Cold War Revisited: “The Thing”

August 24, 2008 – 10:33 am

As certain factions speculate that the world is headed toward a new Cold War, Mark Farnsworth examines the artistic legacy of this phenomenon.

“The Thing” is the darkest film in the Kurt Russell trilogy of Carpenter’s science fiction films and the beginning of his “Apocalypse” cycle. It is a master class of pessimism nearly unrivalled in cinema and a bleak critique on the nature of humanity itself, inspired by the Reagan administration, Carpenter’s first foray into studio film making, and the escalation of the arms race with the Soviet Union.

The plot is more closely related to John W. Campbell’s novella; “Who Goes There?” than the earlier Hawks production of “The Thing from another World.” Special effects allow the shape-shifting alien to be realised in all its bloody glory, which in turn gives Carpenter the freedom to develop a claustrophobic atmosphere of mistrust, fear, and growing nihilism.

In the earlier movie the scientists and soldiers work together to destroy the visible threat of the thing, as they would do with communism. There is a unity mostly derived from the fact that they are white and embody a people fresh from the moral victory in WW2. America in the 1950s was still perceived as the ‘good guys’, the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave’.

With Carpenter’s creature everyone could be the thing and, as a consequence, an enemy. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Arts & Literature, Entertainment, movies, north america, politics | Comments (0)

On the Passing of a Hip Hop Icon

August 24, 2008 – 3:59 am

Today marks the passing of an artist and a legend. Some of us were able to call him our brother, or our son. Another five people called him husband. But one thing we could all call him was… “friend.”

L-Shock was taken before his time. Initial police reports indicate that he slipped on a stray banana peel, and then tragically fell onto roughly seventy large caliber bullets outside of a crowded circus. While the police have heard rumors of foul play, nothing has been made definite at this point.

Rather than mourn the passing of a titan, we at the network would like to celebrate with you the life of a legend. Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Columnist, Entertainment, Feature, humor, music, north america | Comments (0)

The Epic Abomination of “Sex and the City”

August 16, 2008 – 10:27 am

When challenged to use the word horticulture in a sentence the writer, poet, and critic Dorothy Parker retorted, “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.”

Parker, the acid-tongued queen of New York wrote in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker in the early turbulent part of the 20th century, commenting on everything from politics to literature, before eventually writing screenplays in Hollywood. In the early part of the 21st century beset by the war on terror, oil hitting $135 barrel, and global warming, New York has…Carrie Bradshaw.

Now, the “Sex and the City” series at least played like a well-written article: sharp, rude, forgettable and perfectly made to fit the 30-minute format. The movie is too long to be an episode and too short to reflect the achievements of a series.

Four years on from the series’ end Bradshaw is no longer writing for the New York Observer, but plying her trade with “maginatively” titled books like Menhattan. Get it? Because, in this film that’s as good as it gets. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Entertainment, movies, racism, sex | Comments (2)

Thanks, Hollywood! The Joy of Unneeded Sequels

August 1, 2008 – 2:52 pm

We see it on blogs, websites, magazines. We hear it on radio shows. We even comment on it to each other. Believe me, I know how cliché it is to say that Hollywood is out of ideas. But in that same vein, it’s also cliché to say things like “Gravity points down,” or “1=1”. So you see what I‘m getting at.

Now, historically, Hollywood has always done one of two things: it has produced good movies or really bad movies. Some of the more baroque and stylistically bad movies were passed off as good movies, everyone swigged some red wine that they all secretly didn’t care for, and everyone did their best to ignore the fact that the Oscars should only be held once every four years. However, the new trend that has emerged in these last few years is far more forbidding.

These days, the directors and producers are all either remaking or producing horrible sequels to any film they can lay their grubby hands on. In effect, this takes every single movie from the past few decades and makes them all worse. The good movies we’ve enjoyed for so long are shot in the back of the head and toppled into unmarked graves near lonely metaphorical highways. The bad movies are actually brought back from the dead as slavering zombies, cursed in the sight of God (not a metaphor; every theater that played the new Pink Panther should have been required to sell wooden stakes and pieces of the One True Cross at the concession stand). Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Columnist, Entertainment, humor, movies | Comments (3)

Euro 2008: Boys With Balls

June 30, 2008 – 4:36 am

Thank God for the existence of Iker Casillas. The Spanish keeper, team captain, and Legolas-like wonderboy made the final bearable for me. Casillas made me think back to 2002, when this unusually young goalkeeper was having a brilliant World Cup showing and Germany were doing what they did again this year: making me tear my hair out in helpless rage. Football has a tendency to repeat itself.

