables, all the while surveying the scene below her with a puzzled “so do I stop?” expression on her face. The crew could hardly even afford fire (a blaze aboard the ship is represented by an explosion effect that’s superimposed over the frame), and the zombies’ martial arts outfits appear to have come from Godfey Ho’s leftover Halloween costume stash.

So yes, the NYAFF midnight crowd and I agree: Raw Force is a tremendous success. It’s not the kind of slow-burn exploitation film where you have to wade through a dull hour or so for a crazy thirty minutes: it’s a mean, lean and utterly incoherent 80 minutes of laughs and chaos with no downtime. Raw Force is indisputably trash, but it knows what its job is, and it delivers. Did I mention that the film ends with a “To Be Continued”?

Unfortunately, while low-quality copies are floating around online, the film is not legtimately available on DVD. Happy VHS hunting!

New York Asian Film Fest 2010: LA Streetfighters/Ninja Turf: YOU'LL PAY ME FIVE BUCKS OR I'LL KICK YOUR ASS

Well, it's that time of year again. New York Asian Film Fest is always a joy: the organizers run as many classy films as they run crazy ones, and they pick out some of the craziest damn movies you've ever seen. I was particularly attracted to the Saturday midnight showing of ACTION BROTHERS' LA Streetfighters (Ninja Turf in the print we watched, despite the movie's complete lack of any ninja whatsoever), a film whose language is listed as "in English...kind of" on the festival website. These guys found me House, so I was willing to take the gushing website description on faith and buy my ticket (and invite my friends: the people who GET IT came) without really knowing what I was in for. It paid off: this movie is really... something. It is undeniably a thing.

Shitty 80's action movies are a dime a dozen, but this one's above and beyond. Yeah, you'd expect a low-budget action movie like this to have a bad script and nonexistent acting, but that kind of movie tends not to take itself too seriously. LA Streetfighters takes itself extremely seriously despite the fact that it is a series of nonsense scenes strung together until someone realized they had enough to fill 90 minutes, and that's what makes it special.

First and foremost, the lead in this movie is an unmistakably middle-aged man masquerading as a high school gang leader. Lead actor Jun Chong was 41 when this movie came out, and his sidekick was 25. A 25-year-old guy trying to play schoolboy would be bad enough in any other movie, but as it does in every other area, LA Streetfighters says FUCK THAT and goes for the most awkward possible situation. You want to know what the guy's name is? It's... Young.

This is perhaps the least strange thing about LA Streetfighters: until it decides on a plot in the last half hour, the movie is a random barrage of surreal, non-sequitur scenes-- a well-dressed businessman and his trophy wife appear after a gang fight in a pitch-dark alley, saying "we heard about the rumble, that's why we came!"-- punctuated by some admittedly entertaining fight scenes against increasingly bizarre opponents. NYAFF staff was cosplaying as the Spike Gang (they were also, by their own admission, rather drunk: these guys' intros often give the impression that they have been partying hard all night since the fest started). You'll understand when you see the movie.

LA Streetfighters is so bad at everything that it starts to feel like maybe it's not bad at all. Maybe it came from another planet where people just do things differently. A planet where people count how many bananas they've got, and then hand them to a naked guy while he bathes in public. A world where thugs play bamboo flutes in convenience stores to intimidate shopkeepers, where some guys have just never had a birthday cake before. The script feels like it was randomly generated by an alien computer, and the actors delivering the lines are often fobbish and incomprehensible. And good luck seeing a damn thing during the night scenes that make up about a quarter of the film: these guys didn't believe in lighting. There's also the theme song that plays during every single fight scene: the dudes in the back were singing it every time it came up and eventually we all had to join in.

Despite (or perhaps because of?) all the incompetence on display, LA Streetfighters takes itself incredibly seriously. It is a very serious drama, you know. Young is a deeply troubled youth. He wants to return to his home planet-- I uh mean Korea, and he has problems with his drunkard mom: I'd have a problem with my mom too if she was about the same age as I was. Sidekick Tony is the laid-back guy by contrast: by night he helps his parents count bananas at the produce stand and he's dating the sister of rival gangster Chan. Tony only really serves to compound Young's misery by being the guy he sees making out with Chan's sister every single god damn time he walks down the street. If only Young could live that life! Young's angst only gets funnier and funnier as we watch this old dude try (but not very hard) to sell himself as a teen with real problems.

