Lady GaGa's "Marry The Night" music video. Thoughts...

Tonight, GaGa premiered to the world her new 13 minute music video for her newest single, the first track off Born This Way "Marry The Night", and in an interview before the unveiling, she called it "autobiographical" with moments of surrealism. She didn't mention however, that maybe about five minutes of the video could be called autobiographical, while the rest of the clip is full of fire, explosions, and dancing (of course).

Now don't get me wrong I didn't mind the extravagant imagery, along with a topless GaGa bathing in hair-dyed water, but when she said it'd be biographical, i.e. showing moments from her life, I was like...sweet! because if anyone in the music biz, GaGa is someone I'd love to view, life-wise.

But in the video, there was a bizarre elongated moments of her dancing atop a car, after exploding a series of others behind her. For some reason I highly doubt this ever happened. It might be something interesting to toss in when you're writing concepts and ideas to film for a song; but the fact that I was told it was about things that happened to her in reality, I don't know. I wouldn't call it a let down, but I'd say confidently that I was surprised.

The beginning of the video however shows her nearly comatose in a hospital, surrounded by lunatics and the sick, while herself is coming too, listening to music puffing a ciggy and tilting her hospital cap to the side, speaking French. It was beautiful in a sad kind of way, to see her like that, because in my mind I saw how it would actually look if the situation played as such; GaGa on a gurney, not something a gay/fan wants to see. The scenes following deal with her being phoned about losing her label, and after a slight meltdown she's "bedazzling" a strut down a long glorious hallway, bouncing herself back, it's righteous how it is. 

When I watched her video, I liked it, I liked everything I saw. It's pop, so there's dancing and uptempo beats, and it's GaGa, so it's odd and mysterious, edited with fast cuts randomly put together, featuring nudity and a close-to-psycho GaGa. I wish it could have been a bit more heartbreaking, I wish the video wasn't such a serious head-scratchier, because me, a GaGa fan, was like "Huh?" during a lot of the cuts, which hopefully was something GaGa intended, a puzzler with deep meaning, having us as a whole trying to dig further not just into her mind, but in the video's conscious also.

If I had to rate the video I'd give "Marry The Night" three and a half stars out of four, because while I loved every styled hypnotic flaming distraught moment, I couldn't help feeling that it could have been just a bit more epic, considering it had to follow her other monumental works "Bad Romance", Telephone", and "Poker Face", "Alejandro". But it's such a different look at her genius however, that it can stand on it's own. It'll be, if anything, one of those things that'll get better with age. It's a future classic, and it's GaGa, so it has to be in someway.

South Park deserves another Emmy!

So last night, South Park concluded its 15th season with the episode "The Poor Kid", which poked fun at some really risque topics leading the media as I even type this. It had great laughs and some smart, and new, jokes, but "The Poor Kid" isn't the episode I want to talk about right now.

What I wish to talk about concerns the episode seen in the picture above, "The Last of the Meheecans", which to me, totally and completely deserves an Emmy nomination, and even the actual award itself for the brilliance the episode displayed.

"The Last of the Meheecans", which gets its name from the film The Last of the Mohicans, follows the South Park gang, and friends, as they play Border Patrol, where Cartman is the head of control, and Kyle is one of the "Meheecans". Little by little the Meheecans "jump the border", angering Cartman even at his own slumber party. During the game however, Butters (who's Mexican name is Montequilla, Spanish for butter, of course) tries to lead the Meheecans but is dismissed, with no one believing he can be a leader. He ends up getting lost, while still in his Mexican persona, and picked up by a couple who treats him like an immigrant and makes him clean and fix everything, like an immigrant. They eventually feel guilty and drop him of at a Mexican restaurant, where the Spanish workers have heard of him, and he talks the workers into leaving America, and this is where the episode gets interesting, because all the immigrants then start jumping THE OTHER WAY and flee back into Mexico, along with Montequilla.

The episode shows up a reverse of how actual events have gone. It displays that because America has been getting so crappy, with the economy to thank, Mexicans are starting to go back to their own country, replenishing it, as well as looking up to Butters (Montequilla) as a savior for showing them the way. It's brilliant! It's also uncomfortably true, the fact that illegal immigrants think that our country is so terrible that they need to flee back to their country, making a bold and obvious statement, and using South Park's usual dark humor to convey the message.

In real life, I could totally see immigrants escaping the clutches of America's economy, and jumping the other way at the border. The episode makes its point about immigrants, but also makes a point about how American's are so sensationalized about even hearing the words "border" and "immigrant" in the same sentence, as well as also showing that America, kind of, needs the immigrants for little odd jobs like raking leaves, and such.

Now I could go into an entire sh-peal about this and that about the episode, considering it, as well as the season as a whole was fabulous. But now I just want to state once again that I believe that "The Last of the Meheecans" deserves to be South Park's 4th Emmy win!

If you're an advent South Park fan like I am, you'll know that the show has won Emmy's for its topically charged episodes, such as 2005's "Best Friends Forever", which was a straight criticism on the feeding tube scandal that was published on every news outlet, and made a valid point about "right to die" causes as well as showing the poor woman (or Kenny in the episode) in her vegetable state on national television. 2006 saw their second win with the classic "Make Love, Not Warcraft", which utilized new animated techniques with the help of Machinima, and also portrayed a true portrait of lazy gamers who play and play until they swell with fat and grow pimples out the ying-yang. And there last win, with 2009's epic "Margaritaville" which bravely depicted the economic crash of 2008-2009, and mixed it with the biblical story of Jesus, played by Kyle the Jew, of course. These episodes, as well as the season 15 episode in question, all made extremely truthful points, thus leading to victorious award wins, all totally deserved. People think South Park just uses current topics, lampooning them more than other shows are. But what they actually do is take already publicized stories, tell them from both sides, and make the true point of how it really is, what really went down, and washes it with the scandalous humor the show is known for.

