Book Review: Old City Blues

    I’m a longtime Cyberpunk nerd.  William Gibson, Blade Runner, the works.  Giannis Milonogiannis dives into the classic tropes of the genre, filtering it through the Cyberpunk anime of the 80s and 90s, without picking up too many of the latter’s bad habits.

    The story is pretty typical of this sort of thing.  Cops VS corporations, corruption and cyborgs, and of course, A.I. and transcendence. But it’s all a lot of fun to read, and with a good use of rough artwork to create a mood. And the setting, a post flood, reconstructed Athens, Greece is certainly different.

    The stories are efficiently told, without seeming too rushed.  It took me back to some of the things I enjoyed in Cyberpunk years ago. If you’re into it, too, check out Old City Blues.

-Matthew J. Constantine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    That’s pretty much it.

-Matt

Comic Review: Fear Agent Volume 1

    Buck Rogers meets Mack Bolan in Rick Remender’s Fear Agent.  Drawn by Walking Dead alum Tony Moore, Fear Agent has the look of classic 50s sci-fi paperback book covers, with the sass and goofiness of a bawdy Playboy comic.  It feels like Remender is trying to capture some of Bruce Campbell’s swagger in lead Heath Huston.  And what could easily become tiresome, he manages to make work.

    There’s no deep philosophical discussions, no soul searching, no moral allegory.  There’s a guy with a blaster, shooting tentacled aliens and robots, and flying a rocket ship.  It’s goofy and light, and often a bit naughty.  A nice cure to all the mopy, depressing comics I’ve been reading lately.

    The art is pretty good, with enough retro-flare to get the message across.  Robots and aliens are drawn with tongue firmly in cheek, but the environments are actually quite cool.  It’s obvious that while the story is ‘having a go’ at a certain type of sci-fi, it comes from a place of love.

    If you, like me, need a break from all the Debbie Downer comics on the market right now, check this out.  Or if you just like schlocky science fiction adventure stories.  No wheel reinvention going on.  No great leaps in the medium.  Just old-time action stories with ray-guns and rocket-ships.

Fear Agent: Re-Ignition
Author: Rick Remender
Artist: Tony Moore
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
ISBN: 978-1-59307-764-8

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (4/6/14-4/12/14)

    Mostly just movies this week, but good times, none the less.  I love living in the greater DC area.  The options for seeing movies, movies you just don’t get to see on the big screen elsewhere…It’s the berries.

The Raid 2: Berandal:  The Raid was a pretty intense, violent, and action packed little movie.  It has, essentially, the same story as Dredd, but set in Indonesia instead of MegaCity 1 (pick your urban hellscape).  With the sequel, the world is greatly expanded, with several factions of organized crime, corrupt cops, various heavies, and all kinds of horrible places to die.  As far as the plot goes, there’s nothing to write home about.  It’s the usual "cop goes undercover to infiltrate organized crime, using the headstrong, screw-up scion of a major crime family" story you’ve seen dozens of times.  But the cast and the action are what make the film stand on its own.  This is, straight up, one of the most violent films I’ve ever seen, and almost certainly the most violent film I’ve seen that somehow managed to get an R rating from the MPAA.  Of course, we know, you can show almost all the violence you want, so long as you don’t talk realistically about sex (or show a penis).  But even so, I’m shocked this was able to get an R.  If anything I’ve seen warrants and NC-17, it’s this film.  The action and violence are extremely well done, and in spite of a lot of handheld work, I never got frustrated and annoyed by it like I do in most of our modern ‘shaky-cam’ action scenes.  The meat-hook brutality of the combat is at times grueling.  But for action/martial arts fans, this one is well worth seeing.  So.  Dang.  Violent.  Probably the biggest surprise is that the extremely cliché character of the head-strong son of the mob boss isn’t horribly annoying.  I actually like him and his Asian Bruce Campbell cool.

