Mike's Badass Rant, Spielberg's Black-Ass Film

My faithful readers-all three of you-I ask you you this. Have I not always used my cyber-powers for good? To direct you to fountains of knowledge, insight, and general cultural enlightenment so that you may sip from them at will? Well, folks, this one's a gusher.

Okay, so remember Star Wars: Episode I: The Shitty Menace? If I were making a Hellbound Hundred list, this collection of moving images (I love the word "film" too much to insult it by applying it here) would make the All Time Top 5. However, as much as I love bashing it, nothing can compare with the Youtube video that "Mike", a brilliant (if possibly mentally compromised) filmmaker from Illinois, cooked up. It's a delectably mean-spirited, hour-long critique in which he manages to trash nearly every aspect of every scene in the film, from the acting to the story to the visuals and everything in between. He also rants about his ex-wife, his rampant drug and pizza roll addictions, and the strategies that work best when killing hookers. (You read that right). Starting out with the sentence "The Phantom Menace was the most disappointing thing since my son!" and only gaining comedic traction from there, this is without a doubt the strangest and funniest thing I've ever come across on the YouTubes. You'll also gain a new appreciation for the old films (and hell, almost ANY OTHER EXISTING FILM) as "Mike" points out logic and continuity errors so glaringly stoopid my freshman year English teacher would've taken serious points off for 'em.

Here's part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI
Parts 2-10 are on this guys page. Happy viewing!

And now for another Heavenly Hundred. For those of you wondering "When the hell is this kid gonna put one of the Conventional Classics on his list??!?!?!", the time has come....

THE COLOR PURPLE

The 25: White Jewboy does right by great novel, Whoopi does right by great character.

Let's imagine you have a car with some serious problems. The radio doesn't work, there's no air conditioning, and it requires a new tank of gas every other day. But...it travels through time and can fix health care. My point here is, in some situations, you've gotta overlook the shitty parts in order to reap the considerable rewards of the whole. My godawful fail of an analogy applies to The Color Purple, which trips over itself tonally many a time, but emerges as one of most timeless, deeply affecting films of its era.

This is Celie's story. Celie, the woman bearing her second child for her father. Celie, sold into life of abuse at the hands of the cold-hearted Mister (Danny Glover) and stolen away from all she knows. Celie, who learns the meaning of selfless love from Mister's old flame Shug (Margaret Avery), and the benefits of self-esteem from his take-no-bull daughter-in-law Sofia (Oprah, of all people!). And finally Celie, the liberated woman, alive at last to herself and the world around her. If it all sounds a lot like Precious, well, this one did it first and did it better. I give 99% of the credit to Whoopi Goldberg, who plays Celie. That the groundbreaking comedienne is equally gifted at drama isn't surprising; I always sensed their was something deeper hiding just beneath that Sister Act habit. But I certainly wasn't prepared for one of the best performances in American movies. The feelings she portrays are not uncommon onscreen; heartbreak, jubilation, longing, the works. But there's a complexity to how she does it; instead of a generic, Kleenex-ready sadness, Celie has a thousand shades of sad, and we come to know and understand them all. Her happiness doesn't pour out all at once in a blast of montage-ready sunshine; we see all of its various degrees, the way it manifests itself in small smiles and arched body language until it finally peaks in the closing scene. Anger is there, too, always simmering under the surface, and we're always subconsciously aware of the intensity of it, yet still shocked when she erupts at the dinner table in the indelible and iconic "I curse you" sequence. There's a wonderful, slow-burn subtlety in Goldberg's performance. A truly infuriating Oscar snub.

The other "Berg", director Steven, deserves enormous credit as well. In a culture where incest, abuse, and misogyny have become network-special fodder, it's easy to forget what a daring move he made by adapting Alice Walker's controversial book for the screen and not skimping on the sickening stuff. By detailing the lowest of Celie's lows, the film earns its bucket o' tears when this crushed butterfly flaps her wings oncemore. Faithfulness to Walker's book damages the film a bit, too-Spielberg and writer Menno Meyjes, in an apparent attempt to cram in every subplot that popped up in the book, result to crude stereotyping in a few instances, which makes characters such as Mister's son Harpo and the white Mayor's wife look like cardboard cutouts...and it doesn't help that they're standing next to one of the most fully realized characters you're likely to find in a mainstream motion picture. Such attempts to fit it all in lend the film a flabbiness that isn't becoming, and shut it out of a higher spot on my list. But there is startling power at work when the filmmakers stick with Celie's story (and by extension, Goldberg's glorious turn) , a power far too potent to deny this one a spot on my Heavenly Hundred.

The Singular Scene: For all the High Drama moments, nothing moves me more than when Shug sings to Celie, and we see our downtrodden heroine smile for the first time.

Wow, Whoopi can do serious?! Whaaa-?! What's your favorite straight-faced performance from a funnyman/woman? TALK TO ME (via el comment button).