As usual I've been both cranky and ill.
Someone (irritating) at work today said,
"...but i've seen you be cheerful and friendly before"
and before I could remember the cover story I replied
"It was a LIE."
So, it's out in the open. On the other hand, once one has cultivated even a minor reputation for eccentricity, nothing after that needs to make too much sense to be shrugged off as "just another thing." So you can tell the radical truth and it becomes outrageous entertainment.
"What do you think of so-and-so?"
"I love him and obsess over him in the long nights of my solitude."
Cue uproarious laughter.
It couldn't be any better if I actually wore a Jester's outfit.
But I digress.
For anyone who hasn't noticed it is pretty much the middle of the year. I considered some kind of sincere post, but I'm not up to it. The only goal-related thing I would say is that I am happy with my reading list so far this year, which has held up rather well despite being flooded this month by a series of works by Stephenie Meyer. The tally stands at 28 books in total and of these, 13 are non-fiction! Nearly exactly half!! WOOT! (gently mimes punching air so as not to dislodge reading glasses.
Of these, what books can I recommend to you my tasteful and clever audience?
A good question.
From January, Six Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman. Very thoughtfully re-published by Penguin in their charming $10 range (thank you Penguin and good idea going back to classic jacket designs!). Get into some Physics - it is already in you!!
February yielded some good quality reading in the form of The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton (another Penguin $10 winner). A novel about Tesla called The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt and a collection of Essays gifted to me by Mez called How to be Alone by Jonathan Franzen. I felt pretty clever by association after those highlights.
March needed a new flavour, so I read the new SF by Richard Morgan - The Black Man and I really liked it but I recommend it to SF readers with some qualifications (depending on your taste). The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman was lovely and had a little unsaid, which I like. The real standout this month was finishing The Invisibles by Grant Morrison which was a loaner from MsJaye and one of those books that infects and gives one a fever. I got through the fever, and now I can't wait to find out what I'm inoculated against or prepared for. Turns out I love anarchistic-chaos-magic. I want to do it again! (BTW for snobs - be warned - that one's a comic.)
April was quiet, I read some non-fic that was a bit dull and I re-read a favourite novel and then read a French SF novel called Babylon Babies (by Mauice Dantec, but I don't remember the translator. It wasn't Nicole Kidman so don't sweat it). I'd read some mixed reviews and of course the film (Babylon AD)was hopeless but actually i thought that the book was good. Not quite as fully anarchist chaos magical as The Invisibles, but possibly a good enough chaser. Lots of good themes and a clever central character and plenty of wild tech. I would like to read more SF from NESB (non english speaking background) as the flavours and textures are less predictable (all of which was pretty much removed for the film. Poor Vin Diesel. I bet he loved the original script.)
So May was not a big reading month, I was pretty sick, but I did finish Kimono: Fashioning Culture by Liza Dalby which I got on a whim and then was able to read nearly half of during a day of travel. It was fascinating, and I feel slightly more informed now when I watch Japanese cinema, or see modern women wearing Kimono. Actually, I'll fess up and say that I went out of my way to re-watch Memoirs of a Geisha just so I could look at all the kimono.
June, ah June. June has been the month of escapist reading. Binging on one-night-reads is something we all do sometimes, but that doesn't make me proud. In the middle of that I finished What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Darwin Knew: From fox-hunting to Whist - the facts of Daily life in 19th-Century England by Daniel Pool which I had been very eagerly awaiting. I was anticipating a detailed and exhaustive book, but actually this book ought to be subtitled "In Which Things that are Almost Obvious from The Context of the Novel are explained in length oftentimes using Quotations from Self-same Novels. Perhaps you ought to read more proper history books?"
Ah well. More than half of this puny book is pointless. I'm trying to think of a redeeming feature .... um .... it has some nice etchings.
I love to keep lists of books, I wish I'd given-in to the urge a long time ago instead of feeling furtive and dirty for wanting to do so. In a lot of ways it is a more interesting way of tracking the tides and flavours of my life than the dates of trips or the odd event. Movies and Knitting have both taken up a lot of time that I would otherwise have spent reading. But that's ok - ther'e more to come in the great Western Genre exploration, and Riley very nearly has his own bespoke cardigan.
Showing posts with label genre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genre. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Terminator: Salvation
(Spoiler Alert! Yes, again. Don't read this if you're seriously looking forward to the latest Terminator film. But really - who is?).
I swear to you, this blog is not going to devolve solely into me bagging the shit out of popular culture. I aim to bag the shit out of high-brow stuff occasionally as well.
Over the long weekend I went along to see Terminator: Salvation at my local cinema. There were many members of the public in attendance which I do not like. It is not (just) that I am anti-social, they are simply not fit to be in the public arena. Case in point: the 'gentleman' seated next to me wore thongs presumably so that when the urge came over him, he could pick his toes during the film without the irritation of having to remove any shoes. Charming.
