The time of great leaders has passed for us. The time of great change has gone to the wayside. We used to have great men and women to look up to. That we all looked up to. Franklin Delanor Roosevelt. Mahatma Gandhi. John F. Kennedy. Martin Luther King Jr. We don’t have that anymore. We don’t even have the will to change the world anymore.
Even when we try we give up too quickly. A month, a few weeks. As long as it catches our fancy. There was a time when people fought their entire lives to create change.
I want to create that change. To be that leader. To finally wake up a sleeping America, a sleeping world. To reignite the will of the people.
Because nobody else will.
Because I refuse to sink into normality.
Because I refuse to shit out a few kids and sit on my ass.
Because I refuse to settle for anything less then greatness.
Because I’ve felt the deaths and triumphs of a thousand people in a thousand stories.
Because I know I can make others feel the same way.
I don’t know how, but I know the path will be long and hard.
I don’t care.
I will be great.
I will change the world.
Month: January 2015
Boyhood (2014) Review
Boyhood: a film shot over the course of 12 years, starting in 2002. Having been born in 1995, I’m only a year older than the protagonist, Mason. His childhood is my childhood, and to a small extent, his film is my film. There are thousands of people out there who will review this film but only a handful will be able to connect to it on this level. That’s not to say the events in the film happened to me, but rather it’s just a fundamental understanding of what a character is feeling because you felt it at the same time, with the same music, styles and, events floating around your head.
Of course this film was going to work for me. Of course I was going to like it, but as I watched it I wondered how this film appeals to everyone else. What do they get out of it? Boyhood is ultimately three stories, that of Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane), his father (Ethan Hawke), and his mother (Patricia Arquette). Through the eyes of Mason we see the stories of his parents (and everyone else around him) unfold. The stories of their lives weaving through his. Hawke’s Dad struggling with maturity and responsibility; Arquette’s Mom trying to find herself outside of her family, but struggling to care for them nonetheless; Coltrane’s Mason, a boy thrown from home to home, with a constantly evolving idea of family and of life.
Boyhood is less a narrative and more an experience, and a tightly constructed one at that. For being shot over 12 years, Linklater’s film manages to be even smoother than a documentary covering the same time period would be. The experience is so immersive at times that you forget you are watching fiction. As the film goes on though, what became puzzling for me was the thematic question: What is this film actually about?
Your identity? Your path in life? The people around you?
This question started to bother me about two thirds through and I finally started taking notes, probably a little too late. Appropriate, putting it in contrast with my life. Normally I wouldn’t review a film I don’t feel I have full grasp of, but in this case, as in life, I think the experience is more important than the analysis.
In case you haven’t guessed, Boyhood is ultimately about life, and because of this, it’s somewhat open-ended as to what its themes are. Everyone will (hopefully) pull something different from it, as they would any other two hours of their life.
In the final moments of the film a high teenager yells to a beautiful desert landscape that “all of time” has opened up to him. Meanwhile, Mason and a cute girl are talking about moments: how they seize us and how life is just a series of them. In there is perhaps the most important message to me: Despite the fact that Boyhood is all of time, Mason’s time, laid out in front of us, what ultimately matters are the moments.
Boyhood is not a film with some overarching plot or fight against a bad guy, but rather just that: moments that compound onto each other until they finally start coalescing into something with meaning, hence why it took me so long to realize I should be paying attention.
The best films try to teach you something about life. Boyhood is a film that asks you to teach yourself about life. There are hundreds of thousands of people who will watch this. Out of them, most will find it cute, but ultimately uneventful. Some will feel the meaning, but go to bed unaffected. A handful will be impacted, permanently and deeply. I like to think I’m the latter. Boyhood is a film that will stay with me forever. A film that encapsulates my childhood, but will hopefully still find lessons to teach me no matter what period of my life I’m in.
So there it is. What a 19 year old with the same video games, dorky clothes, and angsty attitude towards the world thought of Boyhood. Thought you ought to know.
Learn some manners
To the person sitting in the room next to me: Learn some fucking manners. It is monumentally fucking rude to come home without letting your roommates know. I don’t care if it’s a last minute thing, you fucking tell them. So that she and her boyfriend aren’t woken up at 10am, ruining the much needed sleep they should be getting since they were up at 4am. So that the privacy of her own home that she temporarily had isn’t taken away from her suddenly and cruelly by your noisy fucking ass.
Fuck you.
Learn to actually think of others. Get your head out of your fucking ass and learn some fucking manners.
Of course angrily blogging about it isn’t courteous, but fuck it.
Legend of the Overfiend (1989) Review
This is a fairly old review that I never got around to publishing. I’ve left it unedited for the sake of… something I’m sure. I’ve also left images out because I honestly don’t feel like censoring a bunch of screencaps.
When anime was introduced into the west in the late 80s/early 90s, it became notorious for being dramatic, dark, and extremely violent and/or sexual. There were a handful of films that created this image in both the geek and mainstream culture: Akira, Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D, and Legend of the Overfiend amongst others. Legend of the Overfiend is certainly the most sexually explicit of these, leaving images of tentacle rape in the minds of westerners to this day. It’s fascinating that anime has strayed so far from this “extreme” image, but the rampant sexual perversion still remains, whether perceived or actual.
Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend is a compilation film of three OVAs (Original Video Animation) that were released between 1987 and 1989. Now it’s important when going into this film to keep in mind that the “R-rated” DVD release cuts out about 40 minutes of footage and yet in the first 30 seconds there is a demon orgy. Now imagine what they cut out. Legend of the Overfiend is unforgiving in its content, assaulting the viewer with frequent tits, ass, demon dicks, and exploding bodies. While the variety of demon debauchery and violence is well animated, it’s far from comfortable to watch. However, if you can get past the –to put it lightly– explicit content (and that is very hard to do at times) Overfiend is an incredibly silly and enjoyable film.
The story of Overfiend (yes there actually is a story) centers around Neguma, a bland high school student who also just so happens to be the reincarnation of the Overfiend, aka Chojin. Chojin is a being that, according to a 3000 year old legend, will unite the three worlds: those of the humans, beastmen, and demons. Naturally both the beastmen and the demons are after the most powerful being in the universe, which means plenty of problems for Neguma and his love life! Wackiness ensues!
It’s no surprise that the writing in Overfiend is awful, but that in no way means that it’s not entertaining. Like the best of cheesy 80s/90s action OVAs, Overfiend is ridiculous enough that it easily breaches into “good-bad” territory. It’s hard not to laugh at the two demons dueling with their dicks, or just simply enjoy the fight scenes between the uniquely designed monsters. Where Overfiend ultimately fails is in its ending, which manages to be so boring that it almost loops back around into engaging because you can’t believe the disaster unfolding on screen. The deflation one feels at the end, due to plot device after plot device being thrown in, is enough to piss off even the most forgiving moviegoer, especially after the incredibly long build-up the ending had. In almost every scene a character hypes up the rise of the Overfiend, but once he does they introduce several new elements and unexplained character bits in order to make the film have a somewhat happy ending. It’s lazy and makes the rest of the film feel like a waste of our time.
The ending is almost enough to soil my recommendation, but not quite. The film clocks in at about 100 minutes, meaning you still get 1 hour and 20 minutes before the final act that is solid entertainment. Feel free to shut off the film at that point, because the ending is truly not worth your time. Legend of the Overfiend may be infamously graphic, exploitative, and offensive, but it’s because of these crimes against decency that it manages to be an entertaining and fun watch for you and a few willing friends if you have them.
Mental Multiverse 