Follow @gaijinass
Just finished watching The Company Men
Through the whole movie the only thing I was thinking was “Oh you poor guy you must be so hard done by, forced to drive a PORSHE while looking for work.” I’d say this was a propaganda piece put out in response to the 2011 Occupy, “We are the 99%” movement but the movie was released a year before hippies put up camp in a downtown near you.
Actually one of my bigger pet peeves about Hollywood movies is that almost all of the stories and characters we see on the silver screen are of the top 2% of the American public. Who are the top 2% of America? Well according to the New York Times they are people who make over $250,000 a year. Watching 90% of the movies based on the 2% of America can be explained a couple of ways:
1) To advance most plots or story arcs you need an individual who has a lot of time on their hands, like someone who made a lot of money and retired at 20, a rich dentist who can take time off work or some sort of upper crust old money man who uses his wealth to fight crime. (Think Ryan Gosling in Crazy Stupid Love
2) To make a modern blockbuster you need to have lots of product placement and the companies paying for that product want to sell a lot of bling thus they need characters who can afford the latest, newest most expensive consumerist crap possible.
3) The everydayman with a script he sells and makes it big is a Hollywood myth. Movies are made when a producer gets an idea and then gets his high paid writer to drum out a screen play, remember Kevin Smith writing superman? Therefore movies could reflect this world of Hollywood writers and their rich lifestyles, intensive work schedule followed by months hanging out with their entourages on a hot tropical beach.
Either way the general public watches Hollywood movies with characters and plots that are mostly about the top 1-5% of Americans. Keeping that in mind The Company Men
They’ve sold this lie that everyone lives like the top percentile and so they made this movie to show that yes the rich, they too suffer. Which of course is total utter crap as the rich are rich for a reason, they have all these resources to fall back on not to mention their ready set of connections that will get them over the hump. It’s amazing that common people feel they can connect with the over extended fools in this movie when 95% of the viewing public take a year to make what this movie character’s pull in monthly.
If you like this, you might like:
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Biggest Threats to English Teachers | Japans Sexual Economics | Groper Train | Hypocrisy Cynicism Lies Shame | She works hard for the money |
Gaijinass 
That’s why I was an avid megamovie watcher, these bastards make way too much money for what they do…play make believe! So although I did rent DVDs I supplemented that with the freebies. But must admit have come full circle now and decided that I will only pay to watch a movie that is about the rest of us, not that 2%. And that is true about the movie industry everywhere, although must say that many movies in the UK do have a grittier more common man touch, but sometimes too much in the other direction, showing too many low lifes interacting with the other 98%. Been sticking with Discovery channel now for a while, just gone way off the bull shit and some of the stuck up pussies whose lives and pictures and who they are bunting or divorcing seems to smother the news and web pages otherwise referred to as stars. Maybe some of them can act but who gives a big furry rat’s butt about their personal lives and all the baggage that many of them seem to have. Can never understand why a newspaper would pay big money for a photo of some actor or actress’s butt or being caught in a compromising position..gossip, nastiness, court appearances, more nastiness and so called hollywood experts giving opinions..gez what a lot of BS has sprung up from the whole industry!
I find myself scouring Netflix for either old ass movies I have already seen (The Wraith, John Hughes movies) and the obscure foreign film as often as possible. (In between my Naruto addiction that is.)
I got tired of all the shit movies out there. The last movie I watched in the theater was The Lorax because I took my mom to go see it. The last money I paid money to watch was Toy Story 3. Cartoons! Not even a live action movie. God I hate living in California because people see it as all Hollywood; affluent and shiny. So not the case. Shoot I work for a public school, we have ALL been in fear of losing our jobs for the last 5 years due to budget cuts. How can they glamorize this place when it is falling to shit?
Amazing. The myth that California is some paradise. One of the reasons I have stayed in Tokyo despite all it’s controls and smothering conventions is due precisely to those controls and smothering conventions. California was trying to kill me.
Ben Affleck, by the way, is a jackoff.
California is slowly killing me. In this economy and job market…. I don’t even know where to run.
Ben Affleck can suck a runny asshole.
This may be why I feel more comfortable watching movies where the protagonist crawls through sewers or drives a beat up truck through the night in dirty work clothes looking for god knows what…”Creep” (British horror), and “The Machinist” (most exspensive thing he had was an old muscle car he fixed up but sold, American film…perhaps the best acting ever done by Christian Bale, certainly better than the angry mentally handicapped Batman grating voice, although his Bruce Wayne isn’t the worst…seriously everytime he talked as batman I heard a mentally retarded child trying to sound tough…it was all I could do not to crack up).
Still, Rich people can be intersting…I so need to get ahold of a copy of “Human Centipede 2”.
I’m still amazed when people in hollywood complain about the 1% who make all the money. I coulda sworn they were makiing above $250k a year. and that 250k a year estimate was for a family of 4 not just 1 person. for one person its like 100k.
Those people are just a bunch of toolbox clowns.
also dont move to California, the state is going to declare bankruptcy any year now.
So, I saw the Avengers today. I noticed something. I could write a huge blog about it, but I have a migraine from hell and my ulcer is killing me.
Therefore, this post will have to suffice. It is going to be the ADHD short version (I do not have ADHD, just saying I am going to write a lot less than I could on this). Oh and the mid way through the credits thing isn’t all, watch clear to the end. Yes thor still sports his metal tits (WTF MARVEL HE IS THE GOD OF WAR NOT SOME $!+@^ IN HEAT!)
Anyway, what I noticed. Now, f you are asian then you can not expect to be taken seriously in mainstream American cinema. You either are for kids, or a mindless action movie. Jackie Chan or Jet Li so to speak.
The tide is turning! More asian extras than a hollywood movie about Japan. Even the credits were filled with more than the usual amount of asian names. It was amazing, so many asian extras in some scenes that if you stopped the film at key points and showed all the asians on screen, in a city that hollywood tries to portray as predominantely white, (New York, NY) the average person would then think you were showing them a still from a movie out of the orient.
Not just one scene either. It was glorious. I would have figured the mass northern migration and recent population polls, would have them filling the screen with various latin americans, if they were going to diverge from the standard white with a few tokens formula (a latino with a noticeable accent does get some good screen time in a scene that would have the audience paying atention). I don’t know what caused this, but I hope the trend continues. I have an addiction, the regulars here know that. Seeing this in movies means that I am most likely going to see more asian cinema on the shelves of the local stores, and maybe see some more asian influences in American cinema.
My hopes are up. My fingers are crossed. My prayers and wishes are going out to the asian community that seeks employment in hollywood.
…yeah I have books on directing. Yes those books are all, but one, filled with asian only directors. I have the books within reach in fact.
This brings up the fact that I have now visited the two colleges in my area with any kind of directing program… I am not sure which I am going to, or maybe if I will attend both. The first would give me a generic arts degree, but has all the actual training and experience for directing movies. The second would give me a broadcasting degree, but only teach me how to do news casts, and the teacher hates me, even asked me not to go to the college. Yeah this last paragraph I got totally off of subject, gomen nasai.
Asia is a huge market that Hollywood is just tapping into. Asia, especially Japan where pirating is very low, accounts for at least half of the box office take. I’ve noticed too a clips that play to the Japanese audiences are showing up in more and more movies. There is the SDF Navy in Battleship and of course the opening scene to Resident Evil:
SDF in BATTLESHIP!?! Okay I was going to avoid that mindless filth…maybe not now…I mean I can always play some battleship during parts without asians.
Not to mention all that bit in “Jumper” and of course the Japanese-y scenes in “This means war” etc etc etc