Thursday, September 29, 2005

Bad Crash

I don't usually like to share my opinions about movies. I guess, I don't really have the greatest taste in movies and some might even call me a "cinema slut," because I would watch almost any movie out there if I had the time. That is why cable is so dangerous. Also I'm kind of embarrassed by my taste in movies. For example, 40 Year-Old Virgin... HI-larious. If you've seen it, you might be shocked that a seemingly proper mother of 2 like me would enjoy it so much. I mean, it was almost disturbing how loud I was laughing.

Anyway, I rented some movies at Blockbuster because I was trying to kill some time the other day before I had to pick up Abby (I in NO way endorse Blockbuster. Blockbuster is evil). One of which was Crash. By the way, what is up with the "End of late fees" deal that Blockbuster is now adopting, because I read all the fine print and it's pretty clear to me that if you don't return the movie within a week after the due date, you buy it. If that doesn't seem like a late fee, I don't know what is.

So Crash is about different circles of people, who are actually supposed to be regular people like you and me, who really have all this deep seeded racism. It just riled me up so bad and I didn't even think it was that good. Sure the message was good albeit simple, "don't be a racist," but really the way it was written was not all that deep or eloquent. It felt like a bunch of stereotypes regurgitated and we as viewers are supposed to sit back and applaud the effort for being so racially profound or even novel, which it is not. And since when is LA so interconnected? In fact, it has to be one of the least connected cities in the world, which is why Crash seemed so overly contrived. Plus, I have a real problem with the way they portrayed L.A. First off, where are all the Asians (especially the hundreds of thousands of Koreans?) and Latinos, which make up more than the population of Caucasians in LA. We're not all Cambodian refugees or housekeepers. Also, I've never seen so many Blacks in LA before in my life. I hate how to the media, racism is all about Black and White. Finally, if you're going to do a movie in L.A. at least give some props to certain neighborhoods. It was no fun to watch a movie about L.A. and not know where anything was happening.

In the end, what was it trying to communicate - that Blacks are not as bad as you may think and Whites are not as good as you think? As a side note: Latinos are not all gangbangers and Asians are... it doesn't really resolve what Asians are or are not.

We're all sinful, Black, White, or whatever your race, and all deserve God's judgement.

Crash: 10 fingers AND 10 toes down

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey, i think we just got crash in the mail thru netflix . . . after your rave reviews, i think i'll have to watch it tonight . . .

well, i gotta go, houses to clean, restaurants to manage, and dry cleaners to run!

sayonara!

Unknown said...

James, heh.

There was actually a class-action lawsuit against Blockbuster over the "end of late fees" campaign, for exactly the reason you observed. We got like 12 free rental coupons out of the settlement. :)

Anonymous said...

i saw 40yr old virgin as well. i think we have the same humor b/c i was laughing a little too hard too. it was hilarious because one of our small group guys invited all these girls from church (who all seem to be those really sheltered types who would be really embarrassed at the sight of a boner). anyways... he felt bad and didn't laugh because he didn't want to look like a pervert. we always give him a hard time about being one of those creepy asian fetish perverted white guys so hes trying really hard to break away from that image. i don't remember where i was going with all this... i guess i just wanted to share my experience watching that movie.

ps. its weird reading your blogs!