the super terrific happy hour all-media blowout

Ahoy, Cap'n! Shameless Plug Off The Port Bow!

2011-01-22T07:34:00.001-08:00

But it's not for me! It's for my friend, a first-class horticulturist, ferret owner, knitter, and dyer, who has been selling her yarn privately and through local yarn shops and now has her very own online shop through Etsy.com up and running:

Dandelion Knits

I've used her Merino Superwash and Blue Faced Leicester sock yarns, and she custom-dyed some worsted weight yarn for me to make a stunning felted tote, and it's all gorgeous, comfortable, pleasant-to-knit stuff, and the worsted makes gorgeous smooth felt. Also, she is very swell. So you should order some beautiful, comfortable yarn for yourself or the knitter in your life, confident in knowing that you support someone who rocks. :D

So, about Harry Potter...

2011-01-10T12:29:00.000-08:00

Yes, I realize Harry Potter is old news. However, seeing as how I just read it for the first time, it is, as they say, news to me. So, a brief overview of what stood out:

First, I had been warned that J.K. Rowling's strength is not writing, but storytelling - an assessment with which I entirely agree. Harry Potter probably shouldn't win any "excellence in writing" awards, but I found them nigh impossible to put down, and I feel they'll make excellent read-aloud books. They are engaging, entertaining, interesting, and altogether pleasant. I should mention here that the reason it took me so long to read them wasn't because I was a snob about them being "too popular", but because I didn't want to get into something that so many people were alarmingly obsessed with. Yep, I fell victim to Harry Potter's charms. There is a pair of hand-knit Hufflepuff socks in my near future, and I am no longer concerned that, if I knit a yellow-and-maroon striped Mary Poppins scarf as I've been wanting to for several years, people will assume it's a Gryffindor scarf instead. This would be an acceptable assumption.

Second, being a Christian and active in a church community, I had also been warned that Harry Potter is an occultic evil which will encourage children to engage in witchcraft. I had also heard the extreme opposition, being that Harry Potter is actually a Christian story because it's about the power of love and because there is a Bible verse pertaining to the Resurrection on Harry's parents grave. Now having read the whole shebang, I disagree with both positions. For starters, the only element of magic in Harry Potter that comes close to being occultic is the Divination class - the teacher of which is presented as little more than a harmless fraud whom Dumbledore humours. Though it is eventually revealed that she has been gifted with a grand total of two true prophecies in her lifetime, where they come from is not explained, and her divination through tea leaves and crystal balls is presented as something fake which reveals nothing. After reading Potter, I'm actually quite troubled by the dearth of accusations about its occultic nature, because this is a very serious and dangerous accusation to be throwing about on such flimsy grounds.

Of course, not being occultic doesn't automatically make a story Christian. For me, the single most interesting and important thing Harry Potter has to offer to the Church is its thorough exploration of redemption without Christ, particularly demonstrated through the storyline of Severus Snape. As much as Dumbledore talks on and on about how love is the most important thing, and love conquers all, and it's all about love, he turns out, through his interactions with Snape, to be the biggest hypocrite in the series. Dumbledore offers Snape redemption in works, but can do nothing for his broken soul, and even abuses it further by taking advantage of his feelings for Harry's late mother, Lily. He begins his control over Snape as a young man by telling him that, if he really loves Lily, he will work for Dumbledore against Voldemort, and what could be a good thing turns out to be very cruel as we learn that Snape's "love" for Lily was little more than a very painful, broken, dangerous obsession. The first major climax of the series, at the end of The Half-Blood Prince, features Dumbledore forcing Snape to destroy himself even further for "the greater good". As I read it, the great hero of the tale who champions love is someone whose primary practice is using people. Dumbledore is the ultimate embodiment of what happens when we believe the ends justify the means, even if the ends are good. Harry Potter is a fascinating exploration of a life which I don't know, but am very happy to have this opportunity to understand. I'd go so far as to say it's essential reading for the Christian who wants to better comprehend the world they live in.

All this to say, Harry Potter is a worthwhile read. The films suffer from unsuccessful scripts, but they do have extraordinary art direction which makes them worth the time.

The Talk (Star Wars Edition)

2010-11-17T09:58:00.000-08:00

You’re watching Talking to Your Kids About Star Wars. See the Web's top videos on AOL Video

Because no responsible parent will let their kids grow up thinking that Greedo shot first. It's good to see that someone is thinking of the children.

Why Fight a Losing Battle, and other important questions raised by Halo

2010-10-02T15:18:00.001-07:00

Last week, I was gifted with a copy of Halo: Reach, the latest (and, allegedly, final) game in that famous series. I was giving a friend the rundown at Bible study the other night, mostly going on and on about the fantastic gameplay but also setting the scene of the game. Chronologically, it's the first game in the series, ending where the original Halo begins. For those unfamiliar, Halo begins with your character receiving the news that he is the last surviving member of the Spartan army (the Special Forces of the future), the rest of it having been wiped out in a surprise attack on Planet Reach by the evil Covenant forces - in other words, Halo: Reach is about playing through the campaign in which you and all your mates are systematically dispatched by rampaging aliens. And my friend Greg made one of those laughy-frowny expressions and said, "why would anyone want to play a game that you know is going to end in everyone dying?"

Clearly, Greg is not a Halo afficionado. Those people need no story-based reasons to play Halo, and developer Bungie knows it, having introduced (with Reach) daily and weekly challenges over Xbox Live for both single- and multiplayer modes. I highly doubt a game with such a storyline would sell much if it were a stand-alone title, or the first released in the series. There are many excellent and interesting reasons why Halo has attracted a fiercely devoted fan base on an unprecedented scale, which I will not get into at this time as my mother-in-law glazes over every time I talk shop on video games, and she constitutes one-third of my regular readership. And Greg unsuspectingly posed a question that is important on other levels (no pun intended).

The Halo trilogy and its stand-alone offspring, Halo 3: ODST, are all about victory. Throughout the trilogy, even though the Master Chief is the last of his army, there's no real sense of grief or desperation about it. The trilogy's tone isn't "oh crap, I'm the last Spartan and all the Marines (and humanity) are depending on me", but rather "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum." It's a series with a story and atmosphere of victory. Similarly, ODST is about a squad getting stuck behind Covenant lines and escaping, while causing plenty of mayhem to the enemy and retrieving crucial intelligence along the way. You can't pass the game without getting everyone to safety, gaining a high-level Covenant defector, and seeing one of the characters win back his ex-wife. I don't think it's possible for a shooter to be more feel-good-rah-rah-victorious than ODST.

In summary, every Halo game made before Reach is about getting the win, and getting the win isn't just what gamers want, it's what people in general want. I feel safe assuming that sacrificing oneself to ensure someone else's victory is not a common fantasy or daydream. A lot of people don't even like games in which you have to help other characters sacrifice themselves to get the victory, because then you're not the hero - that was the major complaint about the fantastic The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. But that's what Reach is about: upon realizing that the battle is lost, you and your squad go all out and eventually give your lives so that someone else can win the war. Two-thirds of the way through, the story shifts from planetary defense to data retrieval, making sure that a critical computer program gets off-world to safety, and that program turns out to be the one essential for victory at the end of Halo 3. You and your squad give the hope of victory to everyone else. But none of you make it off Reach, dead or alive.

So why play, from a purely story-based POV? Well...I can't rightly say, in a general assumptive sense. There is something very poignant about helping ensure the war is won, rather than winning it myself. Speaking only for myself, I don't mind (and, in fact, rather like) games with goals like Reach and Oblivion, and I suspect a large part of that has to do with theology. The concept of fighting a losing battle is a strange one for a Christian, since an integral idea/truth of Christianity is the hope of the war already won, the irreversible triumph over evil and death incurred by the Resurrection. But there are many battles to be fought along the way, and we don't win them all by a long stretch, and anyways, we are not the heroes of the story. We don't barrel through life slaying all obstacles by the power of our own awesomeness to win the day. We are meant to and pledge to live not as heroes, but as champions. There's nothing poor or bad about playing a supporting role. And the idea of a sacrifice to keep hope alive, like the one you make in Reach, is not necessarily a pleasant idea...but it is beautiful.

So that's why I appreciate stories like Halo: Reach and others, aside from all the glorious technical/gameplay/etc. things that make the Halo series the only shooters I really enjoy. That is why I don't object to taking part in this particular losing battle.

White Collar

2010-09-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

White Collar (being aired in over here on the local 'shows that are part of courses at X College/University' channel) sounds on the surface like a story some of us have heard too many times. And, for the first four weeks or so of its run, I felt like there was no point in watching it, because I own Catch Me If You Can, which is a fantastic film. Now that the first season's over, I'm pleased to report that my initial disappointment with White Collar was unwarranted.

While its supporting cast of characters is outstanding, the show revolves around the relationship and persons of Neal Caffrey, a twenty-something, internationally renowned (?) master forger, con artist, and art thief, and the only law enforcement officer who's ever caught him, a well-respected veteran grunt in the FBI's white collar crimes unit, one Peter Burke. The series opens after Peter's caught Neal for the second time, and after hitting a wall in a big case, Peter gets permission to give Neal a second chance in the form of a tracking anklet and a job as a Bureau consultant. The problem is, all Neal wants to do is be reunited with his ex-wife, who he believes is being kept from him by some of Peter's colleagues in exchange for stealing and delivering one of the most elusive, rare, high-profile artifacts sought after by private buyers in the world - a mysterious music box. What Peter wants is to not only help Neal stay on the straight and narrow, but help him want to stay there; all Neal wants is Kate, unwilling to believe that his master con artist ex-wife could be using him to recover the box with no intention of remarrying. While the reason for the government wanting the music box is a mystery, the real, central mystery of White Collar is who's right about Kate's motives. Neal clings to the belief that she just wants to be with him, and is the same woman he loved and married, while Peter suspects that Kate is not acting in Neal's best interests, and that his (Neal's) lot will improve if he lets her go and move on, taking the life Peter continues to offer him.

While the mystery of White Collar is who's right about Kate, the focus is not so much on the way people are deceived by others, but the way people deceive themselves. Peter is a man whose confidence and security comes from being himself, while Neal, the professional confidence man, has destroyed his self-confidence and security by devoting himself to being a wide variety of someone else. The show has an excellent contrast going between Peter and Neal that only really started clicking late in the first season - basically, Neal fools people by being someone he's not, while Peter fools people by being himself, letting them run away with their assumptions. Peter is a man whose confidence and security comes from being himself, while Neal, the professional confidence man, has destroyed his self-confidence and security by devoting himself to being a wide variety of someone else. And the brilliant thing is, we the audience have been fooled by Peter, probably because of the character stereotype created by just about every other show or film featuring a blue-collar law-enforcement officer paired with or against a suave, white-collar criminal. He's uncultured, he's a shlub, he's naive, he's single-minded - choose your character stereotype, and White Collar will boot it out the window. As the season unfolded, we saw good reasons why Peter is so well-respected by his employees and his boss. We saw Peter be a completely realistic man who can identify good food and wine - his wife has a business catering high-profile functions, and often uses him as a guinea pig before presenting menus to her clients - but just because he taught himself to recognize it and analyze it doesn't mean that he likes it, and his favourite meal is pizza and beer. We saw Peter be a law-enforcement officer who we can actually believe deserves his rank and tenure, and who we can actually believe is the only person who could catch Neal, because no matter how much Neal convinces himself he can hide things from Peter, he can't. Peter is not some idiot out of Neal's league who caught him just by being determined.

I'd like to touch back on that statement about Peter's security coming from being himself. This is also where White Collar is, thankfully, not like other shows. Peter isn't some ass who thinks that as long as he's being honest and "true to himself", he's doing just fine. He has the self-awareness (and a loving wife) to know when he's in the wrong and needs improvement, and he doesn't wield his being-his-selfiness (what?) like a weapon, the way popular asses like the main characters on House and Lie to Me do. He's the ultimate TV picture of someone who's mature, and calm, and has reached middle age content with their life. In other words, he's the ultimate TV abnormality. ;)

The biggest reason to watch this show is its believability, and its sensibility. Peter and his colleagues are not stupid, or easily deceived by Neal and his friends. Neal is a believable portrait of a young man in crisis, and his distress and inexperience are little match for Peter's contentment, and probably close to the equivalent of Neal's lifetime worth of experience both professional and private. A lot of shows that have boasted strong first seasons have tanked after getting popular or renewed (or both), taking the path of the lowest common denominator, and although the first season of White Collar ended with the proverbial bang instead of the potentially more interesting option, I have hope that it will follow in the footsteps of other recent shows aired on Access like Fringe and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, whose second seasons eclipsed their first to become some of the finest TV ever produced, hands down. (Not that I hope White Collar goes the way of the dodo the way TSCC did. Man, I miss that show.)

All that blathering to say: well done, White Collar! Keep up the good work! Your writers are fantastic!

Keepin' it Simple, Keepin' it Real: Inception

2010-08-17T13:44:00.000-07:00

There's been a horrendous amount of bandwidth devoted to attempting to explain Inception, writer/director Christopher Nolan's most recent feature film. Virtual pissing contests to determine who "gets" the film best are running rampant, and even high-profile critics like Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman have written blog posts about how the film is so confusing and they just don't understand it, generously inviting heaps of responses in the comment section to the effect of what idiots they are.

I don't think not understanding Inception makes you an idiot. I do suspect it makes you someone who's determined to over-think things, or who just wasn't paying attention to the first hour and a half. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, and featuring Tom Berenger and Cilian Murphy, Inception is, put simply, probably the best heist film you'll ever see.

What? A heist film? But I thought it was a high-concept sci-fi something-or-other!

Well, yes and no. Inception is a heist film through and through, using the classic story of a broken master ne'er-do-well (DiCaprio's Dominic Cobb) going in for that one last job whose reward will help him get his life back on track, and get him out of the business for good. This being a classic heist, the job is shadier and riskier than usual. The film's first act sees Cobb assemble his team and explain the nature of the job to the audience; the second act begins with all the team's well-laid plains going quickly SNAFU; the third act pushes their problem-solving skills to the limit in order to get the job done and make it out alive. It's the setting that shoehorns Inception into the high-concept stratosphere - Cobb's not-quite-legal business is "subconscious security", that is, teaching (mostly corporate) clients how to prevent company secrets and intellectual property from being stolen right out of their dreams. And dreams are strange, nebulous, confusing things, which seems to be the starting point for much of the confusion surrounding this film.

The thing is, Nolan meticulously uses the first half of this nearly three-hour production for the purpose of explaining how dreams work, what the rules of his world are, what the story is about, and what to expect once the action starts. It is this careful explanation that makes that first half noticeably slower and clunkier than the films written by or with his brother Jonathan (such as The Prestige and the recent Batman films), but it's worth sitting and sifting through.

Most importantly, Nolan goes to great pains to repeatedly explain the final frame of the film long before the audience gets there. Don't be fooled by the reams of "what does the end mean????" floating around in cyberspace - its simply the culmination of the film's firmly-developed themes. Inception may be confusing to some because its anti-anarchist, anti-cyberpunk, anti-Animatrix story is not one I've seen before in a film dealing with dreams and reality. Simply put, its themes are as follows: there is such a thing as reality, there is such a thing as truth, and running away into your dreams is unhealthy, and a terrible solution to the hardships of real life. Reality and truth are good. These are not welcome ideas to the subculture that worships the Wachowski brothers. Also important thematically is the recurring question of what Inception's characters put more trust in: what they know, or what they believe. Mixed into a simple, straightforward heist film are some simple-but-complex philosophies, and I for one think Nolan did a fantastic job of mixing them. Also, it's just extremely pleasant to watch a straightforward story told very well. Inception doesn't so much have twists, because a well-told story doesn't need them.

In other words, if you've been put off of watching Inception because you've been given the idea that it's some incomprehensible piece of artsy-fartsy-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo, I think you've been given the wrong idea. See it for the fabulous acting, mind-blowing art direction and cinematography, the interesting and important philosophical challenges, and the scene that, in my mind, serves to justify the existence and purpose of wire-work. It really is that good, that simple, and that comprehensible.

Brandon Bird-O-Rama!

2010-07-30T10:24:00.000-07:00

I don't know where this guy came from, but from now on, I want to know where he's going! Check out Law & Order: Artistic Intent and Letters to Walken, in particular.

Oh, and McNinja/Axecop fans, part 1 of the crossover is now up on www.axecop.com! (I got the link to Brandon Bird's website because L&O: AI was advertised on drmcninja.com.)

The Wonderful World of Polish Cold-War Era Film Posters

2010-07-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

This certainly warrants further exploration.

Axe Cop!

2010-06-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

I have so many new things to write about! Tin Man. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans. The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The A-Team. Changes: A Dresden Files Novel. Red Dead Redemption. The Good Guys. Wilbur!

Lucky for you, I don't feel like writing about any of them write now. But if you are prone to ignoring everything I say, and think I'm just a big stupid droning prat, I beg you to set aside your instincts just this once and follow the link to Axe Cop.

As Mr. Monk would say, you'll thank me later.

Further Signs Of The Media Apocalypse

2010-06-05T08:57:00.001-07:00

So our current Telus free preview is Teletoon Retro, and I am just tickled pink to be spending a Saturday morning the way I used to spend Saturday mornings: ejoying The Raccoons, Inspector Gadget, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show, Fraggle Rock (not technically a cartoon, but whatever, it's on), and happy to finally have the chance to watch Batman: The Animated Series.

This isn't to suggest that every cartoon made back in the day was animated gold. My friends and I can happily cringe while remembering such un-illustrious fare as James Bond, Jr. and Stunt Dawgs. Earlier this morning was a double-header of Thundercats, followed by G.I. Joe. And "new" doesn't generically equal "bad" - there have been a couple of stand-out weekend cartoons this decade, mostly Skunk Fu! and The Penguins of Madagascar.

The disturbing thing is, I've seen so many absolute crap new Saturday morning cartoons in the past five or six years that it came to pass that as I was sitting here, sipping coffee and watching Snakeyes and Shipwreck inflitrate a subway train full of Cobra soldiers, the thought running through my head was, man. They don't make cartoons like they used to.

That's right. I found myself wishing that current Saturday morning cartoons could be as good as G.I. Joe.

Let the Media Apocalypse commence!

Red Dead Redemption Original Soundtrack (OST)

2010-05-31T13:00:00.000-07:00

Marketers, take note! The ultimate factor in convincing my husband and I to pre-order Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption, as opposed to waiting a year or two for the price to cut in half as is our usual game-buying habit, was not the free DLC or the map poster, but the free inclusion of the game's soundtrack with all pre-ordered copies. Soundtracks are expensive, game soundtracks especially so, and we figured we couldn't go too wrong gambling on a Western soundtrack - a relatively new genre, they're hard to screw up, and many a forgettable or outright crappy cowboy flick has been elevated by its solid musical score. And I can rarely get enough of the soundtrack from LucasArts' old PC game, Outlaws.

Red Dead Redemption is a solid game, memorable, intriguing, and fun, but its soundtrack is exceptional, a great listen even when separated from its in-game context. Composers Bill Elm and Woody Jackson have brought the Western musical genre into the present, doing two notable things most Western soundtrack composers don't: heavily incorporating both contemporary musical influences and musical influences from the time period their story takes place in. The end result is a lesson in what fusion should sound like. Elm and Jackson's skills have even created a handful of acid jazz-fueled tracks that would sound at home on Lalo Schiffrin's score for Bullitt, or even on The A-Team - but don't sound out of place here, on an album for a Wild West video game released in 2010. Mexican influences are also clear and present, which is swell seeing as how the game's second act plays out south of the border. The only place this album hiccups a bit is on its final track, a vocal number called "Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie", whose lyrics and tone disagree with the game's conclusion and led me to believe that it would be soaked in hopelessness and despair, when its bittersweet ending was actually quite the opposite (much to my relief, though it was still quite emotionally draining).

The closing track's relation to the game's story aside, Red Dead Redemption (OST) is a basically perfect record. For music lovers, soundtrack afficionados, and anyone who likes a good Western, this is something well worth looking up regardless of whether or not you'd play the game.

Red Dead Bittersweet Irony

2010-05-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

It is not uncommon, on highly anticipated game release dates, for obsessive/impatient/image-conscious gamers to "call in sick" so that they can try hot new titles ASAP. As I was standing in line at EB Games to pick up my anniversary present - a special ed. pre-order of Red Dead Redemption - observing the two-dozen-odd 18-35 white males surrounding me, trying not to be too self-conscious as the only woman in the room and cursing my coughs, sneezes, and especially cursing my fever, I couldn't help but take some amusement in the irony that, the first time I ever got a pre-ordered new release, I actually was sick.

Turns out the game's pretty sweet, too. More on that in sixty hours or so. I need to go sneeze some more first, and the cows need herding.

Iron Man 2

2010-05-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

It's hard to sell a sequel to film critics. It's easy to sell them to audiences in a fiscal sense, but until Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2, the most recent good sequel in popular consciousness was Terminator 2. A good film with the word "2" in the title is a confusing beast for professional critics, a good comic-book film with the word "2" in the title doubly so. The resulting effect caused by Iron Man 2 has been reviews which say, "there was too much action, and not enough talking, booo", or "it was okay, but there was too much talking and not enough action. Booo." Would it surprise you to learn that I think neither is accurate?

Iron Man 2 picks up where the first film left off, with Tony Stark announcing his secret identity and showboating it like no one's business, with an appropriately ludicrous introduction that works because of how thoroughly Tony's character was cemented in Iron Man. No, wait, scratch that. Iron Man 2 picks up with Russian career prisoner Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) being given a reason to finally get off his butt and seek revenge for the apparent wrong done to his father by Tony's father fourty years earlier. Rourke is a careful actor, one who has a knack for making a character both over-the-top and down to earth at the same time, and that talent serves this film very well. One critic complained that "it's hard to fear a villain who wears reading glasses, chews toothpicks and coos sweet nothings to a pet cockatoo", but I'd argue that it is these quiet, matter-of-fact eccentricities - and normal things, like being pudgy and wearing reading glasses - that make Vanko so scary, especially when combined with Rourke's sleepy portrayal that seems to suit a man who's spent most of his life in and out of Russian prisons. And who (aside from Russian speakers) knows what he's actually saying to his bird? For all we know, it could be twisted and disturbing sweet nothings, like when Emily Watson moans that she's going to bite Adam Sandler's face off at the end of Punch-Drunk Love. At any rate, Rourke is a standout, producing a character who's also a believable person.

Though the cast is uniformly excellent, special mention must be made of Sam Rockwell as Stark's chief rival in the Department of Defense contracts game, Justin Hammer. Taking on the typically thankless role of the hero's less successful, less charismatic, less intelligent, extremely irritating foil, the film is Rockwell's to steal - and steal it, he does. His scenes with Mickey Rourke are just great, and he perfectly delivers what will probably be this film's most memorable bit of dialogue, in a scene in which he tries to sell Rhodey a new type of bunker-buster missile.

This film does have a bit of an awkward pace, but it's nothing to write home about, and what really stands out is how short the fights are. There's a decent bit of set-up, particularly when Vanko's alter-ego Whiplash is introduced against the backdrop of the Monaco Grand Prix, but when heroes and villains actually start hitting each other, epic boss fights last perhaps fourty seconds. It's like someone actually sat down and asked themselves, "if two people capable of causing massive destruction actually tried to kill each other, what would happen?" - this isn't two giants punching each other in the head for twenty minutes (*cough*Transformers!*cough*).

But, let's face it, the question I've been asked the most is, "is it better than the first film?" No. Is it Spider-Man 2? Not quite. Is it a solid film with great writing, acting, directing, and really great superhero action? Yes. Frankly, the only thing I'm truly disappointed with is that the infamous briefcase suit made a quick but crucial appearance - but there was no word on whether or not it harnessed the power of MAGNETS! Go for the movie, stay for the credits, stay for the scene after the credits, and look forward to the next Avenger film.

Good News, Everyone! It's Star Wars Day!

2010-05-04T13:53:00.000-07:00

May the fourth be with you.

Am I Unhip? Ultimate Litmus Test No. 1

2010-04-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

So I checked the radio this morning to see what was on...and the only reason I kept listening was because I thought they were playing The New Radicals.

I'm secure with who I am. And when 90's rock becomes the Next Big Nostalgic Thing For Those Who Weren't Born In That Decade, the way the 80's have been for the past few years, I'll be both a visionary and a trendsetter.

(At this time, I will neither confirm or deny that roughly two minutes after the disappointing realization that the radio was not in fact playing The New Radicals, I became suspiciously excited by the words "new music from the Crash Test Dummies." Maybe I am a visionary after all.)

The Book of the Long Sun

2010-04-16T09:29:00.000-07:00

It seems to have been a long time since the phrase "Christian literature" was more than something good for a laugh. Ask people to name a fiction writer who's a devout believer, a deep thinker, and an excellent artist, and chances are Lewis, Chesterton, Tolkien will spring to mind. Thing is, they've all been dead for quite some time. And I've got nothing against older works (some of my favourite authors are dead! Ba-dum ching!), but as a lifelong rabid reader, and a Christian for about fourteen years now, I do have a big problem with artistic stagnation. I've read many fantastic books that embody Beuchner's idea of "the world expressing holy things in the only language it knows", but until these past two weeks I'd never read one by someone who I knew was embodying that idea intentionally - one of his characters even paraphrases the quote - and who's still alive and working, to boot! American sci-fi master Gene Wolfe has been described as "the best author you've never heard of". I'd second that motion. It's surely a sign of the apocalypse that Joe Haldeman has a Hugo, but Wolfe does not. However, the Hugos are a mob award, and something Wolfe does have is the admiration and respect of other writers, Neil Gaiman probably being his loudest and most famous fan. After reading The Book of the Long Sun, it's easy to understand why.

The Book of the Long Sun (comprised of Nightside of the Long Sun, Lake of the Long Sun, Calde of the Long Sun, and Exodus from the Long Sun, volumes published from 1993-1996) is a Dyson Sphere allegory set against the exploration of the fallout of false religion, and the free-will debate that was a very big deal at the time this story was written, as worked out by a writer who has spent many years considering and practicing the truth. Its protagonist, twenty-three year-old Silk, is an augur of the false gods, and the story opens with him receiving an enlightening vision from a largely forgotten, minor god known as the Outsider. The Outsider tells Silk that it is his responsibility to "save his manteion" (a sort of church/school/monastery, over which Silk presides), and that he should not expect to receive any help from the Outsider, as Silk is the help the Outsider has sent. Silk's interpretation of this command then sets off a chain of events which, in a series of four or five days, lead to a full-scale revolution in the city-state of Viron, with Silk at its head. Though he interprets the warning to expect no help as a warning that he will receive no help, help comes to him in such varied forms as a local high-profile thief, a couple of prostitutes, a quiet and timid nun, a talking bird with a serious fixation on fish heads, a "legitimate businessman", and even a few of the gods themselves.

