Matt’s Week in Dork! (3/10/13-3/16/13)

    I have absolutely NO idea who I managed to fit in so many movies this week, because I was really busy and I know I spent a lot of time not watching movies.  I know I was having trouble sleeping, but that doesn’t add up.  Anyway, considering how danged tired I am and stressed out, it was a pretty good week.

I need a hug, too.

    On Sunday night, I caught Life in the Year 2030 on NPR.  It was dealing with a bunch of stuff I’ve been reading about lately, including autonomous cars.  It also dealt with ‘smart’ clothing that could do more frivolous things like change color, but could also do things like protect people from getting malaria or keep them warm when it’s cold.  And there was stuff about robots.  Can’t wait for robots.

Nemesis:  Oh, Albert Pyun, you terrible, terrible genius.  Pyun is kind of a master of crappy movies.  He embraced cyberpunk like few others, making flicks like this and Cyborg, among others.  His movies get right into the genre, even when they manage to botch all the things that make movies ‘good.’  This film, for example, has an awful script and what seems to be intentionally awful acting you don’t normally see outside of The Asylum or a George Lucas film.  Like, it’s REALLY bad acting.  And not just because poor man’s JCVD Olivier Gruner can’t speak much English.  Most of the cast can, they just don’t.  Not in any natural way, anyway.  But in spite of it all, Nemesis is kind of a blast.  Lots of shoot-outs.  Lots of running around.  Nasty old environments.  Weird characters.  Bad cyborg effects.  Awesome.  There is an interesting question of gender in Pyun’s films.  I don’t know what his thing is, but he features a lot of women who dress like men, men with classically female names and vice versa, and other odd bits (like the female body builder in the three sequels to Nemesis that all have this film’s leading male character’s name with no explanation).  Is he getting at something with it all?  Or like much of his work, is it just random and accidental?  I don’t know.  I don’t really care.  Just something I noticed.  I can’t believe this movie doesn’t have a blu-ray two disk special edition.  I actually had to get a bootleg, recorded form VHS version, because as far as I can find, it has never been put out on DVD (this needs a 2 disk, digitally remastered, unrated director’s cut!).

Double Trouble:  “Seventeen will get me 20.”  It’s not Elvis VS. Elvis like the movie poster implies.  Instead two dames want to get a ride on the E Train, but he’s a busy cat.  Unfortunately, one of them is a touch on the young side and he (rightly) tries to run the other way.  Comic misadventures and a tour of Europe quickly follow.  And all the while, some weird dudes are trying to knock off the young girl.  It’s enjoyable enough, but totally forgettable.  The girls are cute, but not especially captivating.  The songs aren’t up to snuff (it’s bad when the best one is a reworking of Old McDonald’s Farm).  I guess it’s worth a watch, but it’s no classic, that’s for sure.

Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell:  “I hope you go insane with loneliness!”  The final chapter in the series starts out in a snow covered landscape with a Blaxploitation waka-waka guitar setting a crazy tone.  Man, this series is nuts.  A sure fire sign that East and West were doing a heck of a job influencing each other.  The Lone Wolf series is as much Spaghetti Western fantasy as samurai film.  Over the top everything.  Music, acting, blood, and style.  Dropping Night on Bald Mountain into a 70s style rock tune?  Crazy.  Who would have thought, watching the first film, that we would see a massive, James Bond movie type, ski battle raging through the snowy mountains?  Maybe it was inevitable.  It’s a weird ending to the series, and I would say not really a satisfying one.  I’m not sure why it ended here.  Did tickets stop selling?  Did actors want to move on?  Whatever the case, it doesn’t feel finished.  The movie does; the series doesn’t.

The Golden Compass:  “There will always be free thinkers…and heretics.”  You can make dozens of Christian themed movies and not hear a peep, but one movie based book with an atheist bent (the script leaves out 99% of that aspect of the book), and suddenly, Christians are being persecuted, and Hollywood is holding the whip; the End Times are upon us, and movies are a tool of Satan.  It must be exhausting, trying to find more ways to be offended and oppressed.  No wonder religious people tend to be so humorless.  Though visually impressive and well cast, the script sadly misses much of the novel’s better and more interesting elements.  Scientific inquiry in the form of dashing adventurer Asriel (Daniel Craig) battles the stodgy orthodoxy of the Magisterium.   Nichole Kidman plays the diabolic porcelain doll who embodies the hypocrisy and villainy of blind traditionalism.  I’d have liked to see a better adaptation, and I’d certainly have liked it to have been successful enough to see the rest of the books adapted.  If memory serves, the movie also ends early, dropping the book’s climax.  This makes its financial failure all the more frustrating.  Half of me thinks the movie’s PG-13 rating has more to do with the Christian crusade against the film than any content.  In fact, the only reason I could see for any rating stronger than PG is a sequence where a bear gets its jaw punched off.  That’s pretty brutal.  But I don’t think it’s enough.  It’s a PG movie.  Generally fine for the family, if occasionally scary (but no more so than most classic Disney or other family films from before the 90s).  It could be much better, but it’s still a pretty good family friendly fantasy adventure film.

The Thief of Bagdad:  “Fling him to the ape!”  This silent epic starts slow, but becomes quite the effects filled spectacle.  The sets are amazing and some of the effects would have been passable in movies up through the 80s.  The creatures are nuts (underwater spider!) and the stunts are wild.  Douglass Fairbanks is filled with smarmy bravado that is partly charming and partly off-putting.  He just seems like such a jerk in the first part of the film.  But he’s got personality, that’s for sure.  The princess is kind of a dud, but her various servants are more charming and more interesting.  Not the best silent film I’ve seen, by any means.  But it’s very good and entertaining.  Sort of a Summer blockbuster kind of thing.

