Disney’s still really in fine form. Not perfect, but in fine form.

You get these wistful references to the glory days, which are kind what happens when people don’t recognize that their enjoyment of Carousel of Progress is due to nostalgia rather than due to any quality of the ride experience. It’s pretty bogus. The best work ever done at Walt Disney World was during the late 80s and 90s, when Disney-MGM and Animal Kingdom opened. The worst park, from a sheer quality perspective, is Epcot. On the other hand, it’s the worst park at WDW, which means I enjoy the heck out of it every time.

New stuff this trip!

Raglan Road is a new restaurant which looked cheesy in potential but wow, does it work out well. The food’s really good; traditional Irish cooking with spiffed up presentation and a lot of care taken with ingredients and such. I had this pork loin stuffed with sausage, plus mashed potatoes, and it was just so well done. Perfect harmony of tastes, mild but rich at the same time — loved it.

I did a lot more of Animal Kingdom than usual. The new Everest coaster is superb; not a high end coaster like Universal has across town, but the use of reverse is really good. I liked it a lot. I also saw a lot more of the theming in the Asia section of the park, and it’s an immaculate vista. I’ve read that the team responsible made a field trip to Nepal and the Himalayas, and it’s very easy to believe that.

We also hit Africa, although we skipped the rides. Again, great theming. It’s odd to see pretty depressing areas converted to shiny tourist places, mind you, but I appreciate it as an illusion of relocation to a nonexistent world, if that makes sense.

Disney-MGM is the same way; the theming is very dense, with a lot of detail. I compare this to Epcot, which has minimal theming in the Future World section and very… bursty theming in the World pavilions, I guess. The individual pavilions are buildings in the country’s styles, but for the most part, they don’t present an environment. They’re pavilions, not areas.

Speaking of Epcot, we did the American Adventure show for the first time. Eh. I don’t expect I’ll redo it; it’s cheesy and overwrought.

I continue to wish Disney would figure out Future World. There’s a rumor that Siemens will be sponsoring more of it, which might help, but man. It’s too spread out, and there’s too little to do — the original concept of sub-areas sponsored and invigorated by various companies has been too hard to maintain with shifting sponsorships.

Oh — Soarin’ is nice. Not great, but nice. It needs a narrative track, although the raw images of California are pretty awesome.

We spent a bus ride chatting with an older couple who’d just done a Disney Vacation Club open house. Nice people, but the interesting thing was that they said their guide claimed a new park (“fifth gate,” in Disney fanatic parlance) was on the way. They said he said he couldn’t say anything about it, but that it was gonna be under construction soon.

This seems unlikely — I can’t find a thing about it on the rumor sites — but hey, you never know. If there is a new park opening up in WDW, my bet is that it’ll be a thrill ride park similar to Universal’s Islands of Adventure; it’s the only thing in Orlando that you can’t find replicated inside WDW property.

Good trip. Good company. Can’t wait till next time, as usual.

• Posted by Bryant at 06:13 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

Robert Altman died yesterday night. He was one of the very best.

On his last film, A Prairie Home Compansion, Paul Thomas Anderson stood in as the backup director just in case — so this doesn’t come as a huge surprise. But it is hugely sad.

• Posted by Bryant at 12:08 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

I thought this review was interesting as a sample of flawed political discourse. Also fun for those who want to hear about how Happy Feet is a dangerous, offensive movie, but I’m gonna shine a flashlight on the clever rhetorical trick. Or, in this case, probably not a clever rhetorical trick — it’s probably just a guy who doesn’t realize exactly what kind of hyperbole he’s engaging in.

The trick is this: you take someone generally considered to be offensive on your side of the political spectrum, and you take a behavior you disapprove of on the other side of the political spectrum, and you say “it’s OK to disagree with me, but that behavior is exactly like this offensive person!” It gives you this veneer of reason, cause you’re being all rational and bipartisan and admitting there are slimeballs on your side of the fence. However, it also irrationally conflates what may be perfectly reasonable behavior with behavior that is generally accepted as slimy.

E.g., Pat Robertson:

Calling this Liberal is like those people that call Pat Robertson a conservative. Real conservatives cringe at that statement. No, he is an ultra right wing Christian neo conservative who teaches the word of Christ out of one side of his mouth and then calls openly for the public assassination of the democratically elected leader of a sovereign nation out of the other. No. Real conservatives stand as far away from that scary goon as humanly possible.

