6 Reasons Indy Films Are Better Than Studio

1. Studios Must Pander to Teenagers and Below.  Teenagers, especially teenage boys, buy most of the tickets in this country and around the world.  Once a movie gets above a certain budget it must cater to them, if it wants to make its money back.  The trend has been going on so long its further driven the adult market away from multiplexes.  If you’re wondering why most Hollywood movies are brainless and enjoy cartoon violence mixed with easily impressed women, it’s because that’s what teenage boys get off on. The next biggest market is children.  Cable and Pay Television tends to be more adult and attracts better writing/directing.
 

2. Indy Films Must Concentrate on Character/Acting/Writing.  These things must be adult and deeper in indy film because they can’t compete with studio films on huge ticket items like special effects.  If they have name stars, the stars will usually be working at a reduced rate because they like the script/character/filmmaker.  The good ones will take a huge paycut and work for peanuts, for an artistic challenge or something that inspires or at least interests them, even though they know the film won’t be widely seen.  Instead of being a pampered star, Charlize Theron actually went out and raised money for Monster, she believed in the script and director so much.

3. The Larger the Budget, the Smaller the Creative Risk.  No one wants to take risks with huge sums of money, that’s human nature (we're seeing this tragically right now, in the tepid political response to the economic crash).  It’s much easier to make a risky bet for one dollar or even a million than on a 150 million dollar blockbuster (the very minimum it takes to release a picture globally these days).  The result is often formulaic and dull, pandering to the lowest common denominator or mediocrity by committee.  Indy films are small entrepreneurs or local restaurants (not chains), they can afford to do things their way and put a lot of thought and care into them.  It’s the difference between a meal prepared by a chain and one prepared by a chef.

4. No Teenagers in Audience or Screaming Children.  See reason 1.

Nell Ruttledge in Prince of Swine

5. Better Sex Scenes.  Past a certain budget a studio movie must, almost by necessity, be no more adult than PG-13, or it’s losing the bulk of it market right out of the gate.  That means teasing, innuendo, and the suggestion of sex, but nothing intense, physically, emotionally or politically.  It’s hard to document but most filmmakers complain the level of skin in a sex scene won’t draw as restrictive a rating from the MPAA as physically intense sexuality, emotionally intense sexuality, or especially anything controversial (Hollywood claims to be liberal but the MPAA leans slightly right of center).  An R rating isn’t much of a blow to an indy because the audience is already overwhelmingly adult and probably bored by PG anyway.



One of the best fight scenes of the decade,
David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises

6. Adult versus Cartoon Violence.  The level of violence allowed in a PG film is truly astounding, but it’s almost all of the cartoon sort, without emotional consequence or human understanding, cheap and unconsciously sadistic, but oddly physically as well as emotionally clean and shallow.  Anything with actual violence, where the violence comes with emotional consequences or something other than cartoon death and injury, is deemed too intense and possibly damaging for younger viewers (so we admit them into adulthood addicted to violence, like a drug, but with a completely antiseptic and puerile notion of it – violence separate from humanity or self-knowledge).  In many cases this ignorance/lack of depth lasts until death and even runs for President.

Visit us online at www.war-reform.com and www.princeofswine.com.

Vote for the Wimp, Not the Pimp

Does anyone have big enough balls left to run this country right?  Or are balls even necessary any more?  Are they obsolete?  Should we just throw up our hands, admit defeat and hand the place over to Hillary?

Exhibit A:  Mitt Romney.  Here’s five reasons we can’t vote for Mitt Romney:  Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Citigroup, five of the largest banks and the top five contributors to Romney’s campaign. Would it be fair to say, in light of this, Mitt’s balls are no longer his own? It would be more accurate to call him a whore for the big banks, but that doesn’t rhyme with wimp, and we can’t see any way around Obama’s inherent wimpiness at this point.


It does take balls, on the part of the banks anyway, to stand up in front of the country and insist what they’re doing is good for all of us or even most of us.  That whole “a free market will save us” and “get government out of business’s way” – they don’t even believe that any more.  The big banks are currently taking our money (from the Federal Reserve, at zero percent interest) and buying government bonds with most of it (i.e., charging us interest on it) without risking or investing a dime.  So the biggest champions of the free market (the banks) won’t touch the market with a ten foot pole under these conditions.  Betting on the government instead.

