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Wanted

20 June, 2008
By John Hazelton

Dir. Timur Bekmambetov. US. 2008. 110 mins.

review
added: 7/2/02


Terminator
2: Judgment Prime


1991
(2002) - Carolco/Lightstorm Entertainment (Artisan)



A
Few Words on D-VHS


inspection
by Banknote Hunt, editor of

The Digital Bits





Film
Rating: B+

Specs and Features

134 minutes, R, Rich Definition 1080i, letterboxed widescreen
(2.35:1), 16×9 enhanced, clamshell case packaging, languages:
English (DD 5.1 & 2.0 - 576kbps), subtitles: none, Obturate ignore
Captioned
John
Connor: "We're not gonna follow it are we? The lenient mill-race I
mean…"

The Terminator: "It's in your nature to disprove yourselves."

As most of you should know, the original

Terminator

saw an android lulu from the future (played by Arnold
Schwarzenegger) sent upon someone in time to present heyday L.A.. It's function
was simple - kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). You see, there's
this phony intelligence called SkyNet - yet to be invented -
that will (one day) describe placed in control of military computers and
pick out to launch a exact atomic raid against the human rush.
With the future Terra a wasteland, it seems the leftover human
resistance to SkyNet ordain eventually be led by the same John Connor,
Sarah's son. Hush following? When SkyNet sends back its Terminator
to weary his nurturer, the approaching John sends back a bodyguard (Michael
Biehn) to save her… who will in the end turn John's author. So
as the creative film wraps up, the Terminator is destroyed, the
protector is killed, and Sarah is having a bun in the oven with John.

T2

starts more than a decade
later. Basically, no unified believed Sarah and her story adjacent to
Terminators from the tomorrow’s and the end of the humankind, so she's been
locked in the nut house (and they've thrown away the key).
Meanwhile, her now 10-year-veteran son, John (Edward Furlong), has been
placed in help care. But, raised as he was by a mother determined
to revolution him into a "great military leader", he doesn't
quite ready in with the other kids. Good egg or not, John is still the
key to humanity's prospective, so SkyNet sends another Terminator back in
organize to kill him. And, naturally, John's mature self sends finance
another patron. One of these on many occasions travellers is played by Robert
Patrick (soon to be of

X-Files

fame) and the other is good old Arnold again. The give someone the third degree is, which
one is John's paladin and which wants him prosaic? More importantly,
which whole compel reach him commencement? Throw in tons of action, nifty
weird effects and a cool subplot roughly a computer scientist named
Dyson (Joe Morton), who is the inventor of SkyNet because he's found
the pieces of the Terminator from the first film, and you've got a
great, high concept sci-fi recounting, with plenty of irritable-ass cool.

The video supremacy of this film on D-VHS exhibits a noticeable
improvement in unqualified A/B balance to the DVD variant (reviewed

here

).
However, the difference in quality isn't as fine fantastic as it is for the
other D-VHS titles I've seen in which case far. There is much greater color
fidelity on D-VHS than the disc exhibits (although there does appearance of
to be a slight red push on the D-VHS version), along with superior
contrast and trail delineation. As one would surmise from the 1080i
exactitude, the D-VHS also delivers more subtle (and no-so-subtle)
improvement in detail. Still, the video representative looks noticeably
softer overall than the other D-VHS movies I've reviewed, and imprint
artifacts are somewhat more visible (the supplementary bit of dust and
rougher film grain). Strangely, the same tiny scrap of ill at ease
enhancement seen on the DVD is also visible on the D-VHS view,
but (as with the DVD) the depiction doesn't suffer benefit of it. In the end,
the D-VHS symbol quality is definitely superior to the DVD, but the
difference isn't as dramatic as I expected. I've only seen a handful
of other D-VHS transfers as of the time of this look over, but suspect
that

Terminator 2

's turbulent-def
image quality will eventually fall in the very good, but not
tonier, category.