12 Years a Slave:  “I don’t want to survive.  I want to live.”  I know the basics of the history.  I know how economic and religious ideas came together (with a dash of scientific quackery) in a horrible partnership that created the national shame that was the enslavement of large numbers of Africans in the early Americas through the 1800s (let’s skip the post Civil War awfulness for the sake of this discussion).  I’ve read the books and I’ve seen the movies.  But I don’t get it.  I don’t understand how it could be so widely practiced and accepted.  I know that it was.  And I know that similar things go on today, be it genital mutilation and enshrouding of women or colossal oppression of a people by their government, or whatever.  I know that it happens.  I see it.  But I don’t get it.  How did it take so long to stop what was so obviously a horrible and disgusting practice?  I don’t know.  That’s what I kept thinking through watching this movie.  How did so many people let it happen, keep it going, revel in it?  The movie itself is beautifully immersive, capturing the beauty of the land, while not shying away from the horrors visited brother against brother, sister against sister.  The story is compelling and the acting fantastic.  There’s good reason this was up for all the awards.  But it is a brutal viewing, no doubt about it.  If I have one critique of the film, it’s that I never got the sense of passing time.  I feel like part of the horror of Solomon Northup’s journey was how much of his life was lost.  But the movie felt like it took place over a matter of weeks or months.  Still, it’s a heck of a powerful movie.  Thinking about it over the course of the week, what made this movie more effective for me than some others on the same subject may be that Solomon Northup started the film as a free man, minding his own business, who gets kidnapped and taken to a hostile land.  I can relate to that more than the usual story of a person who grew up under the boot heal of slavery.  It makes things less abstract.

Particle Fever:  This movie made me want to go out and do Science! for a living.  I know that’s not in the cards.  I’m too old, and I suck at math.  But for an hour and a half, I felt like I could be part of all this wonder and the expansion of Human understanding.  Through the eyes of a handful of interesting physicists, we see the final stages of the construction and early tests of the Large Hadron Collider, a machine designed to smash particles together and see what comes out.  Some of these people had theories that were decades old, with no ability to test them until this massive machine was built.  The movie does an excellent job of showing what life on the inside of this particular fishbowl was like, while showing the passions of the people involved.  I also like that it prominently and positively featured women in science without being about women in science.  Typically with a movie like this, if they were going to have one of the key protagonists be a woman, they’d spend 10 or 15 minutes talking about the challenge of being a woman in a male dominated field.  Something that would almost certainly be off-putting for young women looking to get into that field.  Instead, we see women working right alongside men in the office, in the classrooms, and in the construction of the machine, and running the overall project, just as it should be.  No, it’s not like it was a 50/50 split.  But the mix is a heck of a lot better than a couple decades ago.  And if we stop scaring our daughters off of male dominated fields by driving home how challenging they’ll be, maybe that split will decrease more in the coming years.  A movie like this is going to be a heck of a lot more inspirational than one that focuses on the negative.  And inspirational is how I’d describe it.  I’ll admit, there were several times, when the music swelled, the camera moved  over the machine, or we watched one of these scientists’ dawning awareness of new revelations, that I got a bit misty.  Watching the work of so many people come together.  Watching the power of the Human mind to unlock the secrets of the universe, even if only in a small way.  And of course, knowing that science transcends culture and border, becoming the collective effort of our whole species to better know the nature of reality, without the weight of our hatreds and fears.  Is uplifting.

Alexandria The Greatest City:  Over the last decade or so, I’ve become quite the fan of Bettany Hughes and her passion for history.  This exploration of Alexandria is cursory, but interesting.  It makes a good deal of use of clips from the Alexandria set film Agora.  There’s not a lot to this one, but Hughes always makes it interesting, and makes me want to read more.

Lizzie Borden Took an Ax:  No, no, no.  I didn’t think this was going to be what we might traditionally think of as ‘good.’  But as soon as it started, I had that Quantum Leap ‘Oh, boy’ moment.  It’s shot like crappy TV.  It’s written like crappy TV.  It’s crappy TV.  Everyone in this should know better.  I don’t know what the idea was in using modern Black Keys wannabe music for the soundtrack.  But it was bad.  A bad idea.  On a purely shallow note, Christina Ricci did look extremely cute in the period costumes.  I wish she could have stepped out of this movie and into a good Western or whatever.

