A Post Apocalypse Double: The Road and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

You know I'm actually starting to get pretty sick of the apocalypse. I mean after all the movies, books, tv series, video games and nerds huffing and weezing about it it's going to be so fucking hyped up that whatever actually causes the apocalypse in the end is probably going to feel rather embarrased about it. "Sorry guys, but this is it...hope you enjoy it" is something like what I imagine this entity saying. I mean I get that people like to use the post apocalyptic setting to explore things like hope, the darker side of mankind and the perseverence of humanity but it's gotten too far out of hand people. I mean honestly, exactly what do some of these film directors think makes their take on a grubby guy who's family perished long ago any different to the last one? "Oh my gosh! He's having a flashback to a happier pre apocalypse time!" "Oh wow! I loved their completely different take on how fucked we are!" So anyway, sarcasm aside, today I actually managed to watch 2 completely different post apocalyptic films. One was a beatifully directed masterpiece that told story about the destructive powers of war and disharmony with nature. The other was about a grizzled survivalist and his son going to the beach for some reason.

The Road is a pretty typical post apocalypse movie. It's shot on a camera that manages to capture the world in crisp, clear, HD quality black and white and hopes that it can get the edge on the multitute of other movies doing exactly the same thing by being even grittier than the last one. You can sum up almost the whole movie by describing this one scene at the start in which the father is showing is son how to commit suicide with a handgun. Yeah that's right, says the movie, I'm fucking edgy. There are two types of people who inhabit this world. The hectic, pack-hunting rapists/canibals who somehow ended up with all the guns, trucks, houses and whatever else you'd care to name. Everyone else is a starving, dirty hobo pushing their trolly of supplies about the landscape robbing each other and wishing they were dead. I did have to hand it to this movie, it had me on edge the whole way through as I wondered just what would happen to this grubby father and son combo. But on the other hand the way it achieved most of this was pretty cheap. A good apocalypse movie could be set on a pornographic theme park made out of candy and rainbows and still have me on the edge of my seat and The Road could not have done this. It relies too much on gloomy settings and discomforting gore to get the job done. But there was one very crucial factor that made me realise that this movie wasn't good. I thought I was near the end of it, it felt like it had been running for ages and had made all it's social and psychological points and then it turned out it had only been going for 30 minutes. There was still over an hour to go. Upon this discovery I felt unhappy at the thought of sitting through the rest. So there you have it, if a movie feels way longer than it is and you become depressed at the thought of sitting through another extremely slow hour then chances are this movie is not good. Oh yeah, one more thing. If you don't like the idea of slogging it through 100 mins with a character who keeps saying "papa" in an increasingly whiney and blubbering tone then I suggest staying well away from this one.

Contrast what you read above with Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds, which manages to convey hoplessness and desolation despite being animated and colourful. The thing about this movie is that I was so engrossed in the world and the characters that I failed to realise that it was a post apocalyptic movie. I suppose this movie is almost 30 years old now and pre dates the whole apocalypse fad we're currently going through and as a result manages to sidestep pretty much all of the stereotypes. NotVotW is also beautifully paced and thoughtful with it's story telling. It slowly presents the harshness of the world piece by piece. The funny thing is that this movie is actually longer than The Road but because it is so cleverly executed it feels considerably shorter. NotVotW also seems to have a much clearer idea about what it's trying to say and how best to say it. People are better of living in harmony with nature and each other. Killing each other isn't good. This may not sound like much but if you think really hard about it that's basically what all post apocalypse films are trying to say, the only reason you might not have noticed is that they don't do a very good job at it. They spend so much time making everything as grim and fucked up as possible that they forget about the point they're trying to make and that's ultimately the biggest flaw in most modern apocalypse films. NotVotW may not have been as bleak and depressing, but it was certainly more engaging, emotionally involved and moving. I realise I haven't actually revealed anywhere near as much about NotVotW as The Road but that should be taken as a good thing. A truely excellent movie hardly needs any explaining or critiqueing, it should just be recommended and held up as a shining example of cinematic brilliance It's like marking an essay at school. There's no need to go on and on about how good the A+ essay was because it's already achieved great marks. But the slow kid who handed in the C- essay needs a lot of feedback so that they can hopefully understand where they went wrong and do better next time. Or at the very least they can see which kid they should try and copy for their next class quiz.

