Movie Reviews and Celebrity interviews

Those yellow, animated phenomenons have finally made their way to the big screen and it only took eighteen years.  So does the animated movie live up to the hilarity of the television show?  Read on and find out – doh!
The town of Springfield’s lake is overly polluted and socially conscious Lisa Simpson (Yeardley Smith) rallies the town to clean it up.  Her dad Homer (Dan Castellaneta) saves a pig from being slaughtered after it’s used as a prop in a Krusty the Clown commercial and starts to treat it like the son he always wanted.

This doesn’t set well with Bart (Nancy Cartwright) who finds that Mr. Flanders (Harry Shearer) is a more caring father than his pig loving one.  Homer’s new oinking child does what pig’s do and Homer puts the results in a huge silo in the backyard (well, Homer did put a little of himself into the job).  His wife Marge (Julie Kavner) tells him to get rid of the silo of pig waste.

Homer does of course, by dumping it on Lake Springfield.  This infusion of pollution causes the Environmental Protection Agency to become alerted to the situation.  They react in their usual restrained manner – the director Russ Cargill (Albert Brooks) orders that a huge glass dome cover the town.
The Simpsons eventually find themselves outside the dome and Homer decides to take off rather than help his neighbors (especially since they formed an angry mob against him when they found out that it was his silo that pushed the lake over the limit).  He takes the family to Alaska and start over again, but the rest of the family thinks they should return and save Springfield.

The Simpsons have been a television hit since they started airing in 1989.  There’s always been talk that creator Matt Groening should bring his jaundiced creations to the big screen.  He’s seemingly been happy on the small screen but it has finally come to pass and the results are hilarious.
The film does play like a bigger and extended episode of the television show.  It has some hilarious commentary on society as well as just outright wacky comedy.  One bit of commentary has the church folk running to Moe’s bar and the bar patrons running to church as the giant dome of doom is placed over the town.

We also have an extended Bart dare as he skateboards in the buff down to the Krusty Burger.  Not to mention the “Spider Pig” song that my kids would sing during the theatrical trailer.

Where this disc lets down a little is not in the content of the film but in the special feature department.  It feels really rather light and you keep thinking that a more expansive special edition will be in the works somewhere down the line – doh!.

The Simpsons is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and is enhanced for 16×9 televisions.  A fullscreen version is available separately.  Special features include two commentary tracks.

The first one features writer/creator Matt Groening, writer/producer James L. Brooks, writer/producer Al Jean, writer/producer Mike Scully, director David Silverman, Yeardley Smith, and Dan Castellaneta, and the second one includes director Silverman, and sequence directors Mike B. Anderson, Steven Dean Moore and Rich Moore.

There are 5 minutes of deleted scenes introduced by Al Jean.  The “Special Stuff” section has 3 minutes of Simpsons appearances on the Tonight Show, American Idol, and a parody of the “Let’s go to the Lobby” concession stand spiel.  That’s it.  Seems pretty light to me.

The movie is hilarious, but the extra features feel like a bit of a letdown as far as deleted scenes go, the commentaries are top notch.  It’s well worth it for the film.  I must knock it down a bit because it could’ve been a bigger set (and I suspect will be somewhere down the line).

A quintessential loser, an out-of-job puppeteer, is hired by a firm, whose offices are ensconced in a half floor (literally. The ceiling is about a metre high, reminiscent of Taniel’s hallucinatory Alice in Wonderland illustrations). By sheer accident, he discovers a tunnel (a “portal”, in Internet-age parlance), which sucks its visitors into the mind of the celebrated actor, John Malkovich. The movie is a tongue in cheek discourse of identity, gender and passion in an age of languid promiscuity. It poses all the right metaphysical riddles and presses the viewers’ intellectual stimulation buttons.

A two line bit of dialogue, though, forms the axis of this nightmarishly chimerical film. John Malkovich (played by himself), enraged and bewildered by the unabashed commercial exploitation of the serendipitous portal to his mind, insists that Craig, the aforementioned puppet master, cease and desist with his activities. “It is MY brain” - he screams and, with a typical American finale, “I will see you in court”. Craig responds: “But, it was I who discovered the portal. It is my livelihood”.

This apparently innocuous exchange disguises a few very unsettling ethical dilemmas.