Battle of the Darned:  Dolph Lundgren teams up with killer robots to fight zombies?  Sold!  Actually, this movie is better than I expected, but that might be to its detriment.  If it was worse, it might have been more fun.  It’s not good enough to recommend.  It’s OK.  The kind of thing that if you find playing while you’re flipping channels, you could do much worse.  The camera shakes way to much (it is an action movie made after the Bourne franchise) and the CG on the robots is wonky in places.  But it’s OK.  I liked the scenes with Dolph and the robots back to back.  I’d have liked more of that.

Engineering Ancient Egypt:  Another documentary presented by Bettany Hughes, this time on two of Egypt’s most successful pharaohs, Khufu and Ramses II.  By examining the whys and wherefores of building the pyramids first, and the temple at Abu Simbel, she gets into the belief systems and key historic events that shaped the two men and their times.  As often happens, taking the time to look into history produces information that doesn’t jive with generally held beliefs.  One of the primary things I grew up with, that has been rather soundly trounced is the idea that slaves (generally thought to have been Hebrew slaves) built the pyramids.  Hughes’s documentaries are always entertaining and informative, though frequently only introductory.  They’re good starts for further research.

    On Thursday night Brad and I, and a couple others from our graphic novel group, all headed out to the Alamo to watch a VHS projection of that classic, 3 Dev Adam, one of the best Captain America films ever made.  Awesome.

3 Dev Adam (aka Turkish Captain America):  What can one say about this film?  The plot is totally unintelligible, and I don’t know if that’s because of the subtitles or the editing.  The villains have a plan, I guess.  The heroes have a plan, too.  Or something.  They fight sometimes.  In the middle of fight scenes, they often cut to people walking.  Throughout most of the film, it sounds like there are nervous horses on cobblestones, which I think is supposed to be the sounds of footsteps.  I’ve got no idea.  But it was all awesome.  A film to share with friends, for sure.  Plus, who doesn’t love an awkward puppet moment during sexual coupling?

A Touch of Sin:  I went into this film knowing nothing about it at all, beyond the poster image of the guy sitting on his motorcycle in front of a crashed fruit truck.  I recommend going into it the same way.  I won’t give away story or character.  But I’ll say this about the film; it’s beautifully shot and well acted.  It has a slow pace, but isn’t ever dull.  There are some gorgeous images of China, even when they’re of various ugly things or environments you’d never want to live in or possibly even go to.  The film feels extremely contemporary, and not just because it features a lot of people staring at their cell phones.  And if I was left with any message, it’s ‘don’t go to China.’  Very worth seeking out, though.  Know in advance that there is some rather graphic violence.

The Raid:  Having watched The Raid 2 a few days back, I decided to revisit the first one.  It’s a heck of a violent movie.  Not much in the way of plot, but that would have gotten in the way of the horrible, bone-cracking action.  Anyone into brutal action movies needs to see this one.  Good camera work, nasty violence, and excellent gun and hand to hand choreography.

Nova: The Vikings:  This documentary from 2000 does a pretty good job of reintroducing the Vikings, putting the sword to some commonly held misconceptions.  I’m always fascinated by our evolving understanding of those who came before.  This is a very cursory examination of the subject, but still managed to have some interesting bits for me to look into, especially with the Vikings in Russia.

Ninotchka:  When three bumbling Soviets in Paris screw up a deal for the Reds back home, Moscow sends along a hard-line agent to kick things into shape, in the shapely Greta Garbo.  French playboy Melvyn Douglas sets his sights on melting her heart, unleashing the charming woman hiding beneath the utilitarian comrade.  Ernst Lubitsch crafts another supremely funny, cheeky, and surprisingly sexy comedy.  It’s funny how timeless the issues of the film, then quite topical, remain.

Orca: The Killer Whale:  Obviously made to capitalize on the huge success of Jaws, this Ahab Vs. Killer Whale film looks pretty good, but is mostly just silly.  I love the cast and Michael Anderson knows how to make a good looking film.  But it’s so hackneyed.

