Matt’s Week in Dork! (3/2/14-3/8/14)

    Busy, busy, busy.  A Dork’s life is never (OK, often) dull.  Up first thing on Sunday for my recommended dose of Neeson, and then I was off, for another week of running around, trying to read, catching too few movies, and generally doing what I do.  F’in snow storm on Monday threw a bit of a monkey wrench into the works.  Seriously.  I moved to Virginia in part to get away from snow and winter storms.  And everyone kept telling me they’re so rare here.  Well, three out of 7 years we’ve had severe winter weather and I’ve had to shovel.  Not cool.  Anyway, on with the usual Dorkness.

Non-Stop:  Not quite as good as Taken or Taken 2, this “Liam Neeson gets angry and kills a bunch of people” movie is more on the level of Unknown.  It’s fun and perfectly watchable, but it won’t be going on any best of lists.  Like an Agatha Christie story, the movie sets up everyone to look as guilty as possible, so you never quite know who the villain is…except that I knew who the villain was from the first moment said person showed their face on screen.  If you’re in the mood for Neeson yelling and looking angry, while occasionally snapping a neck, watch Taken.  But if you just watched Taken, this is a fine follow-up.

Fiancee of Dracula:  Grave yards, weird nuns, a circus dwarf on a motorcycle, a baby eating ogress who looks like a porn star?  Oh, yes.  Jean Rollin.  This film deals with many of the themes Rollin used from his earliest days.  His vampires are sad, slightly baffled extra-dimensional beings, disconnected from those around them and often thought mad.  They wander and stumble across each other, and across other weird characters as they try to figure themselves and their world out.  Rollin never really grew as an artist, but within his very strange, very specific little world, he was a master.  Dream logic, vague pretension, an almost Romantic sexuality, and a playful touch of the absurd.  Though not traditionally good, I find Rollin’s films compulsively watchable, and for more than just the pretty women taking their clothes off.  The atmosphere he creates sometimes feels like what Hammer Studios was reaching for in their most Gothic of films (though Hammer had a tendency to expect their films to have some modicum of plot and logic).

Pilot X: Murder in the Sky:  This feels like a truncated serial, with much the same plot progression common to the ‘masked criminal’ series.  Planes have been getting shot down, so in an attempt to find out who is doing it, the likely suspects are brought to a secluded house to be observed.  Of course, they start getting picked off, the most obviously guilty first, and so on.  The acting is mostly stilted and the editing makes most of the flying scenes almost impossible to follow.  Several times, I couldn’t tell who was involved in a dog fight, who was winning, or who’d just been shot.  And honestly, the reveal was pretty darned obvious.  The details, not so much, but I had the killer pegged from early on.  It’s an OK bit of fluff, but there are many better.

Tim’s Vermeer:  I’m glad this isn’t simply the ‘mad eccentric’ movie the trailer made it out to be.  Tim Jenison is a very smart guy, and yes, perhaps a bit mad.  And he’s interested in a lot of things.  He’s made enough money that he’s able to investigate and explore these interests to sometimes surreal extremes.  And this is the case with his fascination with the artist Vermeer and how his paintings were made.  Following in the footsteps of a few researchers, Tim conceived of a wild project to try to recreate one of the paintings in what he believes may be the unconventional way it was originally done.  What follows is part archeology, part art history, part This Old House, and more than a part obsession.  Tim isn’t the distant savant, or creepy loner that usually anchors a subject like this.  He seems like a mostly normal, if clearly genius level, human being.  A guy you might get coffee with, or discuss the latest film.  And as crazy as what he’s doing is, he reacts to much of it in a perfectly reasonable way, even admitting at one point that if it wasn’t part of an ongoing film production, he’d have quit working on it.  But I’m glad it was part of that film.  There are a lot of things discussed over the course of the movie, about philosophy and history, etc.  But I think the most interesting and important realization, or assertion is that art and science were not, and should not be separate things.  I think the separation of art and science has led to some serious cultural dissonance.  A satisfying documentary, which made me want to go out and paint…not a Vermeer, but something.

    Thanks to TCM showing so many great movies you just can’t find on DVD, I got a chance to see a Ruth Chatterton movie I’d been wanting to see for some time.  They’re really the only channel I watch, and the one thing I’ll miss when I don’t have cable again in a year.

Dodsworth:  Walter Huston is so much fun as the newly retired industrialist, off to learn how to live his life and love his wife.  Sadly, his wife, played by Ruth Chatterton, isn’t so much interested in love as she is in holding on to her quickly receding youth.  She is attracted to flattery like a moth of flame, and that can’t end well.  Considering that this film came out after the Hayes Codes were in full effect, I was a bit surprised by some of the content.  I suppose, even with the crackdown, not everyone was on board or had their puritanical hooks into everything yet.  I’m gaining a new appreciation for Walter Huston recently.  And I’ve become quite a fan of Ruth Chatterton, who is playing someone very different than I’m used to here, but doing a fine job of it.  You really hate and pity her as it goes on.

About Time:  Absolutely, this is a sappy romantic fantasy, with a very odd time travel twist that allows it to make its point.  Fine.  But dang it, it’s super sweet and adorable, and I love the cast.  It’s funny, it’s charming, and if I had a heart in my chest, I would imagine this warming it.  Now, the movie is guilty of one cinematic sin, for sure.  It uses the old ‘frumpy hair/outfit’ in order to try to make us imagine that Rachel McAdams isn’t a painfully beautiful woman.  However, I thought McAdams is a good enough actor that she made me forget how hot she is for a while, and focus on how awkwardly cute her character is.  I could certainly understand people accusing this of being saccharine or schmaltzy.  They wouldn’t necessarily be wrong.  But I enjoyed the heck out of the whole thing.

