Matt’s Week in Dork! (1/19/14-1/25/14)

    Not a lot of movies this week, but some good dork life living.  Finished a book, listened to some tunes, and did a bunch of reading and worrying in preparation for hosting my first role playing game in a very, very long time (with one very brief exception 3 years ago).

Airplane:  Some of the humor of this film is lost now, due primarily to the world changing.  It’s not shocking to hear some of the topics addressed in such a frank way.  But in spite of some of that inevitable aging any comedy that dares to tackle current events or cultural trends is going to go through, it’s still quite funny, and some jokes appear to be timeless.  It’s so absurd, but so well delivered.  And every danged line Peter Graves delivers is pure gold.

    Sunday night, Lisa, Brad, and myself headed out to the Alamo Drafthouse to see an early favorite of mine, Brazil.  It was really something seeing the film on the big screen, and the first time really watching it in a several years.  What a wild movie, and it must have been pretty darned out there when it hit theaters.

Brazil:  One of those films that was so important to impressionable young Matt, Brazil captures that faded dream of a retro-future Utopia so beautifully.  Terry Gilliam tries his hands at Orwell, through the lens of Kafka, and the results are amazing.  It’s funny, it’s unsettling, it’s horribly dark and on occasion, downright mean.  And it’s full of fantastic performances.  Even the repair men are great.  The script is funny.  The world creation is phenomenal.  The music is great.  A classic, all around.

Snow Queen:  Ten minutes in, I checked the runtime and my heart sank.  Three boring hours.  Boring, boring, boring hours.  Made in Canada.  Made for TV.  Dullsville.  Acting sucks.  Directing is lifeless.  Script is crap.

In the Mirror of Maya Deren:  This documentary, as surface as one expects from less than two hours, does serve as an overview of the woman and her art.  Plenty of interviews with people who knew and worked with her, combined with some footage from her films lets you get something of a sense of Deren, a strange and passionate person who broke a lot of rules, and not just the obvious one of being a woman filmmaker in the 40s.  Her work exudes the dream logic I’ve come to love in later David Lynch, as well as the late Euro-trash cinema wunderkind Jean Rollin.  Can I tell you what a lot of her films mean?  No.  Not remotely.  But they capture a mood.  As a jumping off point, I think this film works very well.  I kind of wish I’d seen it 15 or 20 years ago, when I was interested in voodoo.  Deren did a great deal of research and filming, and even wrote a book on the subject, which apparently gets high praise.  A woman ahead of her time, her work is something film fans should seek out.

    On Friday night, I finished Cleopatra.  An excellent, accessible look into the late Egyptian world and the beginnings of the Roman Empire we tend to think of when we think of Ancient Rome.  It reads like a novel, while having lots of insight and context.

The Flame and the Arrow:  “We’re civilized and the art of civilization is doing natural things in an unnatural way.  I’m just a little more civilized than other men.”  Medieval adventure with heaping piles of high-flying gymnastics.  Burt Lancaster can’t seem to stop doing crazy circus tricks with his outlaw buddies, as they face off against a typically stuffy historic adventure movie foe.  The girls are pretty, the guys are dashing, the villains are pompous.  And the sets look pretty good.  Hardly a game changing classic, it bares more than a passing resemblance to any number of other Technicolor action films of its time.  But it’s fast paced and filled with fun, colorful characters.  And that’s pretty good in my book.

    Saturday night we had our 20th meeting of our graphic novel club, hosted by Brad and Lisa.  This time around we read Sailor Twain, which while lauded by critics, turned out not to wow most of us in the group.  A couple people hated it, one person really liked it, and most of us felt very mixed.  It’s no wonder I stalled while writing my review for it nearly a month ago.  I’ll have to go back and try to finish it.

-Matt

Book Review: Cleopatra

“The personal inevitably trumps the political, and the erotic trumps all: We will remember that Cleopatra slept with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony long after we have forgotten what she accomplished in doing so, that she sustained a vast, rich, densely populated empire in its troubled twilight, in the name of a proud and cultivated dynasty.”