What are the banks doing with most of the rest of our money they’re charging us for?  Gambling with derivatives again (which has zero to do with growing the economy and is a huge risk to it), still completely unregulated in this regard, still government insured, we’re still on the hook if they lose, and they’re even bigger now than when they were too big to fail in 2008.  If one of the big ones bets wrong and we don’t bail them out again it could collapse the already fragile global economy.

If we vote for this crap again by voting for Romney, it’s not him that lacks balls, it’s us.  It’s akin to saying to someone who just robbed you, “Thank you sir, can I have another? Would you like to have sex with my wife too while you’re at it?  Because I don’t think you fucked me well enough the first time.”

 

What's the difference
between these two?
Hint:  It's not race or party



Which leaves us with: the wimp.  Why is Obama such a wimp?  Because he talks big and does nothing or next to nothing.  He keeps quoting Teddy Roosevelt for instance.  You know what Teddy Roosevelt did under these circumstances?  He brought anti-trust law down on Wall Street.  That’s exactly what Obama should do now.  It would solve too big to fail as well as breaking the lobbying power of the largest banks (divide and conquer).  It’s the political equivalent of bitchslapping them into submission so they shut the hell up and aren’t corporately unified enough to bribe Congress any more.  Wall Street squawked about it then, just as it does now.   Do you know what Roosevelt said of this?  “They hate me and I revel in their hatred.”  To translate that from Edwardian English:  Scream bitches and enjoy it, there’s plenty more where that came from.

For the record, anti-trust law doesn’t hurt business at all, just the opposite, it has the same economic effect as diversifying ones portfolio, i.e., it spreads and minimizes risk, as well as pruning our economic tree to make it fuller and larger. It’s just breaking up a gang of crooks who’ve grown too big for their own good and the good of the country, big enough to sink the global economy, big enough to buy both houses of Congress and the Presidency, and stack the deck in their favor.  Did breaking up the phone company a few decades ago hurt our economy or did telecommunications grow like mad after that, the now smaller companies renewing themselves, with new management, now competing with each other at everything from cellphones to the internet, so that we are now a world leader in telecommunications?

So our advice: hold your nose and vote for the wimp, praying that, with nothing to lose and his legacy to think of, he’ll wise up, stop bending over for Wall Street and grow a pair in his second term.  There is some cause for hope.  He hasn’t threatened anyone with anti-trust law yet, but we do have a new anti-bullying law. He’s warming up to go after the big banks by first standing up to fourth graders in other words.  And those little savages can get pretty mean, so, ya’ know, after them, the banks should be easy.

Visit us at www.war-reform.com or www.princeofswine.com

Next Up:  What the Rest of Us Can Do to Restore Our Balls in the Meantime 

Has Anyone Seen Our Balls? Part II

Before we use Part I of this series (http://www.princeofswine.blogspot.com/2012/06/pardon-me-miss-has-anyone-seen-our.html) as the basis for an anti-feminist rant on the secret agenda of Hillary, Steinem, Oprah and the rest of the crew, consider an even more alarming trend.  Women not only have a casual attitude about castration regarding their pets and their men, but also about themselves (and this can be tragic on a profoundly human level).

Ms. Magazine Actually Agrees With Us!

It pains us to do this, more than you can imagine, but we’re going to have to cite (positively!) an investigation from none other than Ms. Magazine in support of this idea. http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/09/12/the-hysterectomy-epidemic-where%E2%80%99s-the-outrage/

The key findings of this study? Over 70% of hysterectomies are unnecessary.  While some women do experience relief from pain, health improvements and other safeguards from removal of the uterus, many more than this do not, and in fact, the procedure increases health risks in more areas than it avoids in the long run.  Finally, a common side effect of hysterectomy is loss of ability to orgasm, reduced libido, and/or greatly reduced intensity of orgasm.  It’s hotly debated exactly what percentage of women this occurs in but one of the most anti-hysterectomy organizations (the HERS foundation) puts the number at 54% for loss of orgasm, 66% for loss of sexual desire, and those numbers bump up 10-15% when loss of the ovaries or loss of ovarian function occurs with hysterectomy (which happens in about half of all hysterectomies in the US).

The most shocking finding according to Ms.’s author (Frances Whittlesey)?  Women, by and large, don’t seem to care much. Where’s the Outrage, as she asks in her title?  Ms. Whittlesey points out, “Can you imagine this sort of silence if a doctor threatened to remove the male testicles without a life threatening reason?”.  No, we can’t in fact, which is probably why we still have our testicles, however much trouble they keep getting us into, whatever the pain, and however much you’d all like to remove them for your own piece of mind and the benefit of the planet.