The Spider Man Movie Trilogy

Woah! Over a month since my last post, gosh I need to shape up. Anyway, first up I'd just like to point out that I was never that big on Spider Man. I never read a comic, I very rarely watched any of the multiple animated series and to be quite honest I never gave a shit. I don't really see the appeal to be honest. The only good thing about Spider Man is the occassionally decent game in which you can swing around the city, getting as high up as you can before flinging yourself towards to ground in an exhillerating, I-have-a-sinking-feeling-in-my-stomach act of catharsis. So now that you know roughly how I stand on the whole Spider Man franchise it's time for me to give you my highly opinionated rundown on the Spider Man Trilogy and how it sunk from mediocrity into a cloying casm of darkness and shit.

Spider Man
The movie that started it all. I was in my early to mid teens when this movie first hit the big screen and I think I recall actually liking it a fair bit at the time. Granted, this was before I had any taste or clear understanding of what makes a movie good in any way, so I think it's a fairly safe bet I liked it because it looked good and the story had internal consistency. Looking back the movie was really just above average and did nothing new and exciting with the Spider Man formula. You know the drill, Peter Parker is a weedy little nerd with glasses whose parents, now deceased, apparently didn't have a lot of money for vowels and consonants to give him a cool person name. The movie sets Peter up as the loser for a while, he has a hopeless crush on a girl out of his league, he is forever running alongside his school bus and the jocks shove him about. I guess it's pretty important that all the Spider Man fans can inject themselves into this universe. Anyway, to cut a long and often painfully scripted story short this movie is about how Spider Man came to be, what motivates him and why.

Spider Man 2
The second movie is a very similar formula to the first one. I can really only fault it in one new way over the original and that's this. They fucking explore the same shit. There is no character developement, which isn't normally a problem because Spider Man has already been developed as a character. But instead of exploring other characters they just retread the "what motivates Spider Man" ground. Oh and Spider Man's love interest is a mopey, unlikable moody bitch who I have no interest in seeing Spider Man get involved with unless it involves consuming her in web, feeding on her and laying eggs in her. However it is this movie in which my favourite Spider Man character ever is introduced. No, not Dr. Octopus you nerdy fuck. The character I'm refering to is the semi-attractive, plain Jane character who is the daughter of Peter Parkers landlord. I like her because she is the only character in the movie who feels real and genuine; as well as that she happily makes Peter a cake to cheer him up, juxtaposing her nicely against that other hormonal tramp. In fact what has always pissed me off about that movie is that Peter Parker should have clearly ended up with the cake lady. She was lovely, she was a dear, she would've had a cake ready for Spidey at the end of a long day of fighting freaks. But despite this I can't really say that this movie was any worse than the first, not in any significant way. But then along came...

Spider Man 3
What a ballsack of a movie. Once again they decide to explore the personal life of Spider Man only this time Peter Parker lets the fame get to his head and he turns into a douchebag. I don't know why this pisses his girlfriend off so much, seeing as how she's a complete bitch too, seems like they're made for each other. Also I'm not exactly sure why the years of being famous have only just now gotten to Peter's head as opposed to say TWO FREAKIN' MOVIES AGO! But I digress. Also the bad guys have the shitest motivations yet. Sandman's excuse for shooting an old man unnescessarily after stealing his car was simply "my daughter is sick." The other guy wants to kill Peter as revenge for revealing that his photo's he was selling to the paper were photoshopped and stealing his girlfriend. He actually goes into a church and preys for Peter's death. Oh yeah, did I mention that of all these unsubtle movies this one is about as subtle as having your scrotum pulled back through your legs and stapled over your sphincter. The fact is that the story is just a clumsier version of the older stories with characters who are all unlikable with the exception of cake girl, who Peter Parker is a complete jerk to. The really stupid part is that half the movie is actually not about superheroes or supervillians, it's just about people you don't like ruining relationships you don't care about. I remember when this came out the Angry Video Game Nerd did a review defending this movie against the swarms of disgust it stirred in people and actually claimed it was the best of the trilogy and wrapped everything up nicely. To that I say, are you fucking kidding me? That movie was pointless, did nothing for the franchise and will forever be known as "The Shit Spider Man Movie." What isn't completely awful is utterly bland.

To conclude I'd just like to say that Spider Man is actually pretty shit. He's a lame super hero with uninteresting motivations and all his supervillain counterparts are stupid. In fact,I can't think of a single decent Marvel Comic franchise. They're all shit. Spider Man is probably the best one. I mean DC has Batman and The Watchmen, which are simply a lot better in terms of quality.So there you have it, I have scientifically proven that DC is superior to Marvel. Fuck you nerds!