The basic question is “whose brain is it, anyway”? Does John Malkovich OWN his brain? Is one’s brain - one’s PROPERTY? Property is usually acquired somehow. Is our brain “acquired”?  It is clear that we do not acquire the hardware (neurones) and software (electrical and chemical pathways) we are born with. But it is equally clear that we do “acquire” both brain mass and the contents of our brains (its wiring or irreversible chemical changes) through learning and experience. Does this process of acquisition endow us with property rights?

It would seem that property rights pertaining to human bodies are fairly restricted. We have no right to sell our kidneys, for instance. Or to destroy our body through the use of drugs. Or to commit an abortion at will. Yet, the law does recognize and strives to enforce copyrights, patents and other forms of intellectual property rights.

This dichotomy is curious. For what is intellectual property but a mere record of the brain’s activities? A book, a painting, an invention are the documentation and representation of brain waves. They are mere shadows, symbols of the real presence - our mind. How can we reconcile this contradiction? We are deemed by the law to be capable of holding full and unmitigated rights to the PRODUCTS of our brain activity, to the recording and documentation of our brain waves. But we hold only partial rights to the brain itself, their originator.

This can be somewhat understood if we were to consider this article, for instance. It is composed on a word processor. I do not own full rights to the word processing software (merely a licence), nor is the laptop I use my property - but I posses and can exercise and enforce full rights regarding this article. Admittedly, it is a partial parallel, at best: the computer and word processing software are passive elements. It is my brain that does the authoring. And so, the mystery remains: how can I own the article - but not my brain? Why do I have the right to ruin the article at will - but not to annihilate my brain at whim?

Another angle of philosophical attack is to say that we rarely hold rights to nature or to life. We can copyright a photograph we take of a forest - but not the forest. To reduce it to the absurd: we can own a sunset captured on film - but never the phenomenon thus documented. The brain is natural and life’s pivot - could this be why we cannot fully own it?

Wrong premises inevitably lead to wrong conclusions. We often own natural objects and manifestations, including those related to human life directly. We even issue patents for sequences of human DNA. And people do own forests and rivers and the specific views of sunsets.

Some scholars raise the issues of exclusivity and scarcity as the precursors of property rights. My brain can be accessed only by myself and its is one of a kind (sui generis). True but not relevant. One cannot rigorously derive from these properties of our brain a right to deny others access to them (should this become technologically feasible) - or even to set a price on such granted access. In other words, exclusivity and scarcity do not constitute property rights or even lead to their establishment. Other rights may be at play (the right to privacy, for instance) - but not the right to own property and to derive economic benefits from such ownership.

On the contrary, it is surprisingly easy to think of numerous exceptions to a purported natural right of single access to one’s brain. If one memorized the formula to cure AIDS or cancer and refused to divulge it for a reasonable compensation - surely, we should feel entitled to invade his brain and extract it? Once such technology is available - shouldn’t authorized bodies of inspection have access to the brains of our leaders on a periodic basis? And shouldn’t we all gain visitation rights to the minds of great men and women of science, art and culture - as we do today gain access to their homes and to the products of their brains?

There is one hidden assumption, though, in both the movie and this article. It is that mind and brain are one. The portal leads to John Malkovich’s MIND - yet, he keeps talking about his BRAIN and writhing physically on the screen. The portal is useless without JM’s mind. Indeed, one can wonder whether JM’s mind is not an INTEGRAL part of the portal - structurally and functionally inseparable from it. If so, does not the discoverer of the portal hold equal rights to John Malkovich’s mind, an integral part thereof?

The portal leads to JM’s mind. Can we prove that it leads to his brain? Is this identity automatic? Of course not. It is the old psychophysical question, at the heart of dualism - still far from resolved. Can a MIND be copyrighted or patented? If no one knows WHAT is the mind - how can it be the subject of laws and rights? If JM is bothered by the portal voyagers, the intruders - he surely has legal recourse, but not through the application of the rights to own property and to benefit from it. These rights provide him with no remedy because their subject (the mind) is a mystery. Can JM sue Craig and his clientele for unauthorized visits to his mind (trespassing) - IF he is unaware of their comings and goings and unperturbed by them? Moreover, can he prove that the portal leads to HIS mind, that it is HIS mind that is being visited? Is there a way to PROVE that one has visited another’s mind? (See: “On Empathy”).

