Dog Day Afternoon

Wow, so people got into a fight about cutting in line and stampeded a poor man to death. Just goes to show that Wal-mart is evil and people who shop there are nuts. Meanwhile, this is the saddest video I've seen in ages, at least this dog had enough decency to help his fellow dog:

That Idea Was So Last Election...

I know that Apu was once voted the most famous Indian in the USA, but things are going to change for everyone's favourite Kwik-E-Mart manager. As is now often the case in politics, stereotypes are ripe for utter and shameless exploitation. Hey, Hillaristas - you want a woman? We have women, meet Caribou Barbie...

Well, world, get ready for the Republican Party's newest move of desperation. Do we have any black/white Hawaiians? Nope? Hey, who's that in Louisiana? Is he foreign or is he just tan? (Send Berlusconi to check on that for us please). Oh he's an Indian? Sioux? Oh, from India, oh Indian but from Baton Rouge. He likes guns, he likes Christians, he hates abortion and doesn't support gay marriage. America, welcome the new non-whitey GOP Obama clone, 'Obama v. 2.0', Bobby Jindal! The Republican Party is like a SNL skit without the irony. Maybe irony is dead. How sad.

Back to Black

OK, so this week Al Qaeda numero 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, called Obama a 'house Negro' like Colin Powell and Condi Rice, which makes it official, nobody thinks Obama is half white anymore.

On to stranger things in the world of identity... I know that you can convert to another religion, but I didn't realize that in that same ceremony you could choose to convert into a woman? Artist formerly known as Michael Jackson (seen here in Dubai) in full Muslim female dress post-conversion. WTF? I see they let him keep his white socks and black moon walking shoes. Not so sure what is going on with his poor child.

Triumph

When all is said and done, this remains the best election coverage of all...





...for me to poop on.

Happy Thanksgiving

Now that the euphoria has died down over the man who was not black enough to be 'black' to the man who suddenly became the blackest African American in the US, La Palin offers us a little insight into what the good folks of Alaska are up to. Is this woman completely illiterate? She can't seem to make any sense. It's really hard to believe there's someone out there who makes Bush sound literate. It's also deeply sad to think that this is as good as it gets up there in Alaska. No wonder all the young people who haven't gotten knocked up by 17 want to leave. Gobble gobble, be thankful this year you're not an Alaskan turkey (and I don't just mean the bird).



On this godly week to come... although I'm not a big fan of Bill Maher, who is kinda the new Michael Moore, I nevertheless thoroughly enjoyed his explanation of religion (scroll to about 3:00 minutes):

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Bill Maher Pt. 1

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

That One is the One!!!

4:01 am GMT - it's official! Hooray, thank god I can go to sleep. Good luck and good night!

The One and That One

0:13 GMT. Here in London, my today is already your tomorrow. In 48 hours the good people of the US will be doing one of the following:

1) welcoming a new era of unfettered sunshine and rainbows that end in buckets of love and happiness
2) examining the fine print in regulations for immigration to Canada
3) wallowing in the grips of 24/7 reporting about voter fraud

In the meantime, The One is free. I hope this is an auspicious sign of things to come tomorrow... Maikaʻi Pomaika‘i!



SNL Presidential Bash...

Business Syphilis and the She-Bush

Best new nickname for Palin: She-Bush. Heheheh...

Best explanation of the financial crisis:

Just in Case...

So it turns out that most people do not know too many Supreme Court cases other than Roe v Wade and even in that case most people have no clue what Roe (pro-choice) and Wade (pro-life) stood for. Fortunately, most people are not running for public office, unfortunately Sarah Palin is. So here is a good Wiki link for everyone to the most important Supreme Court decisions (she might want to look into the following Alaska Supreme Court case just in case she can't see the US Supreme Court cases from her house...). Joe Six Pack Americans should have enough pride in their own history to know more than Palin does about the country (forget world) she lives in.

