The amount of enjoyment you can derive from watching the movie ‘Kick – Ass’ depends largely on the matter of taste.
Do you fancy yourself a person of discerning taste? Not necessarily pedantic but require that the media you consume have at least some modicum of creative and artistic integrity? If so, do yourself a favour and skip this one.
If, however, you couldn’t fart at much less give two shits about what you consume as entertainment - If you think that ‘2 girls 1cup’ and videos of people throwing stones at kittens in a cramped cage make for perfectly acceptable entertainment - you may enjoy ‘Kick – Ass’, it is also very possible that you are seeing a court appointed psychiatrist after spending time in jail for animal cruelty.
One thing about the movie in particular has come under contention as having crossed the line of being in good taste, stabbed it in the back, forcibly violated its anus then urinated on its corpse, that being the character of Hit-Girl, an ostensibly 11 years old girl who uses the word ‘cunt’, gets beat up by a mafia boss and kills said boss’ minions without any signs of guilt, remorse or emotions except maybe joy.
The use of the expletive is not so much of a big deal to me. This may be because, given the heritage of my country, I usually say ‘Arse’ instead of ‘Ass’. It may also be because Singaporeans are very fond of using the Hokkien name of a female vagina as an insult.
(Surveys have shown that many Singaporeans can’t get any)
I attached female to the front of vagina for the purpose of clarity, you can never be too sure these days.
Roger Ebert, venerated movie critic, singled out the physical abuse of Hit-Girl and while this is certainly not the most comfortable thing to watch, I feel he may have overstated it as the director, in an uncharacteristic display of restraint, only had Hit-Girl suffer a nosebleed as her most grievous injury.
As to the third point of contention, this is one of the extremely rare occasions that I completely agree with the board of censors decision to give this movie an M18 classification.
Although from the unbridled laughs that several scenes elicited from the audience in the theater where I watched the movie I wonder if R21 would be too harsh a label.
These are some of the scenes which the audience found so hilarious.
A boy getting run over by a car after stumbling into the street from having been stabbed by an unsavoury character.
A mafia soldier carelessly tripping over from a shove from Hit-Girl and consequently blowing a hole through the top of his head with a shotgun he happened to be holding.
I don’t remember laughing in that theater.
The movie fails in its own aspirations of being a satire on the comic book movie genre. It makes flippant remarks on Superhero origins, pointing out the ridiculousness of being dropped into toxic waste or being bitten by a radioactive spider only for the protagonist to gain ‘a slightly elevated tolerance for pain’ due to damaged nerve endings from the aforementioned traffic accident.
It lampoons Superheroes’ fortuitous motivations by having the protagonist’s mother die of an aneurism while at the breakfast table, only to later kill off Big-Daddy, Hit-Girl’s father, whose death she dutifully avenges.
(What did Big-Daddy die from anyway? Overload of Pride?)
When the protagonist (whose name I’ve already forgotten) discusses the plausibility of a real Superhero with his friends, they dismiss Super Powers as scientifically untenable and gadgets as logistically impossible. Of course, they conveniently left the Father and Daughter crime fighting duo’s access to weapons and wealth unexplained.
Some may say this is meant as a parody of the genre and of itself, but this is lazy writing and incompetent attempts at comedy at best.
See if you can tell when the following stops being funny.
An overweight man performs a standup routine, he jokes that he eats so much oily food that if he passes out and ends up in a hospital they would have to put him on a drip of bacon fat, he then remarks that he is hungry and pulls out a sausage from the inside of his jacket and proceeds to eat it on stage.
Unfortunately, the ingestion of the sausage is the proverbial last straw and he suffers the proverbial heart attack and promptly dies on stage.
The movie attempts to answer the not-so-original question of what would happen if someone tried to be a Superhero in real life. At first it gave the only logical answer, he wouldn’t do very well, only to realise that there is still an hour and a half of tape left and to fill out the rest of the time became what it was supposed to be a parody of, only it was conscious of being a hypocrite and so it tried to disguise itself in violence, cursing and blood.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
Plaque Liberation Front
I bet terrorists don’t visit their dentists often enough.
