The Greatest Movie Mashup: ‘Spring Breakers’ & ‘Heavyweights’

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There are a lot of movie mashups out there on this here internet, many of them quite funny, but it’s pretty rare that you come across one that’s perfect. For a long time, Brokeback to the Future has been the undisputed king of this, but I believe that title has now been usurped by an up-and-comer by the name of Harmony Korine’s Heavyweights. It might not be as ‘funny’ (in the traditional sense of the word) but it makes up for that in pure transcendence.

Much like the music mashup gold standard, A Stroke of Genie-us by Freelance Hellraiser, what transpires is definitely funny, but you’re not exactly laughing. Instead, you’re smiling, and you’re feeling the laughs all throughout your body, warming you. It’s a rush of all-things-are-connected-in-this-world that takes hold of you and provides you a momentary trip. That is the power of the art of the mashup, when what is being mashed up comes together like peanut butter and jelly.

Behold this delicious sandwich:
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Pacific Rim: An Inauthentic Giant Monster Movie




Pacific Rim (2013)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Written by Travis Beacham & Guillermo del Toro
131 min.

Note: If you haven’t seen Pacific Rim, this review could be considered spoiler-ific, and even a little esoteric—so, you know, see the film first.

I love Tokusatsu. For those of you who are baka gaijins, Tokusatsu (or Toku) is a genre of Japanese media. Though it literally means ‘special effects’, a better translation would be ‘cool stuff with men in rubber suits in it.’ Doctor Who airs as a tokusatsu in Japan, perfectly fittingly. On top of that, I love mecha anime—the sheer fact that an entire genre has sprung up from the concept of giant robots punching things is a testament to the beauty of the concept. I’m also a big fan of Guillermo del Toro and his films. So when Pacific Rim went into production, I was highly optimistic, given that I am precisely the choir to which del Toro is supposedly preaching.

Why, then, was Pacific Rim so disappointing?

Although fellow smugster Alex Hiatt dislikes the film far more than I do, I agree with him that the main problem with the film is that it fails to execute its premise entertainingly. But the question I’m asking is, why?

One answer is that it’s not Toku enough. Not just in the obvious sense that the robots punching each other are, woefully, CGI rather than actors in rubber suits, but because the entire film represents a compromised version of what del Toro is crafting a love letter to.
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Watch My Films, ‘Shredder’ and ‘Rehearsals’, For Free!

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Hey everybody. It’s your ol’ pal Cody Clarke, editor-in-chief and weekly critic at this here Smug Film. We’ve built a bit of a relationship, y’all and I, over the year-and-a-month that this site’s been in existence. I feel the love from you coming here and reading all our stuff, and I hope you feel the love right back from me. We’ve got a great thing between us, you shadowy blips on the views counter and myself. Sometimes I wish you’d participate more with comments and stuff, but s’all good—you read, you enjoy, and that’s what matters most of all.

Because we don’t exactly talk much—like I said, totally fine, no worries—you might not know that I’m not just a pontificator on all things film—I’m a maker of them as well. I’ve made two feature-length films to date—Shredder and Rehearsals. Ya boy Harry Brewis reviewed the former on here not too long ago, and ya girl Chloe Pelletier reviewed the latter. These films mean a lot to them, and mean a lot to a bunch of other people. But as of yet, they remain unseen by most.
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Robocop: Times Change

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Robocop (2014)
Directed by José Padilha
Screenplay by Joshua Zetumer
117 min.

Very minor spoilers ahead.

When they rolled that screen open to 2.35:1, I knew it wasn’t going to be like Verhoeven’s. The original Robocop is a minor masterpiece, one of the most cutting satires of the 20th century. It’s dingy, clunky, sarcastic, and howling—just like the ‘80s that spawned it. Our new Robocop—which is, for all practical purposes, the second Robocop remake in recent memory, counting the spectacular Dredd—is none of those things. It’s shiny, sleek, and “tactical,” as Michael Keaton’s character says.

The memorable ultra-violence of the original is gone. In its place, there’s a smooth, sanitized finish over everything, which gives it all a sort of uncanny creepiness—a quality best exploited in one of the film’s high points, in which we learn just where Alex Murphy ends and Robocop begins.
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On the Proper and Improper Use of Jump Cuts

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The Fog of War, one of the only movies that uses jump cuts well.

Jump cuts have always been fascinating to me.  The entire idea of editing is fascinating, obviously.  It’s this whole thing of, ‘How can we make this look fluid?’  ‘How will these compositions work together?’  There is even editing happening in a long sequence without cuts, because the composition is changing.  Just think of the opening of Touch of Evil or Boogie Nights—there’s no actual editing, but the camera’s movement is editing as it goes along—it’s moving from one idea to another, and the varying compositions must fit together in a logical way.  Think about that great shot in Raging Bull where we follow Jake out to the ring.  There are no cuts, but the transition from intimate medium shot to huge, wide, crane shot is an editing choice within the same shot.

If you can intuit these principles naturally, you really have a leg up as a filmmaker.  Kubrick, Tarantino, Scorsese, Aronofsky, Lee, Zemeckis, Spielberg, the Coens—whether you like their movies or not, these guys all have a handle on how to construct a scene.  They have a handle on the principles.
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