Tag: The Master

2013 Pop-Culture Resolutions

Written by Max Thornton.
I have a confession to make:
Last year, I only went to the movies a dozen times, and only 7 of those were 2012 releases.
That is the least time I have spent at the movies in any year since I started going to the movies. There are a few reasons for this tragic failure of mine:
  • I’m a grad student, so I don’t have much free time.
  • I’m a grad student, so I don’t have much spare money.
  • After a blissful six-month stint working in a cinema in 2011 and taking full advantage of my comps, I am still a little resistant to the prospect of having to pay to go to the movies.
  • I no longer live in London, where there is a glorious wealth of theaters screening any and every movie you could want to see. All of four movie theaters exist within walking distance of me now, and most of them have a pretty unexciting selection of films most of the time.
The biggest reason, though, is my general sense of disillusionment with Hollywood as a whole. I’m not sure if this is because the past year or two offered genuinely fewer interesting movies than previous years, or because inevitably a sense of ennui sets in after a while. For example, I thought The Master was okay, but it didn’t blow me away like There Will Be Blood did in 2007. Is this because The Master is an inferior film, or because, with five more years of film-watching behind me, I am just bored to death of movies about white dudes talking about stuff?
To be honest, 2013 doesn’t look much better than 2012 when it comes to movies that grab my attention. A cursory glance over the list of forthcoming releases fills me with despondence. I want to see Zero Dark Thirty, but I’m disturbed by reports that it’s naked CIA propaganda. I’ll see the Evil Dead remake, though my expectations are lowered with every advance word that trickle out. There won’t be any escape from seeing Star Trek: Into Skegness (British joke!). Just about the only 2013 movie I have unmitigated, childlike excitement for is Pacific Rim. Giant robots, giant sea monsters, Guillermo del Toro, and Idris Elba are four of my favorite things, and I can only hope and pray that the combination will be as marvelous as I’m anticipating.
I can’t be the only one who would switch teams for this dude in a heartbeat, right?
 
The thing about being a grouchy griping curmudgeon, though, is that it gets old fast. I want to like things. I want to get excited about upcoming movies. Salivating over a giant-robots-versus-sea-beasties movie is way more fun than shitting all over the latest crop of derivative, kyriarchal tedium. I’m not going to quit fighting the good fight, but I am going to change my focus a little. Here are my pop-culture resolutions for 2013:
I will see more movies alone.
Last week, I went to the movies alone for the first time in eighteen months. It was FANTASTIC. I used to go to the cinema alone all the time, back when I was a fresher in university trying to escape roommate troubles, and I’d forgotten just how brilliant it is. Something about sitting in a darkened auditorium with a group of strangers, never speaking to each other but sharing the cognitive experience onscreen, is just delightful to me.

I’m certain I get this exact expression when I see a good movie alone.

 

I will seek out more foreign and independent films.
It was so easy when I lived in London. I had maybe half a dozen favorite cinemas, scattered all around central London; anything that got any kind of UK release was guaranteed to be screening somewhere nearby. In 2012, shamefully enough, I didn’t see a single foreign-language film. Not one. I haven’t even seen Les Misérables yet, and I’m pretty sure the title and character names are the only French things about that movie. I pledge to make more of an effort this year. Hollywood might be boring me silly, but there must be interesting things going on elsewhere in the world.
I will not be ungrateful about Community, no matter what happens.
When showrunner Dan Harmon was unceremoniously fired from his brainchild, it seemed like yet another death-knell in the long, slow, painful process of NBC’s gradual euthanizing of my favorite show. I had spent so much energy hoping for Community‘s unlikely season-four renewal that, when it actually happened, it seemed churlish to carp about Harmon’s absence. Some fans are predicting that season four can only be a vortex of suck without his guidance. For now I reserve judgment – though, after being so vocal about my hope for a fourth season, I won’t really feel I can legitimately complain even if I do wind up hating it.
This picture does a lot to assuage my fears.
 
Anyone else have any pop-culture resolutions? What are you planning to do or not do in 2013?
Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

‘The Master’: A Movie About White Dudes Talking About Stuff

Movie poster for The Master
Well this movie is a piece of shit.

Slim at Gone Elsewhere does an excellent job of explaining the plot, so if you don’t know the plot, go there first … then come back here and let me explain to you why this movie is a piece of shit.

I went into it thinking it had the potential to be good because Paul Thomas Anderson made Magnolia, and Magnolia has some wonderfully nuanced and well-developed women characters, so I know he’s capable of not creating films exclusively about white dudes talking about stuff, but fuck, I honestly couldn’t get over his absolute reveling in the incessant blathering of white dudes to other white dudes.