In the last half hour, after the heroes' homoerotic gang has gotten their fill of beating up various gimmick gangs like the Spikes and the Mexican Guys, the film remembers that it is supposed to be telling a story. The gang, now known far and wide for their deeds, takes up security work at an affluent businessman's coke party. When Young sees that the guy is selling coke at his coke party, he steals the ill-gotten gains ("I'll use it for good cause!") and the rest of the movie is spent dealing with the vengeance of their former employer. Without giving away the ending, it is the film at its most hamfistedly serious, and the movie finishes on its most hilarious possible note.

When the credits had finally rolled the lights never went up: I don't know whether they were making a final joke about the movie's horrific lighting or whether nobody was there anymore and they were all just really, really drunk.

Usually I can't send you to go (legally) see the movies I watch at NYAFF, but if you have a Netflix account you can watch LA Streetfighters right this second here. Just get yourself some friends and some booze before you do, because it's that kind of movie. At the showing shushing was deemed punishable by assault with a glass bottle. It's that kind of movie. You won't be able to stay quiet.

Five Riders Vs. King Dark: Papa, it's G.O.D! I BETTER CALL X-RIDER!

Sometimes you can tell from the first frame of a movie that it's going to be awesome, and this is one of those. Just the opening has everything you need: it's just the first five Kamen Riders-- 1, 2, V3, Riderman, and X, if you were taking notes-- taking turns posing, doing sweet jumps on their bikes, and getting out of a small plane. Towards the end they do an X-shaped five-man handshake that you must see. Did I mention Ichiro Mizuki? I don't watch a lot of live-action superhero stuff, but when I do, this is how I like it: silly. I've tried to watch more recent Kamen Rider series on more than one occassion, but they're a little too mopey for me. God, that First movie!

Anyway, like the Great Mazinger movie I just talked about, (I'd like to thank /m/ real quick) this is a team-up movie for the kids. It just doesn't lie to you about what's going on. Five Riders most certainly fight against that son of a bitch King Dark and his evil organization G.O.D. in this half-hour movie. King Dark is a big ol' statue who's stuck in the perpetual-boredom pose you see here. The monster under wraps is his strongest henchman yet, Bat Franken: he's Frankenstein's monster, and a vampire bat, and he has a cannon on his back, and he wears a cape. This caliber of dude-- not to mention his henchmen, a pantheon of rubber-suited Greek gods-- needs quite a number of riders to beat.

It really doesn't get much more fun than Riders beating up dudes in monster suits. I especially love the genre-standard shots, clearly taken somewhere else in front of a screen, of guys flipping over the camera or flying back from the impact of a fierce Rider Kick. Speaking of Rider Kicks, at the end of this movie Rider 1 flings X up into the air, over the other Riders, as they each say one word of "X-- RIDER-- SUPER-- HIGH-- KICK!". Bat Franken is knocked onto a hill of defeated monsters, naturally, and the lot of them explode. That is what I am talking about.

There are also a couple of great moments with the kid who represents the viewer: he just wakes up in the middle of the night and, very serious, very collected, explains to his family that G.O.D. is up to something and he's got to call X-Rider right now. Now X-Rider isn't in at the moment, so the kid runs out the door to see Rider 1 standing in front of him. He knew something was up! This kid appears twice, and both times the Riders thank him and tell him what a great job he did. As if to erase any doubt as to who this film is for, two ads for TV Land magazine-- which covers your favorite kids' shows like Mazinger and Kamen Rider-- show up on screen after the credits, as the Riders' triumphant theme fades. Being a kid is sweet, ain't it?

Black Dynamite: USE KUNG FU WHEN HE WANT, HAS SEX WHEN HE PLEASE

Last night I finally got to see Black Dynamite, which I had been eagerly awaiting for some time. It's a very small release, and unless you live in NYC, LA, Chicago, Philly, Seattle, or Atlanta you won't be able to see it. That said, if you do live in one of these towns and you like fun, you would be be seriously remiss in not seeing this movie.

As you might have gathered from the trailer, Black Dynamite is a blaxploitation spoof: if you're not familiar with that-- I guess you might not be, I guess this is supposed to be an otaku blog-- we're talking about a wave of B-movies that specifically targeted black audiences back in the 70s. You've probably heard the names Shaft, Foxy Brown, and Superfly before. These movies have a lasting camp appeal, and this isn't the first time somebody's homaged them. It is, however, probably the first time somebody's homaged them so thoroughly: this director should probably be awarded a degree in Blaxploitation Studies.