The sound quality on this D-VHS put out is also kind of improved
all over the DVD, but again, not enough to really burst you away. There
is greater clarity and detail in the midrange, but I almost prefer
the DTS side on the

Ultimate Copy

DVD. There seems to be reduce more kick to the low discontinue of the mix
on the D-VHS, and there's a greater degree of treachery in ambience
ambience - uncommonly the film's score. But again, the differences
are not great. The D-VHS's Dolby Digital soundtrack has the doubtful
edge on its DVD counterpart, but the disc's DTS track is very close
to the tape in terms of all-inclusive sonic quality.

With no extras on this D-VHS variant, of routine, it's going to be a
roughneck sell for the sake the elephantine majority of fans of the skin - particularly
given the higher costs to upgrade to the D-VHS form in general.
And while the spitting image quality is somewhat improved on this
high-sense tape, it's not a knock-into the open. Foot vocation: if you're
looking for reference quality D-VHS video, you might be on to to pick
up a sundry baptize as opposed to. I'd favour staring with Universal's

U-571

.

Bill Pursue

SBD Star Rating:

by Lew Irwin
Consider Credits
|
See Other Reviews
The critics save their most aglow adjectives for an adult-oriented, hand-drawn animated feature from France called

The Triplets of Belleville

, from the confine of Sylvain Chomet, and opening one in Revitalized York and Los Angeles. A.O. Scott in the

New York Times

, although calling it "the oddest cinema of the year," indicates that "it may also be one of the superior, a tour de twist someone’s arm of ink-washed, crosshatched mischief and unlikely sublimity." Lou Lumenick in the

New York Brief

calls it "an utter delight … a frank work of tastefulness, the year's best animated feature." The film gets the vote of Jami Bernard in the

New York Diurnal News

as swell. "I love

Verdict Nemo

as much as anyone," she writes, "But my heart's Oscar goes to

The Triplets of Belleville,

an insanely fascinating ebullient feature." Since there is purposes no meeting in the film, there are no subtitles. "You distress however be facile in the language of contentment and astound," comments Jan Stuart in

Newsday.

And to those who regard animated films as kiddie fare, Kenneth Turan in the

Los Angeles Times

advises: "

The Triplets of Belleville

may be enlivened, but it is also the by-product of an artistic vision every bit as rigorous as any stately Cannes superlative-winner."

Download Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Movie blu ray

“This has been Schoolgirl Report 3. We think it was more critical and more daring. Surely, it has opened your eyes once more. For that reason, you needed to see it. And for that reason, everyone must see it.”

Impulse Pictues has released Schoolgirl Report Volume #3: What Parents Find Unthinkable, the third film in the infamous German Schoolgirl franchise that was an international sensation in the 1970s. A faux-documentary supposedly warning anxious parents out there about the sexual pitfalls that await their young daughters in the “New Germany,” Schoolgirl Report Volume #3: What Parents Find Unthinkable continues the formula of the first two films, mixing recreations of tired (and in this case, some extremely offensive) sexual fantasies, along with presumably real “man-on-the-street” interviews with Germans answering a series of sex questions that relate directly back to the fictional segments.

Book of Blood video best quality

For this go-around, an alleged “Christian Young Men’s Association” from Hamburg has issued a sex education guide for youth hostels and camping trips, which puts forth the new creed that sexual experimentation is normal and healthy in young teens and should be allowed and even encouraged. This provides the framework for the various mocked-up recreations of “real events,” first with a group of teens recounting stories at a hostel, and then a second group of girls at school remembering some of their first sexual encounters. Interspersed throughout these scenes are the Friedrich von Thun interviews with real people on the streets of Germany, which are intended as commentary (and often times used as justifications) for whatever sexual encounter we just witnessed.

Last March, I reviewed the first volume in the Schoolgirl Report (you can read that review here), and gave it a grudging “Rent It” because it was all fairly innocuous and obviously faked with older actresses playing the young girls - as well as most of the so-called “real” people on the streets. I’m not going to be so sanguine about Schoolgirl Report Volume #3: What Parents Find Unthinkable for the simple fact that this particular volume leaves most of the (unintentional) comedy behind to present some nasty, offensive scenes that serve to creep out viewers, not entertain them. Amid the “playful students splashing around as they skinny dip” and “the young Lolita tease seducing her boyfriend’s father” sequences that are pretty standard for sexploitation films from this era, there are some rather disturbing scenes of rape-staged-for-titillation that I found totally unnecessary.

