"Accomplishments"In theaters: Playing on the fear of intimacy, or being with someone else forever, of losing yourself in that relationship, is part of the central metaphor of Together, though in this case, Dave Franco's character has more than just cold feet to inform his anxiety - something from his past wraps the idea in a demented tragedy. It's actually refreshing to see the male figure be the "sensitive" in a horror movie - Alison Brie's character is much more in control, though we get from the backstory that she used to sacrifice for him, as he is sacrificing for her. The word "sacrifice" evokes cults and director Michael Shanks weaves this idea into his web "expressions made manifest" along with "man and wife is one flesh", "I can't live without you", and Plato's concept of soul mates. A very weird premise, but one told with a lot of humor, especially in the third act's absurdity. Don't drink from a hellmouth, folks!
At home: Though an American production, KPop Demon Hunters gets the Kpop video aesthetic right, I think (I base this opinion on the fact that my friend group was doing Kpop nights BEFORE the music took the West by storm around the time of Gangnam Style). The movie is huge fun, with catchy music (most of it in English, but definitely in the style of), babes of all genders, anime-style action and comedy, a doomed romance, a hilarious but endearing demon cat, and a potent story about rejecting shame and finding the group that will accept you for who you are. Thoroughly pleasant, with some big belly laughs and toe-tapping tunes, the world of Huntr/x revolves around a pop group that hunts demons to protect our world, and the evil Boy Band that tries to steal their fans (I feel bad for every other pop group - South Korea only seems to have the two). It'll soon have you acting like a Kpop fan and picking your favorite group members on either or both teams (I'm a Mira, that much is sure) and/or looking for soundtrack for your own demon-hunting needs.
Jacques Rozier's first feature, Adieu Philippine, is, to me, French New Wave mumblecore, starring Jean-Claude Aimini as a sort of James Dean analog, not a rebel without a cause, so much as a compliant without a cause. He's set to go do his military service in Algeria soon, even though two girls, are vying for his affections and trying to get him out of it. The whole thing is a hang-out movie where he's rather ambivalent about which girl to pick (which frustrates the two friends because they have a bet going - not the best motivation for love on their end either), just as he's rather ambivalent about his military service, or the money he's owed by a Corsican boss man. Nothing really seems to matter, just go with the flow, things are inevitable, and whatever's easier wins out. Rozier was likely making a political statement about this generation or France at this point, and I appreciate it, but it stills reads as a bunch of flighty spoiled brats partying and arguing, which lost my interest after a while.
Café Express feels like Italian Neo-Realism with a comedic touch, in part because it seems to take place in the era when those films were new. A feature, not a bug. Nino Mandredi is low-level con man Michele Abbagnano, a man who'd take a proper job (if we can believe that) if he were offered one, but his single workable hand (if we can believe that) likely makes him less than employable. And so he's become the Italian railway's Most Wanted, because he sells coffee aboard night trains without a license. Given all the close calls and odd characters that intersect his path on the line between Milan and Naples, it hardly seems worth the aggravation, but he doesn't have any other options. Every clever trick, every manipulative lie, every dash for another boxcar, makes us smile and reminds us that not all laws are "just".
When I was a kid, there must have been a big cross-country car rally fad. My grandparents had all these rally trophies, and my TV kept pushing cross-country racing movies like The Love Bug and The Cannonball Run. The latter's antecedent is It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, a star-filled nonsense comedy that acts as a celebrity snapshot for its era, but woof, it's pretty bad. As a card-carrying geek, I resent just how flat the jokes fall (even the blooper reel is mostly Burt Reynolds physically abusing his co-star) because there are things I care about in its DNA. Jackie Chan! Adrienne Barbeau unzipping her racing jacket! Roger Moore playing himself as a Bond parody! A superhero subplot! But then you have the racism of the era - the Japanese team includes Jackie and they speak Cantonese! Jamie Farr as a rich Arab! - and extremely unfunny bits of business like Farah Fawcett's weird tree lover and, well, most things. But if you're a pop culture historian, it might be interesting to look back at 1981 through the lens of what what considered "popular" at the dawn of the decade (as almost everyone is playing themselves or some shade of their screen persona), although I have a feeling they padded things out with has beens who were consistently on Johnny Carson or Merv Griffin.
[Mauritania] It starts in a rather poetic way, with metaphorical tableaux as a means to deliver an anti-colonial manifesto, but Soleil Ô soon resolves into a more narrative structure (albeit one replete with surreal moments) about an African immigrant (Robert Liensol, he's great in this) to France facing systemic racism. Director Med Hondo has a lot of really interesting ideas in terms of staging and the film feels fresh and modern despite having been made in 1970. We're presented with a people whose culture has been forcibly replaced, but with what? And further, to what end if they're still not going to be considered "French"? At times didactic and documentarian, but savagely so, so I don't see it as a flaw. It starts to lose a little steam towards the end, but perhaps I am closer to that primal scream than audiences were back in the day. Great music, too. I'd put this soundtrack in my regular rotation.