I just wanna watch the world burn!

    I’ve been doing a bunch of reading, but from a bunch of different books, none of which I’m all that close to finishing.  Dang, Lord of Light is a dense read.

-Matt

Book Review: Our Final Invention

    I have found the true heir to H.P. Lovecraft, and it is documentary filmmaker turned herald of the AI apocalypse, James Barrat.  No, his book is not a tale of a tortured artist who learns too many of the secrets of the universe and is driven mad by it.  Or is it?  Whatever the case, he presents a vision of the world so soul searingly, existentially terrifying that it belongs on the shelf with the master of cosmic horror.  This is a sobering look at the very real, very possible ending to all of us, building right below our very noses, and under our typing fingertips.  For a pro-tech, futurist like myself, this book is a grim dark side for my usual upbeat visions of a world without want.

One of the less grim scenarios...

    Barrat looks into the building wave of artificial intelligence, the possibilities of human level (and more, superior to human) intelligence, and does not doubt that it’s on the way.  What he doubts, is that it will be a good thing.  I believe…well, I want to believe…that we’re moving in the right direction (overall), and that the future is bright.  I also have an instant mistrust of folks who preach fear of advancements and refuse to look on the bright side of technology.  I’ve also never much bought into the idea that superiority equals maliciousness, which is all part of the slave mentality that infects us as a species.  That said, I can’t find fault in Barrat’s argument.  He makes an excellent case for the terrifying dangers the creation of a human level (or higher) computer mind.  The profound alien nature of a computer mind is where the key trouble lies.  And this, is where I first connected Barrat with Lovecraft.  Both envision something so far beyond our ability to comprehend or control that we would stand no chance against it.  The concept I found most chilling is summed up in the quote from Eliezer Yudkowsky.  “The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.”  It isn’t that Barrat believes a human or more level intelligence would want to kill us.  It’s that it won’t share our interests or values, and we might not be able to even understand what its interests or values are.  We may quickly find that we are little more than ants before its unknowing, uncaring feet.

    My hope is that we as a people can shift our thinking and action in the direction of safety.  I have hope.  I do.  But I have a profound worry, because I can’t pretend I don’t see the opposite every day.  With people steadfastly ignoring scientific findings all the time, from climate change to the benefits of genetically modified foods, and with so many willing to step over their mother for a chance at a few extra bucks, I have worries.  And thanks to this book, I find that I have a fear I never knew about.  I don’t want to die by incineration from the waste heat of trillions of nanobots assembling each other.  That may have just surpassed tidal wave on my list of things I most want to avoid getting killed by.

    This book should be read.  Futurists and optimists like myself need a dose of reasoned descent on occasion.  I think many of us become so inured to the fear mongering, backward looking anti-science of Hollywood movies and uninformed man-on-the-streets, that we build up a wall around our optimism.  This wall blocks our view of the very real threats that are out there.  With so many people crying wolf constantly, the real problems can easily be ignored.  And I think that James Barrat has produced a well thought out and sobering call to action.  He doesn’t preach a halt to progress or a return to ‘simpler times.’  He suggests a safe and cautious handling of a potentially cataclysmic technology that would make the atom bomb seem like kids play.  He’s not talking about a danger to a city or a country.  He’s not even talking about danger to our planet.  The kind of scenarios Barrat suggests are existence erasing, galaxy polluting disasters.  I do believe that our future will be tied with artificial intelligence, and that future could be amazing on a level beyond the wildest science fiction stories.  But the danger must be understood, and we must protect ourselves and our future.

Our Final Invention
Author: James Barrat
Publisher: Thomas Dunn Books
ISBN: 978-0-312-62237-4

-Matthew J. Constantine

Matt’s Week in Dork! (11/10/13-11/16/13)

    I’m still working on several books, but at least I finished a couple this week.  Otherwise, I’ve been continuing my Criterion kick, with a few others to spice things up.

