Simply Amasian

Asians are an unbelievably talented bunch. From business to travel to cuisine and all the way through to the performing arts- Asians have excelled to such an extent that their faces would probably be found posted upon the worlds bulletin board of “ most wanted”. Give the Asian continent a simple wooden box to play with and they will, amongst themselves, be able to think out of it, fit neatly inside it with their amazing physical ability’s and then turn into plastic or some form of software before selling it for a really “nice price”. Asians can do anything. They’ve also proven that they can eat everything too- even dog. Some are generally disgusted and even insulted at the thought of eating dog but I assure you, there is nothing wrong with mut-ton.

Because each Asian nation has something unique and wonderful to share with the world its difficult to have a favourite Asian, especially when it comes to film. India, China and Japan are three large Asian tycoons that have contributed mightily to the world industry of film. However my depth of knowledge or comprehension of Asian film is about as shallow as a pastry dish; so im going to keep this farely short sighted and with Japan in frontal view, please bare with me and try to agree.

It seems as if Japan has kanitchi wow’ed the world with their extraordinary skill in film making. Just as in the world famous Japanese film Godzilla (originally named “Gojira”), the Japanese are monstrous geniuses climbing the towers of the world holding the golden micro chip to the IT industry and bellowing out “ANIMEEEEEE” at the various miniature Hollywood busters buzzing about its head. Studio Ghibli is the world best anime studio and has won the “Animage” (anime grand prix) numerous times. The anime film “Spirited away” also remains the only anime film to have won an Oscar for best animated film. Just like sushi, I would never trust an anime film that has not passed through the hands of a Japanese artisan.

So lets talk about China, in particular the film “Hero”. It looks Chinese on the cover but don’t be deceived as I was, its actually produced by Quentin Tarantino (who has a track record of film that could pass him as Amasian).
Hero is about an unnamed, fearless warrior who is chosen to combat a ruthless army responsible for massacring his people and taking over the entire Chinese empire. What I like about this film is it’s frozen moments of beautiful violence that require mental responses rather than emotive ones. “Hero” practices the Chinese and Japanese brilliance of attention to detail, beauty and artistic skill. There is a deep sense of Eastern philosophy and history, which also makes this film a comfortable bridge between western and eastern film taste. I highly recommend it to those not only interested in fantastic cinematography but those willing to build themselves “an idiots guide to cool Asian enjoyment”.

Now with Extra steroids, Really.

These are a few new members of the UCT Film Society.

I like them, they like me.

We like Extra Steroids.

Art, Big Fuckin Art.

Title: Let The Right one in
Director: Tomas Alfredson

I’m not sure what art is, I can’t give a definition or a basic example of it, however I can tell you one thing, art sure isn’t a bunch of narcissistic post-pubescent twats sitting around talking about their ‘craft’ or their ‘inspirations’. No my friends that’s just bullshit. Artists tend to spend more time working than talking, you meet a kid who talks more about his ‘art’ than actually ‘arts’ that my friends is a classic example of a wanker, the kind of kid whose parents spent their entire lives telling them they were special, but their teachers never reciprocated this, so now having left this setting they now truly feel that they are as ‘special’ as their parents said they were. These people are special. They’re retarded. So next time you meet one just nod and ask if he needs a diaper change or try help him remove his head from his ass.
“Let the Right one in” on the other hand is art, big fuckin bloody art.
Tomas Alfredson gives us his vampires, dark, obsessive, manipulative and frighteningly human, with a moral compass which is rooted in the scarcity of their sustenance. He sprinkles them onto this poetic coming of age tale about Oskar who deals with the perils of being in3-D at age 12. You know the usual run of the mill shit, bullies, puberty, over-active sex drive, divorced parents a vampire girlfriend. Yeah his girlfriend Eli is a vamp, and she gets naked which doesn’t really get a rise out of you as much of a “what the fuck?” This world is constructed beautifully and poetically, Vampires are not trivialized or given centre stage instead they’re just the vampire, like the murderer next door, they do what they do, because they feel its necessary. Eli’s causes havoc all over town by chomping down on people with the assistance of her sycophantic assistant. Who’s more Lurch than Geoffery. The really terrifying aspect of the film is the prospect of growing up and all the fucked up things that occur between birth and death. Oskar deals with a mountain of challenges ranging from his suspiciously pedophilic gym teacher, to the local psychopathic bully who tries to stab his eye out. Alfredson juxtaposes Oskar’s maniacal and violent desires with Eli’s uncontrollable urge to eat people, its smaktastic and throws a few middle fingers at the whole concept of the innocence of children. OH YEAH!
Man is it pretty and fuck scary, this dark, icy Nordic tale, just stinks of yes and AMAzing. It highlights the extent to which the influence of the Bergman crowd has on the current crop of Nordic Filmmakers, And Bergman being the serial ass kicker that he was has passed this gene onto Afredson.
It’s really cool and ‘arty’ and fuckin scary at the same time and is filled with real quality scenes which only someone having experienced the nightmare of being 12 could understand.
In the end what makes the film so extra Yes! Is its intricate beautiful cinematography, pissing out these fantastic Nordic blues and dark reds across the snowy Scandinavian landscape, married to phenomenal mis-en-scene which creates a dark, slow, poetic painful flick which will have you shitting your pants and weeping at the same time.
It’s fuckin quality and dare I say it Art. Alfredson goes to town on this flick and creates a haymaker which will leave you touched in all the right places in all the wrong ways.
I give it 8 Hoers!

