‘Ghost Rider’ is scary fun; Anna Nicole & Britney are scary tragedies
February 25, 2007 | 12:00am
Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.  James Dean
Thanks a gazillion to the producers, director, screenwriter and actors behind the exhilarating but stupid, scary fun of a movie called Ghost Rider, which the snooty high-brow film critics of America have pilloried as junk and which I thoroughly enjoyed. Of course, this film will never win an Oscar nomination or qualify by a long shot as great art and some parts seem laughable, but it has fulfilled its basic and primary purpose for existence.
I didn’t like some of the lame dialogue and consider some portions of the flick utterly corny, but overall, I liked the graphic visuals, the fantastic action scenes and the smoldering special effects. Nicholas Cage acts well as the cool but brooding Johnny Blaze, a death-defying motorbike stuntman who as a youth accidentally sold his soul to the devil and later becomes Satan’s bounty hunter in fiery battles versus worse demons.
What struck me about the life of Johnny Blaze was that he lived life to the fullest, but in a careless, daredevil and almost nihilist way, taunting and challenging death with bigger and more dangerous stunts. Didn’t he have anything else greater or nobler to live (or die) for? At least if Princess Diana’s second son Prince Harry dies in the war against radical Muslim terrorists in Iraq, people will praise him for guts and heroism instead of criticizing his enlisting as a foolhardy publicity stunt or a death wish.
Eva Mendes as the ex-teen girlfriend and renewed love interest of Johnny Blaze is voluptuous and physically beguiling, but her acting as the TV reporter Roxanne Simpson seems utterly unconvincing. Her role and some other parts should be improved in the sequel to Ghost Rider, which I look forward to watching.
My apologies if I betray an overenthusiastic exuberance whenever a comic book superhero is featured in a big-budget Hollywood movie, for I have been (and always will be) a die-hard comic book fan. But not all comics-turned-movies are fun to watch; in fact, some are horrendous, stupefying and boring. Ghost Rider seems better to me in terms of entertainment value than the movie adaptations of such comic characters as the Daredevil, the Hulk and the Fantastic Four. The other recent comics-turned-movies projects which I enjoyed watching were Batman Begins, the X-Men films and, to a lesser extent, Spider-Man 2.
A word of caution to moviegoers; although it’s based on a comic book, Ghost Rider is not suitable for kids below 13 due to some really scary scenes which caused me to turn away my eyes and due to its plot about selling one’s soul to the devil. In this devilish political season of high-stakes but low-brow elections, I suggest that all our election candidates watch this film to learn a lesson or two about the eternal perils of selling one’s soul to the devil for the sake of transient temporal power.
Although I am not the Philippines’ most famous entertainment columnist (that would be Ricky Lo, of course), I couldn’t resist giving my two centavos’ worth of comments on the scary tragedies which have recently befallen those world-famous icons of youth, beauty and celebrity, Britney Spears and the late Anna Nicole Smith. (You’d better watch out, Paris Hilton!)
What a waste of youth, physical beauty, talent and promise, seeing the talented singer Spears publicly self-destruct in her marriage, motherhood, and in her subsequent bizarre behavior such as shaving her head and sporting all those tattoos. I am not ashamed to admit I’m a fan of Britney and other pop music stars of her caliber, generation, cool music and good looks.
What a waste, too, the almost Cinderella-like saga of ex-stripper Anna Nicole Smith who became a Guess jeans model, a Playmate (I distinctly remember her personal encounter in Manila with then Health Secretary Juan Flavier and the latter’s joke about their height differences), and the controversial widow of an old Texas tycoon. She was a reality TV celebrity whose life was already gone before her tragic death at age 39. Worse than her death are the telenovela-like controversies surrounding her death, involving court battles with her estranged mom and others wanting to get hold of her fortune, and preventing Anna Nicole Smith from even getting a decent and quiet burial.
Are the Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith tragedies due to the curse of too much celebrity and fame going to their immature young heads and spoiling their lives with skewed values and skewered human relationships? Or was it due to the burdens of having possessed exceptional physical beauty, as expressed in the Chinese proverb "Hong-gan po-mya" ("The destinies of the most beautiful are so thin")? Or did addiction to illegal drugs, too much alcohol, dangerous misadventures and other excesses of a hedonistic lifestyle glorified in Hollywood (and secretly admired by many of us in our fantasies) ruin their young lives?
Reflecting on these two youth tragedies which grab global headlines, I remember the young Jewish girl Anne Frank whose life was unjustly extinguished by the Nazi Holocaust and what she once wrote in her now-famous diary: "We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same."
The young but wasted lives of Britney and Anna Nicole, the loud and barbaric political wars of the coming May elections and the recent advent of Ash Wednesday remind me of the humbling Biblical admonition: "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his (or, in these two cases, her) soul?"