But I digress.
Firstly, this film is badly misnamed (why do they think that dropping the numbers helps? Oh, that's right, because we're now scraping the prequel barrel and it confuses people to have non-linear sequences. An argument, perhaps, for using the Dewy system for films. But that's a subject for discussion at another time). Anyway. "Salvation" is a misnomer. This film should rightly have been subtitled "Survival" or even something like "have you ever seen a more gritty dystopian future prequel than this?! Holy Shit we're really all going to DIE!!! RUN - RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" but as a marketing person I wouldn't really recommend that - it's hard to make puns with for the actor profiles during promos.
I guess "Survival" was taken, but it is a shame, they should have saved Salvation for when they win the freakin war I would have thought. Not for a film where the resistance takes massive casualties, loses their entire command structure and basically get their arses kicked at every single point.
That leads me to my second point. I don't know a lot about war. Actually, I know very little about war on any level. I've made effort to avoid it personally. From what I have seen and heard it is a deeply unpleasant experience, and something not to be undertaken lightly. Which is why I would have suggested that someone in the Resistance who does know about war ought to read a little book by an old guy call Sun. In this book, which is kind of like a "War for Dummies1" he suggests that you should know everything you can about your enemy. In this film, that could be as simple as remembering that the machines you're fighting are very very smart. Maybe not the ones directly in front of you, but the ones that built them are. I reckon that odds are good that machines that have made themselves self-aware are going to be pretty bright. Hence, one ought to think things through as if you're playing a game of Chess or Go in which your opponent has a higher rank than you. That is to say, they're likely to set traps for you. I would, if I was clever.
Not being clever brings me to my third, and final point. American action films have made a fruitful industry out of not worrying too much about clever if you can be very strong. This almost completely defines the action genre. It is about guys (usually) chasing each other, thumping each other and blowing shit up. This is where T:S comes home and delivers. It's got all the things you look for in an action flick: big guns (tick), attack helicopters (tick), funky secret commando hand signal stuff (tick), blowing shit up (tick, tick, tick), and best of all, big tough guys taking an absolute flogging (sadly I don't mean an actual flogging on a rack. I think the only SF film to deliver that particular delicacy must be Starship Troopers. If you know of any others please, please tell me). In this instance I mean fisty-cuffs to the snoz stuff.
This is what kept me going. I really liked seeing Sam Worthington2 get killed, take a nude mud bath, be beaten, shot at, beaten again, killed again, resurrected, beaten again, and then suicide. Not only is that a thrashing and a half, but it is also one heck of a character arc! And, he just eats it up. I want the next film to be about Marcus Wright stirring things up in the afterlife. OOOHHH - Marcus Wright Vs The Mummy!! I would so totally go and see that. The human equivalent of the bear vs shark question. Brilliant.
But I digress. Again.
On the way home I thought of a great drinking game for this film. It goes like this - first of all you need to get all resistance (shame they skipped the Steampunk possibilities - but one can't have everything) and build (or borrow if you're not well suited to experimental conditions) an alcohol distillation set up ("a still")and make some moonshine (Please remember to cut the juice you get!) then you and your mates all take a swig and settle down to watch this film. Once it starts, every time Marcus Wright does something brutal or has something brutal done to him you have another shot. I leave it up to you to decide if kissing Helena should count. In this way, if you are by some miracle still conscious by the end of the film, you really don't really care that most of the film made no sense and that John Connor is a total arse.
Everybody Wins!3
1. There is both a "Vietnam War for Dummies" and a "War on Terrorism for Dummies" actually published. I thought I was being funny, but it turns out satire is too easily just being inaccurate.
2. Who, BTW, was awesome as Macbeth. Man, I love that version. Even better than Polanski's. Really.
3. Except the humans. And Sam Worthington.
I swear to you, this blog is not going to devolve solely into me bagging the shit out of popular culture. I aim to bag the shit out of high-brow stuff occasionally as well.
Over the long weekend I went along to see Terminator: Salvation at my local cinema. There were many members of the public in attendance which I do not like. It is not (just) that I am anti-social, they are simply not fit to be in the public arena. Case in point: the 'gentleman' seated next to me wore thongs presumably so that when the urge came over him, he could pick his toes during the film without the irritation of having to remove any shoes. Charming.
But I digress.
Firstly, this film is badly misnamed (why do they think that dropping the numbers helps? Oh, that's right, because we're now scraping the prequel barrel and it confuses people to have non-linear sequences. An argument, perhaps, for using the Dewy system for films. But that's a subject for discussion at another time). Anyway. "Salvation" is a misnomer. This film should rightly have been subtitled "Survival" or even something like "have you ever seen a more gritty dystopian future prequel than this?! Holy Shit we're really all going to DIE!!! RUN - RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!" but as a marketing person I wouldn't really recommend that - it's hard to make puns with for the actor profiles during promos.