The Uninvited:  “Dinner will be late.  It’s the lamb being awkward.”  There’s something very strange about this ghost story.  A brother and sister buy a house with a bit too much character.  There’s a long, slow build to strange events, and a most British way of dealing with things.  And there are deeper layers to what’s going on.  An interesting film, if not an amazing one.

Coriolanus:  “Make you a sword of me.”  Ralph Fiennes is an engine of hate that grinds the enemies of Rome beneath his booted feet.  When politicians turn their backs on him, depths of revenge he will descend to will shake the very foundations of the world.  This adaptation of the Shakespeare play takes place in a modern-combat world that resembles the worst of the Balkan fighting.  Vile hate, bloody vengeance, and the passions of angry and proud men.  It’s Shakespeare, man.

Repo Man:  “I blame society.”  Punk rock meets weird in this wild, strange, and totally 80s flick.  A lot of philosophy and surrealism, as strange people of all sorts come together in a search for a mysterious car with a trunk full of…something.  Obviously, not a movie for everyone, this is a must see for those willing to try something unusual.  The music is great, the performances fun, and the whole movie is, uh, special.

Crash and Burn:  In a grim, wind swept desert of a future, conspiracies and danger abound in an outland TV station.  There are hints of The Thing, as tests are done to try to figure out who is a synth and who is human, who might be an shadow agent for the obligatory evil government.  This movie was from the golden age of Full Moon, when the low budget studio seemed like they were still trying, presenting some interesting ideas that were more ambitious than successful.  And when it comes to science fiction movies, I’ll take ambitious failures over lackadaisical successes.

Robot Wars:  I respect the ‘go-for-it’ attitude of this film.  However, the script isn’t good.  And the acting…well, it’s even less good.  I think, when all is said and done, it’s more of a robot tiff, than a robot war.  But it’s OK enough to get through the fairly short runtime.  The lead male feels like a half-assed Rowdy Roddy Piper.  And the two ladies are kinda terrible (including the relatively un-surgeried Lisa Rinna and Re-Animator’s Barbara Crampton).  An OK entry in the Full Moon robot based science fiction file, but not one to stress out about seeing.

Hotel Chevalier:  A short film, and first chapter to the full length film The Darjeeling Limited, this takes place in a hotel room in France, where a lost guy is found by a former love.  The relationship isn’t fully clear, but it’s not good.  There’s not a lot to it, but the music is nice, and it’s full of little Wes Anderson quirks.

The Darjeeling Limited:  “Where’s those nuts at?”  Three cracked brothers meet up on a train in India, for what’s supposed to be a spiritual journey.  But that doesn’t really pan out.  As they travel from one site to another, having little adventures, each one tries to fix their relationship.  But none of the brothers has any idea how to fix themselves, much less a tattered fraternal love.  Outside of a James Bond movie, I don’t think India has ever looked more beautiful, or more like somewhere I’d want to have an adventure.  And while the train, The Darjeeling Limited, feels like a typical Wes Anderson hyper-artificial set, it’s interesting seeming him filming on real locations, taking his odd style to places that aren’t built from the ground up for his purposes.  The movie is cute, sad (very sad), funny, and of course, exceptionally bent.

Godzilla VS Biollante:  The 90s Godzilla films (this 1989 film was the second in the run) were not good.  They’re cheaper looking and sillier, but silly in a not so fun sort of way.  I like that, starting with The Return of Godzilla (aka Godzilla 1985), they tried to bring it back to its monster movie roots, making Godzilla a force of nature, not an ally of humanity.  Sadly, they’re just not good, and this is no exception.  I like the monster design, if not the execution.  A weird plant-Godzilla hybrid is seriously weird, and seeing it shuffle across the countryside makes me wish the movie was better, because that could have been terrifying.

I Declare War:  “I have killing techniques.”  Visualizing the imaginative and violent play of childhood, this film feels like something out of my own youth.  I used to play ‘guns’ with kids in my neighborhood.  Of course, we didn’t have a sociopath playing, so it never got this dark.  In fact, I think we always kept things pretty civilized.  The movie is certainly interesting, and I’m sure will stir up some controversy because of the portrayal of kids and violence.

