Captain's Blog Stardate Feburary 3rd 2008

So this is it, my first ever blog.

Now finally the world will get to hear my thoughts on all the things that matter, like my opinions on books that i'm reading and movies that i've seen lately, because it seems like there is a serious gap in the market when it comes to that kind of thing, and i'm just the man to cram that hole in the culture with my mind juices.

So I saw No Country For Old Men and let me say it was no movie for young men who still have an active interest in engaging with life.  I realise that it's not much of a pun but read on because it has significance....the circle of life my friend.

It's the latest much-hyped movie from the Coen Brothers who i've been a fan of for a few years now. As a 10 year old kid I saw Raising Arizona and liked it a lot and then I thought Millers Crossing was a really great movie about a hat but they first burnt an impression onto me with Barton Fink. I saw it when I was 14 and it was the first truly mind-bending movie that I ever experienced. The story is basically about a mildly successful neurotic New York playwright who is given a job writing for the movies in Hollywood. He ends up writing scripts for B-Grade wrestling movies (basically like porn with pretentions) and starts to dissolve mentally under the pain of loneliness and compromise which culminates in him becoming friends with a psychotic serial killer (though why use the adjective psychotic, is there a possibility that there's a type of serial killer who isn't psycotic?). 

It shook my fragile developing teenage mind.

I hadn't until that point realised that movies could be so insane and scarring, with the possible exception of when I was 11 and my parents had hired Robocop for me without realising it was an R rated movie and because they had already paid for it and weren't that interested in it themselves they let me watch it. The funniest memory I have about that is that they watched it with me and let me see every violent scene but made me cover my eyes during the one sex scene. I realise now that my parents were practising a form of censorship that is very popular in the United States. Anyway I digress.....

After Barton Fink I was a major Coen's fan! They've made so many great movies over the years and this was supposed to be there masterpiece, the one they're tipped to win the Oscar for. I should have been able to love it, it was somewhat incoherent like Barton Fink and like Fink and that other great movie of my childhood Robocop it features excessive violence and a despicable serial killing villain. This should have been a homecoming for me, but sadly it wasn't. 

In brief it's about a hunter who finds two million dollars and a large quantity of heroin that's been abandoned after a drug deal that's turned bad. The hunter then you see(yes I know but I didn't write it) the hunter becomes the hunted. Hunted by one of the most f$%#ed up villains ever seen in a movie, who he then becomes a hunted hunter by a policeman who, well basically is trying to hunt down also the first hunter who then became the hunted .

If I had produced this thing i would have insisted on calling it 'The Hunting', but I didn't produce it so there you go.

I had a problem with the movie that I couldn't quite put my finger on, though why I would want to touch problems with my finger seems a little strange to me. The acting was good, the cinematography was beautiful, they has eskewed commercial pandering and had created a movie that genuinely attempted to look into the darkest corner of mans heart and come out with some truths that can unsettle someone who's on shaky ground. They captured the senselessness of tragedy and violence, but I remained singularly unimpressed. I had to look into a part of my own dark heart in a way that wasn't emo and come to a realisation.

The problem lay with me as a viewer. Sadly im not that early pubescent boy who can have his mind easily warped by almost incoherent art house movies that take a look into the dark hearts of men. I've seen that movie a few times now. It's kind of saddening for me to admit it to myself but on some level i've outgrown the search for truth in fiction. Now in order for me to stay engaged I have to look for truth in non-fiction, be it in book form or more profoundly be it in life itself, the world around me, which is more messier and incoherent than any art house film could hope to be. The actings often not as good as a Coen Brothers movie and the violence and the tragedy is a whole lot more horrifying to experience, but the thing is (and here comes the moral like all the good commercial movies have) it's a more meaningful and worthwhile experience.

In living the movie of my life I think I want mine to become a lot more commercial. I want to fight for what I want and face obstacles that mean I may lose, I want the good to outshine the evil, I want the love story to win out and I want to have grown more character bye the time the adventure comes to an end. I want my life to be a lot more romantic comedy and a lot less Robofink with a depressing ending.

And most importantly of all I want it to all take place within 90 minutes, or 102 minutes if it's the special directors cut because I have the attention span of a 5 year old and i'm okay with that.

Having said that the Coen's have got a new movie in post production with George Clooney and Brad Pitt starring and it sound awesome. I've got a feeling it might just be one of the best movies ever made......

Also I have to add that even though I don't want my life to be Robofink there really is no way of expressing how awesome that movie is inside my head.

The End.