Why Clint Eastwood is the Devil

Well it's been awhile, but yes ladies and gentlemen I am back and ready to throw my opinion in your faces, this week I'll be exposing the truth of Mr. Eastwood in that he is in fact the Lord of Darkness. Or at least he comes off as Satan in the movie "High plains Drifter," whether he is in real life is still open to discussion but more on that in another blog. High Plains Drifter, what an awesome movie, I sincerely loved the hell out of this movie, why you ask? Simple it's almost 2 hours of Clint walking around messing up this town and doing what ever the hell he wants. Oh you want a beer bam its yours, you want to have sex with a lady hey go for it, you want to make this little dude the mayor and the sheriff by all means. How does this walking devil get away with all these evils? Well he killed three guys when he showed up, so the town figures he'll protect them from outsiders if they let him do whatever he wants. Which as it turns out in the end, he peaces out when the bad guys show up comes back and kills them but manages to blow up a building, set another one on fire, paint all the town houses red and make the place seem like a living hell. bravo. And if that wasn't enough heres the twist is Eastwood's character alive? Perhaps he was the twin brother of the dead sheriff, or maybe the sheriff wasn't completely dead when they buried him. Or the later theory which I really like is that Clint Eastwood was sent from Hell to avenge his own death and make the town pay for not helping him therefore making him the Devil.

What confuses me about that theory though is why he does help some people out for instance the native american family in the store, or the little dude who gets pushed around alot. It was touched on in class and I can definitely see the point that the only reason he was nice to these people was to further piss off the town, and in sense he had no beef with the Natives. As far as the tiny dude yeah there wasn't much he could do to help him when Eastwood was being whipped to death and then later on he ends up marking the grave so that could kind of save him from the wrath of hell.

The rape scene was pretty intense, and it came so suddenly I was just like wait wait what? I mean the girl gives him the eyes and does the whole im a rude brat who does what she wants routine which I've seen way too often, especially on My Super Sweet 16. You see girls like that your like man one day someones gonna knock you on your ass, and in this movie Eastwood does that...and then takes it further by dragging her through town into the barn...and then rapes her. Which she kind of gets into (yikes), and later on in the movie he does the same thing to another woman who tries to stab him with scissors, but in that scene hes much more psychological and the girl gets all heated up caz he plays this whole im sweet and i know it routine. I'm sure feminists would love this movie...NOT. I mean every woman character is being violated and seems to kind of like it, and everyone in the town is just lettin it happen and some of them are actually smiling when they see it. Thats what disturbed me about the rape scene not so much the camera aimed up at Eastwood dominating the audience or the graphic showing of the actual deed, but the whole follow up after it. I mean the husband tells his wife to stop freaking out and let the rape go, Seriously? That's horrible. It just makes us hate the town more and side with the evil ways of Clint.

I'd also like to touch on the fact Eastwood has the best one liners in this movie it really completes his whole character of mystery and I like how alot of the story is open to question and nothing is ever fully explained. If Eastwood comes to Fredonia you can bet ur bottom dollar i'll give him whatever he wants.

Crazy High on Sneaky-Pete Wine

Blackboard jungle...you see the funny thing is at first I was totally bored by this movie, I mean yeah I understood that it was a huge deal back then to show the harsh realities of inner city schooling and that it kind of fits into the "classic" race civil rights genre along with to kill a mockingbird and others such as those. But there were just so many scenes that seemed super preachy or long and boring. Yeah I got that he was trying to teach these kids...its like Coach Carter or Hardball... but for me it's just boring after like the first two scenes, then it turns into a Disney Channel original made for TV movie. Cheesy basically, and thus im bored.

When I came into class earlier today I basically had no clue what I was going to talk about because I felt like I hadn't really come away from it with anything worth noting... other then that I thought that one rape scene was pretty ridiculous in that a white kid student tried to rape a teacher in the library, then fight with books, then jump out the window only to completely destroy his face with glass. That was awesome. So there I am sitting there and then I'm asked how I liked it... which I basically said in the first paragraph but I decided to go with my instinct and tell once again what annoyed or bothered me about the picture, which turns out to be some of the interesting components to the film. I really like that about the films we watch, at the surface they seem like typical movies that we either like or dislike, but when you actually sit down and analysis them in-de

pthy and compare them with the readings some really cool stuff ends up coming out that you didn't catch the first time.

