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Category: Culture

Strangling conversation

July 31, 2004
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Hillside Strangler was pretty much blah. If you’re in the market for fictional Hillside Strangler stories with semi-pro acting and over-used looping camera work, you’re good; otherwise it’s worth missing. In short, Samantha Stone is a psychologist who uncovers the truth behind Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi’s killings by finding out what Kenneth is hiding. It’s ploddingly predictable.

Also, the subplot — Samantha breaking up with her drug dealer husband Jack — is pointless other than as an excuse for a lot of breasts. It doesn’t go anywhere and it doesn’t particularly reflect the main plot. Chris Fisher’s movies aren’t going to pass as an art film as long as there’s so much pointless exploitation riding shotgun.

Next movie: One Missed Call, by Takashi Miike. I am looking forward to this one a lot.

Going mobile

July 31, 2004
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I’m in Montreal! This is written post-first movie, of which more anon; there’s a coffee shop with wireless across from the theater but I don’t want to lose my place in line. I’ll upload entries as I find time.

The trip up was pretty painless. The high point was the New York Italian-themed restaurant at a highway exit in the middle of Quebec farmland. Our hotel is small but charming, and it’s an easy walk to Concordia University, where the festival takes place. It was a little disturbing seeing a “For Sale” sign on the hotel facade, but it hasn’t been sold as of this weekend, thankfully.

The area reeks of college, in a fairly cool way. Lots of coffee shops and two comic book stores between hotel and University. There’s a sushi buffet across the way from one of the venues, which I am sure I will not find time to visit. Alas.

Looks like lines will be varied in size; so far I’ve seen one short one and one long one. I hear Red vs. Blue is sold out, but nothing else seems to be. The audiences are exactly the sort of cinema fanatic/genre geek crossover you’d expect from a genre-oriented film festival. I like it.

If I were doing this again, I’d e-ticket the whole thing. The poor ticket desk had to print out our 26 tickets one at a time, which did not exactly endear us to the people behind us in line. There’s a DVD retailer with a big booth across from the ticket booth, selling mostly anime videos, which I will check out later. Other than that merchandising is light. I will get pictures of the immense MegaBlock statues — think Legos, but not.

My back is killing me, so that’s it for now. More anon.

Eyes wide open

July 28, 2004
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Tomorrow I begin the trek up to Montreal for FantAsia. I am so much looking forward to this I can’t even begin to explain. Sadly, I won’t make Porco Rosso, but Cutie Honey is an acceptable replacement.

To do:

  • Pack (clothing, toiletries)
  • Update iPod, get rid of 9/11 speeches (good but they take up room), add Germany 70s electronica
  • Charge camera battery
  • Detach USB cell phone charger from keyboard, tuck into laptop bag
  • Detach Firewire iPod charger from home Mac, tuck into laptop bag
  • Print maps

Chop socky

July 24, 2004
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If you live in the Bay Area, you may wish to help save the 4 Star. Or not — it’s not as if people down on the Peninsula get up to San Francisco that often. But believe me, it’s a great theater. I used to go there all the time and it’d be a shame if they had to close.

Also, it’s the business I want to run someday.

Euclid lives

July 18, 2004
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I tracked down a copy of the new Sean Stewart novel, Perfect Circle, and it’s good enough to be worth waiting eight years for, let alone the four years it’s been since Galveston. So no complaints here.

A little about the milieu, first. It’s the modern world, akin to Mockingbird, with that touch of elemental unexplained strangeness. Like Mockingbird, it’s set in Texas; like many of Stewart’s novels, it’s about family. In the author’s notes for Mockingbird, he says that “I had in mind something that would ‘fit’ with Resurrection Man, but with the quantities of light and dark reversed; a scary comedy, as it were, rather than a brooding novel with occasional jokes.” I think that Perfect Circle is a better match for those words; it echoes the relationship between death and family described in Resurrection Man through a lens crafted of punk music and Texas.

If I was going to write a cover blurb, on the other hand, I’d say something like “Perfect Circle establishes Sean Stewart as the American Nick Hornby,” which would make all the High Fidelity fans happy until they read any of his books besides Perfect Circle. This is why I’m not in marketing.

And come to think of it, Perfect Circle isn’t a comedy, either. So never mind the whole thing and just read it already. There are not one but two chapters on Salon, so you’ve no excuse not to fall in love.

Woof woof

July 16, 2004
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Turns out Jet Li is making his good movies over in France these days. Bob Hoskins and Jet Li, together again! Plus Morgan Freeman, although I can’t watch Morgan Freeman these days without thinking of my friend Jamie’s blockbuster Morgan Freeman idea. He wants to make a movie in which Morgan Freeman is, you guessed it, the grizzled wise gentle cop chasing a serial killer. But Freeman turns out to be the killer in some particularly vile and sadistic fashion.

Anyhow, this looks great.

Strawberry roan

July 11, 2004
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Billy the Kid to Rio: “Will you keep your eyes open? Will you look right at me as I do it?”

I more or less randomly watched The Outlaw today; it was on this set of Western classics I picked up last weekend on Jack Gulick’s advice. Fifty movies for thirty bucks was too good a deal to pass up.

Billy the Kid

When I cracked open the box, I noticed The Outlaw. I like Howard Hughes, or at least his legend, so I popped it in. I only expected a cheesy Western with a lot of Jane Russell. Imagine my surprise when I got a Billy the Kid played by a guy who looks like a fey Johnny Depp and more subtext than you can shake Lucy Lawless at.

“Doc, if you’re not already fixed up, you can bunk with me tonight.”

“No thanks, Billy, I’ve got a girl. She and her aunt just moved in town. You got a girl, Billy?”

“No, I ain’t got nothing, except that horse.”

“You can’t fool me, a good looking boy like you… you must have a girl somewhere.”

“No, I don’t trust ‘em.”

So the first act of the movie is about how Doc Holliday decides to partner up with Billy the Kid, deserting his old friend Pat Garrett. The second act is Doc and Billy arguing over the beautiful Rio (this is where Jane Russell comes in) and Doc’s strawberry roan; it’s unclear which is more important. The third act resolves it all.

Pat Garrett: “You and me never had any trouble ‘till he came along.”

Besides being charged with tension, it’s actually a pretty decent movie. The final faceoff sequence is about as good as anyone could want. The gunslingers use their weapons like the words they can’t always find, to argue and to sting and to wound. I gasped a couple of times, but then again, I’m suggestible.

The coda doesn’t work quite, but I imagine that’s what you get when you fire Howard Hawks as director and try to finish a movie yourself. I could have done without the over-aggressive score, too. Regardless, none of that stopped me from enjoying the movie a lot.

Tasty. See it if you get a chance.

Orgiastic

July 9, 2004
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So that’s settled, then; my pal Chris and I are venturing up to the Great White North (in the form of Montreal) the last weekend of this month to partake in movies. My schedule is basically the same one I outlined earlier, plus Saving Private Tootsie. I chose Hillside Strangler and Into the Mirror over my alternative choices in the end. I have tickets and I have a hotel reservation.

If anyone happens to be in Montreal that weekend, lemme know and we’ll have beer or coffee or something. My free time will be sparse for obvious reasons, but I imagine… maybe I should say “we’ll have popcorn.”

I’ll blog the whole thing, of course. I have already staked out wireless locations. Although if anyone knows anyone in the Concordia IT department who might be able to get me access to the campus wireless network over the weekend, that would be superawesome.