    On Thursday night, we were again at our usual haunt, The Alamo Drafthouse, to see a double shot of muscle and steel.  I’d seen 300 on the big screen when it first came out, but not in a really nice theater.  And it made a difference.  This time around, the first time the Persians slam against the Spartan shields, I felt the impact as much as I heard it.

300:  One of the most wonderfully ridiculous, over the top, macho, beefy films ever made, this rousing tale of buff dudes battling mutant hoards has about as much to do with the historic events as The Ten Commandments, but it’s got a heck of a lot more awesome.  Lots of great lines, lots of wild scenes, lots of driving music, and so, so much wacky slow/fast motion.  The battles are intense and fun, the dialog almost Shakespearian in its theatricality.  And the badassery on display not only from the Spartan soldiers, but from Queen Gorgo …Awesome.  I hope that when I’m called to defend my lands against ravaging hoards of horror, I have a woman half as hardcore as Gorgo watching my back.  In a movie so crammed full of baby-oiled up muscle men, chest pounding, and testosterone pumping speeches, it’s great to have a woman who stands toe to toe on heroics.  And something I can’t help but mention when I talk about this movie, I love that it portrays a couple who are deeply and passionately in love with each other, enjoy each other’s company, and still has a vigorous sex life.

300: Rise of an Empire:  Everything that worked in the first film did not work in this one.  I was horrified to find myself longing for 300’s subtlety…Yeah, a movie that’s about as subtle as a Nic Cage freak-out, and this film makes it look like the world's greatest spy giving a lesson on subtlety at the University of Subtle, Secretly Located In Oxford (accredited!).  We’re subjected to the sad, sensitive, irritatingly concerned, blue eyes of a perpetually young warrior poet from Athens, Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton), who explains in great detail how everything that he and his army does is ‘what living/fighting/being free is all about.’  And then we have the most feared and powerful naval commander in the Persian Empire, Artemisia (Eva Green), who manages to blow every opportunity for victory and display every possible level of incompetence, seemingly having gained all her position and power by using secret vagina magic.  Then we get to find out how she has the most cliché back story they could come up with (yes, that’s right, the toughest sorceress/general/warrior/naval commander and right-hand of the Persian Emperor is just an injured little girl looking to get back at the people who wronged her…For the love of crap!  F&%$ you, writer(s) of this film!).  Show don’t tell.  That’s the golden rule of cinema, and the one this movie breaks most often.  I kept trying to like it.  For the first fifteen or twenty minutes, I think I managed to not hate it.  But at some point, I couldn’t pretend anymore, and the taint it was putting upon the first film was too much.  Zack Snyder has his faults, and his last two movies (Sucker Punch  and Man of Steel) have disappointed me greatly.  But I missed him on this project, for sure.  And really?  Really?  Penetrated by his cock-sword?  Really?  300 only had one female character, but she was f'in hardcore and stood as much for heroism as any of the beefy Spartans.  This movie has two.  Gorgo has inexplicably become a sword wielding warrior woman (not her brand of badass), and Artemisia who seems to embody Victorian Man's fears and hatreds of women.  Ugh.

Old Boy (2013):  I know so many people who go so gaga over the original Korean film, but watching it a couple years back, I was left cold/bored by it.  I don’t tend to respond well to Korean film in general; something about the pacing, I don’t know.  Whatever the case, combined with the fact that Spike Lee was behind this remake, it was not something I gave two craps about.  Not even sure why I ended up putting it on my NetFlix queue.  But I did, and now I’ve seen it, and it’s…OK.  I felt a bit more engaged in this version than the original.  However, it still left me cold; though not as bored.  Everyone is fine.  The story is pretty messed up.  Sharlto Copley tries his darnedest to channel Vincent Price in his wildly silly villain role.  But Lee’s usual camera tomfoolery is off-putting, and while Elizabeth Olsen does a good job, I can’t help but feel her character stepped out of a crappy 80s action/cop movie (if only she lived in a converted warehouse and did welding/sculpting as a hobby).  I wouldn’t avoid watching this, but I wouldn’t go out of my way, either.

    Saturday afternoon, the director and the star of the short film I’m working on came to my place for a penultimate meeting, with some test shots of costume and set, and a final checklist of props and such.  I felt a heck of a lot better after seeing how the set wall looked on camera.  That was making me a bit nervous.  Otherwise, it all seems good.  I’m so danged excited to see this as a final product.

Love:  You can probably guess this from the trailer, but Love owes a good deal to Kubrick’s 2001 and many other science fiction movies besides.  But that shouldn’t lessen your enjoyment of this slightly non-linier story about an astronaut stranded in space.  Pieces of the story are rooted in the American Civil War, and there are lots of flashbacks and cut-away shots of people living and talking about life.  It’s all very artsy, but didn’t feel particularly pretentious.  The film looks great, with some gorgeous Civil War battle shots and lots of excellent space stuff.  Yes, there’s gravity on the space station.  So what?  This isn’t a high budget film, thus, no zero-G filming.  Don’t be a dick.  The sets are nice, and the lead actor doesn’t botch it.  I don’t know that he’s the most charismatic or interesting to watch, but he’s got the weight of the whole film on his shoulders and he doesn’t mess it up.  So, bravo.  Fans of more serious science fiction should give it a go.  Not one for the ages, but good.

