Unless you're a pro-moralist, South Park is a show that's hard to dislike. Take the creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone up to the notch on the big screen and you'll have a usual episode of the show. The difference is as the title states is that's longer with 71 minutes in length, and it's more obscene. The latter is the whole point of the movie where the town of South Park comes into a state of emergency when Kyle, Catman, Stan and Kenny all go to see the Terrence and Phillip movie Asses of Fire through which they imitate them by speaking the phoney, swearing language they say. Kyle's mom leads a coalition of concerned parents to not only kill Terrence and Phillip, but also to go to war at Canada. At many times, Parker and Stone uses their usual shock and toilet humour in here and unlike many other comedies which uses the same kind of humor, it works. It's interesting to see that South Park ends up being a musical where it's both hilarious and catchy. It satires society's prudeness and over-tolerance (the town trying to rip Terrence and Phillip), freedom of speech and also the fact that society wants us to conform especially with the controls of the media. The relationship between Satan and Saddam Hussein is however at times grim and tedious with Hussein often pulling gay jokes. But still. This is a hilarious comedy even the fain of hear will enjoy.
B+ (8.4)
A Clockwork Orange
Stanley Kubrick is well known for taking risks in cinematic history. He casted a young girl to play a promiscious tween in Lolita and used little dialogue in the science fiction flick 2001: A Space Oddysey. With satire, he made Dr. Strangelove where it was released in the beginning of the Cold War. Here's a Kubrick film that does both risk and satire. A Clockwork Orange does both as it is set in a distant future (just like 2001) in London where Alex Delarge, a teenager leads a youth gang called the Droogs where they go haywire in the evenings and rape women. When Delarge attempts to rob a woman (apparently she's the Minister for Interior) she accidently murdered her and in the process he gets arrested, sent to jail and then he becomes part of a government experient where they treat criminals to act like normal human citizens and that's where his life changes forever. Beautifully directed and written by Kubrick, the dynamic approach and character study of Alex is played brilliantly by Malcolm Mcdowell, who's a sociopath to his world with a love of Beethoven and it's hard to see Alex make people suffer from his behaviour and suffer by the same people he victimised. It's a condescending look of the future especially when at the 60s people were optimistic of a happy life out there and also to test the free will of the ultraviolent Alex. A Clockwork Orange is anarchic but at the same time tragic by the end
There were two posts I made in The Catalyst. One was about how critics miss the point and become incredibly inconsistent and unfairly biased when they review movies. Another one was about the buzz about The Social Network. The movie on Facebook.
Now I told you on that post about my experiences on Facebook, how South Park called this device pointless and the predictions I made about the movie and how it's gonna effect us. The audience. Where it is certain that most of the audience are using Facebook. I said it was going to hurt some users who would be insulted about the aims of Facebook and why we are using it.
Now in this post, I'm gonna combine these posts together so I can protest on one critic I really hate. And you would hate him too. Every film critic would also hate him as well. I'm talking about this guy below:
Armond White.
Meet this guy. It's ironic that his name and his skin colour contrast together. I don't know any African American film critics, but I think people who has a great taste in movies and the internet know him as 'the troll' which means to mock someone out of annoyance.
Now I didn't mention him on the post about critics because I was focused on David and Margeret who are really well known critics in Australia and also I forgot about him but here's the facts.
Armond White used to be a music critic so why did he moved to movies when he hated that field he's given to analyse so much
He agrees with the movie website 'Rotten Tomatoes' 52% of the time and had slash out many films which are almost destined to get 100% like Toy Story 3
White's considered a contrarian who rejects in popular opinion.
White's best films he rated were most people including me think were awful including Transformers; Revenge of The Fallen, Jonah Hex, Grown Ups, and any movie critics think are awful
White's worst movies were movies we think are the best. He hates Toy Story 3, Inception, Star Trek, Iron Man, Up, Up in The Air, The Dark Knight, any movie we think is the best.
He was first labelled as a troll by Roger Ebert after disagreeing with his review on District 9, one of the best reviewed movies of 2009.
White claims to have watched 400 movies a year and his aim was to help the viewer get to understand film better.
He adores Steven Spielberg (well why can't we?) and hates Noah Baumbach just like David Stratton like Michael Winterbottom and hates Lars Von Trier.