One can’t hate Spain, though, I’ve decided. Sure, it’s theoretically possible, but why would one want to?

Even after Spain demolished my boys, the Russians, and proceeded to wipe the floor with my other boys, the Germans (and let’s not forget Spain’s 2006 World Cup defeat of my original home team, Ukraine, which could only have been more embarrassing if the Spanish players pantsed Andriy Shevchenko and proceeded to slap keeper Oleksandr Shovkovsky with his own gloves), I can’t help but be happy for them.

When does Spain, an essentially good team, ever win anything anyway? Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Entertainment, beauty, europe, football, sports | Comments (2)

Amusement From Insipid Places

June 18, 2008 – 10:47 am

When I was younger I would ask people the following question: If you could be immortal and all you had to do was chop off the head of the person you most love, would you do it?

Most people would look aghast look and scream: No!

I, however, would laugh at them and tell them that I would happily take off my beloved’s head in exchange for immortality. My reasoning would be that my beloved would love me so much that she’d want me to live forever and give myself to every generation after hers.

I stopped asking this question when I grew older. I realized that no one would love me that much.

I’m kidding. That’s not why.

I stopped asking this question because as each day I grew closer to death, I was less inclined to desire immortality.

This can only mean that while I fear death, I fear life more.

*

When I say to the world that men and women are the same, I do not understand why everyone points to their private parts.

*

Around the time that Muhammad was singing the praises of Allah, there was Muzahim al-Uqaili, singing lamentations to Allah. He wrote about love. Says the poet: Read More »

By Ali Eteraz | Posted in Arts & Literature, Entertainment, essays, love, poetry | Comments (7)

My Superhero Dream Team: Prepare For Glory!

June 11, 2008 – 11:42 am

Like most men, I have very limited insight into the higher neurological functions of the American female. So, as far as discussing the themes that women find appealing in their television and movies, I have to take a scientific approach and only hypothesize about why the ladies like the things they like.

I do know what escapist fantasies dudes harbor, and why. We crave excitement, adventure, speed, and an unprecedented level of nudity. We crave movies based on comic books or similarly unrealistic premises. And summer blockbusters love to oblige us.

They don’t delve into the possible downsides of being incredibly wealthy, intelligent, and having your own cybernetic battlesuit with rockets in the arms and emergency flares in the nipples. There’s just the right amount of adversity; a prosaic and straight-forward evil villain generally puts the hero in a tough spot, and then forces the hero to do something epic. Not so secretly, my ilk envies the hero. We would love to clench our fists and solemnly vow not to rest until justice is delivered to every ass within a 2 mile radius via our mighty feet.

But movies aren’t enough for me anymore. As a dude, the appeal of watching a crime-fighting, justice-avenging hero has simply become mundane. As such, I’ve designed my own super team.

I’ve put a lot of though into this. A lot. For instance, as many of you may not know, there is inevitably a rivalry between the team leader and the resident loose cannon that doesn’t play by the rules and goes his own way.

That will not be an issue here, however, as I plan to be both the leader and the loose cannon. I might sometimes disagree with myself, but I’m sure I’ll be able to resolve the issue by dropping giant boulders onto myself, and then watching them shatter on my abs. Additionally, my biceps will be named Zeus and Odin, and they will probably star in their own spin-off movies. Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Columnist, Entertainment, football, humor, internet, movies, music, politics, video games | Comments (0)

Cristiano Ronaldo and the Coming of the Antichrist

May 22, 2008 – 6:15 am

Author’s note to her faithful American readers: yes, I mean football as in “soccer.” “Soccer” is an ugly word and the rest of the world barely uses it.

I wake up today to a sad world. Sure, things may presently be peaceful in my corner of the universe, with birdies singing and cockroaches scuttling happily about their business of scaring me to death. Yet there is a melancholy note in the birdsong and the scuttling of the unholy abominations known as blatta orientalis has an automaton, going-through-the-motions feel about it.

