Matt’s Week in Dork! (8/10/14-8/16/14)

    A light week on movies.  Actually, kinda light on everything dork related.  Didn’t even finish any books or read any comics.  No real excuse.  Just busy with other things.

Guardians of the Galaxy:  A fun second viewing.  That’s pretty much how I’d describe this film.  Fun.  It’s wild and weird and goofy.  Great soundtrack, crowd pleasing, humorous, and adventurous.  A good time at the theater.

Speed Racer:  I’ve ranted about this film time and again.  I love it.  As a Kung Fu film, as a family film, as a Technicolor mad-machine of weirdness.  Not for the hipster.  Not for the cynic.  For those with hearts open.  Awesome.

To Be or Not To Be:  I just couldn’t get into this film.  There are some funny bits, and some sad bits.  And I know it was largely about facing the demons so many European refugees faced when fleeing the Nazis.  So, to a degree, I feel bad about not giving a crap.  Of the Ernst Lubitsch films I’ve seen so far, this was by far the weakest.

    In my ongoing quest to destroy and rebuild Ben’s psyche into a film ubermensch, I subjected him to the film equivalent of psychotropic drugs, Beyond the Black Rainbow.  I always feel like I’ve done my job when he says some permutation of “that’s the weirdest movie I’ve seen.”  So, success!

Beyond the Black Rainbow:  One weird-ass movie.  An homage to all those awesome, late 70s/early 80s sci-fi/horror films by the likes of John Carpenter and David Cronnenberg, it’s unsettling and odd.  It’s one of my favorite films of recent years, in part because it captures so well the feel of the movies I loved and was scared of when I was a lad.

Ironclad: Battle For Blood:  Ugh.  This features some of the most egregious abuse of shaky-cam footage I’ve ever seen.  And that’s saying something.  The script, the acting, the everything.  It sucks.  I’m all for medieval movies, even on a low budget, but this is cheap.  But at least there’s a scene where a guy gets raped, and the movie seems to be saying it was a good thing and he liked it.

You got red on you.

    Saturday, Rebecca and I headed into DC, where we grabbed a quick bite to eat at Shake Shack.  Then headed over to the National Portrait Gallery to watch Buster Keaton’s College, featuring Andrew Greene accompanying on the piano.  It was an excellent showing, with a good and varied crowd.  DC continues to be full of surprises and wonderful little opportunities.  On the way back, I did a bit of exploring, taking the Blue Line out to Old Town Alexandria, then a bus back home.  I found a few places I’d like to check out, but overall that corridor seems to be pretty bland.

College:  If you can get past the scene where Buster Keaton does blackface, which is…um…pretty awful, this movie is extremely enjoyable.  It’s cute, with lots of darned fine physical comedy.  Buster Keaton has a weird sort of deadpan charm that makes him oddly loveable, even when he’s being a bumbling dolt.

    By chance, I tuned in to TCM and caught their Essentials film of the week, a Hitchcock thriller I’d been wanting to see for some time, Foreign Correspondent.

Foreign Correspondent:  Solid Hitchcock, with all the clever dialog, tension, and paranoia.  I love the cast, with even thugs being played by excellent folks.  Beautifully shot, as usual.  Though about WWII, it feels very Cold War to me.  But then, as it takes place before war is declared, I guess that makes sense.  The finale is really crazy.

Brothers Five:  Plenty of fighting and camera zooms in this enjoyable, if slightly silly, Kung Fu fighter.  Cheng Pei-Pei gathers five lost brothers to avenge their father’s death.  There’s a lot of weapon fighting in this one, which I like.  And there are some pretty darned cool bits.  There are better films from the Shaw Brothers, but this one is pretty good.

    That’s pretty much it.  Though I have been listening to a lot of David Bowie.  Loaded up Low, Space Oddity, Hunky Dory, and Aladdin Sane.  Good stuff.

-Matthew J. Constantine

Matt’s Week in Dork! (6/15/14-6/21/14)

    Looking at this week, it probably looks like I didn’t accomplish much, Dork Life or otherwise.  And that’s not far off.  But I was busy, in my way.  I had a moment of inspiration and started laying the groundwork for a book (don’t know if it’ll go anywhere), then had an epiphany about an old story I never finished, that recharged in my interest in it.  We’ll see if anything comes of it.  But it was a good feeling, if nothing else.

