Reviews

There are three basic approaches one could take to a documentary about Jandek, and none of them are what one might normally attempt in a documentary about a musician: the man is nearly a complete mystery, so you can’t tell the story of his life. You could delve deeply into his music, performing an extended critical analysis that serves as an introduction for newcomers and a reaffirmation for the loyal fans. You could film the mirror, capturing how people react to him and what they read into the Jandek blank slate. Or you could try and unearth the answer to the mystery. ...

Those of us who miss the Warren Ellis who wrote Stormwatch, Excalibur, and Transmetropolitan should check out Ultimate Fantastic Four. I, obviously, already have. The run starts with issue #7 and it is superb. Ellis likes to dislike superheroes, which is a real pity, since it’s his best genre. He’s doing cool things with the Fantastic Four which boil down to “what if they transformed while they were kids,” and it’s working very well.

Hero is exactly as good as everyone says it is — oh — then, well, curse you Stephen Hunter, for screwing up my schtick. Do these movie reviewers know no shame? In point of fact, Hero is infinitely better than Stephen Hunter claims it is. More on the politics of Hunter in a nonce, so that those uninclined can skip that. First, we’ll meditate upon the movie, which is lush beyond imagining both in color (my second Christopher Doyle-lensed film in two nights, so if I am intoxicated with the magic of the projector, do forgive) and in martial arts. Lush is the proper word: I believe that the structure of the movie was concocted in order to provide the opportunity for Jet Li to fight Maggie Cheung more than once, and for Maggie Cheung to clash with Zhang Ziyi in more way than one, and if Donnie Yen only gets the one fight scene, well, it’s one of the better ones in the movie. ...

Last Life in the Universe is exactly as good as everyone says (original) it is (original). I’d compare it to Lost in Translation, but then I’d have to get into saying which one is better, and neither of them is: and the expectations might be wrong, of course. So just take a taste of that sad meeting of two divergent people, and move on. Tadanobu Asano’s Kenji is tired of life. Sinitta Boonyasak’s Noi doesn’t know what she wants out of life. It would be cliched to watch them find each other and come out of their shells, except that the story is punctuated with the unexpected, constantly cutting across the cliches. I went in knowing a little too much about the movie, but even knowing what was coming I was startled by the eloquence of the reveals. ...

Zatoichi reminded me of Twin Peaks. Where David Lynch uses the iconic FBI agent as the entrance point into his off-kilter Pacific Northwest, Takeshi Kitano uses the iconic figure of Zatoichi as the entrance point into bushido. Now, obviously Kitano isn’t Lynch — there are no midgets — but there are distinct similarities in the precedence Kitano gives metaphor over reality. Does it make sense for a group of peasants to dance in the middle of a long shot? Does it matter, if the metaphor is there? ...

That was kind of like finding a string quartet in the middle of a Metallica album. (Yes, I know.) After two days of gleeful carnage, sudden action, and low humor, Robot Stories came along and provided two hours of gently humanistic science fiction. There’s science fiction as the literature of ideas, in which the driving force is the concept; then there’s science fiction that uses the tropes of science fiction to tell stories that couldn’t exist in the world in which we live. Greg Pak’s movie is the latter. The best of the four independent segments is the last, “Clay,” which tells the story of a dying sculptor grappling with the possibility of uploading himself and finding immortality. It’s a common enough science fictional concept, but the segment is not about the implications of uploading — although Pak clearly understands them — it’s about the implications of the human decision to upload or not upload. ...

After fifteen minutes of Saving Private Tootsie, I realized that I was watching something for which I had very few if any cultural touchpoints. So, um, yeah — it’s a bold statement about the acceptability of Thai queer culture framed by a Steven Spielberg pastiche and beyond that I am not competent to say. I liked it, I think, but it was a strong reminder that our understanding of film relies on a shared vocabulary. ...

I tracked down a copy of the new Sean Stewart novel, Perfect Circle (original), 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 (original), 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. ...

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 (original) I picked up last weekend on Jack Gulick’s advice. Fifty movies for thirty bucks was too good a deal to pass up. 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. ...

What Steven Spielberg movie? I’m all about the webs, baby. You’re either gonna see it or not so I’ll just skip the ooohs and ahhhs and cut right to the spoilers and commentary. Oh, one thing. Step back with me to the halcyon days of 1994. Remember the guy who directed Dead Alive and Meet The Feebles, and the guy who directed the Evil Dead movies? They’re gonna be critically acclaimed directors who make billions of dollars at the box office. No, really. Very funny old world.