The Xbox 360 is still in the mail, Best Buy having failed at their claim of a two-day delivery, but The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has arrived fresh from my father-in-law, and if I can't play it yet, at least I have the manual, and that means character creation! I'm thinking at least three plays, perhaps four. Here are the first two, for your consideration:
Character #1 - A footpad, sneaky, fast, agile, high use of the senses. Focus on sneaking, shooting things from the bushes, and becoming the Grey Fox as quickly as possible. Travel light - light armor, bow, short blade/knife - to move quietly and have maximum weight allowance for loot. A smooth talker. Highly controlled level-ups - frequently used and favourite skills to be minor.
Race: Dunmer (Resist Fire, +5 Athletics, Blunt Weapon, Light Armor, Marksman, Mysticism, +10 Blade, Destruction)
Birthsign: The Thief (+10 Agility, Speed, Luck)
Custom Class: Snitch
Class Specialization: Stealth (+10 Security, Sneak, Acrobatics, Light Armor, Marksman, Mercantile, Speechcraft)
Combat focus: Block, Blade, Armorer
Magic focus: Illusion, Mysticism, Alteration
Stealth Focus: Sneak, Marksman, Security
Favourite Attributes: Agility, Strength, Intelligence, Willpower, Personality
Major Skills (base 25):
Blunt Weapon (+5)
Conjuration
Restoration
Heavy Armor
Hand-to-Hand
Illusion
Mercantile (+10)
Minor Skills (base 5):
Marksman (+15)
Light Armor (+15)
Sneak (+10)
Blade (+10)
Destruction (+10)
Speechcraft (+10)
Acrobatics (+10)
Athletics (+5)
Mysticism (+5)
Alteration
Alchemy
Armorer
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Character #2 - A big, burly crusader - total melee combat. None of that sneaking about - if you need to sneak up on something to kill it, you probably can't kill it. Confrontation, issuing challenges, and bashing things is the order of the day. A powerhouse with high stregnth and endurance, and a fine upstanding citizen. Take loot only from ruins, bandit camps, tombs, corpses, and guilds you belong to. Accept all noble-minded side quests, and feel free to eliminate evil wherever found. Do all temple/wayshrine quests; use character for Knights of the Nine expansion. Keep a clean record - no crimes, no bounties, no fines - with the exception of any needed to levy in order to eliminate evil; pre-KotN of course. Highly controlled level-ups.
Race: Imperial (+5 Blade, Blunt Weapon, Hand-to-Hand, Heavy Armor)
Birthsign: The Lady (+10 Willpower, Endurance)
Custom Class: Knight of some sort
Class Specialization: Combat (+10 Block, Armorer, Heavy Armor, Blunt Weapon, Blade, Athletics, Hand-to-Hand)
Combat focus: Blade, Blunt, Athletics
Magic focus: Restoration, Mysticism
Stealth focus: Acrobatics, Mercantile
Favourite Attributes: Endurance, Personality, Strength, Willpower
Major Skills (base 25):
Destruction
Illusion
Conjuration
Marksman
Light Armor
Security
Sneak
Minor Skills (base 5)
Block (+10)
Blade (+15)
Blunt (+15)
Hand-to-Hand (+15)
Heavy Armor (+15)
Armorer (+10)
Athletics (+10)
Mercantile (+10)
Speechcraft (+10)
Restoration
Mysticism
Acrobatics
Alchemy
To misquote a popular children's Christmas tune...Hurry, Xbox, hurry fast!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
He'll Cure What Ails Ya
Earlier, I made reference to a two-day Sharpe-a-thon, interrupted only by dinner at my brother-in-law's in-laws. What is a Sharpe-a-thon, you ask? Why, it is a marathon watching of the first two collections of Masterpiece Theater's early/mid-90's miniseries presentation of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe books, of course!
"Very well, thanks for nothing - who, or what, is a Sharpe?"
Richard Sharpe (Sean Bean, Ronin, The Fellowship of the Ring) is a British rifleman whom we first meet during King George III's invasion of India (not a part of the MT Sharpe's Rifles collection, but the subject of the book Sharpe's Tiger, and it is referenced several times during the miniseries). He's the sort of person for whom the army was a substitute for the gallows - in other words, a thoroughly disreputable brawling, thieving sort who grew up (and spent many adult years) living by the maxim that "all that was needed to get ahead in the world was a bit of sense and the ability to kick a bastard faster than the bastard could kick you." Sharpe's Rifles introduces him after he's made Sargeant for heroic enactment of duty in India, having survived that area and continued on to soldier in the Crimean War, and the film series opens with him saving Sir Arthur Wellsley's (the future Field Marshall Lord Wellington's) life. Wellsley promptly rewards Sharpe with a field commission, and so it begins. Sharpe is suddenly a man who belongs nowhere - he is no longer accepted by the men in the ranks, because he's an officer, but he is held in contempt by (and doesn't fit in with) his fellow officers, because he's been raised from the ranks, and is not a gentleman as 99.999% of officers were at the time...which, combined with the fact that he has Wellsley's special attention, makes him perfect for running all those dirty, nasty little Intelligence-based missions. He's competent, he gets the job done, and no one will mourn him too much if he never makes it back. The series is primarily about the missions assigned to Sharpe and his Chosen Men (essentially, a tiny special forces-esque squad), but it also carries overarching character plots involving Sharpe's and his sargeant's personal lives, and, as my brother-in-law pointed out, a continuing background focus on the time of transition between feudalism and democratic monarchy that Europe was embroiled in at that time. The series carries on through and past the Napoleonic Wars, and characters appear, grow, and die along the way.
High marks are given for casting and dialogue across the board. I also enjoy the fact that I can't think of any other historical fiction about the Crimean War, nor one that focuses on the infantry side of the Napoleonic Wars. Also, Sharpe himself is a well-fleshed, interesting character. He's a rogue - imagine Han Solo in the period between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, adjusting to holding a lofty commission but hardly done with his past - but he grows out of the aspects of that personality that don't jive with his increasing responsibilities and authority. He's an excellent leader, if not just a tad mutinous in the face of any officer who's bad at soldiering, and we see him grow as a leader over the course of the series. He's still coarse and a product of his upbringing, the sort of man who can commit acts of great goodness and decency in front of another man, and still leave that man believing his (Sharpe's) tough-guy assertion that he just did it for the money. He's all for free love - but he's no sexual predator, and refuses sexual encounters with women who are desperate or vulnerable, and when he's married, he's married (at least to his first wife, but that's a story more complex than base adultery). In other words, he may work for British intelligence, but he's no James Bond - though a young Daniel Craig does make an appearance in Sharpe's Eagle, playing a hedonistic, Bond-like sadist who preys on women.
Something else, translated from the books to the series, that sets Sharpe apart is the fact that creator/author Bernard Cornwell is no historical denier. Cornwell is an atheist, and, judging by some of his works, a pretty angry one at that, but he doesn't take the low road of avoiding Europe's Christian heritage, or portraying all clergy or faithful as fools, idiots, bigots, or sadists. In the same vein, Cornwell's nobility, gentility, and officers are not universally afflicted with those afore-mentioned character defects, though of course there are some, because all the villains in a very long story can't be French...but it is clear that these men are abberrations, and exceptions - not, by any means, the norm. I make special mention of this because there are far too many writers who hold the idea that everyone who came before them was naive, or bigoted, or mysoginistic, just plain dumb...so in my books, any writer who gives the past a fair and informed shake gets a big gold star. Sharpe is not a renaissance man by any stretch, he's 100% a product of his time, but fool, idiot, or mysoginist, he is not.
Of course, there are some cheese issues; some budget-related, some early-90's Masterpiece Theater related. Such as, on the budget side of things, a company - and regiment - is just a tad bigger that four or five dozen men, and there was a point when I noticed that a stack of barrels and equipment was in fact not a stack, but a very obvious mural. I titled this post because in the first episode, Sharpe's Rifles, there is a terrifically unintentional laugh garnered when the mere sight of Sharpe (presumably due to Sean Bean's raw sexual magnetism) cures a girl's forced heroin trip. Probably, there was no other way to quickly move the narrative along; after all, you wouldn't get much story from Sharpe and co. dragging the female lead of the tale, reduced to a gibbering loony, around the countryside, and movies do have time limits. Still, it was unfortunately hilarious, and thankfully there were no further such shenanigans in later episodes. None of this should detract in a significant way from your enjoyment of the series, and the budgetary constraints don't have any significant impact on the overall quality of the show. Some of the constraints add to it, like casting a folk musician as one of the Chosen Men and using him to provide the music for the series - on-screen, too.
I've been flagrantly throwing around some history in this post. You can probably get entertainment out of Sharpe without knowing jack about things like the Crimean or Napoleonic Wars, or Lord Wellington, who never lost a battle (!)...but knowing about these things will not only provide a step up from entertainment to enjoyment and admiration; they're extremely fascinating subjects and I highly recommend them.
I previously watched a handful of Sharpe movies by finding them individually at Blockbuster, but if you can find the collections - Sharpe's Rifles, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Revenge - like we did at the library, it's worth watching them in sequence. There are also two or three movies additional movies made in the past few years. It's fun stuff, serious stuff, quality stuff - all around good TV. And, Sean Bean's presence may or may not cure any unintentional drug trips you may suffer, though why they don't advertise this on the box is beyond me.
"Very well, thanks for nothing - who, or what, is a Sharpe?"
Richard Sharpe (Sean Bean, Ronin, The Fellowship of the Ring) is a British rifleman whom we first meet during King George III's invasion of India (not a part of the MT Sharpe's Rifles collection, but the subject of the book Sharpe's Tiger, and it is referenced several times during the miniseries). He's the sort of person for whom the army was a substitute for the gallows - in other words, a thoroughly disreputable brawling, thieving sort who grew up (and spent many adult years) living by the maxim that "all that was needed to get ahead in the world was a bit of sense and the ability to kick a bastard faster than the bastard could kick you." Sharpe's Rifles introduces him after he's made Sargeant for heroic enactment of duty in India, having survived that area and continued on to soldier in the Crimean War, and the film series opens with him saving Sir Arthur Wellsley's (the future Field Marshall Lord Wellington's) life. Wellsley promptly rewards Sharpe with a field commission, and so it begins. Sharpe is suddenly a man who belongs nowhere - he is no longer accepted by the men in the ranks, because he's an officer, but he is held in contempt by (and doesn't fit in with) his fellow officers, because he's been raised from the ranks, and is not a gentleman as 99.999% of officers were at the time...which, combined with the fact that he has Wellsley's special attention, makes him perfect for running all those dirty, nasty little Intelligence-based missions. He's competent, he gets the job done, and no one will mourn him too much if he never makes it back. The series is primarily about the missions assigned to Sharpe and his Chosen Men (essentially, a tiny special forces-esque squad), but it also carries overarching character plots involving Sharpe's and his sargeant's personal lives, and, as my brother-in-law pointed out, a continuing background focus on the time of transition between feudalism and democratic monarchy that Europe was embroiled in at that time. The series carries on through and past the Napoleonic Wars, and characters appear, grow, and die along the way.
High marks are given for casting and dialogue across the board. I also enjoy the fact that I can't think of any other historical fiction about the Crimean War, nor one that focuses on the infantry side of the Napoleonic Wars. Also, Sharpe himself is a well-fleshed, interesting character. He's a rogue - imagine Han Solo in the period between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, adjusting to holding a lofty commission but hardly done with his past - but he grows out of the aspects of that personality that don't jive with his increasing responsibilities and authority. He's an excellent leader, if not just a tad mutinous in the face of any officer who's bad at soldiering, and we see him grow as a leader over the course of the series. He's still coarse and a product of his upbringing, the sort of man who can commit acts of great goodness and decency in front of another man, and still leave that man believing his (Sharpe's) tough-guy assertion that he just did it for the money. He's all for free love - but he's no sexual predator, and refuses sexual encounters with women who are desperate or vulnerable, and when he's married, he's married (at least to his first wife, but that's a story more complex than base adultery). In other words, he may work for British intelligence, but he's no James Bond - though a young Daniel Craig does make an appearance in Sharpe's Eagle, playing a hedonistic, Bond-like sadist who preys on women.
Something else, translated from the books to the series, that sets Sharpe apart is the fact that creator/author Bernard Cornwell is no historical denier. Cornwell is an atheist, and, judging by some of his works, a pretty angry one at that, but he doesn't take the low road of avoiding Europe's Christian heritage, or portraying all clergy or faithful as fools, idiots, bigots, or sadists. In the same vein, Cornwell's nobility, gentility, and officers are not universally afflicted with those afore-mentioned character defects, though of course there are some, because all the villains in a very long story can't be French...but it is clear that these men are abberrations, and exceptions - not, by any means, the norm. I make special mention of this because there are far too many writers who hold the idea that everyone who came before them was naive, or bigoted, or mysoginistic, just plain dumb...so in my books, any writer who gives the past a fair and informed shake gets a big gold star. Sharpe is not a renaissance man by any stretch, he's 100% a product of his time, but fool, idiot, or mysoginist, he is not.
Of course, there are some cheese issues; some budget-related, some early-90's Masterpiece Theater related. Such as, on the budget side of things, a company - and regiment - is just a tad bigger that four or five dozen men, and there was a point when I noticed that a stack of barrels and equipment was in fact not a stack, but a very obvious mural. I titled this post because in the first episode, Sharpe's Rifles, there is a terrifically unintentional laugh garnered when the mere sight of Sharpe (presumably due to Sean Bean's raw sexual magnetism) cures a girl's forced heroin trip. Probably, there was no other way to quickly move the narrative along; after all, you wouldn't get much story from Sharpe and co. dragging the female lead of the tale, reduced to a gibbering loony, around the countryside, and movies do have time limits. Still, it was unfortunately hilarious, and thankfully there were no further such shenanigans in later episodes. None of this should detract in a significant way from your enjoyment of the series, and the budgetary constraints don't have any significant impact on the overall quality of the show. Some of the constraints add to it, like casting a folk musician as one of the Chosen Men and using him to provide the music for the series - on-screen, too.
I've been flagrantly throwing around some history in this post. You can probably get entertainment out of Sharpe without knowing jack about things like the Crimean or Napoleonic Wars, or Lord Wellington, who never lost a battle (!)...but knowing about these things will not only provide a step up from entertainment to enjoyment and admiration; they're extremely fascinating subjects and I highly recommend them.
I previously watched a handful of Sharpe movies by finding them individually at Blockbuster, but if you can find the collections - Sharpe's Rifles, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Revenge - like we did at the library, it's worth watching them in sequence. There are also two or three movies additional movies made in the past few years. It's fun stuff, serious stuff, quality stuff - all around good TV. And, Sean Bean's presence may or may not cure any unintentional drug trips you may suffer, though why they don't advertise this on the box is beyond me.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Zing! Pow! Right in the Kisser!
I've yet to read an even vaguely complimentary review of Frank Miller's assault on The Spirit in a respectable publication, even the hardcore lefty ones. Here's one, not from a lefty publication, written by a guy who studied cartooning under Will Eisner.
Zing. Pow.
Zing. Pow.
Nothing Says Christmas Like The Beginning of The End
A commentary by film critic Jeffery Overstreet has reminded me of something I'd forgotten; the best-quality, most truthful Christmas film I've watched to date: Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men.
The director vowed repeatedly to interviewers that he did not intend any Christian implications with the film; an interesting avowal, since the film is based on a book by a prominent Christian author. Either way, if that was truly Cuaron's intent, he failed miserably, to the benefit of us all. This stunning, heartbreaking, hopeful, glorious film - all adjectives I'd not expect to use in order to describe an apocalypse - tells the story of our world having gone infertile. When the film opens, with the death of the world's youngest person, it has been nearly twenty years since the last child was born. Is it any surprise that such a world has lost all hope and purpose, reducing itself to isolationism and anarchy? And yet, somehow, a girl named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) is pregnant - a young black girl, at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder, especially loathed and endagered in a Britain turned utterly protectionist and facist. It is charged to an older man named Theo (Clive Owen) to get her to safety, to people who will, we are told, not endanger her or her child, or use the baby for their own selfish political purposes. The journey that ensues is frantic and desperate, but always, at the forefront, keeping everything going, is the hope of the child to come.