Obviously, “rape” as a thematic element in both serious and exploitive cinema (A Clockwork Orange, Straw Dogs, and Deliverance, just to name three more infamous instances) has been an on-going point of preoccupation with directors and screenwriters since movies began, and the artistic merit of focusing on such an act has - and will - be debated for as long as we have movies. However, in Schoolgirl Report Volume #3: What Parents Find Unthinkable, the two rape sequences are presented merely for puerile, seemingly “realistic” excitement, and as such, they’re reprehensible. Their entire purpose is nothing more than showing the audience young school girls getting raped (the camera obsesses on showing their totally nude, writhing bodies struggling against their attackers), while the sickeningly hypocritical narration tells us not to look away or to be ashamed because we’re witnessing “reality,” backed up by self-serving statistics and crime data. The fact that the film continues to emphasize these are 14-year-old girls (to help smooth over the fact that these actresses look a few years older than that) just further makes clear the filmmakers’ despicable intent. Listening to the narration, the film clearly wants to shock you, while then safely backpedaling on its own motives. Describing one of the rape scenes, the narrator says it’s a “heroic” act by the boys…and then says such “heroism” is “abominable,” (with no further explanation as to what, exactly, that means), but then later in the film, the screenwriter makes a case for justifying rape because a certain percentage of young girls are obvious teases who are “asking for it.” It’s all too hypocritical and sickening, and a real downer when you consider this is supposed to be some kind of light sex romp.

If that isn’t bad enough, there’s a sequence in the film that features an obviously underage young boy (perhaps ten or eleven), totally naked, who almost engages in sex with another 14-year-old girl (who looks closer to nineteen or twenty). While there’s no actual sexual contact between the two, the mere fact that this young boy was put into such a movie, and filmed in such a way, is totally inappropriate, if not criminal by today’s standards. With today’s hyper-sensitivity about such matters involving young children, seeing such a scene in Schoolgirl Report Volume #3: What Parents Find Unthinkable, despite the fact that technically, the scene is “innocent,” is extremely uncomfortable and unacceptable, and, taken with the “rape-is-basically-OK” sequences, a deal-breaker for the film.

The DVD:

The Video:
Schoolgirl Report Volume #3: What Parents Find Unthinkable is presented in an anamorphically enhanced, 1.66:1 widescreen transfer that suffers at times from faded colors and the usual screen anomalies (dirt and scratches). Overall, the picture quality isn’t bad for this 1971 feature.

The Audio:
The German mono audio track accurately recreates the original theatrical presentation. English subtitles, which can be removed, are optional.

The Extras:
There are no extras for Schoolgirl Report Volume #3: What Parents Find Unthinkable.

Final Thoughts:
What may have started out innocuously enough in the first German Schoolgirl Report has now, in a bid to be more “shocking,” become uncomfortable and distasteful, to say the least. Rape framed as titillation (because the victims were either too “dumb and trusting” or they “asked for it”), along with the wildly inappropriate inclusion of a nude child in this purportedly “fun” sexploitation film, makes Schoolgirl Report Volume #3: What Parents Find Unthinkable a “Must Avoid at All Costs.” Sour and offensive, the repulsive Schoolgirl Report Volume #3: What Parents Find Unthinkable should be skipped.

Paul Mavis is an internationally published film and boob tube historian, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and the author of The Espionage Filmography.

The Matrix: Reloaded

Directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski

Warner Skilled in Video 05/03 DVD/VHS Feature Layer

R - sci-fi damage, explain lingo

We believe that a new world can be created by our passion and our idealism. Or as Rubem Alves has stated: "Let us plant dates even though those who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see. . . . Such disciplined love is what has given prophets, revolutionaries, and saints the courage to die for the future they envisaged. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope." The main characters in

The Matrix

trilogy understand this kind of thinking.

