Ergo Proxy

The Visuals

woooow. Ergo Proxy visuals are sooo pretty. So episode after episode of thinking whatthehellishappening couldn't stop me from lapping up the eye candy albeit rmvb version of it. I can only imagine how prettier it would look in a different format. Apparently, the creators used a combination of 2d, 3d and other digital special effects to achieve that industrial future look.

Anyway, it's soooo pretty that it's hard to miss its flaws --- there were parts where visuals degenerate or become sloppy, where Real Mayer ends up looking like a molten voodoo doll. After watching a couple of episodes, I started noticing how the once clean-cut rendition of the characters got fuzzy around the edges, except for some close ups and select scenes. Like Vincent Law's split personality, one moment you ooh and aah and the next, you wonder if someone changed the channel; then you realize, hell, the cable's got nothing to do with it, you're watching it on real player!

The Plot

Reminiscent of this Gundam movie (Garoad and those blasted newtypes) that I watched last year, there were parts which were mostly gibberish... you were left with crickets in your brain trying to figure out what the outpourings of emo-ness were for. The series can also be faulted with raison d'etre overkill. It's like they discovered this fancy new french term and went apeshit bandying it about. Despite that, the plot does unfold. By episode 9, you'll learn what the fuss is all about. And yes, it IS about raison d'etre or Rene Descartes' Cogito Ergo Sum with a smattering of Plato. Rich in philosophical ramblings, themes of the movie also employed Derrida, Lacan and Husserl, if not in name only.

The Verdict

Interestingly, Ergo Proxy, in terms of characterization and scenes, has a lot of strong symbolisms and can be best described as a factoid-lover's wet dream. For that alone, Ergo Proxy is worth watching twice. The second time around, learn to block out raison d'etre and keep a copy of Philosophy for Dummies within reach. You might just find yourself saying, "COGITO ERGO SUM!"

*edited and reposted from author's personal blog.

300

AH HOO!

It was spectacular! All those hot Spartans with eight packs...

All the swirls, slow-mo and freeze frames. The freaks, the jocks, and only ONE, yes ONE hot woman who served as pretty meat for rancid and diseased old fogies.

Although I missed the first five minutes of the movie, I was blown away, no, annihilated by the visual assault of the remaining 1 hour and 90 minutes. It was almost perfect... it almost made me cry. Now if I ever get the chance to watch it on an iMax screen, i would probably drool and froth at the mouth for 2 hours.

F#ckin beautiful. Even Xerxes, although evoking thoughts of homoeroticism and B&D, was pretty.

Of course, I admit, there was hardly any dialogue or even depth to the movie. But that's what's so perfect (or almost perfect) about it.

I love action flicks. One of my top 5 favorite movies of all time is a zombie flick (go check out 28 days later ). Which is closely followed by Resident Evil, another semi-zombie flick. Although I appreciate movies which show a greater social dimension and/or pedagogical (ugh, a law school term!) value, at the end of the day, I'd choose an entertaining, non-draining action flick crawling with hot guys over a tear-jerking, life-altering movie starring an old woman who most likely dies before the film ends. If I should find any flaw to the movie, then that would be the drawn out scene between the Queen and her son, right after she got Leonidas' necklace back, and the Queen's audience with the council. But like I said, I'm not in it for the story. I'm in it for the eye-candiness of it all.

I loved the graphic novel quality of the film. I love blood, gore and violence depicted in a manner close to artistic as possible. I loved the colors (the sepia, crimson and blue-gray tones of the stills posted above). However, there were scenes which missed the mark, if we were to talk about perfect execution of slow motion employed in action flicks. The hot babe/oracle obviously looks like she was gyrating in water. But then it IS a huge improvement in film making, and I've never seen any movie coming close to having bright cotton candy value according to my standards (The Promise, Crouching Tiger... and House of Flying Daggers, although pretty in themselves, don't come close). But then again, I haven't watched a lot of movies and I'm hardly Roger Ebert. ;)

Anyway, who the hell cares? Half nekkid men thrusting their spears out and shouting ah hoo, need I ask for more?

Madness? This is Sparta!

- King Leonidas to the Persian Emissary

*reposted

SoaP Opera

“But it turned out when they said this movie was ‘shitty,’ they didn’t mean it ironically. They just thought it would be a piece of shit.”
-New Line marketing president Russell Swartz (from Dateline Hollywood)

Snakes on a Plane was marketed to be a crappy B movie, so crappy that it creates a following, so notorious that people would want to go to a movie theater, shell out some $s and see for themselves how crappy it could be. The very concept of the whole movie, from the crappy title to the crappy marketing strategy (or marketing strategy based on the crappiness of it all) ultimately did not spell out success in terms of revenues. If we were talking about fodder for sarcasm, then perhaps, the movie could be said to be a huge success.

Maybe the producers relied so much on the internet as a revolutionary form of media. The film itself created a strong following in terms of web content. Googling up “Snakes on a Plane” yielded 65,300,000 hits. Did the avant garde marketing successfully relegate “Snakes on a Plane” within the happy bounds of pop-culture? I guess so. But does that mean the New Line Cinema Executives can retire early and buy an island or two off the coast of Fiji? Hehe. I don't think so.

If you think about it, based on the premise of their marketing strategy, the ploy worked well, So well in fact, that maybe people started thinking that the movie was so crappy it wasn't worth spending $10 on. Looking at it another way, maybe it wouldn't have done so well were it not for the online publicity. In the end, what the producers achieved was just another topic for discussion. But then again, is it JUST another topic for discussion? Incorporating bloggers into their marketing strategy created an online macarena/ketchup song monster.

Look again at the figure above. 65 million hits!!! Try typing “Nacho Libre” in the search field and you'll get only 11 million results. Nacho Libre is a seriously funny movie, although it probably didn't gross as well as its producers hoped. What about “Austin Powers?” (who doesn't like Austin Powers?) Only 7.3 million hits.

Wow. That is brilliant marketing strategy. Perhaps if they venture into merchandise, they'd make a killing in sales.