The one scene that has always flattened me as surely as a punch on the nose is the one that takes place hours after the baby is born, when Theo and Kee are trying to escape the condemned apartment that's become one more war zone in a world of war zones. As they make their was into the hall, people notice the baby, and the fighting trickles to a standstill as all turn, shocked, amazed, and overcome, to witness the child's passing...and a third of the way through the hall, just as Kee and the baby have passed, the fighting immediately resumes as a man, at the very corner back of the screen and out of focus, is shot in the head. Not only are there some tragic and critical social and theological implications at work here; this scene also affirms to me that, in a film with a deliberately large and horrific body count, every death matters; no life is taken for granted.
There's not much to say about the cinematography or acting without killing at least 3000 words. This is a first-rate film in every sense. And this really is the season for it. Of course, I know someone, a fellow Christian, who thinks this film is so exactly the opposite of how I've described it that she gave us her copy, and that's how we got it for free. So...you know...this review may fail you horribly. I sure hope not.
The director vowed repeatedly to interviewers that he did not intend any Christian implications with the film; an interesting avowal, since the film is based on a book by a prominent Christian author. Either way, if that was truly Cuaron's intent, he failed miserably, to the benefit of us all. This stunning, heartbreaking, hopeful, glorious film - all adjectives I'd not expect to use in order to describe an apocalypse - tells the story of our world having gone infertile. When the film opens, with the death of the world's youngest person, it has been nearly twenty years since the last child was born. Is it any surprise that such a world has lost all hope and purpose, reducing itself to isolationism and anarchy? And yet, somehow, a girl named Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) is pregnant - a young black girl, at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder, especially loathed and endagered in a Britain turned utterly protectionist and facist. It is charged to an older man named Theo (Clive Owen) to get her to safety, to people who will, we are told, not endanger her or her child, or use the baby for their own selfish political purposes. The journey that ensues is frantic and desperate, but always, at the forefront, keeping everything going, is the hope of the child to come.
The one scene that has always flattened me as surely as a punch on the nose is the one that takes place hours after the baby is born, when Theo and Kee are trying to escape the condemned apartment that's become one more war zone in a world of war zones. As they make their was into the hall, people notice the baby, and the fighting trickles to a standstill as all turn, shocked, amazed, and overcome, to witness the child's passing...and a third of the way through the hall, just as Kee and the baby have passed, the fighting immediately resumes as a man, at the very corner back of the screen and out of focus, is shot in the head. Not only are there some tragic and critical social and theological implications at work here; this scene also affirms to me that, in a film with a deliberately large and horrific body count, every death matters; no life is taken for granted.
There's not much to say about the cinematography or acting without killing at least 3000 words. This is a first-rate film in every sense. And this really is the season for it. Of course, I know someone, a fellow Christian, who thinks this film is so exactly the opposite of how I've described it that she gave us her copy, and that's how we got it for free. So...you know...this review may fail you horribly. I sure hope not.
the super terrific happy hour all-media Christmas
POP QUIZ!
Nothing says Christmas like:
a) Futurama vol. I;
b) John Carpenter's The Thing;
c) Battlestar Galactica season 1, with the pilot episode missing;
d) dinner with friendly people you don't really know;
e) The Verve;
f) an impending Xbox 360;
g) two straight all-day Sharpe-a-thons, interrupted only by (d);
h) Speed;
i) her Majesty's Christmas message to the Commonwealth;
j) a French-release theatrical poster for Bullitt;
k) all of the above (especially j);
l) none of the above (especially j).
If you picked (l), this is probably the wrong blog for you.
If you wondered what on earth a Sharpe-a-thon is, stay tuned; you'll know in a day or two.
If you thought I meant the Dirk Benedict Battlestar Galactica, we're probably not acquainted.
If you've never heard of Bullitt, ask my mother-in-law. ;)
Happy Christmas, everyone.
Nothing says Christmas like:
a) Futurama vol. I;
b) John Carpenter's The Thing;
c) Battlestar Galactica season 1, with the pilot episode missing;
d) dinner with friendly people you don't really know;
e) The Verve;
f) an impending Xbox 360;
g) two straight all-day Sharpe-a-thons, interrupted only by (d);
h) Speed;
i) her Majesty's Christmas message to the Commonwealth;
j) a French-release theatrical poster for Bullitt;
k) all of the above (especially j);
l) none of the above (especially j).
If you picked (l), this is probably the wrong blog for you.
If you wondered what on earth a Sharpe-a-thon is, stay tuned; you'll know in a day or two.
If you thought I meant the Dirk Benedict Battlestar Galactica, we're probably not acquainted.
If you've never heard of Bullitt, ask my mother-in-law. ;)
Happy Christmas, everyone.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Merry Christmas, American Cowboy.
I celebrate Christmas as the Christian I am; in other words, as a sacred festival. That being said, I can understand why so many people abhor the season and the holiday - clearly, because of all the awful films associated with this time of year. Sure, there are the fun feel-good stalwarts like White Christmas, and I have nothing against It's A Wonderful Life, but 9.5 out of 10 "Christmas movies" are either melodramatic crap, or brainless heresy ("you just have to believe in...um...believing!"), or a horrific combination of both (there is the odd nostalgia film that fills neither category, like A Christmas Story, but I don't get that movie - I guess you have to have been there to be nostalgic about it). Seeing as how I don't own White Christmas, and can only watch It's A Wonderful Life once every decade, what's left for a girl to watch as December 25th rolls around?
Why, the finest Christmas movie of them all, of course: John McTiernan's Die Hard.
No, really. Hear me out!
First, the obvious: it takes place on Christmas Eve. But past the obvious, Die Hard remains the most (the only?) socially conscious and relevant pure action film I'm aware of. Exploring and expressing the fears of the working-class man at the end of the 1980s, both domestic and economic, it even brings up (without using a word of dialogue) the vestigial remnants of Vietnam as it continued to affect the men who fought there, and the ones who were just a bit too young to join up or be drafted.
Think about it. NYPD cop John McClane is flying across the country to visit his semi-estranged wife Holly, who has moved there with the kids in order to pursue a career as a successful corporate executive. She's not just discontent with being a stay-at-home mom, but has chosen her career over John and all her ties in New York. And who's she working for? The Japanese! At the ultimate conclusion (don't worry, this isn't really a spoiler), she must give up her Rolex - the ultimate 80's symbol of having "made it" - in order to save her life. And who's the villain of the story? A German economic terrorist - this is just on the heels of the fall of the Berlin wall. And in two brilliant, brief scenes, one involving a police helicopter and the over showing John making his way, shilouetted, barefoot, and clutching a machine gun, through the koi pond of the building's darkened atrium - it looks, and sounds, like all the clips and movies I've seen of the Vietnamese jungle, and I think that was done very deliberately as a reminder of the personal impacts of that war, which were still very much present in the 80's. And then there's the racial commentary - with both John and Al and the two FBI agents, we have the black-and-white buddy combo, but on villain Hans Gruber's crew, the hacker/security expert - i.e., the super-smart, highly educated, guy - is a young black man. That's an interesting one.
And, of course, it's a freakin' awesome film! Smart, well-played, great dialogue, one of the most memorably hilarious vulgar lines in film history, and tons of attention to detail - the "under construction" set even has contractor measurements written in magic marker on the bathroom mirrors - it remains the best pure action film I've ever seen, period. It's such a pleasure to watch.
"Elly! Isn't it hypocritical of you to have a violent action flick as your favourite Christmas movie?"
I don't know. But that's the way it is.
Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Reginald VelJohnson, and Bonnie Bedelia. Merry Christmas!
Why, the finest Christmas movie of them all, of course: John McTiernan's Die Hard.
No, really. Hear me out!
First, the obvious: it takes place on Christmas Eve. But past the obvious, Die Hard remains the most (the only?) socially conscious and relevant pure action film I'm aware of. Exploring and expressing the fears of the working-class man at the end of the 1980s, both domestic and economic, it even brings up (without using a word of dialogue) the vestigial remnants of Vietnam as it continued to affect the men who fought there, and the ones who were just a bit too young to join up or be drafted.
Think about it. NYPD cop John McClane is flying across the country to visit his semi-estranged wife Holly, who has moved there with the kids in order to pursue a career as a successful corporate executive. She's not just discontent with being a stay-at-home mom, but has chosen her career over John and all her ties in New York. And who's she working for? The Japanese! At the ultimate conclusion (don't worry, this isn't really a spoiler), she must give up her Rolex - the ultimate 80's symbol of having "made it" - in order to save her life. And who's the villain of the story? A German economic terrorist - this is just on the heels of the fall of the Berlin wall. And in two brilliant, brief scenes, one involving a police helicopter and the over showing John making his way, shilouetted, barefoot, and clutching a machine gun, through the koi pond of the building's darkened atrium - it looks, and sounds, like all the clips and movies I've seen of the Vietnamese jungle, and I think that was done very deliberately as a reminder of the personal impacts of that war, which were still very much present in the 80's. And then there's the racial commentary - with both John and Al and the two FBI agents, we have the black-and-white buddy combo, but on villain Hans Gruber's crew, the hacker/security expert - i.e., the super-smart, highly educated, guy - is a young black man. That's an interesting one.
And, of course, it's a freakin' awesome film! Smart, well-played, great dialogue, one of the most memorably hilarious vulgar lines in film history, and tons of attention to detail - the "under construction" set even has contractor measurements written in magic marker on the bathroom mirrors - it remains the best pure action film I've ever seen, period. It's such a pleasure to watch.
"Elly! Isn't it hypocritical of you to have a violent action flick as your favourite Christmas movie?"
I don't know. But that's the way it is.
Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Reginald VelJohnson, and Bonnie Bedelia. Merry Christmas!
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Denny Colt? I've Heard Of You! I Thought You Were Dead!
You know all those disappointing action movies/thrillers, the ones that have seven to ten minutes of interesting plot revelations and character development and ninety to a hundred and ten minutes of crap filler?
Now, pick one of those same movies, and imagine it without all the crap filler, and you have an approximate idea of Will Eisner's landmark comic serial, The Spirit.
Premiering in the early fourties as a Sunday comic newspaper insert, The Spirit is unbelievably brilliant. I've just had my first taste of it, Corey having picked up an anthology from the library, and if it weren't for the distinctive illustration style of the time, I'd never guess how old it was. The Spirit tells the continuing story of Denny Colt, a cop who accidentally ingested a chemical that simulates death while trying to apprehend a criminal. Buried and thought gone, a short time later a cop version of Santa's little helper appeared on the streets. Police commissioner Dolan wants to know who the Spirit is, and he uses his cop skills to find out within that first story, and so we have a vigilante who is not a vigilante; a man who doesn't operate outside the law because he doesn't break it, who is known to and liked by police, because he's one of them (the Spirit hangs out at the police station all the time)...he's more of a classic private investigator, but with added hero panache of a mysterious existence, and the fact that everyone thinks he's dead.
Here are a few reasons why The Spirit is so awesome. For one thing, the premise: there are many things that can simulate death, and right away we have a character backstory that's so much cooler (and more plausible) than the typical "radioactive goo/gamma-/x-ray" premise of the time it was written. For another, I am now in full understanding and agreement with the statement that anyone who calls Will Eisner a genius is not being nostalgic, or using hyperbole. The average Spirit story unfolds within five to seven pages of panels, and yet the pace never feels hurried, the revelations never feel rushed, everything feels just right - an exciting story with a solid conclusion that leaves me nodding and thinking, "that makes perfect sense!". I think The Spirit can be most accurately compared to that psychology experiment involving a broken circle. You've probably seen it before: show someone a picture of a circle that has been broken, or has various parts of it missing, and ask them what it is, and as long as it doesn't look like a "C" or Pac-Man, the response will always be, "it's a circle". Your brain automatically provides missing information, as long as there's enough for it to go on - a half-circle, or quarter-circle, won't elicit that response. That's basically how Will Eisner told these stories, with enough information and atmosphere to let the reader fill in the blanks without even realizing there were any blanks present. And the atmosphere...I wish my scanner was working, because I would love to show you a page or two, or even some of the story covers, like the one from "Down Below". Just incredible stuff.
On top of all that, The Spirit has strong, memorable characters, like former criminal Satin, and a host of femme fatales that rival any superheroes rogues gallery. It has a great sense of humour - if someone showed me the "Children's Primer" story about Rat-Tat the toy tommy gun, I'd never have guessed it was three time as old as I am. But, to my reading, The Spirit is mostly a tragedy, as it explores what desperate people do when forced into corners, and the seemingly random attrocities that just don't make sense. As I've said many times in this space, retro doesn't automatically equal naive or fluffy, and The Spirit is certainly neither. It's perhaps the best noir I've ever seen on paper.
Of course, The Spirit has one or two things that make it very obviously a product of its time, like an early-on black chauffeur who bears a striking resemblance to a monkey. But I don't think that character lasted too long, because in the anthology I read, the Spirit later has a white kid as his helper.
I can't wait to get my hands on the complete Spirit collection, and read all the storylines from start to finish - the "best of" snippets just left me clamouring for more. Of course, Frank Miller's turned it into a film, premiering next week. I think there's a level on which The Spirit and Frank Miller will actually mix well, because of the former's tales of desperation and incomprehensible evil, and the latter's worldview that this is just what's normal. I also think that there's a very good chance Denny Colt's character has been bastardized into a creation of Miller's perennially dark mind; from what I know of Miller's work, he doesn't believe in goodness. For example, his Jim Gordon (Batman: Year One) is a man with a sketchy record, who may have committed attrocities in 'Nam and who actually cheats on Barbara while she's pregnant with Jim Jr. What I'm trying to say it, I have yet to see any evidence that Frank Miller believes in the existence of heroes, and the problem here is that Denny Colt is a straight-shooting, genuine hero.
Of course, this is all conjecture, and I'm sure I'll watch The Spitit when it's cheap or free, and really enjoy it visually, at the very least.
For now, though, should someone like to buy me the complete Spirit collection, every single strip hard-bound in chronological order, for Christmas, I would certainly send them a very nice thank-you card.
See how I wrote all that without even one bad pun involving the words "holiday", "Christmas", or "Spirit"? If you didn't get a real gift from me this year, consider this it.
Now, pick one of those same movies, and imagine it without all the crap filler, and you have an approximate idea of Will Eisner's landmark comic serial, The Spirit.
Premiering in the early fourties as a Sunday comic newspaper insert, The Spirit is unbelievably brilliant. I've just had my first taste of it, Corey having picked up an anthology from the library, and if it weren't for the distinctive illustration style of the time, I'd never guess how old it was. The Spirit tells the continuing story of Denny Colt, a cop who accidentally ingested a chemical that simulates death while trying to apprehend a criminal. Buried and thought gone, a short time later a cop version of Santa's little helper appeared on the streets. Police commissioner Dolan wants to know who the Spirit is, and he uses his cop skills to find out within that first story, and so we have a vigilante who is not a vigilante; a man who doesn't operate outside the law because he doesn't break it, who is known to and liked by police, because he's one of them (the Spirit hangs out at the police station all the time)...he's more of a classic private investigator, but with added hero panache of a mysterious existence, and the fact that everyone thinks he's dead.
Here are a few reasons why The Spirit is so awesome. For one thing, the premise: there are many things that can simulate death, and right away we have a character backstory that's so much cooler (and more plausible) than the typical "radioactive goo/gamma-/x-ray" premise of the time it was written. For another, I am now in full understanding and agreement with the statement that anyone who calls Will Eisner a genius is not being nostalgic, or using hyperbole. The average Spirit story unfolds within five to seven pages of panels, and yet the pace never feels hurried, the revelations never feel rushed, everything feels just right - an exciting story with a solid conclusion that leaves me nodding and thinking, "that makes perfect sense!". I think The Spirit can be most accurately compared to that psychology experiment involving a broken circle. You've probably seen it before: show someone a picture of a circle that has been broken, or has various parts of it missing, and ask them what it is, and as long as it doesn't look like a "C" or Pac-Man, the response will always be, "it's a circle". Your brain automatically provides missing information, as long as there's enough for it to go on - a half-circle, or quarter-circle, won't elicit that response. That's basically how Will Eisner told these stories, with enough information and atmosphere to let the reader fill in the blanks without even realizing there were any blanks present. And the atmosphere...I wish my scanner was working, because I would love to show you a page or two, or even some of the story covers, like the one from "Down Below". Just incredible stuff.