White's is what I think matches my blog post's rants about critics. He's biased towards and against one filmmaker, he's against movies about his race, put in allegories in his reviews and calls himself a film critic which is just a hobby going into a cinema and enjoy watching the movie. Critics are just people from an outlet going into the cinema.
But here's something. About three hours ago, I was on my Twitter and RT had announced that The Social Network which was getting really rave reviews and early Oscar chances had got its first negative review and unsurprisingly it is White himself.
In his review, White commented about the character of Zuckerberg as an 'obnoxious protagonist Noah Baumbach didn't write' before that White said that director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin sould worship Zuckerberg and not accusing Zuckerberg of being a big jerk. He concluded in his review that The Social Network is a TV-trite.
Well I just checked into Rotten Tomatoes again and believe it or not he hates every movie he reviewed except for the movies I mentioned above. In his reviews, he use many words we don't usually use in real life. In other words, he's like Spock from Star Trek where he's an illustration of rationale and that's what he's like. In other words and I don't want to be mean and to be metaphorical, White is a Vulcan.
In his review of Easy A, he declared that movie the worst of 2010 when it is so good, receiving universal acclaim.
His review on The Wrestler commented on Mickey Rourke's performance labelling both it and the film crap.
He compared Inception to playing Grand Theft Auto which would have been worst if GTA had been turned into a movie. Inception and GTA has something in common. They're both about stealing something for a person involved. The huge difference is that Inception is not a video game and doesn't contain Leonardo Dicaprio shooting Ellen Page in the face. So this made me angry.
What's even annoying is that he gave Grown Ups, the thumbs up calling it heartfelt. As well as Transformers 2 is which he calls it art when it's just a bunch of metal fighting each other with no script at all. Anyone so stupid who never want to read reviews in New York would go pay their money and waste it for that film.
White is indeed an intolerant, nasty, hypocritical troll and he would love to make things back to the status quo when we're becoming a progressive society nurturing our opinions. The status quo making us going into his huge depth of dumb movies.
As for me, I have to be stuck with many people that are like Armond Whites at my school. People torment me for watching Inception, a really smart movie nobody in that school watched and anyone who watched it think it's the worst they've seen so far. While the majority of the school has seen Grown Ups and called "the funniest movie of the year". These people are some of the most intolerant hypocrites I have ever met.
But as the moral goes, everybody has an opinion. And whetyer you like it or not, every film isn't perfect. 99% for Toy Story 3 isn't that exactly the percentage we want, but it's ok. We enjoyed it. HE doesn't. We can't do anything about it.
If White want to make America a country with no taste of culture, wished Justin Bieber would forever lived on this planet when we seriously want him to die, eat the same plain food we should eat, then we don't care. White maybe felt bored in every movie he sees.
In that case, Armond White could be the most annoying person tied with Justin Bieber.
And here's a song I would like to compare to that douche.
In a generation where most of the world is globalised with annoying people from Disney, Justin Bieber's a god, and damn it, Megan Fox's the sexiest thing on the planet, the minority of this generation would make Armond Wite, the critic for the New York Press, a butt of all jokes in arts and culture
As we head into Oscar Season or Awards season as a little warm ups for next year's Oscars, there are a few films in the eligibility list at the moment:
- Inception
- Toy Story 3
- Black Swan (not yet released)
- Winter's Bone (not yet released)
- The Kids Are Alright
- 127 Hours (not yet released)
and as we prepare for that, there's one movie that is in the run for the money and that is...
The Social Network
After you've watch the trailer you would see how great this movie. It shows brilliant performances Jesse Einsberg of Zombieland fame and Andrew Garfield who will be the upcoming Spiderman, bautiful cinematography and direction from David Fincher and shows several interpretations of Facebook as we users never know it
OK.
Have you ever been tired of hearing really bad stuff Facebook has to face involving privacy issues and identity? In Australia, a girl in my place was on the news, couple of months ago that made me sick. She finds this guy who is an animal carer and you know what she did? She followed him to the address he "supposedly' worked at and got murdered. That person was a wilderness person. It's a sad stoory that involves Facebook.
In The Social Network, it's the story of how Facebook becomes a success story for founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Einsberg). But it was to get popular in Harvard and join the elite clubs as he was a total loser there (sorry, but that's the truth)
So when Facebook becomes a phenomenon in his college later he get involved with a lawsuit that charges him with breaching privacy and copyright infringement. BUt this ravels towards his personal life with his feud with his best friend Eduardo Sevin.
So About Facebook...
