clytamnestra

The fact that we know Weiner lost the election gives this film a sense of inevitability. While Weiner still hopes for some miracle we already know he will always be 'the punchline'. It all stays a bit superficial, but i suppose that's the best any documentary can hope for when your subjects are media-trained up to their eye-balls.

Is Weiner a good person? Nah, he is a politician after all, and i dislike a lot of the things he says in that capacity. And he has this one big moral weakness where he says 'yes' to any woman that comes on to him (coincidentally the same kind of weakness as Bill Clinton: both men not only strayed, but continued to do so after being found out).

But another side of this is that Weiner is depicted as the victim of stalking: one of the women he sexted jumps at the opportunity to do a sex-tape and to follow him around (big silicons in a small dress) and very obviously only started feeling 'victimized' when there was money in it for her. Not an innocent victim for sure, but most stalking-victims aren't.

(and i am really just speculating, but i can't shake the feeling this is one of those cases where a guy married someone he is 'supposed to marry': ultra-thin and with great connections, and doesn't want to admit even to himself that he feels more sexually attracted towards 'ugly women')

We all know the solution to this specific Poirot mystery: 'they all did it'. So when working my way through this series i wasn't even sure it'd bother to watch this episode.

But what a pleasant surprise: the writers also realized that the viewers know the basics so they just go through the motions in that regard (the kidnapped baby, the letter 'H', the false evidence, etc). Far easier than in any other Poirot-episode do we get to the truth: they all did it, and they aren't ashamed, in fact the killers are practically bragging about their clever ruse (which makes sense, i suppose, of course they are happy to let everyone know about their revenge).

Where most episodes are a 'who done it' this episode is all about Poirot's moral choice: this is a man whose 'holy mission' is to expose the truth and let the law take it from there. That truth may come at a high cost, but he will not be guilt-tripped for exposing it: if 'a good man' lied and committed suicide than that's his fault/choice and not Poirot's.

The intro with the stoned woman in Istanbul doesn't make much sense in other versions of this story, but here it all kinda comes together. Poirot respecting 'the law of the land' and keeping his opinion to himself (keep in mind he is _not_ English). His faith that he is an instrument of god. The struggle it is for him to turn a blind eye.

An element i haven't seen mentioned in other reviews is the racist attitude of the killers (if there is anything 'typically English' to be found in this tale it's here, in the nonchalant prejudices). Of course every judge in the world would go light on them, would bent over backwards to let them get of with a slap on the wrist. But that's not what they are after, their fear is not as much facing a judge but facing a Yugoslavian judge. To them the entirety of eastern Europe is fly-over country, a backwards backwater with less justice than the corrupt Chicago judge who set the child-murdering mafia-guy free. That's a hard sell for a war-refugee: to say 'we do not acknowledge local legal sovereignty'.

Poirot was thus far presented as 'the perfect detached gentleman': a nice guy, who is always emotionally-stable and whose emotions never appear to run very deep. Here we see a different view of him, a view that is probably shocking to those who equate 'intelligence' and 'intelectual rigor' with 'millitant atheism'.

Many documentaries try to depict a hart-warming story of success, this one is all about the harsh realities of failure. And not just the failure of someone-who-never-got-a-chance, but the failure of a group of people who used to have-it-all. The background: in 1990 Madonna takes on a bunch of starving young dancers, handpicked from the then thriving underground gay art community which was all about 'attitude'. They are featured prominently in her tour and in the corresponding documentary.

This should be their ticket to stardom and riches, but it isn't, at least not for very long. A few short years later they are embroiled in lawsuits against Madonna, and struggling with debilitating drug- addictions. Is it their fault for being naive and letting Madonna build them up as 'sexy and arrogant' and burn all their bridges? Madonna's fault for exploiting them to make herself look young and edgy and underground? The movie doesn't take a clear stand and that's okay, the truth is probably in the middle anyway.