On top of all that, The Spirit has strong, memorable characters, like former criminal Satin, and a host of femme fatales that rival any superheroes rogues gallery. It has a great sense of humour - if someone showed me the "Children's Primer" story about Rat-Tat the toy tommy gun, I'd never have guessed it was three time as old as I am. But, to my reading, The Spirit is mostly a tragedy, as it explores what desperate people do when forced into corners, and the seemingly random attrocities that just don't make sense. As I've said many times in this space, retro doesn't automatically equal naive or fluffy, and The Spirit is certainly neither. It's perhaps the best noir I've ever seen on paper.
Of course, The Spirit has one or two things that make it very obviously a product of its time, like an early-on black chauffeur who bears a striking resemblance to a monkey. But I don't think that character lasted too long, because in the anthology I read, the Spirit later has a white kid as his helper.
I can't wait to get my hands on the complete Spirit collection, and read all the storylines from start to finish - the "best of" snippets just left me clamouring for more. Of course, Frank Miller's turned it into a film, premiering next week. I think there's a level on which The Spirit and Frank Miller will actually mix well, because of the former's tales of desperation and incomprehensible evil, and the latter's worldview that this is just what's normal. I also think that there's a very good chance Denny Colt's character has been bastardized into a creation of Miller's perennially dark mind; from what I know of Miller's work, he doesn't believe in goodness. For example, his Jim Gordon (Batman: Year One) is a man with a sketchy record, who may have committed attrocities in 'Nam and who actually cheats on Barbara while she's pregnant with Jim Jr. What I'm trying to say it, I have yet to see any evidence that Frank Miller believes in the existence of heroes, and the problem here is that Denny Colt is a straight-shooting, genuine hero.
Of course, this is all conjecture, and I'm sure I'll watch The Spitit when it's cheap or free, and really enjoy it visually, at the very least.
For now, though, should someone like to buy me the complete Spirit collection, every single strip hard-bound in chronological order, for Christmas, I would certainly send them a very nice thank-you card.
See how I wrote all that without even one bad pun involving the words "holiday", "Christmas", or "Spirit"? If you didn't get a real gift from me this year, consider this it.
Majel Barrett Roddenberry, 1932-2008
Sometimes, I hear about the death of someone I had no personal connection with, and I feel sad anyway. Yesterday's news about Majel Barrett Roddenberry was one of those times. The widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, Majel appeared as Nurse Chapel in the original series (you know, the nurse with the huge blonde beehive?), Deanna Troi's outrageous mother on The Next Generation, and every Star Trek incarnation including every series, game, and movie - including the as yet un-released J.J. Abrams re-boot - as the iconic voice of the Federation's computer system. I also particularly remember her from a Babylon 5 episode in which she played the widow of the late Centauri emperor, called to the station by Londo because she was a prophetess, and he wanted his prophecy - a strong, fantastic episode anchored by her graceful and dignified character.
Entertainment Weekly did me in by posting, as an obituary, a clip from that TNG episode werein the crew discovers a cryogenically frozen Scotty floating in space. In short time, Scotty realizes that it's some three hundred years since he was last conscious, and everyone he knew or loved is dead, and the clip EW posted was of his powerful, private, thoroughly heartbreaking toast to those gone so far before him. That's always made me cry; I didn't need to hit 'play' on the video to recognize the scene, and it did me in anyway.
What else did me in, in a very sobering way? The reminder that, even in this day and age, in the most eminent first-world country on Earth, and being able to afford excellent medical care, people can still die from pneumonia. There's nothing like hearing that one of the greatest TV sci-fi icons ever has died of pneumonia complications to shock a person into realizations about their own vulnerability.
Anyways...Majel Barrett Roddenberry. I'll remember her best here by not making a syrupy pun using Star Trek euphemisms about passing into the afterlife.
:(
Entertainment Weekly did me in by posting, as an obituary, a clip from that TNG episode werein the crew discovers a cryogenically frozen Scotty floating in space. In short time, Scotty realizes that it's some three hundred years since he was last conscious, and everyone he knew or loved is dead, and the clip EW posted was of his powerful, private, thoroughly heartbreaking toast to those gone so far before him. That's always made me cry; I didn't need to hit 'play' on the video to recognize the scene, and it did me in anyway.
What else did me in, in a very sobering way? The reminder that, even in this day and age, in the most eminent first-world country on Earth, and being able to afford excellent medical care, people can still die from pneumonia. There's nothing like hearing that one of the greatest TV sci-fi icons ever has died of pneumonia complications to shock a person into realizations about their own vulnerability.
Anyways...Majel Barrett Roddenberry. I'll remember her best here by not making a syrupy pun using Star Trek euphemisms about passing into the afterlife.
:(
Friday, December 19, 2008
He Puts The "Ick" In "Magic"
A good light read is hard to come by, because too many authors have a bad habit of equating "light" with "brainless". Alan Dean Foster does the light read nicely; Lost and Found, for example. My new favourite discovery for some good old-fashioned, high-quality fun? Jim Butcher's Dresden Files.
A noir detective story set in contemporary Chicago, this first-person series follows one Harry Dresden, the only professional wizard in North America. You can find him in the Yellow Pages under "wizards". He mostly puts his skills to work as a private investigator, finding missing objects and persons and the like, but every so often consults for the Chicago PD's Special Investigations unit. SI are the folks who get stuck investigating those wierd homicides and disappearances that have no rational explanation, and then explaining them to the city, and the unit is populated with cops who have fallen out of favour with city councilmen, the rest of the force, etc. Harry has one ally on the force, SI's head Lt. Murphy, who works as a character because she's one step - but only one step - away from those uber-irritating "you go grrrrrrrrl!" caricatures, and she plays a nice Scully to Harry's Mulder. This is not to say that Harry is anything like Fox Mulder; for one thing, he's a fun guy. For another, he knows for a fact that the supernatural exists. A member of the governing magic regulatory body, the White Council of Wizards, Harry's a black sheep. Orphaned at six, he was raised and mentored by a wizard who turned out (shocker!) to be evil, and wound up killing his mentor in a fight. You can imagine this had an effect on how he does things like relate to people. Harry's a wiseass through and through, with a sense of humour that may or may not be healthy (but is always entertaining), and is understandably reluctant about things like friendship and bonding. He hangs out as much as he can with Murphy, but otherwise, his only constants are his gigantic cat, Mister, and Bob the Skull, a spirit of intellect who keeps form in, um, a human skull.
Butcher has a nice mythology of wizards and the supernatural, and draws heavily from classic and contemporary sources as well as what must have been a strong Christian upbringing that he appears to have strayed from, but does not resent. For one thing, wizards and the magics that surround them tend to screw up technology, and as such, most wizards are one to three centuries behind the rest of the world - Harry needs Bob to serve as his computer, because computers tend to spontaneously blow out in his presence, and he uses an icebox and cooks on a wood stove. For another, his mythology of faeries is Old World just great. As well, Butcher respects the supernatural in a way most writers of supernatural fiction don't. Creatures like vampires, werewolves, demons, etc. are, in every way, disgusting, evil, and just plain wrong - there is absolutely nothing cool about them in Butcher's universe. On top of that, he also respects the other side of the supernatural battle, another thing most writers of supernatural fiction don't do. Harry's only reliable, constant human friend, besides Murphy, is a man named Michael Carpenter, who is one of the world's three Knights of the Cross. Chosen by God to intervene in certain supernatural battles on Earth, Michael doesn't have a shady past, or some horrible sins he's trying to atone for. When wizards look into people's eyes, the initiate soulgazes, which allow them to literally see the condition and truth of the other person's soul, and is reciprocal, which are two reasons why Harry doesn't look a lot of people in the eyes. When Michael and Harry meet for the first time, Michael insists on a soulgaze...and Harry weeps, because Michael's soul is so beautiful, and Harry wishes his soul were like that.
Butcher also has a great sense of humour that I'm completely in step with. The Dresden Files are The Maltese Falcon meets Angel meets the classic noir writers like Hammett and Sinclair, infused with the soul of a card-carrying geek, and the humour is as dry as it is awesome. Harry, due to the nature of his work and existence, finds himself in many ludicrous situations. At the start of book six, he's running through a burning building. Carrying a box of puppies. Whilst trying to evade a horde of flying monkey demons. Who are attempting to kill him by flinging incendiary poop...and because Harry's a consistent, real character, these ludicrous situations work. They seem perfectly normal, because Harry's normal has been so well established. Other grand comedic situations include a perfectly viable incorporation of I Was a Teenage Werewolf. No, really. There's a nice sense of fun in every aspect of The Dresden Files, even in serious things like Michael's holy mission. When Michael's helping Harry with some random case, he can be hurt like anyone else, but when he's on a divinely appointed mission, he can't be harmed - thus successfully combining pretty decent theology with a classic tabletop gaming joke ("Jesus saves - everyone else takes half damage").
These books are great for stuff like lazy week-ends, or evenings when you're too tired from work to do anything else and just want to be entertained, but there's nothing on TV. They take about two hours to read, but like I said before, I want to stress that they're light - not brainless. For quick reads, there's a lot going on, but not too much. A word of warning: because Butcher respects the supernatural, and doesn't think evil is cool, the violence, and ways people are killed by demons etc., is 110% R-rated. That is to say, it's horrific and disgusting...but that's one of the things that makes this series so great in my mind.
The Dresden Files are a series; in other words, plot and character development is linear, and so the books should be read in order. People change and grow over the course of the story, and events from prior books have impacts on events in future books. So start with Storm Front, work your way up, and enjoy!
A noir detective story set in contemporary Chicago, this first-person series follows one Harry Dresden, the only professional wizard in North America. You can find him in the Yellow Pages under "wizards". He mostly puts his skills to work as a private investigator, finding missing objects and persons and the like, but every so often consults for the Chicago PD's Special Investigations unit. SI are the folks who get stuck investigating those wierd homicides and disappearances that have no rational explanation, and then explaining them to the city, and the unit is populated with cops who have fallen out of favour with city councilmen, the rest of the force, etc. Harry has one ally on the force, SI's head Lt. Murphy, who works as a character because she's one step - but only one step - away from those uber-irritating "you go grrrrrrrrl!" caricatures, and she plays a nice Scully to Harry's Mulder. This is not to say that Harry is anything like Fox Mulder; for one thing, he's a fun guy. For another, he knows for a fact that the supernatural exists. A member of the governing magic regulatory body, the White Council of Wizards, Harry's a black sheep. Orphaned at six, he was raised and mentored by a wizard who turned out (shocker!) to be evil, and wound up killing his mentor in a fight. You can imagine this had an effect on how he does things like relate to people. Harry's a wiseass through and through, with a sense of humour that may or may not be healthy (but is always entertaining), and is understandably reluctant about things like friendship and bonding. He hangs out as much as he can with Murphy, but otherwise, his only constants are his gigantic cat, Mister, and Bob the Skull, a spirit of intellect who keeps form in, um, a human skull.
Butcher has a nice mythology of wizards and the supernatural, and draws heavily from classic and contemporary sources as well as what must have been a strong Christian upbringing that he appears to have strayed from, but does not resent. For one thing, wizards and the magics that surround them tend to screw up technology, and as such, most wizards are one to three centuries behind the rest of the world - Harry needs Bob to serve as his computer, because computers tend to spontaneously blow out in his presence, and he uses an icebox and cooks on a wood stove. For another, his mythology of faeries is Old World just great. As well, Butcher respects the supernatural in a way most writers of supernatural fiction don't. Creatures like vampires, werewolves, demons, etc. are, in every way, disgusting, evil, and just plain wrong - there is absolutely nothing cool about them in Butcher's universe. On top of that, he also respects the other side of the supernatural battle, another thing most writers of supernatural fiction don't do. Harry's only reliable, constant human friend, besides Murphy, is a man named Michael Carpenter, who is one of the world's three Knights of the Cross. Chosen by God to intervene in certain supernatural battles on Earth, Michael doesn't have a shady past, or some horrible sins he's trying to atone for. When wizards look into people's eyes, the initiate soulgazes, which allow them to literally see the condition and truth of the other person's soul, and is reciprocal, which are two reasons why Harry doesn't look a lot of people in the eyes. When Michael and Harry meet for the first time, Michael insists on a soulgaze...and Harry weeps, because Michael's soul is so beautiful, and Harry wishes his soul were like that.
Butcher also has a great sense of humour that I'm completely in step with. The Dresden Files are The Maltese Falcon meets Angel meets the classic noir writers like Hammett and Sinclair, infused with the soul of a card-carrying geek, and the humour is as dry as it is awesome. Harry, due to the nature of his work and existence, finds himself in many ludicrous situations. At the start of book six, he's running through a burning building. Carrying a box of puppies. Whilst trying to evade a horde of flying monkey demons. Who are attempting to kill him by flinging incendiary poop...and because Harry's a consistent, real character, these ludicrous situations work. They seem perfectly normal, because Harry's normal has been so well established. Other grand comedic situations include a perfectly viable incorporation of I Was a Teenage Werewolf. No, really. There's a nice sense of fun in every aspect of The Dresden Files, even in serious things like Michael's holy mission. When Michael's helping Harry with some random case, he can be hurt like anyone else, but when he's on a divinely appointed mission, he can't be harmed - thus successfully combining pretty decent theology with a classic tabletop gaming joke ("Jesus saves - everyone else takes half damage").
These books are great for stuff like lazy week-ends, or evenings when you're too tired from work to do anything else and just want to be entertained, but there's nothing on TV. They take about two hours to read, but like I said before, I want to stress that they're light - not brainless. For quick reads, there's a lot going on, but not too much. A word of warning: because Butcher respects the supernatural, and doesn't think evil is cool, the violence, and ways people are killed by demons etc., is 110% R-rated. That is to say, it's horrific and disgusting...but that's one of the things that makes this series so great in my mind.
The Dresden Files are a series; in other words, plot and character development is linear, and so the books should be read in order. People change and grow over the course of the story, and events from prior books have impacts on events in future books. So start with Storm Front, work your way up, and enjoy!
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Let it Be? Let it Bleed.
"If you remember the sixties, you weren't there", etc, etc. I certainly wasn't there, don't remember them either, but I have the art, and the art is fascinating.
As I finally got my hands on a copy of the Rolling Stones grim farewell to the sixties, Let it Bleed (1969), I was reminded of two things: first, that it's extraordinary, and second, that people who only know the Stones from landmark singles like "Satisfaction" or "Paint it Black" don't realize just how diametrically opposed this band was from the other classic English band (and Stones contemporary) everyone's heard of, The Beatles. Case in point, my husband commenting, with a hint of surprise, "wow, this is really blues-y!". No, those two generals of the British Invasion couldn't be more different, musically and ideologically, and Let it Bleed is a stunning confirmation of such. Where the Beatles pursued experimentation, and creating new sounds, the Stones as I hear them were about actual rock and roll, focusing on its genesis from the blues and pursuing the refinement of that style. Where the Beatles, with a few notable (and stand-alone) exceptions, embodied the hippie ideology of peace, love, and naivete, the Stones had no illusions as to the social and moral failings of this fabled decade, and Let it Bleed is an often painful commentary on just how badly the eyes-wide-shut, free-love philosophy didn't work. Nostalgic, this album ain't - it comes off as a bit relieved to be leaving the sixties behind. It was also released the same year as the Fab Four's final studio album, Abbey Road and, significantly, only knocked that out of Billboard's #1 until Christmas week, when Road took precedence again. Abbey Road has one dark note in "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", but compared to any track you can shuffle off Let it Bleed, it's a very tame way to acknowledge that sometimes, life sucks, and the promises of the decade didn't quite pan out. Sure, there were dark turns to the Beatles, like some of the White Album, or "I Am The Walrus", or those weird uber-violent, mysoginistic tracks like Rubber Soul's "Run For Your Life", on which Lennon sings about how he'll murder his ex if he catches her with someone else, but they always seemed kind of random to me. These tracks never seemed resolved with the larger overarching, ignorantly cheerful tone of the Beatle's catalogue, almost as if they wanted to be looking more deeply at this stuff, but were determined to maintain their peace 'n love, I'm okay you're okay ideology and the image that went with it.