It's hard to figure out where to begin discussing this story, because my main goal is to convince whoever's reading this to read it, and it's not an easy story to summarize, and probably even harder to sell. It's what is commonly referred to in literary circles as "hard" or "high-concept" sci-fi, a genre that isn't quick or simple, very off-putting in its appearance but ironically often more accessible to those who avoid sci-fi as a whole because it's primary concern is story, whereas "low" sci-fi is more concerned with setting and all the trappings of the genre. It's also a dense work of literature, and I don't mean long, I mean dense. Averaging under five hundred pages per volume, and totaling just over a thousand in trade paperback format for the whole shebang, The Book of the Long Sun is easily half the length of the average epic and/or high-concept sci-fi/fantasy story. However, nothing's missing, and no space is wasted. Wolfe accomplishes this in two ways that are somewhat radical in the literary world: first, he dispenses with traditional descriptive writing, offering visual descriptions only as immediately necessary. For example, when Silk first encounters one of the mechanical military "guard dogs" known as taluses, Wolfe offers a description of the talus only as necessary to convey the experience of encountering one. In other words, that initial description is visually incomplete, and it is only until later in the story - when it becomes important to understand what a talus looks like - that he paints the rest of the picture. It's an unusual device that takes some getting used to, but it leaves nothing out and it's absolutely brilliant. It keeps the story moving where other stories take a time-out to gawk. The second way in which Wolfe tells a full and thoughtful story in a flowing and economical fashion is by thinking. As anyone who reads this blog can attest, the hardest aspect of writing is communicating one's full intentions while being concise. The Book of the Long Sun is packed with big ideas, ethos, theologies and philosophies that Wolfe has evidently been pondering for years, probably decades, and which he manages to fully express in the space of two to four sentences. For example, towards the end of the second or beginning of the third volume (I'm afraid it's gone back to the library, so I can't be more precise), Silk has a conversation in which an android, explaining how the world is (having much more empirical knowledge on that count than Silk), makes a casual mention of how "chems" (chemical people) are more valuable than humans, because chems take seventy or eighty years to make, and are not easily replaced, but humans are quick and easy to make, and we grow them inside ourselves. It's a loaded thought on the value of life and casual attitudes towards sex; there's at least a whole semester's worth of bioethics class to be had out of that one brief exchange, and it is typical of Wolfe's writing throughout the whole story. It's intelligent, it's masterful, and it's art. It also makes the book one that's not suitable for reading in short chunks.

Originally, I flipped through the book and resolved not to read it because it was full of "made up" words, and I can't stand books like that. They get tacky and annoying very quickly. Then my husband sold me on the absolutely fascinating story, and I realized two very important things about Gene Wolfe. The first was that every other sci-fi or fantasy book I've read which is packed with alternate words for everyday things is a cheap imitation of Wolfe. The second was that his words aren't "made up" - they're either archaic and unfamiliar English, or logical progressions thereof. The world in which The Book of the Long Sun is set is one in which several generations have passed, and for the common folk language has morphed and evolved into a strange sort of bastard patois which, once you get the hang of it, makes sense and is also ingenious. For example, street people and soldiers using various forms of the word "chill" to refer to killing, or someone being dead. What's a current slang for killing? Putting someone on ice! British slang, mostly the offensive sort, works its way in to substitute for common American curses, like "shag" and its variants in place of "fuck" et al., which I find quite funny as a lot of people I know consider British cursing to be appropriate, to not be swearing, to be unoffensive, which is absolutely ludicrous, but it happens. My absolute favourite language twist of Wolfe's has to be the word "lily" substituting for "truth". We say "gilding the lily" or "don't gild the lily" to refer to embellishing something that's so perfect and beautiful it needs to enhancement or alteration. Just like the truth. Brilliant.

In the end, though, what makes The Book of the Long Sun truly worth reading is what makes any book truly worth reading: its deep and thoughtful message, one easily and often hijacked by hysteria and hyperbole, does not take precedence over the quality of the story. Nor does the quality of the story take precedence over the message, relegating it to a backseat. Here, message and story are equally important, depending on and complimenting each other, and quality and artistic integrity is never sacrificed as they all too commonly are when writers have a Big Idea. Anyone who's read a good book or watched a good movie that had something to say knows that there's no reason why story and message shouldn't coexist in perfect harmony. If you aren't sure what that harmony looks like, may I suggest reading Gene Wolfe. And if you've ever read an article about who sci-fi is the best genre for exploring and explaining the human condition, but weren't convinced, The Book of the Long Sun should be suitable proof.

Dialogues of the Week!

2010-04-03T11:45:00.001-07:00

Oh, it's a close tie - between new episodes of Fringe and Human Target (shocking, I know).

From Fringe, Episode 2.16, "Peter", where Walter explains and confesses himself to Olivia after she has become able to see objects from the other universe, and now knows that Peter is one of them. In this scene, a flashback to 1985, Walter has seen his double (or, as he likes to call him, "Walternate" - isn't that great?) make a critical error in observation that will result in him missing the cure for Peter's terminal illness, thus ensuring that Peter 2 will meet the same fate as Peter 1, and resolves to cross over to prevent this from happening.

Dr. Carla Warren: Walter, I'm sorry, but you can't.

Dr. Walter Bishop: Yes, yes, I think I can.

Dr. Warren: No, I mean you can't. Shattering the wall between universes would rupture the fundamental constants of nature...

Walter: ...That's just a theory; we don't know it to be true.

Dr. Warren: It's a good theory, it's why we've been lying to the military and telling them it's impossible... Walter. There has to be a line somewhere; there has to be a line we can't cross.

Walter: (after a long pause) I've always considered you as a scientist, Dr. Warren, despite your personal needs for religious claptrap. I see I was wrong.

Dr. Warren: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Walter: Don't you quote Oppenheimer to me!

It was a fantastic episode of what surprisingly became a fantastic show, packed with great twists on the standard cliches, and the series is well worth taking a look at. Caveat: you may want to avoid the introductions of most episodes, in which the deaths of the week usually occur, as those deaths are of the sci-fi/horror variety (think Alien or The Thing) and tend to be extremely nauseating.

On HumanTarget 1.10, "Tanarak", a standard tale of a mining company trying to cover up the nature of an unnatural, chemical-related death that's elevated out of the standardized drudge through great acting, great direction, doing things like watching Mythbusters (in the episode's climactic scene, main character Chris Chance grabs a flare gun to blow up a semi instead of using his sidearm, since gas tanks are made to not blow up simply by being punctured or shot - but a flaming puncture is a whole other story!), and, of course, great writing. This week goes again to Jackie Earle Haley's Guerrero, as he blackmails the mining company's corporate fixer:

Guerrero: (entering the startled fixer's car) Whoa, hey Taggart! Been awhile!...Oh yeah, I get it. I could be recording this, right? If I were you, I wouldn't say a word either. So here's the deal. I know you're working with Agrius. You're scrubbing evidence over this whole propylide mess, and I also know, dude, even if you destroy it all, you're keeping one folder for yourself, the one with the really good stuff in it. The one that guarantees you get paid on time, they never mess with you. Problem is this: this company's going down, bro. I think we both know there's no reason for you to be anywhere near it when it does. Make sense? ...Oh, what's in it for you? Dude. How about doing the right thing? How about just the satisfaction of knowing you helped a really good person out of a rotten situation (breaks down snickering) dude, I'm messing with you! I know where you live! And you know it! Tom's Diner, Nineteenth and Pine. Just leave the folders in the back booth by the can, okay? Tell your wife I said hi. (exits the car) See you, Taggart!

The cherry on top here is really that, in a three-man operation, the smallest one is their creepy, dangerous thug. It's a great running visual.

They Live at the Road House!

2010-03-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

A question often* posed to me is, "Elly, just how much awesomeness can one weekend hold?" Well, there was the time I watched Hard Boiled, Where Eagles Dare, The Transporter 2, and Speed Racer all in one such time span, and about nine years ago my first true all-night movie marathon consisted of The Core, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Mystery Men, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, some random episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, both the David Lynch and Sci-Fi Channel versions of Dune, and possibly UHF. That was epic. Caroline, if by some slim chance you've stumbled across this page, I'm pretty unhappy about having lost your contact information and forgotten your last name, so leave a comment, okay? You rock.

This time around, only two films were in play...but they contained so much awesomeness between them that their memories belong beside those mythic weekends remembered above: John Carpenter's classic homage to 50's sci-fi, They Live (1988), and the late great Patrick Swayze's legendary homage to some martial arts style whose name escapes me but which often pops up in Jet Li films, Road House (1989).

They Live stars Saskatoon native (hi folks! Thanks for the comics!) and former wrestling villain 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper as a simple drifter known only as Nada who's hitched across the U.S. from Detroit to L.A. in a Great Depression-style journey to find work. He lands a construction job and sets up camp in a shanty town filled with other transient workers and poor folk, whose food needs are looked after by the church across the street, a church at which strange comings and goings take place in the middle of the night and whose basement looks like a combination drug kitchen/counterfeit sunglasses operation. When the church is violently raided one night by a small army of cops, Nada discovers that the sunglasses are what all the fuss is about, as wearing them makes him feel like he's just ordered a big meal from a drug kitchen. Aliens walk among us! They've taken over and are sucking the life out of Earth! They look like the ghouls from Fallout 3 mated with the villains from Mars Attacks!! And if you're not wearing the special sunglasses, they look just like regular people! Conveniently armed with two pairs of said sunglasses, Nada enlists the help of fellow drifter Frank (Keith David), and together they set out to kick their bubblegum habit once and for all and show those lousy aliens the door. Or the window. Both work.

John Carpenter's films work because he never forgets what they are. He never tries to treat a completely ludicrous premise as anything but, choosing instead to jump in, latch on, and have fun, as demonstrated in films like Big Trouble in Little China and my personal favourite, Escape from New York. This same work ethic can also turn out rock-solid dramas, like his 1984 sci-fi horror classic The Thing, which is of the same quality as the literal mother of them all, Alien. They Live is not a drama, and it looks like Carpenter had lots of fun with that fact. With his brilliant use of black-and-white Sunglasses Vision, a hero who's not the sharpest tool in the box, and such famous lines as "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum" (referenced in legions of movies, shows, and The Dresden Files) and the less-famous line "Brother, life's a bitch - and she's back in heat" (which concludes the longest dirty fight I've ever seen on film, clocking in at nearly six minutes), all topped off with a Hong Kong-style twist and a horrifically funny final shot which now rivals The Lost Boys for my favourite ending to a ridiculous movie, They Live contains almost too much awesomeness for one film to hold. Which is code for, if you think that contrived and melodramatic action films like the ones homaged in Hot Fuzz are in fact deep and serious, you'll probably think that They Live is a stupid failure. And hey, even if you watch it for what it is, you may still think it's a stupid failure. That's okay. You'd just be wrong. ;)

FUN FACT! Keith David worked with John Carpenter prior to They Live, with a chilling and memorable role in The Thing.

MASS EFFECT FUN FACT! Keith David also provided the voice of Captain/Councilor Anderson in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.

CRAZY COINCIDENCE FUN FACT! Keith David also has a small role in...

Road House (which I keep confusing with From Dusk 'Til Dawn, which takes place in a roadhouse), which aired on TV the day after They Live, is a film my husband taped because it is, and I quote, "mythic". Mythically awful, mythically awesome, take your pick; it certainly deserves its allegedly legendary status. Starring Patrick Swayze as a nice young doctor of philosophy who can't find work philosophizing and is instead famous in bar circles for being one of the best bouncers in the U.S. (I am not making this up), Road House sees Swayze's Dalton accepting a job offer to turn around the reputation of the Double Deuce, an incredibly seedy, sleazy, violent small-town bar which happens to be owned by a nice older man who wants to see the place get cleaned up. Obviously, all problems stem from the fact that the town is owned and controlled by some seedy, sleazy, violent tycoon rancher, which may leave some readers wondering whether or not Dalton will have to save the town and hook up with the tycoon's ex-wife. I think I'll leave you hanging.

If Road House's awesomeness factor and Patrick Swayze factor are not enough to catch your interest, consider also that the Double Deuce's house musician is the late great blues man Jeff Healey (one of Canada's finest contributions to music), and that while he had a decent TV career before co-starring in Road House, this still may be the only time you'll ever see Sam Elliott (Tombstone, The Big Lebowski, Ang Lee's Hulk) with brown hair. He looks dangerous, like he's going to come flying through the window to kick your ass at any moment! It's wild! It's like seeing Ben Kingsley with hair in Searching for Bobby Fischer, except that Ben Kingsley looks much scarier now that he's bald. This is not to say that Sam Elliott cannot look very threatening in his current white-haired state, but rather that Sam Elliott in Road House is a bit of an experience.

NOT SO FUN FACT! There is some brief but lingering martial arts-related grossness in Road House, of the level you'd expect to see in a Steven Seagal film rather than a Patrick Swayze one. Eeeeew. Hail to the 80's.

KIND OF BORING CONCLUSION! A highly entertaining pair of films.

*Never.

My Ten Best Friends are Talking Pies: Mass Effect 2

2010-02-25T10:26:00.000-08:00

Mass Effect 2
BioWare Studios, EA Games
ESRB: M for Mature (Blood, Drug Reference, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence)

There are exactly three good things about the city of Edmonton: the good company, the public library, and BioWare, that august game studio which brought us Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, Jade Empire, Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age: Origins - in other words, more high-quality fun than you can shake ten to twelve sticks at. Sometimes, good things fraternize with each other, like when you find out that some of the good company you keep works for BioWare. The ultimate irony of the video game developer is that the good ones who work for good studios are way too busy developing games to have the free time to play them, and one in particular makes good use of this irony by combining it with his delight for gift-giving, and so it came to pass that in the space of three months, I've had the superb luxury of playing two games a week or two after they were released as opposed to waiting a year or two for the price to fall into my tax bracket. One of those was Dragon Age: Origins, which I've been meaning to blurb about for a while now, is ridiculously entertaining, and has just released an expansion pack (Dragon Age: Awakening). The other one, you may have surmised, is the highly anticipated Mass Effect 2, which I'm playing on an Xbox 360.

Beginning shortly after the attack on Citadel Station that served as the climax of the first game, ME2 is set around (surprise!) a fresh encroachment of Reapers and their new lackeys, the Collectors. Human colonists are disappearing in huge numbers throughout the lawless frontier Terminus Systems, and the Citadel Council doesn't appear to be doing too much about it - meaning neither, seemingly, is the Alliance Navy. The game opens with Commander Shepard and the Normandy nearing the end of a long geth patrol, being sent to a system in which ships have been going missing, the official speculation being to blame geth (the synthetic villains of the first game) or slavers. Of course, the official speculation is dead wrong, the Normandy is lost, and after a long series of negotiations (further explained when meeting an old friend in the game's second act) what's left of Shepard's body ends up in the hands of Cerberus, that shady, biological experimenting organization whose entire base of operations in the Attican Traverse you may or may not have destroyed as a series of side quests in the first game. Two years later, Cerberus has put you back together because they believe you're humanity's best hope against the Reapers, and Cerberus insists that their primary goal is to protect and advance human interests. They provide you with a ship, a crew, and the information you'll need to prepare for that ultimate battle, and off you go.

BioWare games tend to have outstanding writing, and ME2 has (unsurprisingly) set a new standard. With an eight-author crew co-headlined by Star Wars novelist and BioWare regular Drew Karpyshyn (Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire), ME2 features a solid cast of archetypes and cliches removed from their boxes and turned into whole, satisfying, engaging characters and storylines, with very few exceptions. Honestly, the only aspect of the writing I'm disappointed with in ME2 is the missed golden opportunity to pay tribute to the classic running joke from John Carpenter's Escape from New York ("Snake Plissken? I've heard of you! I thought you were dead!"). As in the first game, there is a Paragon/Renegade scale in lieu of the standard RPG Good/Evil scale (cue Bill Bailey's slide whistle), in which Renegade dialogue and actions are blunt, aggressive, usually focus on the Big Picture, believe in "live and let live", and that the end justifies the means, while the Paragon is diplomatic, polite often to naive excess, concerned with the small-scale personal elements that form the big Picture, and believes in intervention and that that the end never justifies the means. The fact that neither the Paragon or Renegade actions are always good/wise or bad/foolish choices, coupled with the facts that both paths contain hard to stomach decisions and work towards the same main goal, is what makes the Mass Effect story so interesting to play. Also very interesting, it is made quite clear in-game that decisions made in regards to loyalties and alliances in ME2 will have significant impacts on the outcome of ME3. Decisions carried over to ME2 from ME1 save games did not have as blatantly big impacts in this game as I'd expected, but a quick peek between the lines suggests that they will become very important in the story's final installment. I'm also very interested to see how the writers will handle the fact that most if not all of your squadmates can end up dead by the end of ME2, and how that will affect save games carried over to ME3.

While we're on the subject of dead squadmates, it should be noted that in spite of the big fuss made over the fact that the suicide mission that ends ME2 can in fact be a true suicide mission - even Shepard can die, rendering the whole playthrough null and void since if this happens there are no do-overs and you will be unable to import it to the sequel - the game tells you repeatedly what to do in order to ensure that everyone makes it home. The only way to lose people at the end of the game is by ignoring those instructions and/or making obviously foolish or illogical tactical decisions. There is a critical point after which, if you don't begin the suicide mission immediately, you will lose some or all of the random NPCs floating around the Normandy, but this is easily avoided for experienced gamers who know that heading for your objective is always the last thing you do - and for the inexperienced gamer who gets trapped here, the game tells you in two different places at this point that delaying the mission will help ensure squad survival but sacrifice the crew, thus giving you a clear choice instead of an unwelcome surprise. And while I hate losing usable characters, it would be interesting to see which losses will make a difference in ME3, since I can only think of three instances during the suicide mission in which you can ensure a specific character's demise - all others are chosen at random by the computer. At any rate, my point is, it is impossible to unwittingly lose any of your ten specialists, or your Shepard - it must be done deliberately, through ignorance or choice, so if you haven't played yet and are nervous about this, don't sweat it.

In other story-related news, ME2 also does a great job with romantic sub-plots. They are considerably more interesting and evolved than ME1's, make strong efforts to avoid boring cliches, run the gamut from poignant to cheesy to hilarious (see previous post), and those who protested against ME1 on grounds of moral degeneracy for including a relatively tame, optional sexual cutscene will be pleased to note that there are no similar cutscenes in ME2. There is, however, what could be perceived as a significantly higher fetish content, as two of the three gender-specific love interests for a female Shepard are aliens, and all three characters available to both Shepards for sexual flings are female, with one being an alien Amazon and another being - I am not making this up - an alien sex vampire. Read into that what you will. Someone on the writing crew may have been poking fun at this business by including the galaxy's first "titillating alien magazine" as an in-game shop item, kind of like Three Dog's "weather forecast" taking a shot at the excessive gore in Fallout 3.

On the boring technical side of things, the main edge video games have over any other entertainment media I can think of is that, due to continual and rapid evolutions in computer technology, it's a very rare and embarrassing occurrence for a game's sequel to not surpass its predecessor in almost every way. BioWare doesn't have a habit of letting gamers down, and ME2 is no exception to that rule. For starters, it runs smoother than any other game I've played to date - it doesn't even pause while saving. There are some obvious ways in which this was achieved, most notably in your ship's layout. While there are four levels on the new Normandy, as opposed to two on the original, separating the ship into those load zones makes a huge difference in how the game runs, dividing conversations across three decks. Also, not having a personal inventory is probably a big factor. Sure, you can acquire a decent amount of armor and ordinance over the course of the game, but significantly less than the average RPG selection, and they're stored in different locations. Guns are kept in weapons lockers found aboard the Normandy and in various locations during main quests, and these are the only places to swap out your weapons - you can't carry more than one of each type on your person. Armor is divided into parts (helmet, chestplate, etc.) and stored in your shipboard cabin, and that is the only place you can swap your armor after completing the game's introduction. All this to say that the game doesn't have to remember nearly as much content in each save as it did in the first game, which had a 150-item personal inventory. As well, upgrades are no longer items, but permanent additions to weapons and armor once found, bought, and/or unlocked.

This inventory system also contributes to more interesting tactical decisions than were available in ME1. The limit of one weapon of each type can be a hard call at times, because the developers did a great job of giving each grade of weapon a different purpose, meaning that the "higher"-grade weapon isn't necessarily the one you want. You can have a mini-nuke, but it's not the most practical heavy weapon, it's tricky to use and you cannot get off more than one shot even at full ammo-carrying capacity, and there's a lot to be said for a good old-fashioned grenade launcher - which in this game happens to require a good deal of skill and practice to use effectively. Likewise, a more powerful sniper rifle or shotgun may not always be more practical than its weaker, rapid-fire version which carries three to four times as many rounds, and oftentimes which weapon is better for the job seems to rely on your character class. For example, the high-caliber Widow Anti-Material sniper rifle (unique to Soldiers and Infiltrators) virtually guarantees, when paired with sufficient upgrades and skill, a one- to two-shot kill even on "Hardcore", and for an Infiltrator is the kind of weapon that explains why some people name their guns. However, the weaker Viper rifle is arguably a better pick for Soldiers, who do not have the passive "sniper time" slowdown unique to Infiltrators, but who do have the class-specific "Adrenaline Rush" ability, which in this game pairs a total time dilation with increased weapon damage - meaning that the slow-firing, slow-reloading, one-round chamber Widow is largely impractical for the Soldier on "Hardcore" or "Insanity", but the rapid-fire Viper (with twelve rounds to the chamber and fourty-eight in the clip) can have first- and second-tier enemies dealt with before Adrenaline Rush times out (2-5 seconds). Combined with the fact that, unlike the first game, there are class restrictions on weapon use (ME1 only had restrictions on effectiveness), the combat is much more interesting than it used to be.

ME2's leveling system is another significant change from the first game, with fewer abilities and only four ranks of each, requiring a total of ten points to fully upgrade each ability . That may sound like leveling up is a breeze, but the way squad points are awarded in ME2 - combined with a 30-level cap - makes for some tough decisions for your squad. However, if you're not happy with your decisions for Shepard, one upgrade available after the game's halfway point is the opportunity to re-distribute your points at any time aboard the Normandy provided you have the necessary resources (or you can always exploit the "infinite squad points" glitch, but that's kind of lame). It's a fantastic system that allows you to specialize your abilities in accordance with the mission you're about to undertake, and really ties the game together as specialization is a big deal plot-wise in ME2. While we're talking about missions, my absolute favourite gameplay aspect of ME2 is the ability to, from the load menu, restart whichever mission you last began, allowing you to change your weapons or squad and providing the choice to skip the hassle or take the challenge if it turns out that you chose the wrong tools for the job. The restart option for any mission, main or side, will remain available until you begin a new mission. It really is a fantastic enhancement to the gameplay. As well, you can unlock non-essential main quests (what?) by completing side quests. Unheard of! Absurd! Fantastic.

One of the big advertised features for ME2 was the fact that you can change your class and appearance on imported ME1 games. I was really excited about that, because while ME1 was a big deal at the time for how much you could customize your appearance, I was never very happy with its presets, never quite able to get the look I wanted, and after seeing how far BioWare upped the customization ante with Dragon Age, I was totally jazzed. Which means I was also totally bummed at first when I discovered that ME2 has the same toolset as ME1 - all the preset faces are the same, all the eye/nose/mouth shapes and hairstyles are the same, and there's no additional fiddling around that wasn't present in the first game. I got over it because it makes sense. Another big advertised feature currently unique (as far as I know) to the Mass Effect series is its combination of facial customization and fully cinematic dialogue, in which your character speaks and runs a wide range of facial expressions. These have been really nicely toned up in ME2, and I can't see how it would work so well and run so smoothly if you could go wild with customization. Also, though I can't find a way to save it on the 360, there is a code at the bottom of the customization screen which encompasses every aspect of your appearance, meaning that if you got a really good face and you just want your next character to have different hair, you can write down that code and enter it next time to get that same face instantaneously. For someone who takes their customization seriously, and spends what some may consider a disgusting amount of time getting it "just right" since I'll have to look at it for the next 40+ hours (especially if I run a second play on the same ME2 character, for which you cannot change appearance or class), this is a very big and welcome deal.

The only kind of big downside to ME2 is that the combat AI, at least on the 360, has some weird issues that tend to get you killed three quarters of the way through a huge multi-wave fight for no good reason (though I should note in the game's defense that its well-planned autosave system will only require you to restart the fight you got killed in, not the entire mission). For starters, you can only regain health by taking cover (no medi-gel for you!), and it's not always clear what stationary objects the game does or does not consider to be cover. There are also many instances of the AI making you stand up out of cover if you tap a button too fast when changing weapons or issuing commands, which causes a whole lot of instant death on higher difficulty levels. And while the ability to vault into/out of cover can really come in handy, it can also really screw you over if you tap the left stick in just the wrong way, as can that same tap accidentally running you into something the game considers to be a corner or wall, which will also make you stand up, and if staggered by an attack, you can't take cover until regaining your balance...by which time you'll probably be dead. It also seems that the squad AI has more problems the higher your difficulty level, at least I'm noticing a huge shift from "Veteran" to "Hardcore", though this could simply be perception based on the fact that "Hardcore" is, um, harder. Squad members will also sometimes randomly get out of cover, and if you don't send them to just the right angle, they'll shoot at their cover instead of at the enemy, or simply not fire at all. There have also been a lot of times when I've ordered a squad member to use an ability, and they just...don't. And I may be too busy to notice that they didn't, until it's too late. This is probably a button time-delay issue, though time-delay doesn't explain why squad members sometimes repeatedly turn off their specialty ammo in the middle of a fight. All that being said, the combat is overall more interesting than it was in ME1, especially since the main story fights tend to involve being ambushed on the enemy's turf, with little or ineffective cover, and there are a lot of other big quest fights in which it's more effective and more efficient to learn how to move around a battlefield rather than try to depend on cover. However, "more interesting" also tends to mean "more frustrating"... :)

Of course, there are scads of little features that have made wonderful additions to ME gameplay, like the new and greatly improved minigames for hacking and circuit bypass...but listing them all would make this post even more long and boring then it already is. ;)

Lionhead Studios' Fable series was and is infamously sold on the hype of being an RPG in which all your actions affect the world around you. The first installment, enjoyable though it was, didn't take this premise anywhere close to as far as advertised, and neither did the second installment which, though having excellent gameplay, lowered the bar in spades by continuing to hype this feature while still forcing all serious plot decisions of consequence on the player, decisions which were, in my opinion, rather thoughtless and other less complimentary adjectives, resulting in a game whose completion provided no satisfaction whatsoever and in which "affecting the world around you" really only meant whether wandering NPC's think you're the cat's pyjamas or the devil's right hand (wooo! Hard-core!). The Mass Effect series showed Fable how it's done, resulting in two engaging, outstanding, utterly satisfying titles whose decision-making aspects command repeated playthroughs for the sake of seeing what their consequences will be, and in which combination. Though I got it for free, Mass Effect 2 is some extraordinary bang for your buck, and with how many hours of thought-provoking entertainment it offers, the downside even bigger than the combat AI issues is that it takes an awful lot of self-discipline to not spend way too much time playing this incredible game. The upside? It'll keep you plenty busy while waiting for Mass Effect 3. Enjoy!