South Bronx Heroes:  “If I want you to talk, I’ll throw you a peanut.”  Everybody keeps stabbing everybody.  This relentless view of human misery and crime is grueling and pointlessly sad.  Really crappy movie.

The Black 6:  “Hey man.  Watch out for the goat.”  They may be from different football teams, but the Black 6 can agree on their love of motorcycles, and their hatred of jive turkeys.  Six cool dudes ride wherever the wind takes them, being chill and helping out, and enjoying life (most of all, no hassles).  All they want to do, now that they’re back from the ‘Nam, is spread ‘peace and love, brother; peace and love.’  But honkies and crackers are looking to cause trouble.  This is one of the better ultra-low budget blaxploitation films I’ve seen.  It looks to be financially on the level with Brotherhood of Death, but a better film.  There were a few words, I’m assuming racial slurs, that I didn’t get or hadn’t heard before.  That’s something.

The Black Gestapo:  “Afternoon, black gentlemen!”  Either I was in a really, really different place 10 years ago, or I’ve been mistaking this for a different movie.  ‘Cause a) I thought I disliked it, but I have no idea how that could be true and b) I didn’t remember any of it.  So, I’m guessing I was just wrong about having seen it, and I’m glad that’s been rectified.  It’s crazy over the top.  Great bad dialog.  The characters are weird and extreme, from the wild-eyed Che wannabe second in command who puts together a cracker-killing death squad, to the laidback, sunglass wearing, racist crook, to the semi-gay crime lord.  And the ending.  Dang, man.  So glad I watched this (again?).

Velvet Smooth:  “Later, Papa.”  Oh, man.  This is LOW budget.  Bad writing, worse acting, horrifying clothes, porn sets, crappy music.  Charming.  There are a lot of extended, not especially inspiring martial arts fights.  The kind where people probably got hurt, because they weren’t choreographed very well.  I was reminded of some of the stuff from Black Dynamite.  I love when the you can see the recording microphone aimed at the actors from below the camera.  It adds a little something to conversations to have a white tube pointing at whoever’s talking.  This is also the second movie in a row (the first was Black Gestapo) to feature a friendly fire, accidental throat-cutting by one bad guy against another.  That’s odd.  The finale is pretty good.  But again, this is bargain basement.  Kind of like if the crew behind Land of the Lost decided to do a blaxploitation film.

Disciple of Death:  “No doubt, we all shall meet again… …In HELL!”  This Hammer wannabe fails on every level, except to produce a few unintentional laughs.  The villain is so hammy, the rest of the cast so amateurish, and the almost rap like way the music is mixed, it’s hard to do anything but laugh.  It’s like the UK equivalent of Ed Wood saw a random Hammer film and said, ‘I can do that!’  He was wrong.

Doctor Who: Time & the Rani:  Ugh.  An inauspicious beginning to Sylvester McCoy’s tenure.  Lots of clowning, Mel, the Rani pretending to be Mel (terrifying), goofy green bird people, that new ultra-electronica opening music.  With Colin Baker, I think they were trying to recapture some of Tom Baker’s style.  With McCoy, I think they were trying to go for something of a Patrick Troughton thing; more the loveable vagabond clown, less the slightly mad trickster.  Man, I wish Mel could have spent more time screeching like an injured bird.  ‘Cause that isn’t terribly annoying.  Ace can’t get here soon enough.  And while I think the Rani was conceptually interesting, like the Master, she ends up being so foppishly, scenery-chewingly evil as to be more silly than scary or cool.  The bat creatures had potential, but they don’t work.  I think if I were a BBC exec, watching this story, I’d be thinking about cancellation, too.  I’ll say this about the episode.  Some of the effects, especially some of the composite images, where models are combined with live action, are pretty good, and show some of the places effects could have gone, if the show weren’t so close to its end.  The CG animated opening featured ground breaking technique, but I don’t like it very much.

Silent Hill: Revelation:  “I know the Darkness is coming.”  I’ve been saying for months that the entire reason this project even happened is that someone realized Sean Bean lived through the first film, and that could not stand.  I’m probably one of like 8 people who actually enjoyed the first Silent Hill, and I was very surprised they even bothered to do a second.  I’ll give ‘em this, they don’t screw around waiting to get into the action.  It’s pretty balls-out weird from the beginning.  And everything is sort of taken for granted.  Not a lot of effort trying to explain why reality is broken, or what there are monsters or what have you.  It reminds me of the Hellraiser films, especially the more mind-messing Hellraiser II and the later Nightmare on Elm St. films.  In fact, the whole movie felt very 80s.  It’s really strange.  So, does Sean Bean manage to slip through the cracks again and defy the odds by surviving?  I’ll never tell.  Is the end of the movie a bit of a cop-out?  Yes.  But I enjoyed it far, far more than I expected.

    Thursday night took me away from my comfort zone when I visited with friends Paul and Sarah, and got to hold their new baby, Joseph (totally named that because it’s my middle name…totally).  I haven’t been around kids very much, even when I was one, babies even less.  And, it’s true, I have a lump of coal running my body instead of the more traditional blood pumping muscle known by some as the heart.  Still, it’s a danged cute baby.  His rubber face makes some fantastic expressions.  I can’t imagine the soulless little monster I’d spawn.  Handsome, sure.  But that Thomas Ripley sort of handsome.

    Friday night was the latest meeting of the Justice League of Extraordinary Book Club, where this month’s selection was the hard cover collection Blacksad.  It was an odd meeting, as I think it was the first time everyone was pretty much on the same page.  Everyone liked it.  Everyone liked the art.  We basically just talked a lot about the various things we liked about it.  And there was some question of why fish would still be animals in a world populated by anthropomorphized animals.  A good meeting.  Just oddly agreeable.

