This film is part Natural Born Killers, part Falling Down, and part Idiocracy. It ought to be compulsory viewing as part of highschool… with teachers drilling home the idea that being rude, uninformed, or media whorish are crimes that will be punished by radom & violent deaths.

It’s dark, hilariously funny, and remarkably well made for something with such a small budget.

The film revolves around Frank, an insurance clerk that hates what society has become, full of self-entitled prats that can’t even understand the difference between entertainment and debate, that justify anything so long as it’s entertaining. Likening America to the Roman empire in its decline, as the show has some brilliant satirical swipes at current TV shows like TMZ with “TMI” or the weekly hype cycle that turns a laughing stock into a national celebrity in the space of three days, Frank finally snaps when he realises that with his diagnosis of a terminal brain tumour he has nothing left to lose and decides to commit suicide… until he sees Chloe on a “reality tv” program being a product of the times, and decides he finally has a purpose.
Frank charges himself with ridding the world of people without basic courtesy and the minimum level of awareness to even be a nice person, and the cultural pustules that enable and even advocate such behaviour.

It’s interesting to see Bobcat Goldthwait (Z from Police Academy) work as a writer and director. What a lot of people don’t realise is that the guy is actually an amazingly bitter intellectual, which informs a lot of his standup… which most people have never seen as they’re mostly interested in hearing him talk oddly and scream while wearing silly clothing. A big issue with this film is that the character dialogue isn’t natural. The actors do a lot to make it flow more realistically, and even some of Goldthwait’s directing helps with this, but his writing is… I’m not going to say preachy, but it definitely feels like the kind of dialogue you’d get from Rand’s or Heinlein’s characters: the characters who are Right are witty and erudite, while the characters who are Wrong are craven, base idiots who can only fall back on strawmen and non-sequiturs. To be fair though, that’s exactly what the film is raging against – the dumbing down of society. To be fairer, I’ve personally seen this (and some of the exact debates) in action. Here’s an example:

Frank: Oh, I get, and I am offended. Not because I’ve got a problem with bitter, predictable, whiny, millionaire disk jockeys complaining about celebrities or how tough their life is, while I live in an apartment with paper-thin walls next to a couple of Neanderthals who, instead of a baby, decided to give birth to some kind of nocturnal civil defense air-raid siren that goes off every fuckin’ night like it’s Pearl Harbor. I’m not offended that they act like it’s my responsibility to protect their rights to pick on the weak like pack animals, or that we’re supposed to support their freedom of speech when they don’t give a fuck about yours or mine.
Office Worker: So, you’re against free speech now? That’s in the Bill of Rights, man.
Frank: I would defend their freedom of speech if I thought it was in jeopardy. I would defend their freedom of speech to tell uninspired, bigoted, blowjob, gay-bashing, racist and rape jokes all under the guise of being edgy, but that’s not the edge. That’s what sells. They couldn’t possibly pander any harder or be more commercially mainstream, because this is the “Oh no, you didn’t say that!” generation, where a shocking comment has more weight than the truth. No one has any shame anymore, and we’re supposed to celebrate it. I saw a woman throw a used tampon at another woman last night on network television, a network that bills itself as “Today’s Woman’s Channel”. Kids beat each other blind and post it on Youtube. I mean, do you remember when eating rats and maggots on Survivor was shocking? It all seems so quaint now. I’m sure the girls from “2 Girls 1 Cup” are gonna have their own dating show on VH-1 any day now. I mean, why have a civilization anymore if we no longer are interested in being civilized?

It’s a great speech, but very few people are this eloquent without it being a prepared speech. Even if they could come up with the words, the precise and flawless delivery from Frank, whilst great in the context of a movie, just doesn’t gel with me as being something anyone could actually do with such ease.

There is another part of me that feels that Goldthwait made this film also in part due to the virtual burying of Idiocracy by FOX, a company that’s known for it’s keen sense of keeping anything that might make its audience feel intellectually threatened or present them with alternative points of view that aren’t clearly labelled as “jokes”. This is a film clearly aimed at the sort of people that realised Beavis & Butthead wasn’t a hilarious cartoon of idiots doing idiotic things for their entertainment, like Jackass, but a stark warning on what happens when you spend all your time watching MTV and never aspiring to anything (The only redeeming features of B&B was that it spawned two rather good, thought provoking spin offs in King of the Hill and Daria). MTV and the majority of its audience clearly missed that message, because Judge got booted from the show, and MTV continued to tone down the intellectual and musical content to the point that it had to make a spin-off channel of its own for music, and teenagers today are surprised when MTV does play video clips.

Much like Idiocracy, the film makes me want to weep for showing precisely how ugly society truly is.

It even has that feeling of prophecy about it, considering that Anders Breivik has even used similar rationale in the recent days of his current court case, and people are similarly using his current infamy/celebrity to bolster their own.

Cyberpunk is one of those genres that is clearly defined by it’s elements. It’s always got some form of post humanism, some form of technology corrupting society, some form of secret cabal that controls the rest of the world, some form of societal degradation, and always, always there has been a massive shift in the economy to either total collapse, or brink of collapse with everything controlled by the aforementioned secret cabal.

I know that most of these posts on cybperunk have been concentrating on technology that already exists, and me calling out the scoffers who claim bullshit on the tech. Well, what about the societal concepts as well? Having been paying attention to the crap that’s going down both here and abroad lately, it’s beginning to make me seriously think that perhaps Ben Elton, William Gibson and Masamune Shirow were onto something. (more…)

If you go to SupaNova at all, you’re probably familiar with John Robertson. He’s a Perth based comedian that does a lot of nerdcentric comedy. He’s also a tad on the gawth side. And it’s with no small pleasure that he’s at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this year… Which basically makes for two goth comedians, and half a dozen nerdcentric shows.

A Nifty History of Evil is a fun romp through John’s facial expressions, mans inhumanity to man, movie villians, and a puppet show about the Marquis DeSade… Which is in no way related to the store Marquis And DeSade, located in North Road, Ormond… Even if John happened to spend the entire show wearing a black PVC corset. (more…)

In case you somehow missed, Dom Deluise died today.

And in case you have no idea who Dom Deluise is, he was the last of the jolly fat guys. Unless you’re a fan of Mel Brooks films, there’s a good chance you’re not too familiar with what he looks like, although if you ever watched a Disney cartoon movie in the 80s, you’ve probably heard his voice dozens of times over and not even realised it.

Unlike current fat comedians such as Jack Black, Dom was rarely an angry or sarcastic character. He was a gentle giant of the silver screen, much like whales are the gentle giants of the deeps. With that said, watching Dom attempt to dance in some of his roles was a rather similar experience to whale watching.

Either way, he was always a good watch. Whether it was as Pavorotti in Silence of the Hams, Pizza the Hutt in Spaceballs, or merely listening to his melifluous voice in All Dogs go to Heaven, there was always gentle, jolly, giant entertainment to be had.

The world will be a sadder place, and the only thing not made lighter by Dom’s passing will be our hearts.

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