Sunday, April 28, 2013

The Da Vinci caca

I'm just trying to watch The Da Vinci Code. But it's not easy... "Oh my god, the victim wrote the name of a professor in some unknown context. The professor must be the murderer, there's no other possibility! And since the French police, as everybody knows, don't simply arrest a suspected murderer, we must lure him to the crime scene, where surely he will become so confused that he confesses! And to track him, we will cleverly hide a small GPS tracker... in his jacket pocket. He will never find it there!"

And of course, if you're a cop holding a gun on two potential murderers, and they threaten to harm a painting, you put down your gun!

Inspector Clouseau was high praise for the intellect of French police compared to this caca. 

10 comments:

Bronislaus Janulis / Framewright said...

Ignore the plot, watch it for the art. 8-)

Ken said...

I watched it on a plane a few years ago. The section where he disarms some guys and then leaves the gun behind is stupid. Of course he can't take the gun, or else he'd just shoot the next people who got in his way, but who would leave the gun there? Next film is even more ridiculous.

Anonymous said...

Heh. I also watched this nonsense over the weekend. True rubbish. Still, I did always think Audrey Tatou was angelic.

Anonymous said...

but who would leave the gun there?

Did he at least take the ammo out of it so it couldn't be used again him by some other bad guy?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Oh, that was Audrey Tatou! That must be why I put it in my rental list to begin with!
She was amazing in Amelie.

I just rewatched Subway. Isabella Adjani is another.

Dave Nielsen said...

Not long ago I saw Coco Before Chanel just because she was in it - I had only a very vague of who Coco Chanel was, and that only because Frasier Crane said his couch was based on one she had. It was very good.

One interesting thing is there is an Englishman in it who speaks fluent French. I didn't know at first he was English, though, because I couldn't detect any difference in how he spoke it versus the French actors but I suppose the French would hear it instantly.

I don't know - Pascal, if you're still alive?

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

(checks) Hmm... In spite of all the evidence, my pulse insists that I AM in fact still alive. Go figure.

Very busy professionally, dusty allergenic protracted heatwave and poor sleep are my sole flimsy alibis, inspecteur.

Firstly, I really-really-really must point out it's Audrey Tautou. "Tatou" is french for armadillo, and why on la Terre would a pretty french chick call herself Audrey Armadillo?
(That might compromise her future advertising contracts with the companies that make skin-softening lotions, n'est-ce pas? I can just hear their new slogan: "Now You Tube, I mean you TOO, can have skin like Miss Armadillo." Non, là, ça le fait pas trop, ma chérie, désolé... NEXT!)
Unless she works for Jerry Springer, bien sûr...

Ken dared...
"I watched it on a plane a few years ago."

Holy shit! You were on a motherfucking plane? With snakes? Was Samuel L. Jackson on board?

The DaVinci Crude was, I believe, the mystery equivalent of WWE wrestling : you clearly and immediately need to suspend your disbelief VERY high up, if you're to just enjoy a silly story for adults. So much is childishly obvious.
I mean, who in their right mind would buy their little latina girl a pet monkey with Puss In Boots delusions and let the two of them run off unsupervised all the time, exploring unknown locations filled with hazards and kleptomaniac masked foxes? Yet little Dora Marquez is a cartoon rolemodel for mi broski's niños.
Considering that Dora "la Esploradora" is heavily suspected of residing illegally in the United States with her cousin Diego, I'd readily wager her brightly colored oneiric hijinks are actually acidic hallucinations born from excessively sniffing the "cultural" smoke filling her dysfunctional family home, si?
(Not that I'm suggesting Mexes are pot smokers or deep-fry mushrooms, because, you know, that would be a racist stereotype. And I hate racists almost as much as I hate niggaz. Oops! Uhm... that's not what I meant to express. Some of my best friends are NOT albino.)

Which is an excellent and highly subtle transition to bring us to White Chicks. I mean, come on, from the very first minute of that flick, them two Mexicans are about as plausible as a "moderate islamist" (that's how they describe themselves these days when they con an illiterate nation to elect them). Where was I? Oh, yes: although uncredited, I've recognized, playing the part of the caricatural Russian that turns out to be legit, WWE wrestler "Vladimir Kozlov". His WWE character is a nasty, scary, nigh invincible stereotype of a Russian... and in reality he's Ukrainian! That's about the same as hiring an Israeli to play a Palestinian heel, because their ethnic types are conveniently similar.

My point is, sometimes the good old-fashioned cortico-thalamic pause is not enough, you need to plain and give your cortex the night off. White Chicks, the DaVito Toad, or any Chuck Seagall movie are made just for that. So what? You guys should mingle with the "intellectual commoners" from time to time, it'd preserve you from gathering dust with the microchips in your servery tower. (Get it? Ivory tower, server datacenters... No? Bah, Professor Layton would've seen it coming a parsec away.)
I did say Layton, not Langdon. That was another subtle pun on unsubtle topics. Google it and learn.

Unfortunately, I've watched neither Subway nor Coco Before Chanel. Hence why I tried to "drown the fish" with all the verbiage above.

Did it work?

Ooh, please excuse me, I've just found a pirate download torrent for Flesh Gordon. I hope it's the unedited version!
Gotta run. Necessidado arriba andale eppa. ¡Hasta luego, amigos!

Anonymous said...

My point is, sometimes the good old-fashioned cortico-thalamic pause is not enough, you need to plain and give your cortex the night off. White Chicks, the DaVito Toad, or any Chuck Seagall movie are made just for that.

You can make movies that do without having them be so stupid they take you out it constantly. To paraphrase Tolkien, any fantasy world but have its own consistent rules or else the story is meaningless. There are good versions of every type of popcorn movie, why did this one have to be so stupid?

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Actually, I did enjoy the mix of riddles and suspense-action in the DVC movie. I was only really let down by the honestly ridiculous ending. And that's no spoiler!

In reality (here comes the vague spoiler), the "problem" of the "Grail" could easily be solved by simply keeping ONE generation unawares of their lineage, hence destroying the "world-threatening secret" forever. Especially since God clearly doesn't care about making said secret public knowledge.
And that way, nobody would even need to get hurt, let alone leaving a 2000 year-long trail of mangled corpses! (Which, admittedly, makes for slightly less boring movies, n'est-ce pas? Dora the Explorer makes friends with the Care Bears becomes Guantanamo torture past age 4!)

As for the movies in general, well I for one am a fan of such DELIBERATE outrageous implausibilities as Police Academy and Naked Gun. And White Chicks. In fact, I'd readily watch a new episode of the classic Tom & Jerry cartoons. Because they're just funny.

Does any of us really need to believe that "a man can fly"? Or that an irradiated, dying spider can give you permanent and super-awesome zooper-duper-powers without even turning you into a hideous man-insect or making you shoot web from your butt, as the original arthropod does?

It's storytelling, folks. No Big Bearded Bloke up in the clouds created a Discworld populated by two nekkid overgrown rebel teens, telling them to "behave while I'm gone", before ordering them to wear fig leaves.

I have a far greater gripe with movies "based on a true story". Because THEY try to deliberately lie to you by pretending that "this is practically what really happened". Give or take a few insignificant details. Claatu verrata *COUGH-COUGH*!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

"Does any of us really need to believe that "a man can fly"? ...
It's storytelling, folks."

That's a very good point.
What irritated me here was just:
1: how seriously it was taken because it was about Christ.
2: How huge the book was.
3: how overly seriously it took itself. No ironic distance.

There's a difference between far-flung premises like Krypton powers, and big holes from sloppy storytelling.