So my issues with this film start with the female teacher and how she is over the top sexual throughout the picture in an all male school... of dangerous young hormone amped boys... and is being hit on by the rest of the male staff... what a dummy. But let's look past all that bologna, and look at the fac

t that she is nearly raped on her first day ion the school until she is saved by Dadier. Does she leave the school... nope. Does she stop dressing proactively... nope. Does she start hitting on Dadier who is happily married and trying to have a child? Heck yes she does. What?! That makes no sense. Annoyance number 1.

Annoyance 2: Dadier in general. His character is so cold it's stunning, not to mention that he is a walking oxymoron, he's a teacher who tries to preach equality and learning by non-violent means... yet he is openly racist and beats the crap out of several kids including slamming West into the blackboard over and over again. He is overly sexist to his wife, making her stay at home all day while he wor

ks, puts alot of pressure for her to have a kid after just losing a child at birth... which both himself and his wife are overly cool with... showing no signs of depression or abnormality which therefore scares me even more then if they did. When his wife thinks he is cheating on him he just shrugs it off and is like im not cheating on you so shut up, and then later on she's like I knew you were too in love with me for it to be true, and he's just like yeah whatever. I mean at one point he even comes home and talks about that female teacher and his wife asks him if he remembers what she was wearing when he got home, to which he responds with yeah, what was I wearing? To which she can't respond and then is like ok ok yeah I'm the dumb housewife good call honey I won't question you... I mean females should be outraged by this film... this film isn't so bad at being racist about inner school kids but more about unhealthy home life relationships between Dadio and his wifey. Another horribly disturbing por

tion of this film is when the wife allows for not one, not two but three notes about her husband cheating on her come to the house and then takes several phone calls from West on top of that. I kept waiting for her to burst into the school at the wrong moment of Dadier and the female teacher embracing and then freak out and leave him with is unborn child, thus making him hit rock bottom and freak out on Mills and the whole fiasco ending horribly and racistly ( I realize thats not a word but you get my point). But no, she never comes to check on her husband or the teacher, why? Because a good house wife never would do this, she should always trust her husband even if it makes her freak out and go into labor too early. On top of this he then gets all worked up about how he needs a kid to understand his students better, not nessicssarly to have a kid with the love of his life, no so it will help him his work... i mean damn thats cold.

The last topics I want to touch on real quick are Mills, West, and that Italian kid. Mills is a jerk at the beginning of the film and then soon we grow to like him, it's like we're unconsciously racist towa

rds him at the beginning and then soon realize that we are mistaken as time goes on along side with Dadier. But I mean in a way Mills was racist towards himself, when he states that a black man can never succeed in the world so he just kind of throws in the towel and gives into his aggressive no good stereotype that is placed upon him. I disargree with the reading in that this film is a buddy picture because for the most part of the movie Dadier and and Mills are at odds and it's not until the very end that they become somewhat friends and then it ends with them agreeing to stay at the school, I mean if you looked at it in warped way possibly. West is just a scum-bag. That kid was the biggest jerk in the whole film and the funny thing is I have met kids like him in real life and they're just as scummy. The fact that the reading tried to say he was a homosexual... I don't agree with that. I think Dadier would be more fitting for the classification of a homosexual then West honestly. And as a final note I just want to touch on that the Italian right hand man was randomly the other bad guy at the end even though all the kids turn good its the trashy racist white kid and the shifty and sneaky Italian kids that get kicked out. I mean that is so racist in and of its self that this movie is one big contradiction.

Until next week... keep on rockin'

Nobody talks to children...No, they just tell them.

Rebel without a cause...but in my opinon he totally had a cause. I mean he was really just a normal guy trying to stand up for himself against all the bull that was happening around him. This movie is filled with weak characters that represent so much of the society back then and saddly enough still today. Characters like the Father who is whipped by the mother and can't even stand up to his own son let alone for him. I mean for godsakes he was wearing a woman's apron around and cleaning up. That's actually an interesting take on the father role at this time because as we saw in the date with your family video the father should be the driving force and most relaxed when he comes home, in other words the house and family should revolve around him. Not to mention usually during this time period it was the father who put the wife in line and maybe even enforced domestic violence to prove his point, not to say that either way is a correct manner to uphold a household I just found it funny how Jim tells the officer that he wishes his dad would just smack her into line sometimes.