Dialogue of the Week

2010-02-20T10:04:00.000-08:00

This week's gem which you probably shouldn't use in general public conversation comes to us courtesy of everyone's favourite Mass Effect 2 vigilante sniper, on the subject of not rushing relationships to fourth base:

Garrus Vakarian: Well, you know me. I always like to savour the last shot before popping the heat sink.

[awkward pause while him and Shepard give each other weird looks]

Wait. That metaphor just went somewhere horrible.

Dialogue Of The Week

2010-02-03T09:44:00.000-08:00

Heard on Human Target episode 4, "Sanctuary":

(Chris and Winston are stranded with the guy they've been hired to protect in a remote part of Quebec (vive La Belle Province!), and in sore need of a contingency plan.)

Guerrero: (answering his cell) This is Guerrero.

Winston: It's Winston! Where the hell have you been? I called you, like, thirty times in the last ten minutes! Alright, listen. I thought this job was straightforward, but things have gotten kinda complicated, and we're gonna need your help.

Guerrero: Busy today dude. Sorry.

Winston: You're "busy"? Chance and the principal are in danger. What the hell could you be so busy with that it can't wait?

Guerrero: Winston, my life does not revolve around you. As hard as that may be for you to believe, I'm on another job.

Winston: Another?...Look. Fisher and his crew are here, now Chance is stuck up on that mountain with those psychopaths. Now, he told me you know a chopper pilot down in Montreal, and I need him here fast...

Guerrero: Well, I know who he means, but that's not really an option. We kinda had a falling out.

Winston: Well, can't you apologize?

Guerrero: Yeah, if I had a time machine, or a hell of a Ouija board....Listen, you're gonna be fine, man. You're, uh, capable.

Winston: "Capable"?! Who the hell do you think you're...

Guerrero: Gotta go.

Human Target

2010-01-26T10:06:00.000-08:00

Thanks to increasingly high audience impatience and financial pressure to perform, TV shows have been getting off to stronger starts these past five or so years. Where it was once understood that pilots would be kind of awkward but just enticing enough to convince viewers to give a show some time to find its legs, the average program now has to hit the ground running in order to have a fighting chance - and most of the good ones still don't survive. Human Target, one of the newest residents of the airwave jungle, has hit the ground running through a U.S. Army obstacle training course with flying colours. What I'm trying to convey with that clumsy analogy, which probably came from having just read a chapter about boot camp in the memoirs of Major Richard Winters, is that the first three episodes of Human Target to go to air have been some very good TV that seems to be doing its best to avoid being a genre cliche.

The premise of Human Target is a very easy one to cliche, as it revolves around the business of a small private security company whose M.O. is to use their high-end clients as bait in order to draw out and apprehend their would-be assassins, robbers, whatever. Staffed by an operator (Chi McBride), a freelance information specialist (Jackie Earle Haley), and, of course, the field operator who acts as an unconventional bodyguard (Mark Valley), they're a legal business, not off the grid like the A-Team. They're also, as demonstrated to solid comic effect in the third episode, very well-connected. Although his history is still a bit spotty, it's been implied that main character Christopher Chance (Valley) has a CIA and/or U.S. Army Special Forces background, and that his past work has earned him a lot of favours in high places waiting to be called in, which also helps with legal side of things.

What is so far making Human Target work, strong acting and writing aside, is its eschewing of standard "special agent for hire" conventions. For example, on basically every other show in the genre, Guerrero (Haley) would be an omnipotent computer geek inept in every other aspect of life. On Human Target, though Guerrero knows his way around a computer and then some, he really is, as I referred to him above, an information specialist. He has contacts, he does legwork, he finds the missing pieces of the puzzle through a wide variety of means for Chris and Winston (McBride). And the best part is, neither him nor secret agent man Chris are omnipotent. They're smart, resourceful, and very well-rounded, but they don't know everything. In the second episode, when a fire in a plane's cabin put the pilots out of commission with smoke inhalation and Chris had to step in and help out, he may have a pilot's license but had, reasonably, never flown a 747, which meant he didn't know squat about its landing gear...but he did know where the cockpit manual was, and consulted it. Later in the same episode, when faced with a problem in the plane's wiring, he went to the pilot for help instead of phoning his tech expert, because Guererro's no expert on 747s - the pilot is. What makes Chris such a great character is that he knows how to use resources, and what makes Guerrero a great character, aside from not being an all-knowing, magical instant problem-solving computer nerd, is that he also knows how to use resources. This team is not an isolated one, which is very refreshing (not to mention plain ol' good storytelling). In the third episode, Guerrero had to keep an eye on someone who'd been poisoned with something that would eventually stop his heart, and his first move was to try to get a hold of his local contacts with medical training. When that fell through (one in prison, the other dead), he went to find a defibrillator, and while sitting around waiting for the need to use it, he read the manual. That's right, he didn't already know how to use a defibrillator, but as he reminded a high-strung Winston, they put those things on school buses. He can figure out how to use one. I would never say anything bad about MacGyver, but I'm glad that the characters on Human Target are not his inferior wannabes.

The three main characters have distinct personalities, interact well together, and, most importantly, each have a different role to play (no pun intended). Guererro does legwork in his capacity as an information guy, and he gets stuff done, but he's no field operative - that's Chris's job. Winston doesn't seem to do much leg work at all, which is fine as he's well suited to and very good at his role as operator and coordinator. As for personalities, Chris is no James Bond or Sam Spade, nor is he a lone wolf or infalliable. He's successful because he doesn't work alone. And Guererro is no awkward wallflower. He's successful in his field of work because he's confident, aggressive, kind of scary, and knows how to deal with people, and has a great tick of calling everyone "dude" without sounding contrived. He's easily shaping up to be my favourite part of the show.

The other major point in Human Target's favour is excellent action, stuntwork, and fight choreography. It also helps that Mark Valley has not only done stuntwork before, but is a West Point graduate and veteran of Desert Storm, and the show makes good use of his physical talents. There's plenty of proper dirty fighting going on, in which Chris makes reasonable use of his surroundings, and the show's even had him fight two women without getting all Mr. and Mrs. Smith stupid (though they couldn't resist using the standard cheesy tango music to accompany a co-ed fight at a black-tie function). This show probably also has a bit more financial freedom for its all-important action sequences due to the fact that their excellent "B-list" main cast probably comes with a reasonable price tag, and you know what? The solution to that equation is high-quality fun that keeps a decent distance from sensationalism.

Due to the unwritten rule that you are no longer allowed to have a cop/buddy cop/spy show with an all-male cast, they have introduced a sexy FBI agent to whom Chris has deliberately made himself accessible, and although his business operates more or less above board and he has friends in high places, he's still broken plenty of federal and international laws over the years - if someone can find him and make a charge stick. His fingerprints are on file, along with over a dozen aliases, but is otherwise blank, and now he's given someone in law enforcement a face to go with the names. I can't imagine what they plan to do with Lady Agent, but I do hope it doesn't involve her joining the team (which has a rock-solid dynamic and is just fine as it is) or adding an unecessary and cliched plot tension involving trying to arrest Chris.

It would seem that Fox has high hopes for Human Target, because where I live it's currently serving as the lead-in for 24, a great way to build an audience and ensure stable ratings. This one may actually be around for a while. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Sometimes, it's good to be wrong: Stargate: Universe

2010-01-16T15:10:00.000-08:00

A while back, when the Sci-Fi Channel went through a revenue-based identity crisis and became the Syfy Channel (still looks like an abbreviation for syphilis), their flagship show was a new addition to the Stargate family. I was quite alarmed by the promotional materials for the show, what with it using words like "sexy" and "adventure" in the same sentence, and going on about how it's been specially made for people who don't like sci-fi, blah blah blah. As such, I made the skittish assumption that it was going to be Defying Gravity with a Stargate label, and resolved to stay away. Well, now we have Space, SyFy's Canadian equivalent, and now Space airs Stargate: Universe, and I all I can say is, I should have known better. The Stargate series happens to be quite fond of its good name, and not even the mighty SyFy channel can do anything to change that.

Stargate: Universe comes to us three years after the conclusion of SG-1 and on the tail end of Stargate: Atlantis's run; story-wise, that's also where it sits chronologically. Its premise is that the Stargate project - a military black op centering around the usage of wormhole technology created by a long-gone race known only as the Ancients - has finally found a nine-chevron address and the means to dial it, nine being the maximum number Stargates have. If seven chevrons gets you to another planet, and eight gets you to another galaxy, where the heck do nine get you? When the big day comes, and various troops, scientists, and dignitaries assemble at an off-world outpost to witness the first attempt to dial the mysterious new address, a surprise enemy attack throws a pretty big monkey in the wrench...and instead of getting everyone back to Earth, the project's lead scientist forces the new dialing sequence to completion, and everyone who survives the attack winds up on the Destiny, an unmanned, half-dead Ancient spacecraft with nothing but the clothes (and weapons) on their backs, and whatever they had the presence of mind to grab before running through the gate. Included in this group are a good but reluctant commander, an army medic who was coming to the deliberate end of her service, a solid young officer for whom the army was his only place to turn after a series of personal crises, and a large group of civilians including an MIT dropout who solved the equation that made the trip to Destiny possible, assorted Stargate Project scientists, a U.S. senator and his adult daughter, a ranking official from the IOA (the international body that oversees the Stargate Project), and the afore-mentioned lead scientist, Dr. Rush.

Hmm. Put like that, I can't help but hear the Gilligan's Island song in my head, but rest assured: the similarities between these two shows end at being stranded with a brilliant scientist and a beautiful but seemingly useless civilian.

The show's conflict stems from three primary plots: survival, the tension between cilivians and soldiers (particularly as pertaining to who's in charge), and the independent, hard to monitor actions of Rush, an extraordinarily talented pathological liar whose intellect is matched only by his disdain for others and his ruthless ambition and obsession to see the project through at all costs, a point of view not held by the mission's accidental military commander. As anyone familiar with the Stargate series would expect, the human interaction is of the highest quality and very interesting, as are the characters doing the interacting. Which is a good thing, because that's what SG:U is really about. Where SG-1 was driven by exploration and mythology, and Atlantis was primarily a military sci-fi, Universe is character-driven, which I suppose is where it becomes more accessible for those outside the sci-fi loop. With the regular, long-term Stargate script-writing collective behind it, this brand-new show has already put most everything else on the air to shame. It's even already put out a time-travel episode, Stargate's specialty, which fused everything good about Aliens and the original Predator with everything good about Stargate, and included the following sure-to-be-classic (at least in my house) dialogue exchange: "Well, this couldn't be any worse!" "I'm afraid that's a failure of imagination."

The only place I can see SG:U getting irritating soon unless handled in a very particular way is in the plotline involving Col. Young's visceral rivalry with Col. Telford, a pilot who was supposed to be the mission commander but was in the middle of a dogfight when everyone went through the gate. Young's crew has an Ancient communication system that allows them to contact Earth, even over a distance of several billion light-years, and involves trading bodies with someone at the other end, and Telford does his best to make sure he's almost always that person so that he can be involved with what's happening on Destiny. The way he sees it, Young stole his rightful position as mission commander. That's right, he'd rather be stranded aboard Destiny, because it's his mission, and he does his best to erode the crew's confidence in Young while insinuating his command agenda into their affairs. On top of that, with a lot of long-term bad blood existing between the two, Telford's got some heavy personal blackmail on Young and isn't afraid to use it without bothering to threaten first, hoping to do enough emotional damage to render Young incapable of command. While not an unrealistic character, as Young's opposite Telford is very intense, and I find that has a tendency to get tiresome fast on a series. But, Stargate is far superior to the average series, so we'll see.

Stargate: Universe isn't on at the moment, doing that irritating mid-winter hiatus thing that's now become a TV staple, but I'm looking forward to its return. As an added, bonus, the Stargate name should guarantee that this excellent new sci-fi won't go the way of the usual excellent new sci-fi (rest in peace, Sarah Connor Chronicles), that is to say it's not likely to be suddenly axed in two seasons or less whilst in the middle of a gripping story arc, and odds are it will be played out to its natural conclusion.

Army of Two

2010-01-16T15:00:00.000-08:00

Army of Two (EA Montreal)
Third-person co-operative shooter
Rated M for Mature

PRO:
As the name suggests, it cannot be played alone and requires improved teamwork and communication skills, as it prevents you from completing missions if your buddy is dead (unlike Halo, one person can't just carry you through). It also involves and/or requires actions like flanking, covering, drawing fire away from your buddy so that they can take someone out or because they're injured or re-loading, moving objects or scaling walls that can't be done without help, and dragging your wounded buddy to cover so that you can patch them up before they bleed to death and you get an automatic game over. If you don't have a live buddy handy, the game provides you with a very decent virtual one.

CON:
The split-screen can be tough viewing at some points, unless you have a really big TV. The enemies are pretty small.

PRO:
You don't have to keep checking the split-screen to know what your buddy's up to if he's out of your line of sight, thanks to an inset camera on your half of the screen that follows him.

CON:
Not for the politically correct, as the game centers around the military-vs.PMC (private military contractors) debate, and places you in real-life hot spots like Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. There is one particular mission in which your biggest danger is suicide bombers, and one of the game's Xbox achievements is setting off 25 suicide bombers before they can set themselves off.

PRO:
A fun arsenal of unlockable, buyable weapons that includes an interesting assortment of assault rifles, sidearms, sniper rifles, RPGs, and machine guns. Most of them have available upgrades for the barrel, stock, cartridge, suppressor, and/or frountmount, as well as on-the-barrel shields.

CON:
You can only swap out your weapons at set points in the game, and as far as I can tell, can't decide what your virtual buddy is packing.

PRO:
This results in interesting decisions, if you've already played the game, or interesting strategies if you haven't played the game and find yourself in a scenario in which your equipped weapons are not really the right tools for the job. However, you can swap your primary, secondary, or special weapon with your partner at any time.

CON:
I always forget that you can swap weapons with your partner.

PRO:
One of the character's lines when in "Overkill" mode is "Game over, man! Game over!".

CON:
People tend to swear a lot when they're getting shot at. This can be a put-off to some gamers.

PRO:
One of the achievements involves making like Dirty Harry.

CON:
Viewing the achievements leads to plot spoilers, such as purpose of the achievement that involves making like Dirty Harry.

PRO:
You probably saw that plot point coming from a mile away, anyways.

CONSENSUS:
Silly but fun.

Best Dialogue on TV Tonight

2010-01-11T23:45:00.000-08:00

Heard on a repeat of Fringe:

"Well, it's like I always say: if the government's covering something up, it must be Tuesday."

Is a reference to: the famed UFO/weather balloon crash at Roswell. Apparently, the official government statement regarding the crash was released on a Tuesday.

I feel like I've heard this line somewhere else before, but can't place it. Can you?

The Other Postman. Unleash the hounds.

2010-01-09T23:22:00.000-08:00

Last night, I made one of the classic movie-watching blunders: forgetting that it is directors, not writers, who have the final say on the end product. Eric Roth and Brian Helgeland are excellent screenwriters, but when you're writing for a director whose primary obsessions are epic scenery, gratuitous and very realistic sex, and the American Civil War, there's only so much you can do to help.

The Postman, by David Brin, is one of the greatest reads ever. The Postman, directed by and starring Kevin Costner, is just a few steps shy of being sufficiently over the top to qualify as a Hapless Shitstorm, a genre coined by my friend Andre to describe Baz Luhrman's Australia. The Postman is not just a bad movie, it's an empty one. That's the best description I can come up with: empty. The Postman lives up to its legendary reputation for dullness and then some. Very little happens in its 178 minutes, which I suppose is an impressive feat in its own way. On top of that, Costner forced the story into an epic Civil War allegory, a baffling move that can best be described as a critical failure. Even if you don't take into account its source material and consider the film as a distinct story in its own right, it's still a story that doesn't make any sense. Ignoring everything that made Brin's story interesting, filled instead with said nonsensical allegory and lots and lots of scenery, and basically given the Paul Verhoeven treatment, a condition in which a director reads part of a great book and decides that it would be a way better story if he completely missed, ignored and/or discarded the book's theme, thesis, and message, and replaced it with his own, The Postman is as boring as it is pointless.

(Paul Verhoeven got hired to direct a film version of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, by his own admission read only the prologue and thought it was too boring to read any further, and then went on to make what I would crown the king of Hapless Shitstorms (disclaimer: I have not seen Australia) whose cherry on top is the fact that its theme, message, and portrayal of the military are in every way the antithesis of Heinlein's. Costner's Postman is similar in structure, except that instead of being an antithesis, it's just more or less nothing at all. As I said, empty. I have no idea whether or not Costner read all of The Postman, but the film's content suggests that he never made it past chapter five.)

Avoid at all costs.

The Postman

2010-01-07T12:46:00.000-08:00

About seven or eight months ago, I borrowed a copy of David Brin's The Postman from some friends, and for seven or eight months it gathered dust on my coffee table as I was putting off reading it. I borrowed it in the first place because I'm familiar with Hugo-winner Brin for Startide Rising, but avoided it because in my head I had him confused with David Weber (best known for the Honor Harrington series), who I'm not crazy about. In fact, I bought a Weber book at this year's library sale, because in my head I was buying a Brin novel. Confused? I know I am.

Anyways, the point is, I finally read it, and it is the finest post-apocalyptic sci-fi book - and one of the finest post-apocalyptic sci-fi stories - I've ever come across.

The Postman (1985) opens in U.S. of A., year 2009, sixteen years after a nuclear war that has left the country in a state very similar that of the Fallout video game series, with protagonist Gordon Krantz fleeing for his life while simultaneously trying to reclaim all his worldly possessions after his camp is attacked by "survivalists", roaming terrors who thrive on death, destruction, and mutilating corpses, and who I wouldn't be surprised to hear were the direct inspiration for Fallout's raiders. Just eighteen when the first of the wars began, he has survived the interim, including a three-year long nuclear winter, first by joining a short-lived militia in the early days of the war and later by using his brain and the skills he learned in the militia he wanders the country trading plays and stories for food and shelter at the settlements scattered across the mid-west, thus proving that English Literature 101 may be useful in the event of a nuclear apocalypse after all. After surviving the opening attack on his camp, but losing all his posessions - making him as good as dead, out in the wild - in the course of his escape he stumbles across a derelict jeep containing the fully uniformed body of a pre-war postman, along with a big sack of official government mail regarding what would later be referred to as the Doomwar. Gordon is deeply stricken by this unexpected and most familiar of links to better days, and the fact that the postman was most likely ambushed while trying to deliver his cargo but pressed on as long as he could in an attempt to preserve his country, bringing to mind the U.S. Postal Service Oath to deliver the mail no matter what. He's also delighted to have the postman's warm uniform, and so takes it and the mailbag and continues on his way. At the next settlement he comes across, the residents decide that, regardless of how he came by it, now that he's put on the postman's uniform he is a postman. Recognizing the potential of this course of action, Gordon decides to re-open lines of communication and build up hope, instituting post offices, mail routes, and carriers in each subsequent settlement he comes to and even as going so far as to forge documents "proving" that there is a government out east which is working on restoring America. As the baby postal service grows, and people actually start getting letters from friends and family they thought were long dead, their hope and belief in the rebuilding of the country grows with it. Making the lie even easier to believe is the reasonable assumption that the post would be the only sustainable, wide-reaching federal service to continue after a holocaust, as all it requires is people willing to travel. Gordon is determined to keep the hope alive, but the bulk of the story's tension is found in his constant nervous state of wondering about when his lie will be revealed, and if it will have been successful enough for that revelation to not make a difference to the people.

However, all that's just the setting. The true story of The Postman is a calm, thought out, well-constructed examination of why people need other people, and how it is impossible for an organization, be it town or country, to survive and succeed if run by or consisting of only one type of person or group. This is subtly emphasized by how different each settlement Gordon visits is, in its structure, leadership, attitudes, and practices, and more strongly emphasized by the almost overwhelmingly destructive force of the survivalists. Brin even manages to tactfully deconstruct one of the major and very sensitive real-life socio-political arguments of his time, though I imagine it would not be hard for a certain type of person to ignore everything else and claim The Postman as a feminist manifesto. It is because Brin is so calm that it could be very easy to ignore all the subtle elements that build the core of his message and cling to one of the stronger ones, but ultimately The Postman remains a powerful and successful argument for why no one ideological group can successfully rule or survive on its own.

On top of that, Brin's writing style is incredibly easy to engage. Casual and flowing, his voice in this book feels like a cross between late-50's-early 60's Robert A. Heinlein (Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land), late-90's Stephen King (Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon), and Harry Harrison (Make Room! Make Room!, the Stainless Steel Rat books) minus the hysterics. It opens well, it ends well, has a very reasonable take on the future which is our present, and contains one the most beautifully blunt foreshadowings I've come across. Packed with thoughts and visuals, The Postman somehow manages to never stop flowing, or even slow down. That to me is a most impressive accomplishment - that most famous of descriptive writers, Tolkien, wrote gorgeous visual paragraphs that are well worth taking the time to read, but generally stop the story dead. Brin's visuals are nowhere near as detailed as Tolkien's, but they are full and whole, and his world, protagonist, and secondary characters are both complete and engaging straight 'til the end.

I've never seen the 1997 Kevin Costner film based on this book, and have believed the rumours regarding its legendary dullness as the only Costner-directed film I have seen and enjoyed is 2003's Open Range. However, after reading The Postman, I'm now quite interested in its screen adaptation. Costner is a thinker, and I'd like to see his take on this story. Seeing that the screenplay was written by Brian Helegeland (L.A. Confidential, Conspiracy Theory) and Eric Roth (Munich, The Good Shepherd) more or less confirms that I'll be watching The Postman pretty soon.

In the meantime, I highly recommend The Postman as reading material, even if you've seen and hated the movie. It's a fantastic book, a smart story, and appears to have significantly influenced many aspects of Fallout 3, so if you enjoyed that series I can't think of a single reason why you won't enjoy this book. And if you hate video games with a passion, as some people dear to me do, I still can't think of a single reason why you won't consider The Postman to have been an excellent use of your time.

Two Gentlemen of Lebowski

2010-01-07T12:43:00.000-08:00

Much thanks to the crew at EW.com's Popwatch blog for bringing this to my attention. Warning: will only be appreciated by those who have seen and enjoyed the Cohen brother's cult bowling-noir classic The Big Lebowski.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

2010-01-07T12:38:00.000-08:00

...Is, in this case, J.J. Abram's Star Trek. We won a copy at Corey's company Christmas party, much to our delight. Cor's co-worker, our friend Tim, would have liked that particular door prize, but we all knew it would be borrowed anyways so it's all good. Then, I enacted our plan to buy my mother-in-law a copy of that same movie for Christmas. And then, on Christmas day, I opened a present from that same mother-in-law, and tucked away beneath Kung-Fu Panda, Up, and Keith Green's greatest hits lay...

Well, guess what we got Tim for Christmas this year!

:D

(Still) The Best Thing About Buffalo

2009-12-10T12:29:00.000-08:00

Remember The Goo Goo Dolls? Those guys that you couldn't not hear on the radio all through the 90's, between numerous singles including "Name", "Slide", "Black Balloon", and, of course, "Iris"? Well, I believe there should be less incredulous looks given in my direction when commenting on their recent material ("What? I didn't know they were still around!"), especially now that I've finally heard their most recent studio album, 2006's Let Love In.

Perhaps the most surprising little-know information about the Dolls is that they're not only still alive and well, but have been recording with record labels since 1987. I had no idea myself that 1995's A Boy Named Goo, which cemented their place as a respectable rock and roll band, was in fact their fifth studio album. But even working only from that album, their evolution as a band, and lead singer/writer John Rzeznik's evolution as a lyricist, is what makes them my favourite pure rock band still recording.

Stylistically, there hasn't been a lot of change between A Boy Named Goo and Let Love In - and I mean that as a complement. I listen to particular bands because I like the distinct sound that makes them, well, them, and get pretty put out when, two albums later, they decide to "reinvent themselves" (i.e. got bored with their old style, or got an ultimatum from their label). Also, as an artist and amateur musician, I personally have more respect for artists who choose to focus on something and then spend the rest of their careers striving to make that one thing constantly better while still retaining its core elements. That's a lot harder than it sounds. So the first thing I love about The Goo Goo Dolls is how, since they started being a rock band (they used to be punks, I had no idea), they've never stopped sounding like The Goo Goo Dolls. Every subsequent album sounds like The Goo Goo Dolls, but more accomplished than before. I appreciate it on a personal level, and it speaks volumes to their musicianship. Which is already of substantial quality, as they derive their unique sound by doing things like tuning every guitar string to the same note, but in a different octave, and so on, resulting in music that in a cursory listen sounds like everyone else's same three chords (all hail G C D!) but upon closer inspection stands out because it doesn't sound anything like that. In fact, most of their songs are in A or D flat, which are not really amenable to standard guitar tunings, which means someone needs to do some serious problem-solving in order to achieve their desired result. It sounds different, simultaneously shiny and matte, better than the Big Three in a way that's blunt and subtle all at the same time. I respect no artists more than those who create something so complex it seems simple. That is a truly challenging endeavour, and the Dolls have not only been pulling it off but building on it since the early '90's.

But I mention style here because that's what got me thinking about this post. While listening to Let Love In, Corey commented that it sounded a lot like contemporary Christian worship rock. Which got my attention, because, though both a contemporary Christian and musician I may be, I can't stand the musical stylings of contemporary Christian worship rock. But it wasn't so much the music on Let Love In that makes it this way, but rather what it sounds like. It sounds like praise, and in its own way, I am quite convinced that this is the case.