That is not to say that I believe that all terrorists have bad teeth or unhealthy dental hygiene, I’m pretty sure, hunted inexorably as they are, they would at least have access to some toothpaste and a toothbrush in their treehouse, hobbit hole or wherever they are hiding. A chewed up end of a fibrous stick could work in a pinch.
No, I’m quite certain that even the latest breed of terrorist, the self radicalized, social outcast that spends most of his time on shady internet forums, motivated less by ideology than fighting off a suffocating boredom. The ones that otherwise live normal lives, the ones that could be your neighbours. (Or Pepsi Terrorists as I call them) I bet those people also don’t visit their dentists.
How can I say this with such certainty?
Because visiting a dentist to get your teeth cleaned, would suggest that the person in question possesses the capacity for empathy that is surely a quality that terrorists are lacking. It suggests that the person cares about what others think of them and would do something to improve that impression.
I am not talking about going to a dentist to fix a toothache, terrorists might be misguided and cruel but they are not stupid.
A normal (relatively speaking) person before visiting the dentist would at the very least brush their teeth paying attention to brush near the gums and the hard to reach places at the back of the mouth. A more fastidious person might brush twice. A person who has obsessive compulsive disorder adds flossing and finally a schizophrenic finishes with a round of anti-septic mouthwash to kill any disease spreading bacteria, but he does it every 30 minutes anyway.
But a terrorist would not place any additional importance to a visit to the dentist, the dentist, after all is most probably an infidel, another cog in the capitalist machine, undeserving of sympathy or courtesy. A trip to the dentist is merely an inconvenient step towards blowing himself up after which he would become a martyr and his spirit commended to heaven where it will be blessed with perfect teeth.
Terrorists also lack another vital characteristic most of us take for granted, trust in complete strangers. Trust might be too strong a word for it. Perhaps it would be clearer to say that most people do not believe that the rest of humanity secretly held a meeting and unanimously agreed to destroy their way of life. Most people believe that other people don’t give two flying fucks about their way of life.
It is the lack of this particular quality that impinges on the ability of the terrorist to lie helplessly on a dentist’s chair, completely at the mercy of his various instruments of horror lined up on that swiveling work surface like cutlery on a table of a restaurant that has a menu composed entirely of items you can’t pronounce so you have to point to the waiter stupidly like some mute retard.
4th circle of hell
In many ways dentistry can be said to be a form of oral terrorism. The sterile white washed rooms, the many drills and instruments of unclear function, the bright light they shine on your face, the long waiting times, the discomfort of having a person’s face so close you can see individual pores over a long period of time, not to mention the astronomical prices are just some of the many tools used to intimidate you into brushing at least twice a day and flossing at least once a day.
Oh God! I’ll brush my teeth, I swear!
Maybe it’s professional jealously, because one is clearly doing better than the other.
But there is one crucial way in which their methods differ, and any terrorists reading should take note, dentists have this uncanny ability to make you care.
Even under the stress of being poked in the mouth, not knowing exactly what is going on, one still makes the effort to breathe through one’s nose in case one has halitosis and the dentist happened to not like the smell of rotting seafood.
It also helps that they give you a lollipop after.
So I guess what I’m saying is terrorists should make bombs that give people candy, chocolate and joy instead third degree burns, shrapnel and death.
The new face of terrorism
That is not to say that I believe that all terrorists have bad teeth or unhealthy dental hygiene, I’m pretty sure, hunted inexorably as they are, they would at least have access to some toothpaste and a toothbrush in their treehouse, hobbit hole or wherever they are hiding. A chewed up end of a fibrous stick could work in a pinch.
No, I’m quite certain that even the latest breed of terrorist, the self radicalized, social outcast that spends most of his time on shady internet forums, motivated less by ideology than fighting off a suffocating boredom. The ones that otherwise live normal lives, the ones that could be your neighbours. (Or Pepsi Terrorists as I call them) I bet those people also don’t visit their dentists.
