SUPER MACHETE PENGUINS

I watch movies. Then I blog about them as though you’ve got nothing better to do than read amateur movie reviews.

Super 8

JJ Abrams’ film about middle-school film nerds circa 1979 making a zombie movie with a Super 8 camera who witness the biggest, most OTT train wreck ever whilst filming – and discover the train was an Air Force train carrying a very angry alien.

The film is a fairly obvious throwback to both Steven Spielberg and the wave of SF/F tinged young-adult films that followed E.T. like The Goonies and Explorers. On the downside, Abrams seems to crib from Spielberg a little too directly at certain points, especially the dysfunctional family angles and the ending. On the other hand, it’s a pretty dead-on homage – and an entertaining one at that.

But then I’m a little biased here, because this is really a nerd’s film, from the details of retro pop culture Americana to the maker-culture of model car kits and amateur movie-making. There’s a lot of my childhood to be found here (the soundtrack included), and while I didn’t have access to a Super 8 camera, I damn sure would have been trying to make films with it.

Machete

This film is old news to many of you, but Machete never got a theatrical release in Hong Kong, and only just got a DVD release last month. So I’ve only just seen it.

It’s just about everything I hoped for – a drive-in style Bronson tribute with Danny Trejo hacking body parts off bad guys, and a cast of memorable one-dimensional characters performing acts of OTT violence and gratuitous nudity.

It’s by no means perfect even by Robert Rodriguez’s standards – it’s a little longer than it ought to be (though he did manage to edit out the subplot with the twins), and probably could have been a little more outrageous at times (although I’m glad he also edited out the part with Rose McGowan and the cat). But it’s still so much fun to watch – depending, possibly on yr opinion on illegal immigration and whether you hate it when movies don’t take yr side on political issues.

Mr Popper’s Penguins

One of those “the rest of the family wants to see it” situations. And hey, I love penguins. But it’s basically Jim Carrey playing more or less the same character he always plays when he's not playing Ace Ventura – Decent Guy Who Lets Professional Ambition Distance Himself From His Family But Learns His Lesson After The Film’s Gimmick Changes His Life. It’s admittedly fun in places, and I’d rather watch Carrey’s rubber-faced schtick over, say, anything Adam Sandler does. But basically, it’s safe, predictable, disposable family entertainment.

Slide,

This is dF

ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY MY ONLY POST ABOUT THE DEBT CEILING (UNTIL THE ECONOMY COLLAPSES)

As you may have noticed, there has been a lot of dithering in the US about the economy, the debt ceiling and how if we don’t raise it then the US will default and China will take over the dump.

Or something.

So what does it all mean? What will happen? And what’s the best economic plan that everyone should settle on?

Hell if I know. Ask an economist.

Seriously. I have no real wisdom on this, except for the really obvious point that, on a macro level, what we’re witnessing is the usual political game of Chicken, where Something Terrible will happen unless a deal is hammered out, and both the GOP and the Democrats in Congress have been betting large on all-or-nothing propositions in an effort to score as many political points as possible before eventually settling up on a compromise designed so that each party can claim to take credit for whatever works and blame everything else on the opposition.

The wild card, of course, is the Tea Party contingent that is so desperate to stick to their Small-Govt-Smaller-Budget mantra that they're convinced the debt ceiling is just something liberals made up to scare Americans into paying more taxes, and are urging the rest of the GOP not to fall for Obama’s Evil Plan to enslave America by elevating the debt ceiling to infinity.

Or something.

Anyway, here are the three (3) most sensible things I’ve read about the current state of things:

1. This article from The Economist.

2. This thought piece from John Scalzi.

3. This column from John Avlon.

They’re all critical of the GOP, yes. Even The Economist, which has never liked Obama’s fiscal policies to date. Which should tell you something.

All I can really add is that, for all my reputation as a dour pessimist, I think Congress will cut a deal at the last minute, and I think both party leaderships already have a good idea of what concessions they're prepared to make to make a deal happen. For all their rhetoric, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell at least seem to understand that the debt ceiling is real and has to be raised one way or another, if only because they don’t want to hand Obama his second term by being the party that helped wreck the global economy (again), or at the very least prevented Social Security cheques from being mailed. Everything leading up to that over the next two weeks will be a matter of details and grandstanding.

Then again, that depends on which the GOP leadership considers to be the bigger political risk – forcing the US govt to default on its interest payments as a matter of principle, or crossing the Tea Party by compromising on anything.

It’s always possible Boehner and McConnell are telling themselves, “Well, if we default, we default – we can always pin the rap on Obama somehow – marks will believe anything that follows that narrative, and anyway, last thing we need is for the economy to get better with Obama in charge – we’d never hear the end of it, AJ … and either way we’ll need all hands on deck to take on Obama, and we don’t want the Tea Party taking their act solo when we need ‘em, see what I mean?”

Or not.

Either way, by August 3 we’ll know where the GOP really stands with the Tea Party, to say nothing of the rest of the country.

Put up or shut up,

This is dF