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The Shadow in the North (BBC, 2007)

Before we get started, a few caveats.  First, I haven't read The Shadow in the North.  My complaints are going to be entirely about the BBC's adaptation.  I understand the plot is essentially unchanged from the novel, but I don't know how Pullman treats the issues I'm going to highlight. Second, I'm going to spoil the hell out of the material.

There's a lot to be said for Pullman's first Sally Lockhart novel, The Ruby in the Smoke.  It's dark, it's violent, and it features a refreshingly good heroine.  Sally is strong, smart and independent without too much resort to the usual clichés about feistiness or vulnerability or whatever.  Ruby is a kid's novel, so coincidences tend to be a little too neat and resolutions a little too perfect.  But Pullman doesn't pull his punches: it's a pretty grim book.  A lot of people die, and all fairly horribly. I'm sorry I didn't know about Ruby when I was a kid; I'd have loved it.

And the BBC's 2006 adaptation does the novel no injustice.  The cast is good, the direction is good (if unremarkable one way or the other), and it's faithful to the source material.  Ruby retains the book's surprising violence and adds some welcome ethnic diversity to the cast.  And, at a mere 93 minutes, Ruby moves at a tight clip. There simply isn't time for grandiose indulgences, and the film is stronger for it.  I was surprised by how much I liked it.

So I popped The Shadow in the North into the DVD player full of good will.  A day later, I'm still fuming.

Monsters & Mullets: Caligula (1979)

Pornokitsch is proud (by which we mean ashamed and fairly apologetic) to announce our V Days of Rome Monsters & Mullets feature: Caligula.  Join us on this epic, in no way safe for work, home, children, puppies or life journey - Pornokitsch's first, and hopefully only, foray into actual porn.

The '70s were such a weird time for cinema, right?  Cinemas were bursting with war movies and anti-war movies, heavily stylized masterpieces and equally as heavily naturalistic films, disaster films and raunchy comedies. The blockbuster was born, the studio musical died, and the influence of French New Wave trickled into Hollywood. A new generation of film school brats butted up against institutionalized ideas about cinema so dated that movie-goers could smell the embalming fluid leeching out of the screen. 

And then there was the porn.  The '70s were a such weird time for porn; the US Supreme Court was desperately trying to define the difference between porn and art, and with every decision that came down some self-satisfied self-appointed auteur ran out to produce a film that crossed it. Pornography has never been more mainstream than during that tumultuous decade; films like Behind the Green Door and Deep Throat were commercial, mixed-audience successes that ordinary people, men and women, (yes, even your parents), openly watched and discussed.  Such films, and their acceptance by culture at large, were welcomed by some as harbringers of a new society, a society more open to and tolerant of progressive ideas about race and gender and sexuality.  No longer was sex the sole province of trenchcoated men in dark and smelly theatres.  The world was becoming a better place, one sexually-explicit film at a time.

Into this world came Caligula, the 1979 arthouse fuck-flick that promised to shock and titillate like no other.  It starred major actors, it was written by a respected author, it was based (loosely) on historical events, and it was about... well, it was about a guy who shagged his sister and elected his horse senator.  If Caligula wasn't about Modern Life, nothing could be. Caligula was deep, man. Deep.  And dark.  And sweat-stained.  And uncomfortable.  And crusty, and I don't mean "old fashioned."

Naturally, I sat us down in front of the 156 minute, wholly unexpurgated, wholly uncut version. Jared may never forgive me.

Monsters & Mullets: Q The Winged Serpent (1982)

I have seen hell.  It is dark and close, and Q The Winged Serpent is playing on constant repeat.  For ever and ever and ever.

So.  Q The Winged Serpent doesn't really make a lot of sense.  I'll do the best I can for you, but I can't squeeze water from a stone.  I also can't bring myself to a) screencap this movie myself or b) seek out screencaps online.  So I've decided to draw all the important bits for you.  Hooray!  Let's get started.

Q The Winged Serpent was written, produced and directed by the same guy. As such, it's clearly a labor of love, which we respect here at Pornokitsch.  We're great fans of the ambitious, misguided project - they're integral to our mission statement.  Although Q offers the occasional glimpse of a compelling new-wavey naturalism, and the shots of early '80s New York City are really nifty, there's really not much to redeem this flick and its gross-out porn aesthetic, nonsensical plot and miscast actors.

Monsters & Mullets: The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984)

There's something appealing about the idea of transposing tropes associated with westerns into a fantasy setting.  Who doesn't love a nameless, morally-ambiguous goodish guy savin' the wimminfolk and the grateful townspeople with nothing but his wits and his trusty Colt .45/broadsword?  Steel Dawn may not have proven a particularly successful venture, but writer/director Lance Hool can't be faulted for trying to bring something new to the table.  There are only so many Conan knock-offs one can stomach, after all - and I say that as someone with a strong stomach for Conan knock-offs.