Precious is lost. And by “precious,” I mean the Champions’ League title. Well, for Chelsea, anyway.

There’s a reason why I don’t write much about football. My two favourite teams, Chelsea and Dynamo Kiev, are like the dorky, gifted kids at school, forever getting stuffed into lockers and denied the glory that’s their due. While Hollywood and modern technology have been busy fulfilling the “and the geek shall inherit the earth” prophecy, things are a little different on the pitch.

Last night, as I watched the Champion’s League final (held inside Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium, the hallowed ground where my father went with his father to see many a Dynamo Kiev away game), I expressed my hatred of Manchester United many times over. The expressions I used were creative, and not entirely suitable for this publication. In my defense, I’d like to point out that if it wasn’t for Cristiano Ronaldo’s face, I might have been more civil.

This might seem superficial, but I just can’t stand dudes who smile like evil ferrets advancing on a nest of baby chicks. One of these days, the fall of civilization will be traced to this smug, self-satisfied countenance. You’re laughing now, but you’ll be sorry later, as ashes fall from the sky, the locusts advance, and, somewhere, Cristiano Ronaldo continues to grin maniacally.

Let’s put it this way, if Cristiano Ronaldo lived in the States, he would have already made at least one sex-tape with Paris Hilton and/or Tom Sizemore, then gone on some third-rate reality TV show to brag about it.

You might argue that football is, ultimately, for the smug and the self-satisfied. After all, confidence is what helps plant terror in your opponents’ hearts, no?

Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in Columnist, Entertainment, football, humor, sports | Comments (10)

The Unholy Union of Starbucks and “Juno”

May 5, 2008 – 5:44 am

I’m fairly neutral on the subject of Starbucks, because I don’t care about coffee. Coffee generally reminds me of dirty, boiling water that has been poured through a rusty grating and into a cup by somebody who hates me.

I address the issue by adding a ton of cream or milk, and then enough sugar to create something that has been referred to as both a “diabetic Chernobyl” and “liquid renal failure.” But since I generally don’t care for coffee, I leave Starbucks alone for the most part, and Starbucks returns the courtesy.

That isn’t to say I haven’t given the whole enterprise some thought. Yes, Starbucks is a soulless, lumbering, obese corporate entity that sweats overpriced, fancy-named coffee into the mouths of the public. And yes, I’m unwaveringly annoyed by the way they try to sell me CD’s of music fresh from the rainforest when all I really want is to pay too much for an overly complex milkshake.

However, as a business distributing a product that isn’t definitively proven to harm us, they are legally protected in their pursuit of profit, no matter how aggravating it gets. Apparently, the upper-middle class can only drink coffee brewed by an ancient sect of Brazilian coffee monks in a remote bean-temple. And if this is the case – if there really is a population that needs the bland, heavy-handed illusion of worldliness and “alternatude” along with their income-accino – then so be it*.

I wouldn’t say that I choke on the atmosphere misdirected liberal guilt when I enter a Starbucks, but I do sometimes gag a little. Of course, this same atmosphere plays a large indirect part in Starbucks’ astronomical profit margins, so it’s not like they’re putting on the whole show just so that my gorge starts to rise.

Finally, we must remember that most dyed-in-the-tight-jeans hipsters tend to despise Starbucks for being mainstream, capitalist, and lame. And since the hipster view of just about everything is factually wrong, I can’t dislike Starbucks. Neutrality is about as hostile as I can get.

Now, I don’t know if many of you have heard, but Starbucks is selling the movie “Juno” on DVD. This is a case where two things that are blindingly alike have come together – it is both disorienting and inevitable. Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Columnist, Entertainment, food, humor, movies | Comments (4)

The Greatest Hits Of My Greatest Weaknesses

April 18, 2008 – 11:22 am

I want to provide you with a mariner’s chart of my character: the contrasts and topography of my chipped, flawed personality. What the hell, you ask?

Well, this is based on that narcissism that all writers have – or ought to have. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that I’m besieged by academic deadlines and need something to laugh about.

But the main reason? I’m sitting in a class that I am having trouble caring about (we’re watching a movie on bowel diseases. I just looked up, and was greeted by the sight of a very charming endoscopy).

Some of these tempt me severely, and some of these just make me cry: Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Columnist, Entertainment, Science & Technology, Society, humor | Comments (1)