The Year of Magical Thinking

I cannot finish reading this.

It appeared, with its gorgeous blue-green spine with simple black, serif type on my shelf one day my friend cleaned her apartment in summer. We drank much vinho verde in those days, and she liked to show the world her control over it by swapping the placement of shelves and tables, choosing meticulously where each should interact with another. She designed her own feng shui, and this day on the porch in the sunshine and our thin dresses, she pulled open a scrolled drawer full of books. She bade me take all of them, and they have been sitting now on my shelves for 6 months.

On a night of uncharacteristic insomnia, this spine looked like the best possible thing to make the hours worth something.

It scared the shit out of me. 

Wolf of Wall Street

Remember when Titanic came out, and we all took a collective breath to make it through 3 entire hours. When we exhaled it was with amazement we'd survived. Three hours -- really? Not since the audacity of  Zulus and Ben Hurs have we sat through things like that. And for Ben Hur and Gone with the Wind, we actually had civilized intermissions.

I don't think if Wolf had had an intermission I wouldn't just duck into the nearest theatre playing Catching Fire instead of returning.

There are
only so many ways you can glorify something without it becoming actually boring. Even if it is colorful, well-soundtracked, equal parts short and long shots, brilliant acting, titties, drugs, hot cars... I mean There are some seriously brilliant scenes here. The tag team dwarf launching scenes, for example, introduce how over the top and immoral the lifestyle framed in the movie is. Then, flashback to see how the narrator (interesting Annie Hall style amalgam of voice over narrations add fun texture throughout) started. Much like Tim Robbins' character in the Hudsucker Proxy. So sweet, so innocent, so full of vim for the world.  a couple half hearted fall-to-sin scenes later, we have the board of this fun/deplorable company going through the contracts of hiring the dwarves.

The scenes are well linked. The back and forth of the story telling follows an intuitive meandering this close to the beginning. Unfortunately, the writing loses its way about halfway through and the narration falls out right around where act two should start to seriously grip you, and twist your heart strings.

Instead you get a lack luster quilt of cliche bullet points of how "boring" life is without drugs and endless hookers. Fair enough, but the fascination with the loods lifestyle is so overpowering that maybe the writers, directors, producers didn't want to give it up any more than the character. The reluctance to leave the flying pharmacy of fun over plays the same jokes so much that they over-lap in a succession that would be mind numbing if the ending had seemed as sincere as the funland. Unfortunately, that effect is not pulled off, and somewhere around the end of hour two (beginning of act 2) you look around the theatre and are amazed you are still here, and the story has barely begun.

Ie. it becomes dull. There is no third act to reward the audience for its time spent. There is no sympathy for the Wolf as he sips alcohol free beer, or almost dies on his yacht, or get arrested, or looks sad in teaching people to be salesmen. Either the story has failed to elicit this from me, or I want this guy to persevere in his wolfy ways.

Seriously, his problem solving, and ingenuity early in the film led me to believe he could have defeated the FBI and gone out in a blaze of Dillinger-esque glory if only he had stuck to it. But, no, he wimps out and betrays himself and best friend in a whiny hole of inept self-pity.

Ug.

Watch at home, cheaply on Netflix with lots of tasty beer and a couple friends.

It's Not True! Not Only God Forgives!

Think he'll use those fists?
Think that lens flare is going to save his soul?

Seriously, human beings will forgive a lot. I know this, because the movie Only God Forgives is an atrocious pan through beautiful colors and lighting, a la David Lynch. Glancing through the chat boards on the film's IMDB page, however, reveals the sympathetic souls who deem this an instant classic doomed to the hatreds of short-sighted contemporaries and small-minded poop skulls who hate on slow, twisted, violent movies with no sympathetic characters and nary point of interest in sight.

Which is how most people seem to feel about the Danish-French-Thai flick improbably starring a dreamy American man in the Thai drug world. Open minded viewers can see the feasibility of Ryan Gosling being the son of Kristin Scott Thomas, but not the brother of Tom Burke. Normal viewers can see the feasibility of massive drug cartels in Thailand, but not so much the super white guy running it. Artsy viewers get stuck on the sets and lighting, letting the atmosphere (which is, indeed, brilliant) lull them into thinking the drawn out scenes are equally well-executed.

The problem is not that scenes are slow, and dialog minimal. The words coming out of these characters' mouths are great: they're, articulate of both plot and character development, and fun to hear. Kristin Scott Thomas' opening monologue is killer, albeit 2 lines long.