"Gimme Shelter", opening the album, is a heavy, weary, blistering comment on how horrors like rape, murder, and war hang over our heads and can strike at any time. Title track "Let it Bleed" turns the tame, feel-good refrain of "lean on me" into the more desperate "bleed on me", along with a raft of sexually explicit verses. "Live With Me" is a damning look at unstructured, dysfunctional, carelessly entered domestic life. "Midnight Rambler" uses upbeat, familiar blues conventions to back lyrics about a serial killer. And the album's most recognizable track, "You Can't Always Get What You Want", is one of the greatest album closers I can think of, a brilliant, poignant song of pain and disillusionment warring with hope. I've seen it compared to both "Hey Jude" and "A Day in the Life"; personally, I can't find any substantial connection with either. "Hey Jude" is a beautiful song, but it's pretty tame, and is a loving encouragement to someone, whereas "You Can't Always Get What You Want" is from the POV of someone trying to make sense of things by themselves - it has a weight, and a sense of growth, that is absent from the core of "Hey Jude". As for comparing it to "A Day in the Life"...huh? All I see there is a tenuous connection between using classical musical elements.
To clarify - I don't look down on the Beatles. I just listen to them for what they are, with my eyes open. And I think it's great stuff. At one point in time, I owned all their studio albums, plus a good chunk of the fan stuff like Live at the BBC. I walked down the aisle at my wedding to "In My Life". But, when I'm looking for a little empathy, they don't usually do the trick. As I've tried to convey here, the Beatles and the Stones are different as night and day - I really don't think that they can be compared in terms of, for example, who's the better band. It would be like trying to pit Coldplay against Radiohead, wherein the only common ground is that they're both creative, skilled, and British.
My description of the tracks, and flavour of the album, may leave you wondering why anyone should want to listen to such a thing. I would say, for the same reason anyone would want to watch Unforgiven. Let it Bleed is a very dark album; however, it both explicitly and implicitly says and explores some very important issues. And, oh yeah, it's a musical masterpiece. One of the best rock albums you'll ever hear. It's also not currently available in CD format, but in something that's supposed to have superior sound quality. The audio business hasn't come to the head of its version of the Blu-Ray - Hi-Def war yet. Fortunately, the album didn't give my original Xbox any trouble...though maybe it's just my TV, with its puny built-in speakers, but I didn't note it as sounding any better than a CD format album.
What else can I say? Great album, an interesting slice of musical and social history, though depending on your personality and mental state, it may not be a healthy listen.
As I finally got my hands on a copy of the Rolling Stones grim farewell to the sixties, Let it Bleed (1969), I was reminded of two things: first, that it's extraordinary, and second, that people who only know the Stones from landmark singles like "Satisfaction" or "Paint it Black" don't realize just how diametrically opposed this band was from the other classic English band (and Stones contemporary) everyone's heard of, The Beatles. Case in point, my husband commenting, with a hint of surprise, "wow, this is really blues-y!". No, those two generals of the British Invasion couldn't be more different, musically and ideologically, and Let it Bleed is a stunning confirmation of such. Where the Beatles pursued experimentation, and creating new sounds, the Stones as I hear them were about actual rock and roll, focusing on its genesis from the blues and pursuing the refinement of that style. Where the Beatles, with a few notable (and stand-alone) exceptions, embodied the hippie ideology of peace, love, and naivete, the Stones had no illusions as to the social and moral failings of this fabled decade, and Let it Bleed is an often painful commentary on just how badly the eyes-wide-shut, free-love philosophy didn't work. Nostalgic, this album ain't - it comes off as a bit relieved to be leaving the sixties behind. It was also released the same year as the Fab Four's final studio album, Abbey Road and, significantly, only knocked that out of Billboard's #1 until Christmas week, when Road took precedence again. Abbey Road has one dark note in "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", but compared to any track you can shuffle off Let it Bleed, it's a very tame way to acknowledge that sometimes, life sucks, and the promises of the decade didn't quite pan out. Sure, there were dark turns to the Beatles, like some of the White Album, or "I Am The Walrus", or those weird uber-violent, mysoginistic tracks like Rubber Soul's "Run For Your Life", on which Lennon sings about how he'll murder his ex if he catches her with someone else, but they always seemed kind of random to me. These tracks never seemed resolved with the larger overarching, ignorantly cheerful tone of the Beatle's catalogue, almost as if they wanted to be looking more deeply at this stuff, but were determined to maintain their peace 'n love, I'm okay you're okay ideology and the image that went with it.
"Gimme Shelter", opening the album, is a heavy, weary, blistering comment on how horrors like rape, murder, and war hang over our heads and can strike at any time. Title track "Let it Bleed" turns the tame, feel-good refrain of "lean on me" into the more desperate "bleed on me", along with a raft of sexually explicit verses. "Live With Me" is a damning look at unstructured, dysfunctional, carelessly entered domestic life. "Midnight Rambler" uses upbeat, familiar blues conventions to back lyrics about a serial killer. And the album's most recognizable track, "You Can't Always Get What You Want", is one of the greatest album closers I can think of, a brilliant, poignant song of pain and disillusionment warring with hope. I've seen it compared to both "Hey Jude" and "A Day in the Life"; personally, I can't find any substantial connection with either. "Hey Jude" is a beautiful song, but it's pretty tame, and is a loving encouragement to someone, whereas "You Can't Always Get What You Want" is from the POV of someone trying to make sense of things by themselves - it has a weight, and a sense of growth, that is absent from the core of "Hey Jude". As for comparing it to "A Day in the Life"...huh? All I see there is a tenuous connection between using classical musical elements.
To clarify - I don't look down on the Beatles. I just listen to them for what they are, with my eyes open. And I think it's great stuff. At one point in time, I owned all their studio albums, plus a good chunk of the fan stuff like Live at the BBC. I walked down the aisle at my wedding to "In My Life". But, when I'm looking for a little empathy, they don't usually do the trick. As I've tried to convey here, the Beatles and the Stones are different as night and day - I really don't think that they can be compared in terms of, for example, who's the better band. It would be like trying to pit Coldplay against Radiohead, wherein the only common ground is that they're both creative, skilled, and British.
My description of the tracks, and flavour of the album, may leave you wondering why anyone should want to listen to such a thing. I would say, for the same reason anyone would want to watch Unforgiven. Let it Bleed is a very dark album; however, it both explicitly and implicitly says and explores some very important issues. And, oh yeah, it's a musical masterpiece. One of the best rock albums you'll ever hear. It's also not currently available in CD format, but in something that's supposed to have superior sound quality. The audio business hasn't come to the head of its version of the Blu-Ray - Hi-Def war yet. Fortunately, the album didn't give my original Xbox any trouble...though maybe it's just my TV, with its puny built-in speakers, but I didn't note it as sounding any better than a CD format album.
What else can I say? Great album, an interesting slice of musical and social history, though depending on your personality and mental state, it may not be a healthy listen.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Did You Miss Me? 1.0
Sometimes, excellent movies fall by the wayside, overshadowed by the big-buzz stuff that is released in the same year. 2004's Oscar nominees for Best Picture were winner The Return of the King, Mystic River, Lost in Translation, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and, for reasons only those who truly enjoy poorly-made, mawkishly sentimental pictures can understand, Seabiscuit. Other films released that year, big-buzz in terms of scope and stars or indie breakout-ness, included Finding Nemo, In America, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, The Last Samurai, and Gangs of New York. Easy enough for something to slip off your radar, no? Dang, that was a good year.
Anyways, the subject of today's lecture is a small-but-large film too few people have heard of or seen: Peter Weir's fantastic Napoleonic War epic Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
Adapted from Patrick O'Brian's books of the same names (Master and Commander is book one, The Far Side of the World, book ten of the series), Master and Commander is not only one of the best literary adaptations you're likely to encounter, it's also a tremendous movie in every sense of the word. The plot, taken from book ten, covers Captain "Lucky" Jack Aubrey's pursuit of the French man o' war Acheron across the south Pacific, and in skilled hands taking their cue from equally skilled hands (O'Brian), it's a game of cat and mouse that is smart and classy without being smug. As well, the crew of Aubrey's H.M.S. Surprise is as important to the film as the two main players, adding depth and richness along with a healthy dose of tragedy and comedy alike. Russell Crowe was a perfect casting choice to play Lucky Jack; he is a fine actor, and captures all the right notes of Aubrey's joviality, obsessiveness, and passion. Some complained that Paul Bettany was a bit too tall and good-looking for the role of Jack's ship surgeon and confidante Stephen Maturin, but I'm quite happy to overlook the physical mismatch, as I can't imagine a better casting here either. Crowe and Bettany are a pair of self-assured actors who know what they're doing, and together, they do it so very well.
The cinematography is stunning, and was cause for an Oscar. The film also took home that particular award for sound editing, and rightly so - it's a rare action movie in which I can make out every line of dialogue, and don't have to do frantic sound adjustments between dialogue and action, which is another mark towards what makes this film such a great watch. The score, drawing heavily on violin and cello for reasons obvious to fans of the books, and using both new, classical, and traditional tunes, is gorgeous and a great listen as a CD in its own right. For visuals, director Weir brought in several different F/X houses in order to make use of the specialties of each - Industrial Light and Magic handled things like battles and atmospherics (i.e. storms); New Zealand's famed Weta Workshops took care of the ship models. Speaking of the ship, Weir also demonstrated a healthy appreciation for his literary source by using the Surprise as a character in her own right, just as she should be. Speaking of the literary source, Weir and writer John Collee seamlessly combined the two books seamlessly by using character interactions from the first, and the plot and action from the tenth. It works so very well.
A pleasure to watch in every way, Master and Commander is also great for those of you who couldn't quite get a handle on the books. Patrick O'Brian was the Napoleonic War equivalent of a fanboy, and I personally love the books, but they are quite dense on period accuracy in terms of language use, as well as packed to the gills with technical naval information - think of how some people dislike Tolkien because of his level of descriptiveness, and multiply that by 1.5, and you have Patrick O'Brian. In my mind, that just makes the film better - it not only complimented its source material but, in a way, elevated it.
I've seen the special edition DVD for $6-$10 at Wal-Marts, Blockbusters, and Best Buys. For that price, why bother spending money on a rental? You'll probably want to keep it, anyway.
Anyways, the subject of today's lecture is a small-but-large film too few people have heard of or seen: Peter Weir's fantastic Napoleonic War epic Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
Adapted from Patrick O'Brian's books of the same names (Master and Commander is book one, The Far Side of the World, book ten of the series), Master and Commander is not only one of the best literary adaptations you're likely to encounter, it's also a tremendous movie in every sense of the word. The plot, taken from book ten, covers Captain "Lucky" Jack Aubrey's pursuit of the French man o' war Acheron across the south Pacific, and in skilled hands taking their cue from equally skilled hands (O'Brian), it's a game of cat and mouse that is smart and classy without being smug. As well, the crew of Aubrey's H.M.S. Surprise is as important to the film as the two main players, adding depth and richness along with a healthy dose of tragedy and comedy alike. Russell Crowe was a perfect casting choice to play Lucky Jack; he is a fine actor, and captures all the right notes of Aubrey's joviality, obsessiveness, and passion. Some complained that Paul Bettany was a bit too tall and good-looking for the role of Jack's ship surgeon and confidante Stephen Maturin, but I'm quite happy to overlook the physical mismatch, as I can't imagine a better casting here either. Crowe and Bettany are a pair of self-assured actors who know what they're doing, and together, they do it so very well.
The cinematography is stunning, and was cause for an Oscar. The film also took home that particular award for sound editing, and rightly so - it's a rare action movie in which I can make out every line of dialogue, and don't have to do frantic sound adjustments between dialogue and action, which is another mark towards what makes this film such a great watch. The score, drawing heavily on violin and cello for reasons obvious to fans of the books, and using both new, classical, and traditional tunes, is gorgeous and a great listen as a CD in its own right. For visuals, director Weir brought in several different F/X houses in order to make use of the specialties of each - Industrial Light and Magic handled things like battles and atmospherics (i.e. storms); New Zealand's famed Weta Workshops took care of the ship models. Speaking of the ship, Weir also demonstrated a healthy appreciation for his literary source by using the Surprise as a character in her own right, just as she should be. Speaking of the literary source, Weir and writer John Collee seamlessly combined the two books seamlessly by using character interactions from the first, and the plot and action from the tenth. It works so very well.
A pleasure to watch in every way, Master and Commander is also great for those of you who couldn't quite get a handle on the books. Patrick O'Brian was the Napoleonic War equivalent of a fanboy, and I personally love the books, but they are quite dense on period accuracy in terms of language use, as well as packed to the gills with technical naval information - think of how some people dislike Tolkien because of his level of descriptiveness, and multiply that by 1.5, and you have Patrick O'Brian. In my mind, that just makes the film better - it not only complimented its source material but, in a way, elevated it.
I've seen the special edition DVD for $6-$10 at Wal-Marts, Blockbusters, and Best Buys. For that price, why bother spending money on a rental? You'll probably want to keep it, anyway.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
A Funny Sense of Fun: Lawrence of Arabia
As a child, I remember my father being somewhat obsessed with David Lean's epic, biographical masterpiece, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and that is also what kept me from watching it independently for over a decade. In spite of that negative association, all through my childhood and teenage years I remained haunted, in a good way, by the one thing I remembered from passing through the living room while the film was on: that tracking shot of Lawrence's feet as he strides across the top of a captured passenger train in what I consider the film's most triumphant, disturbing, and visually incredible moment. When I finally sat down and watched it for myself, six years ago, I was blown away as I'd never previously been. It's the sort of film that stuns me anew every time I watch it, as I come away feeling like I'd forgotten just how extraordinary it is.
Starring the magnificent Peter O'Toole as Lawrence, featuring Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, and Alec Guinness, and making excellent use of Claude Raines and Anthony Quayle, Lawrence of Arabia is not only one of the best epics there is, but one of the best biopics as well. T.E. Lawrence, stationed as a mapmaker in Cairo during WWI, found himself given what most of his peers and superiors considered the unenviable opportunity to seek out nomadic Arab tribal leader Prince Faisal (Guinness) and attempt to rally his support against the Ottoman Turks. Once in the desert, Lawrence became captivated with the land and its people, and his somewhat obsessive personality, anarchic tilt, and strong ego translated into creating (and, in a sense, leading) what became an all-out revolt as he convinced assorted tribes to unite against the Turks, whom the English needed help routing. An extremely controversial personage whose alledgedly accidental death in a motorcycle accident remains shrouded in conspiracy theories, it's hard to say just how much of Lean and O'Toole's portrayal of the man is accurate, but verifiable historical facts remain in place. At any rate, O'Toole's Lawrence is a stunning, tragic paradox of a man, a naive idealist with a conniving streak who comes to see his carefully imagined world crumble around him in the worst of ways, and remains amongst the most complex and memorable characters in the history of film.
The acting is extraordinary; the score, by Maurice Jarre, a masterpiece; the cinematography, a work of art. From the moment the camera opens on a birds-eye shot of Lawrence preparing himself and his bike for his final, fatal ride, to the closing shot as he is driven off in a jeep while the score's pompous, prissy British theme contrasts the bold, hopeful, triumphant music of the introduction, it never flags once. As an epic, it's unusual due to the nature of its setting. Epics are classified not only for their large scale, but often for their lavish sets as well, and the majority of Lawrence of Arabia takes in the desert. In a wonderful paradox, the most desolate landscape on Earth takes on a character and quality every bit as rich as any of the massively detailed sets from, say, The Lord of the Rings.
Historically, Lawrence's story and accomplishments - or crimes, depending on your point of view - paved the way for everything that's been happening in the Middle East ever since, and the Western state of relations with that region. One thing most historians agree on is that he is responsible for instructing the Arabs in the art of organized guerilla warfare, something that was previously foreign to a scattered, nomadic people. Uniting the tribes changed the face of Arab culture, society, and politics. As well, the British military badly underestimated the power and determination of the Arabs, using them under false promises and then screwing this newly empowered group. The events related in Lawrence of Arabia are the direct grandfather of last year's Charlie Wilson's War, and, really, the situation in the Middle East today. This is the sort of fascinating, vitally important socio-political stuff I didn't learn in high school, but spent a lot of time researching thanks to one very good film. It should also be noted that anything I've written here about it is the smallest of nutshells.
Beautiful, heartbreaking, and disturbingly relevant, Lawrence of Arabia is a film you'll need to reserve a good chunk of time to watch, but the good news is, it was made back in the day when theatre owners weren't desperate to cram as many showings into one day as possible - in other words, it comes with an intermission. It can at times feel its length, because it plays out in somewhere between four and seven acts depending on how you split it instead of the film standard of three, but I suspect you'll be hooked by that introduction. And then hooked by the history. And then you'll watch it three times in a year.