Monster X Strikes Back: “‘Guilala hot cakes’ are selling like hot cakes.”  Attack at the G8 Summit:  Super goof-tastic, I guess this is a satire.  A giant monster from space (‘cause of those dang Chinese!) attacks the G8 Summit, and with the instigation of the American president, all the world leaders decide not to run, but to stand and fight.  Ace reporter Sumire, of Tokyo Sports Daily is gonna get a scoop.  Each daring and well thought out plan that somehow manages to fail, leads to more comic weirdness.  Usually I’m not a fan of non-English comedy because I miss too many cultural references and what is funny is lost on me.  I think I get most of the jokes in this movie…they’re just not that funny.  The inspirational, worshipful dance is very impressive, though.  I assume everyone will be doing it someday.  And I have to admit that I saw some things I never thought I would, like a giant kaiju god sodomized by a nuclear missile.  That was something.  I can only speak to the English speaking actors, but dang, they’re bad.  I assume the Russian, German, French, etc. are on par.  Though the Russian guy seems like he might actually be an actor.  It seems pretty clear the casting call went out for any Western actors they could find.  Heck, the UK rep has an American accent.  But holy smokes; almost every woman in the movie is either super cute, or smokin’ hot.  The array of translators?  Yowzah.

Lady Snowblood:   On a cold winter night, a baby is born; a mother dies.  Thus opens Lady Snowblood, another Japanese samurai-type film about vengeance, betrayal and murder.  20 years later, that baby is a beautiful woman with a sword in her umbrella, killing her way to satisfaction.  Welcome to Japan in the 1890s.  Another blood-soaked film in the tradition of the Zatoichi and Lone Wolf and Cub movies.  It too features some strange uses of music that gives it a fascinating vibe, even when the film itself isn’t amazing.

Doctor Who: Paradise Towers:  “Hail Pex.”  Sylvester McCoy is considerably less annoying in this story.  Mel is just as annoying as ever.  The super-80s, 2000 AD/Judge Dredd nightmare future world is weird fun.  Episodes like this are so off the wall.  Lots of creepy and strange characters, garish colors, disturbing behavior.  The two old ladies…Yikes.  Pex.  Pex, man.  If only he could have joined the Doctor.  Pex and Ace would have made one serious badass pair of companions.  Look out Daleks.  I really enjoy the set design.  I mean, it’s super simple, but effective.  This is just all around a better story than the first.  The guest cast in this one is quite good.  The DVD features an alternate score which was dropped and given to a different composer.  Frankly, I kind of prefer this alternate, original version.  It was interesting that the writer for this arc was in part inspired by the J.G. Ballard novel High Rise.  That is a novel I became aware of through a book about cities in science fiction, and took me years to track down (I don’t think it was even printed Stateside until recently).  When I’d read the original description of the book, I’d been reminded of some stuff from my youth, including this very Doctor Who story.

Black Pearl (aka 10,000 A.D.: The Legend of the Black Pearl):  “When you are feeling most lost and disheartened, smoke this.” Even if our world ends, society collapses, and eight thousand years pass, I don’t think dreadlocks or tongue and eyebrow piercing on a skinny white dude will ever be acceptable.  Though the fact that the movie opens on our Burning Man cast-off getting the crap kicked out of him, only to be saved by a Veronica Mars look alike makes more sense.  Brad Pitt wannabe hippie-warrior Jesus seems to spend his life a day late and a dollar short.  Maybe he should try washing his hair.  My hat is off to the people who made this movie.  It’s beautifully shot and goes for it, balls out, heart exposed.  And it absolutely looks silly as hell a lot of the time.  Hippie, New Age, martial arts, Native American, Hawaiian (?), and mumbo-jumbo of every sort.  But it doesn’t mess around with trying to be mainstream or approachable.  This film has more heart in it than a dozen big budget films.  Sadly, it doesn’t have any more brain.  It’s kind of like a whole movie set in that nasty future from Cloud Atlas, or some post-Fall science fiction setting from the 60s, but filtered through a couple New Age books with crystals and dreamcatchers and paintings of wolves.  I don’t know who I would suggest this film to.  I’m sure there are people who would like it, but I only have one person in all my circle of friends to whom I’m going to recommend it.

Cowboys and Aliens:  “What kind of man goes around blowing up another man’s cows?”  Science fiction has had a long tradition of mixing with the Western.  Singing cowboys have traveled to the center of the Earth; rustlers have captured T-rexes; and they’ve all gotten mixed up in time travel too many times to count.  Not to mention how many times they’ve been exported to other planets.  This time, an amnesiac, an ornery old cattle man, a bar tender, a mysterious woman, a Native chief and a bunch of others are set upon by kidnapping, gold loving aliens, and they aren’t gonna take it sitting down.  Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford are perfect Western actors, handsome but grizzled with steely stares and barely checked rage.  The aliens are weird, the effects pretty good, and the action well handled.  It is an unabashed mix of sci-fi action and classic western.  And Olivia Wilde…Dang.  She’s weird looking, but in the best way.  Is this an amazing, world changing movie?  No.  But it’s solid entertainment.  Harrison Ford should be in more Westerns.

    My landlord installed a new fireplace thingy, so for the first time ever, I’ve got a working fireplace, which is fun.  I’ve found that I suck at fire.  Still, it’s cool to have.  And as this winter doesn’t seem to want to let go (I think it’s usually in the 60s or more by this time here, but the 30s and 40s won’t stop), it’s nice to have options.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (3/3/13-3/9/13)

    What can I say?  Not a lot changing or going on in this Dork’s life right now.  Though, Sunday night I did catch another episode of Dimension X on The Big Broadcast.  The episode was “The Universe,” based on another Heinlein story.  A guy on a quest to find out the truth about his world and break the chains of superstition travels through levels of the Ship, the whole world he knows.  There are mutants roaming the corridors, legends of a creator who made the ship, an afterlife taking ‘the Trip,’ and more.  I need to track down more Dimension X.  The two I’ve heard so far have been fantastic.  I know Gunsmoke, Johnny Dollar, and Dragnet are all popular, but Dimension X is really more my speed.