I REALLY LIKE TO PARTY

The 10th of February is too far away for us at Film Society we like to party so much that we're moving the date for "Kill Phil" to the 9th of February.
Can't wait seriously i can't wait.
Come dressed to impress and get your Samurai on!
Prizes and awesome giveaways for the best dressed.
In love and spinach

Comedy, the Funniest of the All

Director; Judd Apatow

Writer:Judd Apatow

Cast: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, Leslie Mann and Eric Bana

Throughout history Comedy has done some amazing things and achieved incredible feats; from getting Will Ferrell laid to making Tom Green some friends. But very few people know about the humble beginnings of Comedy, before he became as famous and renowned as he currently is. Most people think that Comedy is as old as the world that we live in – they are wrong. Comedy was born in the 1970’s in Britain; five heroic men donated their sperm and thus, under the name of Monty Python, created Comedy. Since then our dear friend Comedy has undergone many changes; In his early days comedy was disfigured and only taken in by the poor, his ragged clothing and stench prevented him from making any real friends. He was lonely and because of this never really enjoyed school, none of the cooler kids like Action would play with him, and romance, the Genre school hottie, ignored him. He was a late bloomer and remained childish for a very long time (to this day he even remains a little infantile). As a teenager Comedy got tired of being the class clown and dropped out of school, living in his parents’ basement he presented a TV show on public access. It was then that Comedy realised his calling, cinema. It’s hard to believe that Comedy, with his humble beginnings in a poor area of London would be the popular Hollywood star that he is today. What has been instrumental to his rise to fame was his friendship with some of the hottest celebrities in the world.

Over the years comedy has had many influential friends; Steve Martin, John Cleese and in the past decade Judd Apatow. Lately we have seen Comedy’s relationship with Apatow go from strength to strength; it’s crude, crass and awesome. It’s not funny in the same way that Monty Python or Charlie Chaplin is, it’s more human than that. Apatow’s Comedy makes us laugh at awkward people; who don’t quite fit in but try desperately to – he makes us laugh at real people and through doing so he makes us laugh at ourselves. Funny People isn’t typical of an Apatow Comedy we are made to laugh at the people performing in the film, not their characters. Funny People is essentially a comedy about how sad the lives of comedians are.

The plot revolves around George Simmons (Adam Sandler), a famous film comedian, who discovers that he is about to die. He starts assessing his life and realises his life is empty, filled only with empty pleasures. He starts trying to get the things in life he has always wanted, including his ex-girlfriend. It’s pretty sombre, but incredibly funny – in the laughing at the unhappy one-legged clown that has fallen over and can’t get up way.

But what strikes me about Funny People is the emotional depth of the characters. They all seem to have emotional backgrounds, scarred by their pasts and the choices that they’ve made. The emotions of the characters seem incredibly real for a comedy. At most points in the film the characters seem to be experiencing the multi-layered feelings that we have in real life. Because they aren’t just black and white the characters are harder to read and much more believable.

The film feels genuine and because of that it’s a bit scary but still makes you laugh. It can’t tell you much more than that about the film because it’s quite a lot to take in, exploring many facets of what it is to be human and what it means to live.

Funny People is good: if you want to see Adam Sandler do stand-up comedy and give his most mature performance yet then watch it. If you don’t – Fuck You.

7 Hoers

I like to Party!