    It was interesting to watch Love when I did.  A few things I’ve seen recently play with some of the ideas of this short film we’re working on.  Like Gravity, All is Lost, The Wall, and some others I’ve seen recently, Love deals with isolation and the stress of being out of contact.

    And that’s about it.  I had a busy week, but not as much on the Dork side as I like.  I’m hoping with the weather finally looking like it might not totally suck, I’ll be able to get my bike out and start breathing outdoor air again.  Time will tell.

-Matt

Book Review: Lying

    I like to be challenged.  People might not think that about me, because I have a strong inclination to resist change and my suspicion of fixing things that don’t appear to be broken is quite deep.  But it’s true.  I like to be challenged.  I think that’s why I found myself genuinely enjoying reading Nietzsche (for fun, not for a class or something).  And I’m sure it’s why I developed a fondness for the forthright and provocative works of Christopher Hitchens, Penn Jillette, and Sam Harris.  I first encountered Harris through various web videos of debates and speeches, often on the subject of religion and the rejection thereof.  But by the time I found him, that was no longer a challenging subject for me.  He may have helped me find better ways of saying what I meant, but I had already come to terms with my lack of belief in the supernatural.  Where he began to challenge me was in his book The Moral Landscape.  In my gut, I’d never felt right about some of the moral relativism that my 80s-raised mind wanted so much to hold on to.  Something didn’t sit right when it came to justifying barbaric acts in the name of cultural sensitivity, standing silent when I knew in my very bones that something evil was afoot.  And with The Moral Landscape, Harris challenged my thinking, and helped me forge that discomfort into a more coherent and I hope productive way of looking at the world.

    With Lying, Sam Harris has challenged me once again.  As a general thing, I consider myself an honest person.  I suppose most people do, but I have a long standing tendency to call it as I see it (not necessarily as it is) and to play as fair as I can with folks.  Admittedly, I’ve often used silence as a means of avoiding saying truths that might put me in socially awkward positions.  But generally, I’ve tried to be an honest person.  Or so I thought.  Reading Lying, I see that, while on a spectrum, I might be on the honest side of the middle, I still perpetuate our culture of lies.  I’m not a disciplined person.  I’m not going to lie here and say that I will be embracing a strictly and more thoughtfully honest life from this point forward.  It’s not that I don’t think it’s possible (though it would be difficult as I did grow up Catholic, where honestly, especially with oneself, is not generally well received or encouraged).  It’s that I know myself well enough to know that my commitment to being more thoughtful and honest will not be as deep and conscientious as it should be.  Still, the book challenges me to be a better person, and to think more about the damage that lies, even so called ‘white lies’ can do.  I do think that going forward, I will be more careful about telling the truth, more apt to avoid even those socially lubricating fabrications.

    The idea of living in an honest society, a conscientiously honest and straight-forward world, absolutely appeals to me.  And the goal Harris seems to have of shifting our cultural mindset in that direction is an honorable and important one.  Lying seems like the sort of book that should be read by as many people as possible, but probably won't be read by those who could be most served by it (like The Moral Landscape).  Being in business, I can see the need for this book in the business community.  But the medical, governmental, educational, and other arenas could all use a healthy dose of self-reflection and positive reinforcement of honest speech and behavior.

    The book, originally an e-book, now comes in a hardcover edition which features a Q&A between Sam Harris and Ronald A. Howard, a man who was a huge inspiration in Harris’s own quest to lead an honest life.  The two discuss various aspects of lies and truths, and the potential pitfalls and benefits.  In addition, there are questions from readers of the e-book with responses by Harris.  The book itself is quite short (42 pages), with the appendixes bringing it up to 95 pages, plus a few more pages of notes.  But while the book is short, I think there's a lot to think about within its pages.  Again, coming from the business world, this is a heck of a lot more useful and important than something like the oft lauded Who Moved My Cheese.  Whatever your career or lifestyle, I would recommend taking this challenge.  Read Lying, and think more about the truth and lies in your life, how they effect you, the ones you love, and society in general.

Lying
Author: Sam Harris
Publisher: Four Elephants Press
ISBN: 978-1-9400-5100-0

-Matthew J. Constantine

Book Review: God is Not Great

“Credulity may be a form of innocence, and even innocuous in itself, but it provides a standing invitation for the wicked and the clever to exploit their brothers and sisters, and is thus one of humanity’s great vulnerabilities.  No honest account of the growth and persistence of religion, or the reception of miracles and revelations, is possible without reference to this stubborn fact.” -page 161

    It was the success of this book that first made me aware of Christopher Hitchens, though it was various footage of him in debates and readings that made me really take note, made me a fan if you will.  So, it is a bit odd that I’ve only just gotten around to reading God is Not Great, after his autobiography Hitch 22, his massive collection of essays Arguably, his book about the process of death by cancer Mortality, and others.  The book stands as a kind of clarion call for people of reason to shake off their placating politeness and collectively call BS on the aggressive, pervasive, divisive, and morally bankrupt purveyors of the ultimate bait-and-switch scheme, religion (you give me money and power now, and when you’re dead you’ll get some vague reward).  And as you might expect from Hitch, it is full of wit and rage.

