Jodorowsky Interviews from youtube

en francois:

Bush Invited to Join the Axis of evil

Tehran, June 26 2008. Why not! Said Mehmood Ahmedinijaad , The supreme person in competition for Iran’s leading ayatollah post. Theyre already chums with Gaddafi, Kim jong Il , the Chinese Communists and Vladimir Putin’s soul, plus Queen Elizabeth, whose family invented the axis of evil way back when, speaks highly of Bush. Hell No one NOT in the Axis likes Bush anyway, He might as well move to a pacific island with all his nukes and become an axis member!

Reached for comment, Bush said Isreal has cooler jets, plus daddy has to ask the Saudis permission before he joins any more clubs, but there was tentative interest expressed by the Chaneys. ” you realize we must bomb the crap out of you first, don’t you?” Mrs Lynne Chaney said, speaking on conditions of anonymity , on behalf of her husband who was away in a bunker in Colorado Springs(America’s Basement, according to Gretchen Wilson, Fox News), testing some ammunition. “That’s what we did to Mary before we accepted her disease”.

The state department couldn’t be reached but Colin Powell was seen walking outside the Jefferson Memorial, nodding his head in disapproval, looking like a Hobo.

Barack Obama sez. Don’t bring any more Champagne to the celebration tonight. We’re overflowing with the stuff. Cheetos are welcome…specially looking for Corn Cheetos.

Little Alex Vs the big bad wolf.

New York Times, Which many of us Media watchers in the US have long known as the fifth horseman in the Neocon Apocalypse, has let Bill Krystol express its opinion today on little Alex.

Link

Now to be entirely fair, my sympathies are with the blockbuster advertizing, entirely .

its smart, it’s cool and it’s tongue in cheek funny and pokes fun at John Mc Cain’s fairy tale wolf deneamour “Come now my friends! do you really think I would lead you into a quagmire? you can trust ME?! surely!!”

Latest: Removed!

So why is Mr Krystol embarrasing himself wading into this debate against advertising? Because it hurts. The man has grounds to take it personally. the neocons are responding …through their chosen mouthpiece…The New York Times.

Mainstream media? My foot!

NB: Well meaning advice to Bill Krystol/ Paul Wolfowitz/ Don Rumsfeld, other neocons looking for rehabilitation : Join a facility.

Short Notes

George Carlin died. Hope he’s stuck on the roof like he promised.

The love guru splattered on the US box office. Mike myers came out smelling like roses in an other vice shitty movie, proving the truism that noone paired with jessica alba can possibly do anything wrong.

The Journal Takes its hat off to Tim Russert (Bruce springsteen’s tribute.)

Granted Im a couple of hours away but it hurts that not one said they wanted mine.

Momeeee Don Imus is picking on black people again!!!!!

The perils of a multi polar world.

Thanks to Bloomberg.

If the US were Lichtenstein, This guy would be Bourne(shakey cam or no). You can’t make this stuff up.

Kieber Sale of Liechtenstein Data Triggers Backlash (Update1)

By Alan Katz and Joshua Gallu ( Bloomberg.com )

June 18 (Bloomberg) — Heinrich Kieber used a bogus check to buy an apartment in Barcelona, Spain, and tried to blackmail a prince.

He finally got rich by selling stolen bank account data from LGT Group, owned by Liechtenstein’s royal family, to German agents, according to the bank. The German government said it paid as much as 5 million euros ($7.8 million) for the data.

Kieber, a 43-year-old computer technician, triggered probes in 14 countries when he handed over computer disks containing about 1,400 names, prompting France to pledge a crackdown on tax havens when it assumes the European Union presidency next month. Germans alone have $485 billion of undeclared assets deposited abroad, according to the country’s BBW research institute.

Of Ayesha Takia, Pomo factions, The Omen and CGI religion.

A discussion rages on the Ghost’s Journalspace home.

In other news…

Random thoughts whilespacing out in a theater playing sarkar raj.

1. Tanisha Mukharjee must be the cutest Maharashtrian housewife smiling schoolgirl in the history of history itself.

2. The craters of Aishwarya mars.

 

Dasavatharam

Dasavatharam - Kamal’s Revenge on cinema.

 

Good Grief.

 

The Housefull midnight Audience were pummeled into a stunned silence from bad visuals unkind make up, garishly fake computer animation, pukey falsettos and a basic lack of consideration for the audience. I ended up feeling sorry for trashing Tashan. This is a few levels worse. It’s a throwback to the bad old days of a desperate “make movies cuz our film crew needs work” times in the 80’s.  There are NO redeeming features. The rest of this review is me working out MY frustration at the wasted opportunity and time. Stop reading now if you get the picture. Stay away from this film, if it’s not too late already.

 

Sinks like a false god

The Seagull , in his many many years of film watching has never seen a film fail in so many of its conceits as this one has. The SFX- Terrible. The Make up- like paper mache masks Oldfashioned movie making skills- Absent. A sense of history (essential for a historical film) missing. Basic consideration for the viewer - absent. Kamal’s interpretations of the ten charecters -sub intelligent. Sociopolitical theory- like an old village communist “comrade”’s drunken rant.

 

The film is an 1980’s style con job on the distributors to scam up as much money as possible on a premise (actor casts himself in ten roles) and deliver a stinking dud knowing the short memories of the bollywood filmmaking market.

 

It is not as though kamal does not know how to make movies.This is Kamal acting out his creative erectile disfunction. The film is a fast talking con. God we miss a real sci fi drama from India.