Remember Andy Samberg in Hot Rod, when he introduces Denise to his crew and he says “would be fun if we all went around and said our name and a little something about ourselves. I'll start. My name is Rod, and I like to party. All right, Dave, you're up.”
And then Dave says “: Uh, hi. Uh, my name is Dave, and uh... I like to party.”
At the UCT Film Society we’re a lot like Dave… “, and uh... I like to party.”
So grab your Kimono and your Samurai sword and your good eye and join us for what promises to be an extra special evening where we promise to give away a million…. Zim Dollars!
So Let’s do it with our asses hanging out and champagne sprouting from our nipples!
Oh and we’re giving away Free Sake on the evening and everyone loves Free Sake, except Murderers…
Are you a Murderer?

I like big furry butts and I cannot lie!

Dir: Spike Jonze

Writer: Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze

Cast: Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, James Gandolfini, Paul Dano and Catherine Keener

Release Date: 08-01-2010

Thank God for people like Maurice Sendak, I’ve come to grow sick of those fuckin Oprah types who continuously harp on about the magic of children and how they’re so insightful and intelligent and nyah nyah nyah SHUT THE FUCK UP! People are retarded this is a well known fact, children are little people, therefore one can assume that children are fuckin retarded, or at least a little retarded, Sendak highlights this in his book “Where the wild things are” and Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze reiterate this sentiment repeatedly in “Where the wild things are”.

Man it’s big, and furry and pretty and I’m not referring to Tyra Banks’s coochie no I’m talking about “Where the wild things are”. Jonze gets straight into it and doesn’t waste time with banalities or ‘post-modern updates’ No Bam! You’re there, 9 years old again and no-one fuckin understands anything especially not your stupid mean mom who forces you to eat frozen Corn.

You’re there in the land of the wild things and its fun and inconsequential and you have wars, and sleep in big piles and get to go through jungle, desert and forest in the space of a mile. It’s all so wonderful and yes! Accompanied by Karen O’s oh so indulgent yet playful score it’s so much fun! But then shit gets dark, real fuckin dark and James Gandolfini sucking down wooden calzones and sandy tomato sauce rears his ugly yet amiable ass in the form of Carol the wild thing. From there the kids need to leave and you come to realize that this film is not about perspective but retrospective views about adolescence and how the world really is a wonderful and magical place in your head but in reality its filled with fuckin scary furry creatures who want to eat you and kill owls.

It’s good really good, especially because there’s no fuckin commerce, eating, fucking or dying, it’s just a bunch of wild things –Max ‘fake Reca’ Records- included but then the reality of the human condition which is fundamentally wild kicks in and everything goes sideways and well ja that’s life and your ex-wife.

Jonze returns with exceptional form and stays true to the cinematic form without basterdising it with unnecessary niceties, it’s as ascetic as it gets, but that’s good and makes the narrative work and allows you to catch glimpses of the original text. I liked it and I like puppies and Ice cream and slush puppies and if you don’t like those things you’re weird and fuck you! I’m allowed to say that because I’m a child and a person so therefore I’m retarded.

I give it 7 Hoers.

Oh Shucks its Eastwood!

Its almost always as refreshing as downing a bottle of Palmolive shower gel when familiar stories are told by foreign voices. Only by the likes of Clint Eastwood’s genious-ness could the story of 1994 South Africa be told without having to showcase typical stereotypes of the rugby tackling, short pant-ed, beer boeped Dutchman chasing his counter parted black skinny, wide eyed taxi driver down the street with Leon Shuster like stupidity. Invictus was boring, but its hopeful celebration of the New South Africa will perhaps provide that extra little kick enjoyed by south Africans in preparation for 2010 and life beyond that.

Humor appears to be the most influential tool used to capture the South African audience. One needs to only recount the box office successes of Shuster’s “Mama Jack” to notice the nation’s embarrassing taste in humor. Unfortunately most south African laced award winners such as Tsotsi and District 9 draw their humor from producing stereotypes. Stereotypes are funny, but in a country with so much diversity I think stereotypes are more harmful than team building. I was reluctant to watch Invictus on that particular point as I was expecting to see, more than ever, the usual interplay between Jakkie Pretorious and Sipho. However I underestimated Eastwood’s original understanding of South African society as he was able to illustrate a very new “New South Africa”. Matt damon’s accent was believable and nothing like Leonardo Di Caprio’s overbaked accent in Blood Diamond. Morgan Freeman unsurprisingly managed to deliver a pleasantly angelic performance that would make Madiba himself give a little jig and there are some great shots of Cape Town that include the CTICC, which by the way, was only built after 1994, but I guess it may have been a tad expensive to rip down the modern building all in the name of “authenticity”. Eastwood is good, but not that good.