Aw, that’s awesome. He’s condemning a guy who calls for assassination! That shows he’s rational.

Happy Feet is the Liberal Pat Robertson.

Well, there you go. Happy Feet might as well be calling for public assassination. Wait…

Happy Feet is liberal like that unwashed hippie wearing the Look to the skies T-shirt that climbs and handcuffs himself to a tree to prevent someone from knocking down a forest on their own land.

You can have mixed opinions about the morality of people who cuff themselves to trees, sure. However, I think it is reasonably clear that calling for assassination is somewhat lower on the morality scale than tree-cuffing. Cause one involves death, and the other does not.

The review goes on to explain that Footloose is evil because the hero doesn’t believe that God forbids dance — um. Wait. No. That’s the plot of Happy Feet, in this case, but it’s definitely evil. Maybe it was evil in Footloose, too, I dunno. He’s pretty convinced that there’s something clearly wrong with it here — “Still not making up a single word.” After that there are a lot of spoilers, so I won’t keep going, but wow.

This shows up all the time on political blogs. Not quite as often in movie reviews. Good trick to recognize when you see it.

• Posted by Bryant at 01:53 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

There’s a really funny painful video here in which one Brian Atene explains why Kubrick should cast him in Full Metal Jacket. The followup is here; someone claiming to be Brian does a great job of snarking at the original.

After watching ‘em both, through many winces, I’m making the unfounded bet that this is a publicity stunt of some kind. Some random Youtube guy who’s never posted a video before happened to get his hands on a 20 year old videotape, and took the time to digitize it? Maybe, but more likely not.

• Posted by Bryant at 11:16 AM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

While I have done a number of fairly embarrassing things in my life, I have never…

No, I don’t think I can describe it. Go here. For another view, try this.

Perfectly work-safe. The words “forty million dollar elbow” are involved, but it’s not a sports story.

Wow.

• Posted by Bryant at 12:55 AM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

Questions came first.

Is it a pale shadow of Infernal Affairs? Will Scorsese have the guts to sail to the wind and let the bleakness blow through him? Will Nicholson be too much? Will DiCaprio be enough? Can Scorsese make it tight enough for us to feel the pain?

Is it Boston?

Yeah, it’s Boston.

The original was a tense, restrained exercise in suspense and pain. It was good, or better than good. The Departed takes the plot — the same lines, in places — and spills it out on a canvas made of Boston’s racial tensions and class divisions. It’s an equal to its predecessor through an alchemical transformation of mood, theme, and locale. William Monahan is from Boston. He was born ten years before me, which means he grew up watching South Boston riot when black kids showed up at their schools. That’s where the movie opens; that’s where it’s from.

Whitey Bulger came from that. You can’t paint with too wide a brush: you can’t say that South Boston was wholly shaped and driven by the fury of 1974. But Bulger built his organization in an environment full of people who thought that the government had abandoned them; that’s what made it easy. And Nicholson’s Frank Costello is Whitey Bulger, palpably and patently, from the opening footage of the riots to the revelations about his methods.

I’ve read criticisms of the 70s soundtrack. They’re missing the point. It’s a movie about the 70s — Costello is 70 years old, and he’s holding on to the glories he once had, and those glories rise inexorably from what happened then. It’s no mistake that one of the pivotal conversations between him and DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan is about who thinks he could take over for Costello. That conversation reflects Costello’s impending death, whether that death is by gunshot or natural causes. The question asked through both Costigan and Damon’s Sullivan is whether or not Costello’s shadow is long enough to corrupt the newest generation, but it’s not much of a question. Clearly it can.

Infernal Affairs is about duty versus duty. The Departed is about class and the ties that bind. S. drew this distinction between the movies for me: everyone in Infernal Affairs cares about being a cop. In The Departed, they care about getting ahead. Both Damon and DiCaprio are from the same place, and their different paths lead them back to the same place. South Boston, not the police department, is the axis of this movie.

DiCaprio’s the backbone. As far as I’m concerned, he’s gotten away from his glamor. He bulked up, and he plays Costigan with bursts of sudden unrestrained violence. You don’t doubt him. Damon’s merely good, but he’s just fine. He’s so natural in the role that it’s easy to forget that he’s too good-looking and boyish to be able to play a bad guy.

And man, they push against each other well. Rarely sharing screen space, always sharing head space. Ambition versus despair.