Woo hoo!
Starring the magnificent Peter O'Toole as Lawrence, featuring Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, and Alec Guinness, and making excellent use of Claude Raines and Anthony Quayle, Lawrence of Arabia is not only one of the best epics there is, but one of the best biopics as well. T.E. Lawrence, stationed as a mapmaker in Cairo during WWI, found himself given what most of his peers and superiors considered the unenviable opportunity to seek out nomadic Arab tribal leader Prince Faisal (Guinness) and attempt to rally his support against the Ottoman Turks. Once in the desert, Lawrence became captivated with the land and its people, and his somewhat obsessive personality, anarchic tilt, and strong ego translated into creating (and, in a sense, leading) what became an all-out revolt as he convinced assorted tribes to unite against the Turks, whom the English needed help routing. An extremely controversial personage whose alledgedly accidental death in a motorcycle accident remains shrouded in conspiracy theories, it's hard to say just how much of Lean and O'Toole's portrayal of the man is accurate, but verifiable historical facts remain in place. At any rate, O'Toole's Lawrence is a stunning, tragic paradox of a man, a naive idealist with a conniving streak who comes to see his carefully imagined world crumble around him in the worst of ways, and remains amongst the most complex and memorable characters in the history of film.
The acting is extraordinary; the score, by Maurice Jarre, a masterpiece; the cinematography, a work of art. From the moment the camera opens on a birds-eye shot of Lawrence preparing himself and his bike for his final, fatal ride, to the closing shot as he is driven off in a jeep while the score's pompous, prissy British theme contrasts the bold, hopeful, triumphant music of the introduction, it never flags once. As an epic, it's unusual due to the nature of its setting. Epics are classified not only for their large scale, but often for their lavish sets as well, and the majority of Lawrence of Arabia takes in the desert. In a wonderful paradox, the most desolate landscape on Earth takes on a character and quality every bit as rich as any of the massively detailed sets from, say, The Lord of the Rings.
Historically, Lawrence's story and accomplishments - or crimes, depending on your point of view - paved the way for everything that's been happening in the Middle East ever since, and the Western state of relations with that region. One thing most historians agree on is that he is responsible for instructing the Arabs in the art of organized guerilla warfare, something that was previously foreign to a scattered, nomadic people. Uniting the tribes changed the face of Arab culture, society, and politics. As well, the British military badly underestimated the power and determination of the Arabs, using them under false promises and then screwing this newly empowered group. The events related in Lawrence of Arabia are the direct grandfather of last year's Charlie Wilson's War, and, really, the situation in the Middle East today. This is the sort of fascinating, vitally important socio-political stuff I didn't learn in high school, but spent a lot of time researching thanks to one very good film. It should also be noted that anything I've written here about it is the smallest of nutshells.
Beautiful, heartbreaking, and disturbingly relevant, Lawrence of Arabia is a film you'll need to reserve a good chunk of time to watch, but the good news is, it was made back in the day when theatre owners weren't desperate to cram as many showings into one day as possible - in other words, it comes with an intermission. It can at times feel its length, because it plays out in somewhere between four and seven acts depending on how you split it instead of the film standard of three, but I suspect you'll be hooked by that introduction. And then hooked by the history. And then you'll watch it three times in a year.
Woo hoo!
Monday, December 8, 2008
"That's not your name, you're just reading labels on stuff": Yojimbo
Corey has been trying to get me to watch Yojimbo ever since we started dating. I'd always been reluctant to do so, as I knew it only as the film A Fistful of Dollars is based on, and the former is the only Clint Eastwood western I really, deeply dislike. But, after having become better versed in the works of Akira Kurosawa, and having watched Sanjuro, a sequel of sorts, I finally made the right choice.
Yojimbo (1961) is the story of a ronin samurai (Toshiro Mifune!), unemployed due to the end of a dynasty and the new emergence of a middle class, who now lives an itinerant and somewhat aimless life. Stopping at a small farmhouse to get a drink of water, he encounters a young man arguing with his parents, shouting that he's going to go to town where he can live well and die young instead of living a long life of poverty. As our hero gets his drink, the boys parents lament about how the town is overrun by gamblers and gangs, and accuse the samurai of being drawn to the smell of blood. In town, he quickly assesses the situation, befriending an old inkeeper who tells him about the local turf war. Brothel owner Seibei and his domineering wife appointed the town's puppet officer of the law. Rival crime boss Ushitora and his family are the more physically violent gang, and appointed the town's puppet mayor. Basically, it's a good old-fashioned turf war. The innkeeper, Gonji, assumes this explanation of events will prompt the samurai to be on his way. Gonji is quite mistaken. The samurai sees an opportunity: he believes he can, through plotting and machinations, kill or cause the death of the crime lords and their seconds, thus saving the innocents of the town, and get them to pay him to do it, because he's in dire poverty and relies on the mercy of others to get his sporadic meals. If you've seen A Fistful of Dollars, you kind of know where this will go, except that final confrontations - and the heroes - of the two are quite different. Kurosawa didn't need a 'kill the hero' fake-out to create drama and tension (something I don't think those sort of fake-outs ever create, but that's beside the point).
Yojimbo is one of the greatest films I've ever seen, something I seem to say every time I watch a Kurosawa flick for the first time. He was a master of establishing atmosphere and character by the unexpected device of using the camera to follow said character from behind, in a close-up, hand-held fashion, and the opening of Yojimbo, employing both this method and a hero musical theme which can best be described in technical film terminology as "kick-ass", is the greatest minimalist introduction I've ever seen - it tells you almost everything there is to know about the samurai by following the back of his head. Absolutely mind-blowing. Yojimbo also has its occasional fleeting touches of humour, such as when Ushitora asks the samurai for his name, in a scene homaged by Dave Foley's The Wrong Guy and repeated in Sanjuro. But what's most interesting about Yojimbo, and Sanjuro, which is a "further tales of..." rather than a sequel in the traditional sense, is the hero's character growth. Though he remains the same man at his fundaments, he is changed by the events of Yojimbo. He has changed and grown further by the opening of Sanjuro, and even more so by the end of that film. As ironic as this is to say about a film nearly fifty years old, it's refreshing. It's also very effective.
The reason I was so bored and unimpressed by A Fistful of Dollars was because The Man With No Name doesn't exactly have a huge moral high ground over the baddies. The hero of Yojimbo is a man with honour, and not that killer's creed/anti-hero brand of honour. He is a man motivated by goodness and mercy, and the desire to do right and see right done. He also happens to be rather crass, and unconcerned (even, perhaps, disgusted) by social mores when those mores do more harm than good, like in the scene where he rescues the family. Where I don't find this translated well to Dollars is the fact that there is a world of difference between an anti-hero and a righteous man with a vulgar streak. I find it straight-up strange that Sergio Leone translated this noble character into a cold-hearted, mercenary bastard whose only redeeming characteristic is a soft spot for the innocent and oppressed. For a Few Dollars More is ludicrously entertaining, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly remains one of the greatest westerns ever conceived, but there are no illusions contained therein as to the nature of their heros character.
Yojimbo, starring Toshiro Mifune and directed by Akira Kurosawa, runs 110 minutes, black-and-white, subtitles, blah blah blah. And, oh yeah, it's a masterpiece! It's also an action film! You'd have to exert effort to be bored by Yojimbo. It's great way to spend an evening, or a snowy Canadian afternoon.
Say...it's snowing right now!
Yojimbo (1961) is the story of a ronin samurai (Toshiro Mifune!), unemployed due to the end of a dynasty and the new emergence of a middle class, who now lives an itinerant and somewhat aimless life. Stopping at a small farmhouse to get a drink of water, he encounters a young man arguing with his parents, shouting that he's going to go to town where he can live well and die young instead of living a long life of poverty. As our hero gets his drink, the boys parents lament about how the town is overrun by gamblers and gangs, and accuse the samurai of being drawn to the smell of blood. In town, he quickly assesses the situation, befriending an old inkeeper who tells him about the local turf war. Brothel owner Seibei and his domineering wife appointed the town's puppet officer of the law. Rival crime boss Ushitora and his family are the more physically violent gang, and appointed the town's puppet mayor. Basically, it's a good old-fashioned turf war. The innkeeper, Gonji, assumes this explanation of events will prompt the samurai to be on his way. Gonji is quite mistaken. The samurai sees an opportunity: he believes he can, through plotting and machinations, kill or cause the death of the crime lords and their seconds, thus saving the innocents of the town, and get them to pay him to do it, because he's in dire poverty and relies on the mercy of others to get his sporadic meals. If you've seen A Fistful of Dollars, you kind of know where this will go, except that final confrontations - and the heroes - of the two are quite different. Kurosawa didn't need a 'kill the hero' fake-out to create drama and tension (something I don't think those sort of fake-outs ever create, but that's beside the point).
Yojimbo is one of the greatest films I've ever seen, something I seem to say every time I watch a Kurosawa flick for the first time. He was a master of establishing atmosphere and character by the unexpected device of using the camera to follow said character from behind, in a close-up, hand-held fashion, and the opening of Yojimbo, employing both this method and a hero musical theme which can best be described in technical film terminology as "kick-ass", is the greatest minimalist introduction I've ever seen - it tells you almost everything there is to know about the samurai by following the back of his head. Absolutely mind-blowing. Yojimbo also has its occasional fleeting touches of humour, such as when Ushitora asks the samurai for his name, in a scene homaged by Dave Foley's The Wrong Guy and repeated in Sanjuro. But what's most interesting about Yojimbo, and Sanjuro, which is a "further tales of..." rather than a sequel in the traditional sense, is the hero's character growth. Though he remains the same man at his fundaments, he is changed by the events of Yojimbo. He has changed and grown further by the opening of Sanjuro, and even more so by the end of that film. As ironic as this is to say about a film nearly fifty years old, it's refreshing. It's also very effective.
The reason I was so bored and unimpressed by A Fistful of Dollars was because The Man With No Name doesn't exactly have a huge moral high ground over the baddies. The hero of Yojimbo is a man with honour, and not that killer's creed/anti-hero brand of honour. He is a man motivated by goodness and mercy, and the desire to do right and see right done. He also happens to be rather crass, and unconcerned (even, perhaps, disgusted) by social mores when those mores do more harm than good, like in the scene where he rescues the family. Where I don't find this translated well to Dollars is the fact that there is a world of difference between an anti-hero and a righteous man with a vulgar streak. I find it straight-up strange that Sergio Leone translated this noble character into a cold-hearted, mercenary bastard whose only redeeming characteristic is a soft spot for the innocent and oppressed. For a Few Dollars More is ludicrously entertaining, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly remains one of the greatest westerns ever conceived, but there are no illusions contained therein as to the nature of their heros character.
Yojimbo, starring Toshiro Mifune and directed by Akira Kurosawa, runs 110 minutes, black-and-white, subtitles, blah blah blah. And, oh yeah, it's a masterpiece! It's also an action film! You'd have to exert effort to be bored by Yojimbo. It's great way to spend an evening, or a snowy Canadian afternoon.
Say...it's snowing right now!
Tales of the Unfulfilled: South Pacific
If I tell my husband that he's insufficiently romantic, he'll ask me what "romantic" means. When you have no disposable income, romance looks like making supper, having coffee ready if you wake up before I do, and borrowing strange musicals for my viewing pleasure. And the original 1958 film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific certainly qualifies as "strange".
Set in the Pacific theater of WWII and climaxing with an unspecified campaign that is essentially the Battle of Guadalcanal, South Pacific was written as a Broadway show in 1949 and based on two stories from James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific, a semi-autobiographical account of his wartime service. The show revolves around the relations between naive Midwestern nurse Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor), the confident, handsome, and mysterious French plantation owner Emile De Becque (Rossano Brazzi), Marine lieutenant Joe Cable (John Kerr), one very bored construction battalion led in spirit by entrepreneurial womanizer Luther Billis (Ray Walston, a.k.a. My Favourite Martian), and the local Tonkinese (Vietnamese) matriarch, Bloody Mary (Juanita Hall) and her daughter, Liat (France Nguyen). Lt. Cable has been sent by his captain to engage in some critical recon of the Japanese-occupied Marie-Louise island with the help of a locally stationed naval group, and it is through his eyes that we are introduced to the strange and magnificent world of the Solomon Islands. His mission may have an ace in the hole courtesy of local planter De Becque, who once lived and hunted on Marie-Louise, and who is utterly starry-eyed for Nellie, who Cable and the Navy ask to gather intelligence on De Becque before they make him an offer. This isn't such a bad request for Nellie, because she in return thinks Emile is the cat's pyjamas. Underlying this serious stuff is Luther, a character added by Michener at the request of Rodgers and Hammerstein to lighten things up. The only thing more antsy and bored than a GI sitting around waiting for action is a combat engineer with nothing to engineer, and Luther blows off steam by making grass skirts to sell as souvenirs, bartering (and bantering) with Bloody Mary, doing favours for the lovely Nellie, and trying to find an officer who will sign out a boat to Bali Hai - with Luther at the tiller. Bali Hai, an island in site of the naval base and off-limits to enlisted men and non-coms because that's where all the plantation women (and native women) have been evacuated to, is also legendary to the sailors for being the site of the local Boar's Tooth ceremony, a sort of hunting festival that involves booze, dancing, and, well, festivities - everything a bored engineer or sailor could want. He eventually convinces johnny-come-lately Cable to head on over, and in the course of the visit, Cable learns three things: a) Bloody Mary has a daughter, Liat, b) Liat is gorgeous, and c) Bloody Mary has it in her head that Cable will make Liat a good husband. With loneliness and loveliness both firmly at play, Cable falls head-over-heels for Liat, and they spend the next several weeks visiting and enjoying each other's company, until Bloody Mary gives Cable an ultimatum to marry Liat, and Cable makes a run for it - whether this is commitment-phobia, fear of not returning to the States, or racial nervousness is not specific in the context of the film, so read it however you like. All this came out on film three or four years before Kirk and Uhura gave us television's first interracial kiss.
Concurrently, Nellie has accepted a marriage proposal from Emile after a two-week whirlwind romance, and has learned that he fled France because he committed manslaughter - which she's okay with, he had a good reason, he's a good man, it was long ago, etc. What she's not okay with? Earlier in the film, in what must have caused a rash of double-takes across America, a pair of Tonkinese children run up and call Emile (who's not with Nellie at the time) 'papa'. After Nellie's accepted his proposal, he digs up the courage to tell her about the kids, and his dead native wife. Nellie freaks out and bolts, rebuffing all subsequent attempts by Emile to contact her. When Cable learns of Emile's broken heart, he does what any soldier good at their job does and gets the edge he needs by taking advantage of Emile at his most vulnerable, after he's been rejected by Nellie a second time, and the two of them start formulating their plan for insertion on to Marie-Louise.
This most recent viewing of South Pacific was my first time seeing it as an adult - the last time was a stage performance in 1998 - and even as a child, I felt it was brimming with unfulfilled potential in terms of the rushed feel to its racial storylines. It was just last year that I learned it was based on a Michener book, which I've been trying to get my hands on ever since. As I've said many times in this space, old-time writers and filmmakers weren't as a whole afraid of social taboos, and South Pacific is no exception. Can you imagine the audience reaction when Cable sings, regarding racism, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" ('you've got to be taught, before it's too late/before you are six or seven or eight/to hate all the people your relatives hate/you've got to be carefully taught!)? The whole show, from its Broadway beginnings, was subject to criticism, controversy, and accusations of Communism. It's also notable for, even on Broadway, using actors of appropriate nationality to play the roles of Bloody Mary and Liat. In the film, there are subtle touches like black and Native American faces amongst the construction battalion. What stands out most to me is the subtle-yet-not contrast of Nellie's reaction to Emile's crime versus the matter of Emile's children. In other words, she's completely okay with and able to brush off manslaughter, but can't compute the idea of Emile loving someone who isn't white. Shocking not in terms of politics but of story, especially in a genre known (and often derided) for it's gaity and light-heartedness, is a main character's unceremonious death off-screen.
