allisonation

About the previous blog--I just realized something ironic and a bit embarrassing that I am nonetheless unafraid to confess:

"...nothing makes me gag harder than trying to swallow some hamfisted moral message with a sappy soundtrack backing it up."

This is bullshit. I'm a sucker for plotlines and characters, and have happily choked down MANY a craphappy morality tale as the result of empathizing with the characters or overidentifying with the film's plot or subtexts. That's what fiction does. It sucks me in--sometimes even the bad stuff.

I suppose that what really bothers me the most is when I know I'm being sold a product that some greasy Hollywood mogul recycled from other successful flicks and decided to fling at the groundlings this year. And I find myself especially resentful of said commodification when they (faceless whoevers, all of them fat-ass, silk-suit, steakeating rapists as is well-documented by the cartoon that plays constantly inside my insomniac cerebrum) create some stale, garbage-pail catastrophe and market it as an art film with sullen celebrities who just went slumming for the folks who worship filth. See also: Closer, Vanilla Sky, V for Vendetta (and this is largely due to the total betrayal of Moore's text and the soppy revolutionary sentimentality throughout), and Requiem for a Dream.

My readers (and many others besides) just might hate me for slamming those films, especially the ever-revered Requiem (and I'm sorry, but "Requiem for an Anything" just oozes smarmy arthouse pretension)...and I'd have to refrain from commenting very thoroughly on the film, because I won't do what a good critic would do--because I'm not a "good critic," just some schmuck who likes to bitch about shit as a pasttime-- and watch the film again. Strap me down Little Alex style and force me to view it again on the big screen with my eyelids peeled back and see if I don't spontaneously combust.

So, that's that, I suppose. My gift to you. A blog about a blog, the ultimate in narcissistic wordspew. All I'm saying is that I'm just as guilty as anyone for liking things that show little to no artistic merit. Just please, for the love of the sins someone died for, please don't make me watch some vapid crap about the oh-so-precious plight of the bourgeoisie and call it "a brutally honest insight into the downward spiral that is drug addiction" or someone's textbook descent into what the suburbs call "the underworld" while peeking through their fingers and masturbating their own captive boredom.

For the price of a Friday night film, I'll drive you to Orange Mound so you can hug a fucking junkie and see what happens.

Did I mention that I'm just doing this to further procrastinate this disaster of a paper I should have written last week? Hence the spastic prolixity. Somebody be the patron saint of plagiarism here and give me fifteen pages on something about comic books. Your check's as good as mailed.