Comments, suggestions, criticisms and jokes welcome at wilson_lee_flores@yahoo.com. Thanks for all your messages!
Thanks a gazillion to the producers, director, screenwriter and actors behind the exhilarating but stupid, scary fun of a movie called Ghost Rider, which the snooty high-brow film critics of America have pilloried as junk and which I thoroughly enjoyed. Of course, this film will never win an Oscar nomination or qualify by a long shot as great art and some parts seem laughable, but it has fulfilled its basic and primary purpose for existence.
I didn’t like some of the lame dialogue and consider some portions of the flick utterly corny, but overall, I liked the graphic visuals, the fantastic action scenes and the smoldering special effects. Nicholas Cage acts well as the cool but brooding Johnny Blaze, a death-defying motorbike stuntman who as a youth accidentally sold his soul to the devil and later becomes Satan’s bounty hunter in fiery battles versus worse demons.
What struck me about the life of Johnny Blaze was that he lived life to the fullest, but in a careless, daredevil and almost nihilist way, taunting and challenging death with bigger and more dangerous stunts. Didn’t he have anything else greater or nobler to live (or die) for? At least if Princess Diana’s second son Prince Harry dies in the war against radical Muslim terrorists in Iraq, people will praise him for guts and heroism instead of criticizing his enlisting as a foolhardy publicity stunt or a death wish.
Eva Mendes as the ex-teen girlfriend and renewed love interest of Johnny Blaze is voluptuous and physically beguiling, but her acting as the TV reporter Roxanne Simpson seems utterly unconvincing. Her role and some other parts should be improved in the sequel to Ghost Rider, which I look forward to watching.
My apologies if I betray an overenthusiastic exuberance whenever a comic book superhero is featured in a big-budget Hollywood movie, for I have been (and always will be) a die-hard comic book fan. But not all comics-turned-movies are fun to watch; in fact, some are horrendous, stupefying and boring. Ghost Rider seems better to me in terms of entertainment value than the movie adaptations of such comic characters as the Daredevil, the Hulk and the Fantastic Four. The other recent comics-turned-movies projects which I enjoyed watching were Batman Begins, the X-Men films and, to a lesser extent, Spider-Man 2.
A word of caution to moviegoers; although it’s based on a comic book, Ghost Rider is not suitable for kids below 13 due to some really scary scenes which caused me to turn away my eyes and due to its plot about selling one’s soul to the devil. In this devilish political season of high-stakes but low-brow elections, I suggest that all our election candidates watch this film to learn a lesson or two about the eternal perils of selling one’s soul to the devil for the sake of transient temporal power.
Although I am not the Philippines’ most famous entertainment columnist (that would be Ricky Lo, of course), I couldn’t resist giving my two centavos’ worth of comments on the scary tragedies which have recently befallen those world-famous icons of youth, beauty and celebrity, Britney Spears and the late Anna Nicole Smith. (You’d better watch out, Paris Hilton!)
What a waste of youth, physical beauty, talent and promise, seeing the talented singer Spears publicly self-destruct in her marriage, motherhood, and in her subsequent bizarre behavior such as shaving her head and sporting all those tattoos. I am not ashamed to admit I’m a fan of Britney and other pop music stars of her caliber, generation, cool music and good looks.
What a waste, too, the almost Cinderella-like saga of ex-stripper Anna Nicole Smith who became a Guess jeans model, a Playmate (I distinctly remember her personal encounter in Manila with then Health Secretary Juan Flavier and the latter’s joke about their height differences), and the controversial widow of an old Texas tycoon. She was a reality TV celebrity whose life was already gone before her tragic death at age 39. Worse than her death are the telenovela-like controversies surrounding her death, involving court battles with her estranged mom and others wanting to get hold of her fortune, and preventing Anna Nicole Smith from even getting a decent and quiet burial.
Are the Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith tragedies due to the curse of too much celebrity and fame going to their immature young heads and spoiling their lives with skewed values and skewered human relationships? Or was it due to the burdens of having possessed exceptional physical beauty, as expressed in the Chinese proverb "Hong-gan po-mya" ("The destinies of the most beautiful are so thin")? Or did addiction to illegal drugs, too much alcohol, dangerous misadventures and other excesses of a hedonistic lifestyle glorified in Hollywood (and secretly admired by many of us in our fantasies) ruin their young lives?
Reflecting on these two youth tragedies which grab global headlines, I remember the young Jewish girl Anne Frank whose life was unjustly extinguished by the Nazi Holocaust and what she once wrote in her now-famous diary: "We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same."
The young but wasted lives of Britney and Anna Nicole, the loud and barbaric political wars of the coming May elections and the recent advent of Ash Wednesday remind me of the humbling Biblical admonition: "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his (or, in these two cases, her) soul?"
BrandSpace Articles
<
>