Author: Bryant
Quickie review of Forbidden Kingdom:
Two of the fight scenes are excellent, and the rest are pretty good.
I mean, you’re not seeing it for the plot, which is light. You’re seeing it because it’s the first time Jet Li and Jackie Chan have been in a movie together, and despite the fact that you’re nervous about Rob Minkoff’s directing (I mean, The Lion King?), Woo-ping Yuen is a great action choreographer.
It works out pretty well. Michael Angarano is not a completely embarassing martial arts actor; in particular, during his one extended fight scene, he does a decent job of being outclassed by the Witch of the Wolves. Everyone else is solid, of course. The Jackie Chan/Jet Li fight scene is superb and just about as good as you’d have wanted it to be, even with both of them aging.
And as far as I can tell, all the Westerners involved have a fondness for Hong Kong martial arts flicks. Nobody’s trying to dress this up or make it deep — it’s just another kung fu movie with a big premise and some time travel. Exposition is for art movies. If you don’t know who the Eight Immortals are, you can either find out on your own or live without understanding some of the references.
So I liked it, even though the South Boston accents were abysmal.
“OK, here’s the plan for the rest of the night. We’re gonna play the next song, then we’re gonna play the fake last song. Then I’m gonna introduce the other guys on the stage, with their Christian name, their nickname, possibly their Zodiac sign, their place of birth, and their surname. Then we’re gonna turn our backs to you and act like we’re off stage for a few moments. Then we’re gonna turn around, pretend to be surprised, and play some more music and then the show will end.”
As per this news. The novel is titled Anathem, and the blurb follows:
Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians — sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable “saecular” world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown.
Peter Berg is directing a Dune adaptation. Well, that’s a thing. I haven’t seen any of his movies… no, wait, I saw The Rundown, which was mildly amusing. Possibly thanks to the Walken. Maybe they’ll cast Walken as De Vries, and Dwayne Johnson as Duncan Idaho, and Seann William Scott as Feyd-Rautha? Nah, I don’t like where that went either.
15 movies, 15 quotes, no Googling. The last few answers have been supplied.
This is the coolest graph I’ve seen in a while. It’s a picture of box office grosses per movie over time, from 1986 to the present day. Very clever. You can see the evolution of the summer blockbuster, not to mention the winter blockbuster trend.
It’s harder reviewing the really, really good movies. What more are you going to say about There Will Be Blood? Yeah, Daniel Day-Lewis was awesome, and Paul Dano was too. The soundtrack was terribly cool — I didn’t read it as a horror movie soundtrack so much as I took it to be a parallel narrative of the industrialization of the United States. It groaned and crashed and squealed like machinery. Lovely.
The movie is the awesome achievement everyone’s saying it is. 2007 was an insanely good year for Americana movies, what with this plus No Country for Old Men. P. T. Anderson has pretty much come into his own.
Hm, one interesting aspect of the movie, which is not exactly a surprise if you’ve seen anything else Anderson’s made: there’s about zero narrative thrust. Most of the big pivotal events aren’t foreshadowed, and have no build up. There’s a distinct arc of degradation as Daniel Plainview descends into the depths of misanthropy, but there’s not exactly a story there. It’s simply people being people.
See it. Love it.
Dark Heresy. You are the retinue of Inquisitor Lord Zane Castis, the oldest Inquisitor in the Calixis Sector. His purview is heretical documents, which — for centuries — he has collected from the hands of those who would misuse them. Generally not peacefully.
All such documents are stored in the vast ship Tabularium Bibluvio, which also serves as Inquisitor Lord Castis’ headquarters. It is a sphere, dwarfing lesser ships. The heretical archive is contained in the featureless top half of the sphere; below that, the sphere is hollow for half of the bottom hemisphere, with four mighty black pylons connecting the archive to the living quarters which make up the bottom quarter of the sphere. Shuttles and other such less important spacecraft dock on the top of the living quarters.
Over the centuries, the weight of such a convocation of Chaos and lies has literally warped the space around it. It is deeply unsafe to venture into the archive; at present, Inquisitor Lord Castis affords no other person that right. He himself communes with the texts therein on a regular basis, in order “to keep them under control.” From time to time, horrendous monsters rage down the pylons to assault the remainder of the ship. One of your duties is defense against these unfortunate but inevitable results of the ship’s mission.
Your second duty is to assist your Inquisitor in confiscating more documents. The flow is never ending. Vigilance is paramount. This duty takes you to the foulest slums of the Sector, and also to the most lovely nests of corruption. Chaos knows well how to wear a harmless face. Inquisitor Lord Castis is known for his lack of mercy towards nobility who hope to conceal their heretical studies from him.
Your third and final duty, as given to you a few months ago when you were sent to serve Inquisitor Lord Castis, is to watch him. Eventually, he will bend and break under the strain of the archive. You cannot, of course, hope to defeat an Imperial Inquisitor: the Calixis Conclave merely hopes that, in the event of a catastrophe, you will be able to get out word before your death.
Best of luck.