As a musical, South Pacific is unquestionably one of the finest. With globally recognisable tunes like "Bloody Mary", "There Is Nothing Like A Dame", "Some Enchanted Evening", "Honey Bun", and "Younger than Springtime", it firmly cemented its place in history. Why I say its a strange one is because of the distinct lack of song and dance numbers. With the notable exceptions of the mind-blowing Boar's Tooth ceremony, and the hilarious cross-dressing "Honey Bun" sequence, all songs are sung in, well, very natural manners, the way a bunch of soldiers would sit around making a tune, or two people sitting together - they stay sitting together while they sing. A particularly happy character may break out into a spontaneous and very normal little jig, like in "I'm in Love With a Wonderful Guy", but that's it. It's especially unusual for a Rodgers and Hammerstein show. Even though South Pacific is one of their earlier film projects, preceeded only by State Fair and Oklahoma!, those two are still characterized by lavish dancing. (The next R&H film after South Pacific? The King and I.) It's also kind of wierd in a filmmaking sense. A heavy use of colour filters, a new technology at the time, was originally decided on by director Joshua Logan because he feared the richness of the on-location filming wouldn't translate sufficiently to the film stock of the time, which tended to flatten colours. 20th Century Fox then upped the filters even further before the film's release. Logan later regretted the decision, as the end result is a lot of scenes visually spoiled by mustard yellow or emerald green tinting, the kind of stuff film restorers can do nothing about. Speaking of film restorers, South Pacific is also unusual for being one of the few films that originally screened as what we'd call a "director's cut". Known as the "Roadshow Edition" and clocking in at nearly three hours, it was cut down to 2.5 before going into general release, and that was the South Pacific film audiences knew until an original cut was discovered in a private collection in the late 70's. It's been restored now as best as possible; unfortunately, there's only so much damage even the finest restorers can fix. Still, it's always great to have a film as it was intended to be seen. I have to admit, in spite of all this, the thing that I find oddest about the film is the casting of John Kerr at Lt. Cable. Sure, he was an established character actor by that time, but as a romantic lead, I just found him wierd. For one thing, he wasn't good-looking in the classical sense that you generally see in films from that era - he was a skinny, almost gawky guy, a bit weaselly, with small eyes and a large-ish mouth, kind of like a combination of a thinner version of the main character on Prison Break and the original Ferret-Face, Frank Burns on M*A*S*H. And he wasn't some exceptional singer, either - his songs are the most obviously dubbed as nasal almost-alto Cable breaks into a big low-tenor, to an effect more shocking than dreamy. Not a singer, not a classical hearththrob, and it was a role a dozen other actors of the time could have filled. I wonder if, perhaps, he was the only one courted who would love a Vietnamese woman on-screen.
A great musical, a historical document of cultural importance, and another weapon in the arsenal against the prevailing ignorance of an "innocent age" of film, South Pacific is a film that should not go unseen. Go ahead, rent the two-disc version so you can watch the complete film - it's worth it.
Set in the Pacific theater of WWII and climaxing with an unspecified campaign that is essentially the Battle of Guadalcanal, South Pacific was written as a Broadway show in 1949 and based on two stories from James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific, a semi-autobiographical account of his wartime service. The show revolves around the relations between naive Midwestern nurse Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor), the confident, handsome, and mysterious French plantation owner Emile De Becque (Rossano Brazzi), Marine lieutenant Joe Cable (John Kerr), one very bored construction battalion led in spirit by entrepreneurial womanizer Luther Billis (Ray Walston, a.k.a. My Favourite Martian), and the local Tonkinese (Vietnamese) matriarch, Bloody Mary (Juanita Hall) and her daughter, Liat (France Nguyen). Lt. Cable has been sent by his captain to engage in some critical recon of the Japanese-occupied Marie-Louise island with the help of a locally stationed naval group, and it is through his eyes that we are introduced to the strange and magnificent world of the Solomon Islands. His mission may have an ace in the hole courtesy of local planter De Becque, who once lived and hunted on Marie-Louise, and who is utterly starry-eyed for Nellie, who Cable and the Navy ask to gather intelligence on De Becque before they make him an offer. This isn't such a bad request for Nellie, because she in return thinks Emile is the cat's pyjamas. Underlying this serious stuff is Luther, a character added by Michener at the request of Rodgers and Hammerstein to lighten things up. The only thing more antsy and bored than a GI sitting around waiting for action is a combat engineer with nothing to engineer, and Luther blows off steam by making grass skirts to sell as souvenirs, bartering (and bantering) with Bloody Mary, doing favours for the lovely Nellie, and trying to find an officer who will sign out a boat to Bali Hai - with Luther at the tiller. Bali Hai, an island in site of the naval base and off-limits to enlisted men and non-coms because that's where all the plantation women (and native women) have been evacuated to, is also legendary to the sailors for being the site of the local Boar's Tooth ceremony, a sort of hunting festival that involves booze, dancing, and, well, festivities - everything a bored engineer or sailor could want. He eventually convinces johnny-come-lately Cable to head on over, and in the course of the visit, Cable learns three things: a) Bloody Mary has a daughter, Liat, b) Liat is gorgeous, and c) Bloody Mary has it in her head that Cable will make Liat a good husband. With loneliness and loveliness both firmly at play, Cable falls head-over-heels for Liat, and they spend the next several weeks visiting and enjoying each other's company, until Bloody Mary gives Cable an ultimatum to marry Liat, and Cable makes a run for it - whether this is commitment-phobia, fear of not returning to the States, or racial nervousness is not specific in the context of the film, so read it however you like. All this came out on film three or four years before Kirk and Uhura gave us television's first interracial kiss.
Concurrently, Nellie has accepted a marriage proposal from Emile after a two-week whirlwind romance, and has learned that he fled France because he committed manslaughter - which she's okay with, he had a good reason, he's a good man, it was long ago, etc. What she's not okay with? Earlier in the film, in what must have caused a rash of double-takes across America, a pair of Tonkinese children run up and call Emile (who's not with Nellie at the time) 'papa'. After Nellie's accepted his proposal, he digs up the courage to tell her about the kids, and his dead native wife. Nellie freaks out and bolts, rebuffing all subsequent attempts by Emile to contact her. When Cable learns of Emile's broken heart, he does what any soldier good at their job does and gets the edge he needs by taking advantage of Emile at his most vulnerable, after he's been rejected by Nellie a second time, and the two of them start formulating their plan for insertion on to Marie-Louise.
This most recent viewing of South Pacific was my first time seeing it as an adult - the last time was a stage performance in 1998 - and even as a child, I felt it was brimming with unfulfilled potential in terms of the rushed feel to its racial storylines. It was just last year that I learned it was based on a Michener book, which I've been trying to get my hands on ever since. As I've said many times in this space, old-time writers and filmmakers weren't as a whole afraid of social taboos, and South Pacific is no exception. Can you imagine the audience reaction when Cable sings, regarding racism, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" ('you've got to be taught, before it's too late/before you are six or seven or eight/to hate all the people your relatives hate/you've got to be carefully taught!)? The whole show, from its Broadway beginnings, was subject to criticism, controversy, and accusations of Communism. It's also notable for, even on Broadway, using actors of appropriate nationality to play the roles of Bloody Mary and Liat. In the film, there are subtle touches like black and Native American faces amongst the construction battalion. What stands out most to me is the subtle-yet-not contrast of Nellie's reaction to Emile's crime versus the matter of Emile's children. In other words, she's completely okay with and able to brush off manslaughter, but can't compute the idea of Emile loving someone who isn't white. Shocking not in terms of politics but of story, especially in a genre known (and often derided) for it's gaity and light-heartedness, is a main character's unceremonious death off-screen.
As a musical, South Pacific is unquestionably one of the finest. With globally recognisable tunes like "Bloody Mary", "There Is Nothing Like A Dame", "Some Enchanted Evening", "Honey Bun", and "Younger than Springtime", it firmly cemented its place in history. Why I say its a strange one is because of the distinct lack of song and dance numbers. With the notable exceptions of the mind-blowing Boar's Tooth ceremony, and the hilarious cross-dressing "Honey Bun" sequence, all songs are sung in, well, very natural manners, the way a bunch of soldiers would sit around making a tune, or two people sitting together - they stay sitting together while they sing. A particularly happy character may break out into a spontaneous and very normal little jig, like in "I'm in Love With a Wonderful Guy", but that's it. It's especially unusual for a Rodgers and Hammerstein show. Even though South Pacific is one of their earlier film projects, preceeded only by State Fair and Oklahoma!, those two are still characterized by lavish dancing. (The next R&H film after South Pacific? The King and I.) It's also kind of wierd in a filmmaking sense. A heavy use of colour filters, a new technology at the time, was originally decided on by director Joshua Logan because he feared the richness of the on-location filming wouldn't translate sufficiently to the film stock of the time, which tended to flatten colours. 20th Century Fox then upped the filters even further before the film's release. Logan later regretted the decision, as the end result is a lot of scenes visually spoiled by mustard yellow or emerald green tinting, the kind of stuff film restorers can do nothing about. Speaking of film restorers, South Pacific is also unusual for being one of the few films that originally screened as what we'd call a "director's cut". Known as the "Roadshow Edition" and clocking in at nearly three hours, it was cut down to 2.5 before going into general release, and that was the South Pacific film audiences knew until an original cut was discovered in a private collection in the late 70's. It's been restored now as best as possible; unfortunately, there's only so much damage even the finest restorers can fix. Still, it's always great to have a film as it was intended to be seen. I have to admit, in spite of all this, the thing that I find oddest about the film is the casting of John Kerr at Lt. Cable. Sure, he was an established character actor by that time, but as a romantic lead, I just found him wierd. For one thing, he wasn't good-looking in the classical sense that you generally see in films from that era - he was a skinny, almost gawky guy, a bit weaselly, with small eyes and a large-ish mouth, kind of like a combination of a thinner version of the main character on Prison Break and the original Ferret-Face, Frank Burns on M*A*S*H. And he wasn't some exceptional singer, either - his songs are the most obviously dubbed as nasal almost-alto Cable breaks into a big low-tenor, to an effect more shocking than dreamy. Not a singer, not a classical hearththrob, and it was a role a dozen other actors of the time could have filled. I wonder if, perhaps, he was the only one courted who would love a Vietnamese woman on-screen.
A great musical, a historical document of cultural importance, and another weapon in the arsenal against the prevailing ignorance of an "innocent age" of film, South Pacific is a film that should not go unseen. Go ahead, rent the two-disc version so you can watch the complete film - it's worth it.
Who Needs Aisles When You've Got a Blog?
Oh my word.
Pun intended!
In today's National Post:
London - Words associated with Christianity, the monarchy, and British history have been dropped from the Oxford Junior Dictionary.
Words such as "aisle", "bishop", "chapel", "empire", and "monarch" have been removed and replaced with words that include "blog", "broadband", and "celebrity". [...] Oxford University Press says the changes reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multi-faith society.
This brings to my mind two questions. First, how exactly is multiculturalism and multi-faith...ism(?) promoted by deleting dictionary entries specific to a particular culture or faith? The OUP justification is pretty flimsy here. Last time I checked, diversity isn't served or promoted (or enacted!) by means of suppression. I'd use a "that's like saying..." example here, but the only ones I could think of were inappropriately extreme. I'm learning to check myself. So.
And second...does any child really need to go to the dictionary to know what a blog is? Are these additions really necessary? How, exactly, does the deliberate shrinking of vocabularies serve our kids? And not all these axed entries are words unique to the church - I can see legions of future children asking their mums what it means when the PA system calls for a cleanup in aisle three at the grocery store. Also axed this year was "abbey" - I can also see legions of future British children wondering what that big thing at Westminster is. And "empire", and "monarchy"...um. Yes, celebrities and "MP3 player" are far more important to understand than the very cornerstone of British history, society, and politics. Again...what kid needs a dictionary to tell them what an MP3 player is???
It has been a growing trend in the past decade or so for junior dictionaries, which are limited in terms of size in order to be easily used by small hands, to eliminate words that reflect the past (and the pastoral) in favour of urban, technological, and politically correct terms (who else finds it bitterly funny that "debate" was added this year to the OJD, while Christian and monarchist words were axed?). Look, I'm only twenty-four, and already I meet high-school kids who don't recognize words or concepts that are normal general knowledge to anyone my age. Sometimes I wonder if my generation is the last to be taught the old stories, to read things that our parents and grandparents read - stuff that's culturally important (and gramatically sound!). The reason I've been so taken recently with the works of Alastair Reynolds is that he one of the few remaining artists who works off of learning from what's come before, which elevates his stuff above the average crap in the Amazon.com sci-fi listings. The end result of this handing down of stories and learning is that even fluffy, uber-contemporary, pop-fantasy books, like Jim Butcher's paranormal detective series The Dresden Files, can make a (hilarious) connection with the richness of the past by saying things like, "Spenser never mentioned that the Faerie Queen had such a nice ass." Incidentally, The Faerie Queen is public domain, and you can legally download a very nice translation for free - this, to me, is what the past meeting the future should be.
Some days, I feel like the well-educated Geico Caveman is but the cruellest of ironic satires. Today is one of those days.
Pun intended!
In today's National Post:
London - Words associated with Christianity, the monarchy, and British history have been dropped from the Oxford Junior Dictionary.
Words such as "aisle", "bishop", "chapel", "empire", and "monarch" have been removed and replaced with words that include "blog", "broadband", and "celebrity". [...] Oxford University Press says the changes reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multi-faith society.
This brings to my mind two questions. First, how exactly is multiculturalism and multi-faith...ism(?) promoted by deleting dictionary entries specific to a particular culture or faith? The OUP justification is pretty flimsy here. Last time I checked, diversity isn't served or promoted (or enacted!) by means of suppression. I'd use a "that's like saying..." example here, but the only ones I could think of were inappropriately extreme. I'm learning to check myself. So.
And second...does any child really need to go to the dictionary to know what a blog is? Are these additions really necessary? How, exactly, does the deliberate shrinking of vocabularies serve our kids? And not all these axed entries are words unique to the church - I can see legions of future children asking their mums what it means when the PA system calls for a cleanup in aisle three at the grocery store. Also axed this year was "abbey" - I can also see legions of future British children wondering what that big thing at Westminster is. And "empire", and "monarchy"...um. Yes, celebrities and "MP3 player" are far more important to understand than the very cornerstone of British history, society, and politics. Again...what kid needs a dictionary to tell them what an MP3 player is???
It has been a growing trend in the past decade or so for junior dictionaries, which are limited in terms of size in order to be easily used by small hands, to eliminate words that reflect the past (and the pastoral) in favour of urban, technological, and politically correct terms (who else finds it bitterly funny that "debate" was added this year to the OJD, while Christian and monarchist words were axed?). Look, I'm only twenty-four, and already I meet high-school kids who don't recognize words or concepts that are normal general knowledge to anyone my age. Sometimes I wonder if my generation is the last to be taught the old stories, to read things that our parents and grandparents read - stuff that's culturally important (and gramatically sound!). The reason I've been so taken recently with the works of Alastair Reynolds is that he one of the few remaining artists who works off of learning from what's come before, which elevates his stuff above the average crap in the Amazon.com sci-fi listings. The end result of this handing down of stories and learning is that even fluffy, uber-contemporary, pop-fantasy books, like Jim Butcher's paranormal detective series The Dresden Files, can make a (hilarious) connection with the richness of the past by saying things like, "Spenser never mentioned that the Faerie Queen had such a nice ass." Incidentally, The Faerie Queen is public domain, and you can legally download a very nice translation for free - this, to me, is what the past meeting the future should be.
Some days, I feel like the well-educated Geico Caveman is but the cruellest of ironic satires. Today is one of those days.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
WW...Huh? Batman: Child of Dreams
There are many stories and characters that can be appreciated cross-culturally. Shows like Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex or Full Metal Alchemist are Japanese to their core, but a quick search for on-line episodes reveals a fan base fanning out through Europe, South America, and North America. Likewise, American stories like Star Trek have found success (and adoration) globally. Where things tend to get lost in translation is when people try to translate another culture's story into their own equivalent - A Fistful of Dollars, or Shall We Dansu?, for example.
Batman: Child of Dreams is a manga by renowned artist Kia Asamiya (Dark Angel). Apparently, Batman is quite popular in Japan, and being familiar with some of their own illustrated characters its easy to see why. Troubled childhood? Check! Dark, violent streak? Check! Strong desire to do good and save innocents? Check! Conflicted, cool, tech-oriented, ninja-like...you get the picture. On the surface, it seems like Batman is the perfect American story to put a Japanese spin on.