    As usual, he spares no fool.  Be it the media monster and champion of suffering (not for those who suffer, but for their suffering) Mother Teresa, or blowhard fools like Pat Robertson, or imams, priests, and charlatans of all stripes, he is on the attack.  And he uses the greatest tools of the trade.  He uses evidence, history, logic, and the most damaging weapon of all, the words of the holy texts and of their followers.  Is there a book more obviously cobbled together, disjoined, and nonsensical than the Bible?  Well, perhaps the Koran.  Both draw heavily on the Torah, which is itself a patchwork mess.  Claims of historic merit are at best dubious, and more frequently patently fraudulent.  Connections to historic places and people are often wildly inaccurate or incongruous, but that doesn’t stop the faithful from dubbing them proof of authenticity.  And when considering how many generations (frequently centuries) after the supposed events anything at all was written down, can even those less than air tight connections be seriously considered.

“Who--except for an ancient priest seeking to exert power by the tried and tested means of fear-- could possibly wish that this hopelessly knotted skein of fable had any veracity?” -on the horrors of the Old Testament, page 103

    Reading the Bible, the Torah, The Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, or any text with spiritual lessons or claims of the divine, it should be obvious to all but the most painfully unaware that these books are as much the product of humans (men, specifically), as the plays of Shakespeare, the poetry of Homer, or the music (elevating as it may be) of Beethoven.  The rampant bloodletting, petty local squabbling, complete lack of understanding of the world outside of the knowledge of the original readers, and total lack of knowledge of the workings of the world and greater universe should make perfectly clear that there was no mystical revelation, no angelic dictation, just the fevered imaginings of savage men bent on power and scared of death.  No amount of rape, theft, child murder, genocide, or general awfulness is too much, it seems for the righteous.

“If one must have faith in order to believe something, or believe in something, then the likelihood of that something having any truth or value is considerably diminished.  The harder work of inquiry, proof, and demonstration is infinitely more rewarding, and has confronted us with findings far more ‘miraculous’ and ‘transcendent’ than any theology.”  -page 71

    And one can easily compare this century’s UFO mythology with any of the major religions.  It relies on vague stories, shoddy evidence, faulty logic, esoteric writings, and an understanding of the universe that relies on faith instead of reason.  And, like the major profits of old, heavenly forces reveal themselves to illiterate yokels on the fringes of society or beyond.  In a world full of well read, literate people, beings wishing to bring their ‘truth’ to the world find people of limited resources and capability.  That’s just poor planning.  Like with the concept of Intelligent Design, it requires that these cosmic forces are either cruel and deviant devils, or blind idiots (I guess a creature evil enough to make people in a specific way, only to condemn them for being that way might be F-dup enough to put the eye together backwards, put too many teeth in our heads, and have waste come out of our mating organ).

“Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar.  They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace.  But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.” -page 67

    I’ve always liked talking with, or listening to people much smarter and well read than myself.  Gleaning wisdom and knowledge, and finding new books to read or what have you.  Reading Hitchens feels like sitting down to great dinner conversation, and it’s led me to check out many things, and will continue to do so (one of these days I’m going to try Wodehouse).  But it was pretty sweet when he referenced a book I’d actually read already.  I think it’s the first time outside of one of his book reviews (for a Harry Potter novel) that it’s happened.  I read Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus: the Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why several years ago.  A fascinating book.  It was like listening to Dennis Miller back when he was funny (remember the 80s?) or the boys on MST3K, when you manage to catch an especially clever or obscure reference, you feel just that bit more cool, even if it is only for a moment.  Whenever I read Hitchens I feel like I’m learning something, but I also feel inspired to go out and learn more when I’m done.  That is the mark of a great teacher, and I’ve been lucky enough to have many of those (only a very few of them involved in my formal schooling).

    Lest one assume Hitchens only chastises and takes to task those religions more familiar in the West, he does go after several Eastern religions, like Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Confucianism, etc. with both barrels.  Whether exposing the awful hypocrisy of the hereditary horror-show that produced the Dali Lama, or the cult of the god-king that produced the famous kamikaze and was supported by the Buddhist mainstream in Japan, or the sectarian violence between Hindu and Buddhists that still grips Sri Lanka to this day.  And he addresses a couple of the most common attacks on atheism, the Nazis and the Stalinists.  Getting past the problems with the Nazi argument (like that most Nazis were practicing Christians), both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were more like theocracies than any kind of ‘secular’ state.  They did not attempt to suppress religion so much as replace it with a worship and obedience of the state.  He goes into some depth about the complicity of various churches and religious organizations in the creation and maintenance of these monolithic states, including the support of the Catholic Church for several fascist regimes, including Hitler’s Germany (though he does mention some of those few who stood up, including Catholics, to those same evils).

“But an extraordinary number of people appear to believe that the mind, and the reasoning faculty - the only thing that divides us from our animal relatives - is something to be distrusted and even, as far as possible, dulled.” -page 198

    Perhaps his most bold, but in a way most important question (and chapter title) “Is Religion Child Abuse?” looks into the effects of religion, both physical and psychological on children and on the adults they become.  Not just the obvious stuff like institutionalized sexual abuse or genital mutilation, but the more subtle things like telling a kid his grandfather is in hell, suffering for an eternity, because he was a different religion.  Or of course, racism, the ancient partner in crime of religion.  I remember hearing constantly throughout my Catholic upbringing that those evil (fill in the blank with Protestants, Satanists, Homosexuals, etc.) tried to ‘get you while you’re young.’  And I remember even then thinking, ‘wait, isn’t that what you’re doing, too?’  And of course, it was.  The best way to produce adults who believe in this mumbo-jumbo is to force them to believe it when they’re too young and malleable and credulous to turn away.  Otherwise, if you let children get to the point where they’re more rational, there’s almost no way they’d believe much of the crazy stuff written in the various holy texts.  They’ve lived long enough to spot a con, to know a lie, to see a fantasy.  And they’ve certainly lived to the point where getting the tip of one’s penis cut off or vagina sewn up doesn’t seem like a good idea.