I guess "Survival" was taken, but it is a shame, they should have saved Salvation for when they win the freakin war I would have thought. Not for a film where the resistance takes massive casualties, loses their entire command structure and basically get their arses kicked at every single point.
That leads me to my second point. I don't know a lot about war. Actually, I know very little about war on any level. I've made effort to avoid it personally. From what I have seen and heard it is a deeply unpleasant experience, and something not to be undertaken lightly. Which is why I would have suggested that someone in the Resistance who does know about war ought to read a little book by an old guy call Sun. In this book, which is kind of like a "War for Dummies1" he suggests that you should know everything you can about your enemy. In this film, that could be as simple as remembering that the machines you're fighting are very very smart. Maybe not the ones directly in front of you, but the ones that built them are. I reckon that odds are good that machines that have made themselves self-aware are going to be pretty bright. Hence, one ought to think things through as if you're playing a game of Chess or Go in which your opponent has a higher rank than you. That is to say, they're likely to set traps for you. I would, if I was clever.
Not being clever brings me to my third, and final point. American action films have made a fruitful industry out of not worrying too much about clever if you can be very strong. This almost completely defines the action genre. It is about guys (usually) chasing each other, thumping each other and blowing shit up. This is where T:S comes home and delivers. It's got all the things you look for in an action flick: big guns (tick), attack helicopters (tick), funky secret commando hand signal stuff (tick), blowing shit up (tick, tick, tick), and best of all, big tough guys taking an absolute flogging (sadly I don't mean an actual flogging on a rack. I think the only SF film to deliver that particular delicacy must be Starship Troopers. If you know of any others please, please tell me). In this instance I mean fisty-cuffs to the snoz stuff.
This is what kept me going. I really liked seeing Sam Worthington2 get killed, take a nude mud bath, be beaten, shot at, beaten again, killed again, resurrected, beaten again, and then suicide. Not only is that a thrashing and a half, but it is also one heck of a character arc! And, he just eats it up. I want the next film to be about Marcus Wright stirring things up in the afterlife. OOOHHH - Marcus Wright Vs The Mummy!! I would so totally go and see that. The human equivalent of the bear vs shark question. Brilliant.
But I digress. Again.
On the way home I thought of a great drinking game for this film. It goes like this - first of all you need to get all resistance (shame they skipped the Steampunk possibilities - but one can't have everything) and build (or borrow if you're not well suited to experimental conditions) an alcohol distillation set up ("a still")and make some moonshine (Please remember to cut the juice you get!) then you and your mates all take a swig and settle down to watch this film. Once it starts, every time Marcus Wright does something brutal or has something brutal done to him you have another shot. I leave it up to you to decide if kissing Helena should count. In this way, if you are by some miracle still conscious by the end of the film, you really don't really care that most of the film made no sense and that John Connor is a total arse.
Everybody Wins!3
1. There is both a "Vietnam War for Dummies" and a "War on Terrorism for Dummies" actually published. I thought I was being funny, but it turns out satire is too easily just being inaccurate.
2. Who, BTW, was awesome as Macbeth. Man, I love that version. Even better than Polanski's. Really.
3. Except the humans. And Sam Worthington.
Friday, May 15, 2009
The Western
I was lucky enough to be able to indulge recently in a little bit of fairly nerdy, high-def movie marathoning. We watched Serenity for entrees, Blade Runner (Director's cut) for mains, and finished (and I mention here that it is not a decision lightly made finding the right film to follow Blade Runner!) with an encore screening of Tombstone. A most excellent night, and as it was an exclusive viewing club, there was no guilt and much pleasure in talking over boring scenes, rewinding and freeze-framing, reciting dialogue along with the actors, in short all of the things that make re-watching great films fun.
Obviously at some point the subject of The Western as a genre came up. It is kinda easy to see how Firefly (and so Serenity) qualify (plenty of ponies, sidearms and law of the fastest draw), and Tombstone which apart from the Latin-off is nearly a textbook Western ... or is it? In discussion about what great Western films should be watched (we like a list, oh yes, we like a list) Unforgiven came up. And it is an utterly brilliant film in itself, "But" I said in the slightly preachy and pretty annoying way that I have "you simply can not start with it. You have to know about westerns, at least have a feel for them, to really get why Unforgiven is so good." Rather than calling me a wanker, or pish-poshing my elitist stance, my co-nerd simply enquired "What then, do you suggest I watch first?" thus further endearing her to me.
I took a moment to think about it.
I took a deep breath, marshaled my feeble mental resources and began.
I took another moment.
As I thought about it, I realised there was quite a complex history and lineage to a film like Unforgiven (or indeed Firefly on a different branch) and although I'm a fan of the genre as I critically appraised my knowledge in order to provide a reasonable, purposeful and appropriate guide to suitable viewing for a keen neophyte I realised (not for the first time) that I was in over my head.