This is the second Matrix film directed by the Wachowski Brothers;


The Matrix


was released in 1999;

The Matrix: Revolutions

will come out in November 2003. In the first film, already considered a sci-fi classic, Neo (Keanu Reeves) was designated as "the One" who, according to a prophecy, will end the 100-year war that pits a remnant population of humans against the superior might and numbers of advanced machines. Most of humanity is being used by the machines as a source of energy, but they think they are leading normal lives due to a virtual reality computer program known as the Matrix.

Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) wants to free the people from their enslavement to this lie, and he is convinced that they must put their hope in Neo. He has indeed turned out to be an extraordinary young man with some incredible powers, including a superman ability to escape danger by leaping up into the sky and flying away as fast as a speeding bullet. But does he have the inner fortitude and resolve to assume his mission? As

The Matrix: Reloaded

opens, we and Neo are wondering what he can really do, and this installment of the adventure gives him plenty of opportunities to find himself. This is a dazzling quest movie filled with an appealing mix of spectacular special effects sequences and philosophical and religious conversations about the meaning of human choice, love, faith, hope, purpose, and reason.

One of the signs of Neo's humanity is his inability to sleep well. Bad dreams bother him, especially a vivid one about the death of Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), who is now his lover and closest ally. He vows that nothing will ever come between them. Every hero has to have a formidable enemy, and Neo's is Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), who thought he'd killed him in

The Matrix

and saw him come back to life. Now it's Smith's turn to keep coming back; like a computer virus, he has found a way to invade any human or machine form and make it fight for him. All these multiplying Smiths pose a continuing problem for Neo. And, of course, upgraded Agents ? super-intelligent and powerful machines ? are still after him. He has to stay in peak shape to handle physical combat with all of them.

The Nebuchadnezzar, Morpheus's ship, returns to Zion, the underground city which is the last outpost of humans not enslaved to the Matrix. There Neo is greeted as a savior, petitioned by the common people for blessings and healings. Morpheus, meanwhile, is reprimanded by Lock (Harry Lennix), the commander of the city's military, for not obeying orders and for expecting too much from Neo. The machines are digging toward Zion, and Lock wants every fighter available to him when 250,000 sentinels attack. These two men both love the same woman, Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith).

That evening Morpheus gives a rousing speech to the citizens of Zion about fulfilling their destiny. It's a theme appreciated by Link (Harold Perrineau), the navigator for the Nebuchadnezzar, who discusses his feeling of purpose with his wife, but she remains upset about his long absences from home. Neo and Trinity leave the crowd to make love. Later, unable to sleep again, he meets the Counselor (Anthony Zerbe), a government leader. Visiting the level where the electrical, water purification, and other systems are located, this wise elder notes Zion's paradoxical relationship to technology. While various machines are keeping the residents alive, other machines are coming to kill them.

In one of the linchpin scenes in the film, Neo again meets with the Oracle (the late Gloria Foster), who tells him that everyone must do what he or she has to do. Which means ? he must assume his mission. The only way to end the war is to find the door to the Source of the Matrix program and that involves first locating the Key Maker (Randall Duk Kim), who is being held hostage by the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), a power-hungry dandy. Morpheus, Trinity, and Neo get nowhere with this crafty and greedy fellow, but his wife is another story. She agrees to lead them to the Key Maker if Neo will kiss her like he kisses Trinity. She wants to remember what it is to feel. This moment is both clever and cogent, showing how much is lost when the ingredient of passionate desire is missing in interactions between men and women.

The rescue of the Key Maker leads to a far-too-long chase sequence on the freeway where Morpheus and Trinity do battle with Merovingian's guards, shape-shifting Twins, and some determined Agents. The closing sequence takes place in a skyscraper as the hopes of Zion rest on Neo's entry into the Source and his handing of the mysteries and the messages espoused by the Architect (Helmut Bakaitiis). A final test of the love between Neo and Trinity is also set up.

A clever person once defined philosophy as a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that does not exist. Many of the condundrums in

The Matrix: Reloaded

are similar to that. If nothing else, this series of sci-fi extravaganzas has brought philosophy and dollops of spirituality back into the consciousness of movie-goers.