Another interesting character to add is the father of the Judy, a man who is obviously the man of the house but at the same time is treating his own daughter like a tramp. I mean yeah she has her flaws she hangs out with a rough crowd and she might wear too much makeup but hell shes 16 i mean give the gal a break. She shows her own dad affection and he smacks her in the face! It just further drives home the point that the distance between parents and their kids during this time peroid was a large and dangerous riff, take Plato for example his parents basically disown him and he doesn't know how to live or think civily because he's missing this large void in his life where he should have had parents...so naturally when Jim and Judy show him the littlest ounce of affection or friendliness he goes overboard and ends up being the death of him. The real crooks in my opinon in this film are the damn greaser guys they are the provokers of basically everything that goes wrong in this movie, i mean sure it can be argued that everyone was on edge and basically waiting for an excuse to go over the line but still these guys push the enevople way way way too far. I mean hanging a chicken from the doorway? Knife fights? Chicken runs? Theses kids must be bored outta their minds to come up with stupid stuff like that...id be curious to see how their homelife is. I won't hold it past them if their family's where actually typical nice conservatives.

When it comes down to it Jim is a good guy, he tries to do what is right but his parents and basically everyone around him tells him what to do or change his way of thinking or living. This drives Jim mad but I mean he's no rebel at all he's trying to merely survive in the messed up world around him. And his cause is the cause everyone Should have, to do what is right no matter what happens and to defend the defenseless, and never ever back down.

Gotta Dance! No actually you really don't...

Ok so as everyone in the class already knows, I'm not a huge fan of this movie, in fact I find it grossly overrated. Now I'm not saying I hated the movie by any means, nor am I stating I hate musicals because truth of the matter is I love musicals and secretly have musical albums on my ipod that I would never openly admit to! I even starred in a handful of musicals in high school including Guys and Dolls ... yeah, and I think the big name actors and actresses in this film are both very talented and stunning, but the film bugs the hell out of me.

I guess my big problem lies within musicals themselves, in essence musicals are absolutely ludacris and ridiculous to begin with. The fact that people will just randomly bust into songs, often for no real reason is weird, it's like if we were having a discussion and all of a sudden I start singing about clouds because clouds are on my mind... What?Ridiculous. Ok but we can look past that because heck if the song is good we get into it, it's fun

 and your always wondering when they'll sing next. Now the next big problemo is whether the musical is trying to be serious or not... because lets be serious right now, can you take a musical seriously? Like honestly. I have a very hard time with that question because the musicals that I really enjoy are musicals that are playing with or making fun of the issue or story at hand. For example, I enjoyed Hairspray because it makes fun of how racist white people were in the 50s, and other movies like Cannibal the musical, Little Shop of Horrors, or Southpark the movie make fun of the very fact that they are singing in situations that you don't sing in....they therefore make fun of other musicals and that works for me because honestly you got to make fun of yourself in those situations. Now musicals like Fiddler on the Roof and Rent do not do anything for me... they almost subconsciously make fun of the hard issues they're trying to expose, I have heard more people make fun of Rent and singing about AIDS then I have heard people talk about how Rent exposed them to the harsh realities 

of NYC. Come on did they people who made that really think that a musical was the best way to tell the public about those issues?

That's what really warped my view of this picture, yeah Singing in the Rain makes fun of Hollywood and then on top of that when they're backstage they sing and dance randomly, that's funny I will give them that. But to say that this picture is a good representation of what the biz was like back then and how actors acted off stage, it doesn't work. You can't take anything in this film seriously because the musical numbers ruin the validity of the piece. The plot in this movie isn't even good, it makes perfect sense to me after watching the movie and reading the article why that is, because the movie was basically slapped together around the songs themselves. Basically the movie studio said hey we got these popular songs and these popular actors...lets just throw them together and have a weird all over the place plot. And guess what happened the public loved it, and still loves it, I mean it's been labeled a classic, and the fact that everyone keeps egging this process of being distracted by the prettiness of the picture annoys me. I like this movie I find impossible to say this should be a classic in film history, baloney I say, baloney!

That scene that everyone seems to be freaking out over about Don and Cathy singing in the studio to each other...yeah I totally fell asleep at that part, slow songs are not my cup of tea I guess...fair enough

In conclusion what I learned from this movie is the big question everyone wants to know... what does singing in the rain have to do with this movie's story? Absolutely nothing at all. 

