Jupiter Ascending

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a pre-teen girl who was just coming out of her Disney Princess phase was forced to watch Flash Gordon, Brazil, Dune, Predator and a dash of Scientology mythos and then regurgitate them all into one mega-budget mess o' sci-fi nonsense?

Yeah, i haven't either but, if such a thing were to happen, the result would be Jupiter Ascending. Yet another film that proves that you can have plenty of money, talent and creativity and still produce absolute shit. Apparently due to some kind of studio shuffle, the Wachowskis made Jupiter Ascending with a big budget and little oversight--something that will not happen again, not after this. Well, and Cloud Atlas. And Speed Racer.

She does this falling and screaming thing at least a dozen times....

Here we have the perennially serviceable Mila Kunis as Jupiter, a young Russian immigrant cleaning lady who is actually the Queen of the Universe. No, fucking really.

This film is art-directed to the point of paralysis, but they gave someone 

with gold-leaf bathroom walls the kind of cheap white plastic toilet seat you get for $15 at Lowe's.

So, we open with our heroine's Cinderella drudgery, breaking into a Hallmark Channel romance-style flashback of her parents, punctuated by what might be mobsters or aliens or government agents or rival astronomers killing dad. (This, like many things in the film, is never quite explained.) Back to the present, it seems Jupiter's brother has talked her into donating her eggs for cash and giving him most of the money, because apparently cleaning other people's piss and/or shit isn't submissive and degrading enough. She bops on down to the clinic, but while she is unconscious, spread-eagled and having her ladyparts  probed (because helpless and because female), suddenly the doctors turn into weird aliens and announce that they're going to kill her.

Fortunately, Channing Tatum shows up on rocket skates to rescue her--a phrase that appears in the Jupiter Ascending script at least a dozen times. Yeah, there's some bullshit about how she is the genetic duplicate of some previous Queen of the House of Abraxas and, thus, owner of the Earth, but that's not really what this movie is about. What this movie is really about is Jupiter gets kidnapped by bad aliens in flashy outfits/falls through some really great computer animation/is rescued by Dogboy.
 

Yeah.  Charming Potato is a good-guy super-soldier space mercenary who's also part dog or wolf or something. Wait a second... half-man, half-dog in space? I know this one!

Anyway, we are treated to the first of many chase scenes. Jupiter Ascending is just over 2 hours--45 minutes of expository dialogue, 45 minutes of space-chase-fight scenes, 10 minutes of admiring Jupiter's costume changes, 10 minutes of CGI landscape beauty shots, 5 minutes of closeups of cool shit and 5 minutes of character development and plot.

Shitty hometown you don't want to go to, lame relatives you never see...

Our chief villain of the House of Abrasax is played by Eddie Redmayne in Cleopatra/Captain Hook drag, delivering all of his dialogue in a whisper that's supposed to be menacing but sounds more like his tonsils are sore from gobbling crystal meth and cock for 48 straight hours. It's perhaps the greatest post-Academy Award comedown since Halle Berry in Catwoman.

...consider this penance for stealing Michael Keaton's Oscar, you twee bastard.

He sends assorted creepy aliens and fabulously attired mercenary squads after Jupiter, thus adding to the legion of intricately designed and utterly unwritten characters that pass through Jupiter Ascending. It's like the filmmakers spent two weeks creating individual hairdos and tattoos for each one, but didn't even bother to give any of them a name.

Wait, Sean Bean? You're here too? Dang.

So after Dogboy stands around shirtless in a field of wildflowers for a good ten minutes--and you thought i was exaggerating the pre-teen Disney princess angle--Jupiter gets hauled off to the first of a number of space palaces, gets a new outfit and listens to some exposition from her "sister"--or is it "daughter," i dunno. We're basically just here for the pretty dresses and to watch this chick Bathory-bathe in the life force of humans and come out young. And get an ass shot.