How can I say this with such certainty?
Because visiting a dentist to get your teeth cleaned, would suggest that the person in question possesses the capacity for empathy that is surely a quality that terrorists are lacking. It suggests that the person cares about what others think of them and would do something to improve that impression.
I am not talking about going to a dentist to fix a toothache, terrorists might be misguided and cruel but they are not stupid.
A normal (relatively speaking) person before visiting the dentist would at the very least brush their teeth paying attention to brush near the gums and the hard to reach places at the back of the mouth. A more fastidious person might brush twice. A person who has obsessive compulsive disorder adds flossing and finally a schizophrenic finishes with a round of anti-septic mouthwash to kill any disease spreading bacteria, but he does it every 30 minutes anyway.
But a terrorist would not place any additional importance to a visit to the dentist, the dentist, after all is most probably an infidel, another cog in the capitalist machine, undeserving of sympathy or courtesy. A trip to the dentist is merely an inconvenient step towards blowing himself up after which he would become a martyr and his spirit commended to heaven where it will be blessed with perfect teeth.
Terrorists also lack another vital characteristic most of us take for granted, trust in complete strangers. Trust might be too strong a word for it. Perhaps it would be clearer to say that most people do not believe that the rest of humanity secretly held a meeting and unanimously agreed to destroy their way of life. Most people believe that other people don’t give two flying fucks about their way of life.
It is the lack of this particular quality that impinges on the ability of the terrorist to lie helplessly on a dentist’s chair, completely at the mercy of his various instruments of horror lined up on that swiveling work surface like cutlery on a table of a restaurant that has a menu composed entirely of items you can’t pronounce so you have to point to the waiter stupidly like some mute retard.
4th circle of hell
In many ways dentistry can be said to be a form of oral terrorism. The sterile white washed rooms, the many drills and instruments of unclear function, the bright light they shine on your face, the long waiting times, the discomfort of having a person’s face so close you can see individual pores over a long period of time, not to mention the astronomical prices are just some of the many tools used to intimidate you into brushing at least twice a day and flossing at least once a day.
Oh God! I’ll brush my teeth, I swear!
Maybe it’s professional jealously, because one is clearly doing better than the other.
But there is one crucial way in which their methods differ, and any terrorists reading should take note, dentists have this uncanny ability to make you care.
Even under the stress of being poked in the mouth, not knowing exactly what is going on, one still makes the effort to breathe through one’s nose in case one has halitosis and the dentist happened to not like the smell of rotting seafood.
It also helps that they give you a lollipop after.
So I guess what I’m saying is terrorists should make bombs that give people candy, chocolate and joy instead third degree burns, shrapnel and death.
The new face of terrorism
Sunday, April 4, 2010
TGIF
Last Friday I attended mass at a church, one of the two times in every year that my mother would force me to go to church because she feels it is too important for my mortal soul to miss. Last Friday was, of course, Good Friday, the other annual event being Christmas.
I use the word ‘force’ but hardly any physical enforcement is involved. Firstly, I like my mom and even though I do not subscribe to her religious views, I realise that it means a lot to her that I attend the mass anyways. Another reason is that she kinda holds me hostage because I live under her roof and collect an allowance on which I survive on.
Not that it stops me from complaining about it.
You see, if there can be said to be one defining feature about mass it has to be its excruciating dullness. I would not be surprised to learn that the phrase “If you’ve seen ‘em once, you’ve seen ‘em all” was a reaction to a church mass. Even if it appeared in the Bible, I’d feel more amused than surprised.
The church very likely realises this as well, this is why all churches inevitably have uncomfortably hard, angular pews for seating which are designed in such a way that there is no inconspicuous way to fall asleep on them.
It might also go some way into explaining why some churches have taken to getting their youths to play horrible pop songs that have their lyrics tweaked to provide some tenuous link to Christianity.
Have you ever seen a person asleep in a Green Day concert? Thought not.
