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Category: Culture

Anathem

September 10, 2008
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It is rather difficult to talk about Neal Stephenson’s newest without spoiling lots. In generic, cloudy, unsatisfying terms: it’s a Stephenson book, with lots of thought experiments and science and so forth. There are action scenes. The world changes dramatically during the course of the book, as a result of the actions of the protagonists. There is a romance of sorts, in which a practical female character falls for a slightly fuzzy-minded idealist.

The alien world setting is nice. I found myself very engaged by the society and the worldbuilding. Which is good, because there’s a lot of it before the plot proper starts.

OK, spoilers. Don’t get too excited, since it’s just gonna be a one-liner quip.

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Filmspotting Marathons

August 22, 2008
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I’ve been enjoying the Filmspotting podcast; decent opinions, good chemistry between the hosts, a wide variety of topics. One of the regular features is a movie marathon. Over the course of a month or two, they watch one movie per week from a given genre and comment on it. The idea is that listeners can follow along.

They just finished a heist marathon, and will be moving onto a 60s British Angry Young Men marathon in September, which sounds cool. So I’m gonna hop on board. I will no doubt post reviews here, and if anyone local’s interested in joining me and my Netflix queue for viewings, feel free to speak up.

For reference, the list:

  1. Look Back In Anger — Richard Burton and class warfare. A review of the original play coined the term “angry young men.” The play was filmed for television in 1979, with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, so I’m gonna watch that version too.
  2. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning — Albert Finney as an alienated factory worker.
  3. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner — a sports movie! Well, no, not really; it’s a movie about the oppressive nature of British society.
  4. The Sporting Life — Richard Harris, William Hartnell. More sports as the vehicle for social criticism.
  5. Billy Liar — early John Schlesinger, which is awesome by me.
  6. If… — classic allegory with Malcolm McDowell; directed by Lindsay Anderson, who also directed The Sporting Life, so it’ll be fun to compare. Really stoked for this.

Fall Movies

August 11, 2008
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For reference.

Quantum of Solace
JCVD
Synecdoche, New York
W. (if I get to it)

Milk

Frost/Nixon, depending on reviews

The Wrestler
The Brothers Bloom

Slumdog Millionaire

That Batman Movie

July 28, 2008
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We finally caught it over this last weekend. I guess a lot of other people did too, since it’s hit 300 million bucks already. I am eagerly waiting to find out if it has the sort of legs that’ll get it into the top five ever domestic, although I suspect it won’t.

Somewhat surprisingly, it didn’t blow me away. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t overwhelm me. Great acting, excellent plot and theme — I thought the whole balance of duty and public personae was superb, and it echoed through both good guys and bad guys. The early Scarecrow appearance was ideal.

Still and all, the movie needed to be half an hour shorter. I’m not sure what you’d cut — you could lose the foreign travel and edit out the cell phone moral dilemma, but you’d still have a movie that feels somewhat overstuffed. I’ve heard a lot of people call the movie relentless, and it was, and I liked that. I just think it would have been tighter with a couple fewer beats in the Joker’s plan.

Nobody’s ever accused Christopher Nolan of being insufficiently intricate, I suppose.

Second, the fight scenes were muddy. I have a sudden fear that I’m getting too old here, except I recall liking the fight scenes in the last Bond movie, so — crap. Yeah, I’m getting old. Well, the fight scenes were still muddy. Batman’s sonar vision did not help this in the least. Nolan’s not known as an action director, obviously, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but he ought to get someone to give him a hand with the fight scenes next time. In all fairness, the car chase was pretty great.

So as not to give the impression that I didn’t like the movie…

Really good acting all around; probably the best I’ve ever seen in a superhero movie. I loved that it wasn’t Batman’s movie — it was about Commissioner Gordon, the Joker, and Harvey Dent. All three of those guys were great. Particularly Gary Oldman. I wish it had been more Rachel Dawes’ movie, but even so, Maggie Gyllenhaal kicks Katie Holmes’ ass.

Batman really doesn’t make a lot of choices during the movie, and the one choice he does make is predicted and subverted by the Joker. That’s practically a theme — Harvey Dent takes Batman’s choices away from him, the Joker does it a few times, and so on. Thus, the aforementioned trio has to drive the movie, and they’re really good at it.

Also, Heath Ledger’s performance is about as scary-good as people are saying; emphasis on scary. The movie’s worth it just for that.

Starman Omnibus

July 24, 2008
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The Starman Omnibus is awesome. Probably less awesome if you’re not a fan. DC’s going to do six volumes, which are slated to include every issue of Starman plus all the related material (e.g., the Shade miniseries and so on).

The art’s still gorgeous, if less surprising than it was at the time of publication. Beautiful art deco cityscapes, excellent use of shadow and darkness. Tony Harris was so good. It benefits from the high quality of the hardcover’s paper, too.

And there’s nothing wrong with the story. James Robinson notes in the afterword that he was after the sort of weirdness/superhero fusion that early Vertigo had, before the editoral dictate to separate Vertigo from mainstream DC. He nailed it. The additional dollop of DC continuity fetish that he brought to the table probably wasn’t strictly speaking necessary, but I’m not sure it hurts.