Double Jeopardy...I mean Indemnity...yeah

Well first let me start by saying film noir is freaking sweet! I've hear a lot of hub bub over film noir films and always figured they'd be kinda boring and lame, but I didn't realize how awesome ruthless and intense they were! It reminded me a lot of Sin City which is a film noir picture in itself and also one of my top favorite movies, in fact now that I think about it more a lot of the graphic novels that I have read and collected over the years commonly have a "film noir" quality to them even though they're not video. Right from the get go I knew this movie was going to be awesome seeing as the beginning was not in a linear fashion but rather started at the end and backtracked, which help in getting me through the motions of setting up the characters at the beginning (usually a painful procedure for myself, I'd rather get right to the action an conflict and have the characters be developed there as opposed to seeing their normal lives prior to the events) and really grab hold of me as the main character started to put the plan into motion. This was the first film we have seen in class where I wasn't hoping it would end after awhile, rather I was intensely watching and experiencing all the motions with the characters, which really makes a movie in my opinion.

Probably my favorite aspect of this movie the main character Walter played by Fred, and the way he was just so outrageously relaxed for the most part of the movie. Sure he sweat bullets and kinda panicked at some points for the most part he was just calm and cool, for instance when the man on the train started messing up his plan he pl

ayed along and came up with a quick solution by making the guy go back in for cigars, or when that man showed up later and kept almost recognizing him he played it chill and kept his composure. Most of the times when he's with Phyllis he puts on a front in way that basically is like were in deep crap but I got it all handled don't worry about, we got this. Even when she shoots him he doesn't go nuts or plea, he walks towards her and is like go ahead shoot me again... yeah didn't think so bam bam peace devil woman... come on thats sweet. Some of my favorite scenes in the movie are when Walter and Lola, the daughter of the man Walter intends on and eventually murders, are together. First she gets into his car unexpectedly, which I instantly thought meant that she had a crush on Walter and would then be a huge interference in the plan... which turned out to be not so true, but still Walter is cool and nice, yet he knows he is going to kill her dad. Then later on she comes to his office and tells him that she knows who killed her father, which then makes Walter wonder if she knows about him and if so why she has told him and no one else, so I'm like ok well maybe she does have a crush on him, or just wants to mess with him and maybe even kill him hers

elf... turns out I was wrong again. Then when they go out together to the music concert she tells him how she thinks its her boyfriend and her stepmom who killed her stepdad, but she still loves her boyfriend either way... which makes me wonder about if she did have a crush on Walter whether or not she'd turn him in or kinda let the affair go... either way the thing that I liked was how Walter should have been avoiding Lola or at least feeling real guilty when being with her, but instead he talks about how she comforts him and made him feel at ease not paranoid, what?! I'd be so nervous, but Walter is cool with it and in a way I both admire him and at the same time am kinda nervous about his character. I agree with what we discussed in class that Walter is basically a guy who is straight up bored with his crappy life and was obviously searching for the first reason to get his hands dirty whether he consciously knew it or not, thus why the situation should scare the hell out of him but instead he holds on for as long as he can due to the thrill factor... sure he killed someone, sure he cheated the insurance agency, sure he was all over a married woman... and he knows that he most likely can't get out of it, but every time he by passes a barrier I feel like its an adrenaline rush for him which keeps him going and gets him "high" in a sense.

My final point I want to touch on is the overabundance of smoking that was done in this movie. . . which made it look like a giant cigarette / cigar commercial. Basically in every scene someone was smoking, whether it was a business time cigar (Keyes) or a thin cig to look cool and seductive to the opposite sex, or even to relax from a tragic event they all made it seem very natural and a way of life. I mean I do realize back then there were a lot of Americans that did smoke and often at that but jeez there was a ton of smoking up, and man did the camera make it look so elegant, romantic, and professional. Each time Keyes goes to light his cigar Walter always gives him a light almost like a respectful motion to his superior, which at the end is exchanged likewise as Walter lies in a mess at the office door. The sudden burst of flame and white hot burning of the cigarettes and cigars where stunning against the dark backgrounds and made the simple motion of lighting up into a dazzling spectacle that I really enjoyed even though I hate tobacco with a passion. Even the way they Walter light the matches with one hand in a snapping manner that was just I don't know how else to put it but totally bad ass. I gotta learn that trick... note to self buy a box of matches.

Also how many times did Walter say the words Keyes and Baby... id say somewhere around 100...

White Zombie!