The view the movie gives of their present life isn't pretty: moved back in with his mother (who openly blames him for letting it all slip through his fingers), tries to carve out an existence as a dance-teacher, the occasional 'i used to dance with Madonna' show for small uninterested audiences. They try to desperately hold onto their glimmer of fame when the rest of the world has long moved on. Bragging about all the 'you changed my life, made me okay with being gay' letters they supposedly still receive.

A large part of the movie is a reunion dinner. The movies makes no attempt to hide that this is staged (they don't seem to like each other very much, they just play along with the 'family' idea when it might help their career). There is even a new truth or dare game in which they all play their designated part: a dude comes out of the closet with his HIV, the straight kid tells us how he used to despise gays and their diseases, they angle for a new endorsement from Madonna, etc.

Whenever we forget how sexist and cruel the '70s were there are stories like this to remind us: a supposedly serious researcher keeps making decisions with his dick and shows zero interest in the emotional well-being of his study-subject. It starts when a kid-chimp is taken from his mother by force. As nothing says 'grow up to be a well-adjusted adult' like being kidnapped from your loving mother. Then the baby is dumped with the professor's ex-girlfriend (she is a woman you see, and he is a man so he cannot possibly take care of a baby). When she turns out to be a child-neglecting hippie (letting her ape- baby smoke weed, not taking any notes of the experiment) he puts the ape with his new teenage girlfriend. SignLanguage-teaching now begins. This set-up doesn't work out either, but luckily there's finally a proper teacher who teaches the poor ape some rudimentary social skills such as to not bite people (the professor dislikes her, presumably because she's more interested in his assistant's dick). Nim-the-talking-ape is by now world-famous, but he's still a wild and physically strong animal (and an heavily abused one at that) so he lashes out and needs to be put in a cage, with other apes. After a difficult start he finds his turn, with a chimp-girlfriend and a relaxed approach to his sign-language-lessons. With his chance of being 'the guy who made an ape into a human' gone the prof makes a 180 as 'the guy who proved that apes are definitely not human'. What little interest he had in Nim as a person completely gone by now. Nim gets screwed over by humanity again when he and his new ape- family are shipped of to nasty drugs-tests. After lots of activism he ends up in a sanctuary where he lives out his remaining years with some ups and downs.

The basic premise of this show certainly is interesting: 8 random people from all over the world and with a very different outlook on life are somehow linked together. All they share is their birthdate. Not only can they communicate but they can take over each other's body (which is useful when it comes to fighting abilities). Of course a lot of that communication could be achieved with a simple smartphone, but it is the feeling of randomness and the idea of talking to someone completely outside of your social group that creates interesting interactions.

Unfortunately, like many Wachowski-projects, i find the execution to be somewhat lacking. With so many people and so little episodes a lot of the story- telling reverts to 'pet/kick the dog' and 'big leaps' moments of characterization. Such as the cop saving the young kid. German scenes in the holocaust memorial. The sex-seeking beard who is totally into gay porn. The rich African dude loves his daughter very much. To make matters worse a big chunk of story-time is sacrificed to new-age abracadabra. The constant 2-place-conversations are a neat visual trick (presumably one of JMS's contributions to the show), but i'm not sure they are worth the effort in terms of planning versus emotional pay-off. The thing i'd really want to see is some actual deep conflict between these 8 people, instead of this perpetual sense of blissful wonderness and insta-love. When a show feels like sitting in a haze of pot-smoke you need to work on your writing. Go light on the Jason/Whispers stuff until these sensates have actually gotten to know each other in more then just a few flashes.

While there certainly is some good-faith effort into placing everyone into their respective surroundings without being unduly chauvinistic about western values (love-marriage being on the rise in India, open gay-ness being career-suicide in Latin-America, sexist Korea, poor and corrupt but not stupid Africa, gang-vs-cop difficulties in Chicago, East-German gangsters, etc etc) the fact of the matter is that this show is still written through an American lens and it shows in a myriad of ways.