Her mother character is exactly Lady Macbeth meets Donatella Versace -- if such a creature were the single mom and head of an international drug operation. I want to see this character in other situations, ruling different underworlds, fucking with other people's lives.

Similarly, the brothers are engrossing manifestations of how bad individuals can be. The writing pits them not against, but away from each other, as though they both spring from mom's twisted womb, one anal retentive, one anal expulsive, and both unable to relate sexually to anyone in the real world.

Which is where the wrongness starts. Of course one is a rapist/murderer, the other a possibly impotent lock-box. However, there is nothing else to illustrate this. There's a whole boxing ring set with dozens of fighters and bookies to play with -- untouched. You're in Bangkok, don't try to tell me there isn't crazy dog fighting, snake-blood-drinking, trafficking, hostel busting, beach combing, boat using, fun going on. Not even mentioned or shown. The scenes that could fill those lousy minutes of Ryan Gosling looking at his own hands or improbably hallucinating about hallways are innumerable. The best we get is a shoot out in a noodle shop, and some guy's arm sliced off with a machete near a train.

Nope.

Which leads me to the second major thing wrong with this flick. The stylization of the sets, dialog, and totally uptight blocking go so overboard that they blur together and make each scene mockable rather than tense. The only scene for which is actually works is after Gosling brings his hot hooker to meet his Macbeth Mommy for dinner. KS Thomas throttles the scene, Gosling lights her cigarette automatically, and the hooker shows improbably rational, and emotionally stable spunk. For her efforts Gosling makes her strip in an alley way to put her in her place. Yep. It's crazy good at showing all their POVs on life (even though the hooker's isn't believable).

Unfortunately, everything else is dulled into a glam-grunge morass of boredom.

You can see how well these shots are put together.
Too bad nothing is done with them.

Third: the cop. The story is pretty neat, if cliche. Dirty Harry with machete takes unorthodox, and unprecedentedly violent measures to restore the spirit of the law. There's even a sweet training-with-machete-at-dawn scene to show how serene this guy is. But, uh, there are also too many Lynchian kareoke scenes where all audience members sit like statues. That's alot of screen time to tell your audience just one thing. We get it. He's revered and artistic. Use those scenes for another thing or three. Have his safe kareoke spot threatened by some improbable but reciprocal hallucinations of Gosling. Build us a relationship between these adversaries. If director/writer Refn doesn't want to go that route, fine, there are other things you can do, don't just glut your screen with repetitive crap.

Ug. That's why it's bad. Not because "it's slow". Not because it's too violent or too sexually twisted. Because it has a shimmer of idea and fails to express it adequately in the medium the creator has chosen.

Casino Royale

One of my best friends named her baby Vesper. There was a little release to accompany the naming of this new human to the effect of "our beautiful daughter is peaceful and sacred like an evening prayer". I know differently.

Aubergine and I were living together when the first blond Bond burst into the world, shattering the hopes of critics to harp on their same boring lines about corny sexism and crappy tech that never quite actualizes like Star Trek manages. We watched it in the theatre -- we were poor, so this was a big deal. Then she watched it with her mountain man of a fiance (now husband, and proud pappa of two micro-Aubergines).

Just from this simple plot of real life you can draw your own conclusion about why the second small copy of my friend is named Vesper.

This conclusion is just how good Casino Royale is.

And it's not for too many reasons. And few of them have to do with the believability of the physics in the film,  the stupidly over exposed color palette, or the overt exposition of how to play poker, or the idea that none of those rich guys playing poker wouldn't immediately google the hell out of Bond's ostensible alibi and find him to not really exist, and then kill him for his money. If google had existed when Ian Fleming wrote the book, this would have been a plot twist to remember I'm sure. Instead, the screenplay just plugs 15 Sony Vaios, 25 Sony Ericsson phones, and the 1 cursory defibrillator in an Aston Martin and calls it a day on adjusting to the cyber-crazy world of 2006.

Which are all obvious, and funny when you're not attaching to the plot and characters. What makes it is the development of Bond as a character. How he kills his first person. How M doubted his mental state and ability to do the job. Why he becomes a sexaholic. How the first perfect Bond-tini was made, and why he's so damned attached to it. And then... there's Craig himself. He's the craggy, rogueish answer to Pierce Brosnan's slick-to-the-point-of-being-a-skeeze Bond. He brings the franchise back to a place of credibility instead of heightened unattainbility, and therefore gives all us lovers of the underdog and anti-hero something satisfying to hang onto.