Forty years after the groundbreaking publication of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, it seems some things have changed but much more hasn’t.  The most disturbing fact and what Greer missed?  Men aren’t the ones most in favor of castration, of men or women.  What women do to dogs, for reasons of behavior modification, not overpopulation, they’d like to do to men if they could.  And don’t expect much outrage or sympathy if you point this out to them.  They’re even more merciless to their own kind, why should they feel sorry for you?


Next Up:  Does Either Presidential Candidate Still Have His Balls?

Visit us at www.war-reform.com or www.princeofswine.com

Pardon Me Miss, Has Anyone Seen Our Balls?

Pros and Cons of Neutering Your Man Dog

When moving in animal rescue circles one often hears the mantra, “Spaying and neutering is a social responsibility.”  There’s also the common refrain, “How we treat animals is a reflection of how we treat ourselves.” 

Given this we thought it might be a good idea to examine exactly why we spay and neuter our animals in the hopes it might shed some light on how we treat ourselves in these troubled times.

Neutering Our Poor Puppies and the Implications for Mankind

The primary reason we spay and neuter is to keep down the huge and ever growing unwanted pet population.  That’s an excellent reason to spay and neuter our own species, and the reasons we don’t do this (save for the tragic and brutal wave of unnecessary hysterectomies in this country which we’ll examine in Part II of this series) beg the question:  why not find a less painful, brutal and invasive method to treat our animals? Why not a doggie vasectomy or tubal ligation?   (Relax, we’re not espousing a doggie condom, diaphragm or pill, though we often wonder if some owners would go to this length after watching them brush their dogs’ teeth as well as trail them with the infamous scooper and plastic bag).

The answer to this is truly illuminating.  The veterinary establishment stands firmly against this, not for reasons of pet overpopulation or cost (vasectomies and tubal ligations are just as cheap, if not cheaper, than castration and hysterectomy), but for reasons of behavior modification, especially in males.   A dog vasectomy might solve the problem of overpopulation, but it leaves the male hormones dangerously in place.

Surprise!  Men and Women Have Different Views on Neutering

The first thing one notices in sampling the available literature is opinions on neutering differ sharply and predictably along gender lines.  Women are the primary caretakers of animals in this country (as well as being a large majority of those who volunteer at animal shelters), and also the most steadfast voices in favor of spaying and neutering. 

And here’s the most striking fact for our own ulterior agenda (you knew we had one, of course, you didn’t really think we were writing this article out of a scientific interest in dog testicles, pity the poor bastards though we might?):  pet owners and veterinarians, but women especially, insist there are no adverse side effects to castration, or side effects whatsoever, despite all evidence to the contrary.  We could cite various studies for this, but you can informally confirm it yourself by googling “dog neutering male” and counting the responses in favor of neutering.  Results will vary, but we think you’ll find something similar to: 80% of all responses period (on the first page of results) come from women.  Over 90% were in favor of neutering, but an even more striking fact, over 70% of women claimed there were no negative side effects to castration or the side effects were minimal and unimportant.

For the record, any serious veterinarian, and any scientific literature on the subject will confirm the following: castrating a male dog has the following side effects (aside from making him unable to sire puppies):  1) he will likely be unable to have sex, and is very likely to have very little interest in sex period, 2) he will fight less and be much less aggressive with other dogs, 3) he will be much less likely to roam or run away, 4) he will be much more likely to gain weight and lose muscle tone.

All of these were considered either great improvements or unimportant side effects by most women.  The attitude can best be summed by one chipper pet owner, “All of the best things about your dog will still be in place, he’ll be happier, he’ll still love you, and he’ll be a far less troublesome and livable pet! Most dogs don’t even notice they’ve been neutered!”.

(Editor’s Note:  We confirmed this on a recent trip to the suburbs, they were all sitting around still wagging their tails as if nothing had happened, still fat, dumb and happy. The dogs, of course, we mean).

Next Up:  Why Have the Feminists Been So Quiet Lately and What Exactly Are They Up to Behind Our Backs?
(http://www.princeofswine.blogspot.com/2012/06/has-anyone-seen-our-balls-part-ii.html)

Visit us at http://www.princeofswine.com/ and join us at http://www.war-reform.com/.