Dagon:  Why name this Dagon?  It’s an adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, not Dagon.  They’re two different (though somewhat related) stories.  Anyway, the film has some good bits thrown in, but is mostly uninspired.  The Shadow Over Innsmouth is probably the most obvious Lovecraft story to adapt to the screen, yet this is the only time I know of that it’s been attempted.  And failed.  There are worse Lovecraft adaptations.  But thankfully, there are better, too.

The Machine:  Painfully middle of the road, this movie had all the parts it needed to be really good, but not the will.  Punches were pulled, not just in terms of its made-for-TV level of violence and sex, but in its fear of pushing the concepts into new or challenging directions.  Lots of cool stuff is introduced, but none is followed through with any depth.  With low budget film, there is little excuse for making the plot progression bland.  So, this one is a failure.

Trouble in Paradise:  Ernst Lubitsch knew comedy.  Cheeky, dryly witty, occasionally raunchy, and constantly charming, this film isn’t quite as much fun as Design for Living, but it’s close.  Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshal are absolutely adorable together.  The dialog is quick and surprising.  Very much a must see.  And it’s pre-Code, so its mind is fully in the gutter, and wonderfully so.  And stalwart goofball Edward Everett Horton makes an obligatory appearance, with his usual put-upon antics and double-takes.

The Tales of Hoffmann:  Did I just trip the proverbial balls?  Imagine that crazy-ass dream sequence from The Red Shoes was turned into a feature length opera/ballet.  Yeah.  If I believed in gods, this would be against their laws.  There are lots of beautiful (and no small number of terrifying) sequences.  But I think the whole thing is so divorced from sanity as to be difficult to sit through.

Wild Strawberries:  I don’t know if it’s weird for this film to have been made by a young man, or obvious.  I think there comes a time in many a man’s life, certainly in that of the writer, when they discover and are nearly overwhelmed with nostalgia.  Perhaps it’s the realization of mortality making memories and experiences more important?  I don’t know.  But I’ve been in a place where I could have made this film (if I were a talented filmmaker), so in spite of it being about an old man’s life, perhaps it is a young man’s film.  It’s Bergman, so I’m sure there have been Film Studies papers written on the subject, and critical discussions far more profound than anything I can muster.  What I can say is that I enjoyed the heck out of the movie.  Victor Sjostrom is a charming old fellow, and manages to play kindly, sad, resigned, yet full of wonder and joy, making a rounded and complicated character.  Ingrid Thulin as his daughter-in-law is captivating.  She’s like staring at the ocean, seeing ripples on the surface, but knowing there’s chaos just beneath.  The movie is packed with emotional moments, taking you from amusement to sadness, to joy and back.  It’s cute.  It’s touching.  It’s a darned fine film.  And it’s yet another reminder that while Bergman did a few ART! films, with dense symbolism and what have you, he also made a lot of movies that are just about life, and are as relatable and watchable as can be.

    Brad and I headed over to the Mosaic Center to watch The Rover at The Angelica.  That’s when we found out that NOTHING is open before 11AM there on a Saturday.  The whole area was packed with people, yet there were maybe like three shops open, and the only restaurant we found was a Panera Bread.  It reminded me of when my friend and I went in to DC a month or so back and for blocks couldn’t find a place that opened on Saturday.  There are people running around with money to burn, and nobody to take it.  Weird.  How do shops not open by 9AM?  10 at the outside?

The Rover:  This movie shoots you in the stomach and leaves you in the desert to die.  In the burning heat of the Australian Outback, ten years after civilization collapsed, some desperate men cross paths with the wrong man.  There isn’t a lot of plot.  There’s not a lot of talking or character development.  There is a grinding, crushing sense of desperation and doom.  This is a vision of society winding down, of the world drying up, and the people turning to dust.  The slow apocalypse.  The dying of the light.  Guy Pearce is absolutely terrifying in this film.  It’s nice to see him in something good, and allowed to do his thing.  It’s been a while.  I feel like this movie would be a good companion to Mad Max.  It feels like it’s set in that same dying civilization, the same world of the rules rolling back, of people turning into animals.  And co-Dork Brad’s feeling that it’s the spiritual sequel to The Proposition sounds about right, too.

    That’s pretty much it.

-Matt