One major catalyst of this is his babe. While I love Pussy Galore, and her free spirited use of airplanes, she made a total of three facial expressions. By comparison, Eva Green oughtta be given an Oscar.

She is not only a capable actress (watch her weirdo indie flicks) but she is stunning in a way that incorporates freckles and unusual facial structure. In many scenes, she doesn't even wear makeup. Halle Berry was born looking air brushed perfect, it's not her fault of course that she's so goddamned perfect, but that perfection does not lend an air of believable to anyone's action-flick.*

 Most importantly for the film though, is the writing. She has a whole back story that doesn't involve, but does challenge, Bond. The plot uses two book end points of exposition for this, a touching death scene that convincingly builds the Bond character and over-arching themes, and most poignantly, shows just how emotionally involved each kill in a Bond flick should actually be.

Instead of simply shooting and stabbing through the film Vesper must aid Bond in killing some goons, and  is rewarded with a whole touching shower scene to reflect on it (forcing the audience to acknowledge that murder is not actually easy). The best part is the supposedly funny one-liner the next morning: "even dead people have their uses" where the audience is given, for the first time ever, a chance to see how Bond deals with the bodies. While it is clever for subtly uncovering a villain, and does illicit a chuckle, this particular balcony scene chills the audience, confirming the tenderness of the shower scene.

Overall, the plot could easily have been de-Bond-ified and filmed as an Atonement or Brick-like movie and taken seriously by the critics.

Which is to say, quite good.






*I'm not here to say action flicks should be believable. Simply pointing out differences between some entertaining, but infeasible films.

Where the Wild Things Are Not

Maurice Sendak's luscious and enchanting story of 48 pages is quite lovely for two reasons:

1. Distincitve color palette with memorable monsters
2. Story of imagination taking you away -- but not too far away. There is tasty dinner after. You can always go home again.

This is a story written in the 60s for the parents of the 70s and 80s drunk on pop-science telling  you to coddle your children.

You want a real story? Go read Peter Pan. Peter Pan is not for bitches. Peter Pan is for the people who know they could go home, but home would never be the same,  they are too big for home, and they choose to go back to their innocently murderous ways.

Peter Pan raised The Greatest Generation. Where The Wild(e) Things Are raised the sissy whiners who actually buy the footy pjs from the pages as 24 yr olds. And they protest Wall Street. With zero comprehension.

Finally, who would win in a cage fight between Peter Pan and Max?

Babe

Swords

Pixie

  

No big.

Vs,

defeat

um... yea...

What the hell Downton Abbey?

Short Round is actually considering not watching the fourth season next winter.

Remember those scenes from Fahrenheit 451 where the wife character presses herself on her other, digital family? That is what just happened at the Osterhaus. Except there was a quorum of the family declaring such things about the Grantham family.

Seriously, who writes such great drama that our particularly cynical family actually removes themselves communally from reality on any regular basis to care about the fates of fictional characters?

That's my review. The whole thing. That is how good it is. 

Porco Rosso

I heard there was a sequel coming out for this. Not even from a living, breathing person, but from the reliable quorum of IMDB! I heard it was for last year! I love this movie. I have watched it, without doubt, more than any other movie.

Of course, nothing will ever compare with Gone with the Wind, but this is like the training wheels version of Casablanca; the merits of it being so I'll dictate later. In this little space of rant I'd like to pose the idea of another movie with these characters, a prequel.

Rarely would a prequel ever ever work for a movie. The meet-cutes would just lose their punch because you know the real deal is coming. Like How I Met Your Mother. The whole damn thing is a prequel. You'll never get to the climax, and if you ever do it'll be the biggest let down -- you haven't bonded with the real star, so you'll never accept them as a part of your own comfy, beloved.

Even for Casablanca, which basically begs for a prequel, can you imagine that romance being at all fulfilling knowing how it is doomed?

Porco Rosso, however, has the unique perspective of presenting a romantic characters not only in a pleasantly conflicted yet hopeful situations, but  it ends without resolve (hence the excitement for a sequel). On that point, it's just like Gone with the Wind. Not like Gone with the Wind, the historical fiction is very fictional, and childlike. It will adapt to having a sequel, because the bar is set to an achievable level. No sequel to GwtWwill ever live up to that splendor and wanting. The wanting, in fact is the whole thesis. PR's thesis is pure entertainment, and if that entertainment can be continued, we fans will like experiencing, and because of the level of fiction/story, Studio Ghibli won't have too difficult a time delivering.