Just to name a basic few: Brown v Board of Education (desegregation of schools); Miranda v. Arizona (anyone who has ever watched Law and Order should know about Miranda rights); Romer v Evans (gay rights); Hustler Magazine v Falwell (i.e., the People vs Larry Flynt); US v Nixon (President is not above law, ok, maybe Republicans forget this one a lot). If nothing else she should have been able to invoke Edwards v Aguillard (which voted against the teaching of Creationism), Gonzalez v Carhart (on partial-birth abortion), and the recent DC v Heller (which reinforced Second Amendment rights... ermm, that's the one about guns Palin).


By the way, for all those people still blathering on about how Palin's complete lack of experience (much less basic knowledge) should be read as a virtue, they should be reminded that it's not necessarily the best idea to let people with no training undertake a job that they do not understand. There's a reason WHY Joe Six Pack isn't President. Case in point: remember what happened to Homer Simpson's millionaire brother when he lets Homer (the ultimate Joe Six Pack) design "The Homer" at a credit-crunch price tag of $82,000? That's change we can't afford!

Don't Follow the White Rabbit

I never would have thought there was any 'milk' in those candies in the first place so it is all the more shocking that they some were made with melamine tainted milk. Americans will get on their moral high horses again and rant about those sneaky slanty eyed Chinese all the while failing to remember who it is clamouring for super-cheap consumable goods. I remember back when White Rabbit candies were a novelty and honkys would try to peel off the rice paper. Heheheh. Speaking of whiteys...

Elsewhere in today's lack of serious news reporting: Marc Quinn proves that cliches are hugely profitable. His uber-crapola Siren (solid gold statue of Kate Moss in yoga pose... poor man's version of Hirst's equally crapola diamond encrusted skull) can now be added to the list of lame-o sculptures of unworthy celebs and should be paired with Daniels whathisname's Britney Spears Monument to Pro-Life sculpture. Neither can top Jeff Koons' truly inspirational Jacko and Bubbles (above). Quinn's and Edwards' one-liners are sad, shoddy gimmicks. OK, who cares, everyone is all geared up for the great debate on America's Got No Talent.

Hard Times News

The so-called credit crunch seems to be hitting really big time now that even Somali pirates are slashing their ransom rates!



Elsewhere, the Palin ticket really is turning into Miss Congeniality as McCain's election team goes into over-drive to prep Caribou Barbie for the VP debate - no that's a still from the movie, not a photo op of Biden and Palin...

Maybe they can have a talent contest instead, it's Beauty Queen vs Dancing Queen:

I Think She's Turning Japanese, She's Turning Japanese...

Maybe it's her hi-tech Japanese ninja glasses that enable her to see Russia from her house. Kazuo Kawaski thinks so.

But what will the residents of Obama, Japan say?

8 more houses or 8 more years?

Did I not say that McCain was way too Manchurian Candidate to be president?



I know it's totally biased, but hey, McCain's having a bad time. He's being out polled by his own VP candidate Miss Congeniality... (yes, he does seem like he's trying to take off his wedding ring while giving SP the ol' elevator eyes treatment in that vid with Ms Con).

Eight of the world's most unlikely people to have anything in common with each other joined together in their dislike of SP:

1. Alec Baldwin
2. Pam Andersen
3. Matt Damon
4. Lindsay Lohan
5. Chevy Chase
6. P'Diddy (the legion of angry anti-P'Diddyists are pretty funny too)
7. Crowd of Alaskans
8. Pigs and pitbulls (because they are much smarter than hockey moms with or without lipstick)

p.s. Can someone explain the dinosaur/creationism thing? Were they really around 4000 years ago when the Chinese and Egyptian empires were running smoothly or was there an episode of Land of the Lost that I missed? And did John McCain invent the Blackberry? I thought he said he didn't know how to use computers...

911

Seven years since W was too busy reading a book about goats to figure out what was happening in the world. Seven years since this stupid War of Terror was declared and nothing came of it except for a lot of dead people and a bunch of computer games inspired by the War on Terror. Seven years that have been worse than watching Brad Pitt in Seven Years in Tibet. On such a sad occasion, we can only turn to the power of chimps to make us still laugh because the one in power is just too sad and it seems like the US is falling for the Wrinkly White Dude and America's Next Top Model:

The Mamma Mia Ticket

Does this need any comment?

Everyone keeps telling me it's photoshopped but it only matters marginally.