“This is not the result of a few delinquents among the shepherds, but an outcome of an ideology which sought to establish clerical control by means of control of the sexual instinct and even the of the sexual organs.  It belongs, like the rest of religion, to the fearful childhood of our species.” -discussing the horrors of circumcision, mandated celibacy, and sexual repression, page 228

    Though not my favorite book by Christopher Hitchens, nor his most readable, it is a worthy effort and hopefully a conversation starter.  It identifies what he believed to be the great enemy facing humankind, calls it out, and gives it a sock on the jaw.  The book works as something of a call to action for all those who feel that religions of all stripes have a lot to answer for, if not a lot of answers.  And that the denial of reality one must embrace in order to believe in the supernatural is inherently damaging to us as individuals and to society as a whole.  That morality and ethics exist in spite of (and some times as opposed to), not because of religion.  The greatest gift that Hitchens, Sam Harris, Penn Jillette, and Stephen Fry, among others have given people like myself is a sense of community and hope.  We are not alone in our desire to leave behind the damaging and stultifying beliefs of our ancestors in order to create a more just and viable future.  That the way to live need not be dictated by squabbling illiterates who lurked in the deserts of our distant past, but in rational exploration of the world that is.  There are others out there like me, who found no answers to the questions that really matter in myth anthologies written by greedy savages, or in the expectation of rewards and punishments in the hereafter.  I constantly hear people talk about how silly, strange, or unfounded the religious beliefs of other peoples are.  But these same people can’t see the silliness in their own.  My hat is off to the late Hitchens for pulling back those curtains just a bit, and shedding light on a great many shadowed things.

“Yet again it is demonstrated that monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents.” -Page 280

God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Author: Christopher Hitchens
Publisher: Twelve
ISBN: 978-0-446-57980-3

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (1/27/13-2/2/13)

It’s lean days for this Dork.  And I’ll admit, I don’t think my head is in the game.  Still, got a few solid selections in and got some reading done.  So all is not lost.  Without intention  I spent a lot of time in Asia with my movies this week.  Japan, China, Indonesia.  That and more time with British science fiction.  But that’s not new.


Maverick:  “Gums his food and his women.”  Remember the good old days, when we didn’t know Mel Gibson was a belligerent nut-job?  I could have gone forever without finding out.  The 90s were a bad decade for a lot of folks for a lot of reasons.  Few suffered quite as much as 80s action icons.  Arnold, Van Damme, Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, Stallone, and yeah, Mel Gibson.  Somehow everything had this made for TV blandness about it, and the larger than life personas of the previous decade seemed like they were on tranquilizers or something.  Non-threatening scripts, non-threatening cinematography, no nudity of course (or very, very little), no blood or gore, and the f*%#ing music of f*%#ing Randy Newman.  As Raul Duke would say, this is what the world would look like if the Nazis won the war.  Out of this came Maverick, a movie re-envisioning of the classic TV series.  There’s nothing essentially wrong with the film, and maybe that’s what’s wrong with it.  It’s extremely OK.  What’s the word?  Banal.  It never displays the kind of balls it takes to be really good, or to dramatically fail, which leaves it in a kind of default ‘something I’m watching’ state, which was sort of what that whole decade was like.  It has a cornucopia of ‘that guy’ actors with great Western faces, and I love Jodie Foster.  But she feels completely wrong here.  The Danny Glover cameo is painful but Graham Greene’s appearance is a highlight.  The story?  Meh.  Characters?  Meh.  It’s the 90s, man.  I guess I should just be glad Julia Roberts wasn’t in it.

The Time Machine:  “All the time in the world!”  H.G. Wells wrote two of my all time favorite books, The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine.  Both have inspired countless works and been adapted in various ways many times.  Neither has ever really gotten its due on film.  But this George Pal adventure film is a pretty good attempt, even if it misses many of the best aspects of the book.  Wells did not tend to feature romantic subtext.  And in fact, it would have been somewhat inappropriate in The Time Machine, as the simple folk the Time Traveler encounters in the distant future are little more than humanoid sheep or passive children.  In this version, they’re more like vacuous, beautiful, Aryan 20 somethings in Jessica 6 outfits.  Unlike The Island of Dr. Moreau, which desperately called for the sexual tension so conspicuously absent from the novel, I’m still not sold on it in The Time Machine (though it did give filmmakers an excuse for dressing Samantha Mumba in that crazy mesh getup in the lackluster remake, and that earns a lot of forgiveness).  Whatever the case, our dashing, turn of the century inventor catapults himself through time, seeing the disintegration of civilization by prolonged war until he arrives in an almost unfathomable future.  The exploration of this new world has always been my favorite part of the film.  Much like the first 30 minutes of Planet of the Apes, or the first 45 minutes of Alien, or that middle 20 minutes of Beneath the Planet of the Apes where they’re in the underground, the exploration of an alien environment and all its potential danger and wonder pulls me in.  And though I know the movie must move on, I’m always a bit sad when it ends, like my playtime has been spoiled by the inevitable setting of the sun and call to supper.  The production design is interesting and the music the right brand of crazy.  Rod Taylor is a great leading man, and I’m always a little sad he wasn’t in more quality movies (sure, he’s got a few really good ones, but not enough for me).  The whole thing is more upbeat than Wells’ novel, but that’s no shock, as I don’t think Hollywood could handle his less than optimistic outlook on humanity’s future.  I do still hold out some hope, however misguided, that one day both The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine will get a more loyal adaptation.  I know that print and film are two very different means of storytelling, but I think both novels could be done better, for sure.  In the meantime, this is a darned cool sci-fi adventure film.

