Crash!

I was getting all revved up for my Driver's Knowledge Test. I've booked a Test for tomorrow - 11am if anyone happens to read this post sometime between now and then, and happens to feel like praying for me - and I put down $35. An outrageous sum of money for a 45 question computer touch screen test I think. What on earth does broadband cost these people?

Then on Sunday night, Mr Coffee and I watched a movie called Crash, directed by David Cronenberg and starring James Spader.

If anyone's aware of what I'm talking about, you'll know I'm not talking about the Academy Award winning Crash. This is a controversial film about car crashes. Why oh why did I pick this film?

I found the movie really disturbing and pretty sick, although people who love the film would call me a moral flag-waver who believes that every Hollywood film has to have a moral message to it, and only one set of values (mine) and that's why I find it sick. If I didn't I'd find it brilliant.

Actually, I don't believe that, but it still was pretty disturbing! I am happy to admit it didn't suit my own set of moral values and I don't think it would suit a wide audience's set of moral values. I don't think every Hollywood film has to. However, if a Hollywood film wants a better chance of being picked up off the shelf again and again, conformity to certain values does give it a higher chance of that.

Also, the characters seemed kind of empty.

The film is about car crashes, but it also plays out like a crash, or series of them , in that so many rather disturbing and challenging and rather sick things happen over and over that you feel like you're in some kind of turbulent crash situation and you can't get out.

Spader plays the main character. We open to a sex scene. Then his character is involved in a car crash. He is badly injured, he injures a woman, and kills her husband. Soon after, she and he are at it like rabbits in his car.

Then they are introduced to a man, Vaughan, who is obsessed with car crashes, and whose club composes of crash survivors, each who gets turned on by crashes. They are sexually aroused by crashes, and crash over and over, and have sex. It's rather disturbing to watch them stop off at scenes of violent crashes and exclaim "Oh, it's a work of art!" and take pictures of the steaming metal, the mangled bloody bodies, rather than offer assistance. And then jump in a car, ride off, and begin to have sex.

The sex involves all sorts of deviant types of preferences and fantasies, and is antierotic rather than erotic, especially when these people aren't exactly ones you care a whole heap about.

This wasn't the kind of movie I would recommend to anyone else before a driver's test!

Directly afterwards Mr Coffee and myself watched a silly, inane and over the top comedy to cancel out the weird-outedness of Crash. We watched Dodgeball!

Dodgeball is crazy, non-thinking, lowbrow fun - but lots of it. Ben Stiller is good, but my favourite character was the second Dodgeball commentator, Pepper Brooks.

With classic lines as:

Cotton McKnight: I'm being told that Average Joe's does not have enough players and will be forfeiting the championship match.
Pepper Brooks: It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em.

Cotton McKnight: It looks like the clock is about to strike midnight on this Cinderella story, turning Average Joe's into the proverbial pumpkin.
Pepper Brooks: I sure do like pumpkins, Cotton.

Cotton McKnight: In 23 years of broadcasting I thought I'd seen it all, folks. But it looks like Peter La Fleur has actually blindfolded himself.
Pepper Brooks:He will not be able to see very well, Cotton.

I had my most laughs.

And I needed them after ... Crash!