Farscape Season 3:  “Stop, stop, stop!  This makes no sense.  YOU make no sense!”  This season does what Farscape has done since the beginning, ratchets up the stakes, the passions, the dangers, and the operatic insanity to new heights.  The adventures of John Crichton and his band of intergalactic ex-con friends and “…the nightmares I’ve seen…the wonders I’ve seen.”  Everyone is taken through the ringer, bent, twisted, broken, burned, doubled, and put through things only science fiction provides a canvas for and possibilities for redemption you don’t see in other genre.  And of course, it all builds to a totally insane cliffhanger finale.  Several long time cast members, including one of the original crew, don’t make it out of this season alive.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril:  Open on a killer topless lady!  You have my attention.  These movies have taught me one thing, that Japan was full of wandering musicians, most of whom were also trained killers.  In this fourth installment, father and son are separated.  When little Daigoro meets the Japanese John Travolta, the pieces are put in place for a fight.  You know this guy is going down.  A temple full of ninjas?  It’s not long before they’re stumped.  More strange morality from an honor driven society.  The use of flashbacks is also an interesting feature in this series.  Each film reveals more about our heroes as it reveals more about various new characters.  Ogami kills an unbelievable number of people.  And are they setting up for the eventual end of the series?  Time will tell.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons:  Crazy.  So five guys, each with one fifth of his pay, and one fifth of the job’s details are dispatched to test and die by Ogami’s sword.  OK.  Seems like an inefficient system, but OK.  Wave Slashing Technique!!!  Life seems extremely complicated in Feudal Japan.  But little Daigoro is pretty hardcore.  He takes a beating just to prove a point.  If that kid makes it out of this series, he’s gonna turn into one bad mo-fo when he gets older.  Is it wrong that the under water ninja fight made me chuckle?  I think it was actually meant to be funny, so hopefully not.  The final fight inside the home/palace is nuts.  The way the shots are framed is very odd, but kind of cool.  Often focused just off the action, on some piece of scenery, it give the fight a different feel.  And so, so much blood.  Not a lot of film franchises feature a hero beheading a mother and child.  That’s one of the things that makes this series kind of unique.  After the near fatal finale of the previous film, Ogami comes out of this one relatively unscathed.

Abelar: Tales of an Ancient Empire:  “A pox on them all, if they can’t take a joke.”  Oh, crap.  Somebody’s D&D game got turned into a movie with Kevin Sorbo and poor man’s JCVD, Olivier Gruner?  How did this not sweep the nation?  I was marveling at the dreadful script, poor acting, and just general awkwardness of the opening credit narration and flashback, when a name came out of the mist.  Albert Pyun.  Oh, man.  Listen, Albert Pyun is behind a couple movies I love (perhaps in spite of their quality).  But he is also behind some of the most amazingly awful movies I’ve ever seen.  This was obviously gonna be fun.  A magic hair-style princess wants help.  Instead she gets Sorbo.  There’s a porno vibe to the movie.  The cast and filming technique all have an extra dose of sleaze.  Super, super cheesy CGI lends to the overall feeling of home-made video.  The story hops around, skips key sequences, narrates over bits to try to connect scenes.  It’s really, really not good.  Michael Pere’s amazing wigs are something to see, though.  At the end of the day, the movie doesn’t really make a danged lick of sense.  And what also doesn’t make sense is 10 minutes of credits (though they do help pad the runtime to almost an hour and a half).  Just dreadful.  But somehow almost enjoyably bad.  That kind of bad that lets you know, if you had the time and inclination, you could do better.

Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker:  My doppelganger Ewan McGregor is secretly a James Bond type adventurer.  When Winter from Band of Brothers kills him, his annoying nephew is forced into the business.  There are probably enough movies like this now that it could be considered a full-on subgenre; the kid spy movie.  Spy Kids and its sequels, Agent Cody Banks, etc.  This one has a pretty good cast of adults (excepting Alicia Silverstone), but the snotty kid lead is, well, the snotty kid lead.  The jump-cut style of action in the movie is annoying, and out of place in what is otherwise a made-for-TV feeling film.  With the editing style and the music choices, it’s obviously trying really hard to by ‘hip’ and ‘appeal to the young people.’  But it feels false, which it too bad.  It also feels like big, probably important parts of the book didn’t make the screen, mostly the parts that would make the viewer care about anyone.  Stephen Fry adds some class, while Mickey Rourke adds some crazy.  Overall, it just feels like there isn’t enough interesting at the core of this to bother.  It’s not that it’s badly done or whatever.  It’s clear a lot of work went into the making of the film.  It’s just not that interesting.

Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie:  “Burn heretics!” Half of me says, ‘how did this ever happen?’  The other half says, ‘how did it take this long?’  The 40K universe begs to be realized visually.  Artwork has been a key element since its creation, and seeing it as an animated film makes sense (though live action would be welcome).  Unlike other movies based on table-top games (Mutant Chronicles, Dungeons & Dragons, etc.), it’s clear this was created by people familiar with the game (writer Dan Abnett is among the most popular author of Warhammer novels, so I guess it shouldn’t come as too big a surprise).  It gets nothing wrong when it comes to details.  The tech is right, the style is right, the themes are right, the names and places are right.  This IS a Warhammer 40,000 movie.  In a lot of ways, this is about as generic a story as they could tell.  Space Marines (Ultramarines, no less) VS. the Black Legion (the demon looks Khorne, but I’m not up on my Chaos armies).  Other than Imperial Guard or Tyranids, I don’t know who else might have worked and still been approachable to John Q. Public.  Still, I’d have liked to see Slaanesh, Tzeentch, or maybe even some Eldar and Orks?  Anyway, the CGI isn’t bad, and the voice acting is pretty good.  The script isn’t amazing, but it’s serviceable.  Space Marine dialog is almost destined to be somewhat stilted by their nature.  There isn’t much of a story.  And the pacing is oddly slow.  Not boring, but slow.  I would have liked a good battle hymn during the last stand, though I don’t know that a casual viewer would accept a bunch of sci-fi soldiers singing as they face unbeatable odds.  But you know what, for a first attempt at a 40K movie, this was pretty good.  And it’s one of those all too rare adult animated science fiction films.  Nice.

Moon:  David Bowie’s kid and that squirrelly guy (Guy) from Galaxy Quest somehow came together to create one of the all time best science fiction films of all time.  Who’d have thought?  An homage to films like 2001, Outland, and Silent Running, and a darned good science fiction film on its own, Moon is a quiet, thoughtful, emotional movie.  Made on a super-low budget, it manages to pack quite a punch.  Visually excellent, great music, and a powerhouse performance from lead Sam Rockwell.  A must.

Attack of the Puppet People:  “What would I do in St. Luis?”  John Agar!  I love my NetFlix queue.  I never really know what will come in next, and it’s like a little fun challenge to watch and enjoy them all.  This Bert I. Gordon classic features the Once and Future King of B-Movies, John Agar and his terrifying…er…handsome face.  John Hoyt (Enterprise doctor before McCoy) is a super-creeper doll maker bent on dastardly deeds.  And his particular brand of pseudo-science is kind of awesome.  The movie is Bert I. Silly, Bert I. Goofy, Bert I. Fun.

Chung King Express:  “When an apartment cries, it takes a lot to mop it up.”  A young cop who just got dumped is out looking for love.  A coke running femme fatale looking for a place to hide.  A beat cop trying to come to terms with his lady leaving him.  And a music loving young woman (manic pixie dream girl) working at a fast food place.  Relationships, what might have been, what was, and where they’ll eventually take us, for better or for worse.  I don’t always like the style choices in the film.  The weird trailing effects in the opening chase sequence, for example.  But the romance with the Stewardess sequence is really good.  In fact, the whole second half of the movie is excellent.  The music is weird.  The soundtrack features some solid, evocative songs.  But the score reminds me of that electronica jazz from Blade Runner, which feels weird in the 90s (it wasn’t all that normal in the early 80s).  I remember watching this movie years ago with the anticipation that it was going to be some kind of exploitation crime film.  I was sorely disappointed and took 10 years to come back and give it another go.  This second viewing (prompted in part by reading The Film Club a few weeks back) was much more enjoyable and I was in a much better place to see the film.  The sadness of two men in the aftermath of their women bailing.  The tentative steps of reaching out to someone else.  Adorable but painful and awkward fumblings toward connection.  Manic Pixie’s secret housekeeping is totally crazy (TOTALLY CRAZY!!!), yet manages to be extremely cute at the same time.  There is a bit of strong violence in the early part of the film.  But otherwise, it’s a very light, romantic film.

Witches’ Hammer:  Europe’s witch fever is the subject of this Eastern European film from the 60s.  Pretty good production value and a strong cast help.  And the Hammer Horror storyline and semi-exploitative nudity make for entertaining viewing.  But that sick, sexual malediction inflicted on people by their obsessive and oppressive clergy is at the core of the movie.  People sublimating their sexual need with orgies of wrathful violence.  And obviously, the rampant hatred and demonizing of women (can’t talk about Medieval/Renaissance Christians without bringing that up…Oh, how times have changed…Oh, wait!).  Not a great movie, and relentlessly downbeat.  Still, it’s well made.

The Lady from Shanghai:  “Some people can smell danger.  Not me.”  Orson Welles is a poor Irish sap who crosses paths with hokey-smokes hot Rita Hayworth and her google-eyed lawyer husband Everett Sloane.  I’m kind of used to Welles as either a pampered intellectual/artist type or a bloated old beast. 
This weird, in between stage, with him playing something of a badass going to seed is somewhat disconcerting.  But he pulls it off.  Heck, I even forgive him the James Cagney-type Lucky Charms accent.  Welles was a master of portraying the ugliness of human relations, especially among the rich and/or powerful.  This movie is some pretty danged twisted stuff.  Beautifully crafted.  It’s extremely stylized with strange use of rear projection and ADR.  But that help enhance the madness of the tale.

Branded to Kill:  “My hope is to die.”  I’ll admit it.  For quite a while I had no flippin’ idea what was going on in this movie.  Something about hitmen I guess.  One of ‘em is a useless drunk.  They drive around.  I thought with a corpse in the back seat, but it turns out the guy wasn’t dead.  Or there was another guy.  I don’t know.  And I have no idea what happened during the big shoot-out around the 15 minute mark.  The geography of the scene didn’t make any sense I could figure.  And what’s Puffy Cheeks’ deal?  Again.  I don’t know.  He sure likes rice, though.  And sexin’ the ladies.  The sex scenes are pretty weird and wild.  Watching this, I have to wonder, did the Japanese audiences watching it when it hit theaters think it was as crazy as I?  I’m guessing yes.  I’ve seen enough Japanese movies from that time to have a pretty good idea that this would have been strange no matter the viewer’s native tongue/culture.