At the start it's kind of tough to even call Black Dynamite a spoof, because it's so dead on. Fake Rudy Ray Moore who speaks only in poorly-metered rhyme, check. Fake Pam Grier, check. Boom mic in the frame, you got it. Even when the movie breaks into song about exactly what is going on in this scene right now, it's not too far off from what the bottom-of-the-barrel blaxploitation movies were really like. In fact, terrible production values are less a running gag than a way of life for this movie: weird cuts, people standing in places they shouldn't be, and awkward silences after bad line readings are all common. This is no slick studio production: it's going for that Dolemite, that Fred Williamson vibe.

And yes, it works. We had a pretty small crowd in attendance (small movie, limited run, limited advertising, people don't know this movie exists), but the movie managed to keep all of us laughing for nearly its entire running time. There isn't a line in this script that isn't funny: when the guys and I got out of the theater, all we could talk about for an hour were all the awesome things people said in this movie. Check out the soundboard for some examples, but be warned that this, and even the amazing trailer, only give away a tiny bit of how awesome Black Dynamite actually turned out to be. I'm deliberately withholding information from that is too awesome not to find out in the theater. Don't look up plot details: go see the movie instead.

So not only were my expectations met, they were actually exceeded. Considering my expectations were high enough from the trailer, this is really something! If you're in a city this movie is playing in, I'm telling you, it will not disappoint. Get out there and see this movie on the big screen while you can, before it inevitably becomes a cult hit on DVD and cable.

New York Asian Film Fest '09: Tokyo Gore Night - TOKYO TOWER IS STUCK IN MY ASS!

I don't know where to start with this thing, other than to say it started at 11 PM and didn't end until three. Tokyo Gore Police may have run at NYAFF before (not that I'd gotten around to seeing it before last night) but it certainly never ran like this. I might remember stuff out of order: forgive me. Also, this entry, like the showing, is very, very long, so be prepared for that.

Firstly, the directors of Tokyo Gore Police and Machine Girl, Yoshihiro Nishimura and Noboru Iguchi, along with CG man Tsuyoshi Kazuno and CG's mortal enemy, Tak Sakaguchi, who'd also been around for the showing of his own Otokojuku movie, were all present. I can't emphasize enough that these dudes truly seem to love their work, and that they sure as hell know how to have some fun. Some seriously twisted fun, yes, but isn't that the best kind?

Before you continue, I should probably elaborate on the film themselves. Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, and the rest of these guys' work are not for everybody. There's certainly worse stuff out there that's disgusting for its own sake-- may you never see it-- but these films push the boundaries of the bloody, grotesque and cruel, and they push it so far that they are often very, very funny. This is not the kind of horror that scares: it is the kind of horror where you either laugh or throw up. If you are squeamish about blood and guts, or about graphic descriptions of the atrocities on display in these films, I recommend you move slowly away from these movies and from this post. If you are already laughing, then you're home.

New York Asian Film Fest '09: Be a Man!! Samurai School: THIS MATCH WILL END IN AN INSTANT

This next movie is an adaptation of a series I've talked about briefly before: Sakigake!! Otokojuku. I even posted my anticipation back when the film came out in Japan and then immediately forgot it existed! As you can probably determine from the English title, this is a story about manning up in a comically harsh Japanese nationalist private school. It's one of the classics of Shonen Jump fight manga, and director/star Tak Sakaguchi grew up reading it and wanting to be hero Momotaro Tsurugi. I guess there was only one way to make that happen, huh?

As it's made by a fan, the movie is extremely faithful to the source material, particularly the hyperactive shifts between relatively serious action and extremely stupid comedy. They did it so well that one guy complained during the Q&A after the movie. That's just Otokojuku, man! They even hired the inimitable Shigeru Chiba, who played a couple of roles in the anime version, to narrate. There is no greater entertainment than a freeze-frame on a fancily-named martial arts maneuver as Shigeru Chiba shouts its name at the top of his lungs. The video I linked is from 25 years ago, and the man hasn't lost his touch one bit.