Bright Star (2009 Film)

For the first time in the history of Infinite Possiblogities I have decided to dedicate this post to someone, my dearest mother, who not only gave birth to me and raised me into the cynical critic I am today but who was also directly responsible for me having to watch this movie. I'm not going to use her actual name for fear of what you sick bastards might do to her, but this one's for her nontheless.So this is something like what my mum said to me what she convinced me to watch Bright Star.

"It's about this wonderful poet John Keats who I studied in high school"

-Mum

Now just to elaborate this movie is more specifically a dramatic interpretation of the final three years of John Keats' life and focuses primarily on his romance with some sappy, pathetic, unlikable wench. At one point later on in this movie there is a line of dialogue that really sums up my feelings regarding this movie. The line is "I have failed John Keats" and that's exactly what the movie feels like it's done. I was one of four people who watched this movie in this particular sitting and despite our often different tastes regarding film and television there was a universal disapproval of this film. Even my mum, who loves John Keats as a poet and who is awefully fond of the kind of bonnet drama's that frequent the ABC of a Sunday night couldn't say anything but bad things about this movie. To put it in terms my fans will appreciate, it is the worst film I have seen since Kicking the Dog *GASP!*

So what makes this movie bad? Well almost every problem with the film is directly linked to Keats' love interest. In the opening scenes she seems like your typical Austen heroin AKA flirtatiously hostile living with her family waiting to marry for love rather than wealth. Which is fine really, nothing new but a tried a true character that will suit the movies need for a love interest. But oh no, she turns out to be something else entirely. What she really is is a pseudo-stalking, overdramatic bitch whose mood sways annoyingly and suddenly between hopelessly devoted, mopey and pathetic and then to angry and sulky. She, as well as the movie itself, overdramatise everything. There were points in the movie where something absolutely trivial was happening yet the music seemed to br prompting us to feel sad or sympathetic. I was confused and wondered at times whether I was missing something. I eventually reached the conclusion that the person who wrote the musical score must've realised early on what a pile of undercooked toss this movie is and so decided to try their hardest to inject emotional music into as many places in a hope that the audience will be so moved by the score that they could be showing Yu-Gi-Oh and they'd still be touched. This was extremely misguided.

The problem is that this movie is attempting to be both a great romance and a tradgedy, much like Cold Mountain and like Cold Mountain it fails to stir the appropriate emotions in the viewer. But while Cold Mountain fell a little flat, Bright Star was more like a pathetic primary school kid jumping up and down trying to reach their lunch that a bully is holding up out of reach, just before getting punched in the guts and thrown in the mud. Both the characters are unsympathetic and have as much chemistry between them as a chemical reaction between noble gases (this one's for you chemistry nerds!). The girl is not only pathetic and annoying but also self involved and at times unfair and mean to her younger (and dare I say more likable) siblings. If you are anything at all like me, my mother, my father or my girlfriend you will fail to be enticed by this movie despite its' constant efforts to wring every drop of drama from every single scene.

Hiatus - It's That Time of the Year Again

You guys know the drill. Uni exams mean I'm once again ball-and-chained to my desk studying furiously. This means that Infinite Posiblogities gets very boring for a few weeks. Exams end on the 21st for me, so I wouldn't expect anything before then (unless I decide to procrastinate, in which case I'm a very naughty boy and I advise all female and effeminate male fans to spank me). In the meantime you can troll through the archives for "classic" posts, catch up with your "books to read" pile or attempt to mend the broken relationships you've been ignoring whilst under my hypnotic trance. Have fun and stay safe.

Bamercise: Clean and Get Lean

Every so often I come up with a post idea that ends up being quite challenging and daunting to write. This is usually because my poor little head is swimming with a multitude of things that just can't wait to be said, pushing and shoving to get ahead in the queue. Bamercise is one of those things. Bamercise raises many questions in my mind and I think the biggest one of all is "How?" Some people might be wondering "why?" but when you've watched it it's clear that it's a clever marketing/advertising tool. But before I delve too deeply into the questions I suppose I had better enlighten first.

So Bamercise is a creation by the folk who make Easy Off Bam (you know the cleaning product?) and supposedly works off the idea that their cleaning products are so effective that you "no longer get the workout you used to get from cleaning." So instead of releasing a slightly shittier product the good people at Easy Off Bam thought that the only responsible thing to do would be to make their own aerobics exercise regiment based around cleaning. So now us commoners can join Bambi and her team of Bamtastic followers for some Kitchen Cardio, Bathroom Blitz or Total Toilet Training.