What about this one of 'George Bush in Lipstick'.

Read the article at the Huffington Post...

Bill for President

This is the missing chapter from Obama's account of his life in Dreams from My Father - Fat Philadelphia Years (alias 'Bill' seen here standing in the middle on the right). He was always the good kid in the Junkyard Gang wasn't he?

And from Paris, we have the following (Wrinkly Old White Hair Dude):

The Koala is not かわいい* (but Keanu is)

*kawaii = cute

From the producers of Calamari Wrestler comes this postmodern journey into the psychic life of... Executive Koala. Cute on the outside, but does he have a split personality? Is he a brutal killer, an innocent victim, an overworked salary man trying to get by, or just a man in a suit? Watch it now at crunchyroll.com.

OK, this film is totally whack, I mean beyond Machine Girl whack. But it's actually kinda spellbinding. Whereas Machine Girl was just buckets of fake blood and a pretty limp storyline, this might just be one of the lost masterpieces of indie cinema left to be discovered. The best part has got to be when the courtroom dream sequence is reduced to a musical. I think this undoes all the pain that was caused in my brain from having to witness Richard Gere in Chicago. The bit about inserting nice memories was also a nice nod to Strange Days, Ghost in the Shell, and Paprika. Part Donnie Darko, but also thoroughly existential. The kungfu scene at the end kicks Keanu Reeves' butt - is it OK if a girl gets completely slammed against a wall by a koala bear? The completely absurd ending would have left Brecht in utter awe. Nice one... definitely to be watched completely wired on Coke and gummi bears.

Edison's Invention

Beyond John Edwards' and Georgia's respective meltdowns, it's been a slow month for shocking news, but here's an alarming comparison of anatomies: Hawaii Five-O Part II vs. Small Guy Trying To Look Big

Nice V-neck tan line Obama...

Also, all the hype about Dark Knight was mostly hype. Great effects, but it wasn't dark enough and what was up with the Darth Vadar/Batman voice over? But everyone in that film has been cursed: Edison Chen had all of his porn stolen from his pink Macbook and uploaded onto the internet by mysterious "Kira", Heath Ledger OD'ed (who, by the way and with respect to the dead, does not deserve an Oscar - crazy is easy to play, Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon was much more impressive), and then Morgan Freeman got into a car accident. But what gives - Edison Chen is so completely STILL in Dark Knight. When Morgan Freeman gets to Hong Kong (what a fantastic waste of money for a great shot of Batman standing above Central) he is greeted as he enters the skyscraper by... yes, Edison, speaking perfect English (obviously) while everyone else is speaking Cantonese and "Lau" inexplicably speaks Mandarin (inexplicable because Lau is a Cantonese surname; Liu is the Mandarin equivalent - maybe it is a nod to Andrew Lau or Andy Lau?). Anyway, so I checked up online and some reports say he was supposed to be a cop, others insist that Chin Han replaced him as Lau, which would make him the bad guy instead of a cop. Anyway, all's well that ends well. I knew he'd be able to pull a Hugh Grant on this one. Gillian too. Fools, people in sex scandals sometimes even become president. I wonder what John Edwards will be doing next year...

p.s. Zhang Yimou does not disappoint, he is still the biggest director of eye candy for obese Western audiences (check out Kajui's shakedown on the opening ceremony and further comments on EastSouthWestNorth).

Happy 08-08-08!!!

Hope every one had an auspicious one. OK, no time to blog at the moment but highlights include Dark Knight and Man on Wire as far as movies about men in black hanging out on the top of buildings (more on Batman later). In the middle of Olympic-mania, Obama's Hawaiian vacation, McCain's bitch slap from Paris Hilton, and Russia and Georgia on the brink of war (no wonder Putin looked so unhappy at the Olympic opening ceremonies), the best absurdist news story of the week has got to be this one reported on BBC about an over-enthusiastic man in a Welsh town called Pontypridd who had his stereo and music seized and destroyed after he refused to stop blasting Cher and U2. Here's a little vintage Cher to redefine Patriot Act:

Almost 08/08/08!!!