If there is one bright spot in the exercise in ennui, it would have to be the Gospel readings. For people unfamiliar to the proceedings of mass, the Gospel readings are when a member of the congregation would read aloud to all present a selected passage from the Bible. Three short passages are usually read after which the presiding priest will deliver a sermon or a speech commenting on the passages read.
The sermon, I can lose, because it is very hit and miss, depending on the priest, it can be a humourous explanation of the passages with a couple of heartwarming personal anecdotes thrown in and capped off with an Aesop moral or an entirely humourless, powerpoint style summary of the Bible passages that would put the wooden pews to work.
In fact, those were one of my favourite moments when I used to attend church more regularly as a child, just behind eating luncheon meat with nasi lemak rice in the church cafeteria.
I loved hearing the stories, even though they were disjointed and I probably didn’t understand half of the words or even before I understood the inconsistencies, hypocrisies and the allusions to the more salacious parts of the Bible, which is how I derive most of the entertainment from the stories now.
I think I was enraptured by the sense of majesty and importance in the language used.
As I grew older and more knowledgeable, I learnt about the influence of the language of the Bible on the way people speak and write. I am told it ranks among Shakespeare and Keats as the three main influences on the English language. As someone who aspires to be a writer and having not read much of Shakespeare and not at all of Keats, (Blasphemous, I know although I hope to change that in the future) I am thankful at least to have an early exposure to the Bible. How much that has seeped into my consciousness, I cannot say.
That pompous, dogmatic language of the Bible is certainly very useful for sounding important. Anybody no matter how goofy looking could muster up a least some small sense of authority if one injects words like ‘thou’ into his speech.
Gandalf is pretty cool, but you’ve got to admit that is a pretty goofy looking hat.
It does have its flaws though. These would be the two main faults, tiresome explanation and needless repetition.
For example in all of the readings of the mass I attended last Friday, whenever something happened that was referenced to in earlier parts of the Bible, it would invariably proceed to hammer home the fact that this was prophesized however many books ago. This is not only a jarring interruption to the exposition, it is also an insult to the intelligence and attentiveness of the readers, not to mention really annoying. This is not unlike a garrulous, smart-arse commentator one occasionally encounters in cinemas that is unable to keep the fact that he has figured out the identity of the murderer in the movie to himself, only in this case the commentator is a character in the movie so you can’t reach behind you and express how your knuckles feel about his running commentary.
Another common annoyance is the Bible’s propensity to repeat itself, the New Testament would be one-fourth its length if it could make up its mind about whose account it wanted to use. It is not as if the occurrences when some detail is not corroborated by the other books would have detracted from the central message of the book. This almost seems like a lazy attempt to pad out the story or what some industries call ‘filler’. The requisite melancholic ballad in between the hit songs in a pop album.
The book is also not above rephrasing sentences or having the same things happening multiple times.
Is Peter’s denying the acquaintance of Jesus three times more evocative if it happened three times instead of just once?
Does the Macarena get any better after the first 30 seconds?
No. no it doesn’t
Regardless, the Bible is and will remain an influential book. Not even a book collaboratively written by J.K Rowling, Dan Brown, Mitch Albom and Stephenie meyer about a teen wizard who uses magic to decipher clues to an international conspiracy in works of art while having inspiring conversations with his late lecturer, in addition to maintaining a relationship with an unageing sparkling vampire, would conceivably help to create a religion which would eventually count a quarter of the world’s population as its followers.
Then again, its followers have not resorted to proselytizing through emotional blackmail, annoyance or violence… yet.
I use the word ‘force’ but hardly any physical enforcement is involved. Firstly, I like my mom and even though I do not subscribe to her religious views, I realise that it means a lot to her that I attend the mass anyways. Another reason is that she kinda holds me hostage because I live under her roof and collect an allowance on which I survive on.
Not that it stops me from complaining about it.
You see, if there can be said to be one defining feature about mass it has to be its excruciating dullness. I would not be surprised to learn that the phrase “If you’ve seen ‘em once, you’ve seen ‘em all” was a reaction to a church mass. Even if it appeared in the Bible, I’d feel more amused than surprised.