The story is hyper-compressed, as you'd expect from an adaptation of a shonen fight manga, and it covers as many of Otokojuku's characteristic tests of manliness as possible-- like Momo's buddy Genji proving himself by sitting in a vat of boiling oil-- before finishing with the classical shonen fighting tournament. All parties are constantly proving their manhood by fighting, screaming or both until they start to bleed, and then fighting or screaming harder in response. Manly spirit is in great supply here, and the booming yell of headmaster Hehachi Edajima in particular (without his hairdo, the one that Tekken's Heihachi got from him) is done magnificent CG justice.

Not that there's a lot of CG in the film: Sakaguchi kinda hates it, and he made a point to let us know in the Q&A that he tries to make action movies with as little CG as possible. It's all stuntmen here, doing crazy, crazy stuff. In the first five minutes of the movie, a character is hit by a car going about 40mph, which Tak and the stuntman who was hit (also present) are pretty sure is a record. As a result of this approach, his team's stuff has a lot of old-school spirit, like a Hong Kong movie without the kung-fu. After all, most of the guys of Otokojuku aren't suited to that fancy hop-around kinda stuff: just check out Momo's "punch everybody really, really fast" fighting style.

It was shot in two weeks on 400 grand, and yet it's still definitely the best live-action treatment that Otokojuku could ever have hoped for. Probably one of the best of the transitions from anime/manga to live-action that I've seen thus far. Dragonball Evolution probably cost a ton more. Just sayin'.

I have a question for those of you Japanese-fluent who have read all the manga or watched the anime: there's a subplot that doesn't really go anywhere in the film in which rough, scarred Genji goes out on a date with a cute schoolgirl who was really just pranking him the way that Japanese schoolgirls seem to have a thing for doing in the movies. After being humiliated by her and her friends, Genji yells "THIS WAS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE" and runs off to the park to cry while the girl looks on, ashamed. Momo has to cheer up his bro, and it never comes up again. I couldn't figure out whether they were just checking off the list of scenes from the manga, as they are in the rest of the film, or whether this was one of those studio-mandate scenes where they add a female character to expand the demographic. I expect a response, Internet!

New York Asian Film Fest '09: House IS THE MOVIE I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED

That's right, the New York Asian Film Fest is going on right now. If you're into the kind of things I cover on this blog, there is probably something here that you're going to like. Before we get started, I'll direct you very quickly to my coverage of the stuff I saw at last year's fest: Ryu ga Gotoku, Retro Game Master, Dororo, The Bodyguard, and Oneechanbara. Should give you an idea of the kind of thing I go to the fest to see.

Anyway, my first movie of the fest this year was the life-changing House (or as a deep, menacing voice intones at the title card, HAUUUSUUUU). I'd seen clips on the Internet, but taken out of context, you still don't really know what you're getting out of this movie other than a full-on sensory assault. You can find those same clips on Youtube if you search "Hausu", but I really recommend you go into this blind, and I'm going to tell you as little as I possibly can of what happens in this movie.

House is an idol vehicle and a slasher movie, and it's directed by the man who made this amazing commercial featuring Charles Bronson hawking cologne. We got a little primer on director Nobuhiko Obayashi before the film began, with a talk from Machine Girl director Noboru Iguchi and Tokyo Gore Police director Yoshihiro Nishimura. These guys gushed enthusiasm for the film and gave us a little trivia, some of which, perhaps, Mr. Obayashi would not have liked us to hear. After the intro, we got a short video from Obayashi and his daughter, who gave her dad the story of House back when she was seven years old. And yes, this explains a lot about the film. After that, another gift from Obayashi: eight minutes worth of commercial work, including my favorite Mandom commercials. These commercials serve as a visual preview for House, where you see the same kind of cheesy effects and non-sequiturs out in full force.

But even then, you are not prepared for House. Like Iguchi and Nishimura told us before the show, nothing really happens in the entire first half of the movie, and that doesn't really matter because Obayashi's totally off-the-wall direction supplies the entertainment by itself. Want commercial-length glamor shots? Absolutely! You want abrupt tonal shifts? House has got them! You want the movie to just stop in the middle and comment on itself? Got that, too! Music by Godiego (yes, Godiego, it starts at 1:33)? YES. There isn't a frame of this movie where some bizarre visual effect or unorthodox method of storytelling isn't in use. The plot is total nonsense, things just happen for the sake of it, and Obayashi has the wonderful habit of inserting gags at completely inappropriate times: for example, cutting to a man eating ramen at a stand staffed by a bear in the middle of a scene where two of our schoolgirls are sailing on a sea of cat blood.