But spicing up your barbarian cheesecake with a little revisionist western nutmeg isn't quite the same thing as merrily ripping off a classic western and dumping it into genero-fantasyland.  Witness today's Monsters & Mullets feature, the 1984 David Carradine-starring The Warrior and the Sorceress.  If you feel like you've seen this movie somewhere before, you have.  Only last time, it starred Clint Eastwood.  And didn't suck.

NB to the above poster: there are no blonde women in this film.  The titular sorceress is a brunette.

Liveblog Spectacular! Half of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince! (the better half)

8.29 pm.  In keeping with a well established tradition, (I, uh, liveblogged the Resident Evil movie on Twitter, once.) Pornokitsch guest-editor Mr. Pickles and I, your fearless editor-who-isn't-Jared, shall go forth and liveblog!  Tonight's movie: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which we started last night but never finished.  (My friends, it is a long movie.).  I'm not sure how far along we got last night, so this may be a very short liveblog.  Or not.

We are comfortably situated on our squashy beanbag sofa in front of the television.  Those of us who wear pyjamas are jim-jammed out; those of us who do not are not.  Mr. Pickles is seated next to me, with his paws on my left leg, purring.  I have just finished a gigantic meal.  Bring it!

8.32: And we're on!  Dumbledore and ol' Harry are having a serious conversation to portentous music.  Oh, hell, this could be at any point in the series, much less this movie.  I have no idea how much more of this film we have to go.

The Cinematic Black Hole: Liveblogging Dragon Wars

The back of the box for Dragon Wars is completely devoid of information.

Rather than traditional things like ‘plot summary’ or ‘character names’, all I know going into this movie is that it cost $75 MILLION DOLLARS. 

If you're keeping score at home, that's 84  million boxes of 89-cent Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Sight unseen, I already know that’s a lousy deal.

1: Who needs the back of the box when you've got an animated backstory to kick things off? Every 500 years, the world gets a dragon. A good one or a bad one. Since bad ones destroy the world, apparently the good ones are on a fairly lengthy winning streak.

3: Is that Michael Madsen as a government agent?

4: An Unshaven Young Reporter is having flashbacks. More backstory.

The Cinematic Black Hole: Liveblogging Resident Evil

I put on Resident Evil (movie, not game) and it's 20 minutes in (now 25 minutes in) and WHERE ARE THE FUCKING ZOMBIES?  I saw Milla Jovovich's boob, but I'm not actually into boobs, and that was 15 minutes ago anyway.

What there is, besides that boob, is some INCREDIBLY LEADEN ACTING AND DIALOGUE ALL DELIVERED IN AFFECTLESS MONOTONES.

Example of actual dialogue:

- "What is this."

- "The door."

- "It's sealed."

- "I'll open it."

At right:  Milla versus the florescent lightbulbs.

The Cinematic Black Hole: Carnosaur

I saw this movie once, like fifteen years ago. It came out in 1993, and I watched a VHS version, so I must have seen it in '94 or '95. Picking on a film I haven't seen since I was a freshman in high school doesn't seem exactly fair, but I've been working on a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen review for two weeks now, and it has spiraled entirely out of control, and I need a stop-gap until I can rein the damned thing in and post it.

Carnosaur wins because it was the first movie on this website's list to which I had the following reaction: "oh, shit, that was a terrible movie."

First: a plot summary without looking it up on IMDB. Dinosaur fetuses are cloned and implanted into unsuspecting women. The women deliver giant, Mentos-eggs which hatch dinosaurs which mature really fast and eat everyone. Eventually the evil scientist who came up with this brilliant plan lays her own Mentos-egg and dies. The End.

The Cinematic Black Hole: Mirrormask

Dave McKean. His asthetic leans toward creepy, shadow-box inspired collages, which isn't my particular cup of tea. But lots of people like it. He's made a name for himself as an illustrator and artist, and he's written a bit, too. He got his start collaborating with Neil Gaiman; their collaboration made them both (relatively) famous. It was probably inevitable that they would wind up making a movie together.

Alas, that movie was Mirrormask.

The Cinematic Black Hole: 10,000 BC

This is not the place for reasoned, coherent reviews of good movies.  This is the place for lunatic raving.  This is where we defend the indefensible and decry the utterly detestable.  This is the Cinematic Black Hole.

(CBH is an ongoing movie review feature inspired by the following paragraph, which was the first movie review I posted on my Facebook account.)

"I don't think I can give this fewer stars. But it deserves it. It deserves negative stars. Yes, black holes. 10,000 BC deserves black holes as its unit of review. It took 1 hour and 49 minutes of my life away from me forever."