House of Bamboo:  “You better go.”  In post-War Japan, a G.I. is murdered and zzzzzzz…  The footage of Japan is a fascinating glimpse into the state of things in the wake the second World War.  It doesn’t matter what Fox’s DVD box says though, this is not a Noir film.  At least it does deal with hoodlums and crime.  But all in the bright light of day, in vibrant color.  Robert Stack is the lifeless dolt who blunders his way into trouble after trouble, but he’s got a secret.  Seriously, Stack seems to be purposefully trying not to project anything that might accidentally be seen as charisma.  Robert Ryan is the criminal boss picking at the bones of a city trying to build itself up.  And his journey from successful boss to cracked nut is kind of fascinating.  Other than Robert Ryan, the film’s only real selling point is as a visual record of a particular time and place that doesn’t focus on (but doesn’t ignore) the tourist hot-spots.  I can’t help but wish filmmakers could go back in time and make a better film so I could enjoy the setting more.  Run Don’t Walk is still many years away, and much of the character seems to have changed by then.

Doctor Who: The Krotons:  After scouring the English countryside for the weirdest looking people possible for the guest cast, this story about crystal-robots keeping human slaves and occasionally eating their brains is fairly well done, but a bit formulaic.  Granted, this is early enough in the series that perhaps it’s more of a formula establishment, but whatever the case, it feels like pretty familiar territory for this Who fan.  Still, I’m always glad to see one of the all too rare Patrick Troughton stories.  Zoe and Jamie are cool companions.  I like that Zoe does a lot less screaming than other female companions.  She’s possibly the Doctor’s intellectual equal (maybe even superior), but much more rational and cool headed.  And Jamie ain’t too bright, but he’s clever, strong, and resourceful.  All in all, a perfectly fine, if not especially memorable story.

Challenge of the Masters:  “The Death Kicks?  Killing Spear?  Those techniques come from the North!” Gordon Liu has such a strange, child-like, almost alien way about him.  He makes for an extremely charming lead, even when he’s playing kind of a tool.  I love all the completely ape-nuts contests you can find in martial arts films.  The firecracker contest that is so important in this movie seems about as reasonable perfectly safe as one of those Dan Ackroid Christmas gifts from that old SNL skit (what kid doesn’t want a bag o’ broken glass?).  But I dig these crazy mellow Kung Fu masters.  The good ones are so chill.  Some mole-faced bastard has to come along and cause a ruckus.  Still, that results in killer kung fu in several wild battles.  Spears, fists, plant pots.  And everything is so dusty!  And it’s true what they say, “although your breath control’s good, it can’t beat my death kick.”  As expected, nay, demanded, there are lots of weird training rituals that our hero must work through.  And there’s some rockin’ spear fighting, which is a favorite of mine, and not a weapon I see used a lot, at least not in key fights where the techniques are prominently featured.  It’s also one of the few martial arts films that seems to do more than talk the talk when it comes to the philosophy.  The ending is genuinely in tune with the ethical teachings.

Lady Terminator:  “That’s an authentic reproduction.”  So, the movie starts out with a chick who can’t get no satisfaction, killing the dudes who don’t… uh, make her happy.  Then a guy shows up, does his bit, and steels a snake out of her lady business (it bites the wangs off the guys that don’t please her), which then becomes a dagger.  She’s having none of that, so curses his descendants before going to the bottom of the ocean to join forces with evil.  You know.  That old story.  Fast forward to the present day where we find a scientist, a cop, and a rock star on a collision course with an evil goddess and her penetrating snake.  Combining dreadful acting with even more dreadful dubbing, they manhandle an inept script like it’s their job.  Presaging the crafty creation of Tara Reid’s Alone in the Dark scientist (She is wearing GLASSES, man!  Of course she’s a scientist.), our dim-bulb nymphet anthropologist has all the subtlety and naturalness of a porn star (“But…I didn’t order any …pizza?!).  Indonesia went movie making mad in the early 80s.  Unfortunately, they didn’t go in too much for quality in writing, production, or acting.  Our lady terminator also has magic undies, which only appear when she’s facing the camera, but are absent when she’s facing the other direction.  And I guess you don’t need robots from the future.  You just need a snake in your hoo-hah to be an unkillable machine of death.  There are hints of better films, like Layer of the White Worm, Cat People, …The Terminator (OK, not hints, but blatant rip-offs in the case of The Terminator), etc.  But it fails in just about every way possible.  Snake, though.  He has to be the coolest Debbie Gibson haired, giant nosed, girly bird-man in a Canadian tuxedo I’ve ever seen.  If this movie worked really hard, it might eventually rise to amateur hour at the Half-Ass Hotel Jamboree.  Sadly, like all too many movies filmed in Southeast Asia, it is not only extremely derivative, it’s also crushingly dull.  Although the spiraling insanity of the climax, especially Snake’s part in it, makes the movie worth a watch.  I recommend gathering friends, as without their helpful MST3K banter, you might not stay conscious until the last ten minutes, where it gets kind of amazing.