Answers. Scorsese had the guts. It was painful, gaudy, two and a half hours of damaged goods filmed with perfect technique. Nicholson was too much here and there, and there again, but if it hadn’t been for his facial expressions — yes, Jack, we know your grin — he’d have been perfect. The physical presence and the voice were what I wanted.

Best Director, Best Picture, Best Actor (DiCaprio), Best Supporting Actor (Wahlberg). Not a prediction, but they’re all of that caliber. Best Editing, of course.

The answers were good. Thanks.

• Posted by Bryant at 04:12 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

It’s time for the Lost Badass List to reappear. We last examined the question of the island’s badassery after the seaon finale. This list categorizes badasses over time, but is heavily weighted towards the current storyarc. This year, since the Others are regulars and since I cannot deny the force of nature that is Benry (credit for neologism to S.), Others are eligible for the list.

Without further ado!

1. Benry (aka Ben Linus, aka Henry Gale)
2. Sayid
3. Jin
4. Sawyer
5. Juliette

Comments and spoilers after the jump.

• Posted by Bryant at 11:53 AM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

As of September 24th, the first two Skylark books by E. E. Smith are listed on the Distributed Proofreader site’s list of Silver E-Texts. This means that they’re gonna hit the Project Gutenberg archives soon. This is awesome.

Sadly, the Lensman books look like they’re still a few decades out.

• Posted by Bryant at 12:09 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

If you look around a little on the Internet, you can find copies of the pilot episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Aaron Sorkin’s new one hour TV drama. It’s about a weekly sketch comedy show unsurprisingly like Saturday Night Live, with the expected Sorkin-load of interpersonal drama and principles and so on. No Joshua Malina yet, although I expect him to show up in the second season as the remarkably bright yet socially slightly inept wunderkind. (It’s a fair prediction. Come on.)

Anyway, me and S. watched the pilot the other night. Try and avoid the download that claims to be for an iPod; the sound is not quite synced perfectly with the video. Y’know, it’s Sorkin — there are principled monologues and two of the cast members used to be in a relationship with each other but now have to work together. I don’t think, one show in, you can really know if he’s breaking new ground, but the same old ground is still pretty good.

In particular I like that Sarah Paulson plays a devout fundamentalist Christian who happens to be one of the big three cast members on the show within the show. Sorkin likes discussing religion, and President Bartlet’s Catholicism was always taken seriously. If he can keep that up here, I’ll be intrigued.

The cast has the chance to grow on me. Matthew Perry was really good; Bradley Whitford was pretty good. Timothy Busfield has a regular role as the guy who runs the control room, and he easily distinguishes it from his West Wing role — Whitford had more trouble doing that, which may wind up being a minus. Steven Weber was good as the network chairman, but he’s playing the role a little too young. I kept forgetting he’s supposed to be as important as he is. Amanda Peet has the potential to be the weak link in the cast. Maybe she’ll surprise me.

But yeah, it’s Sorkin, it’s fun. I’ll watch it.

• Posted by Bryant at 12:57 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

I’ve talked about Lost badassery, but I’ve never created a comprehensive list of film badasses. That’s why I’m not Vern. Here it is.

• Posted by Bryant at 10:07 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

Let’s go to the tape, Chumley. I amended two grades; in retrospect, Wilderness was a touch better than I gave it credit for, and Samurai Commando 1549, while excellent, was not quite “I’d want to own it on DVD.”

Which is the requirement for an A grade. B grades I’d recommend seeing. C grades, well. And D grades I’d recommend avoiding.

Grade A

The Great Yokai War (A+)
Isolation (A+)
Train Man (A+)
All Out High (A)
Evil Aliens (A)
Reincarnation (A)
Widerness (A, improved grade)
The Echo (A-)
Pusher 3 (A-)

Grade B

Five Deadly Venoms (B+)
Samurai Commando 1549 (B+, dropped a notch)
Shinobi (B+)
Three Mighty Men (B)
Ultraman Max (B)
Vampire Cop Ricky (B)
Aziris Nuna (B-)
The Descendant (B-)
The Order of One (B-)
Storm (B-)

Didn’t Make the Grade

Red Shoes (C+)
The Gravedancers (C-)
Subject Two (C-)

Junk (D)
Hell (incomplete/D)
Ressonances (D)

Miscellanea

DJ XL5’s Zappin’ Party Cavalcade

• Posted by Bryant at 08:37 AM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

And finally…

The Great Yokai War. Just, whoa.