And if property rights to one’s brain and mind were firmly established - how will telepathy (if ever proven) be treated legally? Or mind reading? The recording of dreams? Will a distinction be made between a mere visit - and the exercise of influence on the host and his / her manipulation (similar questions arise in time travel)?

This, precisely, is where the film crosses the line between the intriguing and the macabre. The master puppeteer, unable to resist his urges, manipulates John Malkovich and finally possesses him completely. This is so clearly wrong, so manifestly forbidden, so patently immoral, that the film loses its urgent ambivalence, its surrealistic moral landscape and deteriorates into another banal comedy of situations.

BRUCE LEE

ENTER THE DRAGON
LITTLE KNOWN FACT
WAY OF THE INTERCEPTING FIST
A WARRIOR’S JOURNEY
LAST MAN STANDING
GAME OF DEATH
NUNCHAKU
FISTS OF FURY
THE CURSE
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE
SILENT BUT DEADLY
ELVIS & BRUCE
THE DRAGON

“Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own”
- Bruce Lee

ENTER THE DRAGON

Bruce Lee Jun Fan Yuen Kam was born in the year of the dragon, 1940, and at the hour of the dragon, between 6 and 8 AM.

LITTLE KNOWN FACT

Bruce’s ancestry was Chinese and German. His father was Chinese while his mother was of German-Chinese decent. Her mother was Chinese and her father was German.

WAY OF THE INTERCEPTING FIST

Jeet Kune Do, also known as Way of the Intercepting Fist, was Bruce Lee’s personal martial art style. He developed it with the idea of being more flexible and practical with martial arts techniques. In doing so, he commonly considered the greatest martial artist of the 20th century.

A WARRIOR’S JOURNEY

His Jeet Kune Do instruction was a premium in the highest demand and commanded a staggering $275 an hour. His students consisted of some of Hollywood’s most elite, including Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Joe Lewis and Chuck Norris.

LAST MAN STANDING

In many ways his celebrity gave him a parallel to the characters he portrayed as he was contantly being challenged by movie extras and other men who could get near him seeking to gain fame by beating him in a fight. Many tried, but he was never beaten.

GAME OF DEATH

His last film was “Game of Death” and was his only film to be shot with sound. His earlier films were shot without sound and the voices were later dubbed in.

NUNCHAKU

Nunchaku were Bruce Lee’s hand weapon of choice and when wielding a pair he was an undefeatable force. He developed his legendary routine under the instruction of karate master Hidehiko “Hidy” Ochiai. The two men first met at the Los Angeles YMCA in the mid-1960’s.

FISTS OF FURY

Bruce Lee’s ultimate secret was his lightning quick speed. To demonstrate he developed a trick where he had a person hold a coin and close his hand around the coin, but before they could do so Bruce would quickly remove the coin and replace it with another most often without the participate even realizing what had happened. When they opened their hand, it would be the new coin.

THE CURSE

As most know, Bruce Lee’s death was deemed to be extraordinarily bizarre. Motivating many to be belove it was the work of “Oni”, a Japanese term for demons or evil spirits. This curse apparently carried on to his actor son, Brandon Lee.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

During an interview, composer Lalo Schifrin revealed that Bruce often trained to the “Mission Impossible” TV Show soundtrack.

SILENT BUT DEADLY

Another claim to fame was Bruce mastered a technique called, “The One Inch Punch”. With it he could deliver a devastating body punch just with his fist just a mere inch from his target.

ELVIS & BRUCE

Elvis Presley and Ed Parker had a pet project film they were constructing in 1973 and 1974, but then suddenly it was forgotten until 2003 when the footage resurfaced. The film is basically groups of martial arts experts going at it. The cast reads like a ‘who’s who’ of the martial arts world of the time and although he is not featured in the film, 20 minutes of never-before-seen footage of Bruce Lee was also discovered with this lost footage.

THE DRAGON

When he passed away on July 20, 1973 Bruce Lee was only 32 years old was 5′7″ and weighed 128 pounds. He might have been small in stature but was one of the all time greatest film stars and the most accomplished martial artist in modern history.