Dogboy shows up and rescues Jupiter, she asks for a change of costume. (This is literally the only initiative we will seen taken or order we will seen given by the alleged Queen of the Universe.) Then we go into the terrible, obvious Brazil ripoff where we spend 10 minutes watching Jupiter and Dogboy follow some Space Twink around to various space bureaucracies to do the paperwork to establish her Earth rights. The tone is completely different than the rest of the film and it's painfully unfunny. But the worst part is this...

That's right. Terry Gilliam cameo. Terry Gilliam has to beg to get 1/100th of the budget wasted on derivative shitshows like Jupiter Ascending and is usually refused even that. But here he is, contributing to the stealing of his own schtick....

But, wait! Kidnapped again! This time she is whisked off to meet Prince Charming, who lays some crap on her about how he's a good guy and she can help him blah blah blah... it hasn't taken long for the space lords to figure out that it's pretty easy to handle the Queen of the Universe: Give her a pretty new dress, use a bunch of big words, light some candles and she'll agree to whatever you say.

Don't get me wrong. I am a full believer in the power of a good frock. But this is ridiculous. So, Prince Charming--who is actually evil--wants to marry the Queen of the Universe and Dogboy must stop the wedding... after we've had a good, long look at the gown, hair and makeup. Just like a hundred fairytales including Flash Gordon. I mean, it is such a direct Flash Gordon jack that someone should sue...

Dogboy takes Jupiter back home, only to find that the Cock Whisperer has kidnapped her (stereotypical) family, so she is immediately carried off again with Dogboy again in hot pursuit on rocket skates. Blah blah, sign over the rights the the Universe or I kill your family blah blah....

 You must pay the rent! 

I can't pay the rent! 

You must pay the rent! 

Seriously, i just want him to tie her to some train tracks already....

Dogboy to the rescue!

(Again.)

At the end, Jupiter doesn't want to be Queen of the Universe. No, she just wants to go back to Earth and scrub toilets and live with a family who doesn't appreciate her. This sort of "the only true happiness a woman can know is by having her entire identity wrapped up in her family" bullshit barely got by in the fifties: Now it's just ridiculous. Not even the endings of Mahogany and Made in Paris involved this level of abandonment of achievement for a life of domesticity.

Even more ridiculous when you compare it with a movie like Bound, where the women flipped everyone's script and came out on top. I dunno what happened with the Warchowskis, but Larry and Andy gave us The Matrix's Trinity, who was fierce and invincible and saved Keanu's punk ass countless times, as well as the aforementioned killer team of Corky and Violet.  Lana and Lilly give us Jupiter, who basically just changes outfits and waits for Dogboy to turn up and help her out of whatever mess she has wandered blindly into.They have every right to their own vision of femininity, i just wished they'd kept it a little more kickass...

Spice World

Oh, this one takes me back. Way back.

 

Specifically, to a period in the late 90s. I was a music critic/editor and general NYC rock chick. It was the internet boom, the rise of downtown, the zenith of the major labels, it was a giddy motherfucking time indeed. And it was also the time of the Spice Girls, the cartoonish girl group that i and a number of my Lower East Side proto-hipster chick friends (un)ironically loved.

They were like the Monkees but with cool outfits and a line of dolls and stickers and books and lollipops and viewmasters and creepy inflatable toys and all manner of crap.

See that Ginger doll, second from left? Sitting in my library, still in the box,
right next to my NRFB Debbie Harry Barbie.

And, like any band that's more persona than chops and that has a ton of money and a young fanbase behind it, someone decided they needed to make a movie. Spice World tries hard to be A Hard Day's Night, but it actually doesn't even make it into Head territory.

The plot, such as it is, is the same plot these movies always have: Will They Make It To The

Big Gig, although this also has a dash of We Must Stay True To Where We're From  No Matter How Famous We Get. As you can imagine, a lot of time-killing shenanigans and amusing set pieces are needed to fill up this cream puff, but the Spice Girls and Spice World just don't have enough in them to pull it off.