There is some situational humor, mostly in the story of the Indian girl desperately trying to get her unbelievably perfect fiancée to dump her.

Overall i think this show has promise, and i'm curious to see what the 2th season will bring.

This movie is based on 2 autobiographies and it very much shows: there is a severe lack of distance or humor. Julia was a bit more tolerable than Julie, but in the end i didn't really like either character.

Julia is a bored upper-middle-class housewife whose first scenes in the movie boil down to 'my quirkiness makes the usually-grumpy french completely accept me, even though i am an obnoxious American speaking no french but appropriating their culture and cuisine nonetheless'. She goes on to take very expensive 'real cook' lessons, because she is no ordinary housewife but totally an actual professional cook by sheer force of wishing for it to be true. We are supposed to feel sorry for her when the owner of the cook-school looks down on her. There's a possibility for drama when her husband gets in McCarthy's crosshairs, but that plot sizzles out before it even took off. Another missed opportunity was when her sister gets pregnant and the lack of children in the Child's household.

Julie has even more quirkiness in her life. For some reason hanging out with 'friends' that are portrayed as comically self-absorbed and shallow she instead longs for something to do with her life. Something that potentially salvages her failed writing-career. Enter the blog. And the luck of living in a time-period when every moderately-successful blog led to an outpour of book-offers (we get treated to a phone- parade of publishers and agents begging for an appointment). Julia seems to have thought the whole project was 'a stunt' and it's hard to disagree: obviously you can't learn how to cook from making each dish just once. And when we see Julie typing content for her blog it's all about her marriage and her lazy unfounded hero-worship for Julia instead of about food.

I suppose the movie is okay enough if you want an easy chickflic to get you through the evening, but don't expect for the past-present format to have any deeper meaning, or for anyone to learn anything about themselves.

If you want to see an exercise in child-abuse this it the movie for you. It starts with a mother who forces her child to follow into her exact footsteps and have the ballet career she never had (because she got pregnant!), which leads to the daughter torturing herself with starvation-diets and gruesome exercises in a futile attempt to please her mother. As so many abused children her total lack of 'self' makes her an easy pray for sexual predators and their manipulations. She sadly never manages to come into her own (though there is a short episode of lashing out by sleeping with a random boy and with a 'bad girl' friend). And eventually dies at the end of the movie, in a scene that seems to suggest this climax of unending psychological and physical brutality heaped onto a young woman is somehow 'artistic'

When i saw the title and description of this documentary i thought it would be awesome: A documentary about people walking the entire length of a famous river. But alas, this was not the nature/anthropology-focused documentary i had hoped for but the story of egomaniac white jackasses carried through the jungle by their local guides. The camera firmly aimed at the constant childish bickering instead of the beautiful landscape or the exotic villages they come across. If this is the stuff English soldiers are made off i now understand why the English empire has crumbled: pretending to be badass while the locals make fun of your cluelessnes and your total lack of preparation.

has some interesting tidbits. mostly if you study the documentary-makers together with the people they portray. the documentary itself is mostly a dime-a-dozen leftist pamphlet from some chest-pounder doing an anthropological study about the USA. this guys chooses to focus on sitcoms (and how they evolved over the years), which is a novel and interesting angle. it's a few interviews with sitcom writers, some fragments from their shows, and then tim stanley blabbing it all together. the whole thing is in no way a comprehensive history of American sitcoms, but i think they did the best they could with a 1-hour story.

i think one of the biggest problems was too much ambition: you can't give a decent overview of 'abortion in sitcoms' AND 'gays in sitcoms' AND 'the failing of the American dream in sitcoms' AND 'religion in sitcoms' etc, AND tie each issue to how it is treated in politics, AND discuss how it is viewed by the common men. AND yam it all in one hour. it comes across as trying to push a season's worth of documentaries in just this 1 episode.

a movie about 'the first American openly-gay successful politician' would have to try very hard to not be at least somewhat interesting. and this movie has no problem accomplishing that (admittedly easy) task.