I alluded early on to John Rzeznik's evolution as a writer, and currently having in my possession every studio album from A Boy Named Goo to Let Love In really makes this stand out. A Boy Named Goo isn't quite an angry album, per se, but it has a lot of despair - an overarching feeling and message of, "things suck, and we're quite upset about that, but can't see a way out or what can be done to change things." Its follow-up, Dizzy Up the Girl (she of the numerous radio hits), starts presenting glimmers of hope - there is still a lot of entanglement in bad situations, but there are also the beginnings of seeing light at the end of the tunnel, the realization that maybe, just maybe, there might be a way out after all. Gutterflower (2002) is a strange one, and quite possibly my favourite. It's what you might call a break-up album, but which I would say, in its depth and maturity, is more about the end of a relationship rather than a break-up. With the average levels of bitterness, rage, and immaturity on the standard break-up album, it would be both insulting and misleading to refer to Gutterflower as such. That album is packed with surprisingly gentle but sharp rebukes on how not to deal ("Big Machine), grown-up acceptances and admissions ("Sympathy", "What do you need?"), and it closes with the most clear expression up to then of what became of Rzeznik's Catholic upbringing: "Truth is a whisper and only a choice / nobody hears above this noise / It's always a risk when you try and believe / I know there's so much more than me / Yeah I got caught up in the ruse of this world / It's just a promise no one ever keeps / And now it's changing while we sleep... / Who's the one you answer to / do you listen when he speaks / or is everything for you / and do you find it hard to sleep"

Let Love In tells a story of what sounds like Rzeznik finding good, healthy, earthly love, but every song also drips with Christian images of joy, peace, hope, delight, particularly "Without You Here". With lyrics like "let me remind you / the light doesn't blind you at all / it just helps you see" ("Become"), and songs like "Better Days" (my new favourite Christmas tune), the one thing this album is clearly in praise of is truth and love - the only question is whose. I can't imagine it being anything other than the Christian variety, because that's what it screams in my ear, and because the one thing I can say in all certainty without being a presumptuous ass is that there is no truth but Christ, and that there is no joy comparable or more powerful than that found in his salvation. However, I would be a presumptuous ass to make declarations regarding John Rzeznik's opinions on Jesus, and since I can't find any word from him on the subject, the true inspiration behind Let Love In will remain a mystery.

And, of course, the album is very solid musically, and John Rzeznik's made a place for himself in my books amongst the great lyricists of rock and roll with "Feel the Silence", an honest song about the difficulties of reconciliation that includes the brilliant line "we're drowning in the water that flows under this bridge."

All this to say that The Goo Goo Dolls are alive, well, and, with every album, better than ever. Rock and roll hasn't been too big this decade, what with the major trends being the alt-experimental styles used by Coldplay, Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, Hey Rosetta!, Sufjian Stevens, Jets Overhead, and the like, and, on the not-so-good side of things, the "adult contemporary" resurgence we can all throw gardening tools at American Idol for causing. But despair not! If you want some good current, plain ol' rock and roll, look no further than the little white tab at HMV labelled "Goo Goo Dolls". I once had some kick-ass lemonade and corndogs at an outlet mall in Buffalo, but The Goo Goo Dolls will always be the best thing that little city's ever produced.

Where The Wild Things Are

2009-11-10T22:32:00.000-08:00

While I've got nothing against professional film critics, and read a critics review because I'm interested in what they have to say, there are four major categories in which I don't take anyone's word for in regards to a film's quality and/or message: action blockbusters (particularly comic and sci-fi related), Oscar bait or anything released during Oscar sweeps season, foreign films, and children's films. Children's films are tricky territory for critics, probably because they are not made for the people reviewing them, and in that same sphere their suitability for children is also necessarily judged. And suitability seems to have been the main point of contention regarding director Spike Jonze's brilliant adaptation of one of the few books it seems everyone you know has both read and loved: Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.

That Jonze's film is brilliant doesn't seem to have been in contention amongst critics. Beautifully written, directed, acted, designed, and photographed, Where the Wild Things Are expands on its brief but loaded source material in all the right ways. In this version of the story, young Max's journey doesn't begin with a punishment for acting his age, but a panicked flight from a confusing home situation made that way by his father's absence. It is this absence and its impact on both Max and his mother that set the framework for this picture. Miserable, confused, and hurting, he throws a spectacularly well- (or ill-) timed tantrum that gets out of hand, culminating with biting his mom and running away into the woods, and so his mystical journey begins.

And what a journey it is. The most striking thing about the land of the Wild Things is that it's not striking. It's a very familiar, plain deciduous forest, albeit one bordered by desert on one side and ocean on the other. The forests inhabitants, physical appearance aside, aren't especially fantastical either. Most of the Wild Things are easily identifiable as the different aspects of Max's being, and the rest are familiar in less obvious ways. In this way, the film allows Max to explore his feelings and question his actions after the Things crown his their king and he spends the length of his reign being caught in the middle of their conflicts. Carol is the most obvious part of Max, angry and confused by a sudden and unexplained abandonment, and it is mostly through arguments over Carol's behaviour that Max learns about his own. Max's journey to the land of the Wild Things is psychological in nature, and I would wager that its raw honesty is at the heart of what so many critics and filmgoers have claimed makes this film unsuitable for children - a claim I strongly dispute. There is much in this film to make both adult and child uncomfortable, but discomfort and unsuitability are two very different conditions, and the former is not always without its benefits.

Some critics have taken exception with the film's dark depiction of an unstable, unreliable world; others, with its violence. I would address the latter complaint first. Usually, when people complain about violence in kids films, it is because the violence is over-the-top or cartoonish, that is to say sanitized, the reality of its impacts hidden and denied. In the case of Where the Wild Things Are, it's kind of ironic that the majority of complaint's I've come across stem from the impacts of violence being portrayed in an honest and realistic fashion. The Wild Things are much bigger and stronger than Max, and so even their innocent play is fraught with peril as they cavort around jumping on each other and knocking over trees with childish exuberance. The risk of Max being involuntarily harmed is always present and palpable, largely thanks to an excellent performance by twelve-year old Max Records, and the risk of voluntary harm is always in play as well, as it is quickly established that the Wild Things have very short fuses. Also, there's the fact that they crown Max with a circlet and scepter taken from the corpse of a former king they clearly ate after they grew displeased with him, and verbal threats regarding Max becoming someone's meal are made more than once. The involuntary violence - that is, Max being hurt while playing - is not something I can find a reason for being alarmed by, as kids face it every day in the schoolyard, and it is in many ways a normal part of childhood. As my husband pointed out, Where the Wild Things Are is more honest about play than any other kid's film we've seen, because in this one - as in real life - play and games always break down after a point, resulting in at least one kid leaving hurt or unhappy. As for the threat of voluntary violence, I'd say it ties into the film's deeper theme, with is the second point of contention for many critics: the instability and unreliability of Max's world. Early in the film, Max's teacher gets a little too in-depth explaining to the class how the sun will eventually die, but not to worry, because humanity will probably have eradicated itself through any number of apocalyptic scenarios long before that happens (that uncomfortably hilarious scene brought Invader Zim''s Miss Bitters ("doom...dooom....dooooomed!"). Carols mournful monologues include a reflection on how all the sand in the desert used to be something, and what it might erode into next; and, of course, the eventual discovery that Max isn't a real king with mystical powers destroys any fairtytale qualities remaining in the Wild Things existence.

I think it is this portrayal and exploration of instability that makes Where the Wild Things Are one of, possibly the best kid's film I've ever seen, and the very reason kids should be taken to see it. It is unflinching, but not unbearably so, because it is honest. The reason for Max's recent loss of his father is never spoken of in the film, allowing it to be read as being about either divorce or death, and in this way its talk of the sun's extinction is a perfect metaphor. What should be more gratuitously reliable than the sun rising, setting, and being there every day? What should be more gratuitously reliable to a child than the continued, whole existence of his family? More than any other film I've seen on the topic, Where the Wild Things Are explores what happens when the most reliable thing in a kids world is swept out from under his feet with a breadth and depth unmatched even by Brad Bird's The Iron Giant - and I would argue that it does this in a way that a child sufficiently old enough would understand and identify with. Unfortunately, I don't have a child to query on this topic, so this is all conjecture based on what I read and watched as a kid and the fact that I come from what sociologists call a broken home, but I can say this: it's no E.T. E.T. is the most famous, well-loved kid's film about broken homes of my generation, and I hate it. I think it's horribly dishonest, as it glosses over the ugliness of divorce and its impacts with both the confusingly incomplete metaphor of its titular character and the fact that, aside from being less lonely for a few weeks, Elliot never works anything out emotionally, and the only angry or irrational behaviour he exhibits can be blamed on E.T. accidentally getting drunk and passing it on psychically. There is, of course, a tidy, convenient, happy-sappy ending to the story. People love this movie, I mean truly, deeply love it - a Rotten Tomatoes poll several years back ranked it as the best sci-fi film of all time. To quote my favourite virtual philosopher, Homestar Runner: What. The. Crap. E.T. is escapism, but not the good kind. I hated it when I watched it as a child of divorce, and I hated it when I watched it as an adult child of divorce.

Where The Wild Things Are, on the other hand, lays its cards on the table. It's a story about reality, and what our options are when the prospects of a fairytale ending or mysterious stranger who will make everything okay are dim or impossible. I don't know about you, but I don't know a lot of adults who speak fondly of blatantly fictional stories about uncomfortable realities. Sure, we like our biopics, and "based on true events" stuff, but it's telling that the best, most complete, most honest film I've ever found about the destructive nature of guilt and unconfessed sin is an English-language picture written and directed by Americans...which was produced and filmed in Spain, because they could not get financial backing in their home country, and whose only U.S. distributor was Paramount Home Video. In the circles I most frequently travel in, El Maquinista (The Machinist) is often dismissed out of hand because of its R rating, a rating which seems to accompany films about truth almost as much as it does films about obscene and gratuitous lies. Where The Wild Things Are, by virtue of its source material, is already more famous than The Machinist will ever be, even in the face of a new public interest in star Christian Bale (The Dark Knight) - but I wonder how the response to this movie would change were it an original or little-known story. I'd love to read a review by someone who's never heard of the book.

Spike Jonze is a man with a very strange resume consisting mostly of music videos for the like of Bjork, The Chemical Brothers, and R.E.M., as well as writing credits for Jackass, Jackass: The Movie, and Jackass 2, but until now has been most well-known for a bizarre little film called Being John Malkovich, a picture I'm not sure I like but will always appreciate. Whether or not you take your kid to see it, Where The Wild Things Are is a work of art that accomplishes everything good artwork should.

Just Act Natural: Rise of the Silver Surfer

2009-10-13T09:43:00.000-07:00

When the first Fantastic Four came out in 2005, it was not a good time to be making comic book movies about comic books that weren't serious. Sam Raimi's first two Spider-Man flicks had just taught the non-comic-loving world that superheroes had both brains and hearts, Guillermo Del Toro's first Hellboy (2004), though not a high-profile film, was rather good and also featuring a dark and somber mythology, and Batman Begins, which hit Can-Am screens a month before Fantastic Four, pushed critics and audiences over the final edge of belief that a comic book movie must be serious, dark, and restless in order to be good, legitimate, popularly acceptable art. The fact that Fantastic Four is not, as a series, a dark and serious enterprise didn't stop filmmakers from trying to force it to fit such a tone, and the resulting film, when not outright awful, was underwhelming and dull. So it's not surprise that its 2007 sequel 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, was a gift-wrapped critical punching bag. I certainly had no intentions of watching it with memories of the first film still fresh in my mind.

But I'll watch virtually anything as long as it's free, and this month's new Telus Preview Channel is Action, and amidst all the awesome double-bill screenings of The Rock/Con Air and Aliens/the original Predator came, obviously, Rise of the Silver Surfer, which somehow got taped and somehow got watched, in its entirety, last night. I was expecting lots of things from Silver Surfer, but a good time wasn't one of them.

And yet, a good time was exactly what I got. Casting aside all efforts to make The Fantastic Four something they're not, Rise of the Silver Surfer is lighthearted, candy-coated, well-played fun that exercises the spirit of its source material with delightful abandon. The plot is nicely straightforward: the Surfer, a scout for a planet-eating entity known as Galactus, has marked Earth as his boss's next meal, and by the time the Four get this information, they have less then a week to come up with a way to throw Galactus off course. Galactus has awfully inconvenient timing, because Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffud) and Sue Storm/The Invisible Girl (Jessica Alba) are still trying very hard to hold a wedding without a world-threatening crisis breaking out before they can say "I do". For others, however, Galactus' timing is great, because it coincides with some nameless lackey un-boxing Reed's defeated arch-nemesis Victor Von Doom so that he can meet up with the Surfer and try to strike an alliance. When his proposal is rejected, Doom turns to the U.S. military - and the Fantastic Four - with the insistence that they must work together in order to save the planet. Of course, Dr. Doom is full of crap. Fortunately, The Invisible Girl has a power none of her comrades can absorb from her: feminine charm, which, also fortunately, the non-human Surfer is not immune to. And did I mention that the Surfer has total mastery over matter, and is Earth's only hope? Much planet-saving ensues!

When I say the plot's straightforward, I don't mean there are no holes or discrepancies, just that if you roll with them, you'll have a good time. Who un-boxed Doom, and why? Why does the military let him parade around with virtually unrestricted access and no armed escort? How, exactly, does the Surfer defeat Galactus? Rise of the Silver Surfer is one of those films in which such trifles don't matter, and if you think they need to matter, of course you'll hate it. The whole feel of this film is 100% Fantastic Four comic book fun, and succeeds on those grounds. Its deliberately cheesy humour is nicely underplayed, and it has a lot of genuinely funny moments to boot, mostly courtesy of Ioan Gruffud's spot-on portrayal of Reed Richards. Gruffud, the titular star of A&E's fantastic Horatio Hornblower films, plays Reed as every inch the haplessly boring, scientific, un-witty, out-of-the-loop straight man character he is, and the result is lots of natural, believable, enjoyable comedy. A lot of critics panned his performance for being dry - well, it is, and that's the point. Reed is a dry character, who produces lots of dry humour, and when you do it right, like Gruffud does, this is a good thing. There's also a lot of fun provided by Johnny Storm/The Human Torch (Chris Evans) and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Michael Chiklis, The Shield), particularly in a Surfer-related plot device that causes the Four to be able to trade powers by touching each other. All in all, how understated everyone is is surprising and delightful, and really ties the film together. There are some pleasantly touching moments, too, again divided up between Reed/Sue and Johnny/Ben. And the phone call that interrupts Reed and Sue's third attempt at a wedding at the film's close is a brief moment of pure comic genius, a hilariously ludicrous scenario which the cast plays straight to end the film on a wonderfully memorable note.

I'm going to be a presumptuous cynic here and suggest that another reason Rise of the Silver Surfer didn't do well with Canadian/U.S. audiences may be that there was no significant action occurring in major Can-Am cities, or affecting major Can-Am attractions (aside from a crack in the Washington monument), and I wouldn't be surprised if this led to a lot of people not caring about damage or peril occurring on-screen simply by virtue of being disconnected from the locations. The first major peril of the film involves the Surfer dislodging the ferris wheel at Central Pier in Blackpool, Englad, a major tourist attraction and point of significance - but only if you know that it's more than just another ferris wheel in the first place, and you think about it in relation to the movie's main theme. In the context of the film's primary sub-plot, in which Reed and Sue's wedding is constantly postponed because they can't have a 'normal life', I thought it was a brilliant decision to imperil/have an assault on a monument that represents, well, a pleasant and normal life instead of the usual imperiled government or patriotic monument, which though more globally, recognizable, wouldn't have much impact in this film. There's also a lot of potential for audience disconnection in the film's climax, in which a) the Four don't defeat Galactus, and b) the parts taking place on the ground take place in what looks like a small residential area in (I believe) Hong Kong. When the lights go on again, signifying victory, it really is stunning and effective to see a city so densely lit as Hong Kong come back on-line. In the average Hollywood film this scenario would probably take place in Times Square, but with a small and unassuming Hong Kong street comes not only commercial/entertainment neon advertising, but more emphasis of the theme of a normal life: lights burst on in corner groceries, laundromats, office buildings, real run-of-the-mill, everyday sort of places. It's a small touch, but a big reinforcement.

Also, a lot of people were upset about having a non-corporeal villain, complaining that he wasn't scary. I don't think he was supposed to be. Galactus, and defeating him, is the main plot of the film - but it's not the point. It's a character-driven story, and Galactus is merely a backdrop for giving the characters new situations to interact in.

Honestly, the only thing I had a hard time rolling with in 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer was the fact that Chris Evans and Jessica Alba, whose characters are brother and sister by birth, share absolutely no discernable genetic markers, by which I mean I was starting to wonder if my memory of the comics failed me and the characters were supposed to be adopted. Alba is a lovely lady, but whoever decided to dye her hair blonde and bronze her skin for this film succeeded only in making her look very strange, very fake, and ultimately, very distracting, and not in the good way. What can I say, I'm an artist. Strange visual discrepancies distract and bother me far more than their plot equivalents. Yes, yes, I know that Sue Storm is a blonde in the comics, but this is one area in which a little revisionism wouldn't have hurt.

4 Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is enough good (mostly) clean fun that I wouldn't mind having it on my shelf if I ever find it in the cheap bin. It's a great way to spend a fun and relaxing evening, as long as you're willing to accept it for what it is.

FlashForward

2009-09-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

The main selling point for FlashForward, the new HBO/ABC interpersonal drama/sci-fi/procedural that premiered this past Thursday, has been stressing that it comes to us courtesy of the co-writer of The Dark Knight. That advertising sold me, and I'm glad it did.

The premise of FlashForward is so simple it's complex, and absolutely fantastic: on a normal day, everyone on the planet simultaneously blacks out for exactly two minutes and seventeen seconds - except, as the main character puts it, they didn't black out. They went somewhere else, and those who didn't die in the meantime came back with memories of events that have yet to take place. While everyone's "flashforward" happens on the same day and time - April 29, 2010, at 11 a.m. (California time) - everyone's flashforward is different. Except, of course, for the people who did actually black out and saw nothing, the assumed meaning of which is that they'll be dead by that time. The pilot wastes no time getting into the action, which is made sufficiently terrifying as the blackouts mean hundreds of thousands if not millions of deaths in car or plane crashes, swimmers drowning as they lose consciousness in the middle of the water, patients dying unattended on operating tables, and so on. The show appears to have tipped its hat to its largely British cast by honouring the mystifying British love for inappropriate slow-motion; thankfully, this is very brief. Overall, the chaos is neither overdone nor insufficiently chaotic, which is a hard line to walk, so kudos to all involved.

It looks like the show's focal point is going to be FBI agent Mark Benson (Joseph Fiennes), and those who are directly connected to him - his wife Olivia (Sonya Walger, Lost, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), their young daughter, his partner, Demetrius (John Cho, Star Trek), and probably his AA sponsor, Aaron, with Olivia's colleague Bryce as a wildcard. And, of course, the villains and/or people behind the blackouts, one of whom has been clearly identified (Jack Davenport, Miss Marple, Pirates of the Carribbean), and one of whom was revealed in the trailer for next week's episode (Dominic Monaghan, Lost). It's shaping up to be a reasonably interesting cast of characters, too. While it's been established that Mark and Olivia love each other and are happy together, with the script eschewing the overdone "wife is bitter with workaholic cop husband" story by making them both busy people who love their jobs (she's an ER doctor), they also have a bizarrely passive-aggressive relationship characterized by Olivia leaving Mark little anti-love notes or text messages saying things like, "You're a crappy husband. I HATE YOU." This confusing dynamic is made all the more interesting by Olivia's flashforward of herself cheating on Mark, a vision she hates and fears. The characters are divided into three distinct reactions to their visions of the future. Mark, Olivia, and Demetrius have seen evil or frightning futures and are terrified that their visions will come to pass; they will take deliberate action to alter or prevent future events. Aaron's flashforward included his daughter, a Marine killed by a bomb in Afghanistan, and with this confusing suggestion that she is somehow alive. With this vision, Aaron is given a new hope - and he is terrified that his future won't come to pass, and it is inferred that he will do everything he can to make it happen . Bryce, who blacks out just as he's about to commit suicide, sees a hopeful future that he doesn't elaborate on and wakes up brimming with life and joy - whatever he saw, he's looking forward to its arrival, just watching and waiting. It's an interesting division, these three distinct reactions, and I look forward to seeing how this all develops.

While the show's selling point has been fixated squarely on writer/director/producer David S. Goyer, who wrote the story for The Dark Knight as well as Batman Begins, on which he co-wrote the screenplay as well - and this is an excellent selling point - it should be noted that writer/producer Brannon Braga (Star Trek: The Next Generation), shares show creation and writing credits here, which will make it extra disappointing if the show suddenly tanks. Using the Batman films as a benchmark, intertwined and/or circular storytelling is Goyer's specialty, and in this respect the pilot sits head and shoulders in this respect above other recent sci-fi- themed shows with ensemble casts. In other words, Goyer can actually juggle multiple character storylines properly. His introduction of the show's characters was neither too cryptic (a device usually used to conceal a lack of genuine mystery or drama), nor was it a case of too much information. Beautifully done, sir. Some early on-line reviews have been complaining that the show has already clearly revealed several ultimate and character plot points. Well, that's what's commonly known as "foreshadowing", is a crucial element of circular storytelling (finishing a story the same way it begun; see: the Bourne trilogy), and in the hands of a capable writer, is one of the most paradoxically exciting and satisfying storytelling devices there is. I can't think of a single good story that is built and dependent on the shock value of its reveals. In my experience, good storytelling all about the journey. Any hack with a word processor can come up with a plot; for example, Lord Haversham was murdered, and everyone thinks it was his wife, since she was having an affair with his brother, but actually the butler did it. What will make that simple story awful or excellent is not learning what happened, but why and how it got from point A (the murder) to point B (who did it). Versions of that sample plot are the foundation of shows like Miss Marple or CSI - but not every episode is good, is it? The most skilled storytellers reveal all their secrets and tell you exactly how the story will end within the first act, but do it so well that you probably didn't catch it the first time around, and can't quite put your finger on why the story's conclusion was so right, but you know in your gut that it was. The Prestige is a perfect example of this.

FlashForward's staging and cinematography are beautiful, and the acting is strong, with Joseph Fiennes well on his to making amends for his title roles in the abominable Shakespeare in Love and the okay but forgettable Luther. Sonya Walger and Jack Davenport elevate the quality of any production they're in, and FlashForward also includes what looks like a long-term guest role for the elegant Alex Kingston, who is best known this side of the pond for a long stint on ER, but who I remember for her beautiful, heartbreaking turn opposite David Tennant in the Doctor Who two-parter "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead."

On the basis of the pilot alone, my only complaints with FlashForward are the irritating (gimmicky?) use of that capital F (instead of just letting "flashforward" stand as the inverse of "flashback"), the fear that it will either suddenly tank or keep improving until it is unceremoniously cancelled without resolution five weeks from now, and the fact that I have a very, very hard time making out most of the dialogue, which interestingly enough is also my only big problem with the recent Batman films. There's a certain low range which I can hear but barely understand words in, for example, I must concentrate very hard during Christian Bale and Liam Neeson's sparring sequence on the frozen pond in Batman Begins in order for their dialogue to be more than muted gibberish. This range problem is exacerbated on FlashForward by the fact that a large number of U.K. male actors tend to compensate for difficulties in maintaining an American accent by half-mumbling in an almost subvocal tone, which usually does the trick but is very hard to hear, and Joseph Fiennes is quite guilty on this charge. As he's the show's primary actor, well, either I'm going to start adapting to this range (which would be great), or drive my husband crazy by rewinding or asking, "what'd he say?" every twenty seconds (which would be hard to classify as "great").

In my opinion, FlashForward is worth the risk of the frustration that comes with a show being suddenly cancelled mid-story In a decade where series get axed if they don't top the Neilsen ratings within three episodes, making a good pilot has become more important than ever, and FlashForward is one of the finest pilots I've seen yet. Not too empty, not too full, it demonstrates the show's potential while delivering a surprisingly satisfying fourty-something minutes of TV. I'm looking forward to watching it grow.

"But in eighteen-hundred and twelve, they burned your White House!"

2009-09-23T09:20:00.001-07:00

Speaking of that CNN article on District 9 being recently banned in Nigeria until all scenes involving the crimelord and his shaman are removed, it must be said that the article in question contains the finest bit of propaganda I've seen that wasn't directly related to WWII.
This is CNN's first on-line District 9 print feature to include a photo of its writer-director, South African native Neill Blomkamp, and what a photo it is. Not only does this baby serve to silently yet purposefully emphasize that this is situation in which a white man has offended black men, but of all the photos taken on District 9 press junkets, CNN picks one of Blomkamp smirking, which strongly suggests deliberate, sinister, and racistly superior intentions.

My hat is off the the photo editor. This is absolutely brilliant, perfect propaganda - so subtle, but only if you're thinking about it, which is what makes good propaganda effective. As stupid, insulting, and inflammatory as I think this particular bit of propaganda is, in a weird way it has greatly increased my respect for CNN as an organization that is extremely good at what it does.

Head, meet sand. I have a feeling you two are going to become good friends.

2009-09-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, CNN.com put up an article about how the depiction of Nigerians in District 9 offends some Nigerians. For those who haven't seen the film, there is a sub-plot involving a Nigerian crimelord and his shaman, who have seized the opportunity to exploit the helpless Prawns as they're evicted from Johannesburg while also killing them and eating their hearts (and other body parts) because they believe that they'll be imbued with the aliens power upon doing so (i.e. become able to use their bio-engineered weaponry; the Prawns are also much physically stronger than humans).

Let's ignore for a moment the question of why CNN is just now running a story about controversy over a film that's been in international release for over a month. The bigger issue is that writer/director Neill Blomkamp didn't just pull this idea out of his ear. I don't know what the stats are for Nigeria in particular, but cannibalizing enemies, rivals, or physically unusual persons for the purpose of gaining special powers is a very, very old practice which remains an active problem in many parts of the African continent. The day The National Post ran a review of District 9, in which the reviewer criticized this aspect of the film as being offensive and culturally insensitive, the back page of that issue's 'A' section was devoted to an ongoing series of articles about how the abduction, dismemberment, and murder of albinos for the purpose of gaining supernatural power through cannibalization has reached a critical mass in Tanzania. If Blomkamp was stereotyping anyone with his depiction of this practice, it was crimelords and criminals, because the film very carefully establishes that the Nigerian villains are not Joe Average citizens.