OK, on Friday night, thanks 100% to co-Dork Brad, I got to the AFI Silver to see House of Frankenstein, hosted by local celebrity Count Gore De Vol.  Not being from this area, I sadly don’t have the history with the man and his show that I am sure I would have had growing up here.  In my own hometown, we had Eddie Driscoll and the Great Money Movie.  And I know, around the country there were various local stations with their own crazy character for horror, sci-fi, or crime movies.  The Count was very fun, and there was lots of footage from his old shows (what was with all the Penthouse pets?).  This was his 40th anniversary as the Count, and House of Frankenstein was his first film.  There were games, guests, and ghoulish good times.  And one lucky winner gets to co-host an episode of his web show.  It’s one of the biggest crowds I’ve seen to date at the AFI.  Maybe the biggest.

House of Frankenstein:  I love Boris Karloff more and more as the years go by.  I don’t think he ever really let it get him down, but the fact that he was type cast as a horror movie villain-type is too bad.  He was a heck of an actor, with a lot of subtlety that could have added strength to many other films, drama, comedy, whatever (check him out in Targets!).  Still, within the genre, he flexed a great deal of muscle, playing a range of characters from the pathetic, to the sympathetic, to charming, to the absolutely diabolic.  House of Frankenstein was pretty late in the Universal Monsters run, and it was obviously a gimmick.  Let’s see how many monsters we can clumsily work in.  But, it’s a lot of fun and Karloff is a great villainous protagonist, on a trek across the continent with evil science on the mind.  After totally screwing over Dracula, he manipulates the Wolfman and Frankenstein’s Monster in a fiendish plan to put brains in dogs or something.  And all the way, his hunchbacked manservant and former fellow inmate does his bidding.  But when Hunch gets his heart broken by a fickle Gypsy vixen, all hell will break loose.  It’s not a great movie.  But this and House of Dracula were both fun and they sort of paved the way for Toho’s Destroy All Monsters.

Mothra VS Godzilla (aka Godzilla VS The Thing):  Less the allegory for atomic weapons, Godzilla has become more of an embodiment of uncontrollable nature.  The movie starts with a tremendous storm that wreaks devastation upon the region.  Out of that comes Godzilla, like a continuation of the storm; impersonal, dangerous, but without purposeful malice.  Then there are the tiny twins and their magical connection of a gigantic moth and the brutalized survivors living on a bombed out island.  Will a couple of brave reporters be able to convince them to work their songstress magics in an effort to direct one giant monster against another?  One of the best classic Godzilla films, it features many of the elements that make the series so much fun to watch.  Good human drama, a fast pace, excellent use of music, cool sequences of miniature destruction, and a sense of wonder and awe.  It also deals with director Ishiro Honda’s frequent theme of the Brotherhood of Man, the idea that love and understanding between all the world’s peoples could reshape and heal our future.  For what in many ways is a disaster film, it has an uplifting message, and it’s no surprise that these films resonated so strongly with young and old.

Doctor Who: Death to the Daleks:  When the Tardis suddenly looses all power, The Doctor and Sarah Jane are stuck on a desolate, ugly world.  Lurking about are awkward somethings in dirty robes that blend in with the terrain.  And blue-suited invader types who can’t get their ship to take off.  To top it off, a sophisticated city of light shines like a beacon on the horizon, but promises death to anyone who goes near.  All in all a pretty standard set-up for a classic Who story.  And then, the twist.  Sadly, the title of the story arc kind of gives that away.  But then, another twist!  Multiple factions, various interests, trouble of all kinds.  Oh, Doctor.  The music is weird, with a kind of goofy, humorous tone.  The story does have some interesting ideas, and like a lot of the better ones, uses the standard situational set-up to good effect by playing with your expectations.  Sarah Jane is much better here than she frequently is during this era, not nearly as screamy and whiney.  The guest cast is very good, and their stories play out in different ways than you might expect.  The thing, the Root, I think it’s called, that guards the city is pretty cool, too.  It reminds me of the gun-head from the War of the Worlds ships, but acts kind of like a snake.  Though yes, you can see the wires, I thought the scene where it comes out of the water to kill the slave guy was darned effective.

Sapphire and Steel:  This was an odd one for me.  I saw the first story (the first disk) a few years back, and it didn’t really click with me.  I’m not a Joanna Lumley fan at all, and David McCallum seemed to be phoning in his usual dour terseness.  Little character development, a rather shocking slow pace, and a lot of obscurity.  Why did I watch another disk?  No idea.  I didn’t much care for it either and gave up.  For some reason, a few months back, I decided to try watching it again, and I’m glad of it.  The series as a whole has some issues.  And a LOT is left unexplained and unexplored.  The deeper nature of the elements, their goals and greater purpose, remain vague.  They seem to work for someone/thing.  They seem to be tasked with repairing breaks or imperfections in time.  And they don’t seem to be human.  What is causing the time imperfections?  Is it directed?  Sometimes there seems to be a force at work against them, others it seems to simply be random or natural.  The pace never increases, remaining a snail throughout.  But the ideas and general haunting strangeness make the whole thing kind of grow on you.  There is an essential Britishness about it, in its stubborn refusal to go where you expect, to reveal the truth, and to have easy answers, or to have a relatable, likeable cast.  Due to strange subject matter and time of production, I am sometimes reminded of the more kid-aimed Tomorrow People, though that show was less inscrutable.  I don’t know that I can recommend it to most people, but if you like UK sci-fi, if you like the surreal, if you don’t mind working for it, you might want to check this one out.  And what an ending!  I would love to see someone do a serious reworking of this show’s concept.  Limited cast, extremely limited location.  You could do it on a small budget.  You just need the writing.

