This Week in Geek (7-13/11/11)

Buys

I got three DVDs this week: JCVD (for our upcoming Van Dammathon), Shaolin (because Andy Lau and Jackie Chan, that's why), and Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue (10 one-hour Polish films by one of my favorite directors).

"Accomplishments"

DVDs: Red vs. Blue - The Recollection collects seasons 6 though 8 of the popular web series and while I thought Rooster Teeth would abandon both the Blood Gulch characters and the humorous tone (judging by the more plot-driven Recovery One mini-series included on both Blood Gulch and this DVD), I was happy to find it did not. Season 6 - Reconstruction does have more of a plot, leading to some important revelations about the Red vs. Blue universe and its characters. Season 7 - Recreation, though it follows almost directly from 6 (with the Relocated mini-series between them), is a return to the first five jokey seasons and as a result feels less satisfying. But all is forgiven by Season 8 - Revelation, which has mind-blowing fight scenes (thanks to special effects and motion capture, taking RvB to another level entirely), and a rather poignant ending that wraps up the various character arcs with a grace note I would not have thought possible. As with the Blood Gulch Chronicles, there are a lot of fun extras. Each season (re-edited into a feature film) has a fun and informative commentary track, and there are plenty of outtakes, deleted scenes, and sketch comedy PSAs. There's also a standard animation short starring the RvB characters, a few featurettes about the actors and effects, and the animated menus are frequently amusing as well.

Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) begins what I will call my Boredom Trilogy, not because I think any of the following films are boring, but because they are all quiet, artful, slow-moving films that deal with boredom or stillness in some way. And yes, because I think many WILL find them boring. I'm a whole other animal, however. (Note that I didn't watch them in sequence on purpose, I was just pulling stuff off the shelf alphabetically!) So Blow-Up is a repertoire film that I'd hear about in film class long ago, but had never seen. It wasn't what I was expecting. David Hemmings stars as a Swinging 60s photographer who (I must say, eventually) takes candid shots of Vanessa Redgrave in a park. She desperately wants the photos, and he discovers, by blowing them up, clues to a murder. While that's the plot, most of the film feels essentially plotless, with many tableaux evoking still photography, and scenes that cause the film critic on the commentary track throw up his hands in defeat. They work for me though. The film is in many ways about the reliability of images. Things are consistently taken out of context to see if they still have meaning (the blown-up detail, the piece of guitar, the propeller) and the film is itself an image (albeit a moving one) that proves unreliable. Things are not well explained and by its dearth of dialog, the characters don't give up their secrets. It's the point of mimes at the end who share an unreal perception (an invisible ball) the Hemmings character eventually adopts. And at the heart of this unreliable image is the youth culture of the Swinging 60s, shown in the film to be superficial though sought after. Why does the Hemmings character go into an antiques store, and why does the shopkeeper tell him nothing's for sale? It's part of the character's quest to find meaning in his life, something the pure image of his culture has not given him (and he's not the only character looking to get out of that London). He looks for meaning in the old, but the past is also denied him, just as evidence of the murder also disappears. It's the kind of movie that is mystifying while you watch, but the reveals itself afterwards, and I could literally do a sequence-by-sequence or even frame-by-frame analysis of it.

Next up is The Bothersome Man, a quirky Norwegian film in the vein of such films as Being John Malkovich. Our protagonist Andreas is dropped into the middle of a desert at the start of the film, brought into the city, given a desk job, and in a way, a spouse. Everyone but him seems disconnected from their feelings, and he has the temerity to fall in love, attempt suicide, and later try to dig a hole through the somewhere that smells and sounds good. It's a weird and at times funny parable about the artist or passionate man butting heads with the mainstream, a vast sea of essentially joyless people who are content to live boring lives in loveless relationships, pragmatic rather than romantic. At least, that's what I got out of it. Trond Fausa Aurvåg is an excellent everyman in this and you feel every absurd moment with him, but it is a pretty bleak film despite its humor. I also like the sonority of Norwegian, not a language I'm used to, and that's probably a reason to like the film only for a language lover like me.