Of course seeing this on film would be viscerally offensive to the tens of millions of Nigerians who aren't cannibals. It's a horrific, evil practice, and its depiction in District 9 should make anyone want to puke long before the hand-held camera action starts. But banning its portrayal on the grounds of cultural insensitivity or offense, or fear of stereotypes - as the Nigerian government is now doing due to increasing complaints from the citizenry - isn't going to do anyone much good. As a Christian, I have spent a lot of (stereotyped) time being reminded of the evils the institutional Church has perpetrated, both in my lifetime and long before. I have seen lots of Christians behaving very badly on film. I could consider it personally offensive to see something in a film such as a priest sexually abusing children, and (somewhat) rationally argue that this portrayal promotes a negative stereotype or condemnation of the Church as a whole. While successfully preventing that film from showing a priest abusing a child may make some people feel good or righteous about themselves in the short run, maintaining the illusion that nothing's amiss, it is a selfish, useless exercise that does no good. The wrongs must be faced, and set right; the house must be cleaned. When there are still an unbelievable amount of people ready to hold you personally responsible for all innocent blood spilled during King Richard's Crusades, you learn pretty quickly that ignoring or denying a shameful practice - especially one that's actually ongoing - doesn't make it go away.

It's a hard thing to face and own up to, being a part of a culture or body in whose name other parts are committing great evil. It's a source of great grief. But problems of this scale can't be fixed until they're recognized and condemned by enough people who are willing to fix them, and Neill Blomkamp has done nothing wrong by drawing attention to this particular problem in a very public way while being very careful not to indict the general populace in the process.

What A Looker!

2009-09-21T10:39:00.000-07:00

Speaking of divisive, controversial issues directly resulting from the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, how about that striking dress worn by Drew Barrymore at the Whip It premiere, and seen by me in The National Post? The photo in question is, sadly, not available in the Post's on-line archives - I still get most of my news the old-fashioned way - and a good one has been surprisingly hard to find, considering how big a flap this dress has caused, but there a few okay snaps here. For a clear look at the dress, but worn by a model who doesn't rock the look like Barrymore does, pop over to The Alexander McQueen Experience. I can't provide a direct link because this is a flash slideshow, but if you scroll the thumbnails all the way to the end, the dress in question is fourth from the right.

On a normal day, the fashion industry and I have no reason to be on speaking terms, but this is more or less the textbook definition of "total work of art." Also, I personally think it's one of the most beautiful pieces of clothing I've ever seen.

The Sand Pebbles

2009-09-19T22:17:00.001-07:00

Talk about art imitating life, a life which obsesses over the nature of art. The Sand Pebbles (1966), starring Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Richard Crenna, and Candace Bergen, is a film about issues whose hilarious tagline happens to be "THE STORY OF MEN...men who disturbed the sleeping dragon of China as the world watched in terror!". In light of my recent comments on women, film, and "issues", and some of the responses those comments have garnered, I can't begin to explain what a perfectly funny coincidence it is to have watched The Sand Pebbles tonight.

Directed by Robert Wise (West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Day the Earth Stood Still), The Sand Pebbles takes place in 1920's China and tells the story of U.S. Navy engineer Jake Holman (McQueen), newly transferred to a post patrolling the Yangtze River on the U.S.S. San Pablo. Jake is an uncomplicated man, and while good at his trade and far from stupid, he defines the term "military grunt". He is content with his place in the Navy, and with Jake, what you see is what you get - he's not hiding any secret strengths below his average-Joe surface. River patrol is pretty boring, but Jake gets unwelcome excitement in the form of dozens of Chinese nationals who have slowly made the San Pablo their home, filling out the holes in its crew for the price of room and board. Some of those holes are in Jake's engine room, and it's not long before this bigoted johnny-come-lately is stirring up the sleepy, comfortable rhythms the crew has grown into as it coexists with the Chinese while doing as little work as possible. Jake's first and only friend on the ship is Frenchy (Attenborough), a gentle and genial fellow who takes a shine to a local woman on his first shore leave with Jake. Jake kind of has women on the brain himself, specifically Shirley (Bergen), a missionary he met while en route to his new post. As internal conflicts on the mainland deepen, it's not long before the American gunboat's grudgingly tolerated presence becomse something far less welcome, though they remain forbidden to use force against the Chinese. Tensions skyrocket when the Chinese lay siege to the Pablo, trapping its crew aboard and forcing it to winter in the harbour as the sinking water level becomes impossible for a boat that size to navigate. What really brings everything to a head, though, is the increasingly dangerous position the crew finds themselves in after one of their own is falsely accused of the murder of a Chinese national.

Packed with heavy themes of bigotry, sexual abuse and slavery, and the many facets of Communism, the first half of The Sand Pebbles is an engaging and exquisite drama. Steve McQueen was an extraordinary talent, and his performance here is one few actors can rival; it may very well be his finest. In his hands, Jake's everyman attitudes and conflicts are real and recognizable, and selling that type of character is one of the harder things for an actor to accomplish. Richard Attenborough plays a role very different from the one he played opposite McQueen four years earlier in The Great Escape, bringing Frenchy to life as a man of shy, quiet determination who's as easy to identify with as Jake is. Captain Collins (Richard Crenna, who you may recognize as Rambo's Col. Trautman) and his first officer, Mr. Bordelles, are a rare cinematic pair in that they are both not only men of good character who make a good team, but who are excellent officers and seamen as well. Candace Bergen's Shirley doesn't have a lot of screen time, but she uses that time very well, creating a natural character who reminds me of many of the missionaries I've known. Robert Wise was an extraordinary hand at drama, and in this area The Sand Pebbles is rivaled by few other films. Looks, body language, and myriad other small but important touches make the characters and their actions and reactions natural, normal, and real.

The second half of the film brings with it military action, and these sequences are not up to par with the film's strong dramatic scenes. Not only is the direction less deft, resulting in one of the more unengaging cinematic naval battles in recent memory, but the second half is also where the film starts becoming engulfed by its primary political message. This is not to say that wasn't clear from the start. While the final ten minutes should be terrifying, and similar scenes in other films have left me unable to sleep, I found the terror here was overshadowed by the message. About thirty minutes before the end, the film's politics become cemented to its emotions, and after over two hours of identifying with Jake, his last scenes left me unaffected by his predicament because I'd been firmly told why I should feel what he feels in those last moments, whereas up until then the film had simply made a good argument for what it thought was the best reason for Jake to feel as he does. The first problem with this is that I'm very stubborn and stupidly proud, and have an automatic negative gut reaction to emotional instructions. The second, wider problem with this is that, while well-presented, I couldn't relate to or identify with the film's reasons for its feelings, which is why they worked well as a preferred option to consider, but not as an absolute. After two hours of restrained yet very effective presentation, this lessened the message somehow. In this way, The Sand Pebbles is very similar to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: the first half is a perfect, incredible example of its genre and filmmaking in general that also brings a powerful, thought-provoking message; the second half gives all that up for a soapbox.

On a separate note, I would feel remiss to not mention that the shortest available version of The Sand Pebbles clocks in at three hours and three minutes, and doesn't really have what many filmgoers including myself would consider to be an "ending" . It stops rather than ends, an important distinction for any story, but one you may find especially frustrating for a story of this legnth. A more recent example of a film that finishes instead of ending is No Country For Old Men, which uses that device in a fuller, more effective fashion than the film in question. If you don't like getting that kind of sass from your movies, you may prefer watching the first half of The Sand Pebbles and then paying a visit to Moviepooper.com to fill in the rest (or just ask me how it ends).

On a very separate note, for some reason I'm convinced that Robert Wise was one of the few McCarthy-era directors to be an actual, card-carrying member of the Communist party, but I can't seem to find any corroboration of that, so I'm starting to doubt that this conviction/memory is correct. If it's not, who am I confusing him with?

First half good, second half less good, The Sand Pebbles is as perfect an example as I could've asked for of the difference between a good film about issues and a bad or not so good film about issues - because it's both! No one will ever accuse me of being efficient, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the virtue. :D

Movies For Women, and The End of Internet Anonymity Syndrome

2009-09-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

While I was letting this post stew for a few days as I put my thoughts together, I left a half-formed comment on Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch Blog (www.popwatch.ew.com), a micro-version of my argument for why there are few well-known female directors. One of the Popwatch writers took half of that half-formed comment and posted in in their "makes us think" article, inviting other EW readers to comment on, um, my (half-) comment. I discovered this not due to my daily jaunt over to ew.com, but by Googling "Jane Campion interviews" and finding my name crop up at a publication called Bitch Magazine, commenting on how stupid my comment was (I can now say that I've been bitch-slapped by Bitch Magazine. Tell me that's not entertaining). The Lesson? People do in fact read what you write on the Internet, so be smarter about it, and remember that anything can be misquoted. So here's the whole argument, fully-pondered, fully-rendered, for your consideration.

The Toronto International Film Festival has been upon us for several days now, and with it a new piece (the Keats bio-pic Bright Star) from Oscar-nominated director Jane Campion (The Piano). Campion's presence at the festival brings with it an expected spree of interviews in which both interviewer and interviewee at some point complain about the lack of female directors, lack of films for women, and the need for more female empowerment (whatever that really means. I haven't figured it out yet. EW.com film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum describes Bright Star as "womanly-wise." I haven't figured that one out yet, either.

Now, this rubs me the wrong way for two reasons. First of all, it would appear that when people complain about a lack of female directors, what they're really complaining about is a lack of female directors who are also household names. The thing is, the number of male directors who are household names - i.e., who you can name-drop in conversation with anyone you know regardless of their film knowledge and get an "oh yeah, him!" in return - is very small number indeed. Spielberg...Lucas...Michael Bay...Clint Eastwood...maybe Cameron or Scorsese or the Cohen brothers. Out of the huge number of men who direct films, a very small number succeed in directing films that go on to see cinematic distribution, and within that very small number, very few make big waves in the general public mind. Which leads to the question of how many female directors there are to begin with by comparison, because that does matter in such a conversation. If, in a sampling of a hundred film school students, fifty men and fifty women, fourty-five of those men want to be directors, but fourty-five of those women are more interested in cinematography and screenwriting, bemoaning the significantly larger number of male directors is meaningless. Now, if fourty-five men and fourty-five women all want to direct professionally, all work equally hard at perfecting their craft and making connections, and all want to make high-quality, interesting films that reach a broad audience (or crappy films that also reach a broad audience, like Transformers or Cold Mountain), it would be a bit strange, yea even suspicious if thirty men but only two women wound up directing widely-distributed films. But this conversation means nothing without a grasp of how the number of directors seeking to make films for broad audiences is divided across gender lines in the first place.

That idea of "broad audiences" is my second point, and a big part of my theory on the lack of household-name female directors. In my experiences as an artist, and a life-long big consumer of art, be it film, literature, music, or video games, an overwhelming number of female artists tend to focus their art on "women's issues." The result is often a work that is made strictly for consumers with the same approach to feminism as the artist, and has little concern for actual art. One of the most famous female fantasy authors to date is Marion Zimmer Bradley, whose The Mists of Avalon (1982) is a highly influential tome that female fantasy authors like Mercedes Lackey have taken their cues from since. I may have read way too many Bradley imitators in junior high; let's just say they didn't leave a mark in the good way. The Mists of Avalon is a re-telling of the Arthurian myth based on, well, the premise that all men are patriarchal pigs whose sole apparent purpose in life is to make women miserable, and that girls rule and boys drool. The story is merely a vehicle for Bradley's manifesto, and as such its quality is a secondary concern, by which I mean it's a rather bad book. In general, any book or film whose focus on "issues" supersedes its concern for making quality art tends to be shoddy, regardless of the artist's gender. I think the American feminist movement is one of the worst things to happen to art, because its message of "empowerment" also promotes the message that it's every female artist's solemn duty to make art about women's issues and only women's issues. There's nothing wrong with niche art - one of my favourite films, Brick, is a bizarre production that I can't imagine appealing to anyone other than a film geek, a Dashiell Hammett fan, or someone so obsessed with Joseph Gordon-Levitt that they'd watch him wash the dishes and consider it time well-spent - but if the art is bad, and never moves past the paradoxical attention-seeking/navel-gazing nature of niche art, who the audience is doesn't matter. I personally feel that making a great movie is far more useful than obsessing over the fact that there are still sexist men roaming free even in today's enlightened society.

What do directors like Jane Campion think about female directors who make films for wider audiences? Beats me, because the pro-empowerment directors never mention these ladies in their interviews. Everyone's favourite manly-man high-octane thrill ride, Point Break, was directed by one Ms. Kathryn Bigelow, who also directed everyone's less-favourite manly-man high-octane thrill ride, K-19: The Widowmaker (featuring Harrison Ford doing his best "Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October" impression), as well as James Cameron's Strange Days. There are also a lot of women doing great work behind the camera other than directing. Veteran film editor Thelma Schoonmaker has been assembling Martin Scorsese's films since before Taxi Driver, and won an Oscar for The Departed - but since she's not the boss, she and women like her don't seem to count as "women behind the camera". In the world of fantasy literature, former Neverwinter Nights game-writer Naomi Novik recently burst into the scene with her Temeraire novels, entertaining and well-done historical fantasy that has something for everyone and seeks to tell an engaging story (though in fairness, I can only apply that description to the first three; her two most recent ones have faltered a bit).

I think what offends and entertains me the most about this whole business is the thoughtless sexism of "empowered" women promoting the bizarre idea that movies not made specifically for women are lesser films that we tolerate, that we cannot identify with these films, and that we all secretly crave and prefer "women's films" above all others. I guess I must be a man trapped in a woman's body, because my favourite films include The Seven Samurai, The Big Lebowski, The Great Escape, John Carpenter's The Thing, Stargate, Escape from New York, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the Rock, Die Hard, Get Carter, and most of the films to come out of Marvel Studios in the past decade. I didn't see the A&E Pride and Prejudice until my husband convinced me that it was amazing. And there are a goodly amount of women in the video game industry, which pro-empowerment feminists tend to write off as being just for men. Alyssa Finley is the lead hand on the BioShock series, an extraordinary work of art and tech. Google "Rapture City" for a visual, and prepare to have your socks knocked. Susan O'Connor is the game writer responsible for BioShock, Gears of War, Far Cry 2 (which I've recently put my hand to, and is brilliant), and many other solid shooter titles. Those alternately funny, morbid, funnily morbid, and overall genius Vault-Boy, Vault-Tech, and skill book illustrations from Fallout 3? You can thank Natalia Smirnova, who's also responsible for the entire user interface of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Bioshock, Gears, and Far Cry are all first-person shooters, to boot - the epitome of the "just for men" genre. But with the kind of credentials these ladies have, there's no good reason to assume they're not making the games they love to make. All of the titles listed above are "game of the year" winners in some way.

To blame the ratio of big-name female directors to big-name male directors on sexism is an easy out. To ignore the female directors who aren't big names but who make well-loved films that aren't just for women is humourously sexist. To ignore skilled women behind the camera who don't happen to be directing is just insulting. To attempt to write off films, books, and games that aren't made specifically for women as being just for men is sexist and insulting. To make good art, whoever you are? Now that's empowering. Whatever that means.

He's Blonde! He's Pissed! He'll See You In The Lists!

2009-09-17T12:08:00.000-07:00

"What should I say, except this miller rare
He would forgo his talk for no man there,
But told his churlish tale in his own way:
I think I'll here re-tell it, if I may.
And therefore, every gentle soul, I pray
That for God's love you'll hold not what I say
Evilly meant, but that I must rehearse,
All of their tales, the better and the worse,
Or else prove false to some of my design.
Therefore, who likes not this, let him in fine,
Turn over page and choose another tale:
For he shall find enough, both great and small,
Of stories touching on gentility,
And holiness, and on morality,
And blame me not if you do choose amiss.
The miller was a churl, you well know this;
So was the reeve, and many another more,
And ribaldry they told from plenteous store.
Be then advised, and hold me free from blame;
Men should not be too serious at a game."

- "Prologue, The Miller's Tale", The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)
Translation by librarius.com

Amongst artists and audiences alike, "anachronism" is a bit of a dirty word. Usually the unfortunate by-product of negligence (i.e Medieval ladies wearing high heels, not invented until the reign of Louis XIV), or used as a spoof (i.e. Robin Hood: Men in Tights), it's rarely welcome and gives an easy excuse to avoid the creative past. However, the first and primary idea pounded into the head of every contemporary art student is that there are no new ideas, so don't waste your time trying to come up with one. Instead, learn from what's come before, study it, translate it, use it, and figure out what unique touch or spin you can put on it to make it "new".

Writer/director Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Conspiracy Theory, Mystic River) proved that he knows this very well with 2001's A Knight's Tale, a delightful, hilarious, and utterly satisfying production that pulls anachronism into a great big bear hug and then leads it in a jig or two. When Sir Ector dies between matches at a joust with only one round left to go before winning the whole thing, his squire William (Heath Ledger) sees it as an opportunity to change his destiny. Convincing Ector's other squires, Roland and Wat (Mark Addy and Firefly's Alan Tudyk) to play along, William takes up his master's arms and armour and wins the purse, which he then convinces his friends to spend on getting him trained and equipped to compete in an upcoming tournament. With a month to improve the skills acquired from practicing with his master, and to figure out how to fool a tournament that requires proof of noble birth to compete, Will, Wat, and Roland stumble across (or, rather, are stumbled across by) none other than Geoffrey Chaucer (Paul Bettany), a little-known scribe who can forge Will some birth certificates for the price of a hot meal. Rounding out their renegade company with a widowed smith named Kate, the newly formed entourage of the newly formed Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein starts making waves on the tournament circuit, and it isn't long before "Sir Ulrich" discovers the best part about being a nobleman: the noblewomen! Lady Jocelyn is, of course, a renaissance woman, a mouthy firecracker who is also admired as a prize by the dastardly Count Adhemar (Rufus Sewell), a highly skilled boor with a penchant for ensuring that he never loses. Will William win the tournament, and the lady? Will his con be revealed? Will she still accept him? We've all heard this story before, and we all know the answers. It's about the journey, not the destination.

And what a journey it is. With a soundtrack featuring Queen, BTO, War, Heart, Thin Lizzy, and Sly and the Family Stone, A Knight's Tale opens by inviting the audience into its holistic fusion of Medieval and modern imagery with a tournament crowd pounding out the iconic rhythm of "We Will Rock You" as the jousters take stage. This film works because it doesn't treat anachronism as, well, anachronism. A Knight's Tale isn't the least bit serious, but it is very much in earnest, and with its happy, confident, and satisfied treatment of its story, its blatant anachronism fades into the background by the simple and impressive virtue of not feeling out of place. Will and Jocelyn's first dance, set to David Bowie's "Golden Years" (1975), seamlessly combines period dance, '70's dance, and contemporary pop dance, the result being one of the most memorable and deceptively simple dance sequences I've seen in any film. The best adjective I can come up with for this film is "holistic" - Brian Helgeland covered so many bases with ease. Paul Bettany's Chaucer - arguably the best part of the film - is a smart-ass, good-humoured addict who combines the contemporary pitiful stereotype of the educated, unemployed starving writer with a quick tongue and WWF-inspired heraldry that all provides a fantastic character for a fantastic actor. His role is made all the more funny by the fact that while The Canterbury Tales start out quite posh with - natch - "The Knight's Tale", they quickly become a one-upmanship contest with dubious rules as to what makes one story better than the last. After Chaucer's cheeky "don't shoot the messenger if the story's rude" narration, things get pretty ribald as the drunken Miller refuses to wait until he's sobered up before saying his piece. For extra film-related historical fun, Edward the Black Prince of Wales plays a small but crucial role in A Knight's Tale which mirrors a recorded incident from Chaucer's life, in which he got a helping hand from that Edward's father.

From start to finish, A Knight's Tale is a beautiful production that looks great, sounds great, feels great, plays great, and doesn't insult the audience's intelligence. It has nice little touches, like how the knight Will and co. were squired to was a good, kind man, instead of portraying all blood nobles as idiots and boors. Its only visible weaknesses are its random use of rather vicious Christian blasphemies, and the fact that Jocelyn is an underdeveloped character with little evidence for why our good William loves her blindly - though I wonder if this wasn't done deliberately for the cliche. She's gorgeous and witty, but that's about it, except when she's being petulant and using her wit in incomprehensible ways (i.e. her nonsensical parting shot in the "no use for a flower" argument with Will).

If you're wanting some serious Medieval fiction, I can't think of anything off the top of my head; suffice it to say, A Knight's Tale would not in this case be enjoyable to you. Although, if all your experiences with anachronism have been bad or happily stupid (i.e. Men in Tights), I'd suggest watching A Knight's Tale to see what can happen when that device is used, deliberately, and not only used but reveled in - and the end result is shockingly good. Watch it for the artistic interest, stay for the fun. And be sure to watch the credits to the end.

"I don't wanna be a secret weapon! I wanna be an exposed weapon!" And so you shall.

2009-09-16T09:43:00.000-07:00

Well, this just made my day. Not only were the rumours of an offer true, but District 9 star Sharlto Copley has accepted the role of Howlin' Mad Dog Murdock in the upcoming A-Team film! Well, I'll have to watch it now. This is going to be great. I'm remembering the energetic, life-filled, slightly manic glee bubbling off of Wikus in the first act of District 9, and topped off with one of those crazy little smiles of his, I can't imagine this guy not being perfect playing everyone's favourite pilot of questionable sanity.

I just hope they don't try to give it the Batman treatment. Chris Nolan's Batman worked because Batman wasn't meant as a joke, no one really liked Batman-as-joke except in the sense where it's so bad it's awesome - and there are some truly quotable lines in Adam West's Batman: The Movie, which does grace my shelf - and the comics and most of the cartoons were serious anyways. Whereas I assume everyone who loves The A-Team loves it because it's so much goofy, shameless, good clean fun. Also because it contractually guarantees at least one rolled or exploded vehicle per episode.

...We Should All Be So Lucky.

2009-09-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

This sort of thing amuses me deeply. I was watching some A-Team the other day while cleaning up, and saw episode 1.5, "A Small and Private War", in which the A-Team is hired by an old cop to take down and expose the bizarro-A-team, a S.W.A.T. unit that's begun taking assassination contracts for extra cash. In this episode, one of the key bad guys is played by Dean Stockwell, who you may all know from Quantum Leap but who more recently had a great and well-played turn on the new Battlestar Galactica as skin-job John Cavil (best character exit ever, by the way! Freakin' brilliant!). One of the stars of The A-Team was Dirk Benedict (Face), who wound up kicking the crap out of Stockwell's character in "A Small and Private War." And as you all know, Dirk Benedict played Starbuck on the original Battlestar. Which means that everyone who's worked on the new Battlestar is now only one degree from George Peppard.

Those lucky so-and-sos.

:D

Eh, What?

2009-09-15T21:32:00.000-07:00

Overheard shouted by author Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policeman's Union) after getting clocked on the head with a Peanuts poster during a brawl on The Simpsons:

"You fight like Anne Rice!"

Classic.

...?

For You Drew: 1 Thank-you note, home-made

2009-09-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

Found left as a bookmark in one of the Edmonton Public Library's hardback copies of Stephen R. Lawhead's Tuck:

"Thanks for all your hard work this week! You have REALLY
stepped up to the plate. I absolutely appreciate you.
*thank you*
I love you Drew, for now + for always,
your wife "

Well done, Drew!

I love the smell of revolution in the morning. It smells like hushpuppies.

2009-09-11T11:12:00.000-07:00

There's a wild rumour going around that District 9 star Sharlto Copley has been offered the role of Mad Dog Murdock in the upcoming A-Team film.

That has got to be the most beautiful rumour I've ever heard. I shall dream at night that it comes true.

How pleasantly embarrassing! A monster is born.

2009-09-10T13:36:00.000-07:00

A couple months back, I was perusing christianitytoday.com's interesting Out of Ur blog, and was immediately transfixed by the words "free book." Send me a definition of "consumer Christianity", the man says, and if I dig it, I'll send you a free copy of my new book on the subject. So I ponder for a moment and shoot off an email to the address provided. Why pass up the possibility of a free book? And then I forget about it, because I barely remember what I did last week, let alone what I did last month.

Howdy-doody. Not only did I (presumably) score one of those free books, but the author thought my definition was quality enough to post on the Internet himself. That's right, someone other than myself thinks that I have something to say that's worth splashing across the World Wide Web - on a blog people actually read, to boot.

In light of recent events, I believe it is my solemn duty to henceforth become a completely insufferable, over-opinionated prat (as opposed to just a very insufferable, over-opinionated prat) as I continue to feel the burning urge to inflict those opinions on the entire world.

:D

Howdy-doody.

There's No Kill Like Overkill.

2009-09-10T12:25:00.000-07:00

"Well, I won't argue that it wasn't an action-packed, adrenaline-fueled thrill ride. But there is no way you can perpetrate that kind of carnage and mayhem and not incur a considerable amount of paperwork." - Sgt. Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), Hot Fuzz

Last week was lousy. I was physically ill, and down in the dumps. I was in that weird place where you're not quite sick and tired enough to sleep all day, but you're still sick and tired enough to not want to do anything. All I wanted to do was watch things go boom, and what began as an innocent one-off somehow morphed into a long weekend of, well, watching things go boom....with very fun results.

First up was Hard Boiled (1992), a Hong Kong classic that pretty well sums up leading man Chow Yun-Fat's work with legendary director John Woo, the man who can be blamed (or credited) for everything subsequently made by Michael Bay. A steamy tale of undercover brothers, triad gun-runners, and office romances, Hard Boiled stars Yun-Fat as an in-your-face, lone wolf detective named - I am not making this up - Tequila. Co-starring Tony Leung (Infernal Affairs, In the Mood For Love) as Tequila's buddy, this film is the pinnacle of the genre so lovingly sent up in Hot Fuzz. Like all Hong Kong flicks I've seen, Hard Boiled bounces between over-the-top seriousness, earnest seriousness, and ribald or unintentional humour with abandon. I don't think Tony was supposed to be joking when he said the superintendent told him that Tequila never wastes bullets, and yet.... Ah, well. In my opinion, anyone with the intestinal fortitude to zip-line into a warehouse full of people armed with automatic weapons, or to zip-line down electrical wiring out of an exploding hospital while holding a baby, has the right to use as much ordinance as they please. Packed with scenes of Tequila shooting two guns whilst jumping through the air, Tequila shooting two guns whilst sliding down railings, and Tequila shooting two guns whilst dangling from a height, and, yes, lots of things going boom, the only thing Hard Boiled is missing is Woo's trademark flock of doves, substituted here with a poster in the hospital. Watching Hard Boiled is kind of like watching the complete works of Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich, with The Transporter and any film starring Keanu Reeves or Steven Segal as a cop playing in the background.

Random fun fact: the scene in Hard Boiled in which Tony Leung receives a birthday gift was re-enacted virtually word for word ten years later in Infernal Affairs...with Leung again being on the receiving end of that transaction.