Tokyo Drifter:  “A drifter needs no woman.”  From the ultra-stylized opening, you know this isn’t your average film.  Right away I was reminded of lower budget crime films from the States, like Killer’s Kiss or Murder by Contract.  But swingin’ 60s Tokyo has a look and feel all its own.  Contrasting black and white with some crazy vibrant colors cranks up the wild and strange.  And the accompanying jazz is perfect.  This is the Japan James Bond should have arrived at in You Only Live Twice.  Director Seijun Suzuki was apparently quite the pain in studio boss’s ass, making movies they just didn’t get.  But you can’t accuse them of being dull.  I really can’t talk up the madness of the color usage enough.  Sin City used some similar techniques, but it feels totally different here, more theatrical, more surreal.  Not to mention the equally surreal, seemingly always going on, go-go dancing.  And the crazy old-time bar fight?  OK.

Sunday morning, I finished Penn Jillette’s book Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!, which I received as a Christmas gift.  Heh.  Anyway, I’d picked it up to look at the introduction, figuring I’d put it on my ‘to read’ pile for the upcoming months, and ended up blowing through like 60 pages.  So, it’s sat on my end table serving as my early morning coffee book for the last month and it’s been great (sadly, it did get a mouthful of coffee spit on it at one point due to the stupid set-up of the human repertory and digestive system).  Definitely worth seeking out and reading.

And on Saturday morning, I finished My Year of Flops, which is a great book for film buffs who aren’t stuck in the Art House mode.

-Matt

Book Review: Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!

    Everybody has heard of Penn & Teller.  Maybe you’ve seen them do tricks on The Tonight Show or Saturday Night Live.  Maybe you’re the only person (other than me) who actually paid attention to the credits of the English language version of the French animated movie Lightyears (or whatever it’s called in France).  Maybe you saw their movie…you didn’t, I know.  But you know who they are.  Everyone does.  What you and everyone else might not know is that Penn is a pretty smart guy and a funny one (Teller is smart, too…probably smarter, but he didn’t write this book).  He’s as crass as can be, but still eloquent in his way.  For evidence of this, watch their show, Bullshit, where they call BS on various topics and explain why (their episodes on food production where they rip ‘raw’ chefs a new one while singing the praises of genetically modified crops, and their episode that dismantles the Dali Lama and Mother Teresa are kind of amazing).  But if that isn’t enough, read one of Penn’s books.

“There’s one show business and Bach, Dylan, Ron Jeremy, and the guy at the mall in the Santa suit are all in it.”

    Penn Jellette is an atheist.  That much he makes quite clear.  He doesn’t dance around or make excuses.  He just says it.  Using a list of generally accepted American holidays as an extremely loose frame, Penn tells anecdotes, exposes his pain, and celebrates life and living in various essays.  But he expands on those holidays to show that every day we’re alive should be a great day, a holiday.  From his early street performances to phone conversations with Johnny Carson, from his loving parents to his love for his children, from swearing at Gilbert Gottfried to playing an amazing practical (and not hurtful) joke on scientist Arno Penzias, Penn has a crazy story for any occasion.  On his deathbed, he will not be able to look back on his life and feel he didn’t live it.

“I couldn’t jack off in front of pictures of women I’d made cry and if that makes me less of a man, so be it.”

    The book is funny, sure.  But it’s also thoughtful, sometimes sad, often uncomfortable, and generally life affirming.  Penn’s love of life, not just his own, but that of every human being (except maybe Clay Aiken or Donald Trump), is exactly the kind of humanity we so desperately need in greater quantities.  And while I know many will argue this I think it’s a love only possible when one abandons thoughts of the supernatural, the afterlife and such.  Only when you accept that this life, here and now, is all there is, and only what you do and experience and create means anything, can you truly live and love, and make the world a better place for yourself and those who will come after.  He has my absolute favorite answer to the foolish idea that our morality comes from some divine inspiration.  When asked if there is no god(s), why don’t you rape and kill as much as you want?  His answer, and mine; “I do rape and kill all I want.  The amount I want to rape and kill is zero.”  If they only thing that keeps you from doing evil is the fear of punishment or the hope of reward, then you’re a bad person.  It has nothing to do with the gods and everything to do with you.  He follows that up with another feeling that echoes my own.  “…there’s nothing sexy to me about someone who is not attracted to me.”  Beyond all the societal reasons (emotional and physical damage, breakdown of civility, etc.) that make rape wrong, I am now and always have been only interested in a woman who is actively and openly interested in me.  Rape is abhorrent and anathema to me, and that has nothing to do with mystical forces or invisible thought police.

“I want the impossible.  But I’ll settle for what we have.  Everything in the world has to be enough.  Everything in the world is enough.  I’m rejoicing that what scares me and breaks my heart is the beauty of what I have right now.”

    If you’re in the mood for some rollicking good times, nonsequiturs like you wouldn’t believe, crazy cats both famous and not, and a self-effacing/self-aggrandizing narrator not unlike someone you know, check this book out.  If you’ve never had a friend like Penn, you should seek one out.  I’ve had a couple, and they enrich your life.

Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!
Author: Penn Jillette
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
ISBN: 978-0-399-16156-8

-Matt