    “You’re going to fire me at a planet?  That’s your plan?”  I started off the week with the first disk of the new Doctor Who’s seventh season.  The new series is its own monster.  I like it, but it sometimes feels like its emotional extremity is wound up to such a crazy level that it loses its impact.  I salute them for going for it, but occasionally toning it down to 11 might help balance the series out.  I was glad to see the return, in a way, of the Silurians.  They’re one of my favorite, infrequently recurring (sometime) foes.  And hey, Farscape’s Ben Browder shows up as a Western town sheriff.

    Reading a good history book can be thrilling.  Seeing the connections between seemingly unrelated events, piecing together a deeper understanding of places and peoples, how things came about, why some people are famous and remembered, while others languish in obscurity.  History can be amazing.  I’ve developed quite a taste for reading about it.  But it can also become danged depressing.  Seeing all the times the world was on the right track, that things were building to something amazing, only to be dashed by some wave of religious zealotry or ethnically motivated violence (usually both).  It becomes somewhat grim.  Removed from the events by time and with my modern perspective I want to grab these people by their jerkins and shake them until they wake up to the stupidity of what they’re going to do.  Without really noticing it, and because my interests were hopping between different subjects and time periods, over the last couple years I read almost exclusively history, memoir, and philosophy.  I’d moved away from another subject near and dear to my heart, science, specifically technology.  In fact, one of the only science books I’ve read recently was The Greatest Show on Earth, which was an excellent discussion of the up to date understanding of biology.  Not a lot about technology in there, beyond those things that allow us to gain deeper understanding of how biology works.  So, without realizing it, I think I’d put myself into an intellectual funk.  Reading so much history started making me feel bad.  I became so frustrated with humanity and all its many mistakes and stupidities that I was getting pretty blue.  A couple weeks back, I was looking at my book shelves and saw a book I’d picked up a year or so ago, The Vertical Farm.  “I haven’t read a science book in a while,” I thought.  Oh, man.  What a cathartic relief.  I need to remember to throw in something like this every once in a while to balance out my other reading.  A positive, future looking book about things we are doing and can do to improve ourselves and our world.  And a reminder that while there is still plenty of darkness in the world, today really is the best time in this history of humankind.  There has never been a more peaceful, enlightened, connected, free time ever.  Does everyone enjoy it?  No.  But more people do than ever have before.  And it can get better.  Riding that high, I wasn’t ready to come down.  After so many books about various times humanity dropped the ball, I needed a bit more about picking it up and running with it.  So I grabbed another book off the shelf, The Department of Mad Scientists.  Even better.  A look at some of the amazing strides we’ve made in the last 50 years, and hints at some of those on the horizon.  The world has so much potential for getting better and better.  I’m glad I live now, as opposed to before.  But part of me wishes I lived later.  Which I think is why I’ve come to embrace a degree of immortality.  I want to see what comes next, and then, and then.  Where will we be in 50 years, 100 years, 10,000 years?  What will humanity have become?  I want to find out.  And if these DARPA folk and others like them keep pushing boundaries, maybe I’ll live to find out.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (2/24/13-3/2/13)

    Gah.  Thank goodness for the brief escape of movies.  Not my best week.


Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades:  “Getting laid is just about the best part of being in our line of work.”  Ogami Itto is back with his boy in a cart, killing assassins, dispensing etiquette lessons with extreme prejudice, and scaring the locals.  The structure of these films is rather strange.  I guess in part because the lead characters are simply wandering around, and I guess maybe because it was originally a comic.  Though there are longer stories and themes, a great deal of the action takes place in little episodes.  In this one especially, by the end of the first 20 minutes, we’re seeing what seems like a climactic duel.  These movie teach valuable, if sometimes obvious lessons, like ‘don’t stick any part of yourself into the mouth of a woman who hates you.’  Seems obvious enough, but some people seem not to know.  I suppose any class based society, especially one with a high value on face, will have a complicated system of behavior, but dang the whole Bushido, Way of the Warrior thing seems unnecessarily complex.  I feel bad for the pistol packing bandito.  He seemed like a nice enough guy.  All the various factions and interests pulling this way and that in this movie get pretty nuts.  Everyone seems to have screwed over someone, or been screwed over by someone.  And everyone is out for blood.  They get it.  By the bucket.  Ogami kills almost as many people as John Matrix.

The Mechanic:  “My friends are so happy they’re killing themselves.”  The 70s, a time when leading men didn’t have to be handsome.  Heck, they could be pug-ugly sombitches like Charles Bronson.  Here the master of the ‘stache plays a consummate professional, hired by mobsters to take care of problems.  He smokes a pipe.  He’s physically fit.  He listens to classical music.  He knows kung-fu.  He looks at art.  He has a swanky bachelor pad.  He hooks up with love-hungry dames (well, money-hungry).  He lives the dream.  Sure, sometimes you have to blow up a sad old dude.  But that’s why they call it work.  When Keenan Wynn shows up, you know there’s gonna be some kind of trouble.  That trouble ends up being Stringfellow Hawk himself, Jan-Michael Vincent, a punk looking to get more out of life.  But you know the kid is trouble.  He’s just too brash to not cause problems.  Once again, the mob suits think it’s a good idea to mess with their trained killer. Why would you do that?  You’re just begging for trouble.  It’s stupid.  Let him do his thing, pay him what you owe, and be cool.  It’s a PG movie from the 70s, so there’s nothing kid-friendly about it.  It’s not as extreme as some, so it would probably only get a PG-13 today, especially because there’s no nudity (the most evil thing imaginable in the eyes of the MPAA).

