New Website: therealjoeboon.com

Hi all, I have decided to go with the greater customisation available through an official website, built with wordpress.

The contents of this blog have been imported into my new site, so you will lose nothing by going over there. It means that I can do more than I can here. So please head over to therealjoeboon.com and continue to enjoy lively commentary, political news and information, and film and book reviews.

Cheers!

Sin City, A Dame to Kill For (REVIEW)

I watched the first Sin City on my Ipod video back in 2006, and even on the tiny screen with unacceptably low resolution (by contemporary standards) I was utterly enthralled. The long awaited sequel has been released ten years after the original, and I was apprehensive as to its promise. The attempts by sequels to both relive and better the glories of the initial product have so often failed that its remarkable that the studios remain committed to doing them.

A Dame to Kill For is not better than the original film. In fact I would venture to say that Sin City in 2004 had a much more revolutionary impact. It was among the first live action films to be entirely shot before a green screen, and prepared audiences for further acclaimed Graphic Novel adaptations like 300, and Watchmen. That there were also poorly received flops like The Spirit says little more than the genre is subject to the same commercial risks as more mainstream genres.

Sin City seemed to come out of nowhere. The stylisation of the cinematography (in particular the famous colour-pass technique) resurrected the 'film-noir' sub-genre from long term obscurity, and the quality of the characters -- not to mention the actors behind them -- gave the film a raw power to which no amount of b movie action sequences can match. Playing Marv reinvigorated Micky Rourke's career, which had languished in the 90s with action flops and a underwhelming segway into boxing. The latter left him with a botched facial reconstruction and an empty bank account. With Marv he returned to top of audiences demand, which is evident in A Dame to Kill For as his role was inflated by being a crowd favourite. He is fantastic in this film though, despite not really having his own story.

I'm not going to try and go through the whole cast, as I know that online film reviewers can often commit the sin of capitalising on the lack of an editor -- the best use for such reviews is to induce sleep. But deserving a special mention is Jessica Alba, who seems untouched by the last decade and does a good job as Nancy struggling to accept the suicide of John Hardigan (Bruce Willis) and obsessed with vengence. Powers Boothe is even better this time as Senator Roarke, understandably so as he really only had one scene in the first movie. This time he is the main villain after Eva Green's eponymous dame. They both are convincing 'heavies' and though Eva is as frequently topless as she is fully clothed, I am not going to complain.

Josh Brolin takes on the character of Dwight McCarthy who was played by Clive Owen in Sin City. He does a good, solid job, but I can't deny that I miss the more psychological Owen. The sinister chauffeur and master at inflicting pain Manute is played by Dennis Haysbert, who replaces the late Michael Clark Duncan. Haysbert gives his character a tad more depth as to his motivations and background, but Manute remains a rather mysterious figure.

Almost finally I want to say that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is just as watchable as you might expect. He plays the interminably lucky gambler and 'city-slicker' Johnny. His card skills are brilliant, and his story has a fair bit of emotional power. 

The women of A Dame to Kill For carry the film and give it the emotional depth needed to equal the previous instalment. The one in particular I want to mention is the 20 year old Julia Garner who plays Marcy. She is one of the girls working in Katy's saloon and accompanies Johnny on his gambling spree. Garner seems to have walked out of cinemas golden age. She has a timeless beauty and curly hair that reminds me a little of Shirley Temple. But to trawl deeper than the cosmetic, Garner has an authentic presence, there is not a hint of falseness to her character, and Marcy is fully a part of the sinister world of Sin City, while being a naive and innocent part. Garner's career is still in its early stages but she has been in a few other films already, including a starring role in Jim Mickle's We Are What We Are. Watch out for Julia Garner, she is going to go far. 

Julia Garner

Capricious Minds

George W. Bush has been criticised heavily for taking the United States to an open ended war in Iraq. The joint resolution which was supported and then regretted by the likes of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry (Barrack Obama was saved by not being elected to the senate until 2004) passed in October 2002. It was employed by President Bush to authorise the invasion in March 2003 and subsequent occupation which officially lasted until 2011. 

The case I have often heard from pacifists, feckless liberals, and people possessed with anti-american spite; is that blank checks of the kind from 2002 enable powerful nations to play god in antique lands. In a general way this is a correct and valuable lesson. And the mistakes in prosecution of the war in Iraq are well attested to. But the critics overstep when they argue that getting embroiled in another conflict in Mesopotamia will have the same outcome as before.

Hesitancy to oppose the Islamic State (which is not a perversion of Islam, but rather a nihilistic interpretation of it) presumes that the people of Iraq are not worth defending. Or at least their value as fellow human beings does not outweigh our own suspicions of the American war machine. This luxurious position (since it cannot be said of those nearer the shells and beheadings and rapes) is cautious, and sensible in a self-serving way. But it is morally indefensible.

With the wide angle lens of history we can deduce that Iraq has been a place of instability and often rancid fear for decades. For the last twenty-five the United States of America has played an active part, and were it to mobilise effectively the new threat of ISIS would quickly shrivel. The difficulty is that the domestic (and now we can definitely say global) public have long had an irritable digestive system for wars abroad. Indochina (including the two Vietnam wars 1954-1975) permanently upset the stomach, for which we can thank the likes of Henry Kissenger for adding chronic acid reflux.

If public opinion was to stabilise for long enough to carry out a thorough engagement things might be a hell of a lot more peaceful. But Kissenger incarnates; those without conscience, with a narcissistic desire for credit and praise are with us still and have to be guarded against. How then to proceed? A good start would be to know your enemy, and to learn who cannot be tolerated to continue existing for the irredeemable damage they do to their fellow humans.

A war against ISIS with boots on the ground may be worth fighting by this logic. I am no soldier, and I cannot write with the same strength as one who could carry these principles into the theatre of war. But inasmuch as I can I will stick by the people of Iraq, and not subject them to the evil of capricious minds. There is a humanism at work here, it defies the us and them understanding and embraces the logic that we are all people worth a damn, and we have been involved in each others lives far to long to pull back now.