    Growing up, Ancient Egypt was something of an obsession of mine.  Like most things, I think it started with Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it blossomed into something more as time went on.  It wasn’t just digging up tombs and finding ancient bones that I found interesting, it was the lives that led to those bones, to those ruins, and those statues.  And how could I not notice Cleopatra.  Long before I knew anything about Rome and Caesar, I knew Cleopatra.  Well, I thought I did.  Over the years I’ve found that a great deal of the history we learned in school was at best shallow and at worst (sadly, most often) simply wrong.  There are countless reasons for this; not the least of which is a sort of iris through which much of the past has been distorted, the Victorian Era, when history got a prudish make-over.  But Cleopatra has been getting bad press since day one; two thousand years of having her name dragged through the mud or held aloft like a prize, depending on who was writing the books.  Stacy Schiff’s biography tries to cut through all the fluff, the rewrites, and the outright slander to get at the woman and her times.  Like with Bettany Hughes’s excellent Helen of Troy, I think one of the most striking and useful parts of this book is the recreation of the time, the context in which the person lived.

    The various conflicts throughout the lives of Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Cicero, and Octavian, among many others, help to create a tapestry of cause, effect, action, and reaction in a world on the cusp of tectonic shifts.  The end of an era, the beginning of a new.  So many players at the table, all bets were off.  The unlikely winners and losers, the highs and lows, the doomed and the destined.  The story is as rich as any novel, and as well written.  Schiff manages to dance comfortably on that fine line between recitation of facts and a novelist’s grasp of story.  And most important, these people come off as…well, people.  Men and women with goals and dreams, driven and pulled by each other and the sweep of wars and loves.  Societies going through tumultuous changes on a grand and intimate scale.  We see Rome, still a stinking warren of mud spattered buildings, still sputtering with barbaric pride.  Alexandria, refined and perhaps a bit snobbish.  Rome, with its focus on physical prowess and not too subtle anti-intellectualism.  Alexandria with its love of art and learning.  How could they not clash?  And of course, the clashes were about more than land and gold, they were about lifestyle and world view.

    Again, Schiff gives famous names their human faces.  I quickly came to like Julius Caesar, with all his many faults.  Cicero strongly reminded me of someone I knew and didn’t especially like. Cleopatra, at first clever and lucky, but eventually ruthless and powerful, a leader who knew her people, but made many enemies.  Mark Antony, a man of great passions, is as bold a hero as any bard could hope for, and as tragic.  Even knowing the history, at least in broad strokes, I couldn’t help but hope things would turn out better, that some people would win while others get their comeuppance.  Alas, this history was written in blood a long time ago.

    Of course, when trying to tell the story of Cleopatra, Schiff has a hard job of separating the truth from the propaganda.  Does she do it?  Even she isn’t sure.  Throughout the book, she reminds the reader that much has been lost, much has been exaggerated, obliterated, and intentionally obfuscated.  And always, Cleopatra, or the idea of Cleopatra, has been used as a tool.  She quickly became the “Whore of the East.”  As often happens when you have people from a more civilized, cultivated, and yes, rich place; those who are not as civilized, cultivated, or rich look upon them as pampered, decadent, and immoral.  And, when you have an conspicuously male centered society like Rome, a supremely powerful woman, in charge of that rich, cultivated nation very quickly becomes the target of the harshest slander.  Schiff doesn’t paint Cleopatra as some victimized wimp, nor as the painted trollup, nor a secret modern hero.  She was a product of her life and times, a resilient, cunning, daring, competent ruler, forged in the disasters of her early life, soaked in the blood of her enemies.  A foil to the rulers of Rome, and a historic figure of tantalizing complexity.  With all these people coming together, at the heads of great nations, it’s no wonder we’re still talking about them two thousand years later.

