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Category: Culture

The Lives of Others

March 14, 2007
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I don’t really care about the Oscars anymore, thanks to Forrest Gump. However, I’m still capable of getting curious about the winners, and if Best Foreign Picture didn’t go to Pan’s Labyrinth, a small part of me wants to know why.

In this case, The Lives of Others just happened to be a better movie. Not by a huge margin, but I have no complaints about the Academy’s decision in this case.

It’s about two intertwining lives; that of Gerd Wiesler, a Stasi agent, and that of Georg Dreyman, a playwright. One watches the other; the other performs, unknowingly, for the one. The third actor in the drama, Christa-Maria Sieland, is a pivot point for everyone else in the movie. Her choices create the context in which the others…

Fail to meet, because they don’t ever really. But it’s her actions which bring Wiesler to reconsider his life as a watcher, and which bring Dreyman to idealism and subversion.

Despite the humanistic, nearly redemptive ending, I have to think of this movie as a tragedy. You have — well, five interlocking wheels of motivation, albeit the three mentioned are the major ones, which drive inevitably towards a tragic ending. There’s a coda, after the Wall falls, but it isn’t anything other than bittersweet.

Organized Crime

March 12, 2007
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I’m mildly addicted to Hard Case Crime books. (Parenthetical trivia: Charles Ardai, the editor and founder of Hard Case Crime, is married to Naomi Novik, who writes the Temeraire series. Fantasy Napoleonic dragons vs. noir thrillers. Small world.)

Anyway, mildly addicted. The new books are in the style of the old books, and the old books are a fun read. Slick, completely stuck in the preconceptions and prejudice of their day, but fun. Tough guys slouch around dealing with rotten people in seedy situations, and there’s a bad idea for every gin mill and a gin mill for every chapter. There’s something charming about a milieu in which the world isn’t measured by the time it takes for an email to get to you — I suspect that one of the key dividing lines of modern fiction is the point at which cell phones became so common that you had to assume them. It’s a fundamental change in the difficulty of interactions.

The view of organized crime is a really interesting difference between these books and modern mysteries slash thrillers. Blame the trinity of Puzo, Coppola, and Scorsese, I suppose. All these old books have an organized crime that’s almost completely a corporate matter. The Organization (or Outfit, or Family, but not Mafia) has lawyers. It wears three-piece suits and does business in a fairly chilly, austere kind of a way.

In Point Blank, the money quote goes like this: “Let me tell you something about corporations, Walker. This is a corporation, I’m an officer of a corporation, and we deal in millions, we never see cash. I’ve got about eleven dollars in my pocket.” That’s the size of it. You see hints of Sicilian heritage here and there, but they get shoved into the background a lot. Sometimes you don’t really see organized crime as much as you see a big businessman whose pursuits lead him across the legal limit now and again.

I figure this reflects the corporate mindset of the fifties. It wasn’t till 1969 that Puzo blew it apart with The Godfather, and Coppola and Scorsese nailed the coffin shut, or some such suitably violent metaphor. This is about a ten year lag from the point at which the Mafia as we think of it today first really hit the American consciousness, but that sounds about right for pop culture.

This primary realization, along with a week or two spent swimming in 50s-60s noir, was the clue that unlocked Edge of Midnight for me. You want to pull back a notch and go for that chilly, corporate feel or the world doesn’t quite make sense. At least, not for me.

This leads to my one-shot idea, which is an Edge of Midnight game set in the aftermath of one of those failed jobs you got all the time. I think I’d want to kill off the protagonist, or rather, the person who’d be the protagonist in the book. I could do worse than lift Max Allan Collins’ first Nolan novel, with a dead Nolan; that leaves us with the older guy who plans jobs, his eager but wet behind the ears nephew, his nephew’s friend the driver… I’d have to rework the girlfriend, who is in no way a playable character, but I’ll think of something.

Can't You Say You Believe In Me

March 9, 2007
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Some geeks build things. A few geeks build things really well. Once upon a time, there was a geek named Tom, an MIT graduate, who worked for Polaroid. He decided he wanted to build a rock and roll band.

So he built Boston, and say what you will, but it’s my opinion that he built the best stadium rock band ever. Boston had the biggest selling debut album and held that record for over ten years, which is not trivial. That doesn’t mean it was great music, but stadium rock isn’t great music. They knew what they were doing.

They: Barry Goudreau, Tom Scholz, and Brad Delp. Cause nah, it wasn’t just Scholz and his magical effects boxes. Goudreau played guitar and wrote songs, and Delp’s voice was pretty much integral to the whole thing. Not that he was a great singer, although he was good, but he had great range and a wonderful harmony and it wouldn’t have been Boston’s soaring overblown overwrought flights of musical excess without him.

All of which is preamble to this: Brad Delp died today, at age 55, in his home in New Hampshire. I am sorely saddened. May he rest in peace.

Pan’s Labyrinth

March 4, 2007
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Pan’s Labyrinth is not so much a children’s movie. It’s about children, but that’s not really the same thing. Easy mistake, since it’s called a fairy tale and that has certain cultural references for us, but think the original Grimm’s stories.

Which were, admittedly, cautionary. I guess you could take your kid to Pan’s Labyrinth as a cautionary measure against him or her becoming a fascist military officer, but there may be better ways to accomplish that.

Really, though, it’s a fairy tale about the Spanish Civil War. Three acts, three tasks, three parallels to those tasks in the adult world. Ofelia and Mercedes begin by capturing keys; the second task is taking a dagger, mirrored by Mercedes’ knife (and her later use of it). And finally, Ofelia’s choice regarding her brother is precisely Captain Vidal’s choice regarding Ofelia’s mother Carmen — what’s a life worth to you?

Or, perhaps, it’s Mercedes’ choice about Vidal. Hard to say. Is Vidal’s search for information about the rebels likewise a parallel to the quest for the key? Are his torture instruments his dagger? You could read it that way, although I think that’s perhaps a bit more multi-layered than del Toro intended. The pivot point of Ofelia’s brother is enough of a nexus for the parallel quests for me.

On the other hand, I’m perfectly content to assume that the fantasy kingdom is Spain without Franco. Only makes sense.

Pan’s Labyrinth fits in with Labyrinth (sans sentimentality), Heavenly Creatures (sans insanity), and The Great Yokai War (sans Miike). Awesome movie.

Mouse stuff

January 25, 2007
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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.

I also hit Africa, although I 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, I 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.

I 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. Can’t wait till next time, as usual.

Rending of hair, and so on

November 16, 2006
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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.

Internet sensation

October 31, 2006
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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.

Faux pas

October 28, 2006
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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.