but were it gets more interesting than some other biopics is that this movie does not paint harvey as a saint (with only a few very minor faults added for dramatic tension): instead he is portrayed as your average selfish, manipulating and dishonest politician. who will steer up social unrest in order to play the us (gays) against them (original san fransico-nites) card and get votes, but also use whatever other issue he happens to stumble upon (dogpoop) for political gain. at the same time it also shows a non-dbag side: he cares about his lover, he fights for equal rights for gays, he is insecure about 'being 40 and accomplishing nothing'. all together creating the kind of believable multi-dimensional character that is extremely rare in Hollywood.

a good choice in my opinion, because it highlights that even if a gay person is a selfish scumbag that should not take away from his fundamental human rights (to not be beaten up, to live with the person he loves, to run for office, etc).

its not clear to me though why the movie spends so much time on his assassination, when it is clear (in the movie at least, i don't know about reality) that his murder has nothing to do with his sexual orientation or political ideas. it is just a normal random workplace shooting (as far as such a horrible thing could ever be considered 'normal'). a co-workers hits a very dark spot in his personal and professional life and takes it out on the guy that symbolizes his ruined career: in this case the guy who made a political trade about an issue that was very important to said co-worker, but who then backed out at the very last moment during the actual vote, without any prior warning or explanation about that last-minute betrayal.

in technical aspects this movie was adequate (though not particularly good): the sets look Egyptian, the special effects are acceptable for a TV-movie.

the acting ranges from 'phoning it in' (our hero and heroin) to 'cringe-worthy' (the bad guys and extras) the story is the biggest problem: to say that the writer wiped his ass with historical accuracy is an understatement. but such an offense could be easily forgiven if the departure from history is for the sake of making a more entertaining story or for trimming a confusing back-story. this story however fails at both: it constructs an elaborate back-story (or at least pretends to have done so, while in fact it's just 'good versus evil') and fails to be entertaining.

the only entertainment this train-wreck offers is in schade-freude: laughing at the huge pretensions that seep through and at the actors who must at one point have thought they were in a half-way decent movie. that the hero and his friends are boring and not very intelligent is to be expected (they are audience-avatars, and the people who make these movies don't have a very high opinion of their audience). but the biggest problem is that the villains are equally stupid and one-dimensional and (most damning of all) boring as hell. their only goal is apparently to 'be bad' (and not in the 'getting drunk and having fun' way, but in the 'having countless staff-meetings and doing boring political things' way).

this movie had so much promise: -a famous story from dutch history -several well-known experienced dutch actors and a famous model trying her hand at acting. -nice scenery of amsterdam and nova zembla, in 3D no less

unfortunately all of that potential was wasted: -the story is messy and most of the scenes feel disjointed. if you know the story you'll notice all the parts that are missing or incorrect, if you don't know the story you'll just be confused. -the dialogue is horribly written. the acting is terrible, most off these actors have done way better in the past. and don't get me started on doutzen kroes -the 3D was of the universally-hated post-production kind (shot in 2D, then digitally converted to 3D, instead of filming with a 3d-camera). no doubt done to save money, but they needn't have bothered: good 2D looks way better than bad 3D (though i'm a big fan of GOOD 3D)

and wtf did this movie start with the shot of them in a boat with a dead polar bear if that scene is nowhere in the movie? seems like this is a director who wants to include *every* scene that has been shot.

and why did everybody on board apparently forget to pack their gloves and a warm hat?

very bad adaptation of a very good book. the lady who wrote the book (Thea Beckman) said she did not like this movie and i can only agree.

in the book Dolf is a strong person who tries to do sensible things given that he is stranded in the middle ages. in the movie he's a totally uninteresting whiny little brad, mostly concerned with his own superiority over these primitive people.

in the book he eventually resigns himself to being stuck in the middle-ages for the rest of his life, in the movie it is clear all the time he will be rescued, taking away all tension (and i just want to forget about the ultra-clichéd Hollywood-style 'he has to take a pill every day and only has like 5 pills')

In the book Dolf makes friends with some of the people he meets. in the movie the only person of interest is some girl with the brains of a peanut. (it's a kid's movie dammit, which pedophile ever thought they really needed to cram some romance in it?)

in the book he goes back in time out of scientific curiosity, in the movie it's because he can't handle loosing some stupid socker game.

in the book he gets things done with his intelligence, being a leader because he has earned the respect of his comrades, in the movie: no intelligence, no hard earned respect.