Where to begin, oh my good golly this movie was horrible! When I saw that we were watching a zombie movie I was actually quite excited, considering I have seen quite a number of zombie movies in the past that I found to be awesome. Then I found out that White Zombie was actually the first zombie movie ever made, which both intrigued me yet caused me to kinda doubt the actual quality of the movie. And then all hell broke loose. I agree with alot of what was said in class that this movie seems more like an abstract dream then an actual "horror film," in that alot of images are shown as well as things said that really have nothing to do with the plot at all. For instance the water in the castle... what was up with that? Was it poisoned water, or perhaps a cursed river that captures your soul? Either way characters were becoming seriously troubled by it which made me feel at first like laughing but then oddly enough changed to me just becoming disturbed by it. The same is true of the vulture that shows up every once and awhile in the picture and that god awful noise that seems to be so over exaggerated it at first seems funny but at the same time gets under under skin.

I found the movie as a whole to be highly annoying and almost lazy in a sense. Th

ere was so many uses of the same shots, over and over again. How many times are they going to show the zombie master clenching his hands together, after awhile I just wanted to yell Ok we get it, you can control the undead and the living with your weird little handshake, stop remin

ding us! That guy was quite freaky to begin with, I think it was definitly unneeded to show him starring at the camera for long uncomfortable lengths of time. Another example of them using the same shots like its going out of style was when the main woman character is broken from the spell at the end of the film and her face is light up, and then darkened, and then light up, and th

en darkened, etc. Seriously, we just need to see it once, we know she's going to end up ok at the end, she's the white beautiful female, of course she'll be fine, we don't need to play the whole is she ok, no shes not, but maybe, it's not thrilling at all and borderline humorous.

The reading helped me big time with this movie, because alot of this movie made l

ittle sense to me, but Tony helped to show and explain scenes that even though I saw I felt were just kinda random. Not to say that most of that movie doesn't make sense, but through Tony's analysis I was able to derive much more from the plot and the characters. Although his points were very insightful there were parts of his paper that I felt were diving too much into a meaning that really wasn't entirely there, particularly when he describes who each zombie represented in the US imerpialism sense. I mean I could write a 10 page paper about how Titantic is a

ctually a metaphor for the French Revolution, it doesn't mean that that is the movies actual

 intent.

My Man Godfrey

This week we watched My Man Godfrey, and to be brutally honest this film annoyed the crap out of me. In terms of camera work it wasn't really anything fancy or impressive, the storyline was all over the place, and the characters were pretty much all nuts. I mentioned in class how this film reminded me alot of Wedding Crashers, that is if the movie had been just about Vince Vaughn's story. In both films there is a main character guy who feels he is superior to the rich people around him and has very saracastic comments about it, there is also a crazy girl in both who is obsessed with this main character. The parents in both films are rich and somewhat oblivious to the way their children act, peticularly the crazy daughter. In the end of both movies that main character ends up with the crazy girl, even though it seems like a horrible match. In retrospect when someone else related the film to Arrested Development I totally agreed in that that show is of a way closer tie to My Man Godfrey then Wedding Crashers, and made me wonder if the show used that movie for something like a starting block.

The main reason why the film really grinded my gears, was because of the whole idea that Godfrey allowed the family to keep living rich while not really learning a lesson. Throughout the film you have a character who is educated, kind, patient, and overall just a good guy, Godfrey, and then at the same time you have this family that is arrogant, ignorant, insane, mean, and essientally stupid. As the movie goes on we come to realize that Godfrey actually descends from a rich family and chose to live as bum for some odd reason, and then suddenly he decides to strike back at the rich community by showing up to a scavenger hunt and calling them idiots. And then he decides to take it a step further and become their butler...which really doesn't make sense but we let it go because he claims to have a plan up his sleeve. The big plan? Oh its to handle the family's money without them knowing and make them richer then they were already. Great idea Godfrey, don't let the family that is nuts, bad with money, and depends greatly on their income, learn their lesson and be broke for awhile. No instead wait til the father of the family figures out oh crap were broke, then tell him its all good and then go and build a night club on the river by the garbage dump for homeless people to work at. Oh and marry that insane girl who is spoiled out of her mind. What?! This film is ridiculous, I don't know who wrote this but really it just doesn't add up to me. In the reading we were assigned about Screwball Capitalism really drives home what I'm taling about in the sense that the movie almost accidentally doesn't help with the money situation or that of the rich class in america, seeing as the moral of the movie appears to be If your rich and crazy, someone smarter then you will let you keep on being rich and crazy.