Miike isn’t one of my top five artists in the world (David Cronenberg, Richard Thompson, Wong Kar Wai, George R. R. Martin, probably Aimee Mann; list subject to change), but he’s the guy I’d like to play Being John Malkovich with. I want to see what he’s thinking while he works. I want to figure out what he’s trying to do, and I want to figure out how he keeps up his insane multi-movie-per-year pace while still churning out heart-stoppingly beautiful, perfect moments of film.

The Great Yokai War is almost painfully emotionally involving. Miike digs his hooks in early and holds you: he makes you care about what happens. There’s some sort of visceral reality in the way he shoots a movie that gets you; he has a way of immersing audiences which is just as effective here as it is in Audition. It’s just the specific emotional responses that are different.

Then I contemplate the climax of the movie, in which the world is saved by a freak coincidence and a legume. Plus pop music. Is Miike engaging in a cynical angry satire on children’s movies? I am honestly not sure. One Missed Call was in part a deeply barbed stab at Japanese cultural media, so maybe this was the same. There’s a scene where Tadashi Ino, the kid protagonist, dresses up for the big fight with a deeply snarky line pointed directly at Dragonball Z and its ilk, so there are hints of satire. But man, Miike clearly adores the Japanese cultural goblin tales he’s working with…

I got no idea. Hard to figure out. Either way it was a superbly beautiful, scary, thrilling, involving movie about saving the world. I’m a little sad about missing the rest of the movies Saturday night and Sunday, but exhaustion had set in, and this was about as good a capper as I could have asked for.

Grade: A+.

• Posted by Bryant at 05:43 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

Saturday was our children’s movie day. Aziris Nuna was the first of the pair, and it was pretty much a generic children’s movie. It’s somewhat looser than you’d expect from a US flick of the same style, and a little more leering, but all in all it didn’t go anywhere weird or wild.

The opening shots were incredible: pyramids rising behind Moscow, and a ship of some sort kinda drifting over the city. This had me considerably excited, since the Fantasia blurb said “Aziris Nuna is set in an alternate reality that sees the architecture of Moscow blended with Egyptian temples and pyramids.” Alas, this was not the case — it’s set in our reality, with a bunch of time travel, and the opening shots are just cool effects.

The look of the film held up. It’s sort of Fifth Element, sort of Zathura. The effects and set design were pretty amazing, considering the whole thing cost less than four million to make. (This according to one of the producers, hanging out at the back of the theater as we filed out.) The acting was as good as you’d expect, and the thing was competently made. But, eh, it’s still just a children’s movie and it didn’t hold my interest.

Grade: B-.

• Posted by Bryant at 03:05 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

The first time I saw Five Deadly Venoms, I was not as kind as I might have been. I enjoyed it a lot more this time — perhaps because I was in the mood, perhaps because it was on the big screen, or perhaps because I saw it in good company.

It’s still a sort of mystery with a lot of varied kung fu style, but I was ready for the pacing. I dug the range of fights quite a bit on second viewing; there’s great distinction between the five venoms. I was also forewarned that Lizard was played by Philip Kwok, who I have a fondness for from Hard-Boiled, so it was cool watching him mug around.

Grade: B+.

• Posted by Bryant at 01:26 PM | Comments (0) | Followups (0)

Fantasia lists this as The Order of One, but IMDB has it as Order of One. Who knows? The official website uses the article, so there you go.

It’s a total DIY low budget indie flick, shot for under $100,000 in and around Montreal. The big bad evil martial arts master is played by a real sensei from a local dojo, and I’d bet on a bunch of his thugs being students from the dojo. This makes, anyhow, for some pretty fun martial arts scenes — I can’t complain about that.

Well, and I can’t complain about much of anything. I mean, it’s an enthusiastic low budget tribute to Sonny Chiba and 70s action flicks, right down to the split screen. Yeah, the picture quality sucks and some kind of transfer sync issue was doing something weird with the frames per second, but whatever! It’s a guy just out of prison getting his hands on a mystical sword and fighting off waves of assassins while trying to decide if he should deliver it to the good guys or keep it himself. What more do you want?

… no, you don’t get good acting, but they’re all having fun.

Grade: B- if you don’t mind the complete indie nature, C+ if the bad lighting bugs you. For me? B-.

• Posted by Bryant at 12:44 PM | Comments (1) | Followups (0)