Next up came Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton in Where Eagles Dare (1968), a film I mistakenly had cause to believe was great in the way Unforgiven is great, as opposed to great in the way The A-Team is great. Fortunately, Corey insisted we have some friends over to watch it with. Friends who would've made worthy co-hosts on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. I believe Where Eagles Dare was on an Entertainment Weekly list of "Manliest Movies", and it certainly wasn't made for the rest of us. For one thing, Clint excepted, this film has to have the single ugliest bunch of special forces apes this side of The Dirty Dozen, and if there's one thing I've learned from the movies, it's that the special forces only accept recruits who can make at least twelve women swoon simultaneously. Packed with double- and triple-crosses, double- and triple-agents, and the only car I've seen explode before it hit the bottom of a cliff, Where Eagles Dare is a film best watched in good company and a good mood. I don't think I'd have enjoyed it on my own - while at the higher end of the B-movie spectrum, it's no A-Team.

Then, The Transporter 2 was on TV. This may very well be the single most ridiculous non-spoof action film I've seen to date. Fortunately, it takes nothing seriously, making the film unashamedly funny and fun. Jason Statham's Frank is a champion of mid-air automobile maneuvers, launching full-on anarchic assaults on those boring laws of physics - there's a reason why he's the transporter. A classy fellow, Frank's good with kids, removes his suit jacket before every (very well-choreographed) rumble, and is the only man I've ever seen use watermelons as boxing gloves. Yes, you read that correctly. Throw in a completely gratuitous female assassin who can't actually hit anything despite wielding two machine-pistols, and spends the entire film wearing nothing but boudoir lingerie (ah, Luc Besson!), and...well...this film is absolutely ridiculous. Absolutely, positively, entertainingly ridiculous.

After that, we were at Blockbuster to buy Corey a late birthday present, and it struck me that the Wachowski brothers' live-action take on Speed Racer could really tie the whole weekend together. Perfectly nailing the show's anime style in terms of both look and storytelling, Speed Racer is supremely entertaining. However, I couldn't shake the jarring sense that something wasn't right - because it is so perfect, and I couldn't reconcile the feeling of watching anime with the presence of live actors. This film is a textbook example of why different mediums are used for conveying different visual and storytelling styles, and my enjoyment of it was tempered somewhat by the constant awareness of how much time and money was spent for the purpose of making something into something that it's not. But, it was fun, and it gave a lot of animators several years of gainful employment, no matter how much they whined about it in the featurettes. It's almost enough to give the Wachowski's clemency for their last three cinematic monstrosities. Also, Speed Racer includes a role so small it could probably be called a cameo - a cameo by the Twilight Samurai himself!

And there you have it: the most action-packed Labour Day weekend in Elly history. This is the stuff traditions are made of...

Battlestar Galactica as Social Science. Eh, What?

2009-09-03T10:36:00.001-07:00

I finally have the last half-season of the new Battlestar Galactica in my grasp (more importantly, in my DVD player). Too bad an on-line article not directly related to the show blabbed all its reveals including the ultimate ending, the identity of the fifth Cylon, and what Starbuck finds in the (half-)season premiere! Still, it's always interesting to watch how a story builds when you know where it's going to finish; there's more to see, so to speak.

It's not an overly strong show, and has never quite lived up to its tight first season, and has a tendency for melodrama. But it has always been a strong sci-fi with a well-built mythology, not to mention that it looks great, and there are some things that it does incredibly well. Last night I happened to pause an episode on a frame of Tigh and Adama hunkering down with assault rifles in an airlock while waiting for an execution squad to burn through the door, and it hit me that Battlestar Galactica did something I've seen no other show do: be truly multi-generational.

Starting at the top, we've got Adama, who is literally the Old Man; Tigh, Ellen, Laura Roslin, Doc Cottle, The Cavils (you know, the dude from Quantum Leap and Dune), and Tom Zarek - the 50+ bunch. Then there are my people: Gaeta, Apollo, Starbuck, Hotdog, Anders, Tory, Dualla. Sandwiched in the middle are Athena and Helo, Tyrol, The Sixes/The Leobens/The D'Annas, Baltar. Watching the unfolding of the rebellion that opens season 4.5, I started realizing that the writers have throughout the series presented the members of each generation with the hopes, fears, impulses, and decision-making processes unique to each. It's rare to see multi-generational casts with so much balance in numbers between the age groups; it's even rarer to see each generation be presented well, especially Galactica's older crew who are neither loopy, incredibly obscene for "edgy" or "comic" effect (I'm glaring at you, Little Miss Sunshine!), or more irritable, stubborn, or unreasonable than their younger comrades. Battlestar isn't the first show to have three generations on-screen, but in my experience it's the first show to resist making caricatures of any of them. With this final season, I see how the writers slowly built and tied together the "human family" theme in a literal and solid manner.

I'm looking forward to the end, even though I know what it is, because in hindsight I can see how good the journey's been even during the show's weak patches. And I'm anxious to see if I called it right that the "dying leader" prophecy is about Adama, not Roslin. No magazine or paper managed to spoil that plot point, ha!

Good news, everyone! I've taught the toaster to feel love!

2009-08-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

Also, Merlin series 2 will be hitting the BBC sometime this September. Which means that NBC and CTV should pick it up sometime next June. But, you know, you guys could air it by January, if you really wanted to (nudge, nudge).

Huzzah!

Reading Rainbow, 1983-2009

2009-08-28T10:06:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how long it'll take to process the idea that Reading Rainbow is officially off the air because no one will fund it anymore. Granted, I haven't watched that show in earnest since, I don't know, 1993, and haven't even caught it while channel surfing since, um, 2008 (hey, if you just happened to turn on PBS while LeVar Burton was having a storytelling adventure, don't try to pretend you wouldn't just happen to leave the TV on too). Getting the axe now makes this show only one year older than I am, and I'm quite attached to it. It's Reading freakin' Rainbow! How can it not be on the air forever and ever until LeVar Burton passes from old age and no one dare fill his hallowed shoes, like with Mr. Rogers or Mr. Dressup?

The rationale reported in the NPR article is that PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, etc., are finding they have to focus on funding shows which teach kids the technical process of how to read; that we no longer have the luxury of funding a show that teaches kids how to read in the Dead Poets Society sense. I can't cognitively grasp the idea that so many kids are apparently not learning the mechanics of reading in, you know, school, that 26 years of teaching kids why to read and how to love it has to be tossed aside like a bag of mouldy tangerines.

I'm speaking as an outsider here, because I never had a problem with literacy, I don't have a kid to teach, and I'm not a social scientist or think-tank researcher. My mom says I started reading off the page when I was 3, and my childhood is rife with memories of being told to put down that book and not read at the table, at the social gathering, at the...you get the drift. I know very well that there are a lot of terrible, completely ineffective teachers blighting the educational landscape who have screwed up countless lives and couldn't find literacy (or other subjects) with a hunting dog and a Ouija board. But where did I get that snappy line about hunting dogs and Ouija boards? Not from a book, my friends! From Babylon 5 ! Ergo, TV plays a critical role in teaching children insufferably witty, self-satisfied language skills! I think I've proven my point.

Seriously, though. How did such a huge country get so dependent on public TV as a source of basic primary education that the Powers That Be need to ditch Reading Rainbow just because it's not hooked on phonics?

Dark City

2009-08-27T10:53:00.000-07:00

Dark City, an oft-mentioned sci-fi film by writer/director Alex Proyas (The Crow), is an odd creation that I am shocked to discover was made in 1998. With an overall sense of amateurishness and coloured by that undefinable but distinctly '80's sci-fi film style and appearance, I just assumed it was made shortly after Blade Runner by someone who thought that film was really cool and wanted to make their own noir dystopian flick but didn't actually understand why Blade Runner worked.

It's unfortunate, because at its core is an interesting story no one else has really explored on film: the idea that an alien hive mind not only knows it's a hive mind, but is deliberately trying to split itself in order to better its chances of survival. Unfortunately, Dark City buries that core deep under unsuccessful attempts at mystery. Appearing to have intentions (as its name suggests) of being a film noir, it opens with a man awakening in a hotel room accompanied by no memory, a dead body, and a pre-war New York aesthetic. He gets right down to searching for clues as to his identity, but of course is being pursued by both police and aliens who call themselves The Seekers and who can bend time and space. The problem is, the story wastes all its potential mystery and tension by not building a story to speak of, instead offering up boatloads of reveals too early and too often to make sense or have impact. Also bogged down by ridiculous villains, random nonsense (why do aliens who can kill with their minds pick knife fights? How did aliens allergic to both sunlight and water manage to harvest Earth in the first place? And other such intrigues.), and visuals that do nothing to support the story and seem to be entirely based on the idea that a films atmosphere can be created by setting alone, Dark City is a textbook case of what could have been.

Dark City would be worth watching if it were made when it looks like it was made, an earnest experiment in the early days of that sci-fi film style; as it is, it just comes across as something with either a misused sense of nostalgia or a refusal to learn and grow off of what came before. If you're hankering for something dark, mysterious, and sci-fi with a disturbing but coherent story that takes place in a stunning Art Deco city, go play BioShock.

Random Discovery: Sayonara

2009-08-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

I actually saw the last five minutes of Sayonara (1957) back when we had a fantastic channel called Silver Screen Classics as our free cable preview. When I saw it at the library, I figured I'd get around to watching the rest.

Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by the man who wrote the similarly-themed Tales from the South Pacific, and directed by the same man who adapted that story into film, Sayonara opens during the Korean War with an exhausted flying ace being grounded and reassigned to Kobe for hazy reasons that mostly involve facilitating his marriage to a general's daughter. The son of a general himself, and a highly decorated officer, Lloyd (Marlon Brando) is a catch his fiancee Eileen's mother doesn't want to let slip away. When Eileen surprises him in Kobe, Lloyd is tired, depressed, restless from being grounded, and unafraid to admit that he'll marry her, but he isn't exactly crazy about her. Eileen isn't crazy enough about him to marry him under those conditions, and the two begin a distant, awkward dance as neither is decisive enough to blow off their engagement so hastily.

Also reassigned to Kobe for equally hazy reasons is one of the airmen in Lloyd's squadron, Joe Kelly (Red Buttons). Joe is thrilled about going to Kobe, because then he'll be with the woman of his dreams: a shy and gentle Japanese national named Katsumi. Stationed in Korea, with most troops taking leaves in Tokyo, despite the Japanese having been the enemy just six years earlier a lot of U.S. soldiers are finding love in ol' Edo. The army is not happy about it, doing everything in its power to prevent these matches. Lloyd is asked to try talking Joe out of marrying Katsumi, but is unsuccessful, and defying his country, his army, his friends, deadly stacks of paperwork, and the knowledge that Japanese nationals are denied entry to the U.S., Joe and Katsumi wed under the sullen eye of an embassy clerk...with Lloyd as their best man. Lloyd doesn't approve of the marriage, but as Joe's former commanding officer feels an obligation to honour the man's request. With Joe being his only real connection in Kobe, and having little else to do, Lloyd begins accepting regular invitations to Joe and Katsumi's home, and in the process begins learning that there are some very pleasant aspects to the new Mrs. Kelly's country and culture.

He also begins learning this outside the Kelly home by going to the theater. Slowly developing an appreciation for kabuki and dance revues, he quickly develops an appreciation for the star dancer of the Matsubayashi troupe, the stunning and mysterious Hana-ogi. When Lloyd finally scores a meeting with Hana-ogi under the guise of dinner at the Kelly's, he learns that she hates Americans because her family died during U.S. bombings. Gently reminding her that he lost a lot of friends to the Japanese during the war, Lloyd's pursuit of Hana-ogi begins in earnest. With Lloyd facing condemnation from the military and Hana-ogi facing condemnation from her countrymen, who don't approve of marrying Americans any more than the Americans approve of marrying Japanese, Lloyd remains stubborn and shameless as he tries to coax Hana-ogi out of her reticence. However, things start to unravel on all ends when an order making fraternization with Japanese women a court-martial offense comes on the heels of Joe (and thousands of other airmen in his situation) being ordered back to the States, where the army hopes they'll forget about the wives they can't enter the country with.

Consisting mostly of static dialogue and demonstrations of Japanese culture, Sayonara is a film that's more important than it is good. It's hard to watch even when nothing bad is happening on-screen, because Brando suffuses the whole film with Lloyd's restlessness and frustration over being removed from his squadron, and so the whole thing takes on a very uncomfortable atmosphere. However, Brando is always a treat to watch, and the earnest, quiet contentment Red Buttons brings to his character keeps the film breathing. For her gentle, mostly Japanese-speaking or silent performance, the actress who played Katsumi was awarded a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. There's a lot of solid acting in this film. There are also many interesting aspects to the story, aside from the racial integration plot. For one thing, Katsumi is not a woman for the audience to fall for, an exotic, classical beauty for whose love any man would put aside race like Hana-ogi is. She's quite plain, almost boyish, and Joe is head-over-heels crazy about her. In the context of era, I think this may be the single most important way in which the film conveys its message. Joe doesn't love Katsumi because she's exotic and sexy, though to him Katsumi is always the most beautiful women in the room. Joe loves Katsumi because she's a delightful, loving, loveable soul, and their story is captivating. Another interesting plot point is the demonstration that finding dishonour in marrying someone from a particular country goes both ways, and on top of that, Hana-ogi has a good reason why her marrying anybody would be dishonourable.

There are some pretty strong negative opinions of Sayonara floating around on the Web, mostly interpreting it as a cautionary tale about how headstrong women (like Eileen) lose their men, who only want docile women (like Katsumi) who slavishly cater to their every whim, as demonstrated by Joe and Katsumi's "shallow" relationship - to which, were I not so long-winded, my response would be "...what?" There's a point to which I can understand that analysis, as Joe and Katsumi are shown to fall in love and marry before either of them can speak a word of the other's language, which can easily seem unwise or based on lust. However, marriage in that context is also a logical conclusion to the idea that a person is defined by their actions, a popular concept touted on most any program on U.S. or Canadian network in which interpersonal relations are a factor, and a regular feature in Western cinema spanning such diverse fare as District 9, The Rock, Get Carter, Unforgiven, The Iron Giant, Iron Man, Heat, Hellboy, Spider-Man, and any romantic comedy or Disney film you can name (are you trying to name one that doesn't apply? You must have some time on your hands). As well, the idea that the marriage in question is shallow and baseless is subtly but decisively countered in the film, as we're shown Joe and Katsumi's relationship continuing to grow and thrive after they gain verbal communication. And calling the marriage shallow based on the way it ends, as many do, would necessitate applying the same criticism to most if not all of Shakespeare's tragedies while also ignoring what a common conclusion it is in Japanese storytelling. Mostly, though, I think to view Sayonara as a cautionary anti-feminist tale is to miss its message of understanding cultural differences, as servant actions are an integral part of the Japanese tradition and not limited to female roles. This is briefly demonstrated in the film in the scene where Lloyd learns how to serve and drink sake. In the context of this particular story, condemning a cornerstone of Japanese culture as backward or misogynistic seems rather ironic, though I suppose interpreting Katsumi's servience as an anti-feminst fantasy isn't suprising considering how many of the sacrificial servant themes of Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai were stripped for its beloved American redux, The Magnificent Seven. Does that make service a literally foreign concept?

Sayonara is kind of a boring film, but it is an interesting story. And there are some weird and telling things about the atmosphere in which it was made that add to the interest, like how Audrey Hepburn was the first choice to play Hana-ogi (she refused, saying it was a great script but it would be ridiculous to try passing her off as Japanese), or how the only male Japanese character in the film is played by everyone's favourite late, great Mexican, Ricardo Montalban (is it an indication of foreign women being considered exotic and sexy but foreign men being a threat, or was the role first offered to a non-Japanese actor, who in this case accepted it?). Should you come across it, it's a pretty good diversion for when you're doing something boring that doesn't let you look at the TV, like the dishes; a revealing slice of the recent past.

District 9 (Is The Cat's Pyjamas)

2009-08-23T09:17:00.000-07:00

Hey! Guess what! I actually saw a movie less than five years old!

I'd been looking forward to Neill Blomkamp's feature-film debut, a sci-fi that lives up to the overused terms "gritty" and "visceral", since the first trailers came out. For one thing, a sci-fi film not re-making or based on something famous or cult-famous is kind of a novelty these days; for another thing, I'll admit that while I'll always love Star Trek and Babylon 5, I prefer my sci-fi hard and, um, "gritty".

On absolutely no level did District 9 disappoint. I'd even go so far as to say it was worth the $30 (two tickets and bus fare) that it cost my husband and I to go see it in the theatre.

Set in present-day Johannesburg, District 9 seamlessly combines conventional film style with faux-documentary footage to put a genuinely fresh face on the fugitive's story. In the early 80's, after three months of silent waiting, the South African government decided to board a giant alien spacecraft hovering over Johannesburg, and found a legitimate humanitarian (?) crisis - heaps of weak, sick, starving aliens amidst heaps of alien corpses, and removed the lot of them into a refugee camp that quickly degenerated into a slum. The citizens of a freshly post-apartheid Joburg found themselves forced to deal with a truly alien populace while still not really having solved less complicated things like race or tribe relations. The government found themselves with a political and military dream, a refugee population whose treatment only a few fringe NGOs cared about and who brought with them a substantial weapons arsenal. Unfortunately, Prawn (as the people have named them) technology is bioengineered, meaning in theory that only a being with Prawn DNA can use a Prawn weapon. But that hasn't stopped the humans from trying to figure away around that.

Enter Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a goofy, sensitive field agent for Multi-National United, a para-governmental/military body (a fusion of the ATF, INS, and FBI, kind of) created for the purpose of dealing with the Prawns and dissecting their technology. In spite of MNU's vigilant population control, the Prawns have increased in number, and the local are done putting up with these creepy, smelly, wierd, resource-consuming refugees so close to the city limits. The film opens as a documentary on Wikus' big day: he's been appointed to head up the eviction and relocation of the Prawns to a new tent camp two hundred miles away from the city. One of the refugees turns out to have a shack full of contraband technology, and when Wikus accidentally takes a facefull of strange liquid, he starts to sicken and soon one of his arms doesn't match the other - in other words, he begins mutating into a Prawn himself. In MNU's eyes, he's not a sick man but an invaluable resource packed with the DNA that will finally allow them use of Prawn weaponry, and the order is given to harvest him in a manner resulting in his death. Wikus manages to escape, but pursued by MNU agents, physically transformed into an object of hatred, and faced not only with arrest warrants splashed across every TV but accompanied by the propaganda that his mutation is the result of having sex with aliens, this desperate, terrified man has nowhere to go but District 9. He logically assumes MNU won't look for him there, and also that since Prawn technology has begun mutating him, surely the Prawns will know how to restore him. Fortunately, there is a Prawn (known as "Christoper") who can help him, the one whose shack full of contraband landed Wikus in this mess in the first place. Unfortunately, there's always a "but"...

This is a serious film. It's dark, it's strong, it's visceral, and when it's gory, it's gory. It's also one of the best films I've seen of any genre, and left me happy for hours, high on that glee that comes from being exposed to excellence. For starters, the story never stops making sense. When Wikus and Christopher hatch and execute a plan to raid MNU headquarters for a key piece of technology, it makes sense, because although like most field agents Wikus spends most of his time at a desk doing paperwork, field agents in his kind of field should all be trained how to raid a building - and on a much smaller scale, we see him do it twenty minutes earlier while serving eviction notices. In other words, his slow transformation into a Prawn isn't accompanied by a sudden, out of character transformation into a badass. He's a beauraucrat, sure, but Blomkamp and co-writer Terri Tatchell do away with the caricature of the beaureaucrat-as-idiot, instead portraying the paradox of the "other side" of being a special agent. A lot of reviews for District 9 describe Wikus as becoming sympathetic to the Prawn's plight due to his transformation; I can't say I saw that at all. Over the sixty-odd hours of realtime the film chronicles, Wikus is a desperate, terrified man, and it is that desperation and terror that drive him. He doesn't develop a new concern for the Prawn's problems, he's understandably consumed with his own, and in his desperation is willing to screw the one Prawn who can help him in order to end his nightmare. Wikus is a blessed anomaly of an action movie protagonist. He's a happy and sensitive goofball with a shy smile, merry eyes, and a habit of making little arts-and-crafts presents for his wife who also oppresses, murders, and displaces refugees in a similarly guileless fashion, as it's just a job that keeps everything running smoothly - and anyways, they're not even human. Far from being a wallflower nerd, he's outgoing and incredibly confident, the pros and cons of which the story brings into play. He's a beaureaucrat, aware and fond of regulations, and as befits someone in his position he is intelligent and resourceful. However, he's not uncommonly intelligent, and as his father-in-law ominously foreshadows, "he's never been very strong" - and that's not a reference to how much Wikus can bench-press. Without giving too much away, let's just say he doesn't produce a sudden act of redeeming heroism in the final reel. Not an evil man, but driven by desperation and terror - and, in that final reel, guilt and pragmatism - he is neither hero nor anti-hero. He's a character instead of a caricature, and so his actions are worth exploring as hypothetical "what would I..." questions in ways that those of the Final Reel Hero aren't.

In interviews prior to District 9's release, director Neill Blomkamp - who grew up in post-apartheid Johannesburg, but moved to Vancouver in his late teens and has his first official IMDB credit for CG animation on Stargate: SG-1 - stated that he had no intention of making an apartheid film, that District 9 should not be read as such, and that the setting is simply where he grew up. As an artist, I can say that the single hardest thing for an artist to accomplish, the thing most of us strive for, is to lay down a specific intent for a project, make it, and then hear people indepentently identify your work as having that intent. Blomkamp succeeded in making the film he wanted to make - connecting District 9 to an apartheid allegory would require imagination well beyond my limits. Instead, the social subtexts present in the film are current and unpopular ones: the plight of unwanted refugees, abortion, the eating of people for their powers. There's a running subplot in District 9 wherein a Nigerian shaman and warlord are constantly after Prawns because they believe that if they eat certain body parts, they will gain the ability to use Prawn technology. I don't know how serious a problem this is in Nigeria in particular, but it is a long-standing real-life issue in many African countries, and one that's not a popular concern for Western activists because since shamanism - i.e. cultural religion - comes into play, there's this warped idea that it would be culturally insensitive to rally against the practice (or racist to even suggest that shamanism is still practiced, period). The National Post's Vanessa Farquarhson demonstrated this in her review of the film, writing how this seemed "offensive" in a film about "respecting different species, cultures, and ethnicities." Unfortunately, in the same day's Post, the back page of the A section was almost entirely devoted to an article about how albinos in Tanzania are being abducted, dismembered, and murdered because many Tanzanians believe that eating albino parts will grant them special powers. Also, I really didn't read District 9 as having much to do with tolerance. It's a great story with many facets and subtexts, but it's not about racism or insensitivity. While racism and the existence of refugees are usually connected, they're still two very different problems, and if it's necessary to view District 9 through the lens of social commentary, the plight of (unwanted) refugees would be its primary message. But at its core, it's just a fantastic, sufficiently deep, gripping story about a desperate man on the run who's willing to do a lot in order to get his life back.

It also provides some great fictional food for thought. What were the Prawns doing so far from home in the first place (Christopher infers it takes at least a year of realtime to travel between Earth and his planet)? You don't go on sightseeing trips with hundreds of thousands of your countrymen and a huge weapons arsenal. Why are Christopher and one friend the only Prawns who seem to know how to repair their technology and fly their vessels? Is the rest of the flight/command crew dead? Did the other Prawns kill them, and is that why Christopher and his friend have kept their rebuilding of the command module from the rest of their people? And then there are the questions of the end of the film regarding what promises Christopher will keep, and what he'll do next. Because what's said and shown in the film is logical and satisfying, these questions are interesting daydreams to bandy about over a slice of pie rather than frustrating gaps in the story.

Of course, fantastic production, etcetera, etcetera. It looks great, and it's fantastic to see a new director with a background and formal training in CG animation know the limits of that medium. Produced and funded by Peter Jackson - thank you very much, sir - , District 9 is perhaps the smallest, cheapest film visually supported by the fine men and women of WETA Workshops who, though having an excellent CG department, are best-known for their models, miniatures, matte paintings, weapons, armor, and other "tangible" special effects. These disciplines combined produced things like the only alien I've seen that looked so terrified and dismayed, I actually felt its terror and dismay - that made aliens characters instead of aliens. On less than a third of the minimum budget projected for the Halo film Universal understandably denied a director with no proven return on that kind of investment, District 9 is one of the most visually satisfying, realistically engaging sci-fi flicks I know of. I mentioned early on that it has its fair share of gore - but this is an instance in which the term "its fair share" is truly applicable. There's nothing over-the-top or out of place, and it contains the only non-exploitative dismemberment I've ever seen on film. The decapitation and dismemberment of an important antagonist used as a regular, logical cause of death, filmed in the frame's background, and not for shock value? Neill Blomkamp, you amaze me.

Floating around the 'net is a short film Blomkamp made to show Universal what his Halo would look like. It's an impressive demonstration, and with District 9 garnering not only critical acclaim (nice, but not essential) but a strong box office (absolutely essential), I doubt I'm the only one who would be shocked if Halo is made with anyone else at the helm. And after seeing District 9, a film about aliens in Johannesburg that doesn't talk about apartheid and isn't over the top with the stuff it does talk about, I'd trust Blomkamp to make a Halo that wouldn't be stupid about the trilogy's religious zealot story. A mature filmmaker and proven artist making a movie of a great game that actually has a story to back it up?

BRING IT!

(And also go see District 9.)

I Am Squeegee Man! Do You Sense Its Power???

2009-08-21T19:52:00.000-07:00

I prefer to think of "B-list" actors as "working actors". They're the guys you recognize because they spend so much time in front of the screen, be it large or small, and they're able to spend so much time there because they can't command A-list salaries. And because working actors are constantly, um, working, they have a lot of practical opportunities to hone their craft...and wind up turning out more consistently enjoyable and varied performances than some A-listers I could name. When the B-list gets together en masse, you know you're in for a quality time.

My favourite comedy to date is the Marx Brothers Duck Soup. Seated shortly below it, hovering somewhere in an amorphous blob with UHF, The Wrong Guy, The Big Lebowski, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz and The Court Jester is one that may make you say, "I've never heard of it": Mystery Men.