OK, go away for a couple of weeks and the biggest wedding since Charles and Diana happens under your radar - Tony Leung and Carina Lau (wedding announced some time a couple of weeks ago) finally wed after dating for almost 20 years. Not big for most people but FREAKING big for HK, China, and Taiwan and that's over a billion people + so important for 1/4 people in the world. Wong Kar-wai and William Cheung 'curated' the wedding (whatever that means). ON the topic of The Talent Mr Leung, began watching pirated RED CLIFF DVD in Toronto, but it was, as the Pacific Mall salesgirl told me, only 'camcorder quality' so not even '90% DVD quality'. I like old school hand held pirated DVDs because it preserves the sense of the cinema as a public space - e.g., you can hear everyone laughing their heads off when the actors say something ridiculous that will just appear very 'Oriental' in the official DVD (e.g., any glossy but lame-o Zhang Yimou martial arts film). It's good to have a clued-in public present to judge how silly things are (I think I've been reading too much Gramsci this week, but on this see also Laikwan Pang). Back to John Woo's The Battle of Red Cliff: in one scene, Tony Leung's and Takeshi Kaneshiro's characters challenge each other to sing but then have a gu-zheng-off instead (contest on flat stringed instrument... last seen in Kung Fu Hustle) and everyone in the audience got the giggles. Sadly never made it to the end so can't report on film but watched it with my teenaged cousin who kept substituting everyone with Lord of the Rings characters (hee hee). But hey, it's John Woo so we can count on trustworthy themes - brotherhood, blood, and diagonal shooting (hmm, that will be more difficult with axes and cross bows but I'm sure he'll manage).

ps. here's a follow up to previous blog courtesy of Vanity Fair featuring John and Cindy McCain (can you take someone named Cindy seriously?):

Barack Osama

Don't know why but all I seem to be blogging about these days is the Golden Child (on second thought, Coming to America is a more apposite Eddie Murphy reference here). I definitely want Obama to become president because he wins on fun factor (remember when Jesse Jackson was prompted to say "I want to cut his nuts off"? -- that's funny politics). McCain is a little too Manchurian Candidate to be a laugh. Thing is, you couldn't find a joke funny enough to make about him like the one The New Yorker made about Obama and his wife. OK, so two funny/terrifying things: people who can't take a joke and Michelle on the View. What is up with that show? It should be re-named Desperate Housewives in the Sexless City. Ick. Glad I was never in a sorority. Gross.
I guess none of those "loyal" bleeding hearts who love The New Yorker remembered the March 2008 cover from not too long ago or indeed the Radar cover from back in November 2007 when people thought that Giuliani (The Man Who Forgot To Run For President-Giuliani or was it The Man Who Got Too Lazy To Fundraise-Giuliani?) would be the man to challenge Hillary. Yeesch, lighten up people! Have these devoted readers of The New Yorker ever met New Yorkers? Ya gotta love any identity group who would carpet bomb Madonna's car with pebbles and other Central Park debris because she has disgraced their beloved Yankee so appropriatly named A-Rod (OK, this story is admittedly reported from the same Radar of the dubious magazine cover--i.e., can you really trust people who thought Giuliani was The One?).

OK, people who can laugh at what is funny about racial stereotypes should check out Russell Peters' comedy act Outsourced (funny guy living in L.A., he would be Canadian wouldn't he...):

Springtime for Hitler

Haven't had time to post anything, but here is another one from the BBC for the wax lovers: 'Waxworks Hitler Beheaded in Berlin'. Not quite as odd as the woman who pinched the Oceans Thirteen wax figures or nearly as heroic as Paul Kelleher who beheaded a statue of Thatcher back in 2003, but pretty weird all the same.

Big Brotha

Is it finally over? My god, I am SO sick of hearing about Billary vs the Junior Senator from Illinois. She should divorce Bubba and get Obama to nominate her as his next Supreme Court Justice and then she will have lifelong power, which is what she seems to crave more than anything else. And just when this painfully long, tedious "election" of popularity has finally come to a possible end, it has been announced that the 9th season of the crapola-thon Big Brother has begun in the UK. That has always been the beginning of summer in London in my mind, which is becoming mush from all this democracy. Wonder how things are going in Zimbabwe...