A pack of schoolgirls, each named for their sole characteristic-- their names are Gorgeous, Fantasy, Melody, Kung Fu, Sweet, Prof (the nerd), and Mac (the fat one)-- decide to stay at Gorgeous' aunt's house for their summer vacation, which is obviously a terrible idea from the moment they set foot on the property. In the second half of the film, they're picked off one by one by said aunt-- who's a vengeful spirit, of course-- in ways that coincide with their silly, silly names. This is where Obayashi's goofy surrealism really goes into macabre overdrive, and I'm not going to spoil a second of it.

This all sounds pretty cut and dry, but when you're actually watching this movie, you'll understand from the very first moments. Unfortunately, you can't buy the movie on DVD, but you can find it floating around online if you look really hard. If you're in NYC, I highly recommend you go to Thursday's midnight screening: the first one sold out and the second one probably will just on word-of-mouth. Hell, I'm even considering seeing it again. Watch this movie any damn way you can. You will not regret it.

Live-Action Akira is dead: NOW STOP CRYING, NOBODY WANTS TO KILL YOUR PRECIOUS ANIMES ANYMORE

There's been a minor trend in Hollywood lately towards getting live-action film rights for various popular Japanese cartoons: as they've already done (or are planning) movies for all the major American superheroes it makes sense to get your hands in some other properties before Well A runs dry. Unfortunately for all the studios, two big studio movies based on anime have come out and bombed: one was Speed Racer, which was awesome and everybody involved knew would tank, and the other was Dragonball: Evolution, which was fucking terrible and everybody involved knew would tank. I would dare speculate that the failure of Dragonball in particular has put some fear in the studio heads who've already put themselves behind other live-action anime projects, of which there are a few.

Well, gang, count one down. The Akira live-action film, which, if I recall correctly, has been on and off in the planning stages since the early 90s anime boom, is once again dead. This isn't to say that this particular movie's dead for good, or that the Ghost in the Shell and Robotech productions are doomed, but perhaps it signals a, shall we say, cautious attitude towards our beloved big-eye catgirl robot maid cartoons?

So is it a good thing or a bad thing that this trend seems to be getting finished before it started? I've already pre-emptively insulted all the people who want Hollywood to stay away from their anime forever (Nippon banzai wai wai sugoi kawaii), but it's not like I'm not cautious. On the one hand, "anime movie" could become the next "comic book movie": we could have a nice 20/80 ratio of quality to shit, and maybe a couple of those movies would be outstanding adaptations or even outstanding entertainment in their own right, completely apart from their source work. Maybe somebody would make a really good version of something shitty, like, I dunno, all those old Ohata OVAs. On the other hand, "anime movie" could become the next "video game movie", nearly all of which I have ignored and been better off for it.

The way I figure, Hollywood is just a total crapshoot, but I'd rather they take the 99-to-1 chance of making a decent movie than not take the shot at all. That said, you can usually tell whether the movie's gonna suck or not when they tell you who the director is and you take a look at his past work. And remember that sometimes, even terrible movies are salvageable, and you get a beautiful stroke of cosmic luck, like Raul Julia getting to play M. Bison.

The Great Happiness Space: I GUESS I'M EMOTIONALLY DAMAGED

Let's shift gears yet again and talk about a documentary. I watched this on Netflix streaming the other night, so if you have an account, you can really easily check it out that way. Ever since then I've been unable to stop telling my friends about it, and I guess I have to count you all from now on. The Great Happiness Space is a doc about the real host club scene in Japan, and how it and the rest of the companionship/sex industry in Japan form this endless black hole of despair. You know that cliche image of someone falling down an endless void, their arms and legs sticking up in the air and flailing as they yell? That's how I felt this entire movie. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA".

Rakkyo is the stage of of our vicious cycle, a big host club in Osaka where women pay by the hour for the false companionship of pretty boys with spiky hair. Even though all a host really does is flirt, karaoke and drink with his customers, partying as hard as five or so desperate women are willing to pay you for is still pretty tough work. Leader and club owner Issei guesstimates that he puts down ten bottles of champagne in a night, immediately noting "My liver's probably fucked". Anybody would be willing to risk their liver when they stand to pull down what these guys do, though: 10 grand a month is considered low, entry-level pay, and Issei makes 50.

It's okay to stop here and drop your jaw and say "Jesus fucking Christ", so I'm going to give you a minute.