Child of Dreams sees Batman off to Tokyo after a local news crew visits Gotham, attempting to get an interview with the Bat when things go sour. It seems that Batman's rogues gallery has escaped and/or returned, but things get especially fishy when our hero notices that a) these rogues are fundamentally different in character than the ones hes come to know over the years, and b) shortly after Batman defeats them, they have nervous breakdowns, age rapidly, mummify, and die, all in the space of a short trip to the cop shop. A quick visit to Arkham, and some DNA tests, confirm Batman's suspicions - the culprit here is a new drug that enables people to live out their biggest dreams, become their idols, literally. Equally suspicious is the appearance of these impostors coinciding with the aforementioned news crew's visit. Young reporter Yuko Yagi has made a meteoric rise through the newsroom ranks, partly due to the patronage of her uncle, who owns the station, and just happens to be a pharmaceutical magnate (dum dum duuuuuum!). Enter a meeting between Yuko and Bruce Wayne, and a subsequent "business trip" to investigate the source of the drug. You can probably see where this is going.
And that, I think, is the problem with Child of Dreams. Asamiya said that he deliberately kept this story from being manga by avoiding the manga convention of suspension of disbelief; you know, how right in the middle of a manga or anime will be something just ludicrous, but you roll with it because that's part of the fun? I'm hardly the expert on manga that Asamiya is, but I don't feel this story succeeded in being something separate. Bruce Wayne and Batman, though they share many international traits, are quintessentially American characters, and the context in which Batman stories have been told is also quintessentially American. I just didn't find it translated well to Japanese sensibilities. I think a large part of this is the melodrama factor. For one thing, Japanese is a very loquacious, emotional language, a factor that survives any good translation, and loquacious and emotional (and dramatic!) aren't really good matches for Batman. Child of Dreams, in its core, isn't about Batman per se, but about poor lovely young Yuko as she realizes her uncle's treachery, sees her childhood dreams of Batman come true, and begins a whirlwind affair with Bruce. It's melodramatic. Batman doesn't work as melodrama. I don't even see this particular story being gripping even if it weren't hampered by its Batman angle.
It's an interesting cultural excercise, so it could be recommended in that respect, but as a story, I was bored and couldn't wait to finish it. At any rate, its nice to know that it's not only American auteurs who can take foreign stories out of their native contexts and not succeed.
Batman: Child of Dreams is a manga by renowned artist Kia Asamiya (Dark Angel). Apparently, Batman is quite popular in Japan, and being familiar with some of their own illustrated characters its easy to see why. Troubled childhood? Check! Dark, violent streak? Check! Strong desire to do good and save innocents? Check! Conflicted, cool, tech-oriented, ninja-like...you get the picture. On the surface, it seems like Batman is the perfect American story to put a Japanese spin on.
Child of Dreams sees Batman off to Tokyo after a local news crew visits Gotham, attempting to get an interview with the Bat when things go sour. It seems that Batman's rogues gallery has escaped and/or returned, but things get especially fishy when our hero notices that a) these rogues are fundamentally different in character than the ones hes come to know over the years, and b) shortly after Batman defeats them, they have nervous breakdowns, age rapidly, mummify, and die, all in the space of a short trip to the cop shop. A quick visit to Arkham, and some DNA tests, confirm Batman's suspicions - the culprit here is a new drug that enables people to live out their biggest dreams, become their idols, literally. Equally suspicious is the appearance of these impostors coinciding with the aforementioned news crew's visit. Young reporter Yuko Yagi has made a meteoric rise through the newsroom ranks, partly due to the patronage of her uncle, who owns the station, and just happens to be a pharmaceutical magnate (dum dum duuuuuum!). Enter a meeting between Yuko and Bruce Wayne, and a subsequent "business trip" to investigate the source of the drug. You can probably see where this is going.
And that, I think, is the problem with Child of Dreams. Asamiya said that he deliberately kept this story from being manga by avoiding the manga convention of suspension of disbelief; you know, how right in the middle of a manga or anime will be something just ludicrous, but you roll with it because that's part of the fun? I'm hardly the expert on manga that Asamiya is, but I don't feel this story succeeded in being something separate. Bruce Wayne and Batman, though they share many international traits, are quintessentially American characters, and the context in which Batman stories have been told is also quintessentially American. I just didn't find it translated well to Japanese sensibilities. I think a large part of this is the melodrama factor. For one thing, Japanese is a very loquacious, emotional language, a factor that survives any good translation, and loquacious and emotional (and dramatic!) aren't really good matches for Batman. Child of Dreams, in its core, isn't about Batman per se, but about poor lovely young Yuko as she realizes her uncle's treachery, sees her childhood dreams of Batman come true, and begins a whirlwind affair with Bruce. It's melodramatic. Batman doesn't work as melodrama. I don't even see this particular story being gripping even if it weren't hampered by its Batman angle.
It's an interesting cultural excercise, so it could be recommended in that respect, but as a story, I was bored and couldn't wait to finish it. At any rate, its nice to know that it's not only American auteurs who can take foreign stories out of their native contexts and not succeed.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
WWBD? War Games Act One: Outbreak
I've always loved comics, but never had enough cash to really do anything about it. However, I have come to the conclusion that the reason the Edmonton Transit Service is the worst major-city transit I've seen in Canada is because the city funnels all its municipal works money to its public library system.
This makes me happy on two distinct levels, those being a) free movies, and b) free comics.
After a recent announcement that Batman will be concluding as a story sometime in the next year, I was delighted to learn that I can now kind of catch up. War Games Act One: Outbreak is a collection of seven issues of a storyline set at what I think is the prelude to the end of the canon. Batman has burned through four Robins - Dick Grayson has been working as a cop in eastern Europe and acting as Nightwing for some time now, and is trying to figure out how to tell Bruce he needs help leaving the League of Assassins ("you joined what???"); the second Robin (who I know nothing about) was killed in action, #3, Tim Drake, has willingly resigned at the request of his parents, and #4, Stephanie, has been newly fired and is actingly independently under the name Spoiler. His rogues gallery isn't a pressing concern, replaced by the ever-escalating gang activity. Batgirl #1 has been paralyzed, shot in the face by the Joker, and now operates Batman's tech and intel as Oracle; the current Batgirl is on good terms and working with Batman. Catwoman is still Catwoman, doing her part to keep the gang wars from blowing up. And Batman is still Batman, becoming ever more entwined with the underworld as he makes deals to bring as many gangs as possible under his control for stability's sake, while doing a great job of alienating as many allies as possible under the belief that he doesn't need any help.
War Games: Outbreak is a solid Batman take on a very old story. All the big-time gang leaders and crime bosses in Gotham are invited to a meeting. Gunfire breaks out, and of the thirty-odd bosses and bodyguards present, only eight walk away. No one knows who called the meeting, but the result amongst the frantic and furious survivors is a war or proportions unprecedented even by Gotham standards. Innocents are dying, the time-honoured code of keeping your rival's family off-limits is violated, and the fragile unity and calm Batman and co. have been working so hard on is shattered in an epic way.
This is a great story. Well-executed - we learn by the end of the act who called the meeting and why, and it's not what you'd expect - well-written, gorgeously drawn and coloured, War Games is a fantastic character piece, great addition to the Batman canon, and an all-around very good book. In many ways, its a story about secondary characters, focusing mainly on Stephanie, Tim, Nightwing, and Batman's allies in the gang wars, but their stories tell us everything we need to know about Bats. I'd love to get my mitts on the stories in which Tim is acting as Robin, because he's a great character. And Nightwing's fear and shame as he tries to summon the courage to tell his former mentor/father figure that he needs help correcting the biggest mistake of his life is near-heartbreaking. The interplay between Batman and Oracle is strong...it's just a good book, okay? And, I shouldn't have to say this but even the library classifies is as children's lit, Batman hasn't been especially kid-friendly since Adam West hung up his tights, and War Games is no exception to that rule.
My knowledge of Batman canon is far from encyclopedic, but I was able to get through War Games and enjoy it every step of the way. So don't be intimidated if you're not too up on the story; if you can find this episode, give it a whirl. Acts two and three are currently on hold for me at the library; I'm really looking forward to them.
This makes me happy on two distinct levels, those being a) free movies, and b) free comics.
After a recent announcement that Batman will be concluding as a story sometime in the next year, I was delighted to learn that I can now kind of catch up. War Games Act One: Outbreak is a collection of seven issues of a storyline set at what I think is the prelude to the end of the canon. Batman has burned through four Robins - Dick Grayson has been working as a cop in eastern Europe and acting as Nightwing for some time now, and is trying to figure out how to tell Bruce he needs help leaving the League of Assassins ("you joined what???"); the second Robin (who I know nothing about) was killed in action, #3, Tim Drake, has willingly resigned at the request of his parents, and #4, Stephanie, has been newly fired and is actingly independently under the name Spoiler. His rogues gallery isn't a pressing concern, replaced by the ever-escalating gang activity. Batgirl #1 has been paralyzed, shot in the face by the Joker, and now operates Batman's tech and intel as Oracle; the current Batgirl is on good terms and working with Batman. Catwoman is still Catwoman, doing her part to keep the gang wars from blowing up. And Batman is still Batman, becoming ever more entwined with the underworld as he makes deals to bring as many gangs as possible under his control for stability's sake, while doing a great job of alienating as many allies as possible under the belief that he doesn't need any help.
War Games: Outbreak is a solid Batman take on a very old story. All the big-time gang leaders and crime bosses in Gotham are invited to a meeting. Gunfire breaks out, and of the thirty-odd bosses and bodyguards present, only eight walk away. No one knows who called the meeting, but the result amongst the frantic and furious survivors is a war or proportions unprecedented even by Gotham standards. Innocents are dying, the time-honoured code of keeping your rival's family off-limits is violated, and the fragile unity and calm Batman and co. have been working so hard on is shattered in an epic way.
This is a great story. Well-executed - we learn by the end of the act who called the meeting and why, and it's not what you'd expect - well-written, gorgeously drawn and coloured, War Games is a fantastic character piece, great addition to the Batman canon, and an all-around very good book. In many ways, its a story about secondary characters, focusing mainly on Stephanie, Tim, Nightwing, and Batman's allies in the gang wars, but their stories tell us everything we need to know about Bats. I'd love to get my mitts on the stories in which Tim is acting as Robin, because he's a great character. And Nightwing's fear and shame as he tries to summon the courage to tell his former mentor/father figure that he needs help correcting the biggest mistake of his life is near-heartbreaking. The interplay between Batman and Oracle is strong...it's just a good book, okay? And, I shouldn't have to say this but even the library classifies is as children's lit, Batman hasn't been especially kid-friendly since Adam West hung up his tights, and War Games is no exception to that rule.
My knowledge of Batman canon is far from encyclopedic, but I was able to get through War Games and enjoy it every step of the way. So don't be intimidated if you're not too up on the story; if you can find this episode, give it a whirl. Acts two and three are currently on hold for me at the library; I'm really looking forward to them.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
So This Is Not Christmas
I may be a masochist. I'm working, by choice, as a seasonal retail employee. Maybe it's because I've worked in the health care sector, but I don't find it too overwhelming, and most of my customers are really swell. What I'm not looking forward to, as I wait for my coffee to brew before I set off to another busy day, is the impressively large, constant string of Christmas songs that are not, well, Christmas songs.
Some people may justify it by saying, "well, it's not just Christmas this time of year, we need to be inclusive and tolerant." Okay. If that were true, I'd be hearing some nice Winter Solstice music (Enya, maybe? I love Enya!), and some kickin' Hanukkah tunes (I'm Jewish by birth, and I love klezmer), and, if there is sacred music associated with Ramadan, I'd be hearing that as well (and especially interested, as I have no idea if there is such a thing). Alas, under the current way of things, for eight hours a day it's nothing but songs about Santa or the weather, which have nothing to do with anything. So not only does the mall sound system bow to the pressure to pretend Christmas is not a Christian festival - wishing something away won't make it go, folks! - they also fail on any and all claims at "tolerance" and "inclusiveness" by not playing any tunes that lie about the natures of Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, Ramadan, etc. It could be so simple, really, except that too many people keep caving to the whining of those who have no religious affiliation, don't actually celebrate any sacred festivals, and seem to believe that, as a result, they shouldn't have to have any accidental exposure whatsoever to even the slightests suggestion that these things exist. So tolerant!
To quote, as I so often do, the great philosopher Homestar Runner: Sewiously.
Some people may justify it by saying, "well, it's not just Christmas this time of year, we need to be inclusive and tolerant." Okay. If that were true, I'd be hearing some nice Winter Solstice music (Enya, maybe? I love Enya!), and some kickin' Hanukkah tunes (I'm Jewish by birth, and I love klezmer), and, if there is sacred music associated with Ramadan, I'd be hearing that as well (and especially interested, as I have no idea if there is such a thing). Alas, under the current way of things, for eight hours a day it's nothing but songs about Santa or the weather, which have nothing to do with anything. So not only does the mall sound system bow to the pressure to pretend Christmas is not a Christian festival - wishing something away won't make it go, folks! - they also fail on any and all claims at "tolerance" and "inclusiveness" by not playing any tunes that lie about the natures of Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, Ramadan, etc. It could be so simple, really, except that too many people keep caving to the whining of those who have no religious affiliation, don't actually celebrate any sacred festivals, and seem to believe that, as a result, they shouldn't have to have any accidental exposure whatsoever to even the slightests suggestion that these things exist. So tolerant!
To quote, as I so often do, the great philosopher Homestar Runner: Sewiously.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Industrable, My Ass: Hellboy II
Ah, good ol' Guillermo Del Toro. And good ol' Hellboy. Back together at last! We were unhappy about not having the munnies to see this on the big screen, but perseverance paid off, and, natch, we got to see it for free courtesy of someone else renting it. And what wonderful free stuff it was!
Working in realtime, Hellboy II: The Golden Army begins at around 11p.m. with an alarm at the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development and keeps going clear through to the following afternoon. The plot is classic faerie tale, a story of an uneasy truce between humans and faerie folk (you keep out of the city, we'll keep out of the forest) having long been broken by the humans, and a faerie prince (the fabulous Luke Goss) who's decided that he's tired of sitting back and letting humanity break the truce while the faerie folk die. In a sweet (in both the traditional and contemporary sense) opening flashback to Hellboy's childhood, we learn a) that said truce was instigated by the repentant faerie king after he unleashed the indestructible Golden Army on the earth, and b) just how much of Hellboy's adult life has been shaped by watching Howdy Doody as a child. Back to the central plot, though: it's a good old-fashioned tale of patricide, fratricide, attempted fratricide, vengeance, mourning for the lost, and plenty of humour to keep it all from going Pan's Labyrinth on us. In short, Hellboy II is everything a good fairty-tale should be, morbid, funny, large in scale, and splendorous, by which I mean invoking a sense of wonder.
Director Del Toro is good with monsters, and his budget for Hellboy II gave him free reign to shine. His tooth fairies are a great Old World twist on the schmaltzy Western attitude toward fairies. The Troll Market scenes top Hellboy's "sense of wonder" quotient - imagine the Neverwhere miniseries with 85-110% more money and imagination. As all good set designers are also master scroungers and recyclers, I imagine that the dearth of Del Toro's sets budget went to paying those good folk for all their long, hard hours. This is one of the things I most appreciate about any director involved in the fantastical: he knows when to use CGI, and when to not. All the best-looking fantasy films employ that combination attitude, and Hellboy II is a fit addition to their ranks. A good example of combination FX is in the climactic battle situated inside a giant mess of gears and clockwork that uses both physical giant revolving gears and digitally created crevasses.
