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Category: Culture

Leaving on a jet plane

Most of the movies which claim to be based on true stories aren’t. Odd, that the one recent work of fiction that really is rooted in fact doesn’t mention the true story at all. And now, over on IMDB, the commenters mock The Terminal for an implausible premise. Funny old world.

Anyhow: The Terminal is a really tasty eclair. It’s not deep but it’s awfully yummy and you can’t beat chocolate. It’s a very human movie, with a fine degree of attention towards choices and the difficulty of making them. At the heart, it’s about people caring about each other and it manages this without being schmaltzy. I smiled a lot, and I laughed a couple of times.

Tom Hanks pulled off a character with a heavy accent without ever seeming goofy, which is more than I expected, so I suppose now I have to admit he’s a good actor. Catherine Zeta-Jones was beautiful but — as usual — refrained from actually portraying a convincing connection to anyone else on screen.

If the pacing hadn’t collapsed at the end I’d give it four stars.

Weekend getaway

Of course, if I went to Fantasia for a weekend — say, July 30th through August 1st — I could still catch about a dozen movies and have a great time. Say…

Hillside Strangler for weird American avant garde serial killer cinema (or Heaven’s Seven for the Thai take on Vietnam, it’s a hard choice).
One Missed Call cause who doesn’t love Takashi Miike? This looks like his take on Ringu.
Deadly Outlaw Rekka. Two hours of Miike is good; four hours is superb! Um.
Porco Rosso, Miyazaki, yes.
Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace, for cheap laughs.
Executioners From Shaolin, the classic Shaw Brothers movie.
Enter… Zombie King!, cause masked wrestlers and zombies can’t be skipped.
Toolbox Murders, because it’s the only thing in that time slot and I like to hurt myself.
Malice@Doll (or maybe Freak Out) — ooo, wacky CGI anime!
Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, classic machinima, and I would love to see this on the big screen.
Robot Stories makes a nice contrast to the machinima.
Into the Mirror — Korean horror is not always good but so far in my experience it’s been interesting.
The Bodyguard, cause I want to see more Thai martial arts action.

It would make me sad to miss 8th Diagram Pole Fighter and Ju-on and Battlefield Baseball and The Card Player and I could keep going. But some is better than none. The only problem is going to be finding a flight out of Montreal at 10 PM Sunday.

Anyone want to meet me up there?

The silver screen and screen

Turns out that I’m not, in fact, going to be able to develop a time machine and go back in time and clear off enough of my schedule to make it possible to go to Fantasia Festival 2004. Which is a damned shame. The only silver lining is that I won’t have to make any choices about which movie to see, this way.

Pale lining indeed. Well, maybe next year I can arrange to take a month off.

Standing the heat

Yep, I saw it. Chances are most people reading this will have seen it or will intend to see it (and for the rest, read on for a special offer). So instead of reviewing, I’ll ramble.

It’s a Michael Moore movie. From some comments I read previously, I expected it to be less of a polemic, and perhaps more objective. Nope — he’s narrating the thing and even if he doesn’t come out in front of the camera much, it’s still got a heaping helping of Moore sarcasm and innuendo. I think I could have done without mocking members of the Iraq War coalition; even if I don’t think Costa Rica made a significant contribution to the war, I still believe the country deserves the same respect as any other sovereign nation. And I noticed that Moore left out England and Spain when listing coalition members.

On the other hand, it’s also got some astoundingly effective moments and, yeah, a few things I didn’t know. Some of them angered me, and some reminded me that there was a time when Bush didn’t look like he could possibly be as bad as he’s turned out to be. The Lila Lipscomb segments reached brilliance. Specifically, her reaction to the woman who challenged her. Every Republican should watch the movie for that moment if nothing else: that’s the danger you face when you try to brush off criticism.

Which leads me to the special offer. I think people should see this movie, not because it is a magic wand which will convert the masses to frothing Kerry worship but because it shows things you wouldn’t otherwise see. It does not present a complete picture. It does present important elements of a complete picture. So if you weren’t going to see this movie because you think Moore is a pompous blowhard, I will happily purchase and read a political book of your choosing if you change your mind. Even if it’s by Ann Coulter.

(Offer invalid if you pick a book I’ve already read, so be careful — you’d be surprised.)

Ancient Masonic conspiracies

Let me get this straight. Nicholas Cage is playing Benjamin Franklin Gates, scion of the family Gates, which has been sworn for generations to find and protect a legendary treasure. The Founding Fathers of the United States left clues to the location of the treasure in the symbols of America, in particular the eye in the pyramid. Now he’s racing against a British rival to reach the treasure before it’s too late?

I’ll see that.

Hand-held giant robots

“If you’re not excited by a movie that features giant robots, hand-held death rays, flying fortresses, mysterious ninja hotties, underwater dogfights, last-second cliffhangers, and guest-starring cameos from dead guys, then maybe this movie wasn’t made for you.”

(Scroll down. But the Wes Anderson flick sounds great too.)

Wellman deal

If you’re looking for Manly Wade Wellman to read, and you should be if you like American mythology and folklore, Night Shade Books is running a 50% off sale until midnight tomorrow. The collected stories are beautiful volumes, well-bound and nicely typeset. I recommend them highly.

Ow my eyes

I’m only a few pages into the new Delta Green novel, Denied to the Enemy, and I will no doubt finish it. However, I am overwhelmed with a strange compulsion to rant. First I will quote.

Before he joined in 1938 he was frightened almost all of the time. Oh now, how he missed those innocent days. Since his induction into the group Bruning was in a constant state of paranoia and fear. The things he had seen! The way his world had changed in under one year! He had a skill you see, a talent with language which was necessary for the group to achieve its goals. Bruning had studied many ancient tongues and was lettered in three very difficult ones. In addition he had a skill with cyphers, something developed during a stint at Oxford and his study of the works of John Dee. If only he was not so clever! His mind, something he had considered a blessing in his murky past now was a terrible weapon at the disposal of the Reich, and although the intangible front he fought upon was won or lost through the study of words, of meanings and innuendoes and secrets, the casualties caused by such battles were real enough.

I, too, suffer from the affliction of the comma abuser. I, too, use commas to extend a sentence far past its healthy conclusion. But man. I think the problem here is as much the absence of commas in key locations as the overuse of them. This is disappointing, particularly insofar as the novel comes from a company known for meticulous editing and painstaking care.

Clone vats

After seeing Napoleon Dynamite, I am greatly heartened to know that should something happen to Wes Anderson we’ll still have someone to make Wes Anderson movies. Very minimalist, very charming if you don’t assume it’s intended as mockery of the title character. Dryer than the average Wes Anderson movie. I liked it.

Necro!

The Chronicles of Riddick was not as good as I wanted it to be, but it was also not as bad as I feared it might be. It’s the perfect Warhammer 40K movie; there’s very little pure good in the world, the antagonists have psionic powers, and there’s lots of blood and guts. If you can’t take a guilty pleasure in spiky bitz, it’s not a good movie for you. If you can, then it’s worth the viewing.

As promised, David Twohy created a huge mythology to inform the movie. None of it is particularly explained, because the payoff needs to wait for the rest of the prospective trilogy, but you can tell there are bones beneath the musculature of the story. Sadly, the only real connection to Pitch Black is Riddick — while both movies are interested in questions of faith, I wasn’t ever really convinced they were taking place in the same universe. I kind of liked the non-supernatural universe better.

Vin Diesel is excellent. Alexa Davalos, who plays Jack from Pitch Black all grown up, is really good. Everyone else is pretty much OK.

I’m hoping this makes enough to greenlight the two sequels, but I’m kind of suspecting that it won’t.