Click images for desktop size: "Friends" Yesterday was not a very good day.
As usual the Super Bowl was disappointing. The play was horrific except for the incredible work by the Giants front four. And the gave the MVP to Eli Manning? Not giving it to a member of the D-Line was a shocking disgrace.
The officiating was the worst I've seen in a game this year, let alone in a Super Bowl. In a close game the refs were a factor. I have no idea if the results would have been different but I dislike the idea that it could have been.
Fox should pay two billion dollars to broadcast the game next year.
I can understand using the showcase to promote themselves but 6 hours of tedium featuring American Idol? The best thing about Ryan Seacrest is that when "American Idol" fades we'll never hear from that talentless boring yobbo again.
Tome Petty didn't embarrass himself. The NFL is run by old rich men. They have no feel for the community or for the people in it. The only thing that makes the NFL viable is the beauty of the game.
These are the fools who booked Sting and the Rolling Stones and thought they were hitting the pulse of America . . .
I'll never forget the 2001 World Bowl (NFL-Europe -defunct- Championship) when they thought they'd attract the young punters by booking a true youth Superstar - Coolio . . . that was in 2001 . . .
Tom Petty is going to be playing up here. Tickets are obscenely expensive. I've written to his manager and tried to cage a couple of free ones . . . who knows.
The Super Bowl pre-game stuff used to be a bit staid but within that confine it would sometimes show sparks of vitality.
Like before Super Bowl VI they showed a brilliant two hour documentary on a semi-pro football team from Pottsdale PA. It was an excellent film. It showed people playing the game for nothing with the same dedication and hard bite that every player in the NFL displays. It showed love and the blood of the game, a love stained only with the players own blood.

Click images for desktop size: "Bees" by Nature Photos Or else there'd be some excellent footage from NFL Films. Always with creepy soundtracks but stuff you'd never get to see anywhere else, before or since. It was creative and had a sense of the beauty it was trying to impart.
Now the pre game seems like mainly marketing. I guess it was inevitable but I miss the old stuff. Which makes me feel really really old.

To complete the mediocre day I saw "John Rambo". It was everything "Rocky Balboa" wasn't. Mainly it was rotten!
No point and second rate action.
The only real interesting thing to me was that Stallone has been watching some Asian action flics.
The war and carnage sequences were swiped from the Red Chinese "Assembly". Hollywood did make them look a touch better but not to as devastating an effect.
The film was also loaded with well known Thai stuntmen! There were heavily underused. They used a crew that were in the Thai "Born to Fight". In the Thai film some of these guys bounced from a helicopter to a moving truck bed to a motorcycle to the ground ALL IN ONE TAKE! Nothing near as jaw dropping here, which may have pleased them. Nice for them to make more money and not have to nearly kill yourself.
I never really met Stallone, except once on an elevator at Universal's Black Tower. I was surprised at how short he was. I actually thought he was an impersonator except when he got off on his floor their were an appropriate number of toadies greeting him with "Hello, Mr Stallone".
Thing is that this is the guy who married Brigette Neilsen after she introduced herself by sending him a nude life sized photo statue of herself.
I don't think he gets good advice and when he does he may not listen to it.
Everything that was good in "Rocky Balboa" is absolutely missing here. There's no real plot, just a device. No real characters, just faces that pop in and out. No empathy, no cheering, no feel that these are people being torn to shreds. And the Rambo character has nothing behind him. Nothing feels right.
"First Blood" directed by Ted Post was a very cool little movie that gave thrills and violent pleasure with a very loaded message.
"Rambo: First Blood 2" was kind of silly but still remembered emotions and people. It was cool head cracking fun.
"Rambo 3" was a mistake. An expensive one but a mistake.

Click images for desktop size: "People In The Sun" by E Hopper "John Rambo" is like a mescal nightmare you forget five minutes after you wake up and vomit.

My friend and I did get to watch "Ginji The Slasher". An odd movie I can't make up my mind about. That's usually a good sign, when you can't decide about a film.
Its a bout kamikaze pilots. Was there ever a more vicious looking weapon that the kamikaze zero?
Its about this fellow Ginji, who became a dark legend. After surviving his career as a kamikaze he tries to survive in war devastated Japan. The Americans are there and the Americans corrupt everything. In the imagery there are some pretty painful correlations to America's current involvement in Iraq.
His ex-commander has taken Ginji on as an employee, seducing him with promises of rebuilding Japan, getting the money and the power to correct the devastation. He betrays Ginji's trust and in a mad attempt to kill the ex-commander Ginji slaughters twenty of his boss's yakuza bodyguards.
Ginji believes his entire life was created so that he could be fated to die, to die with honor. Instead he ends up in prison for fifty years.
He comes out and the world has changed, His ex-commander is now a former Prime Minister of Japan who writes articles on marine biology while he plans to resurrect the draft and recreate Japan's armies. Ginji is a legend. Children play "Ginji The Slasher" games. But he is an old man and wants only to sit and wait until he can die.
The old world won't let him. The modern world is still terrified of him. Everyone wants something from him and he just wants to be left alone. Alone to die.
Its an interesting crazy film. Crazy in a Tashaki Miike "Ichi The Killer" sort of mode. Its not that frenetic. I guess it couldn't be when the lead is an 80 year old man. But while "Ichi The Killer" is wild and driven on hormones "Ginji The Slasher" is cool and full of thoughtfulness, hopes and dreams.
Its an excessive move with pretty imagery, gushing sword wounds, and a tiny bit of hope. I still don't quite know what I think of it.