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Category: Culture

Where it's due

May 19, 2005
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Much of my Count Dooku opinion was shaped by Sean Stewart’s Yoda — Dark Rendevous. Sean Stewart is one of the best fantasists working today; his Star Wars novel rises way above the pack. It’s all about the relationship between Dooku and Yoda and Stewart knows how to write about mentor/student relationships.

He’s also got a surprisingly good knack for writing lightsaber battles; or maybe not so surprising when you consider the swordplay in Night Watch. The… second to last? I think so. The second to last time I saw Stewart read, he read that portion of Night Watch and it was clear he loved writing it, but he hasn’t returned to any action to speak of since.

Yes, fanfic, fine

May 19, 2005
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In my Episode III, Palpatine’s temptation of Anakin is mirrored by Count Dooku’s struggle with his own desire for redemption. As Palpatine is to young Anakin, so Yoda is to his best student, Count Dooku. Count Dooku is the man he pretended to be in Episode II.

The movie has a tighter focus: Obi-Wan and Anakin pursuing Dooku against the backdrop of the Clone Wars. (None of this nigh-instantaneous transport between star systems.) This, too, is a mirror: this time we’re reflecting the pursuit of Luke and Leia. Dooku moves from system to system, just ahead of the Jedi, directing his grand strategy from behind the scenes. He is still Palpatine’s creature; the Clone Wars are still orchestrated. But he has potential.

Somewhere along the line, and it’s part of Palpatine’s temptation, Anakin dons the armor. It’s not because he’s horribly scarred, although he knows that use of the armor will scar him as it draws upon his life force. It’s because he can’t catch Dooku without it. He needs this crutch before he can fulfill the orders of the Jedi Council. Obi-Wan is outraged. Palpatine is smiling.

In the third act, Obi-Wan and Anakin catch up with the Count. He disarms Obi-Wan with ludicrous ease. Dooku is the best Jedi duellist of his generation, and he has a real claim to the title of the single best lightsaber duellist ever to pass through this galaxy. Obi-Wan watches, pinned, while Dooku and Anakin duel. Anakin is almost up to the task. But not quite. Anakin reaches to the Dark Side, finally, his final surrender in the face of certain death. Dooku cannot allow this: he cannot allow another Jedi to go down the path he foolishly chose. It’s the moment of Anakin’s failure and the moment of Dooku’s redemption and there is no turning back. Dooku slays Anakin rather than allow him to become a monster.

But what now? Dooku could perhaps win the Clone Wars. If he does that, he shatters the Republic. He could allow himself to be defeated, but then Palpatine wins. He cannot return to the Jedi Council, because there is no turning away from the Dark Side.

He makes the only choice. He dons the armor; he seals himself into it, knowing that he cannot be released short of death. He turns back to Palpatine, with another name. He’s the only person who could carry out such a deception; had he not already turned to the Dark Side, living such a lie would surely bring him there.

Decades later, he will gently tease Luke, the son he never had, into reaching his potential. He will, in the end, see the Emperor killed. Nobody will ever know who he was, and he can’t admit it even at the end: to do so would be to shatter Luke, after all. Yoda will die thinking that Dooku was never redeemed.

The real Episode III was pretty good. There’s one scene made up completely of cut shots, back and forth between two principles, that works amazingly well. (Then Lucas reuses the technique and drains the life of it, but oh well.) The lightsaber duels are very good. The dialogue is laughably bad, worse than anything in any other Star Wars movie. Best of the prequel trilogy by a long shot and possibly better than Return of the Jedi.

Above the main

May 18, 2005
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A Sundial In A Grave: 1610 is what the Kushiel books wanted to be, but less gilded. Late Renaissance, swordplay, espionage, desperate adventure, and dominance/submission games? Check. It’s possible there’s even a Mary Sue character, depending on how you look at things.

And yet A Sundial In A Grave does not over-enthuse about the joys of pain in the bedroom, it does not linger endlessly on the prowess of the hero, and it is not a morass of angst. It swashbuckles, all the while aware of the contradictions that lie at the heart of the protagonist. He is a duellist: he is a man who desires — but that would be telling.

It doesn’t quite so much beat the living crap out of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, but if you were wanting plot with your mock historical, well, this would be the appropriate port of call. The territory is similar, if more mystical. Where one plot is driven by the wisdom of Isaac Newton, the other is driven by Giordano Bruno.

I loved it.

Snapshot

May 14, 2005
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This one’s for Jeff.

By last count, I had 528 DVDs — this includes TV shows and some wrestling, though. So maybe around 475 if you only count movies. A relatively small number of those are in a sell stack.

The last film I bought was The Life Aquatic, in the Criterion 2 disc edition. It looks like another great Criterion production.

The last film I watched was Serenity; it’s been an off-month for me.

Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me… let’s see. Brazil, which is the movie that taught me that there was life beyond the summer blockbuster; Days of Being Wild, which was my first Wong Kai Wai movie; Magnolia, which makes me cry; Ronin, the most underrated Hollywood action movie of the last 20 years; and Crash, which is probably my favorite Cronenberg movie.

I’m not going to tag anyone, but pick this up if you’d like.

Building up

May 10, 2005
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I am fantastically excited: Fangoria has the first peek at the FanTasia film festival lineup. As I’d hoped, Night Watch and Kitamura’s Godzilla: Final Wars will be there. Night Watch is the Russian conspiracy modern fantasy epic which has a ton of buzz, and Kitamura is of course the director of the insanely spirited Versus. Those were the movies I’d really wanted to see.

Lots of other cool stuff, too. Lion’s Gate has a small slew of J-horror sequels, which I’ll see if it’s convenient, and the horror anthology film Three… Extremes by Miike, Fruit Chan, and Chan-wook Park. I’ll see that for shock value. Lots of zombie movies. Hm, and Paul Spurrier’s “P” — made in Thailand by a British director, looks interesting, gives me some creepy vibes. I love fusion and I want to see that one badly.

Speaking of creepy, Creep looks intriguing as well. I don’t know a lot about it, but I like subway movies and I like Franka Potente. There’s a capsule review of it on Twitch, from whence I also got the Fangoria link.

I love this festival so much.

And the ship

May 6, 2005
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So I’m not going to talk about the movie at all. You can’t see it for four months; why should I even plague you with an opinion on quality? I think you should see it, where “you” means “yes, you, reading this right now.” Further I will not say.

I will talk about the experience of the preview a little. Sean Maher (Simon) and Morena Baccarin (Inara) showed up at the theater to thank us for coming and sign autographs. Joss Whedon had a trailer before the movie in which he talked about how we needed to go out and be browncoats and push the movie. The interesting thing for me was that he speaks with a fannish accent — you may know the one. Not the gamer fannish accent, which is fairly light, but the SF fan accent. He talks the way people who go to a lot of SF cons talk, with those careful pauses and deliberate telegraphing of wryness.

Pretty good atmosphere for seeing a movie.

Day and date

April 29, 2005
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Huge news: Soderbergh is committing to simultaneous release across TV, DVD, and theaters. His next six movies will be released in theaters, on DVD, and on television (via Mark Cuban’s high def HDTV network) at the same time. The movies will be funded by Cuban, shown in Cuban’s Landmark Theaters chain, and the DVDs will be released through Cuban’s DVD label. So it’s all Cuban, all the time.

This is something Cuban’s wanted to do for a long time; he is betting heavily on digital distribution and he’s probably right. He built his corporate structure with exactly this kind of deal in mind; he owns a company at each level of the movie distribution chain, from production studio down to every consumer product distribution channel. He must be thrilled that he managed to get someone as prestigious as Soderbergh to buy into the concept. Chances are that Soderbergh will bring one of his star stable (Clooney, Roberts, or Damon) along for at least one of these six movies, which should do wonders for publicity.

It also means that Soderbergh won’t be making another blockbuster for a while. I wasn’t expecting Ocean’s 13 anyhow. According to the article, his next movie will be Bubble and will be a fairly experimental piece, at least in that there won’t be any professional actors. IMDB says Soderbergh’s also working on Che — Benicio del Toro, Javier Bardem, and Franka Potente? I’m so there. I can’t tell if Soderbergh is really directing it, though: some say it’s Terence Malick. The latest info says it’s Soderbergh. It’s gone back and forth a few times, I think.

He’s got The Good German coming up, as well, which has another fairly exciting cast. If I were speculating, I’d say that Che won’t be part of the six movie deal, but that The Good German might be. It’s all guesswork on my part, though.

So what are the implications beyond Soderbergh? Really depends on how this works out. I think those three markets are different enough not to cannibalize each other. I think that people who want to see movies in theaters will keep on doing so: The Big Sleep has been out on DVD for a while, but I still went to see it on the big screen. As long as directors keep directing with the big screen in mind, it won’t fade. Similarly, people who want to own the DVD are different from people who want to watch it once and move on with their lives, so HD TV and DVD don’t overlap too much.

On the other hand, the rental market starts looking different — not initially, but as HD TV and broadband penetrate the marketplace. Netflix has a lifespan; if I were an executive over there, I’d be figuring out how to get my brand name into the digital distribution space. Greencine is already thinking about it.

Hm. And you know, I wonder if we wouldn’t see more short term runs of movies, at least in the independent space. Your average art house theater schedules movies on a day to day basis, rather than on a week to week basis, because most people who want to see The Big Sleep in a theater will make it there in the first day or two it’s playing. I wouldn’t predict the end of week+ runs for independent films, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we saw fewer lengthy runs.