However much Invictus made me wanna stand up and hug a fellow South African, the story was slow and predictable. I doubt that this film will become one of Eastwood’s “million dollar babies” but I do recommend that in four years time when Invictus wins itself a spot on the SABC timeslot, you make sure you drop kick some boerewors unto the braai and seat yourself down to enjoy one of South Africa’s most memorable feel good stories.

Monkey Hippies Take to the Screen

James Cameron is cool. It had to be said. He managed to make a movie about aliens on a distant planet with a mannish female main character a success. If that’s not awesome I don’t know what is.

Avatar is Cameron’s latest science-fiction film and it’s just as good as anything he’s done before. In terms of coolness Avatar kicks ass, and I mean that in an Arnold Schwarzenegger talking in a crazy accent while shooting a rocket launcher in the air way. It revolves around a paraplegic ex-marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) who controls a bio-engineered body of a Na’vi person (a native on the planet Pandora) in order to gain the trust of the locals. It wouldn’t make sense to tell you anything more as that would ruin the cool, but somewhat predictable plot.

What I can tell you about Avatar is that it’s pretty intense; I hate the excessive use of CGI in films because at the end of the day it loses the human appeal that cinema has. But, Avatar pulls it off; I haven’t been so excited about a huge, odd-coloured hero since Shrek. The giant blue Na’vi people are a cross between hippies and hunters, they roam around being peaceful, doing weird shit with their hair, living in an enormous tree, talking to shrubbery and painting their faces. In other words they live the dream of most Earth Dance attendees. Humans, on they other hand are ruining the planet, mining a very rare mineral called Unobtanium (classic name) and destroying all in their path in order to make a quick buck. Ultimately, a huge, inevitable battle happens, and it’s missile-launching helicopter-things versus blue monkeys with sticks and stones on giant birds.

The characters are stereotyped but work well in the context of the film. Steven Lang plays the ultimate bad dude; Colonel Very-angry-at-the-planet-for-giving-him-a-sexy-facial-scar who pretty much tries to destroy all in his path because his grandchildren refuse to visit. Dr Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) is an idealistic botanist desperate for some Na’vi ass because she has no mates on Earth.

Avatar is good, everybody should watch it, and while it can get overwhelming and confusing, because to me all blue people look the same, the last twenty minutes is a pretty hectic, kick ass session that’ll satisfy anybody. The voice acting is good, it’s visually brilliant, watch it.

James ‘the lover of blue primates’ Brown

GINGER MIDGETS

I always imagined Sherlock Holmes as a not so tight-assed Private Dick who had an intense homo-erotic affair with his sidekick John Watson, wherein their supposed mystery-solving adventures were just holidays in the country side where they played Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, drank colourful cocktails and did their rendition of God Save the ‘Queen’. Guy Ritchie seems to think differently. Sherlock Holmes (2009) is an action packed blockbuster with all the attributes for you to stand up halfway and scream “America Fuck Yeah” even though it’s set in 1800 England. There’s guns, explosions, cigars, sinister foreigners and a plot to take over the world. It sounds a lot like James Bond or another day in Hillbrow, but it’s Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie. Ritchie uses the stock-standard formula of all “Boom Boom Boom” films but he slyly slips in aspects of his style. With Robert Downey Jr. –as Sherlock Holmes- constructing a Chernobyl-esque –shit’s fucking extra epic- interior monologue which is married to Ritchie’s amazing fight scenes which make Manny Pacquiao look pre-menopausal. But then he reverts back to the tried and tested formula and before you know it there’s this mega-douche in the form of Lord Blackwood –Mark Strong- trying to take over the world. He uses black magic, but that being said gives way away too much and well you probably know what happens from there, so I won’t continue ruining it. Oh and Jude Law’s also in the film and being Jude Law all his outfits seem like they’re cut straight of Vogue Homme Winter/Autumn 2010/2011 review. But Blah fuck it, it’s pretty and it’s loud and on top of that you get to see Downey Jr. dive out of Buckingham Palace into the Thames and come out with Pneumonia and the clap! Can you say bring on the invention prophylactic!?

Watch it if you like things exploding, women almost getting naked and the prospect of the devil not wearing Prada but Paul Smith.

BOROLE OUT!