Based on a middling-popular Dark Horse comic series, made before comic-book movies were cool, and boasting a cast that reads like a B-list almanac, Mystery Men doesn't sound like a recipe for success. Judging by how few people I know who've seen it, it wasn't. A spot-on parody of the superhero genre, Mystery Men follows a trio of B-list, part-time superheroes as they fight mostly for the right to be considered legitimate superheroes. Champion City already has a resident superhero, Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear, spoofing Batman), and he keeps the streets clean by himself. When the streets get too clean, CA's popularity and product-placement revenue start to dwindle, and he organizes the release of his asylum-bound arch-nemesis so that things can get exciting again. Unfortunately, after seventeen years in the nut house, Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush) is ready for him, and it's up to Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller, before he was famous), The Shoveler (William H. Macy), and The Blue Rajah (Hank Azaria) to free the Captain from Casanova's clutches. As The Blue Rajah bitterly observes, there are never any evil trios (they're all about the travelling gangs), so to even the playing field the gang starts recruiting. Winding up with The Bowler (Janeane Garofalo), The Spleen (Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Ruebens), The Invisible Boy (Kel Mitchell, the only unfamiliar face in this crown), and being taken under the leadership wing of the terribly mysterious Sphinx (Wes Studi), bonding, mis-flipped toggles, and general hilarity ensue as they plan and enact a series of assaults on Casanova's castle.

I would go so far as to call this film brilliant. Almost every line of dialogue is quotable on its own merits, the production looks like a comic book (always a nice touch), and did I mention that the cast also includes Eddie Izzard as one of the leaders of Casanova's main gang, The Disco Boys? This film works because the cast rises to the occasion of earnestness, embracing their characters, delivering their lines in straightforward manners, and quietly reveling in all the ridiculousness that can be mined from the world of superhero comics. Few films boast such solid acting and direction whilst simultaneously providing a laugh a minute (lllliterally). I've watched this one upwards of ten times since it first came out - the dialogue makes it a great thing to have on in the background whilst cleaning or doing homework or something else tedious that prevents you from looking up at the screen too often but doesn't take a lot of mental effort.

I also may finally read the source comic, if the library has it, because I'm curious to see if the social commentaries hinted at in Mystery Men (the film) are more pronounced in Mystery Men (the comic). The core trio - The Shoveler, The Blue Rajah, and Mr. Furious - represent particular social archetypes: respectively, the blue-collar family man, the older guy who lives with his mom, and the late twentysomething (or early thirtysomething) loser with a dead-end job and little else. For something more blunt, the Invisible Boy is under the "care" of a father who can't concern himself to acknowledge the kid's existence. And it may be more than coincidence that The Disco Boys just happen to have two leaders, one white and one black, in charge of a gang that bases itself on a style and genre inseparable from the decade when race relations in American really started to take off. So I wonder...

Not to say you should watch Mystery Men with the mindset of something serious. But watch it you should - it's stupendously good for a laugh.

Let's Make A Deal

2009-08-21T19:18:00.000-07:00

Near the end of his life, master storyteller Will Eisner (The Spirit) wrote a graphic novel called A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories that is very famous in the right circles. And I have absolutely no idea what to make of it.

I'm starting to notice a trend in books written by great authors shortly before their deaths (not including those who died young or suddenly), namely, that they're...strange. Frank Herbert's God Emperor of Dune, for example, or Robert A. Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Like A Contract With God, these books are more heavily weighted towards saying something than they are towards telling stories, but what they have to say is cryptic to me. I like speaking with old people, and especially hearing sermons from people who are close to dying of old age, because they're usually very interesting. Important, too, with the weight of so many years behind their words and lessons.

But these books...in particular the Eisner one since I just read it yesterday...there's a trend here, but a trend of what, I have no idea. I should perhaps keep it in the back of my mind to read this stuff when I'm in my twilight years - maybe then I'll understand.

John Constantine, Hellblazer

2009-08-19T12:04:00.001-07:00

With comics so easily accessible at no cost, why not read 'em all? Adapted into a decent Keanu Reeves film a few years back, Garth Ennis' John Constantine, Hellblazer: Rake at the Gates of Hell is a standard-setting volume. The final act of the Constantine story, it boasts incredible layout and perhaps the best use of the comic medium that I've ever seen. Unfortunately, it's also shockingly immature, uncessarily vulgar, unremittingly oppressive, and its plot can be summarized as, "life's a bitch and then you die, unless of course some random homo ex machina* kills Satan and cures your lung cancer in the last panel." Sometimes stories read out of sequence make me thirst for the rest of the tale (case in point, Hellboy); Hellblazer is not one of those. Boring, I can handle. Stupid, I can handle. Boring and stupid? I may be unemployed, but I've still got better things to do. Watch the movie, for example.

*Don't get your vapors all fluttered, this isn't some weird slur against homosexuals, it's just a joke riffing off deus ex machina. In Latin, which this is, homo means "human", or "man". You're thinking of the Greek homo, which is the one that means "same", and it's kind of ironic if you think about it that that particular word has been co-opted to only have one understood sense or meaning.

Because some things must not be kept to oneself...

2009-08-19T00:19:00.000-07:00

...but their media connections are tenuous at best.

To deliberately misquote the NRA nut from UHF: Coincidence is for wimps and Communists.

It's Howdy-Hellboy Time

2009-08-19T00:13:00.001-07:00

When it comes to the importance of books, in the popular consciousness comic books hover somewhere between Harlequin romances and novels based on video games. Sure, if you turn them into a graphic novel, then they matter - do you ever wonder how literary culture would would regard Alan Moores' The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Tim Sales and Jeph Loeb's The Long Halloween, both of which begun as regular comic issues, if they weren't later published in graphic novel form? And, of course, some graphic novels are genuine graphic novels, intended to be such from the beginning, and those are also regarded popularly as a respectable form of literature. But what happens when a story arc spans a collection of diverse short stories, many of which are stand-alone, thus making graphic novelization impossible...but you bind them into book format anyway?

Well, for one thing, you get the "library volumes" of Mike Mignola's landmark series Hellboy, a book which taught me for the first time in twenty years of reading what people mean when they speak of books as mystical objects; how they were encouraged to read after becoming entranced by a book's physical qualities. Looking (and weighing) like the love child of an encyclopaedia and an atlas, Hellboy Volume 2 is a stunning thing, a black-bound creature with no dust jacket and a cover bearing only its title, byline, and a small matted illustration from a fan favourite story contained within. It's so heavy it makes me grunt when I pick it up. With gorgeous glossy pages too thick to flip idly, the sort you feel guilty about leaving fingerprints on...well, there are books, like the dinky little paperbacks I buy because they're cheap and easy to read on the bus, and then there are books. Hellboy Volume 2 is the latter.

And the good news is, it's not just pretty on the outside. Having spawned one spin-off that I know of, a small army of tributes (Mike Mignola lets other writers/artists publish Hellboy stories), and two solid films by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth), Hellboy as drawn by Mignola is famous for a groundbreaking art style that relies heavily on clean lines and black. As written by Mignola - I stress this because I have not been impressed with the Hellboy spin-off B.P.R.D., which he doesn't write, or the tribute volume I've read - it's also a great, thoughtful story about nature, choice, predestination, and a guy who more or less defines the phrase "loveable curmudgeon".

Opening its story during the Second World War, Hellboy is the story of a little red fellow with horns and a giant right fist who falls into Allied hands after entering Earth courtesy of a supernatural Nazi experiment gone awry. Taken under charge of the U.S. Bureau of Paranormal Research and Investigation (B.P.R.D.) and adopted by one of its agents, Hellboy grows up far quicker than the average boy and is soon engaged as a field agent himself. Hellboy is based on the short story format, and those short stories are in turn based on existing Old World folk stories both famous and obscure (but mostly obscure). It does, however, have several overarching story arcs, the most prominent being that of who - and what - its main character is. The dictionary definition of laid-back, Hellboy spends somewhere between twenty and thirty years unconcerned and uninterested in why, for example, he was born in Hell and has a gigantic and very powerful right fist that doesn't match his left, as he dispatches supernatural evil on behalf of the B.P.R.D. in a very "all in a day's work" way. In that same manner, he loves his adopted father fiercely, is protective of his friends and colleagues at the B.P.R.D., and has a large soft spot for Howdy-Doody (hey, he grew up in the late '40's) and cats. Wry without being hip, an oddly likeable mix of difficult child and grumpy old man, Hellboy is a great character to build a series around. It's Mike Mignola's treatment of Hellboy's nature, however - and the supernatural in general - that makes the story a far better read than your average demon-based comic, spin-offs and tributes included.

As a general rule, the difference between high-quality, mature supernatural fantasy and crappy, immature supernatural fantasy hinges on the respect the author has for his subject matter. People who write this stuff with a low belief in or respect of the supernatural can still turn out a quality product, but one that's also invariably stupid (Joss Whedon's Angel is a good example of this). One big thing that sets Mignola's Hellboy apart from other comics with the word "Hell" in the title, for example Garth Ennis' John Constantine, Hellblazer, is the fact that Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. get along and work in conjuction with the Church. Hellboy has genuine friends and mentors among the priesthood, and his lady friend Liz, also a B.P.R.D. agent with supernatural powers, is a nun in her spare time. Even better than this is that, as far as the Hellboy I've read, Mignola doesn't make the Church a "good guy" character by twisting it into a popular, politically correct something it's not - it's one of the Good Guys on its own merits.

Hellboy may be a put-off to many readers on the basis of its name alone. Well, as they say in showbiz, it's not what you've got, it's how you use it. At its core, Hellboy is the story of a fallen creature born that way who deliberately works on a daily basis to reject his nature and become something better. It's a redemption story, but a strange one as Hellboy turns out to be the literal son of Satan, his real name being Anung Un Rama, the Beast of the Apocalypse, destined to be the Great Destroyer. Even after he learns this, though, he continues to live as he's been living, and what's especially appealing from a storytelling perspective - and indicative of the author's maturity - is that Hellboy doesn't waste time whining about how it may all be hopeless in the end. He just does as he does, grinding down his horns every morning and choosing to live as his adoptive father taught him, rejecting (and actively slaying) evil.

I believe it was Buechner who wrote that the world speaks of holy things in the only language it knows, which is a wordly language, or something like that. What sealed the deal for me becoming a Mike Mignola fan was the last story in Hellboy Volume 2, "Box Full of Evil". Due to Hellboy's nature and power, assorted forces of evil both supernatural and earthly are in a constant state of attempting to reclaim him for the Devil's purposes, and this is what motivates the villain of "Box Full of Evil". Though he severely injures Hellboy, he is unable to turn him, and so sets about attempting to claim the nature of the Beast for himself. As Hellboy awakens blind on a supernatural plane, a creature there asks him, "Who are you, boy? What is your name?". Mentally defeated and crushed, Hellboy replies that he is Anung Un Rama. The creature summarizes who Anung Un Rama is and demands to know, "is that who you are?". Hellboy says no, and the creature responds, "then that's not your name, is it?" Hellboy is the story of someone who takes on a new name in rejection of the person their old name belongs to. It is written that when we come under the protection of Christ's salvation, we are born again, become someone different, and start life anew. And what is one of the first things that happens after you are born? You are given a name. "Box Full of Evil" touched me in a very deep and secret way, and I doubt I'll ever read it without bursting into tears as it slams home the heart of God's grace.

If nothing else, Hellboy Volume 2 sparks some interesting thoughts on the size of books versus their perceived value, and what an anomaly this volume is in that regard...but that's a story for another day.

Lamentations 3. How Mysterious.

2009-08-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

In a horse-powered sleigh at the top of the town
sun coming up paints the snow all around
with rose light
In front of the house where I'm supposed to be born
I don't think I'm ready to walk through that door just yet
To be one more voice in the human choir
rising like smoke from the mystical fire
of the heart

The wind that blows through everything
sweeps out the halls of my heart when I sing
to you
It carries the moon and the stars and the rain
Carries the seagulls and carries my shame
away
Spins me around, stops me running away
from all of the things I've been waiting to say
But don't

Here
Is bigger than you can imagine
Now
is forever

Sun coming up paints the snow all around
Rose on the roofs and the trees and the ground
And the stream
In my dream
Messenger wind swooping out of the sky
lights each tiny speck in the human kaleidoscope
With hope

- Bruce Cockburn, "Messenger Wind" (You've Never Seen Everything, 2002)

Barry Lyndon

2009-08-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

There are some things people do just for the sake of being able to say they've done them; reading War and Peace, for example, or Proust. The cinematic - and less time-consuming - equivalent of this is watching Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. Based on a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, Barry Lyndon is a Seven Years War period drama famous for being lit almost exclusively by natural light (i.e. sun, moon, and candles), and also for being just over three hours long and rather unpleasant. A lot has been written about Barry Lyndon, the tale of an Irishman of no consequence who believes it's his destiny and right to be a gentleman and embodies the philosophy of the ends justifying the means, but since a picture is worth a thousand words - indeed, this film is one of the more obvious extensions of that belief - let's just say that Barry Lyndon can be summarized as follows:

No, really. Actor Ryan O'Neal holds that exact expression for the majority of the film, and it pretty well says everything there is to know about Barry. However, to put that in context:

The story of Barry Lyndon, at least as I interpret it from Kubrick's interpretation, is that of small people in a big world. Barry is a man of no consequence who believes he should matter in a material way, but even those who are of consequence in his society come across as insignificant here beside the grandeur of the setting. And it's not an issue of props and furniture - there are plenty of period films with lavish interior sets. I wonder if Kubrick's reliance on natural light was partly meant to emphasize how small one man is on the stage of the Earth. In Barry Lyndon, the settings are more alive than the people. Many critics of this film slam its use of detachment, and its characters are detached, cold, at arm's length from the audience, pitiful blights on a gorgeous backdrop. However, I suspect this is a large part of its point. The film includes a narrator, who fills in crucial information that's not shown and tells us exactly what's going to happen before it happens, further contributing to putting Barry at arm's length by serving as a sort of Greek tragedy Chorus. It's an interesting story that reverses the familiar tale of the nobleman who perpetrates bad behaviour because he believes his position is his divine right, and eschews the other familiar tale of the common man who strives to rise to nobility by being, well, noble.

I have very mixed feelings on the work of Kubrick's that I've seen, and was expecting this film would be little more than a good-looking exercise to slog through, so I'm still surprised by how much I enjoyed it, and how I was consistently engaged instead of bored. However, at the same time, it is little more than a good-looking exercise, the film version of a person who's as devastatingly gorgeous as they are shallow, and it's obvious why many think it's the most boring film ever conceived. It's also an extraordinary production, and I always come away from those feeling good even if the content has left me sobered. Kubrick was notoriously miserable to work with, but those who acted under him gave him what he wanted in the end, and with relatively little dialogue for such a long film, more is said with understated looks than by anyone opening their mouths.

The strangest thing for me was that I felt Barry Lyndon to be just that: understated, matter-of-fact. I accept that many will find that feeling to be odd, at the very least. I felt this film to be more focused on presenting a story than proving a point, yet it had a very strong point to make about human shallowness - it's sort of like a hopeless and nihilistic version of the book of Ecclesiastes. Since it makes profound comments by presenting a protagonist and world that are completely vapid, it's one strange but effective moviegoing experience. The end result for myself was that this film said what it had to say without having the moral/thematic kick in the teeth of stuff like Spartacus or Dr. Strangelove, which is not necessarily a bad thing. There's a part of me that would absolutely watch it again, for example if a friend wanted to see it but didn't want to sit alone for three hours. However, using the paradox I've come to expect from Kubrick, Barry Lyndon takes its theme of small and insignificant people in a big world several steps too far, resulting in an unrelentingly nihilistic story that contradicts the effort and grandeur of its production by being meaningless for the sake of being meaningless. And while that paradox - lots of effort poured into saying nothing matters - may be Kubrick's point, and come to think of it is clearly present in his other work, it's just not my bag, man.

What else can I say? Interesting, gorgeous - one shot between scenes is that famous architectural painting recognized as the first to use proper perspective - and moving quickly enough to feel neither shorter nor longer than it actually is, Barry Lyndon may well become my favourite Kubrick film. But, hey, it's a Kubrick film, and his pacing and baggage aren't for everyone.

The Drive-In Channel

2009-08-12T10:13:00.000-07:00

For someone who didn't grow up in the '70's, "exploitation film" is a mysterious and ambiguous term bandied around that has something to do with gratuitous sex and violence - but there's plenty of non-exploitation flicks that have that, aren't there? So what's the difference? Then Quentin Tarantino homaged the genre with Grindhouse (though one could say that all of his films homage exploitation films in some way), and I started to get a better idea of the difference between exploitation and plain ol' gratuity. I've only seen the Death Proof half of Grindhouse, and let's just say I saw and heard things that I never, ever wanted to see or hear Kurt Russell (or anyone, for that matter) say and do. I didn't expect anyone, not even Tarantino, to surpass his Kill Bill Vol. 2 in terms of, um, yuckiness (though I should state for honesty's sake that I appreciated that picture. I have my reasons.).

This month, our basic cable preview channel is The Drive-In Channel, and it turns out that those corny, innocent "enjoy a refreshing ice-cold beverage at our concessions stand!" commercials everyone knows to be associated with drive-ins are a very misleading representation of what's actually on The Drive-In Channel. In essence, it's 99% exploitation cinema, occasionally interspersed by said commercials, 70's short documentaries, The Incredible Hulk, and the odd Clint Eastwood western. And, it turns out, there is a very large gap between gratuitous sex and violence and the exploitation genre - "exploitation" is exactly what it is. I don't know how else to describe it.

Case in point: where else can you watch a film called Wild Women in Nature in the Raw, followed by Keyholes Are For Peeping, Goldilocks and the Three Bares, a film described as "a phone-sex operator suspects her artist boyfriend is killing topless dancers", and The Hooker Cult Murders, set in Montreal (holla!) and starring Christopher Plummer? (Who, while this hasn't affected my appreciation for him, I cannot resist herein referring to as Christopher Slummer. You walked right into that one, pal.)

The saddest thing in this whole business is that, when Quentin Tarantino made Death Proof, he was upping the quality of grindhouse cinema by inexplicable proportions. My advice? Stay far, far away from any film you've heard referred to as exploitation, and never, ever add The Drive-In Channel to your lineup.

I Wish I Made That Up Just Now

2009-08-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

So, I finally grit my teeth, seized some integrity as a critic, and watched a little Defying Gravity.

You know how a lot of cartoons use that editing device of cutting sharply to one shocked or angry person, then to their nemesis, then back again, accompanied by the sound dum! Dum! Duuuuuuuuuuum!? Like on The Simpsons, whenever Maggie encounters the unibrow baby? I couldn't find a clip, but you know what I'm talking about. It's a common comedic device used to enhance ridiculous situations.

Episode 2 of Deying Gravity used that device to end a very serious, cliffhanger scene in earnest.

If I were you, I wouldn't believe me either. I guess I just have too much faith in humanity to think that someone would every use that for "serious" storytelling.

Also in this episode, the mission commander boasted to a girl that he ran a whole five kilometers that morning, as if this is piddling distance is supposed to be an accomplishment for a freakin' astronaut, i.e. one of the most physically fit people in existence. I can run five kilometers no problem, and I don't even work out.

Suffice it to say, my lack of faith in this program was not misplaced. It really is Grey's Anatomy in space.

The Twilight Samurai

2009-08-12T09:14:00.000-07:00

After having been immersed in Japanese film since meeting my husband five years ago, I've come to the not unreasonable expectation that any Japanese film I come across is going to be horrifically tragic, have a horrifically tragic twist, or interrupt a comedic scene with something horrifically tragic, like a sudden violent death. What can I say, it's a very sober culture. This is not to say that I don't like Japanese film, quite the contrary. But I don't expect a pleasant evening out of one.

Imagine my surprise, then, at 2002's Tasogare Seibei (The Twilight Samurai). Regarded as the best of the recent samurai movies, The Twilight Samurai is set near the end of Japan's feudal era and tells the tale of a low-level samurai named Seibei. There's an idea in the West that the samurai were similar to contemporary soldiers, ie. that being a swordsman was a full-time job. In reality, with so many of them kicking about there were many tiers of samurai, and Seibei is such a low-level one that so long as his clan in not engaged in active warfare, he works for a pittance as a storehouse inventory clerk - think of him as being in the army reserves. Seibei is a widower with two young daughters and a mother suffering from late-stage Alzheimer's, and as his position doesn't provide enough to hire help - indeed, it barely provides enough for the four of them to live, as he remains in debt from his wife's medical care and funeral - he must go straight home every night to care for them and do housework, thus earning him the derogatory nickname "Twilight". It is a foreign concept to Seibei's co-workers that he can't ever go out drinking in the evenings; though being aware of his situation, they just don't get why he won't ever blow off his responsibilities just for one night.

Seibei's only true friend is a fellow samurai named Iinuma, who is of a much higher clan rank and social standing, and often away to Edo or Tokyo on business. On one trip home, Iinuma tells Seibei of his sister Tomoe's divorce. Tomoe's husband, a respected samurai captain, turned out to be an abusive drunk, and when this became clear Iinuma petitionned the clan for a divorce on her behalf, which was granted. Iinuma is wracked with guilt, as he arranged the marriage, having every reason to believe it was a good match. Seibei is wracked with guilt and inner conflict, as he didn't really love his late wife and always carried a torch for Tomoe, but won't pursue her because he (reasonably) believes their social situations are too different - her family is quite rich, and her standard of living would lower drastically if married to Seibei. And Tomoe's ex-husband, Koda, is wracked with anger, refusing to accept the divorce. Koda eventually shows up at Iinuma's house late one night, drunk, and challenges Iinuma to a duel, which Seibei accepts in his place in order to protect his friend's life and standing (dueling within the clan is forbidden). When Seibei defeats Koda without killing him, things start to change, though he does his best to prevent that. Meanwhile, since her return to Iinuma, Tomoe has been reacquainting herself with her childhood friend Seibei, and coming to his home every day to do housework, care for his mother and daughters, and help ease his difficult life. She loves him. He loves her. Throw in a little sociology, a little politics, and the newfound unwanted attention Seibei is getting from the clan leadership since the rumour of Koda's defeat has emerged, and hey! You've got a story!

And a very nice story it is. Neither sappy nor perversely tragic, The Twilight Samurai is a multi-layered, well-written, well-acted, well-paced, and all-around excellent and enjoyable film. The title is not only a riff on Seibei's nickname, but plays on the setting (the twilight of the feudal era) as well as the fact that he's not old by contemporary standards, but betting a bit old for starting over again in terms of love and swordplay. It's an interesting story for putting a man in what would typically be a story about how hard it is to be a woman: a single parent caring for children and and eldery parent while holding down a minimum-wage job. This, and the overall beauty of the film and story, reminded me very much of another Japanese drama that could have been very tragic but isnt: Miyazaki's My Neighbour Totoro. And you know, the pleasant, thoughtful experience of watching that picture was very much the same derived from The Twilight Samurai.

I cannot emphasize enough how wonderful this film is. It's profound without being oppressive or tragic, it's serious yet delightful. We got it from the library, but I look forward to adding it to our collection one of these days.

Desecrating the Classics: The Magnificent Seven

2009-08-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

At dinner on Monday with our good friend Scott Peacock, he made a comment about how classic film critique is often built on the bias that classic film can do no wrong. In other words, it's very rare to hear someone denounce a classic film, or even one that's just old, and in my experience our Mr. Peacock's comment is quite astute. While I've enjoyed films both old and classic since I was very small, I have had some pretty extraordinary letdowns due to people gushing over classic pictures (see: Vertigo, My Fair Lady).

I want to make two things very clear: one, I like movies in general, and when they were made doesn't factor into whether or not I think a flick is good; and two, I'm cuckoo for Westerns. So it's no surprise now - though it was at the time - that The Magnificent Seven is kind of awful.

That's right, The Magnificent Seven. That huge Western with an all-star cast, top-rate director and production company, and incredible source material, that sits at the top of so many "Best Western Film Of All Time!!!" lists, including the AFI's, and that people rave over as if it's the greatest thing since Clint Eastwood. Based on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, the film takes place in the American Wild West and tells the story of a diverse group of (seven) gunslingers who are hired by a Mexican village for protection from a bandit gang's regular visits. The story plays out in three acts: the group's formation, their preparations at the village/getting to know their enemy, and the final confrontation.

I really, really wanted to like this movie; in fact, I reasonably expected to based on its pedigree. I like The Great Escape so much that, as the class geek, I was able to sell my grade 11 world history class on this old movie no one had heard of to be the one WWII movie we could watch (there was a vote) - and not only convinced them it was good enough to watch instead of Saving Private Ryan, but actually had cool kids come to me privately afterwards and thank me for recommending it. Backed by the same production company and director as The Great Escape, and a large portion of its cast (including Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and - pardon me while I fan myself and sigh - Steve McQueen), and featuring an incredible score by Escape composer Elmer Bernstein, as a production it's solid. The cinematography is gorgeous, and production quality is high. However, it's also melodramatic, corny, boring, trite, and generally pretty lame. Made well after the American industry had figured out how to differentiate acting/directing methods from theater to film, The Magnificent Seven is bogged down by bad blocking, overdone writing, and hammy performances (though of course not from Steve McQueen, as Alvin Plantinga successfully proved in 1952 that a bad performance from Steve McQueen is an impossible condition. Okay, I made that up just now). This was very surprising to me because The Great Escape is such an understated production. I'm always astonished by the difference directing makes to enhance or reduce an actor's performance, and particularly shocking here is that the leader of the bandits as played by Eli Wallach (a.k.a. the Ugly from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) couldn't be described as "threatening" on a good day. It's a does-not-compute on the same level as Joel Schumacher managing to make Kiefer Sutherland's vampire motorcycle gang leader the exact opposite of badass in The Lost Boys.

I should also make it clear that I first saw The Magnificent Seven two or three years before watching the film it's a remake of, Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, and even then I knew The Magnificent Seven was trite. Even then, I couldn't find any reason to care about anything the gunslingers were doing. Having watched it again since seeing Seven Samurai - I wanted Corey to see it, so I could have the comfort of knowing someone else thought it was a crappy film too - has reinforced that significantly. None of the nuances of Kurosawa's story are present; all that tale's powerful themes of humility and sacrifice were stripped away. The killer is, it's a story that can actually translate well to American culture. Unfortunately, lessons on humility are replaced by cocky pride, sacrifice is replaced by either self-servience or sacrifices so small as to be insignificant. The cynic could say that is how to translate the story to this side of the ocean. This is one trite, trite film, made all the more meaningless by basing itself on one of the most meaningful films you'll ever find.

Ignore the "Best Western Ever" lists. Save yourself the time and disillusionment. If you want a good Western, go watch The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, or For a Few Dollars More, The Searchers, The Outlaw Josey Wales, or if you like your movies recent, there's always Tombstone, Unforgiven, 3:10 to Yuma, and Open Range. If you want a good The Magnificent Seven, go watch Seven Samurai - it's one of the greatest films ever made. If you insist on clinging to nostalgia and liking The Magnificent Seven because it's "classic", and this critique has made an impact on your blood pressure, then I beg your indulgence to go hide behind a wagon before you start throwing the rotten tomatos.