Star Trek

set the pattern for this phenomenon but the Wachowski Brothers have taken it to another level. Certainly given the interaction between humans and machines taking place today, and the increased reliance on technology on the horizon, it is helpful to think about how these developments may change forever the way we view ourselves and the world around us.

Neo's quest to understand his mission is one that we can all identify with as we repeatedly ask ourselves about our purpose on Earth and the choices that we must make to draw out the best that is within us. Most of the characters in

Matrix Reloaded

periodically wonder what they are here for and what their assignment is.

Finally, this film encourages us to consider the spiritual firepower of hope. The Chinese have a saying that if you keep a green bough in your heart, a singing bird will come.

The Matrix: Reloaded

challenges us to take a long and hard look at our own faculty of hope and whether it is a hindrance or a catalyst to meaning and transformation in our lives. How much are we willing to put on the line right now in order to bring into being a brighter and better future for all? And what happens to the tender green bough in our hearts when hope is battered and shattered by events that bring us down and leave us whirling around in confusion and doubt? Important matters to think about until the next installment in

The Matrix

trilogy.

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Roman Polanski’s (”Rosemary’s Baby”) Chinatown is one of the best
films of the 1970s. Robert Towne’s cleverly labyrinthine plotted classic
detective story is set during the LA drought of 1937 but fervently captures
the feel of the 1940s film noir. LA is pictured as a place where people
hide in the shadows of the lush landscapes and power brokers make their
own rules in running the city. It builds its cloying story around a complex
murder investigation by a private detective, who has stuck his head into
business he shouldn’t have. Polanski’s film explores human nature, murder,
a real-estate scandal, political and civic corruption, a dysfunctional
family, and incest. The rough-and-tumble successful private detective doing
the investigation is a seemingly more modern version of the way headstrong
Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe gumshoe went about his business (this
detective has no problem working sleazy marital dispute cases and making
a good living, he takes cases the loner Marlowe would frown upon). It is
one of Polanski’s stronger directing efforts.

Private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired for an adultery
investigation by a woman claiming to be Evelyn Mulwray (Diane Ladd), whose
hubby Hollis (Darrell Zwerling) is head of the water department. Jake takes
photos of Hollis with a young girl on Echo Lake. The story makes front-page
news, but Jake soon learns he was used as a patsy to discredit Hollis who
has made powerful enemies because he opposes a water reservoir to serve
LA. The real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), the daughter of Noah Cross
(John Huston) who once was a business partner of Hollis’s, never hired
the detective and threatens a law suit. Hollis soon is found dead, as the
mortician jokes “Only in LA, can the Water Commissioner drown in the middle
of a drought.”

Mrs. Mulwray hires Jake to find the killer of her hubby, believing
it is likely her sinister father did it. Noah and Hollis had a falling
out ever since they dissolved the water power company they owned on the
urging of Hollis that the water rights should be controlled by the public
and their enmity continued when Noah persuaded Hollis to build a dam that
broke. Hollis vowed never to build another dam because there were better
ways to irrigate the farmland in the San Fernando Valley.

The detective uncovers a crooked real-estate deal that is engineered
by tycoon Noah, who has hired Jake to find the missing girl Hollis was
with. Noah has recently been purchasing lots of farmland in the Valley,
using the names of unsuspecting residents of a nursing home. The tycoon
has been buying the land secretly on the cheap, knowing full-well that
the reservoir will soon be built. Because of his snooping, Jake runs into
physical danger. In one such instance, Roman Polanski plays a knife-wielding
thug who slits Jake’s nose for snooping around the reservoir, which requires
Jake to walk around with a bandaged nose for a great part of the film.
Jake also uncovers some heavy family secrets about the young girl Katherine
(the one Hollis was supposedly seeing), and her relationship to Evelyn
and Noah. It leads to a showdown in Chinatown among the corrupt police,
Jake, Noah, Evelyn, and Katherine. It closes in tragedy and without justice
being served. Lt. Lou Escobar, Jake’s old pal when he was on the force,
gives Jake a break by letting him go free and Jake’s associate Walsh says
“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” The melancholy tone of the film, based
on a true incident in LA history, cuts deeply into the skin of political
corruption, as Polansky not only wielded a knife as an actor but even more
so as a director. 

