Movies You Can Watch Over and Over

Over at Dean's World they're discussing movies you can watch over and over again. Among several I could list, here are trailers for two of my favorites:


The Matrix:  If I had to name a single favorite movie of mine, this could well be it. I have watched it dozens of times.

"The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."


Kill Bill, Vol. I:  Again, I've watched this movie so many times I've lost count. Especially the wondrously surreal sword fight scene. Uma Thurman against, oh, about 80 opponents at once. Amazing. Just amazing.

Not Kill Bill, Vol. II: that one, I find watchable but not especially rewatchable. But Vol. I really is a work of wonder.

Degeneration

Over at CrunchyCon, Rod Dreher writes of

this fantastic Quebecois song called "Degeneration," by a band called Mes Aieux (My Ancestors), articulating a traditionalist/crunchy-con protest against modern emptiness and anomie. It's subtitled in English, so non-Francophones can follow it... I'm told that this song is now one of the most popular in Quebec.

I'd say this song captures some of the liabilities of late modernity to a tee. And over at YouTube, I see one of the commenters has hit an associated nail square on the head:

Suggest to a modernist that his beloved modernity may be in the slightest way unworkable or even less-than-ideal, and he will react with the fury of the most hidebound reactionary, reiterating his tired mantra that "we must look forward, not backward". He doesn't want us to question his plans to fully and completely impose his vision upon the world.

Spot on target. The myrmidons of modernity, the technocrats, and the bureaucrats will tell us to just shut the hell up, get with the program, and enjoy living in the empty, hollowed-out, deracinated modern world their efforts have produced. But some of us refuse to submit. That's one of a number of reasons why I live on a gravel road, far out into the countryside, surrounded by cornfields, and amongst people who still have their heads screwed on straight. I've seen the alternative: I lived amidst it in academia most of my young adult years. Now in my middle age my aim is to do what little I can to help one small and still relatively sane corner of the world stay on an even keel.

From the Cartesian cogito ergo sum onward, modernity has been very, very much a mixed bag. Lots of pluses, lots and lots of minuses. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty about the modern world that I like and appreciate. But at the same time, I've always thought that modern culture is at its core deeply, radically dysfunctional: conducing strongly to the emptiness so aptly expressed in that song. That, however, is a rant for another time.

Fight Scenes from Neon Genesis Evangelion

Okay, continuing from last time, today it's some fight scenes from my favorite Japanese anime series.


In this fight scene from episodes 1 and 2, the boy Shinji Ikari has never even seen a giant robot before, much less piloted one. But he's their last hope— the only person available who's capable of "synchronizing" with an Eva— so they just shove him in the entry plug of Eva Unit 01, and send him out, with no practice or experience, to fight Sachiel, the Third Angel.


From episode 18. Commander Ikari: "Reclassify Evangelion Unit 03 as the Thirteenth Angel! All units, the target must be destroyed!" —Shinji Ikari, piloting Eva Unit 01: "But father, there's a pilot in that Eva, a kid just like myself!" Shinji refuses to fight, so Commander Ikari seizes remote control of Unit 01 and makes it destroy Unit 03, as Shinji cries, "No, father! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"

Only afterwards does Shinji learn that the pilot of Unit 03 was his friend Touji.


From episode 19. Asuka in Unit 02 and Rei in Unit 00 fail to stop the Fourteenth Angel, which is advancing on headquarters. Shinji had vowed never to pilot again, but he has a change of heart and returns in Unit 01 just in the nick of time. But then, in mid-fight, the power reserves in Unit 01 run out...

Like I say, NGE is not exactly Yogi Bear or Bugs Bunny, and it's not likely to turn up on network TV here in the US any time soon. Eh, slightly violent?! Though this is the kind of cartoon I would've just loved, back when I was a kid— say, circa 1968?

A Scanner Darkly

I only got to see this movie recently, didn't get to see it when it hit the theaters last summer. I've watched it three or four times now, and let me tell you, it rocks!