The guys make all that money by how well they play the girls, naturally: the main trick is that they've built a small ceremony around opening and drinking a champagne bottle, the "champagne call." Order a bottle and the hosts crowd around, pour the booze into a giant novelty mug (you have to have a tissue under your chin while you drink from these things), and either customer or host-- more often host-- chugs it down while the rest of the guys dance around and give the customer the attention she's really paying for. The idea, of course, is to make the customer feel so special that she's miserable when the drink is done and the guys go to the next girl. That way she'll buy another, the hosts will come back, Girl B will be left alone, and so the process repeats itself. This sort of bidding war for love is how the hosts make the bulk of their money.

The hosts are transparently cynical and manipulative by trade, simultaneously presenting the fantasy their customers seek and making sure that it's very costly. One host has a crisis of conscience, and the guys have a group talk where they ultimately agree that while too much exploitation is an awful thing, a little exploitation is just what the girls came here for. It doesn't seem to honestly satisfy anybody's conscience, though. "I love you", for example, is tossed around cheaply by both host and customer, and neither party is really stupid enough to believe it. Ultimately, the hosts are numb, distant, and a little tragic themselves: the job has completely separated them from their own ability to honestly love. Plus they puke up their own blood sometimes from all the champagne.

There's this subplot with a new guy who's real clean-cut and straight-edged, and you can tell they want to show you his gradual decline, but nothing really happens to him short of getting his hair bleached.

The customers are about as interesting as the hosts, and a lot sadder: they have no apparent regrets about the kind of money they spend, and as I mentioned, they're deeply involved in the host club fantasy. Many of these women are so involved, in fact, that they've managed to go utterly beyond reason and earnestly believe they have a chance at a serious relationship with their chosen host.

When the first half of the movie details how much people are spending, you're asking yourself throughout "Where the hell does anybody get this kind of money?" Well, sometimes the answer is simpler than I imagine: they're in the sex business too. Only other hostesses, and more often prostitutes, can actually afford the ludicrous costs of high-end host club membership. And this is what's truly baffling about it: more than anybody, you'd figure these women would know better. I can't imagine, in their heart of hearts, that they don't. But they sure as hell don't show it! Night after night, these women put down thousands upon thousands of dollars towards their mutual dream of being with Issei forever and ever. The phrase "financial worship" is used more than once.

As miserable as the hosts probably ultimately are, they've at least got tons of money out of the deal (the money trail goes john to hooker to host, it seems), even if they don't seem to have any time to do anything with it. These women are sad on a whole other level. I want to say "like otaku," but it's really a lot worse than that. Otaku aren't so beaten down by the world that they feel like selling their bodies to buy $10,000 hugpillows is the only way they will ever achieve happiness.

The movie really slams home the point when you finally get to see Issei leave his number one customer and turn to the camera in total disgust, launching into a speech he can't say to her but clearly wants her to hear about how she's crazy and manipulative, and says things to the cameras that she wants him to hear. These two might only have ever been able to honestly communicate with each other through documentary film cameras. Maybe it was a good thing, after all.

Ultimately, the whole thing is a terrible cycle of despair, and the participants are all prisoners by choice. You can't feel sorry for the guys because of the cash and the exploitation, and you can't feel bad for the women because they really crave said exploitation. There's not much to say about it, except maybe to put your hands up in front of your face, reach towards God and ask why.

So yeah, I just saw Badass Manly Watchmen

I'm allowed to make this post because everybody in nerdland is talking about this movie anyway. I dreaded this movie when I heard the 300 guy was doing it, and the trailer that got everbody's fanboy dicks all waving in the air got me dreading it even more. It seemed to me-- and it still does, having seen the movie-- that glamorous, slow-motion heroic bloodshed is about the least Watchmen thing in the world. But the visuals were dead on, and it would obviously be worth the price of admission to even see elements of this book brought faithfully to life on the big screen. So I read all the advance reviews, I built my expectations, and I saw it opening night anyway.

My expectations lined up exactly with what I got: the movie is a loving fanboy tribute, except it's the kind of fanboy that cranks all the violence up to "ludicrous", carefully strips the original work of all subtlety and moral ambiguity, and kinda forgets about pesky shit like character or whether or not the viewer cares about any of this. On its own merits, it's a fun ride, but it's a poor representation of the comic as a whole. The more you think about it, the worse it becomes.