Karma karma karma chameleon

This just in - Sharon Stone blames China quake on bad Tibet karma. Mwahahahaha. So, I guess in 2001 when her husband, Phil Bronstein, got bit by a komodo dragon in the LA zoo was it payback for her entire filmic career? Hey, she just doesn't want anyone 'to be unkind to anyone else'. 'They're not being nice to the Dalai Lama who is a friend of mine'...

Well, do us a favour, stop making movies. That would be very kind to us all. BTW - My cousin provided me with the all-time best review of Basic Instinct 2: 'it was a good architectural tour of London'.

Jesus Christ Superstar

What the??? Drudge Report has called it 'Obama Mass'. I wonder if they are serving fish and loaves. That's quite a bill for the Rent-a-Crowd company he's going to have to pay...


This reminds me of the Gospel of Debbie, which anyone raised Catholic has to read for a good laugh.

The Air I Breathe

Better than the Hollies song. IMDB reports that the director - Jieho Lee - had to go to Harvard Business School so that his Asian parents would let him become a director. Good thing he persisted. One of the best US films I've seen in a long time. The Wiki entry said that most US critics gave it negative reviews which just goes to prove the continued idiocy of film critics in that country. It is a four part story in which every character is interlinked with the others (think Babel, but much better and without the grotesque bourgeois pomposity of trying to address 'world events' and tick off every global market in the most superficial way). I guess the cinematography is far too beautiful (Brendan Fraser sequence captures the magic of Leon Lai in Fallen Angels and rolls like Clive Owen in WKW's BMW ad, which also features Forest Whitaker) and the plot requires too much thought for an American audience with ADS. Crying shame. Bad reviews make for lily-livered investors and Jieho Lee is a good thing - managed to get one of Sarah Michelle Gellar's best performances since Buffy and Forest Whitaker is heartbreaking as a chump. The Good Doctor - Mark Kermode - was supposed to review it yesterday but ran out of time, pity (however, watch Mark's review of Rambo on Youtube, while you're at it watch his hilarious rant about Tarantino).

You speaka my Englisha?

No time now for comments but here are two highlights from Munich and Rome.

I wonder if it's a German dollar store? I bet you it's full of CCMs. And, no, it's not just the Chinese who have trouble with language. Check out the Italienglish below (very nice cafe though). If you are really that intrigued you can also read this BBC report on US misspeaking and inarticulacy and see this guy's site for laffs.

May Day! May Day!

Lots since the beginning of May: so first Red Ken gets booted out of office by Conservative goofball Boris Yeltsin Becker Johnson (yes, he does look like the love child of that grotesque orgy), then a rather pathetic may Day parade goes down the streets of London - I counted very few people, lots of young white shirted men stopped in front of Starbucks (unknowingly I think) and gave the good ol' left handed salute. The photo to the left is the guy in yellow who follows at the end of the parade and rolls up the police tape. He is the personification of Post-Socialism. The answer to the question 'What comes after Socialism?' is: the police state. Then a few days later Hillary decides that she's going to go the way of Milosovic and pander to bombing someone for political popularity. The verdict is in, get ready for President McCain (hey, he will be less reactionary than Hillary). Thank god for this item from Kaiju to cheer us all up - Wong Kar-wai has had Yoyo Ma re-score Ashes of Time!!! Oh, yes, and Rain beat Colbert for Time Mag's 100 most influential people, which leads me to ask what the heck has happened to the USofA?!

The Political Absurd

Sad day folks, especially if you are Italian. Is it the hair implants? The canzone or the general fact that the man is a crook?

The Filmic Sublime

This clip from Jia Zhangke's Still Life makes up for all the bad movies I've seen this month. Just to set it up: a woman has been searching across China to find her husband to ask for a divorce. She finally finds him and they are talking to each other in this dilapidated tenement block and sharing a piece of candy. What happens next is as close to the sublime as I've seen in film in a very long time.