Five more volumes to come, at around 18-20 comic book issues per volume. Not too bad. I’m hearing DC is doing omnibus-style volumes for other books as well; good call.

iPhone eBooks

July 22, 2008
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eBooks on the iPhone are pretty obvious; I’ve been keeping an eye out for a good reader. Here’s the first cut: Stanza (App Store link).

The key is being able to download your own books, which Stanza allows. Grab Stanza Desktop and load your books into there, then select Enable Sharing from the Tools menu and fire up the iPhone Stanza app. Shared Books -> Books on Macintosh displays the list of currently open books in Stanza Desktop. Select the ones you want, and there you go.

(Helpful hint: go back to the Mac to tell Stanza Desktop that it’s OK for the iPhone to connect. I couldn’t figure out why the iPhone app was hanging at first.)

Stanza Desktop supports a nice list of file types, including Open eBook, Kindle, Mobipocket, HTML, PDF, LIT, PalmDoc, RTF, and Word. It does not support Sony Reader or PDF files. Good enough for my purposes but not perfect.

The iPhone UI could use a little polish but it’s very functional. I’m happy for the nonce. The apps are currently free; the web site says the Desktop will cost something once it’s out of beta.

Fantasia '08

July 1, 2008
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Sadly I’m not going again this year, for good reasons involving schedule and finances, but that’s OK. It will not stop me from considering the lineup at length.

The ticketing is wild this year. The festival starts this Thursday; tickets go on sale tomorrow. The schedule only came out like Friday. Make your decisions quick. I’m thinking next year I just choose a week and trust in fate for the movies. Or go for two weeks. Mmm, two weeks.

Here is the volume. Here is the pump. Here is the dance floor. Do what is right.

Continue ReadingFantasia '08

Weekend Entertainment Pursuits, Part II

June 30, 2008
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Wanted sucked rocks. Here’s a list of the good:

  • Set pieces: the skyscraper assassination, the sunroof bit, the keyboard across the face.
  • Angelina Jolie’s performance, which was surprisingly nuanced and subtle, especially at the end.
  • The Russian thriller-verging-on-horror aesthetic: the knife fight in the denoument.
  • Timur Bekmambetov bringing in his Russian homeboy Konstantin Khabensky to play a supporting role.
  • Curving bullets.

And the bad:

  • That’s not a plot, Timur.
  • That’s not an American accent, Wesley.
  • Blurred choppy confusing action sequences. And I like fast cuts.
  • Misogyny to beat the band, lovingly preserved from the original comic.
  • No wasting Terrence Stamp, please.
  • What the hell? The rat bit? That makes no sense.
  • Come to think of it, the weird recuperation pools kept changing, too.
  • After all that talk about how assassination can be moral because it saves lives, the train? Excuse me?

The scales balance poorly. There were way more blurred choppy confusing action sequences than there were excellent set pieces. If the action had been all good, I might have forgotten about the lack of creamy moral center. However, none of the victory conditions were achieved. Pity.

Redbelt

May 13, 2008
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Redbelt wound up being ultimately unsatisfying for me, which was all the more regrettable given that 95% of the movie rocked. Jeffwik noted last night that he’d never seen a Mamet movie which progressed towards an emotional climax in the way Redbelt attempts, and on reflection I think that’s exactly it. Mamet was working a bit outside his comfort zone, and almost nails it, but I’m not sure the guy knows how to do a story in which good guys win at the end.

Which is a pity, because he builds tension and despair about as well as anyone in the business. The story is positively claustrophobic, not in the scenery but in the way Chiwetel Ejiofor’s options contract and dwindle. He’s in a bad state, and then there’s a ray of hope, and then it vanishes hard. He’s the perfect actor for this, too — it’s another movie where he nails the tough determined moralist who suffers for his morals. See also Dirty Pretty Things. So you’ve got this foreboding, mannered atmosphere to work with.

About five minutes before the movie ended, I thought it was going to be another despairing Mamet ending, which would be OK by me. The moment when Ejiofor turns back was beautifully staged, too: silhouettes with no dialogue, just an action and a decision. That worked. And the culminating fight scene was unlikely, but on the margins of plausible. And again, it’s Mamet. One can accept some artifice in a Mamet movie.

But the last two beats fall flat. Perhaps one would have been all right. The fact that the two redemptive moments are identical, two separate people performing the same action — that was leaden for me. Yes, we get it. Ejiofor is noble and is recognized as such. Just… not twice.

Of course, this is the story equivalent of the repetitive overlapping Mamet dialogue I love, so perhaps I’m getting what I deserve. Still, it just broke my acceptance of the artificial world.

Which is a shame, because other than that it’s one of the best things he’s done in years. There’s the usual cast of Mamet regulars doing the things they do, plus Ejiofor, plus Tim Allen (who’s awesome). The aforementioned tension hooked me emotionally; I cared about the outcome. I’d even still recommend it. I just wanted the climax to match up with the rest of the movie.