Steven Soderbergh's Bubble is a very simple murder story, but it's his method that's experimental, interesting and even poignant. Soderbergh cast non-professional actors in the roles, put the action in or near their hometown (on the border of Ohio and West Virginia) and molded the characters around their true selves (insofar as they improvised their lines based on things they knew or had experienced). Real people in real places having real conversations - all very mundane - makes it seem like a documentary at first. Only a couple of moments of directorial flair (and the intrigue when it sparks) reveal that it's a fiction. It somehow works. The setting, a doll factory, provides an ominous backdrop and a world of novelty, and the actors are so true to life, it'll make you think about how emotions are usually portrayed in a heightened way on screen. But while much of the film looks sterile and distant, there are moments of emotion cleverly created by Soderbergh by surprising his actors, giving hidden directions, etc. The package of extras is excellent, with two commentary tracks (one with the director, the other with the writer and actors), the original interviews used to cast the actors, a deleted scene, a brief photo gallery, interviews with Soderbergh, and a making of featurette.

Our KFF selection, a Shaw Brothers picture called Killer Clans, was a weird one this week. The premise is simple: Warring clans try to take each other out, often through the use of sleeper agents. The plot is anything BUT simple however. The character of Uncle, whom everyone is trying to kill, believes in being prepared to the point of putting over-prepared Batman to shame. His schemes are completely crazy. And he's not the hero here. He's a bad dude. Is there a hero? We weren't sure. The butterfly-catching assassin who falls for the girl in the forest is probably the closest, and his relationship to that girl rather sweet, especially after the film makes a couple of false steps with sexual scenes early on. While I'm still getting Dragon Dynasty's every release, I do wish they'd include at least minimal extras these days, just something to identify why the film is important to the kung fu canon or something. My own research shows that the film is based on Gu Long's wuxia novel "Meteor, Butterfly, Sword" (just as Michelle Yeoh's Butterfly Sword was, though they are clearly completely different bits of the novel), which explains some of its poetry.

Books: I also finished Richard Castle's Naked Heat. This is the second book written by the fictional novelist Richard Castle about the fictional police detective Kate Beckett (or Nikki Heat in the novel). It's the closest thing to a Castle tie-in book you'll ever get, but with a metafictional twist. The first book was ok. Naked Heat starts off as just ok, but soon becomes the better sequel. The murder mystery is better constructed, for one thing, with lots of potential suspects as well as action scenes that aren't far off from Castle's. You could well imagine him writing this in between seasons 2 and 3, although it also prefigures a moment in the Season 3 opener (or did Rick have time to make revisions before the book came out?). All the characters are there under new names, Nikki reacts to the article about her and the unwanted fame it generates, and the show's trademark comedy translates into the book. It now feels like a continuing story, which Heat Wave obviously couldn't do. Warning: The language is stronger than the show's (and even the first book's).

Hyperion to a Satyr posts this week:
II.ii. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I - A Midwinter's Tale
III.i. The Nunnery Scene

Comments

MOCK! said…
I bought Naked Heat from a local Borders before it closed. It didn't grab me and once the show itself started, well....

Maybe I will try again next summer...
Siskoid said…
It took me a long time to get into it too. But once I hit, I dunno, page 75? I ran through it. A slow starter.
Señor Editor said…
Oh cool, looking forward to the Vandammathon and the Kieslowski stuff. I haven't seen JCVD, but what I heard about it blew my mind.

