Archive for February, 2015»
Pony Art: Dreamer, It’s Late
MLPFIM: Dreamer, It's Late by the-gneech on DeviantArt
Commission for @mlp_Dreamer of the #TwitterPonies, a fun little scene between himself and @mlp_AppleJack. As fond as she is of Dreamer, she doesn’t look real happy to be answering the door at this time of night.
Aww yeah. Quality!
-The Gneech
“Jeeves is a secret agent, starring Colin Firth.” I should love that, right? I mean, I have one or two other buttons you could push, but this should be a slam-dunk “instant favorite” for me.
Nope.
I loathe this terrible, awful, no-good movie. Besides not actually being very good at what I would have considered its selling points, it is also deceptively marketed and prurient in its intent and tone. All of the “charm” is not charming. All of the “humor” is not funny. And instead of being escapist superspy fare, it’s just idiotic, hateful, sophomoric violence-porn with no aesthetic or story value.
In short, it sucks.
NOTE: There will be spoilers ahead, if it is indeed possible to “spoil” a movie that is already rotten. But you’ve been warned, in any case.
So we start things with a clear “George Lazenby couldn’t make it” James Bond stand-in being sheared in half by Gimmick Henchman, with one half flopping to the left and one half flopping to the right, Wile E. Coyote style. It’s dumb, but they’re trying to establish an OTT aesthetic, I get it. Amazing how there’s not even a drop of blood in this room full of rubber body parts, but yeah, okay, I get it. CGI dismemberment is fine as long as it’s not bloody, sayeth the ratings board. That enough would have knocked the movie off my faves list, but it isn’t the real problem.
So then we move into the main meat of the story, where Forgettable Protagonist Boy gets inducted into the Kingsmen, hitting all the same beats MiB did better, while Colin Firth investigates the mystery of Samuel Jackson as Lisping Steve Jobs Wants to Destroy the World. It’s serviceable if a bit dull, but leads to where the real problem is.
Samuel Jackson as Lisping Steve Jobs has stolen the macguffin from Secret Agent Super Dragon: he has a hate plague app implanted in cellphones all over the world, which makes people go berserk and kill everyone within plot device radius. He decides to run a test of this at the !Westboro Baptist Church; Colin Firth attends to investigate, gets hit by the mind control ray, and then spends the next ten minutes slaughtering everyone in the church, because he’s a badass superspy in a bulletproof suit and they’re all just degenerate hicks.
And then I walked out.
I’m told it gets worse from there. I don’t even want to imagine. But let’s dissect this moment of cinematic poo-throwing, shall we?
First and foremost, it’s clear that the movie thinks that filling the church full of annoying bigots makes it totally okay to spend ten minutes showing them all slaughtered one by one, in close up from almost Colin-Firth-cam view. It’s all super-quick cuts and choreography, and again without a drop of blood. You’re not supposed to be thinking about the horrors being inflicted on these people, you’re supposed to be impressed by what a badass Colin Firth is. (Luckily for us, we were reminded by a PSA at the beginning of the film that if a kid puts on harris tweeds and shoots up a school after seeing this, it’s totally not the movie’s fault.)
Well guess what, movie? It’s not okay. Do you maybe not understand what makes bigotry bad? The reason these hate group people are awful is because they would think it was funny to have a single person walk into a room full of [group they don’t like] and wipe them all out in gruesome ways. Ha, ha, darn those wacky bigots! …Wait.
Presumably the movie will then follow up with Colin Firth being all horrified at what he’s done and whinge about not having any choice, etc., etc. (I don’t know, because as I say, I walked out); and while that may theoretically be an out for the character, the filmmakers had a choice. You were the ones who chose to revel in this crap; you were the ones who said, “Hey, who wouldn’t want to vicariously slaughter a church full of crackers?”
I was shaking with rage when I walked out of the theater. Not just at what the movie had done, but that none of the previews or reviews had objected to this, or even fucking mentioned it. I went in expecting classic superspy escapist fare; instead I got loathsome violence porn. If I’d wanted to watch a goddamn Tarantino movie I would have had my head examined watched a goddamn Tarantino movie. One of my standing policies is to never willingly watch movies in which “murdering people and laughing about it is totally okay, as long as they’re the wrong sort of people” is a core value.
To hell with you, movie, and to hell with your poisonous mindset. You are absolute garbage, and you’ve brought shame to everyone involved in the production.
-The Gneech
I must admit that I’ve never really paid a lot of attention to the Ursa Major Awards, for two reasons. First, I tend to be more of a producer than a consumer, and as such awards just don’t show up on my radar that much. Second, in my capacity as a producer, I rarely had anything that I thought really merited recognition on a “literary award” kind of scale, except possibly No Predation Allowed, and I completely missed the window on that one due to dealing with personal crises at the time.
However, that has changed. This year, No Predation Allowed: Ten Years of The Suburban Jungle is eligible for nomination due to its new edition from FurPlanet. In short, I’ve got a second shot at it, and as this is currently my magnum opus, I have to admit that it would be really nice to see it get at least a nomination nod.
So this is a call to my fans! Please nominate and vote for at least one of my books. I actually have five that are eligible: all three volumes of No Predation Allowed and issues one and two of Rough Housing. I won’t be so greedy as to ask you to use all five nomination slots on my work… but I will be just greedy enough to point out the lovely symmetry of it.
Seriously tho. :) I’ve been told that Suburban Jungle was an important work in the furry world, and I’d certainly like to think it made its mark. If you could help make this happen, I’d be grateful. Thanks!
-The Gneech