 

There's a bit where the Spices swap personas--Posh as Baby, Scary as Ginger, etc.--and do mildly nasty impersonations of each other. The best part is when the girls flash forward to what they would be like as mothers--overly fecund and correspondingly cranky Baby, drop-'em-off-at-boarding-school Posh, bedazzled jogging suit Sporty, kente caftan earth-mother Scary and, my favorite, cocktail-swilling, rollers-and-rhinestones Ginger...

 

What Spice World has in spades is a truly insane amount of cameos: Elton John, Elvis Costello, Bob Hoskins, Bob Geldof, Jennifer Saunders (in Edina Monsoon mode), etc. Roger Moore plays their boss and Meatloaf plays their bus driver. Said bus has a little thematic nest for each Spice Girl--Posh has a runway and fashion magazines, Baby has a swing and stuffed animals, Sporty has exercise equipment and Scary has... zebra print. It is not explained why they need to careen around London in a bus, rather than just go home each night. I mean, they're not on tour. There is also a curious fixation on the bus' plumbing. Although maybe that's supposed to be humor, I dunno...

 

 

 All manner of shit is flung around in hopes that something sticks: Male strippers, drill sergeants, costume changes, childbirth, haunted houses, alien encounters, bomb scares... none of it is exactly dreadful, but none of it is particularly droll either.

 Spice World was truly the last of its kind: Today's teenybop stars already feed their fans a steady stream of Twitter and Youtube, so there's no need (or much desire) to bother with a full-length film. Which is just as well: Do you want to see Justin Bieber as a boxer or a carny? Selena Gomez beach party? One Direction meets the Phantom of the Park?

Now this is the movie i wanted to see...

The best one can say for Spice World is that it moves along. One wishes they'd gone a bit further--of course it wasn't going to be Beyond the Valley of the Dolls or Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, but it could have pushed a wee bit harder. Posh's peevish reaction to everything (summoned to meet a fan in the hospital, she begins screaming "It's Victoria!" in the comatose kid's ear) and Ginger's cleavage-flashing and boy-chasing hint at something that could have gone a bit more Ab Fab. Still, it's got "girl power" and, lord knows, it is a relic of its time.

... which leads me to one of my favorite conversation starters: "Did I ever tell you about the time I managed a Spice Girls tribute act?"

Back during the second Clinton administration, i had a cable access show and a shitty punk band. Even more than bar-and-party-gigs, my bandmates/improv troupe/girl gang were known for getting into full glamour drag and crashing high-profile parties. Once as we strutted into a Grammy after-party, people began shouting about us being the Spice Girls and thus a brief turn as a lip-synching Spice Girls tribute act was born. Before you ask, i was Managerial Spice, which meant that i did not have to dress up as a Spice Girl (i was actually in a heavy Mamie Van Doren phase then), but got to run them through their routines like an autocratic Russian ballet mistress, get everyone to the nightclub, give the manager our CD and have top-shelf Scotch with said manager, and finally collect our pay. (In drink tickets: After all, we were lip-synching in a nightclub, back before this was something Britney Spears could make five figures a night for.)

Fake Spice: Ginger, Scary, Baby, Posh, Stalker.

(Managerial Spice is behind the camera, natch.)

Liquid Sky

When I was in high school, this movie put the zap on my head but good.

Ah, yes, New York City in the 80s. The downtown Scene of Liquid Sky, with its strangely unmelodic music, unwearable outfits and motionless dancing does indeed seem like Bohemia as imagined by an alien or emigre (or a suburban teen). And, of course, there's models, neon, Eurotrash, drugs, parties, fashion, philosophy, soap opera actors, performance art and multiple wardrobe changes. And, yeah, aliens.

 

"Delicious, delicious, oh, how boring."