It's not that The Magnificent Seven is a complete load of crap, there are worse pictures by far. It's just that it's not good, it's really not good, and there's no good reason for that to have happened.

So Simple It's Complex

2009-08-07T13:32:00.000-07:00

The Edmonton Public Library has a sweet CD collection, and when I go to the Whitemud branch it's rare that I don't yank one or two items off the soundtrack shelf. Film scores are a favoured genre for me; there's nothing like music that tells a story, and the right score supports and elevates a film beyond that medium's capabilities. It seems like the film composer's club is a very small one, with the same names popping up again and again, and I imagine its a much harder discipline to succeed in than regular composing. To use an analogy, buying a gift for yourself is easy; buying a gift for someone else, to suit their taste, style, character, contents of their home is a practice that most people dread because it's usually so hard.

This week's film score of choice: Howard Shore's haunting, dread-filled backbone of Martin Scorsese's The Departed. That (excellent) film is an American re-telling of a (very good) Hong Kong drama called Infernal Affairs, and is a cop story about corruption, unhealthy determination, and the impacts of going deep undercover for those with consciences (a cop infiltrating a gang) and those without (a gang member infiltrating the cops).

Shore's score is centered around Spanish guitar styles, in particular the tango, and the reason this matters it's pretty far down the list of sounds expected to prop up an American police/gang drama based on Chinese source material and set in the heart of Boston's Irish community. Somehow, incredibly, the score not only works but sounds right. It takes on Mexican qualities at some points, building off the film's Wild West aspects and perhaps nodding to the fact that The Departed is in many ways its own kind of spaghetti western. It maintains the unrelenting gravitas of the film's story all the way through, and that non-problem is the only problem with it. Bubbly, sexy, festive Spanish guitar is very accessible and easy to listen to on a regular basis; dark, corrupted, threatening Spanish guitar is not. Whatever the case may be, it's a fantastic album that succeeds because of Shore's ability to produce the ultimate creative paradox: the music is so simple its complex.

If very dark American-ish Spanish guitar isn't your cup of tea, you can still enjoy the work of Howard Shore. He's worked on just about every film genre you can name, as well as many familiar titles, and is probably best known for his work on The Lord of the Rings. Even if you don't like instrumental music, if you like music period you'd be missing out big time by not listening to at least one Howard Shore film score. He's our Maurice Jarre.

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait: Merlin

2009-08-03T11:54:00.000-07:00

A month ago, I found myself falling prey to a condition I castigate other for, because it often leads to the cancellation of a worthwhile production: judging a show based on its first handful of episodes. Sometimes, I forget that most shows need at least a season to find their legs.

In this case, the show in question is Merlin, an interesting take on the Camelot legend that has actually claimed the distinction of adding something new to the story. It's set before Uther Pendragon's death, with him on the throne and Arthur as crown prince, and young peasant Merlin as Arthur's servant and friend. An orphan, Merlin has been raised and educated by a now-elderly man named Gaius, who serves as court physician and is doing his best to tutor Merlin as the boy begins to manifest his magical powers. In an intriguing reversal of the "religion persecuting science" chestnut, Uther outlawed the use of magic early in his reign when the dangers of any random peasant possessing and using virtually unlimited power became clear. The practice of magic is a capital crime, but the series doesn't present Uther as a hotheaded villain who carelessly persecutes people "just born that way", for which I thank the writers - Merlin could so easily have been a cheap gay lobby allegory. Thankfully, it's more profound than that, giving Uther's decision a logic that's hard to accuse of being irrational or cruel.

By far the most interesting thing about this series is how it contrasts Uther and Arthur, and by doing so foreshadows the latter's doom. Where Uther is willing to make hard decisions for the greater good, Arthur makes his choices with all the passion, folly, and utter lack of regard for the future that one would expect from a teenage boy. Whether the series will have Arthur die young, never flinching from these decisions, or live to middle-age to witness the fullness of the destruction they'll cause, it'll be an interesting journey. Especially interesting is Arthur's definition of responsibility, as demonstrated in last week's episode when he berated Uther for not curtailing someone else's decision. One of the court knights, conducting his knightly duty, accepted a certain-death challenge thrown down to Uther, and Arthur regarded it as Uther's responsibility to overrule the knight's decision - and violate his dignity, and adherence to the Knight's code - and forbid him to fight. The rest of that episode made this scenario even more intriguing. Uther, with his years of experience, is a steady character who makes understandable decisions for the greater good; Arthur is an overemotional, textbook case of living in the moment.

Decision-making is at the heart of this series; an unexpected and engaging quality for a show whose main plot revolves around the persecution of people for possessing something they cannot choose to possess. Every episode to date deals with the choices people make when they convince themselves that they have no such freedom in order to justify actions that are typically dangerous or foolhardy. On top of that, the primary focus is on the choices parents make raising their children, and the choices their children make in response. If one were to make a drinking game for Merlin - and, as Canada's a year behind on airing this U.K. production, someone probably already has - the target phrase would be "I have/had no choice", uttered by Arthur and Merlin far more than by any other characters. Arthur in particular blurs the lines between compassionate choices and foolish ones with gusto, all the while provoking the audience to ask which sort of decision he's made, and what the consequences may be. The fact that the end of Arthur's story is common knowledge adds to the interest, as every week we see Arthur make and justify the choices that will ultimately lead to the fall of Camelot, and his death.

The big reason I've been so hard on this series, and had such a hard time being willing to sit through long enough to let it find its legs, is just that - I know how it will end. I expect much higher standards of storytelling and execution from productions whose endings are known; their journies needs to be very good in order to give me a reason to reach their foregone conclusions. Merlin certainly did not start out this way - the first six or seven episodes don't even get the "awesome crap" seal of approval, at least not where dialogue and drama are concerned. However, it's improved quickly and vastly. The talent in front of the camera played a large role (no pun intended) in keeping me watching. The core cast - Uther, Arthur, Merlin, and Gaius - is outstanding, with veteran TV actors Anthony Head and Richard Wilson anchoring the production as Uther and Gaius, respectively, and a pair of solid newcomers as Arthur and Merlin. Behind the camera, the production design is nice period work - even the castle's large luxury spaces, like Uther's throne room and Arthur's apartments, are quite small by other period's standards - and the writing has improved in leaps and bounds.

One thing Merlin is absolutely not, though, is standard Arthurian myth; if such a thing as an Arthurian purist exists, they will likely be offended by this show. For example, Guinevere is not nobility but a maidservant to Morgana (Morgan la Fay), here an orphan of noble blood who lives at Camelot as Uther's ward. Then there's Gaius, Merlin's mentor, a character new to the story. The origin of Excalibur is neither of the myth standards (but very interesting), and it would appear that unless Mordred is part fae, or conceived of magic, he is not Arthur and Morgan's bastard son. Though he could be, because speaking of strange conceptions, the circumstances of Arthur's birth are also not to standard. There's a surprisingly intriguing plotline involving the last living dragon. And, of course, there's the big kicker: that Arthur and Merlin are more or less the same age, growing up as boyhood friends instead of one being older mentor to the other. I think this is a great foundation to build the Camelot story on, because of the new dimension and direction it creates. And that is, at the end of the day, where Merlin finds its success. It holds the rare distinction of adding something new and good to and old story. The episode "Excalibur" actually managed to put a new take on the Black Knight story without evoking any ridiculous memories of Monty Python and the Holy Grail - now that, my friends, is impressive good TV.

I've you've missed the episodes up to now, CTV is airing them for Canada so you can probably stream them off their website. I support giving Merlin a chance. Here's to a second season.

2009-08-03T11:42:00.000-07:00

When it comes to books, I don't read a lot of non-fiction. It's not that I'm not interested, but rather that the stuff worth reading tends to be non-conducive to being read in short spurts and easily interrupted - i.e., it's no good on the bus. Also, it tends to cost an arm and a leg. (But what book doesn't, these days? How I long for the good ol' days, when I could get mass-market paperbacks for $4.95...)

Anyways, I think I'm going to have to grit my teeth and settle in (eventually) to read Mike Sack's And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft. Why? Because in an interview in today's National Post, when asked if there was a common thread between the writers Sacks interviewed, he replied that most of them suffer from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

This information intrigues me. It puts a new perspective on American TV humour. OCD enslaves those who suffer from it, making them unable to do things like leave the house until a piece of furniture is placed exactly right - which could take hours. That's strange, isn't it? And when people do strange things, it's common to mock them for it, or at the very least let off an innocent laugh. I can carry on a conversation with someone if the levels of water in our glasses aren't equal, but what if I couldn't, and were stripped of my ability to choose not to? I'd be a prime target for inadvertent humiliation.

Consider how many sitcoms base their laughs on someone inadvertently humiliating themselves: Seinfeld, Friends, The King of Queens, and Two and a Half Men are good examples of that. On Seinfeld, it was a regular gag that one of the main characters did something a new acquaintance found unorthodox, and thus wound up looking like a fool - and it was usually little things, like ordering a drink with no ice, or wearing a certain colour. Another regular source of laughs was how Jerry couldn't handle messy spaces, or items in his house being out of place. Remember the Friends episode where Joey buys a "European carry-all"? And basically every episode of Two and a Half Men? For me, the best part of Futurama is the hapless Dr. Zoidberg. Speaking of Futurama, cast member Maurice Lamarche played The Brain on Pinky and the Brain, which depends on the fact that, every week, The Brain will be foiled and humiliated as he fails to take over the world. The first four seasons of M*A*S*H, with lead writer Larry Gelbart - who is featured in And Here's the Kicker - are primarily comedy, the main source of which is Hawkeye and Trapper playing a cruel and humiliating prank on Frank and/or Margaret, or Frank's frantic obsessions and guilt complexes. An unreliable source alledges that Gelbart's preferred pseudonym, when he used one, was Francis Burns. The plot thickens.

The crowning example of a comedy based on that kind of humour is probably Tony Shaloub's Monk, an excellent show which is hands-down the most tragic comedy on television. Det. Adrian Monk suffers from severe OCD, and his compulsions are usually what's played for laughs...or are they? Monk often seems like it's daring us to laugh, because it also exposes Adrian's torment in his actions against the inherent humour of a middle-aged man with wet feet shrieking, in full panic mode, "There's ocean in my shoes!!!". That scene, from "Mister Monk is Underwater", is one of the funniest things I've seen on television. It's also incredibly sad, and the fact that it's so funny makes me somewhat uncomfortable.

In other words, I'm really excited about reading And Here's the Kicker, and am at this time kicking myself for forgetting about it when spending a substantial Indigo gift card yesterday.

Mr. Genre Goes to Setting (And Gets Lucky)

2009-07-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

It seems we have another "accessible" sci-fi show coming to TV this fall: Shonda Rimes' Defying Gravity. Rimes is the creator of Grey's Anatomy, and the basic premise of Defying Gravity is that a bunch of astronauts live on a space ship in a Big Brother-type setting, and that their primary concern is not so much as their mission, or life on a space ship, but, rather sex. Yep, a "sci-fi" show whose press presents it as not only being entirely about sex, but about the juvenile, damaging, hedonistic, dangerously fantastical approach to sex as seen on Grey's Anatomy.

Honestly, when I first saw this trailer on the telly, I thought it was a prank. Most reputable sci-fi has a good love story, happy or sad. We all smiled or cried over Captain Kirk and his exotic alien babes, Picard and Crusher's unrequited love, Han and Leia, Sheridan and Delenn, Kira and Odo, Jack O'Neil and Samantha, John and Riley (ok, maybe not that last one, as no one watched Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)...but this is something disturbingly different.

Are Defying Gravity and Stargate: Universe indicative of what's meant by the SyFy channel's mandate of diversifying programming and making it more accessible (DG, for the record, is an ABC show)? I sure hope not, because anything associated with Grey's has a higher-than-average likelihood of being....um....bad.

Seriously, though. What happens when you take a genre - in this case, sci-fi - and relegate it to setting status, ignoring the philosophical qualities? Can it still be considered sci-fi if it adheres to the genre in letter (advanced technology; off-Earth setting) but not in spirit (no, "orgies in space" is not a standard sci-fi storytelling element)?

Hopefully, this is just the fad for a season or two. Every TV season has a fad, just like how every summer there are two or three movies with the same foundation, like Armageddon and Deep Impact in 1998. In the meantime, if I find myself concerned about how people handle interpersonal relationships in space, I'll pop in a little TNG, or if romance isn't the concern of the day, 2001: A Space Odyssey..and pretend that Deying Gravity will never make it to air.

By The Beard Of Ra!

2009-07-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

Re: what exactly will the SyFy channel do about "diversifying" it's programming to attract non-sci-fi viewers?

I think we have our scary, scary answer.

Scary.

Emmy, Where's Your Trousers?

2009-07-17T09:47:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to rant about this year's glaring Emmy nomination exclusions, because it always just sounds snooty. I'm not even going to rant about how no recognition for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (save a sound editing nod) or Life (did they even submit considerations?) factors into my opinion of the Emmys as a meaningful honour. But I could, because everyone involved in at least the last four episodes that closed Terminator, and Life's mid-season "Badge Bunny" deserves to be recognized for putting out the highest-quality TV I've seen in twenty years as a watcher. Heck, I'd send them a plaque myself.

What I am going to do is take an opportunity to point your attention towards the gentleman who, amidst two remarkable ensemble casts, is the one I believe to be most deserving of award-based recognition this year: supporting actor (and master artist) Garret Dillahunt. Playing a total of three very different characters on two very different shows - Terminator and Life, natch - and kicking ass and taking names across the board, Dillahunt proved himself to be the epitomy of the writer/director's dream: the actor who will not only take everything you throw at him, but deliver it. His performance on Terminator as a (literal) killing machine whose body gets repurposed to house a childlike artificial intelligence prototype was one of if not the most convincing turns I've seen on-screen (see especially: "Cain Raised An Abel"). On Life, as crimelord Roman Nemikov, his portrayal was so strong and thorough that Roman's presence loomed over the entire second half of the season. He only appeared on-screen in three episodes, but I remember him as having been a regular.

And the little TV clips on Terminator of the Hercules/Beastmaster-type program starring the man whose body Dillahunt's terminator originally stole? Brilliant on so many levels.

The full casts (and writers, directors, art directors, cinematographers, music directors) of Terminator and Life were extraordinary talents who will be missed, at least by me, who doesn't believe HBO and House are the crowning achievements of dramatic television. But if one just person outside the sound crew from either show could be recognized for their work. I'd want it to be Garret Dillahunt. Well done, sir.

Happy Bastille Day, Everybody!

2009-07-14T14:25:00.001-07:00

Well, maybe "happy" is the wrong adjective.

...

The long-awaited ending of Heaven's Gate

2009-07-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

Congratulations, sympathy, and much thanks to the brave soul who Moviepooped Heaven's Gate. This infamous 80's western screens in its entirety about once every four months on TVO's Saturday Night at the Movies - oh TVO, I miss you! - and I decided to take a stab at it before we left Ontario. I couldn't make it past the 2.5-hour mark, at which point there were still almost 1.5 hours left to go. Some movies are worth staying up until 2 in the morning to finish; this overly long, poorly-paced, minimally scripted and generally boring debacle is not one of them. If you have a deep and resentful loathing for Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books, stay away from this film - it's the cinematic equivalent. (Haven't read The Wheel of Time? If you've ever watched Dragonball Z, it's the same idea.)

It's easy to be tempted to watch Heaven's Gate. Who can resist a western, least of all a western whose cast includes John Hurt, Christopher Walken, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Jeff Bridges, and Isabelle Huppert? It sounds great on paper. This is the second most disappointing western I've ever seen...though I suppose I haven't really seen it, as I didn't sit through the whole thing. But now I know how it ends, so thank'ee, Moviepooper!

Warhol-Sequitur

2009-07-13T08:49:00.000-07:00

I'm about to embark on an extensive just-for-fun paper, subject Andy Warhol. A recently heard comment has led me to take a second look at his work, and appreciate it for the first time. Can anyone recommend a notable book, documentary, etc.?

Fire Up The Warthog!

2009-07-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

I've never heard of South African director Neil Blomkamp, nor his award-winning sci-fi short Alive in Joburg, nor of the feature film that led to, District 9, which is set for release this August. I have, however, heard of Peter Jackson, and his refusal to direct (but agreement to executive-produce) a film version of the Xbox phenomenon Halo. Halo: The Movie never made it far past the greenlight room, reportedly because Universal and Fox didn't want to approve something so expensive without Jackson directing. The story goes that Jackson put forward Neil Blomkamp's name to helm Halo. The studio response: "Who's going to watch a film directed by Neil Blomkamp?"

Judging by this trailer, a lot of people - myself included.

If District 9 holds up to the quality promised in that clip, I'd look forward to the same director's version of Halo. There hasn't been a good military sci-fi film since Aliens, so we're long overdue. What I would not look forward to is Halo by Peter Jackson, mostly because of his disturbing love of melodrama, amply demonstrated in weird plot additions to The Lord of the Rings that didn't so much render the story more accessible as they did cause my ears to bleed. If Jackson made Halo, he'd probably do something like have Cortana download into a hot human body so that her and the Master Chief could get jiggy with it. And let's face it, their love is strange enough as it is. (Cortana is an artificial intelligence. And the Master Chief is a cyborg, so can he even, I mean, you know?)

But hey! There's a new sci-fi film coming soon, and it promises very good things, so let's all be happy and wait for August (and hope it screens locally).

How To Succeed In Diplomacy Without Really Trying

2009-07-09T15:43:00.000-07:00

If you don't know who Andy Warhol or Jasper Johns is, this may not be funny.

Sci-Fi's Metamorphosis

2009-07-07T10:07:00.000-07:00

Did you know that the Sci-Fi Channel has changed it's name to SyFy, believing that this will encourage viewers who won't watch anything labeled sci-fi to tune in?

Well, it's news to me!

This move has been partly explained as a desire to have a unique brand name. The people behind the change claim that SyFy will give them more flexibility in programming. I'm curious to see how, unless they're planning on diluting the channel's content with other genres, and why that would be considered a good move. One of the main points of having (and watching) a specialty channel is because it has a specialty. I'd wager most people don't watch TSN for reasons not involving sporting events and news, or watch Discovery because they're really in the mood for some fiction (unless you'd put Criss Angel Mindfreak in that category, in which case you're in luck). I'd like to see whatever test marketing they've done involving people who don't like sci-fi and how the name change affects their media consumption. The most interesting thing here is that ratings and demographics are not an issue - the Sci-Fi Channel is going strong across the globe, with a balanced gender demographic to boot.

I can understand the temptation to move the channel from a (wildly popular) specialty product to a mass-market product that the jocks, geeks, goths, preps, and your mom who watches American Idol can all agree on. After all, we've seen it happen recently and with great success in the film industry: The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and Star Trek have been embraced by people who wouldn't be caught dead reading a comic or watching an episode. However, we've also seen the same intent produce quite the opposite result; see: The Incredible Hulk. No, wait, don't. Please. For your own sake.

Then, there have been a handful of recent films not trying to cater outside their target markets, which have been good and returned a decent box office but haven't become mass-consciousness phenomenons, i.e. Hellboy. I'm guessing that's kind of where the Sci-Fi channel is right now, popular and profitable, but popular and profitable isn't as good as wildly popular and hugely profitable, so they're trying to raise the stakes.

I can't help but see the SyFy Channel having a Stargate: Atlantis effect. A few years ago, the producers/writers seemed to think they were giving the people what they want by killing a major male character for no plot reason (and, they insist, no personal reason) and replacing him with Firefly's Jewel Staite, thus severely skewing SGA's Hot Guy to Hot Girl ratio whilst losing an interesting, entertaining, well-established character. It turns out that the show badly underestimated its audience, as the backlash was so intense and angry and prolonged that they soon found themselves scrambling to find a way to bring this guy back to life, but plot or contractual obligations prevented them from doing much about it. It's one of the the classic TV blunders: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Also, Syfy looks like an abbreviation for Syphyllis. That's just undignified.

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Bank Job

2009-07-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

I've watched a lot of heist films, but rarely enjoyed doing so. It's a genre that typically glamourizes and glorifies criminals and crime, and that tends to spoil the fun for me. I don't even partake in socially acceptable theft, like pirating music and film, so as slick and well-put together as something like Ocean's Eleven is, I just can't get into its groove. So help me for being a stuffy, uptight, conservative goody-two-shoes; I just don't find gleeful, wanton criminal behaviour with no significant negative consequences to be interesting or fun.

Then again, if I were a true stuffy, uptight, conservative goody-two-shoes, I'd never have watched The Bank Job past its first sixty seconds. The best heist film I've ever seen is, unfortunately, a film I'm not going to recommend to anybody (but I'll tell you about it 'til your ears fall off. Hypocrisy? Irony? You decide!).

The Bank Job (2008) tells a version of the Baker Street Robbery, a 1971 heist involving a big enough haul and small-but-juicy enough amount of public information to propel it to urban legend heights. The film follows a man named Terry (Jason Statham), a part-time thief not making enough in his day job to pay off some crime boss (whether its a loan or protection money is never specified). When his friend and part-time colleague Martine (Saffron Burrows) propositions him with a solid plan to roll a bank, Terry's desire to pay his debts and get out of "the business" prompt his agreement. Also requiring a tidy bit of cash is Terry's desire to permanently leave the country with his wife and kids, so that he'll no longer have to worry about them being harmed by a vengeful mark or colleague.

The heist, however, is not the climax of the film, but the end of the first act. The second and third acts are the story of the aftermath. Unbeknownst to the crew, Martine has been hired by British domestic intelligence (MI-5) to retrieve the contents of a specific safety deposit box belonging to a local criminal. It turns out someone's been blackmailing his way out of prosecution by possessing sexually indecent photos of the Queen's little sister. Upon discovering these, Terry is both livid and terrified of the ramifications of knowing they exist. Also winding up in the crew's possession are a local madame's blackmail photos, mostly of MPs, and a list of dirty cops. At this point, the heist takes a back seat as the story becomes Terry and co. trying to figure out the safest way to dispose of information some people would kill for.

I suppose it would be more appropriate to think of The Bank Job as a drama/thriller rather than a heist film, especially since the heist isn't the story. There's a lot to appreciate in this film. The acting, writing, directing, and use of music are solid. Amongst a cast of British TV regulars, Statham stands out in particular, his performance being so...normal. Terry's reaction upon agreeing to the heist, in spite of its gravity and his reasons for doing it, includes a touch of giddy, incredulous, I-can't-believe-I'm-actually-going-to-rob-a-bank! bubbling up to the surface. It's these small things, present but quiet, that prove Jason Statham to be very good at his job. In a nice touch rarely seen at the movies, Martine's withholding the job's true nature is presented not as conniving greed, but an attempt to protect Terry and the crew from the trouble that accompanies such knowledge. My favourite part of the movie? The fact that it's about fallout, and consequences, and is not in the least bit glamorous or sexy. In a nice bit of foreshadowing that pretty well sets the tone of the movie, the crew ultimately accesses the bank through an underground crypt packed with Black Death leftovers . Overall, The Bank Job is a gritty, severe, often uncomfortable portrait of why crime bears no resemblance to George Clooney's giddy antics in the Ocean movies, and very well-done. From my perspective, it's the best heist film yet.

There is, however, a very big caveat for some viewers. There is more female nudity in the first fifteen minutes of The Bank Job alone (with more to come later) than I've ever seen contained in one movie. It's not entirely unreasonable, as a large portion of the plot involves the practice and consequences of sexual deviance and general depravity, and one of the villains is a pornographer, and the nudity is not presented in a particularly tittilating fashion either - but I know that for many people, the context doesn't matter, only the presence. With a story set in 1971, it's kind of funny and perhaps not coincidental that on-screen nudity is so prevalent in 70's film that it's almost a defining mark of the era. Bonus points for authenticity?

There's also a lot of very uncomfortable and disturbing violence in the film (and I'm okay with that, since murder and torture aren't subjects to be dealt with lightly), but most of it is off-camera or cut away from. Even without reveals, though, it's cringe-inducing - I couldn't even bring myself to watch some of the characters anticipation of what was to come, which I guess says something about their quality of work. The Bank Job is, in every way, "intended for mature audiences. Viewer discretion is advised."

It's one of the most mature films I've seen, in the sense that it could be more harmful than other films to watch without thinking about it what's being said, or having a stronger sense of what you do and don't take away from visuals. Someone could go in thinking that they're going to see a cool film, discover to their disappointment that this one's dark and deep, and only pay attention to (or remember the film for) the incredible nudity. Or go in knowing exactly what they'll get, and still have the same reaction.

As I said, I will not recommend, i.e. tell anyone they should watch this movie. It's excellent, yes, but so's The Big Lebowski, and for similar reasons I don't usually recommend that one either. So.

Fallout-Sequitur: The Amazing Disappearing Nuka-Cola Truck?

2009-07-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

So, you know how the distribution list at the Nuka-Cola factory lists the Super-Duper Mart, Paradise Falls, and the Old Olney grocery at the main Quantum drop sites? Long after completing "The Nuka-Colla Challenge", I finally went into Old Olney - I was avoiding it because it's full of Deathclaws, and I didn't have the dart gun - and not only is the Old Olney grocery apparently no longer in existence, but the whole Deathclaw-infested city and sewers only yielded one puny bottle of Quantum. Sure there's lots of ordnance in the sewers, but you'll probably spend it all killing Deathclaws, and the only real reason to go down there is for a unique suit of power armor, a couple of mini-nukes, and a free Fat Man (too bad I'm using a character more closely resembling a U.S. Army Ranger than a Cap Trooper - that loot's useless!).

But then, a glimmer of hope! On the steps of the firehouse, on the southeast corner of town, is a skeleton with a note beside it telling of how the Quantum delivery truck had an accident and jacknifed on the highway "east of town", but the shipment was intact! So I spent quite some time trolling the ground-level and elevated highways in the southeast quadrant, but no truck. I remember coming across a truckload of Quantum earlier in the game, but it was nowhere close to Old Olney, so I'm thinking this truck doesn't actually exist, and that's it's all a cruel, cruel joke. A cruel, cruel joke full of Deathclaws.

So if you haven't completed the Nuka-Cola Challenge, and are thinking that going to Old Olney will help, it looks like you're mistaken. Unless you want that power armor, save yourself the time (and ordnance).

(One plus side: the eastern overpass overlooking the town is a great place to practice very long-range sniping in safety. Even if you hit a monster, it won't see you and can't get to you anyway.)