Please be informed that I am going to spoil the hell out of a movie that came out yesterday and a 20-year-old comic book. Enjoy this spoiler space, and hit back on your browser if nobody's already told you yet.

(brought to you by BRAWNDO)

Let's just get to the violence first, because it's one of the few times that ridiculous ultraviolence hasn't worked for me. Every incidence of violence has been blown up. Every punch is turned into a kung-fu setpiece, mutilations and fountainous ejaculations of blood are worked in wherever possible, and when Dr. Manhattan disintegrates people in the comics, the movie has them exploding into goo ala Fist of the North Star. These scenes are all shot the 300 way, which is to say in slow-motion, no matter how redundant.

The single most point-missing part of the movie is probably the scene where Nite Owl and Silk Spectre are attacked by gangsters in an alley, and are supposed to rediscover the weird thrill they get from playing superheroes and beating up bad guys. This is all well and good, but then they start killing people. Detaching limbs, slitting throats, breaking necks with a joy that is in-character for, well, a Zack Snyder movie, but not for these characters. There are unrepentant killers in Watchmen, and these two are not them: Nite Owl is a nerdy, insecure Batman and Silk Spectre has been groomed for the profession since childhood and never really cared for it. The movie doesn't even really acknowledge that there's a line between "costumed hero" and "casual murderer", which really ought to be a big concern for Watchmen, you know? The movie's overwhelming bloodlust gets in the way of issues like that.

My friend said that Snyder films his sex a lot like his violence, and I guess that's how you sum up the sex scene. What was elegantly handled in a page before becomes straightforward titillation on the screen. (The music, by the way. What a collection of groaners.) It really becomes clear here that they only hired the actress who plays Silk Spectre for her likeness to a comic character and her willingness to do this scene. It wasn't acting chops.

Speaking of which, the cast. Most of the cast are spot-on duplicates of their comic equivalents and play them well, with the exception, again, of Silk Spectre. This is really unfortunate, because her character is the emotional center of the whole thing. As such, any emotional scenes-- particularly the fateful conversation with Dr. Manhattan on Mars, which was an astonishing botch-- are snubbed out by bad acting. This is fine by the movie, because it's really not very concerned with that pussy shit.

The other thing is Ozymandias. Spoiler: Ozy was behind everything all along. He's the bad guy. This used to be a surprise, but in the movie they've rewritten him into a really obvious movie villain. He's recast as an effeminate young man with a slight accent who hangs out at Studio 54, and ominous music plays whenever he talks: this is Hollywood action movie shorthand for evil. From the first scene it's obvious not that he's behind everything, but that he's a huge douchebag. Comic Ozy was a pretty smug guy, but he projects this strong, wholesome "I'm your other dad!" image, which is lost in the rewrite. When people say "But that guy's a saint!" about him in the comic, you buy it. Nobody calls Ozymandias a saint in the movie. In a related, amazing botch, Ozymandias' climactic declaration-- "I did it thirty-five minutes ago"-- has no impact whatsoever. The audience barely even noticed it happened.

And then there's the script. Every whisper is turned into a scream. Everything that's implied in the comics is stated outright in the script, and in places where the original dialogue was sufficient, it tends to tag on some cliched line to make sure the audience understands what is being said. But I'm not even sure the audience that isn't familar with Watchmen understands what the hell is going on here at all! It's not really made clear that these are supposed to be normal people wearing costumes, not superpowered types (and then they all inexplicably know kung-fu so maybe they are...), and it feels like that fact is omitted-- and there is kung-fu, and the violence is amped up-- so that people would go see this movie.

Also, the part at the end where Nite Owl runs back to yell at Ozymandias was like self-insertion fanfic.

Complaints aside, the movie's visuals are outstanding. Scenes like Dr. Manhattan's transformation and Nite Owl's dream about making out during a nuclear holocaust are translated to the screen as oh-my-god perfection. And the changed ending is just fine, jeez, of course they couldn't have had the squid. There's a hell of a lot to see here if you're a fan of the book, but you'll still probably be disappointed. On the other hand, it's tough to recommend this movie to a non-fan, and the reviews (also the intense fanboy rage in response to them) really reflect the total confusion and bewilderment this movie has caused in anybody who hasn't already read the book. If you want to see a lot of stuff (mostly humans) explode, then I guess this movie's still got you covered, though. It's all visceral: the brain comes in second and the heart may as well not exist.