'Yo veo dead people' or Beetlejuice en espagñol

Had loads of caffeine last night to get hyped up to see the 'super scary' The Orphanage. Super scary as in: What has happened to people's taste?!?! I checked the reviews again this morning to make sure I hadn't imagined them. Still a 4.3/5 star rating and still lots of reviewers going on about how scary and moving it is. Not super and not scary. OK, freaky social worker with bottle lens glasses and Geraldine Chaplin (offspring of legendary Charlie) as a psychic were creepy enough but that had nothing to do with horror, social workers and children of very famous people are just creepy by definition. So I am still left wondering what is the hype all about?! You can't be both a horror film (which is how this film has been pitched by Warner Bros, whose corporate finger prints can be seen all over this movie) AND be a moving fairy tale, that's a very tough combo. And for those of you who didn't see every next scene coming a mile away: you need to spend more time in the cinema!!! This isn't even Guillermo del Toro, but a GdT production (i.e., here's a bunch of consolation money for not winning the Oscar for the truly deserving Pan's Labyrinth, which IS a very moving fairy tale without being a horror film). El Orfanato is essentially a fluffed up Mexican version of Beetlejuice (which I do rate highly) featuring a mini-Donnie Darko without bunny ears or a reworking of the unbearably pretentious The Others by Alejandro Amenábar (which is the original Spanish Beetlejuice). As far as 'we are dead people trapped in an old creaky house with doorknobs that turn in the dark by themselves' scary the ropey old black and white Deborah Kerr vehicle The Innocents (1961) still haunts:

What was scary was getting off the night bus and seeing my neighbor standing there sending off a friend. That's uncanny considering there are millions of people in the city of London. Also ran into friend's parents at the bus stop the other day and they were visiting from New York. Bus stops as portals: next horror film scenario after the mutant pandas and giant penguins stories...

Happy Bank Holiday!

OK, so Easter is a big scam like all other holidays, except we get an unusual number of days off so hooray. The big JC dies so let's eat huge amounts of chocolate bunnies, eggs, marshmallow chicks, etc. and stuff ourselves silly because Christmas was a while ago now: 'whenever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there will be obscene gorging involved'. Hey pass that body and blood of Christ... Protestants said that Catholics were essentially cannibals because they were so hung up on the whole transubstantiation business. Vampires too in that case.

Anyway, Easter in London this year was full of freak snow storms that melt on contact. It's like fake snow or something. One minute it's a blizzard, next minute it's just another cold, dank, gray English winter day. I think I'm trapped in someone's snowdome... This Easter I went to a baptism which was followed by biblical amounts of drinking and a very nice lamb (of God?). Then read this story about a praying dog bumping up numbers at a Buddhist temple, so now the verdict is in: organised religion is full of freaks from fundamentalists to UFO worshippers (yes, this reminds me that the last time I was in the USofA I saw a 'documentary' on TV about UFOS in the Bible, no you couldn't make that kind of crap up...). We can thank the 'History' Channel for this enlightening programme (official brainwashing machine of the American Right and producers of the equally dubious History of Britain with Simon Schama)...

Oh, on the topic of documentaries and in keeping with all that seasonal redemption yada yada, went to see Rene Vautier's most excellent Afrique 50 (1950) at the Tate Modern Paradise Now film series. The Tate clips were uneven ranging from the poetic sublime (Moholy-Nagy's film The Old Port at Marseilles) and the political sublime (a piece on the S.C.U.M Manifesto) to the outright stupid (both contemporary video artists should be tied up in an auditorium and forced to watch their own self-indulgent crap for 24 continuous hours). But Vautier's terrifyingly prophetic film is still amazing and well worth the watch if you can handle the clip without subtitles, puts Fritz Lang's Metropolis to shame (and that is one of my all time favourite films, I even liked Giorgio Moroder's remake too). OK, not to end Easter on a downer, here's a clip of baby pandas to cheer everyone up (even if I think they are being cloned en masse in Chinese labs, fantastic horror film scenario in the making here and yes, the first two victims of the mad GM panda will be those two giggling girls in the clip)...

Super Simpsonize Me

It's been a very long couple of weeks and there are many things to report on and nowhere obvious to start so I combined two highlights: Slavoj Zizek's pay-per-view lecture series Ideology Embedded at Birkbeck in London and the Simpsonizer. Well, at least that's what I wanted to do, but for a man who is everywhere all the time, it is strangely hard to find any hi-res photos of him, so you will have to do with this one of me.