Prince Avalanche:  “I’m pretty optimistic about next weekend.”  2013 seems to be the year of the lone wo(man).  Being alone, being lonely, or being separate has been a key ingredient of many of the year’s films.  Two guys, working together out in the middle of frickin’ nowhere, deal with various versions of being lone and alone.  Products of the City, they’re finding a slice of something (happiness? peace?) out in the Wild.  The movie isn’t amazing, or especially profound.  But it’s an enjoyable watch, funny in its way, and worth checking out.  It also looks very nice.

Barbara:  I’m still fascinated with the Cold War, likely because of growing up in its shadow, and my odd feelings toward the 50s and 60s that I won’t get into here.  I’m also interested in different perspectives on events, places, or times.  This drama focuses on a woman living under scrutiny in East Germany, while she tries to work at a hospital, and seems to be planning some kind of escape to the West.  She’s a cold figure, beautiful, but unapproachable and reserved.  But as the film progresses, I became more and more curious about just who this woman was.  Seeing a more idyllic, less industrial nightmare version of East Germany makes the ever watchful Big Brother that much more sinister.  What seems ubiquitous in an urban sprawl seems horribly out of place in the green and beautiful countryside.

Thor: The Dark World:  I continue to scratch my head as I watch this massive Marvel comics mythology building on the big screen.  As far as I can figure, it’s unprecedented.   Multiple series, all connecting into a greater whole.  It’s madness, and it’s wonderful.  And I’m not even a Marvel fan.  The second outing for the God of Thunder isn’t quite as cohesive as the first film, and I don’t think it’s overall, quite as good.  However, it’s still a great deal of fun.  I love that the movie spends relatively little time on Earth, cranks up the mad sci-fantasy, yet still keeps those little bits of awkward humor (the scene on the subway cracks me up).  I’m not sold on the style of filmmaking, which feels a bit too shaky, and blurred.  Which in this day and age means kind of generic.  Though that was hardly so extreme as to ruin the film.  It’s hard for me to review the movie, honestly.  I’m just dumbstruck by the fact that this is happening.  There’s a Guardians of the Galaxy film coming.  They’re really doing it.  How has this come to be?

    On Friday night, we met again for the graphic novel book club.  This time around we discussed Boxers & Saints, a historic fiction (with fantasy elements).  The group had a lively discussion, with lots of different opinions considering everyone seemed to like the book.

Summer with Monika:  A young woman trying to find love in the world, and a young boy with his head in the clouds come together for a bit of romance.  Their awkward awakenings to sex and love are charming and melancholic in that Bergman way.  And their adventure on a boat is full childlike wonder on the one hand, and emerging sexuality on the other.  Unlike so many movies of this type, it shows the consequences of actions.  There are several moments when you feel like the movie is going to end, when it reaches the point a movie normally would cut to credits, but then it tortures you with an ‘and then…’  It’s rough when things go from idyllic and pretty to…well…not.

Bad Day at Black Rock:  “I live a quiet, contemplative life.”  A guy gets off a train at a town full of secrets.  Things don’t go too well after that.  Spencer Tracy seems a bit too old for the part he’s playing, but he’s quite good.  And as he and Robert Ryan face off, it gets uncomfortable.  Lots of good character actors play goons of one sort or another.  It gets mean.  Real mean.

Rules of the Game:  They didn’t have to deal with the Hayes Codes in France, I guess.  This funny, but ultimately somewhat tragic examination of upper-class twits is sometimes disconcertingly contemporary.  It’s funny, it’s risqué, and it works well as a time capsule from another time.  The director, Jean Renoir, also has an important supporting role in the film, and is quite good.

    So, over the course of the week, I was able to finish Boxers & Saints, and A Manual for Creating Atheists.  Both were pretty good in their own way.  Not too much else going on.  But by next month’s graphic novel club meeting, I’ve got to come up with my choice.  I’m weighing some options.

-Matt