There are many funny things about Bamercise and most of them are the people. Bambi herself is pretty much a beaming set of perfectly aligned, blindingly white teeth resting atop an athletic body, bouncing around, keen as mustard to scrub those toilets. But the hilarious characters don't stop there. Even though nobody else utters a word the other participants in Bamercise are hilarious and fun to watch. There's the gangly bald guy who can't keep his balance. There's the gay guy in the pink tank top and fab shorts.There's the blonde one who I completely forgot about until I looked at the box. There's the grumpy old one. There's the short one who looks about 14 and then there's the more shapely one whose body jiggles about unashamedly like that party hard aunty we all have. I guarantee you that every single one of these people will make you laugh out loud at least once (most of them many times).

Now back to my original question of "how?" More specifically, how did the marketing department of a company that maufactures cleaning products come up with the idea to make a themed exercise DVD? Don't get me wrong, I think it's brilliant in both its concept and execution. I mean it's the kind of thing people will watch, laught at and tell everyone about. It's really clever advertising if you think about it. But how on Earth did they come up with it? Getting from regular ads to a workout video seems a little like playing connect the dots in your mind and having the numbers 4 to 12 missing.

So here we are at the conclusion of this little post and I find myself thinking back to what I said earlier. Bamercise has been a challenging topic. I feel like I haven't said enough, like I haven't done the material justice. I've only just now realised that I didn't even mention the humorous use of cleaning products in the exercises as well as how apparently they couldn't afford to give a bottle of BAM to every person because there's one guy who's left out. What else have I forgotten? Oh fuck, I forgot about the hilariously repeditive song that plays in the menu. So before I go I'd just like to ask, does anyone else think it's a little bit sad that I feel unworthy to blog about a camp aerobics DVD?

Some Overthinking in Regards to Pokemon

Like my post on Harry Potter all those many months ago I thought I'd look into the Pokemon universe and talk about some of the things that have confused or bothered me over the years. Believe me, having played all the main games quite thoroughly I think I'm well qualified to make some of these points. So here we go...

How the Fuck do Pokeballs Work?
As far as I can tell when a pokemon is sent inside a pokeball the pokemon is destroyed, sucked atom by atom into the ball for storage so that they can hang off the trainers belt until they're needed. This really poses a lot of questions for me. For example, what do the pokemon do whilst inside the pokeballs? Are they happy in there? Are they conscious? Can they die in there? Do they need sustinence in this state? I mean imagine if you left a tentacool in there a few days and just when you decided to send it out into battle it comes out as a dried up blob of crap. Can that happen? And if it can and you sent a dead pokemon out in a battle would that count as a victory to your opponent?

Furthermore, How do Pokemon Get Stored on a PC?
Yeah riddle me that one? This is really more of the same question as the Pokeball one. But really? What's going on here? So your pokemon is in a ball and then the ball and its contents are somehow destroyed and rebuilt in binary? It kind of makes me wonder how many lab ratatas had to die before they perfected this technology.








Do People Ever Eat Pokemon?
This is a topic that the show often managed to skillfully avoid. Do people consume pokemon as food? People need to eat as do all living things, so it seems likely that they would. But the show and the games spend so much time promoting the special bond that exists between pokemon and humans that the thought of munching down a seaking fillet seems almost sick. I guess there exists the possibility that the world of pokemon is much more enlightened than ours and they are all able to live happily on a vegetarian diet. But I could swear I've seen the characters eat things that look meat based in the show. But there is another possibility I suppose and that's that other than pokemon there are regular, non-pokemon animals that exist in that world too. But then again you never actually see them, what are they doing when they're not being food? Which kinda brings me to my next point.

What Exactly is a Pokemon?Pokemon basically seem to be the animals in the pokemon world. The main difference seems to be that pokemon can be easily stored. So if all the animals in the world of pokemon ARE pokemon that really poses the question, are human beings pokemon? If you throw a pokeball at a person that is sufficiently weakened is it possible to capture them? It kind of has disturbing implications in regards to human trafficing, kidnapping and sex offences when you think about it? Images of seedy men in large coats selling pokeballs in an alleyway behind the pokemart come to mind. I mean it makes sense for humans to be pokemon as well doesn't it? Surely we can't expect to believe that humans are the only animals in that universe that aren't pokemon? And if we aren't pokemon then what makes a pokemon a pokemon? Gosh it turns out that once you start asking questions about pokemon the whole damn fictional universe unravels before your eyes. Anyway, back to Heart Gold version I go.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon

Dear Infinite Possiblogities,
hurry the fuck up and write something decent before I am driven to hunt down your address and chew through your spine whilst you sleep.
Love always,
Adoring Fan