[Mozambique] Tracking the punk rock movement in several African countries and how they were influenced by anti-colonial and anti-Apartheid movements, Punk in Africa promises Mozambique and Zimbabwe, but is really more about South Africa, and only gets to the rest in the last 15-20 minutes (padding out a documentary that was less than feature-length?). Judging from the age of those bands, it does seem like South Africa was there first, skewing to older musicians coming back into the fold to give interviews, visit the old haunts, etc., with younger bands fighting the power in the other, still/more politically chaotic countries where punk survives because of its innate anti-authoritarian origins (though "punk", in the film, also includes ska and reggae, we won't split hairs, it's all protest music). Interesting, but a bit surface level, especially if you're not from the region.
[Libya] Even if 1980, it must have been clear that Lion of the Desert was at least informed by the Palestinian issue. It certainly seems to speak to our era. Detailing a seldom brought-up page of history, the film details the attempted genocide of the Bedouin in Libya by Italian Fascists in between the two World Wars. Recalling the great desert epics of yore - I mean, Anthony Quinn, Lawrence of Arabia himself, plays the great rebel leader Omar Mukhtar - as well as Dune's Fremen (the history inspired Frank Herbert and it's obvious here - I'd never thought of Baron Harkonnen as "Duke" Mussolini, but there you have it), the film is perhaps over-long (battle after battle, massacre after massacre, though each is distinct), but feels subversive today. It's about good Muslims defending their lands from largely evil Westerners, not the roles cinema would paint of these ethnic groups for most of history. Quinn is great in this, and well matched to Oliver Reed as his opposite number. Great location work in Libya, too.
Books: Created, the Destroyer (weird title) is the first of some 155 pulp action books starring Remo Williams, 1970s violent exploitation media's answer to the pulps of yesteryear, and if I could use only one word to describe it, it would be MACHO. Machismo just drips off the page, and while I like the pungent prose a lot - it's funny, it gives great details, it's MUSCULAR - you wouldn't want to be a female character in the world of C.U.R.E. In Created, we get Remo's origin story and training with Chiun, so movie fans will recognize at least some of this, but the main plot - Remo looking to infiltrate a criminal organization and assassinate its very top - is different from "The Adventure Begins"'s. And it's pretty good, but the novel's structure is all over the place, losing its lead in favor of the gangster's not entirely necessary back story in the middle, and suddenly giving us a meaty chapter where everything happens after spending the bulk of its pages on quick, pithy 3-pagers. The Destroyer series looks like a cool ride, but even if I appreciate its hard anti-corruption line, I'm not sure its politics are really for me.
RPGs: First things first - our Torg Eternity session couldn't take place until the Monster Hunter's player reconfigured his character to match Azteca's reality, having transformed at the end of the previous. Problem was, there's not a whole lot that's known about this mini-cosm, so I went to various sources, including GURPS Aztecs, to craft some Perks, Spells and Miracles that fit the world. The character, now a DEMON Hunter, jacked himself up as warrior-sorcerer-priest type with lots of interesting powers, some alchemical (like his OG potion-maker), some controlling animal spirits. And right out of the gate, his bad roll curse seemed to be lifted (or rather, transferred to the Frankenstein who kept bumping into things), so he wasn't as disgruntled as he was after the last transformation. As for the session, we start with a heist for an Egyptian artifact in a Venetian museum, the supervillains from their Day One adventure (as other PCs) show up, levelled up some, 8 months since those events, and there's a boat chase on the canals with a couple of them escaping, but the heroes getting their hands on the thing. Then, it's off to Cairo to meet up with the pregnant Sabella (the flame of a former PC) for more information, but she's been kidnapped by an angry super-villain, strapped to the top of the Cairo Tower with a bomb, and we had to play the cliffhanger sound effect there because it was time for bed.
Best bits: When the Realm Runner moves Eternity Street to Venice, he floods it with water. The Tharkoldu taxi driver was fine - he had a boat! - but the group's reputation with the rest of the citizens has gone down (and I had JUST coded in reputation modifiers right on the scene, too). I let the players imagine they had any heist equipment they could imagine getting into the museum and they were clever with it, disabling the cameras with a magically floating spray can, making a hole through the laser grid with mirrors, and descending on a large Julius Caesar statue with a pulley tent. A guard walks in, the Frankenstein Mishaps his Stealth, but someone plays a card that makes it a close call - funny scene of the guard thinking he's just a statue (well, he is "off-color"). On the canals, Hooded Cobra loses his boat when the Realm Runner retcons a rocket launcher with his Flashback Perk, and sinks it, but he's picked up by a second boat. But the Frankenstein rams it from behind, allowing the Deadlands Preacher to hop aboard and grab the stolen artifact and push the villain in the water. He's picked up by his cohorts in a helicopter, and he sends his Super-Boxer into the mix (by treachery), but he's left sinking at the bottom of the canal, dragged down by his massive gloves (but I didn't a body). Meanwhile, did I mention it was a full moon? The Demon Hunter has turned into a Man-Bat and snacks on a shocktrooper (oof, yes, I did see a body). The best bit in Cairo is that, as part of the cliffhanger, the Frankenstein comes face to face with the rotating restaurant's featured singer - his old love interest who he was always trying to escape. We made that have more weight than the ticking time bomb.
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