On the other side, PR has two killer flash back scenes. Their presentation is brilliant for various reasons, but for the argument for a prequel they are brilliant for the amount of hopeful conflict they present.

There are at least three love stories presented. Only one is resolved in the flashback. There's a death. There's a definite posse with complicated interpersonal drama. There's this whole movie to show life goes on after that drama, and that the drama continues to exist in the present, and has potential to sustain itself well into the future.

Add to that the setting, of the first ever pilots experimenting with airplane design. The characters are bros like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with one chick sidekick like April. On the grand scale, these characters are fighting the first wars with planes. On the small town, micro scale individuals are in the midst of a clash between socialism and libertarianism. Fraught with physical peril, heroism, and then inexplicable magic transformation of man to pig, there is ripe territory for an audience drenched in adventure fantasy to dig in.

I want a whole movie or mini series following the meeting of Gina, Piccolo, Marco, Belrini, and all the little people they meet. They're young enough at the beginning that their parents could betroth one another, or forbid them associating with whichever appears most nefarious in any given adventure. There's innocent love and experimental kissing. The inevitable first crash in the open sea, stranded on an island. the character development of honor. Building up why we can never believe wrong of Marco, the inevitable turning of one of their party who joins the fascists and gets killed. The righteous anger there-associated.... I could go on. Give me the money for the time, and I totally will.

In the mean time, I just keep watching it and keep to myself how Marco becomes Porco and how Ferrali betrays his best friend. How Piccolo fathers a string of mediocre engineers but political geniuses, and how Fio is the ultimate last great hope for the Adriatic. 

Trailers

An art form not given enough credit.

Here are some I watched, and who I want to watch the whole film with:

Mamagaard and Dawnula:
Safety not Gauranteed (definitely watched the first 15 minutes of this film thinking it was just an indie flick sort of trailer. Totally awesome and loveable)
Celeste and Jesse Forever
To Rome with Love

Papagaard:
Bernie

Hunter:
Hitchcock (also, he needs to see Pyscho)
Holy Motors
Arbitage

Houston:
Girl Model

Short Round:
Safety not Guaranteed
The Impostor
The Words
Beasts of the Southern Wild

And that's just the "indie" flicks that are hot right now on Apple TV.

Das Camp

Having had a streak of bad work days, little Kiddo was settling in for another slug fest with the email system when my super sweet office mate, Spalette, came to my cubicle. She was a little giddy, and Kiddo was not feeling the good vibrations, until Spalette pulled forth from her purse one of the more thoughtful gifts I've received in recent memory: an NTSC version of Iron Sky, the Nazis-from-the-moon movie made almost entirely from fan donations...

There are several reasons for my fascination with the movie, not least of which is how it was financed. Number 1 reason is the ridiculosity embodied in the idea of moon nazis. Much like zombie nazis, there just aren't enough ways in the world to poke fun at a bunch of people who took them selves so seriously.

Fears, I have found in talking to my friends Sugar, Pho Poet, Skinny Dancer, and now Hunter, should here be quelled: Nazis are bad guys. I inherently understand this as well as the next human being. What they wrought with such exemplary perfection combines humanity's 2 most instinctive disgusts: genocide and incest.  You really have to work hard and be in very specific place in history for such things to even be comprehensible. This movie does nothing to discredit this conclusion.

Number 2 reason for loving the previews of Iron Sky are the flaming zeppelins in space. Yep.  For a steam punk chick in a cyber punk age, you really can't top such a spectacle. The visuals and effects don't stop there either. In fact, it's the number one best thing (distinct from Kiddo's favorite thing) about the movie. There is good reason for it too.

Watch the credits for Iron Sky. There  is a screen full of actors, writers, and directors, and two minutes of constantly scrolling credits for animators, props guys, costumers, and sfx kids. Look further into them, and you find all those animators, prop guys, costumers, and sfx kids all came to this project from super high end films with awards. Most notably the costumers from Schindler's List. It's a kind of completion in thought that makes my humanist side tremble with joy.

Which is why I was so excited to see it.

Watching with Hunter though, was a little nerve wracking. There was discussion of the need for no humor to surround genocide. There was questioning of some of the campier aspects of the film (a UFO landing in a marijuana field, inexplicable losing of lady clothes in an airlock). I was a bit defensive.

How does one overcome being defensive of a beloved thing? Inflict more  of that thing on the offender.

We watched Cannibal the Musical immediately thereafter.

Ha.