A Scanner Darkly, based on the science-fiction novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick. It's the near future. 20% of the US population is addicted to the deadly "Substance D." People live under hidden surveillance in a state of total information awareness. The police wear identity-shifting "scramble suits," not to disguise themselves in trailing suspects, but rather to remain anonymous to other police officers.

Keanu Reeves plays "Officer Fred"/"Bob Arctor," an undercover narcotics agent whose dual identity is unraveling into an outright split personality. But the real performance to watch comes from Robert Downey Jr., who steals every scene he's in.

The movie was filmed as live action, then rotoscoped— transformed by computer into animation. One of those rare "book adaptation" movies which is actually true to the original book. Worth seeing. Like I say, it rocks!

Cops Meets Dungeons & Dragons

(h/t Steven)

"It's the Final Caountdowwwnnnnn..."

Oh no. Oh no. Just Oh no...

Do you suppose perhaps he could find a single key to sing in, and stick with it?! Aiiieeeeeeee!!!

(h/t Greg)

Yabba Dabba— Hack! Hack! Kawff!!!

Here's an old TV commercial from the early 1960s, when I was a kid.

Oh, how times do change!

Neon Genesis Evangelion

One of my many odd interests is a Japanese anime series called Neon Genesis Evangelion which came out back in the 90s. Bought the entire series several years ago on videotape. Then bought it all over again on DVD. I've watched every episode numerous times, some of my favorite episodes probably 50 times. (!!!) It's about some giant robots (the Evangelions) fighting creatures known as the Angels which are attacking Tokyo-3 in the year 2015. Fifteen years after a catastrophe known as the Second Impact, which wiped out half the human race. Only a few select youth are capable of synchronizing with the Evas and piloting "mankind's ultimate fighting machine" in the battle against the Angels.

Weird conspiracies, cosmic mysteries, dense plotlines, and intriguing character development. Rocking battle scenes. Strange Freudian motifs. And I'd bet all that kabbalistic symbolism flies right by most viewers. For instance, the Human Enhancement Project is nothing other than the kabbalistic "mending of the vessels," with Unit 01 as Adam Kadmon...

I discovered on YouTube this excerpt from Episodes 1 and 2, Shinji's first battle piloting the giant robot, Evangelion Unit 01. Music not part of the original, I guess adding a new "soundtrack" is part of these remixes. Anyhow, very cool battle scene.

"Good Talk Now, Ask Me How"

"Here at here, we learn to nouns, sentences, and talking..."

(QuickTime video, 7.9 meg download)

(h/t Urthshu)

Synchronicity Strikes!

Oh dear. My apocalyptic little rocking horses have come to life in a cartoon...

(h/t Dean Esmay)

Spock's Pad

All right, all right, I give in at last to the YouTube craze! Am I "Web 2.0" enough now? This be Spock, takin' you on a tour o' his pad...



(h/t Steven)

Shatner "Sings" Rocket Man

Back in the late 60s, William Shatner a/k/a Captain Kirk recorded some bizarre audio renditions which sounded like an insane, screeching, demented, spaced-out parody of Shakespeare. Not really singing so much as stiffly, awkwardly enunciating. Problem is, Shatner meant it seriously.

Then about ten years later, Shatner performed this video rendition of "Rocket Man," in similar style. Shatner, in a tux, idly smoking a cig, and stiffly enunciating:

"She packed my bags.... last night, pre-flight...... zero hour, nine A.M....... And I'm gonna be hiiiiiiiigh........... [eerie music: Woooooo-eeeeeee-ooooooooh!] as a kite by then..."

And from there on, it only gets worse. Much worse. Multiple images of Shatner onscreen... one, idly smoking a cigarette... the other, gesticulating and stiffly enunciating: "And I think it's... gonna BE... a long, long TIME..."

Not singing. Enunciating. Stiffly.

Yes... yes... "To boldly go where no Elton John has gone before!"

     (A much higher fidelity 44-megabyte version can be found here.)