Don’t get me wrong; Joaquin Phoenix’s emotionally disturbed character, Freddie Quell, totally makes a sand-woman on the beach—complete with breasts and spread legs—that he then proceeds to hump and fingerfuck in front of a group of cheering white dudes (even they get uncomfortable after a few seconds of this) before beating off into the oh-so-vast and Oscar-worthy cinematographically-shot ocean, but as far as women characters go, the sexually assaulted sand-woman left a little to be desired.

Freddie Quell pinching a sand-woman’s nipple in The Master

Okay, okay, Amy Adams appears a few times, once to read a naughty sex passage from a book to Freddie—who wouldn’t want to hear Amy Adams say “opening the lips of her cunt” (or something) for no discernible reason?—and she shows up again to jerk off her husband (The Master!) Philip Seymour Hoffman over a fucking bathroom sink, so I don’t want to mislead anyone—women exist in this sea of white dudes talking about stuff, but in between giving handjobs, carrying around infants, defending their men, and gratuitously exposing their breasts to drunk and violent sociopaths, they’re just kinda blah.

I don’t want to mislead anyone. I’m not saying I haven’t exposed a breast or two to a sociopath in my day, but that doesn’t mean I found these ladies relatable, and that includes the violated sand-woman.

Amy Adams in The Master, looking pissed

And I wish I knew what to say about Freddie’s love for a 16-year-old girl named Doris, especially since he looks like he’s in his mid-50s throughout the film. Okay, in fairness, Freddie only interacts with Doris in his memories (because this is art, people), so it makes sense that we never actually get to see Doris age. (But still, Freddie was either like 30 when she was 16, or they should’ve hired some better fucking makeup artists.)

Regardless of the potential statutory rape situation, Freddie can’t seem to get over his First Love because then we wouldn’t have the quintessential white dude movie plot dilemma: there’s a girl he can’t have, or a girl who died, or a girl he lost, or a girl he has to save—if there’s one thing we all know about films about white dudes talking about stuff, it’s that women emotionally fuck up white dudes so hard!

Eeeek, bitches, can we cool it already?

Doris and Freddie in Freddie’s creepy memory/flashback in The Master

This film will probably win a million Oscars and other accolades because the people who determine award winners in Hollywood are white dudes who like watching movies about other white dudes talking about stuff. And the critics lauding this film? They’re mostly white dudes who like helping white dudes who determine award winners in Hollywood vote for movies about white dudes talking about stuff. So yeah, expect this to grace the list of Best Picture Oscar Nominees.

Getting back to this movie being a piece of shit, here’s the thing: a million people will say, “Stephanie, you obviously just don’t get this film. It’s genius! You don’t understand art! It’s a metaphor for the ways in which religion and absolute power corrupt! These dudes are supposed to be awful!” Perhaps all of that is true. Except, of course, for the fact that none if it is true.

Freddie Quell, boom

Okay, on a less pissy day, I might go along with the argument that Anderson is attempting a successful metaphor regarding men and religion and corruption, but that doesn’t blind me to the fact that he ultimately uses women characters tropes of women to move forward the fairly boring plight of white dudes struggling with … something. I certainly don’t buy the argument either that this is just how things were back then i.e. whenever this film is supposed to take place; there’s an important difference between depicting a time period and straight-up worshiping it.

The point is, if your film contains about three speaking women total (oh, and a woman made of sand), and each of these women is constantly doing one of the following—standing by her man, carrying around babies, jerking dudes off, existing only in the occasional flashback, lying on a couch and talking about how she remembers a penis poking her when she was still a fetus in the womb—or, if she’s a literal fucking object (i.e. she’s made out of sand), then your film suffers from, at the very least, lazy writing.

The Master and his ladies

Yes, I just said that Paul Thomas Anderson, creator of There Will Be Blood (white dudes all over the place), Boogie Nights (a movie about a white dude with a giant cock), Hard Eight (white dudes), Punch Drunk Love (a movie about a white dude phone sex operator pimp or whatever), and Magnolia (a movie in which we get to hear famous white dude Tom Cruise tell us to “respect the cock”), got particularly lazy with his women characters in this one. Movies made by a white dude about white dudes talking about stuff—stuff like power and corruption in capitalism and religion, for instance—can succeed (There Will Be Blood)—just leave the fucking recycled caricatures of women out of it (There Will Be Blood).

Of course, then we wouldn’t be treated to last-line-of-the-film-gems like this:

Freddie (talking to a woman while she’s riding him): “You’re the bravest girl I’ve ever met. Now stick it back in, it fell out.”

If you want a different, slightly more intellectual (ha) take on The Master, you should read this review by Didion, who writes “… this film shows that Anderson has a lot more sensitivity toward women than his prior films would suggest.”

Preach it!