Zizek's lectures were nuts as usual, but two memorable quotes include:
1. 'When I'm ready to take questions, I will distribute them'.
2. 'Without 1968, there would have been no Bill Gates'.
Highlights included:
Analysis of the 'ideology glasses' scene in John Carpenter's They Live; identity vs. representation as demonstrated in the 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me' scene in Cabaret; comparison of Joan Baez singing 'Joe Hill' and Terminator 2 and the theme of martyrs and posthumous collective organisation in the line 'what they can never kill went on to organize'; explanation of the dialectic through the birdcage trick in the Prestige; naming La Vita è Bella and Schindler's List as two of the world's all-time worse films (too ignoble to merit links); analysis of Lenin as a good matchmaker in Reds. I'm sure the book will be out soon, the guy writes them like most people eat candies.

Chicago Baywatch

Obama being very Hawaii Five-O here. I dunno, I find this disturbing. Not the lack of clothing, but the strangeness of this guy's body. Does that man have magic clothes that slim him? Some weird Harry Potter coat for making you look 5 sizes smaller? If so he should market it to Hillary's so-called middle-aged, middle-class women voter base. Maybe he wears a girdle? Like I said, it's kinda disturbing. Not as disturbing, mind you, as how much weight John McCain suddenly gained while I wasn't looking (or maybe I just had a false memory of him being a skinny guy, and I was never looking all that closely anyway)...

Spare Some Change Bro?

will.i.am is a campaign deus ex machina for Obama. Is Babs still campaigning for Hillary (oy vey)?

This is not an Obama endorsement, but he'd be more fun as president than John McCain (don't forget John Edwards was supported by the MWLLKR site). Obama's a lucky guy to have found good (and free) PR. There are lots of spoofs out there already including 'john.he.is' for John McCain which I was sent by my bro. There is also the well-circulated Obama's Top 10 List on Letterman as well as a seriously OTT MadTV clip of Hillary with 'jungle fever' wanting to serve under Obama - definitely NOT suitable for the easily shocked and offended (don't say I didn't warn you)...

Addendum: Here's a bunch of other new songs about Obama...

'Better Britney than Whitney'

I remember you used to say this to differentiate between crazy celebs like Whitney Houston who end up coked off their faces and marrying boy band has-beens and perky up and coming pop tarts like Britney Spears. Poor Britney, what went wrong? Can't help but feel sympathy for her because she is so freaking nuts. I remember back when she was savvy and sane enough to have made the video for Lucky (life imitating art...)
But over all it's a bad week to be a celeb, especially if you are Edison Chen (who, like Britney, has been reported to be suicidal this week, although much of these details are likely to just be salacious HK tabloid fever). Although porn-from-your-laptop is never something you want to leak out to the world, Edison has plenty of other things to be ashamed of like his bad R&B rapping in Cantonese. Oh yeah, and he owned a PINK MacBook. Edison was slated to be in the next Batman, but it looks like that film is cursed with bad luck.



p.s. Hey, doesn't any of this remind anyone of the internet photo-plot of Beyond Our Ken starring the very same afflicted Gillian Chung (and Daniel Wu)? IMDB plot outline reads: 'A month after Wai Ming broke up with Ken, she finds nude pictures of her on his website. To get back at him, she teams up with his new girlfriend'. You'd think she would have learned... more life imitating art.

p.s. no time now to plug most excellent HK director Pang Ho Cheung, maybe another time (see Isabella if you get a chance, saw it two years ago at HKFF and PHC was there with Chapman To)...

Hard Rain

The movie is on its way: Speed Racer with Rain from the Wachowski Brothers of Matrix fame.

Myeh...

I'll be in Rome of all places at the beginning of Chinese New Year so here's a final farewell from the pigs. Safe travels to everyone on the move (especially all those people stranded in frozen train stations without heat in China).