All the old faces from Hellboy are back, except for Agent Meyers, who has been replaced by wisecracking German Johann Krauss (voice of Seth MacFarlane) who is, essentially, a ghost. A lot of critics hated Johann, either because they felt he was a cheap stereotype or superfluous. He's absolutely superfluous; so what? He holds his own, and is lots of fun to have around. As far as being a cheap stereotype, well, that's what I would have said until watching a DVD featurette of the music of Babylon 5, starring series composer Christopher Franke. I believe this featurette is attached to season four. At any rate, it's all the proof one needs that Germans like Johann are no stereotype, but actual entertaining (and unwittingly entertaining) people. As for the core gang - Hellboy, Liz, and Abe - they're all in fine form. Ron Perlman's title character is up to his old tricks, lazy and obsessed with TV, candy, cats, and revolvers, and hampered by an inability and/or unwillingness to pronounce big words. In this flick, his disrespect for the authority of the BPRD (characterized by Arrested Development's Jeffery Tambor) winds up backfiring on him after he decides that he wants to go public and be recognized for his work, and Hellboy learns a thing or two. Pyrotechnic girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair), the quintessential brooding outsider chick, is learning a thing or two of her own after Abe accidentally uncovers her big secret. Speaking of Abe (Doug Jones, doing triple-duty as the Chamberlain and the Angel of Death), it appears that Jones voiced his character this time around. Doug Jones is most directors go-to guy for etheral or gangly on-screen creatures, having both that build and amazing control of his body, and typically speaks the dialogue during filming, which is then dubbed by someone else. In the first Hellboy film, Abe was voiced by David Hyde Pierce, who refused to be credited for his work because as far as he was concerned, Abe was Doug Jones' character through and through. I think I actually prefer Jones voicing Abe, because David Hyde Pierce's voice-over voice is a bit cartoonish, and this new sound adds a lot to Abe's character. He sounds much more comfortable this time around.
Rounding out the players are the afore-mentioned Luke Goss as faerie Prince Nuada, and Anna Walton (Crusoe) as his twin sister, Princess Nuala. Goss plays his old, mournful, warmonger character to a tee, in voice and body alike, and may just be my favourite on-screen elf. Part of this credit is to the character and makeup design - you know how in other films, you always see these beautiful hundreds- or thousands-year old elves who look about 25 and are perfectly unblemished, Hugo Weaving in The Lord of the Rings being the exception because they let his wrinkles show? While Nuada looks mostly young, Del Toro remembered that he is a warrior, and as such is covered in thick, ropy scars, the souvenirs of his centuries of battle - even master swordsmen get blooded, especially when they've been alive that long. Nuala is more subtle, but the effects of age are still there, such as a close-up of the back of her hands in the Map Shop scene - her hands are crepey like an older woman's. Another nice detail on Del Toro's part is that, when faerie/elves are together, they don't speak English. But neither do they speak a made-up language - a "set visit" featurette identifies it as Old Irish Gaelic, which lends far more gravitas to the faerie folk by being something an old humanoid creature might actually speak.
A lot of the criticisms I saw surrounding The Golden Army were mostly related to a lack of gravitas. Hellboy was certainly a darker, more gravid film, and The Golden Army was made on the heels of Pan's Labyrinth, which is probably the most grave and horrific film I've ever seen (which may have something to do with it being lighter than Pan). There was also criticism because it didn't use Judeo-Christian myth this time around; that, I don't know what to say about - I'm a Christian, and I don't see that using pagan myth made for a lesser story. It seems to be a pattern that, when comedic directors or actors try out serious work - Dreamgirls, Reign Over Me - the critics hail them and see this as a step up, but when serious directors try comedic or less serious work - like this piece - it's a step down, it's not as good as his other stuff, etc. Well, okay, The Golden Army is a less cohesive film than Hellboy, but not by much. And by using more humour and having a greater sense of excitement than of dread, it's a rollicking good faerie tale adventure, a better one than its predecessor. Most of the humour also fleshes it out as a character piece, for example, Hellboy and Abe's drunken "women confuse me!" hang-out/karaoke in the library, a beautiful and hilarious sequence. This is not to say that The Golden Army lacks gravitas. Prince Nuada's story is a tragic one from start to finish; our introduction to his character is ingeniously heartbreaking in its visual cues, and though his pride is his ultimate ruin, it is not the cause of his defeat, providing both a nice twist on the usual as well as heightened tragedy.
Do you like faerie tales? Do you like comfortable humour? Do you like action films that are neither excessively gory nor populated by potty-mouths? If so, Hellboy II: The Golden Army is the film for you.
Hellboy II: It's worth paying to see.
Working in realtime, Hellboy II: The Golden Army begins at around 11p.m. with an alarm at the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development and keeps going clear through to the following afternoon. The plot is classic faerie tale, a story of an uneasy truce between humans and faerie folk (you keep out of the city, we'll keep out of the forest) having long been broken by the humans, and a faerie prince (the fabulous Luke Goss) who's decided that he's tired of sitting back and letting humanity break the truce while the faerie folk die. In a sweet (in both the traditional and contemporary sense) opening flashback to Hellboy's childhood, we learn a) that said truce was instigated by the repentant faerie king after he unleashed the indestructible Golden Army on the earth, and b) just how much of Hellboy's adult life has been shaped by watching Howdy Doody as a child. Back to the central plot, though: it's a good old-fashioned tale of patricide, fratricide, attempted fratricide, vengeance, mourning for the lost, and plenty of humour to keep it all from going Pan's Labyrinth on us. In short, Hellboy II is everything a good fairty-tale should be, morbid, funny, large in scale, and splendorous, by which I mean invoking a sense of wonder.
Director Del Toro is good with monsters, and his budget for Hellboy II gave him free reign to shine. His tooth fairies are a great Old World twist on the schmaltzy Western attitude toward fairies. The Troll Market scenes top Hellboy's "sense of wonder" quotient - imagine the Neverwhere miniseries with 85-110% more money and imagination. As all good set designers are also master scroungers and recyclers, I imagine that the dearth of Del Toro's sets budget went to paying those good folk for all their long, hard hours. This is one of the things I most appreciate about any director involved in the fantastical: he knows when to use CGI, and when to not. All the best-looking fantasy films employ that combination attitude, and Hellboy II is a fit addition to their ranks. A good example of combination FX is in the climactic battle situated inside a giant mess of gears and clockwork that uses both physical giant revolving gears and digitally created crevasses.
All the old faces from Hellboy are back, except for Agent Meyers, who has been replaced by wisecracking German Johann Krauss (voice of Seth MacFarlane) who is, essentially, a ghost. A lot of critics hated Johann, either because they felt he was a cheap stereotype or superfluous. He's absolutely superfluous; so what? He holds his own, and is lots of fun to have around. As far as being a cheap stereotype, well, that's what I would have said until watching a DVD featurette of the music of Babylon 5, starring series composer Christopher Franke. I believe this featurette is attached to season four. At any rate, it's all the proof one needs that Germans like Johann are no stereotype, but actual entertaining (and unwittingly entertaining) people. As for the core gang - Hellboy, Liz, and Abe - they're all in fine form. Ron Perlman's title character is up to his old tricks, lazy and obsessed with TV, candy, cats, and revolvers, and hampered by an inability and/or unwillingness to pronounce big words. In this flick, his disrespect for the authority of the BPRD (characterized by Arrested Development's Jeffery Tambor) winds up backfiring on him after he decides that he wants to go public and be recognized for his work, and Hellboy learns a thing or two. Pyrotechnic girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair), the quintessential brooding outsider chick, is learning a thing or two of her own after Abe accidentally uncovers her big secret. Speaking of Abe (Doug Jones, doing triple-duty as the Chamberlain and the Angel of Death), it appears that Jones voiced his character this time around. Doug Jones is most directors go-to guy for etheral or gangly on-screen creatures, having both that build and amazing control of his body, and typically speaks the dialogue during filming, which is then dubbed by someone else. In the first Hellboy film, Abe was voiced by David Hyde Pierce, who refused to be credited for his work because as far as he was concerned, Abe was Doug Jones' character through and through. I think I actually prefer Jones voicing Abe, because David Hyde Pierce's voice-over voice is a bit cartoonish, and this new sound adds a lot to Abe's character. He sounds much more comfortable this time around.
Rounding out the players are the afore-mentioned Luke Goss as faerie Prince Nuada, and Anna Walton (Crusoe) as his twin sister, Princess Nuala. Goss plays his old, mournful, warmonger character to a tee, in voice and body alike, and may just be my favourite on-screen elf. Part of this credit is to the character and makeup design - you know how in other films, you always see these beautiful hundreds- or thousands-year old elves who look about 25 and are perfectly unblemished, Hugo Weaving in The Lord of the Rings being the exception because they let his wrinkles show? While Nuada looks mostly young, Del Toro remembered that he is a warrior, and as such is covered in thick, ropy scars, the souvenirs of his centuries of battle - even master swordsmen get blooded, especially when they've been alive that long. Nuala is more subtle, but the effects of age are still there, such as a close-up of the back of her hands in the Map Shop scene - her hands are crepey like an older woman's. Another nice detail on Del Toro's part is that, when faerie/elves are together, they don't speak English. But neither do they speak a made-up language - a "set visit" featurette identifies it as Old Irish Gaelic, which lends far more gravitas to the faerie folk by being something an old humanoid creature might actually speak.
A lot of the criticisms I saw surrounding The Golden Army were mostly related to a lack of gravitas. Hellboy was certainly a darker, more gravid film, and The Golden Army was made on the heels of Pan's Labyrinth, which is probably the most grave and horrific film I've ever seen (which may have something to do with it being lighter than Pan). There was also criticism because it didn't use Judeo-Christian myth this time around; that, I don't know what to say about - I'm a Christian, and I don't see that using pagan myth made for a lesser story. It seems to be a pattern that, when comedic directors or actors try out serious work - Dreamgirls, Reign Over Me - the critics hail them and see this as a step up, but when serious directors try comedic or less serious work - like this piece - it's a step down, it's not as good as his other stuff, etc. Well, okay, The Golden Army is a less cohesive film than Hellboy, but not by much. And by using more humour and having a greater sense of excitement than of dread, it's a rollicking good faerie tale adventure, a better one than its predecessor. Most of the humour also fleshes it out as a character piece, for example, Hellboy and Abe's drunken "women confuse me!" hang-out/karaoke in the library, a beautiful and hilarious sequence. This is not to say that The Golden Army lacks gravitas. Prince Nuada's story is a tragic one from start to finish; our introduction to his character is ingeniously heartbreaking in its visual cues, and though his pride is his ultimate ruin, it is not the cause of his defeat, providing both a nice twist on the usual as well as heightened tragedy.
Do you like faerie tales? Do you like comfortable humour? Do you like action films that are neither excessively gory nor populated by potty-mouths? If so, Hellboy II: The Golden Army is the film for you.
Hellboy II: It's worth paying to see.
Pirates of the Caribbean, blah blah blah 3.
I greatly enjoyed the first Pirates of the Caribbean film. It was an actual homage to the old Disney live-actions like Treasure Island and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, full of wit, excitement, loveable characters, dastardly villains, and moments of genuine peril. With a straightforward and well-executed plot, killer score, and gorgeous sets and cinematography, well, what more could you want? Except for that stupid monologue at the end where poor Jonathan Pryce has to say that piracy can be a good thing because he doesn't want to punish his daughter, it was a stupendous film. Corey and I saw Dead Man's Chest in theaters, and were rather upset at having paid so much to do so - for one thing, it fell apart in terms of narrative cohesion. For another, there were no characters left that we could at all sympathize with. In that installment, the East India Company was doing its job of ridding the seas of pirates - something I think, historically, was a good thing - and the closest thing to a legitimate villain was the one EIC guy who double-crossed Jack...but I didn't care that Jack was getting double-crossed, because everyone and their monkey was double-crossing everyone else, regardless of their place in the pantheon of heroes and villains. What really soured that story for me was the ludicrous concept of loyalty as the only measure of right and wrong - Jack, Will, and Elisabeth devolved into a narcissistic trio of absolutely horrid, bratty people, and just kept on doing stupid, destructive things in the name of "loyalty". I didn't even like any of them in that film, Jack especially having transformed from a rogue who we love anyway (a la Han Solo in A New Hope) into a consummate asshole who we're instead told we must love because of, again, loyalty, so what I wound up with was a sloppy story populated with irritating, dislikeable characters. The only one I was in line with, or rooting for, was Jack Davenport's Commodore Norrington, an upright man playing by the rules and helping rid the seas of the evil of piracy. Dead Man's Chest didn't exactly make a case for why this was a bad thing, though it begged us to believe such.
So why, you ask, did I watch At World's End if I hated Dead Man's Chest so much? The answer, my friends, is "it was free."
I'm not too sure what to say about At World's End. It attempted to clear up Dead Man's fatal flaw by setting up the East India Company as an actual immoral organization, in an opening scene wherein they hang a large group of pirates (I'm okay with that!) without due process (I'm not okay with that) - they came very, very close to creating legitimate overall villainy, they recognized that this hadn't been done in the previous film, so kudos to the writing staff for that. Unfortunately, there remained that other fatal flaw, that of Elisabeth and Will crusading to help keep pirates all over the world from being put out of business by the EIC, despite the fact that they've been exposed to enough to see that pirates in general are not good people that one should want to keep around. Of course, there was a greater plot, that of figuring out how to help Jack break his deal with Davy Jones, and again, here the writing staff redeemed themselves by making it clear that no one cared about rescuing Jack because they liked him, but because they wanted something from him that they couldn't get while he was trapped between worlds. Cancel out that redemption with lazy stabs at portraying the main East India officer as evil for doing everything in pursuit of profit (because pirates do everything in pursuit of...um....lupins? Yeah.). Toss in a Davy Jones love story (eeew!) and a mess of other stuff and you have a movie. It was more cohesive than Dead Man's Chest, but not by too much.
That being said, it was beautifully filmed (I mean beautifully), and used its ludicrous budget well. The game attempts to wrap everything up by bringing back incidentals from the first film were acceptably cute, and when the film was funny, it was very, very funny (the pirate council stands out in memory). It has probably the best use of the american Salt Flats I'll ever see on screen. The fabled Keith Richards cameo was shockingly (wonderfully) understated, and inadvertently said a lot about Jack's childish rebelliousness by showing his father as a straight man. And I was not expecting them to end it the way they did - a good twist, sad. Well done.
I suppose I'd have an easier time accepting the villains of the story if the writers had actually incorporated some of the history of the East India Company when looking for ways to paint them black. I mean, these are the people who begun the Opium War because they needed more capital to buy tea. There are a lot of legitimate issues to run on if you want to villainize the East India Company. Anyways.
If you loved Dead Man's Chest, I imagine you've already watched At World's End at least four times. If you thought Dead Man's Chest was pretty lame, and thus have never gotten around to watching the final film, my suggestion is: only if it's free.
So why, you ask, did I watch At World's End if I hated Dead Man's Chest so much? The answer, my friends, is "it was free."
I'm not too sure what to say about At World's End. It attempted to clear up Dead Man's fatal flaw by setting up the East India Company as an actual immoral organization, in an opening scene wherein they hang a large group of pirates (I'm okay with that!) without due process (I'm not okay with that) - they came very, very close to creating legitimate overall villainy, they recognized that this hadn't been done in the previous film, so kudos to the writing staff for that. Unfortunately, there remained that other fatal flaw, that of Elisabeth and Will crusading to help keep pirates all over the world from being put out of business by the EIC, despite the fact that they've been exposed to enough to see that pirates in general are not good people that one should want to keep around. Of course, there was a greater plot, that of figuring out how to help Jack break his deal with Davy Jones, and again, here the writing staff redeemed themselves by making it clear that no one cared about rescuing Jack because they liked him, but because they wanted something from him that they couldn't get while he was trapped between worlds. Cancel out that redemption with lazy stabs at portraying the main East India officer as evil for doing everything in pursuit of profit (because pirates do everything in pursuit of...um....lupins? Yeah.). Toss in a Davy Jones love story (eeew!) and a mess of other stuff and you have a movie. It was more cohesive than Dead Man's Chest, but not by too much.
That being said, it was beautifully filmed (I mean beautifully), and used its ludicrous budget well. The game attempts to wrap everything up by bringing back incidentals from the first film were acceptably cute, and when the film was funny, it was very, very funny (the pirate council stands out in memory). It has probably the best use of the american Salt Flats I'll ever see on screen. The fabled Keith Richards cameo was shockingly (wonderfully) understated, and inadvertently said a lot about Jack's childish rebelliousness by showing his father as a straight man. And I was not expecting them to end it the way they did - a good twist, sad. Well done.
I suppose I'd have an easier time accepting the villains of the story if the writers had actually incorporated some of the history of the East India Company when looking for ways to paint them black. I mean, these are the people who begun the Opium War because they needed more capital to buy tea. There are a lot of legitimate issues to run on if you want to villainize the East India Company. Anyways.
If you loved Dead Man's Chest, I imagine you've already watched At World's End at least four times. If you thought Dead Man's Chest was pretty lame, and thus have never gotten around to watching the final film, my suggestion is: only if it's free.
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