If I had to rate the season as a whole, I'd obviously approve it, for improving the comedic quality it somewhat lacked in the few seasons before it, plus it's note-worthy that all the episodes of season 15 (except for "Royal Pudding", which was negatively received by tele-critics for stupidly mocking the Royal Wedding) were positively viewed. But if I had to rate "The Last of the Meheecans", I'd "acclaim" it, because it lampoons a topic that's still so sensitive to both sides of political justice, as well as shadowing it with extremely smart comedy that should be emulated in other shows, because it's easily laughable.

I also would like to say, in my opinion, besides "Butter's Very Own Episode", "The Last of the Meheecans" is the best episode to feature Butters as the main role. Also, in the episode when Butters, even though he ruled Mexico for a few days, is still seen not much of a leader by his friends, and causes him to stand up and raise his arms, causing the entire country of Mexico to go into the streets and shout his name, probably the best ending to any episode in the whole show's history, because it's so uplifting (literally) and Butters does truly deserve it with all the crap Cartman puts him through.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of TV's best animated series, please nominate "The Last of the Meheecans" for an Emmy, because I believe in my heart that it will win the prize. And if it doesn't, then I'll lose all faith I had in the award ceremony. Period.

The Human Centipede: It's not THAT bad!

Okay. Consider all the horror movies that have come out in the past three years. All, or most, have nothing to do with horror, except play with our fears of getting hurt; i.e., stabbing and killing, like every other movie ever. 

I was happy to find that The Human Centipede [First Sequence], didn't follow the same route. 

The Human Centipede uses a different type of horror, a horror utilized in the award winning Black Swan. Know which horror I'm talking about? If you don't, I'm talking about BODY HORROR! 

Body horror is exactly as it sounds; horror based on our human bodies, which usually showcases the body being destroyed or malformed in some way. Example; Natalie Portman's character in Black Swan began to graphically grow feathers from her arms in her epic transformation scene. On viewing the feather's plucking from her skin, it causes us as the audience to grow chills, and begin feeling what she feels, if we could ever imagine something as powerful as that. 

Something like that occurs in the movie I'm reviewing now, except, it's much worse, cringing even. 

In The Human Centipede [First Sequence] two female American tourists are drugged and kidnapped by a mad doctor (played by Dieter Laser) who is a famous surgeon whom specialized in separating Siamese twins. He has such a hateful appetite for human life, he spends his time alone, pondering what he could do with his medical skills. This is when he forms the idea of instead of separating people, he wishes to conjoin them, creating his own creature, the "human centipede". To him, the unlucky tourists he captured, as well as a Japanese tourist he catches later, are now his guinea pigs for the operation. 

One major reason why people were so turned off by this movie is the disgusting way he joins the trio, conjoining their mouths to the other person's...behind. The mere idea, the shock value alone from the thought of being in that position, and for us even seeing the trio like that for a little more than an hour long, really freaked the viewer's out. What they don't realize is the director did us a favor, because the two female victims (the very bad actresses who's names I wont say because it isn't too important) are shut up the rest of the film, besides their constant moans and cries after the surgery. The only people who speak are the doctor, and the Japanese victim, who is the front of the creation, but he only speaks his native language, which somehow adds to the uncomfort, even though the viewer can read the subtitles. 

What makes this movie so scary isn;t the actual monster the doctor manufactures, but the doctor, well, actor's performance as the twisted surgeon. Laser's performance is so convincing and so satisfying to any horror fan, because he really absorbs his role. If he was spotted walking around the street, and knew him from the film, most likely they would run away, because they'd forget that he was acting, and think that he was going to kidnap them and knit their faces to someone else's behind. To me, Laser deserves more roles as an actor; he did so good as an evil German doctor, he could almost be compared to the likes of Hannibal Lecter, considering both are remarkable film characters, and unforgettable.

Also, I didn't like that people said the film was "gross" because it showed too much. To me, it showed hardly nothing, except of course for the surgery scene. It doesn't show any "crap" although it's implied in one scene using only sounds, when the poor middle girl has to feed. But that scene is so short it passes by in second, but for some reason the audience will target it as the topic of discussion, and downplay it, unable to fully gain the complexity and horror it shows. The thought of being force-fed crap, and actually having to sit and watch somebody do so, then showing the emotional fallout of the centipede as it sits during the night in a cage crying out muffled yelps for help. 

It's those types of things the film runs on; gross sights and people moaning through their bandaged scars. Tom Six, the film's director, uses his first film as an opportunity to showcase torturous cries, all the way even over the closing titles. It wasn't in my book too much, when you think about the situation they're in, it would have been odd if he kept them silent. In a way however, it almost displays a pleasure certain individuals get off too, the sound of constant physical and mental pain, and Six has the doctor enjoy every second of it, even crying in happiness at his first look at his creation; indeed it proved to be one of the more unsettling scenes in the movie. 

If I may end this short; The Human Centipede [First Sequence] will please any true fan of the horror genre, and will delight them to know the story is quiet, and a quite possible original tale that will get under the skin of any newcomer, unable to handle the makeup and props. And I can see a promising future for director Tom Six after having the pleasure of viewing his controversial debut film, that went as far as being the most discussed horror film of the year during it's release. 

If I had to rate it, I'd give it an approval; enjoying the plot but suffering while the main actresses spewed each uninspired word of their dialog until the doctor begins to speak, then it turns good again. It isn't the best, but it will make you squirm. Oh my God, you will squirm.