So, our heroine is Margaret, is the classic pretty girl from a good suburban family who has turned into into a warpainted, substance-huffing scenster fashionista/victim. Or, as her girlfriend, Adrian the midget performance artist calls her, "an uptight WASP cunt from Connecticut." Margaret has no comment on being called this. Margaret has no comment on anything: She hasn't given a fuck in so long she's forgotten what giving a fuck even feels like.

 The ladies reside in a neon-bedecked apartment with a view of the Empire State Building. Back when you could afford that sort of thing on a petty drug dealer's salary. Now you'd have to be a real lowlife criminal to pay that kind of rent. Like a stockbroker or something.

 

We also meet some of the rest of our cast, classic New York characters all. The junkie artist who talks about Cocteau while he shoots up and sponges off of his girlfriend. The trust fund brat aka that "guy on the dance floor who's offering all the chicks cocaine." The professor who uses pretentiousness as both lure and repellant. The woman who has seen every scam and still falls in blind love with her eyes open. The nasty fashionista who says shit like "Frankly, this bird-of-paradise routine is done every day in Vegas--and better." The slumming Upper East Side matron who is tolerated for her wallet. The drug-huffing ambiguously gendered pretty boy...

Douse his hair in Clairol blue-black #124 and he's about half the guys i dated in my twenties. And, well, if it was an actual male, of course. For the hook here is that Anne Carlisle plays both Margaret and her nemesis, Jimmy, the male model.

Carlisle is slightly reminiscent of a wooden Tilda Swinton. After this, she went on to flounce through a bit as a transsexual in Crocodile Dundee and a five-minute guest spot on Miami Vice as a stewardess girlfriend of Don Johnson who dies when one of the coke-filled-condoms she's drug-muling ruptures. And a rather odd Liquid Sky-themed Playboy shoot.

So the upshot is that aliens land on the roof of Margaret and Lesbian Midget Performance Artist's apartment. Somehow the aliens feed off of some chemical produced in people's brains when they have orgasms (or get high). Now, consider that Margaret is frigid, but everyone wants to bang her. You can see the passive-very aggressive direction this is going...

Aside from the fiercest warpaint since Ladies and Gentlemen: The Fabulous Stains (okay, that was after, but whatever), Liquid Sky is also distinguished by its relentless whistle-screech-ring Fairlight synth soundtrack.The music was composed by director Slava Tsukerman, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Carlisle (And you thought multi-tasking was a millennial thing. You wanna see a holocracy, go to the set of an indie film in the 80s or 90s where everybody just fucking did everything. You'd haul half your apartment to some set somewhere and wind up cooking a mess of beans and rice for two dozen people. You'd rewrite your dialogue and then carry light kits up from the basement in three-inch heels and sequins.)

Liquid Sky remains an incredible time capsule of New York City and the East Village when it was full of intellectuals and artists and punks and weirdos and every now and then a Ukranian granny. Sure, the story is daft, but the plot is really just an excuse for wild outfits, weird dialogue and scenes that trap this moment in time and this particular species of urban hispter on video like prehistoric fossils in amber. Take the climactic photo shoot...

 

This, of course, culminates in the scene in which Jimmy and Margaret taunt each other before the crowd of giggling, shade-throwing voyeurs. He sneers at her for being "old" and "ugly," while she somehow manages to be more insulting in calling him "the most beautiful boy in the world."

One, they're the same person, so ugly and beautiful are illogical. Two, Margaret making "beautiful"--a word that everyone else throws at her--into an insult says something about how powerless being admired for surface can  make one feel. And, three, is #2 why she wins this? Well, that and she blows him--and you know what happens when someone gets off around Margaret, who has finally realized that having everyone you fuck dematerialize is kind of an impressive power to have. Also, another fine example of the "go fuck yourself" via drag, as also seen in Female Trouble.

And, well, i'll always have a soft spot for Liquid Sky for its influence upon me. You think i'm kidding? Fine. Here's "Margaret" in New York City circa 1982..

And me, in Poughkeepsie, circa 1986...