The church very likely realises this as well, this is why all churches inevitably have uncomfortably hard, angular pews for seating which are designed in such a way that there is no inconspicuous way to fall asleep on them.
It might also go some way into explaining why some churches have taken to getting their youths to play horrible pop songs that have their lyrics tweaked to provide some tenuous link to Christianity.
Have you ever seen a person asleep in a Green Day concert? Thought not.
If there is one bright spot in the exercise in ennui, it would have to be the Gospel readings. For people unfamiliar to the proceedings of mass, the Gospel readings are when a member of the congregation would read aloud to all present a selected passage from the Bible. Three short passages are usually read after which the presiding priest will deliver a sermon or a speech commenting on the passages read.
The sermon, I can lose, because it is very hit and miss, depending on the priest, it can be a humourous explanation of the passages with a couple of heartwarming personal anecdotes thrown in and capped off with an Aesop moral or an entirely humourless, powerpoint style summary of the Bible passages that would put the wooden pews to work.
In fact, those were one of my favourite moments when I used to attend church more regularly as a child, just behind eating luncheon meat with nasi lemak rice in the church cafeteria.
I loved hearing the stories, even though they were disjointed and I probably didn’t understand half of the words or even before I understood the inconsistencies, hypocrisies and the allusions to the more salacious parts of the Bible, which is how I derive most of the entertainment from the stories now.
I think I was enraptured by the sense of majesty and importance in the language used.
As I grew older and more knowledgeable, I learnt about the influence of the language of the Bible on the way people speak and write. I am told it ranks among Shakespeare and Keats as the three main influences on the English language. As someone who aspires to be a writer and having not read much of Shakespeare and not at all of Keats, (Blasphemous, I know although I hope to change that in the future) I am thankful at least to have an early exposure to the Bible. How much that has seeped into my consciousness, I cannot say.
That pompous, dogmatic language of the Bible is certainly very useful for sounding important. Anybody no matter how goofy looking could muster up a least some small sense of authority if one injects words like ‘thou’ into his speech.
Gandalf is pretty cool, but you’ve got to admit that is a pretty goofy looking hat.
It does have its flaws though. These would be the two main faults, tiresome explanation and needless repetition.
For example in all of the readings of the mass I attended last Friday, whenever something happened that was referenced to in earlier parts of the Bible, it would invariably proceed to hammer home the fact that this was prophesized however many books ago. This is not only a jarring interruption to the exposition, it is also an insult to the intelligence and attentiveness of the readers, not to mention really annoying. This is not unlike a garrulous, smart-arse commentator one occasionally encounters in cinemas that is unable to keep the fact that he has figured out the identity of the murderer in the movie to himself, only in this case the commentator is a character in the movie so you can’t reach behind you and express how your knuckles feel about his running commentary.
Another common annoyance is the Bible’s propensity to repeat itself, the New Testament would be one-fourth its length if it could make up its mind about whose account it wanted to use. It is not as if the occurrences when some detail is not corroborated by the other books would have detracted from the central message of the book. This almost seems like a lazy attempt to pad out the story or what some industries call ‘filler’. The requisite melancholic ballad in between the hit songs in a pop album.
The book is also not above rephrasing sentences or having the same things happening multiple times.
Is Peter’s denying the acquaintance of Jesus three times more evocative if it happened three times instead of just once?
Does the Macarena get any better after the first 30 seconds?
No. no it doesn’t
Regardless, the Bible is and will remain an influential book. Not even a book collaboratively written by J.K Rowling, Dan Brown, Mitch Albom and Stephenie meyer about a teen wizard who uses magic to decipher clues to an international conspiracy in works of art while having inspiring conversations with his late lecturer, in addition to maintaining a relationship with an unageing sparkling vampire, would conceivably help to create a religion which would eventually count a quarter of the world’s population as its followers.
Then again, its followers have not resorted to proselytizing through emotional blackmail, annoyance or violence… yet.
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