Siskoid, have you ever heard about the "Thorgal" comics series? It's a widely popular and critically acclaimed series in Europe, but it's mostly a "big thing" in France, Belgium, Scandinavian countries and Poland, from what I know. It was reprinted in the US and England but I don't think those countries ever got the full series, just a couple random volumes. The series started over 30 years ago and up until recently it was made by the same creative team of Van Hamme and Rosinski. I don't know if you're into that kind of thing (it's far from any one "type of thing" though, it's a really good and original series) but I highly recommend it. While some European comics get a lot of shine outside of Europe, I'm constantly surprised this one doesn't (at least I think it doesn't, maybe you've heard of it...). The "Thorgal" albums come out usually once a year and whenever they do, they get publicity in every major newspaper/magazine. It's really, really good stuff. Somewhat spoilerific wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorgal

Anyway, that was a pretty random question but I thought I'd ask/recommend! And since you speak French (you do, right?), you'd make a good person to recommend it to;) (I bet it's all easily available online in French. The French love that shit)
Siskoid said…
Born and bred French Canadian, Senor!

I've heard of Thorgal, but haven't gotten into any post-90s French/Belgian comics in any meaningful way. I have a friend who married a French girl and brings back stuff all the time. I'll ask him about it.

But I'm not a particular fan of barbarian comics (yeah, even Conan). I always seem to like them more in principle than execution.
Siskoid said…
Oh and as far as the Van Dammathon goes, it should be during the holidays, from noon to midnight, date to be determined. We're pretty sure of the 7 movies to be shown:

Bloodsport
Street Fighter
Double Team
Hard Impact
Universal Soldier
Sudden Death
JCVD

Order to be determined. I'll probably make a Twitter event out of it too, but that's gonna be a long This Week in Geek!
Señor Editor said…
Oh I'm no fan of barbarian comics either. There's only so much of that stuff one can take. The image in the wiki page (of the "Barbarian" issue) is a bit misleading, though. If anything, Thorgal is the most civilised person in a (sometimes) barbarian world. He only wants for his wife (and later children) to be happy and live in peace and always tries to avoid using violence, if possible. But it's not easy at all for him. It's a simple premise, but the plots that come out of it are truly fantastic. The particular "Barbarian" issue that's shown in the wiki article is about Thorgal, his family and friends being captured by the Romans (or something to that effect) and used as slaves for their entertainment. So it's something of a reversal of the particular barbarian cliche. I highly recommend the first 10 or so volumes of Thorgal. I very rarely venture outside superhero comics but that's one book I regularly make the exception for (plus, it usually comes out on late November/early December so I often get it for Christmas, so that's a nice regular X-mas thing for me too;)). The first issue is pretty generic, though (but it needs to set up the story etc) so if you ever get around checking it, know that it gets really really good afterwards:)
Señor Editor said…
And as to the Vandammathon, last time I saw most of these movies I was a kid renting them on vhs so it's gonna be real treat to read your posts on them (as well as the ones I haven't seen).
Siskoid said…
Thorgal: Recommendation accepted!

Van Damme: Me too. I'm not even sure which one's I've seen. The only ones I have a clear memory of are Bloodsport (always on TBS) and Sudden Death (my favorite Die Hard rip-off of all time). Had Timecop been selected, there would have been that. Otherwise, it's a blur.
Señor Editor said…
The best Thorgal volumes are "Alinoe", "Louve" and the South American issues (9-13). It gets epic right there.

Looking forward to Universal Soldier! I remember bits and pieces of it. Dolph Lundgren is also one of the people I'd never assume were highly educated but apparently he is. Van Damme on the other hand seems like a pretty simple guy. I still laugh at the memory of seeing an interview with him in Polish television sometime around 1994 and him saying that acting to him is like "eating, drinking or, if you'll excuse me, shitting." and the look on the interviewers (a lady who usually interviewed arty-farty directors and actors) face. I miss those action movie stars of the 80s and 90s. The Rock and his ilk are pretty poor current substitutes imo. Ah well, enough of my longass comments!
Siskoid said…
Haha. We were talking about action stars of different decades last KFF. Our evaluation was that the 80s had the musclemen and martial artists, the 90s started the everyman action hero, and the oughts brought us the geek/nerd hero (appealing to the core audience's power fantasies more directly by involving it as the represented group).