"I'll have a think about it, and I'll make you a list." Best I could do at the time.
That was over two weeks ago, and I've been thinking it over. I started a list, and it seemed inadequate. Then I started a second of films I've seen but forgotten, then a third of films I'd been recommended, but never got to, and then a fourth of westerns set in space. The myriad shifts and mutations in the genre, the massive and now difficult to grasp homogeneity and popularity of it in its heyday all these things somehow need to be encapsulated and yet there are a huge huge number of westerns, and really I have only seen a very tiny part of their whole. Also, to add a little more piquancy some films set "in the west" are not a Western, likewise a story can be on a moonbase and still be quintessentially a Western (so I think) so why is that? What is at the heart of this genre? What really defines it? Is it independence? Masculinity? Justice?
So I have not made the list, and in another fresh move for me, I am not turning to my reference books (much as I am tempted) but shall instead embark upon a course of viewings. I shall ramble my way through 70 years of Western films in all their guises with no deadline, no schedule, no roster, no real purpose other than for the journey itself and to share the glory and the pleasures of the trip with you, my beloved travelling companions.
Suggestions and recommendations are warmly welcomed. Reviews and notes or mentions of films may or may not appear here in the future after this next week - nothing much is certain in life. In the great tradition of the high-country cowgirls "we will be together on the ride until we aint" (BTW I made that up, that tradition and that little aphorism, but I promise, I'll take the reviews a lot more seriously. Actually, I had my fingers crossed then too. You're on your own. You'll need to cross-reference anything you find here that you want to quote, or believe, or otherwise propogate).
I've decided to start in the 40s and have borrowed 2 volumes (!) of the "John Wayne Collection" from my brother-in-law. I shall view selectively from this vast array lest I sicken and fall early into the undertaking.
Until next we meet, Ye-Har!
Obviously at some point the subject of The Western as a genre came up. It is kinda easy to see how Firefly (and so Serenity) qualify (plenty of ponies, sidearms and law of the fastest draw), and Tombstone which apart from the Latin-off is nearly a textbook Western ... or is it? In discussion about what great Western films should be watched (we like a list, oh yes, we like a list) Unforgiven came up. And it is an utterly brilliant film in itself, "But" I said in the slightly preachy and pretty annoying way that I have "you simply can not start with it. You have to know about westerns, at least have a feel for them, to really get why Unforgiven is so good." Rather than calling me a wanker, or pish-poshing my elitist stance, my co-nerd simply enquired "What then, do you suggest I watch first?" thus further endearing her to me.
I took a moment to think about it.
I took a deep breath, marshaled my feeble mental resources and began.
I took another moment.
As I thought about it, I realised there was quite a complex history and lineage to a film like Unforgiven (or indeed Firefly on a different branch) and although I'm a fan of the genre as I critically appraised my knowledge in order to provide a reasonable, purposeful and appropriate guide to suitable viewing for a keen neophyte I realised (not for the first time) that I was in over my head.
"I'll have a think about it, and I'll make you a list." Best I could do at the time.
That was over two weeks ago, and I've been thinking it over. I started a list, and it seemed inadequate. Then I started a second of films I've seen but forgotten, then a third of films I'd been recommended, but never got to, and then a fourth of westerns set in space. The myriad shifts and mutations in the genre, the massive and now difficult to grasp homogeneity and popularity of it in its heyday all these things somehow need to be encapsulated and yet there are a huge huge number of westerns, and really I have only seen a very tiny part of their whole. Also, to add a little more piquancy some films set "in the west" are not a Western, likewise a story can be on a moonbase and still be quintessentially a Western (so I think) so why is that? What is at the heart of this genre? What really defines it? Is it independence? Masculinity? Justice?
So I have not made the list, and in another fresh move for me, I am not turning to my reference books (much as I am tempted) but shall instead embark upon a course of viewings. I shall ramble my way through 70 years of Western films in all their guises with no deadline, no schedule, no roster, no real purpose other than for the journey itself and to share the glory and the pleasures of the trip with you, my beloved travelling companions.
Suggestions and recommendations are warmly welcomed. Reviews and notes or mentions of films may or may not appear here in the future after this next week - nothing much is certain in life. In the great tradition of the high-country cowgirls "we will be together on the ride until we aint" (BTW I made that up, that tradition and that little aphorism, but I promise, I'll take the reviews a lot more seriously. Actually, I had my fingers crossed then too. You're on your own. You'll need to cross-reference anything you find here that you want to quote, or believe, or otherwise propogate).
I've decided to start in the 40s and have borrowed 2 volumes (!) of the "John Wayne Collection" from my brother-in-law. I shall view selectively from this vast array lest I sicken and fall early into the undertaking.
Until next we meet, Ye-Har!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)