Tuesday, September 13, 2011

POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold- Be warned. I have always been a fan of Morgan Spurlock's work. This is most likely because he uses his documentaries not on a political agenda, but on an entertaining educational basis. His target this time: Advertising. Spurlock understands that advertising takes up way too much of our everyday lives to fit into an hour and a half of our time, so his plan comes into play. Finance his movie using his movie. He spends the time of the movie, showing how a blockbuster gets involved in advertising by funding his film the same way. The concept's meta style is almost too much for a mind to handle. But when you follow, you really become tuned in to the world we live in. We all realize that organizations are constantly fighting for us to buy their products, but to what extent, it really takes an insider viewpoint. Spurlock presents the horrors of marketing in such a fun way that you might ignore the horrors underlying everything he does for the film's running time. The Neuromarketing scene displaying how they have learned to appeal to our brains' desires insinuated frightening ramifications for the future. Will we even have control over our desires when companies can appeal to everything we want. How much control do you really have over the products you buy?



Nosferatu- The 1922 classic "Symphony of Horror" plays out Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' in a influential way for all vampire films to come. In fact, this is the film that first introduced Sunlight murder into the vampire equation (looking at you, tons of future movies, 'True Blood', etc.) (not looking at you, 'Twilight Saga'). Overall, it's slightly boring, but none more so than your other average German silent films, but also it's tonally awkward, though that is mostly just the modern viewpoint. The film is kind of an unexpected downer overall with an ending blurb that seems to contradict its final scene. I won't go into it more than that, but the blurb did not convince me of its claim. Not one bit. Another thing that bothered me quite a bit was the super consistent use of obvious lines (pretty much every line, so it warrants the "Super") like "you will have to sweat... and bleed to make sure this man moves in", or how about the ever popular, "your wife has a nice looking neck". It's too much to take. One line is nice, it's like the director winking like "get it, it's a vampire movie" but 20-30 times is like him throwing bricks with the message tied around it, and I'm like "Enough, I get it!" Anyways, there are better vampire flicks to watch, but it's shorter and its minus beastiality rape and Keanu Reeves with a poor british accent, so I'll watch it over that one. Haven't seen the Bela Lugosi one yet though.



P.S. Best of the three to me is probably 'Dracula: Dead and Loving It'.



Come on, it's Leslie Nielsen. He was even solid in 'Superhero Movie'.

- Jeff Bassin