eeegah

Some twenty or so years ago, Charles Bukowski was a hero of mine. I blindly accepted the image that was created by intellectual types and seen in various films. Of course, I never got to meet the intellectual types that prescribed Bukowski as a hero. They usually could be found safely behind the counter at hipster video stores and record shops. These people hardly talked and when asked a question, usually sneered and nodded in some vague direction. They were useless when it came to locating a specific title, but their shelves were always stocked with strange and unique titles. To be inducted in the secret hipster club, I believed I had to shed my bourgeois up-bringing and espouse the counter-culture.

My introduction to Bukowski started with the movie Barfly, the late 80's film that starred Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunnaway. I was a fan of Rourke at the time. He also embodied a sort of modern male fantastical anti-hero, a brooding intellectual type. At the time, this appealed to me. Barfly's hero scoffed at convention. A mid-30's tramp, who lives life with no ties, answers to no one, --Oh--and to be recognized as a genius by a hot female literary snob, icing on the cake. Afterwards, I read Post-Office and Hollywood, the later being Bukowski's take on his experience with the film.Now, allow me to fast-forward to the latest film based on Bukowski's book Factotum, one which I read and enjoyed. Bukowski takes the form of Chinaski in this novel. I often wonder where Bukowski ended and Chinaski began. 20 years after Barfly, the fictional movie Bukowski is still the same. I have watched about an hour of the movie and I have yet to see signs of the facade cracking. Here is why Factotum Bukowski was my hero. Chinaski is handsome (played by Matt Dillon). He has clean neat hair, styled, but not over the top. When Dillon smokes and writes, he looks cool. Chinaski goes from job to job, ignoring and/or fighting with various bosses. He screws two floozies, one of whom he lives with, walks out on, only to return to with little repercussion. Chinaski is his own man and we never see him emote. He's a sterile, one-dimensional, 30 something, James Dean archetype. Factotum lies to the viewer. It does so by haranguing the idea of a man (a writer) without consequence. A poor man, who's suffering for his art. What could be cooler than that? Now, let's say there are some truths to Factotum, in that the events took place. What the audience is missing is the pain that shrouds Chinaski's existence. Maybe the point of this movie, and most movies, is that for 80 mins., we need to escape the world that's filled with consequence and pain and take-up vicariously with an anti-social womanizer, that smokes, talks, drinks with detached coolness. One who rejects conventional behavior of job and family. My hero used to be Movie Bukowski. Long ago, that would have worked. It was easier then. Now, I have yet to claim a hero. Things are not as easy. Hipster logic and movie renditions of counter-culture icons offer no solutions or even ask questions.

I picked this slab-o cheese on a double billed disc w/ "The Attack of the Bee Girls" @ Meijer for 2 bucks. Now if you are a fan of B-Films, I highly recommend the trip to Meijer. They have a ton of cheap-o DVDs in a big crate. You can get 5 DVDs for 10 dollars. I also picked up a gem called "The Crippled Masters" (a 70s Kung-Fu Revenge flick, and yes, they are crippled). But, I'm getting way off on a tangent...

The Last Woman on Earth is an interesting film with some unintentional laugh-out-loud parts. What's interesting about it is how well mannered they are during the end of the world. There are two males and one female left alive after some kind of doomsday devise is detonated, which is never really explained. In this type of scenario you'd expect people to behave wildly; looting the electronics store, stealing Italian sports cars, driving a tank through the middle of downtown (as I believe this happened in a film called "The Quiet Earth"). Instead they wear pressed slacks, shave, mix cocktails (no one explains how they still have power, let alone ice cubes) and fight over one boat in a harbor full of 'em. This is not Corman's most entertaining film and you will find your attention slipping in and out, but for my money it beats the latest sitcom or reality show.

I had to weigh-in on this one.

With the religious right tightening it's grip around community standards in the US, Zombie's homage to the 70's grind-house horror flick falls right through the cracks. Very large cracks at that, it's playing at the multi-plex! Once upon a time, moviegoers had to watch this sort of stuff in renovated old burlesque houses, at midnight showings or at the drive-in.

Reminiscent of "Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS" and "I Spit on Your Grave" in it's unrelenting and unapologetic brutality, Zombie has created an aesthetic that in some ways is appealing to me but in other ways downright horrifying. I was trying to figure out if Zombie was getting off on making the audience squirm, or if he was just getting off. It lacked the kitsch and self-awareness of his first one, which in turn buffered the mayhem.

There is no doubt that Rob Zombie is talented (I never thought anyone could make Sid Haige uglier) and I enjoyed the dialog, some of the sequences, the redneck 70s soundtrack but there's something to be said for subtleties(like Psycho, or even Halloween). Years ago this picture would have never seen the light of day. Are we so numb to the violence in our county that Zombie had to up the amps to see if we were still awake?