    If you want to see Rome through a different perspective, or just want a glimpse into the era that produced so many famous names, this book is a great read.  If you want to read a compelling story of love, loss, betrayal, politics, religion, life, and death, with murders, suicides, sex, and wild parties, this book has what you need.  And you don’t need to have a background in Roman/Egyptian history to understand or enjoy it.

"She lost a kingdom once, regained it, nearly lost it again, amassed an empire, lost it all.  A goddess as a child, a queen at eighteen, a celebrity soon thereafter, she was an object of speculation and veneration, gossip and legend, even in her own time."

Cleopatra: A Life
Author: Stacy Schiff
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
ISBN: 978-0-316-00192-2 (I listened to the audio book read by Robin Miles: 978-1-61113-915-0)

-Matthew J. Constantine

Matt’s Week in Dork! (9/29/13-10/5/13)

    I feel a bit better about this particular week in dork, if only because I was able to be really lazy on Sunday and watch a bunch of movies, something I haven’t been able to do in a while.  I needed the rest, though it turned out not to be enough.  Not too much else going on, except that for about two hours, the Godzilla trailer was out there on the internet, and it looked good.  Not sure why it was taken down; that seems silly.

    On Sunday morning, I watched a few episodes of the serial killer TV series Hannibal.  Is it great?  No.  Honestly, it’s not even all that good.  But it’s watchable fluff.  For a show from one of the major networks, it’s shockingly adult, and I don’t just mean about the gore.  I mean, it’s not something a child or an illiterate feeb could follow with ease, making it at least better than ER, Big Bang Theory, or dozens (hundreds?…thousands?) of other similar crappy shows.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec:  “Who allowed you to shoot at science?”   Certainly, it is no great distinction, but this is Luc Besson’s best film since The Fifth Element.  It has a nice blend of his usual quirky humor, French sensibilities, and old timey adventure.  A plucky gal reporter travels the globe having crazy adventures, but her current quest involves a mummy, a mad scientist, an intellectual mummy, and a pterodactyl, all part of a puzzle that will save her infirmed sister.  Like most Besson films, it’s quirky and occasionally annoying, but unlike a lot of his more recent work, it’s fun enough to still be mildly enjoyable.  I’d have loved it as a kid, and I think that’s its best audience, with just enough potty humor and macabre to really rope ‘em in.  And who knows, maybe this will lead them to reading the comics and other books that inspire this sort of thing.  It also features possibly the only not terrible score by Eric Serra I’ve heard, so there’s something.

Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance:  The first film was an interesting take on the classic samurai film, with a swordswoman on a bloody quest for revenge.  This second film feels like an afterthought, with little of particular interest.  It’s fine I guess.  But I wouldn’t bother seeking it out.

The Brotherhood of Satan:  Another on a long list of 70s films about Satanists, this one has some cool bits, but like most of the others, it’s ultimately quite boring.  Lots of long, quiet shots, and sudden surreal action.  Lots of good character actors.  Worth checking out as a companion to The Devil’s Rain or Race With the Devil.  Just don’t go in looking for a classic.

The 70s, man.

Priest:  “I am the bringer of the tide.”  This movie is hardly genius, but it’s visually interesting and fairly fun.  It’s the sort of weird science fiction film that shouldn’t be so rare, where the filmmakers use modern technology to present something a bit different.  At the time, it was the closest thing to a Judge Dredd film (or Mutant Chronicles) I had seen.  Of course, now Dredd exists and that isn’t the case anymore.  Still, it’s an enjoyable little romp, and at least the vampires are monsters, not romantic heroes.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir:  “As for me morals, I lived a man’s life, and I’m not ashamed of it.”  A gorgeous widow moves into a beautiful old haunted house, the dwelling place of an old sea captain’s ghost.  She’s brassy and he’s cantankerous.  It doesn’t take long for sparks to fly.  It’s a very cute romance, and the actors both have a great deal of fun with it.