 

High tech failed product

Kamal is missing something basic here.The whole purpose of special effects generated on the computer is that they look real. These look like they are computer generated painted cardboard props. The whole purpose of make up is that the “made up” person looks real . These look like some horror film masks melted in the Madras sun.

 

The whole purpose of playing ten charecters is that an actor explores different character ketches and makes them real people you can identify with. Kamal ‘s ten feels like an attempt to save appearance money he would have to have paid to get ten other people.

 

Ten Kamals : Jowls and all

Walking through the half dimensional character essays,

 

Rangarajan nambi (the 12^th century priest) is a cardboard cutout fist banger with a Brahmin priest’s getup. I never thought I’d see a film where a person dressed like a temple priest is introduced in the inner sanctum of a temple bashing the heads of bad guys(squirting blood) against the large stone idol of Vishnu. A first of sorts in world film.

 

Christian Fletzer- is supposed to be a rogue CIA Agent, he looks like he has trouble swallowing from goitre. When he speaks , he sounds like there’s a grapefruit sized lump in his throat.

 

Avtar Singh- The sikh singer (which is a terrible pun. He’s sick with cancer…singh sing- get it?) Looks like a middle aged bottling company executive with a ashion emergency and cries too much.

 

Sick singh-er

Shingsen Narashi- the Japanese martial arts instructor speaks terrible Japanese for even my untained ears , and looks like one of those alien cat people in star trek. He seems to be inspired by the unisex waiter costumes at an American hibachi steakhouse.

 

George W Bush: looks like red riding hood’s granma wolf version of george bush and speaks in a somewhat strange howl.

 

Kaifullah Khan: the 7 foot tall muslim cariciature (a tamil film equivalent of blackface)  Sounds retarded and catactonic. His character feels vaguely offensive, the way a “white person from West Virginia” sketch might be essayed incestuously.

 

Krishnaveni patti : this is one of the three real acting roles in the film although Its drowned out by the shrieking and sqeaking in fifty different sharps and flats.

 

Vincent poovaragan: The black Indian low caste leader is the political statement of the movie and a believable essay is caught in the tsunami of bad taste that is dasavatharam.

 

Balram naidu : the Indian intelligence official from Andhra must be the funniest role Kamalhasan has ever played. Why didn’t he show up in the film earlier? This is one reason I believe that this film is really the revenge of Kamalahasan on his audiences in the world at large.

 

Govund ramaswamy: the conventional hero, Kamal is too old and fat to essay this role convincingly.

 

Mallika serawat: doesn’t know how to pole dance.sings an embarrassingly bad English number.

 

Im a broken man now.I thought life had served me every possible doozie. Dasavatharam , I was completely unprepared for. But no one really prepares for the tsunami. 

Indiana Jones and the crystelline skullduggerry of multimillion dollar…whatever….

The Journal does not review video games. We have very good firends who play/ design videogames, we just are unequal to the task of addressing the audience with our reviews.

If Mr Berg wants to start making movies again, we’ll watch. not that he needs to pause that giggle on the way to the bank…

Before The Rains (Santosh Sivan 2007)

Before The Rains

 Sivan (Asoka, Terrorist,(Cin) Bride and Prejudice)  has missed his wildlife photographer calling. There’s no imax theater chain in Bollywood. Maybe his calling does not pay enough that he needs to disguise his natural photographer profile as a filmmaker’s. Maybe he just doesn’t realize where his real skills are. Maybe he wont collaborate with any real filmmakers from ego reasons, in any case Before the Rains (which is now in limited release in the US, and thus requires a comment on the journal,) is an imax example of why the world needs script writers, directors (which is a separate skill than cinematographer) and music directors,editors? Somebody….?  apart from cinematographers grown like cancer , all over a film.

 

The Heart of Darkness , a 1902 Joseph Conrad book, about the evil that lurks within the heart of imperialist men, has been tremendously influential in some south asian literature circles. Its almost as if, to some, the literary movements of post colonial studies and Salman Rushdie’s magic realism never happened.I guess, if you own cardamom plantations in Kerela, and control the lives of a few thousand people, you can shut your eyes and pretend that the semi real world passing by is merely patterns of clouds.Sivan’s film is set firmly in this territory.  Perhaps Sivan is inspired by the happenings in iraq and occupied Palestine that he needs to make a statement that sounds retrogressive even as the real world is becoming thus retrograde.Before the Rains is a photographic monolith from the Western Ghats documenting  the evil that men do to them , which is interred with the women’s bones, in the name of love.

 

Sivan’s film comes , in inspiration, from a much more complex 1993 work by Adoor Gopalakrishnan    called Vidheyan(The Servile) which was a meditation on the willing acceptance of slavery by an immigrant. While I gets the feeling that Sivan is unequal to the task of refocusing the Gopalakrishnan opus to address Sex colonialism, one also has pity for what is in effect a great set of  images without deep coherence or drama’ It  feels like an excuse for cliched jingo.

 

 

Nandita Das playing the complexly imagined Sajani (and everyone pronounces Sajani differently) is the only fleshed out charecter in the film. Her motivations and actions feel real .Everyone else seems to be reactions to her central presence. I am not a fan of mother goddess earth films, mostly because it’s a grand elegant metaphor that fits all agendas. Thankfully the mother goddess is just an allusion in this film. People who want to make that connection may.

 

In the end BTR feels like a glossy in a dentist office or a Cinemax late-nighter ,except we see little flesh(Thankfully, Das’ femme is more substantive than mere skinshows). I’d see Wide Sagasso Sea for a more competent treatment of the same post colonial issues , less of a washout too.

 

Edited to add: as I commented to Joey, I Think Before The Rains is a good viewing experience, it just is barely a tenable feature film.