Loser

OK, so Hillary Clinton really is a sad, sad cow. Nobody was supposed to be schmoozing for delegate points in Florida, everybody agreed (because Florida is full of senile people incapable of remembering when to hold their primaries), but Hillary changed her mind at the last minute because she realized she might lose... She makes Rumsfeld seem like a Boy Scout. I'm not saying that Obama is the Saviour (Keanu Reeves is THE ONE), but Hillary has really outdone herself in desperate, mega-loser'ish moves - as if getting her castrated husband Bill to bad mouth Obama wasn't enough, now she reminds me more than ever of Reese Witherspoon in Election.
I think Florida should not be allowed to vote anymore. Red card for stupidity. Dade County should be carpet bombed off the Union map (they have provided us with three memorable US history moments: the Chad incident; OJ Simpson's first post-Nicole arrest; and the demise of Paul Reubens' career: Pee Wee Herman caught masturbating in porn theatre, thanks a lot DADE COUNTY). In fact, let's just saw off Florida and send it off to Castro, maybe he can improve literacy rates there.

I see white people

Mwahahahahaha... see full scoop here and for info on the real Jeff Ma and Mike Aponte. Not sure who Kate Bosworth gets to play (and yeah, you can ignore Aaron Yoo in the corner on the left, it would have been impossible not to have at least one authentically Asian guy in any random selection of five MIT students). Trailer also suggests that Kevin Spacey's agent still thinks he's an actor and not just the director of dubious stage productions at the Old Vic in London.

p.s. For those of you who are not familiar with Ma & Aponte, they were the MIT nerds who scammed the casinos in Vegas and got caught but now all have stellar professional, non-nerd careers (whoohoohooo, capitalism keeps the world spinning and spinning!).

I see dead people... but they're not very scary

This is the 'horror' show down between Fan Bing Bing and Li Bing Bing:


Ha ha ha, just saw this ridiculous US distribution poster for Teng Hua-tao's most fantastic would-be Wong Kar-wai'ish, would be 'horror' film The Matrimony (Chinese title literally says: 'there are ghost inside my heart' and yes first two US posters on top make the movie look way scarier than it actually is). In spite of all the 'would be's it's a really good film - excellent ending (although you have to be sharp or you'll miss the whole point), Rene Liu is great, and well, I don't know why Leon Lai keeps getting screen time... He makes the ghosts look more alive than the humans. Best Leon Lai casting: Fallen Angels where Wong Kar-wai has him play a totally expressionless hitman. Genius. perfect use of his wooden face. We'll see what the ambitious new Chen Kai-ge film will bring where LL plays an opera master (me, I'm thinking, LL's face covered in what will essentially be expressive stage makeup, kind of reminds me of Tom Cruise 'acting' with a mask on in Vanilla Why, I mean Sky).

It's not really a 'horror' film but part of that distinct Chinese genre of ghost films like Stanley Kwan's Rouge, which would have hugely disappointed any horror fanboy expecting gore. Ditto for the Bing-Bing-a-thon here. On this note also check out Johnnie To's Linger (Chinese title: 'fly away butterfly'). You can watch the un-subtitled original version on Youtube but don't read the synopsis if you don't like spoilers [correction: you could have watched it if you had been fast, it's been removed: here's the trailer link instead]. I can't vouch for Vic Zhou's acting (this is his first feature film after a successful run of Taiwanese soap operas), but he is good eye candy for the run of the movie.

Did I mention this is Johnnie To? I guess you wouldn't expect him to do a simple love story, one of the people would have to be dead right? And there are also motorcycle chases involved. The posters makes Li Bing Bing look dead, but young Vic Zhou actually plays the corpse. It's not bad, a little like a passive aggressive version of Ghost, which is one of my father's favourite film. Hmm, that was possibly THE worse promo for a film anyone has ever made. Ugh, in fact, I think I've convinced myself out of liking the movie with that unforgivable remark... (apologies to Johnnie To).

And I have to say, I think Li Bing Bing wins hands down on this one.

Six degrees: Li Bing Bing and Rene Liu were in World Without Thieves with Andy Lau.

Oh and for all those F4 fans weeping from their temporary hiatus, they have a new album out, I think it's called 'Waiting for You' or waiting for you to make us some more money...