Cool experiment, in any case. I’m glad Cuban got Soderbergh to give it a try.

Bitter popcorn

April 27, 2005
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When Phantom Menace was released, I took the day off work and drove up to the AMC 1000 Van Ness in San Francisco. If you ask me, it’s got the best screens in the city, although maybe the new AMC multiplex in Daly City beats it these days. But that multiplex was built over hospital parking, and is thus morally flawed, so I vote for the 1000 Van Ness. Besides, the Daly City multiplex wasn’t done when Phantom Menace came out.

As far as San Francisco movie theaters in general? Yes, of course the Castro is better. But they don’t show blockbusters. The Coronet was awesome… for sentimental reasons: yeah, it was the canonical destination for blockbuster openers. However, the 1000 Van Ness had better screens. My favorite rep house in San Francisco is probably the Roxie, while I’m digressing. But man — the Four Star, the Bridge, Red Vic, even the Embarcadero didn’t suck. I saw a lot of Cronenberg movies at the Embarcadero. I do miss San Francisco’s movie options, as much as I love the Brattle.

Where was I? Oh yeah; Star Wars.

So I drove up and got to the theater by noon, with tickets in hand for a 7:30 show. Surprisingly, the theater was not packed. I’d anticipated camping out in line with my pal Jamie — no such need. In fact, there were still tickets available for the 1:30 show. Jamie and I looked at each other.

“Hey. We could see the 1:30, and then we could see the 7:30! We could see it twice in one day! It’s gonna be awesome! This is great! We are so lucky!”

In retrospect? Yeah, the lack of people lining up should have been a sign. I don’t really recall what I was thinking. I might have said something about how everyone was over at the aforementioned Coronet. The local newspapers had been doing stories on the line over there, which was huge. So, sure, that’s why nobody was around at the 1000 Van Ness for the most important movie event ever. (We didn’t know about that thing with the hobbits yet.)

So we went to see the 1:30 movie. So exciting! The Lucasfilm logo at the beginning! The incredibly cool first ten minutes or so!

And then it was as if we’d eaten the top layer of our popcorn and found stale Milk Duds underneath. The hell?

Afterwards we kind of slouched out into the lobby and looked at our 7:30 tickets. And looked at the tickets we were holding for the other five or six people who were seeing the 7:30 showing with us. And sat down on the floor, and talked about — I don’t remember. Gaming, probably. When everyone else showed up, we didn’t trash the movie — figured it was better to let people make up their own minds, plus hey, maybe it’d get better with a second showing. Which it didn’t really.

So that’s why I saw Phantom Menace twice on opening day despite hating it both times. It turned me off blockbuster openings for a while. The thing with the hobbit did a lot to fix that, as did both Spider-Man movies. (The first of which I saw at the Metreon, since I’m keeping track.)

Despite all that, despite the tale of woe, despite the painful contrast of Natalie Portman in the Star Wars movies and Natalie Portman in Closer… I’m still sitting here with four tickets to the midnight showing of Revenge of the Sith at Boston Common. (First come first served but one’s earmarked for my brother unless he doesn’t want it and one’s earmarked for the guy who got me a Serenity ticket ditto.)

Eternal optimist am I. Sigh. You know what was really good? Sean Stewart’s Star Wars novel. It had a lot of Count Dooku in it, y’know?

Cornucopia

April 15, 2005
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It hasn’t been posted on their calendar yet, but the Spring 2005 Brattle schedule is out. Highlights include:

That’ll keep me pretty busy.

One step further

April 15, 2005
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I’m heartbroken. I wanted to watch Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow forever, dancing back and forth in slow motion, captured in the timeless rhythm of Wong Kar Wai’s directing. Despite the titles which fix the story in Hong Kong: 1962 and Singapore: 1963 and Cambodia: 1966 — despite them, there’s no chronology to it. There are panes of glass layered one on top of another, and you peer through them murkily, making out the outline of a fruitless love affair.

They are always meeting. They are always falling in love. They are always losing one another. The echoes are endless. Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung are the iconic actors of the moment, and the Amah is played by Chin Tsi-ang, who was the first female martial arts film star in the 1930s. Mr. Ho — himself played by a matinee idol of the 50s — is having an affair, so as to echo the affair of the unseen spouses. There’s always a mirror, and when there isn’t a mirror, there’s a frame.

They interact through echoes. They cannot speak of love, so they echo the affair they’ve discovered their spouses are having. One almost thinks that the violation, when it occurs, is not that one of them speaks of love; it’s more that the mirror is broken. The dance could have continued forever if, always if.

I could write about it forever, too, but I’m heartbroken. In The Mood For Love, but it’s a very literal title: a mood is a long way away from fulfillment.