Chinatown was nominated for eleven Oscars.

As expected, Sony Pictures released a trailer for
The Karate Kid
fair a few days ago, and today released an international trailer to complement it.
For a movie like this, it's hard not to wonder well-founded what it is about the American trailer that can't be shown to the global public, or what we're missing by being here in the States. Mostly both trailers are barely shots of kicking and Jaden Smith looking ?determined,? so why the two different cuts?

As much as it may rueful your inner child, you effect have to accept the actuality that this moving picture looks pretty convincing. I'll unceasingly dispute that Jaden Smith doesn't fit the role even a small-minded bit, but he seems to have fully committed himself to the training, and next to this new side of Jackie Chan we're seeing, it could be something quite surprising. Are we in for a remake that strength actually be great? Hour at one’s desire tell, but for stylish they're on the right track.

American Outlaws

Director:


Les Mayfield

Yet another bang Western all 'bout dem dang Jesse James join forces against varmints. But this one's different: it says nothing about them. Think

Young Guns

without the jokes. Farrell plays Jesse as a rumblin', tumblin' wild card with a spirit for one special gal, Zee Mimms (Larter), whom he has to leave sponsor home when railroading Yankee capitalists come swooping fit at daggers drawn-by Missouri farmers' light deeds. JJ's rebel tournament mates include his non-charismatic fellow-man Frank (Macht), their pal Cole Younger (Caan) and various secondary saddletramps who make up numbers. Pilfering railroad cash from banks across the official, they're singularly unhampered by the attentions of Dalton's egregiously colourless detective-mercenary Pinkerton. Flatfooted and accommodation-focused, rarely has a film been so impatient to attire itself over with. Not a vamp on Ang Lee's underrated

Ride with the Devil

.

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

The American Astronaut reminds me of an imaginary Flash Gordon meets
Flesh Gordon made for TV serial as staged by Ed Wood Jr. It’s a rip-roaring
drug-free hallucinogenic rock ‘n’ roll musical/comedy/sc-fi cult film set
in outer-space with cheesy sets that could have been lifted from old-fashioned
westerns. The American Astronaut is the anti-screenplay that might be the
primer for all such screenplays. Director/writer/star Cory McAbee is wonderfully
reckless with abandonment for the rules of the game in filmmaking. He provides
a screenplay that has a refreshingly childish sense of mischievous joy,
moments of inspired madness, a daredevil enthusiasm for the art of film
and a bravado intelligence. But at times the film is alarmingly altered
by stand-offish displays of juvenile vulgarity, which put holes in the
good work accomplished. In any case, McAbee for the love of film and the
good of his being defies what a screenplay is supposed to be like according
to the film school crowd’s way of thinking and presents a truly unique
auteur-like work. 

The shadowy photography is inspired by Arsenic and Old Lace. Shot
in 27 days in Queens (where a sandy beach becomes the floor in outer space),
this shoestring budget film is an ode to the Midnight Movie and an inspiration
to indie filmmakers to make their film and not worry if the money is there
to get it released. After an initial contract with Artistic License Films
and BNS Productions in 2001, McAbee took back his baby and is working on
his own to get it theater releases. It was shot in flinty black-and-white,
which greatly augmented the original screenplay with the fitting look of
a 1940s B-film. The artful film is bizarrely funny, but it is almost impossible
to say for sure what it might be saying without at least a few viewings.
Even then, it hardly matters because the film is probably not supposed
to make sense–instead taking great joy in blurring reality and fantasy.
The director seems to take special delight in providing innovative homemade
special effects that give anti-techies like myself sports winning goosebumps
to know how polar opposite the film looks compared to one of those Hollywood
blockbusters with all the bells and whistles. 