P.S. Your songs are shit and don't count

This is the kind of letter I'd deserve to get had I actually earned any fans. So anyway I've decided to cease and decist all of my procrastinating and get back to my blog (because lord knows I've missed the old gal). Now I'm sure there are a good number of you out there who are familiar with Sailor Moon, whether it be because you saw the anime on Cheez TV or because you stumbled upon pictures of her and her friends engaging in threesomes with the cast of Dragon Ball Z. But how many of you were aware that they made a live action Sailor Moon series in Japan called Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon? Yeah, yeah I know YOU did, put your hand down (you know who you are). Anyway well there is such a thing and I watched it all and I've deemed it blog worthy. So strap yourselves in, for I am going to review and discuss the many ups and downs that is Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.

Now lets get one little thing out of the way first. Do you like Japanese entertainment and culture? If you answered "no" or some explicit variant on that theme then PGSM is simply not for you. Don't look into it, don't give it a try, just walk away and be thankful that Infinite Possiblogities was here to save you from wasting your precious, precious time. I say this because, quite frankly, if you can't stand bubbly Japanese school girls singing J-Pop karaoke then you will struggle to make your way through a single episode of PGSM without destroying something or commiting some horrible crime. Having said that I must admit to being something of a closet PGSM fan. This is something I could never admit to a good number of my friends because, to be perfectly honest, I deserve to be ridiculed. I certainly enjoyed it more than I ever did the over-played anime series. Anyway, I'm sure some of you may be wondering what in the fuck PGSM is all about, so let's move on to that.

PGSM is the story of 5 teenage girls who have no reservations about getting dressed in public having dormant powers awoken in them by talking cat toys so that they can fight evil shit. Turns out they're not always very good at fighting and so they often get helped out by the love interest known as Tuxedo Mask whose disguise consists of wearing a tuxedo and a mask. Just to give a brief overview of all the costumes the Sailor Scouts all dress like they're going to a costume party to lure out sex offenders in an undercover police sting operation and everone/everything else looks like a Queer-Eyed Power Rangers cast. But I actually liked how the show looked. It's colourful and vibrant and except for the occassional dodgy CGI effect it looks pretty believable.

But enough about the aesthetics. As well as being about hot chicks killing shit there is quite an extensive story of forbidden love, tradgedy and the search for identity woven in with the rather camp beat 'em up. The story itself is fairly straightforward in esscence however it is on many occassions made unneccessarily complicated by weird pacing. There are some points where the story moves painfully slowly to reach conclusions that are immediately obvious to the audience assuming they aren't brain damaged and then there are times where the plot twists and turns at a bewildering pace. Oh and I hope you like flashbacks, because PGSM has flashbacks in spades. There is this one kinda cute scene where Usagi offers her love interest some pastry thing that you will get very sick of seeing. Seriously, they must flashback to that moment about 12 times throughout the series. We're not goldfish guys, we can remember that these guys are into each other. Having said that, the story is still quite easy to follow, with maybe the exception of the ending. The ending isn't exactly confusing per se, but it has that "what the fuck was all that about?" quality that seems to plague the endings of so many animes (what happened when Mr. Serano opened the car door at the end of GitS: Stand Alone Complex? How come Section 9 allowed Kuze to get killed at the end of 2nd Gig? What the fuck was the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion all about!?!). I mean I get it's supposed to be symbollic and lightly philosophical but does that really mean we have to be confused too? Oh and one more thing *SPOILER ALERT* Since when did it become stock standard for anime series to end with the destruction and rebuilding of the world and/or the self? I mean I know it can be an interesting way to end a series but it can be a little anticlimactic at times. *SPOILERS OVER*

Actually speaking of anime stereotypes PGSM does play out much like an anime would and conforms to a lot of the perplexing things that animes never really explain. How come Japanese people are so accepting of the fact that monsters have just started popping up? How come nobody can recognise people who are dressed in costumes that actually reveal more of their body than regular clothes? How come Japan can't last a full series without shoehorning in some annoying, kookie child (I mean they made her out of a cat...what IS that!?!)? How come the transformation of only girl who clearly hasn't hit puberty is the most overtly sexual? How come everybody is always singing the same J-Pop song all the freaking time until you just wanna tear out your eyeballs and stuff them into your ears? HOW COME SAILOR MARS, MY FAVOURITE CHARACTER, DIDN'T EVEN TRANSFORM IN THE SPECIAL, MOVIE LENGTH EPISODE!?!