Facebook is a revolutionising social network that is used currently by more than 500 million users. But if you want to know more, here's a link of the full info about Facebook.
To hear the first time that Hollywood is making a movie about Facebook sounds ridiculous to you. But if you understand film maturely, wisely use Facebook at your own time, then seeing this movie wouuld be a huge offer.
I first logged in to Facebook on November last year and you won't believe this but the day before I signed up, I've seen New Moon and I've realise how awful it is and wanted to write a comment about the scene where Kristen Stewart's acting went so horrible. So I just got 'sucked in' into Facebook.
The first few months on Facebook, it seems that you can message and chat your friends, share photos, posts and videos on to your profile, play games like Poker, Yahtzee and build up your virtual farm.
The real truth of Facebook and that... South Park episode
Unfortunately, there are some things I would not wanted to do on Facebook and that is to become social.
There was a line in The Breakfast Club where Bender said to Brian who tells Bender that he was part of the Physics Club where he tells him they discuss physics, do experiments and so on. And this was what Bender reacted...
"So it's social. Calm and demented, but social"
This was one of my favourite lines in the movie because not only Brian's being tormented for joining an isolated social group, but he's been praised since at least in a group and not completely a basket case.
The fact that Facebook is a social network doesn't mean a lot of users on Facebook are social. IT's not a law or a rule from social networks to be social but many of them doesn't follow the rule.
There are two kinds of people who are not social in the network:
The first kind is the people who choose not to be social on Facebook. And I chose not to. I would either socialise outside of Facebook and can just have a chat with a person in eye contact. And users on Facebook have to go and do something like that since they can't devote their lives too much on Facebook.
The second kind is people who turned out to be losers inside and outside. They can become that if they are bullied or berated online or offline and will lead them to feel manically depressed and kill themselves.
Facebook reminds us that the Internet and many other types of technology such as MP3s and mobile phones is a waste of time and changes the way we live completely.
One person who shows this example is South Park. I've dowloaded this episode called "You Have 0 Friends" which is an obvious spoof on Facebook. Apparently this actually send the real messages of Facebook. The boys are on Facebook, they made a profile for Stan so he can socialise with them when Stan doesn't wanted to get into this new way of socialising. Meanwhile Kyle keeps losing friends when he made friends with a loser named Kip Drordy.
The whole episode wasn't that funny and yet it is really the most popular episode before the 200th and 201st episode of South Park. But the main message by that episode is that Facebook is pointless in life since Stan never wanted a Facebook profile as well as making friends on that site when you don't know anyone.
This is Kip... and he's a social outcast
I really hated that character Kip. Not hate, but I disliked him. I first take pity to him because he only made a Facebook account six months ago and made no friends but when Kyle decided to friend him he goes berzerk and hangs out with him everywhere on his laptop. The truth is Kip is a social outcast and he is a loser inside Facebook. And he doesn't do anything with his account once he has no friends. For the worst, he's one of the most disturbing character I have seen in South Park
Facebook can also be tool for attention. You put in photos and videos... for what. For comments on how good looking you are. I don't want comments on my photos or tags like "Oh he's sexy" in my photos. And I don't want a profile picture but everybody force me to because they think I might be a paedophile. But if you look at my badge you will see a picture of me I made for Scott Pilgrim which is my profile picture and I will keep that picture because I want to.
I wish I wasn't on Facebook on the first place. Even so, I've been thinking many times about deleting my account since I was meddled with by so called 'friends'
SO GOOD RIDDANCE!
Anyway back to the movie and..
The Previews
Surprisingly, The Social Network had got rave reviews. Many of them have a star rating between 3.5 to 5 stars.
So if these preview tells you anything that it looks awesome and is one of the best movies of the year. Go see it.
Predictions about The Social Network
The Social Network is moved to October 26th in Australia from November 26th. One thing certain and is and again from the trailer is that the performances are brilliant and beautifully directed. Might have a certain chance for Best Picture at the Oscars.
But there's a flaw in this and it is whether or not the audience would be moved by this film. Expectations was very small because people think a movie about Facebook is boring while it was on production.
Not only would they be bored by this movie, but the fact is that much of the world, almost half a billion people in this world use Facebook would be insulted by this movie as they might have use Facebook for nothing and that Mark Zuckerberg has been using our profiles for profit.
But anyway, The Social Network is one of the movies I want to watch in this season with The Town as well as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I.