Sundown:  Gene Tierney is the adventurous lady of dubious background who gets mixed up with some bloody business in Africa.  Gun running, conscientious objectors, and hidden bases.  This is no classic. It’s a pretty forgettable espionage adventure film, but watchable.  If you’re looking for movies to supplement your Indiana Jones love, you can throw this on the list, but don’t make the extra effort if it’s not readily available.

Godzilla Raids Again:  The English dubbed/edited version of this film is a mess, but a funny one.  The Japanese version is more serious, though not nearly as good as the original film, or as interesting and strange as the later entries in the series would become.  It’s worth a watch for fans of the series, and does have some good bits, but it’s forgettable.

Son of Fury:  Tyrone Power is full of haughty, baby-faced rage with just enough charm to be likable.  Gene Tierney is only slightly more Polynesian than I am (read: 0%), but OH MY GOODNESS does she look amazing in her Hollywood island garb.  Mmmmm.  It’s a fun movie, and I really enjoy John Carradine’s supporting role.

Slaves in Bondage:  One of those ‘morality pictures’ that were so popular in the day.  Basically, just an excuse to show women in various stages of undress, doing various forms of naughty business…all in the name of educating people on the dangers of free love, drink, and any sort of fun.  The acting is markedly dreadful, with exceptionally awkward dialog.  It’s terrible fun.

Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.:  One of the better new Godzilla films, this one builds on a lot of what’s gone before, taking the whole ‘Godzilla’s bones’ thing to its obvious, Mothra infused conclusion.  The characters are OK, and the call-backs to classic films are well done.  There’s some genuine emotional stuff, and a good ending.  Plus, some crazy action.  I’m generally not as into these post-1985 films as I am the original run, but this is certainly a good entry.

Glen and Randa:  What if Adam and Eve were from Brooklyn…and morons?  In this post-atomic war story about a couple of naïve young people wandering around being stupid, we’re subjected to some strange images and weird behavior.  Not a good film, but an interesting low budget exercise.  It’s full of all that post-hippie disillusionment and self-hatred that has infected most science fiction since the 60s.  There are some good scenes.  Worth checking out, but don’t expect much.  Kind of like Idaho Transfer.  This has an X rating, but it's from a time before X meant 'porn.'  At worst, it should have an R.  There's nudity and a bit of awkward sexuality, but nothing to push it any higher than an R, for sure.

The Misfits:  Wow.  This is an absolutely brutal portrait of a bunch of broken people on a booze fueled journey into hell.  The film is uncomfortable and painful, and the characters all way past their breaking point.  It’s fascinating, really.  I’m still no Monroe fan, nor am I much of a Gable fan.  But they’re both oddly compelling here.  It’s some stark, strange stuff.  Melodrama of high order.  It has a lurking menace to it, something about the music or the lighting, I don’t know.  But through the whole movie, I really wasn’t sure how dark they were gonna go, how brutal it was gonna be.  And, coming out around the time the Hayes codes were breaking down made the possibilities just that much more.  Remembered now as the final film of Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, it is worth seeing past that ignominious distinction to see the film as it is, part of a changing tide of film as Hollywood began to shake the dust and cobwebs off.

Whirlpool:  Not an amazing Noir by any means, this does feature an especially fun and sleazy performance by Jose Ferrer.  I tuned in because of my building Gene Tierney obsession, but her role, while central to the film, was uninteresting.  You could have replaced her with any passable starlet of the time and nobody would have noticed.

    I’ve got multiple books going right now, not making a lot of progress in any of them.  Heck, I’ve even got a working CD player again, so I’m back to listening to audio books while I make my breakfast, which means I picked back up where I left off with a Cleopatra biography I was listening to last year.

    Seeing that trailer (now taken down, but no doubt coming out again soon) for the new Godzilla recharged my Kaiju engines again.  Not that they were all that run down.  And it worked out, because Tokyo S.O.S. had just come to me through NetFlix.  So, I’m gonna give Half Century War another read and do a review of that soon.  Darned fine comic series.

-Matt