I liked almost all of Thea Beckman's books and if this is the way the movie-industry treats them i just hope the rest of her stories will be kept of the screen and in the hands of people who do not feel like reading a book once in a while is to much of an effort.

rather good for a low budget movie. of course the story doesn't follow the original legend in all the details, that's rarely the case in most movies anyway. and even if those changes don't make the story really better at least the story isn't changed in some unrecognizable Hollywood monstrosity.

special effects are very impressing for a modest budget.

my problems are with the Gothic music and clothing (why do so many people wear black?).

the story is about Siegfried. he is loved by 2 women: Brunhilde and Kriemhilde. He himself loves Brunhilde, so Kriemhilde gives him a magic potion that makes him forget about Brunhilde and love her instead. this leads to a lot of misunderstandings and betrayals and in the end most of the participants in this game have died violently.

i recently saw this movie and it was much better than i expected. with every new (old) Eddie Murphy movie i see i'm afraid it will be like 'the nutty professor', filled with toilet jokes.

while romantic comedies are usually either romantic or funny, this movie accomplishes to be both. it has a few slapstick moments, but they are countered with some believable serious moments. movies that try to stock every minute of it with a joke are usually not that funny. especially if that humor only refers to toilet or sexual habits. that's usually an easy way out for comedy-writers without inspiration.

the story is that of a young prince of some fictional African country. instead of marrying the woman that is chosen for him (who is trained to be a completely obedient wife) he goes to America, trying to find a woman who is willing to marry him just for himself, without his money. so he goes incognito, rents a cheap room and gets a job mopping floors in a fast food restaurant. after a while one of the daughters of the owner of said restaurant falls for him and dumps her rich boyfriend (who didn't tread her well anyway) for him. when she finds out about his title, she's at first angry with him for lying, but they talk it out and we end with a big wedding.

a cute movie. all of the 'good' characters are nice and likable. the movie is predictable from the first minute, but these kind of movies are not supposed to be intellectually challenging anyway.

2 rich sisters are abducted by 2 poor young men (and their friends) wanting to marry them. at first the abduction is not much of a success, forcing the 4 of them to travel together for a few days. during this time both couples fall in love, but everybody is still a bit uneasy: the girls don't like the guys being after their money and the boys feel uncomfortable about that as well. that problem is solved when it turns out the sisters don't have any money after all. some more problems arise, but in the end everything is worked out and our happy young couples go find passage to America.

the only thing i didn't understand was the claim of this movie being 'based on real facts'. even though rich englisch ladies have indeed been kidnapped by pennyless younger suns, the story as displayed here is obviously fictional. making this claim will only confuse people who are looking for a realistic story, and drive away people who want a simple romantic story. better to drop that claim altogether.

i suppose this movie was funny for some audiences. those made out of not so smart, white teenage boys for instance.

the whole movie centers around the one joke of a guy dressing up as a fat old lady. obviously?! a big fat black southern woman can only have bad (bathroom)manners and her daughter is to stupid to see the difference between her mother and some guy dressed like her. this daughter is of course a single mother. providing both sexual tension (for aforementioned teenage audience at least)with the mother and some 'family-moments' with the boy. after a little more toilet humor we are served a happy ending, with only one down sight: the possibility for a sequel is left wide open.

i could complain about this movie a lot more but i would't want my comment to get any more debt then the dialogs in this poor excuse for a film.