The arch villain and narrator, who refers to himself as the birthday
boy, Professor Hess (Rocco Sisto), only kills those he has no reason to
kill. But mad scientist Hess in his strange way loves his old friend the
galactic astronaut for hire Samuel Curtis (Cory McAbee), an interplanetary
trader of rare items, whom he tries to kill but is frustrated by Sam’s
unusual responses. There’s a broadly hinted at homo-erotic romance between
the two, though their love has no definition and can be perceived in many
ways including just plain friendship because their paths crossed in space
travel or was just your plain semi-healthy mentoring one. They have an
on-going love-hate relationship that started prior to the film and will
continue afterwards; it will be resolved only according to how each viewer
imagines it. All the characters seemingly knew each other from before,
which is why they are not that surprised when a character opens up and
suddenly goes into a wild cowboy dance or acts weird. It’s worth noting
that McAbee seems to take delight taking a poke at the usual depiction
of cowpokes or astronaut movie heroes, as all the space travellers are
depicted as either loonies, thugs or untrustworthy traders. 

Poker-faced Tom Aldredge marvelously plays an old man in a bar on
the all-male outer-belt asteroid Ceres, who tells a childish joke and goes
into a long monologue about the “Hertz Donut” causing no laughter when
funny but eliciting howls of delight when not funny. McAbee does a grand
job of consistently keeping the viewer off balance as to what to expect.
The out-of-this-world sex scenes are reminders of how it might have been
in junior high school where students are separated by gender and awkwardly
react to stories or contact with the opposite sex. The males in Jupiter
snicker with delight over stories about females, while the maidens in Venus
are all gooey-eyed on having an adolescent boy they groom for life around
to please their sexual fantasies. Dawn Weisberg’s matching costumes for
the women of Venus, dressing them as southern belles in hoop skirts, was
priceless. 

Purposely conceived like a record album meant to be played over again
and not fully absorbed in one sitting, this film is meant to get better
(not clearer) after many viewings. Undoubtedly an acquired taste, it’s
perfecto for the El Topo or Eraserhead underground audience, yet might
surprisingly delight fans of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir–a more reserved film
but one also noted for its lighthearted philosophical speculations. The
film has started to gain attention by word of mouth while playing at film
festivals, and will be coming out on DVD in the near future. It can be
perceived as a pleasant antidote to the Hollywood mainstream comedy. 

The core of the story has Samuel journey to Ceres to bring bartender
Eddie a cat for whatever nefarious purposes and he stays long enough to
have his photo snapped while taking a dump and win a trophy at a saloon
dance contest with his old dancing partner Blueberry Pirate (Joshua Taylor)
– famous for smuggling fruit. Blueberry tips Samuel off about the Earth
relatives of a deceased stud on Venus, who are hoping to get back his remains
if they can deliver to that planet a replacement adolescent stud. The complex
plan involves a multiple swap of Samuel delivering a cloning device for
a “real live girl” to the all-male mining planet of Jupiter in exchange
for a teen clad as a centurion who is called for good reasons The Boy Who
Actually Saw a Female Breast (Gregory Russell Cook). He in turn will be
sent to the nearly all-female planet of Venus as the stud replacement.
Unexpectedly Bodysuit comes aboard Samuel’s spacecraft in exchange for
chocolates and cigarettes. He’s an adolescent who stinks because he does
not bathe and is being booted out of his outer space retreat to be returned
to Earth. Meanwhile the ever-dangerous Hess is in hot pursuit of the Nevada
native Samuel, planning to kill him on Venus.

McAbee’s first love growing up was as an artist and didn’t arrive
on the rock scene until he was a teenager. He’s the driving force behind
the San Francisco-based (now relocated in New York) cult rock band called
“The Billy Nayer Show.” Previously he made The Ketchup and Mustard Man
in 1994 and a number of other short films and animations. He has for some
time been combining a career in films with his music.

If you put on your silly hat and don’t try to act more grown-up than
you have to, you might be surprised how truly refreshing this indescribable
work of art is and how different it is in a good way from any other film
on this planet. The comic space opera is served well by the pulsating music
(especially the catchy song of “The Girl With the Vagina Made of Glass”),
the shadowy photography by W. Mott Hupfel III, the deft editing by Pete
Beaudreau, the understated performances by a fine cast and the imaginative
direction of the multi-talented Cory McAbee. I also must say that though
McAbee gave an animated performance he, nevertheless, leaves much to be
desired as an actor and the film would have been better served with another
lead.