Assassination:  “Oh, boy, am I gonna miss Nancy Reagan.”  When I saw that Cannon symbol pop up at the beginning of this movie, then Golan and Globus?  Oh, man.  I knew I was in for a treat (or I hoped).  Old man Bronson is tasked with protecting the First Lady.  You know that’s gonna be good.  Awkwardly directed, poor sound design, stilted dialog.  Then Jill Ireland’s incalculably stupid First Lady actually shows up and the magic happens.  He’s so surly.  She’s so bitchy.  There’s an Asian woman named Charlie (not kidding).  I think this movie was doing ‘jazz hands’ it was so silly.  Man, this movie is a turd.  It feels like it would be good fodder for the MST3K boys.  But with them out of the picture, it’s up to us to carry on the good fight and watch crap like this.  Michael Ansara shows up to add his own brand of class, but it’s nowhere near enough.  The movie ends up feeling WAY longer than it really is, becoming quite excruciating by the hour mark.  And man, Jill Ireland is aggravating.

The Big Sleep:  “Would you happen to have a Ben Hur 1860?”  Another classic, one might even say iconic Humphrey Bogart crime films, it isn’t a perfect movie by any stretch.  But it’s full of the usual charm, and those little exchanges that make it stand out.  The whole sequence in the book shop with Dorothy Malone is probably the most obvious, but for a reason.  The girl is adorable, and there’s a sweet, almost innocent, sexual tension that is fun to watch.  If only I had a fraction of the panache (or the bottle of pretty good rye) that Bogart has, maybe this would be my typical visit to the book store.  Heck, there are gorgeous dames wherever Bogart goes in this movie.  Even the cabbie.  Tons of back stabbing, twisting of knives, shady behavior, and yeah, murder.

The Thing:  “Nothing wrong with this Norwegian.”  Hands down one of the best horror films of all time, and a great science fiction flick, to boot.  Adapted from the creepy 30s story Who Goes There?, it captures the camaraderie of men on the frontier, as well as paranoia and phobia.  A Lovecraftian alien stalks an Antarctic research base and it could be inside anybody.  1982 was an amazing year in film, giving us several classic films.  The Thing is one of those greats.

Gattaca:  More cautionary tale than the typically anti-science we’re normally subjected to in science fiction films, this looks at the dangers presented by the abuse of genetic engineering and gene sequencing.  A retro-50s style world where traditionally conceived children become de facto second class citizens, while the world is the oyster of those who have been crafted to be superior.  A guy with bad eyesight and a high potential for a tricky ticker can’t settle for cleaning toilets.  He’s dreamed of going to space since he was a little boy, and being genetically in-valid won’t stop him.  Masquerading as a genetically superior person, he manages to get himself on the docket for launch.  But it all comes tumbling down when a supervisor is murdered and undue attention falls on the potential astronauts at Gattaca.  The 50s look and ‘gee shucks’ hunger for space exploration balance well with the murder mystery and triumph of the human spirit story.  And though the script urges caution, it does not actually condemn genetic engineering.  The superior people are not evil.  Some are perhaps unsatisfied because things have come too easy, but they are not evil.  The discrimination faced by the un-modified is obviously also bad.  At some point over the last 30 or so years (maybe a bit more) stories like this, those urging cautious advancement, avoidance of potential dangers presented by advancing technologies, gave way to simple fear mongering and anti-science/anti-reason stories.

Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord: The Ultimate Foe:  “All my travelings throughout the universe, I have battled against evils, against power-mad conspirators.  I should have stayed here.”  The final story in the season-long arc is pretty lame.  Frankly, the whole season was pretty blah.  And of course, they bring the Master back.  Gah.  Not a great exit for Colin Baker.  It’s too bad.  I have actually come to really enjoy Baker as the Doctor.  It’s too bad he was saddled by less than amazing scripts.

Nomads of the North:  Trouble is brewing in Canada when a country girl and her sick old father hit bad times, and Raoul won’t come back to save the day.  Meanwhile, a puppy and a bear cub have adventures in the wilderness.  How will these stories converge?  Watch and find out!  A lot of this movie seems to be ‘let’s film some cute animals and see what they do.’  But there’s always time for Father Murder-Face!  The story kind of wanders.  It’s supposedly based on a book, but I can’t imagine that being any good.  Who knows.

The Shock:  Sinister old-timey Chinatown is the launching point of this Lon Chaney vehicle.  Oddly, Chinatown only seems to have like three Asians in it.  Chaney is a crippled wheeler-dealer, sent by the evil (white) lady who runs local crime, to a rural town where he falls for a local cutie.  But she’s betrothed to another.  Oh, dear.  Standard twists and turns, then EARTHQUAKE!!!  Neither this, nor Nomads of the North were especially good, but interesting looks at less than classic films being made in the silent era.

    I finally tapped back into Farscape after a long hiatus.  Still super weird.  The f-dup love of Aeryn and John, a planet full of degenerate spirit talkers, dangerous escaped criminals (well, more dangerous escaped criminals) back stabbers, clones, Stark mysteriously disappearing again, and all the stuff you expect from one of the craziest shows to ever hit the airwaves.

The She Beast:  “For running over a chicken you won’t get more than two years.”  No idea what the quality of the original film might have been.  But this DVD is terrible.  Grainy, pan & scan, bleached out colors, and horrible audio.  The movie itself, once one gets past its presentation, is pretty lame.  Witches, Dracula, satanic cults, and various tomfoolery.  Barbara Steele and her Marty Feldman eyes runs into supernatural trouble in Eastern Europe.  But not before her husband nearly face-humps a peeping tom to death.  This movie sucks.

    After a really long and unintentional break, I got back to Space Academy.  Another of those kid-aimed ultra-low budget shows from the 70s.  It’s OK, but not especially good.  The cast is bland and of course, Dr. Smith from Lost in Space is awful.  When you realize that this show was from around the same time as the UK’s Tomorrow People, its quality appears rather diminished.  And it’s all in the writing, as neither show had especially sophisticated effects.

    On Saturday, before attending a gathering at a Reston bar to commemorate the closing of the Reston Barnes & Noble, Brad, Lisa, and myself went to the AFI Silver to see another of Brad’s 2013 movie resolutions, Gone With the Wind.  It’s a movie I’ve always kind of wanted to revisit, after my less than successful attempt back in the 80s.  My mom and I had tried to watch it, but I bailed after 15 or 20 minutes, and she fell asleep for most of its 4 hour run.  I was always a fan of movies, and I loved the classics, but it just didn’t hold me.  So, I figured now would be a good time to give it a go, and on the big screen no less.  What a way to see this classic.  AFI’s number 2 film of all time.  This was gonna be great!

Gone With the Wind:  F*&% this movie and the horse it rode in on…and then beat to death.  Before I get into anything else, I have to say that, with the exception of Birth of a Nation (which people have had the good graces and sense to turn their collective backs upon), this is about the most racist film I’ve ever seen.  (Political meeting?!  You mean Klan rally you assholes!)  It’s bloody awful.  Just awful.  The only consolation is that, amazingly, nobody was in blackface.  But every black character is a horrible exaggerated stereotype that made me squirm in my seat and want to watch Django Unchained just to get the taste out of my mouth.  How many more times could they wistfully talk about the good old days of Southern chivalry and how gallant and honorable all those slave owning, inbred degenerates were.  Please, let’s hear again how those Yankees were evil for forcing men to work (totally different from slavery…’cause this time it’s us).  I feel like this movie took a crap in my head.  Scarlett O’Hara now sits alongside Holly Golightly in my pantheon of most despicable depictions of womankind in cinema, made all the worse by her (and Holly’s) beloved status among young girls.  Were there ever two worse role models?  A fickle, money hungry, self-centered monster and a ditzy whore.  Great for the kids.  As Scarlett destroys everything and everyone she can rope into her orbit of bitchiness, we are subjected to crying fit after crying fit, shrill screechings, and human ugliness in a rainbow of flavors.  In fact, there are only maybe two characters in the entire thing that don’t make me wish Sherman’s March had been a lot wider…and hotter.  Clark Gable is pretty awesome as the dashing rogue who manages to have the fickle monster’s number.  Sadly, some devil drives him to love the beast, and he dashes himself against her treacherous shores on more than one occasion.  Oh, and let’s not forget the drunken rape followed by the blissful morning-after glow.   …What the F&*%?!  F&%$ this movie!  It’s so bloody disgusting and dreadful, with such a sickness at its heart that in spite of its bloated, four hour run-time, I wasn’t bored until the last 45 minutes or so.  I was sustained by hatred and rage.  Getting to the technical aspects, I know some quality was lost due to a pretty bad print.  But the whole thing felt ultra-artificial.  Even when everyone was outside.  I think that may have a lot to do with the coloring techniques of the time (similar to The Adventures of Robin Hood), though I’ve seen other movies from around then that looked better.  There were a few really beautiful shots, with some interesting composition.  Sadly, the Max Steiner score was kind of awful, and he‘s usually good.  That theme got into my head like an terrible pop song.  Every three or four minutes, it plays again, or some variant on it does.  By the intermission, I was so flippin’ sick of hearing that one musical phrase (da-DEE-da-da) over and over, I wanted to scream.  Well, like Birth of a Nation, I can check this off my ‘to see’ list and thankfully never have to sit through it again.  The movie made me wish I could travel back in time and Sherman my own way through the South and pee all over everything after it burned.  F*^% this movie so hard!  So hard it wakes up the next morning and happily hums and drinks its tea, gets pregnant with my hate-baby and then falls down some stairs.

Just got raped.  Not kidding.

The Mysterious Lady:  Greta Garbo, man.  I’d always heard about her, and I’d seen pictures.  But seeing her in action makes all the difference.  You can totally understand why everyone went gaga for her.  Not only is she beautiful, but she has a naturalness in front of the camera that stands out in that era, and there’s something in her eyes that speaks of pleasures and dangers beyond a normal man’s experiences.  Like the femme fatale of later Film Noir, she is the inspiration for men to do stupid things, to get into all sorts of trouble, and to fall into soul shaking love/lust.  Beyond that, the movie is a fun little spy caper, though there isn’t much to in by way of plot.  Still, it has some good moments.

The Temptress:  Another Greta Garbo film where she’s destroying men and they’re loving her for it.  This one it shot with some serious panache and style.  The fade in to the rich banker’s party from his photo is very well done, and the party itself is lavish and sumptuous, but sinister as well.  This one is odd, because Garbo isn’t exactly the monster everyone seems to think she is.  I think she’s actually completely honest, only professing love for one man.  But every man destroys himself and his friends on the alter of her beauty, every man that is, except the one she loves.  I’d feel pretty bad for her, except that she doesn’t really stop any of the men.  I wouldn’t say she leads them on, but she doesn’t try to stop them, either.  It’s weird.  Visually the movie is quite striking.  And it has a whip fight.  You don’t see that too often.

    And we watched another couple episodes of Game of Thrones.  Very entertaining, very grim show.  Lots of strong performances.  And things are getting much stranger.  I’m very curious to see where it all leads.  And they toned down the sex after the first couple episodes featured a bit too much.  I don’t have a problem with the sex when it furthers the story, just when it starts to get in the way, which was becoming a concern for a bit.

What, does this seem odd?

    In preparation for watching The Thing, I sat down to the original short story, Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr.  Sometimes one forgets that Lovecraft’s writing style doesn’t seem archaic because it was written in the 20s, but because he was consciously emulating earlier styles.  In many ways, Who Goes There? reads like a modern story.  A few uses of older phrases or different vocabulary aside, there is little to set it apart, stylistically from a horror story of 30, 20, or 10 years ago.

-Matt