"Accomplishments"
In theatres: Its events very much back to back with the first instalment, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come adds a layer to the Satanic organization/family controlling the world, and a sister for Samara Weaving's Grace (Faith, played by Kathryn Newton) to share the jeopardy. And I'm sorry to say it's that character that drains my enthusiasm for the franchise. They've strapped the sisters with terribly scripted abandonment issues and have them arguing about stuff that only makes me want to shout "get over it!" at the screen, because there's a time and a place. Newton's character doesn't always take it seriously and it bothers me. That said, once the action starts, there are a lot of great gags, the wedding motif is retained from the first film, and they've cleverly cast Here I Come with horror icons - Newton, but also David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, and Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar. So it's fun, but the big subplot tried my patience. Does the goat have its own instagram yet?
At home: While I find it very strange that the title would reference Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (not so strange that it also references Mikey and Nicky, however) Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a fun crime romp in which gangster Vince Vaughn uses a time machine to go back to the night everything went wrong to protect his wife's lover (James Marsden) from what is set in motion. Eiza González is Alice, and I'm never unhappy to see her. In fact. this has a very fun cast that includes Keith David, Stephen Root and Ben Schwartz, so let's go! I'm not gonna pretend every bit of shtick worked for me - maybe if I were a fan of the Gilmore Girls... - but there's enough there to enjoy, including some great music choices (bookending the film with musical numbers), nice action, and a gut punch of an ending. Does Kingpin have his own cat instagram yet?
Hal Ashby pushes the limits of what's possible in a romcom (well, he would) in Harold and Maude (or perhaps it's because Bud Cort looks so young (more 15 than the character's 19 or 20). Regardless, having the morbid Harold, whose main hobby is staging his own death, fall in love with octogenarian free spirit Maude (Ruth Gordon) still feels subversive, and yet, completely acceptable. It's not like Hollywood isn't neck deep in older man/younger woman pairings, though they usually fudge the numbers so the characters are closer in age than the actors. The comedy is absurd, with an early favorite Harold's mom (Vivian Pickles) who is in her own bubble and is never styled the same way twice. The Cat Stevens music makes me wonder why "single artist" soundtracks aren't more of a thing (at least outside of music biopics). The character arc is compelling, as the kid obsessed with death is confronted with the realities of mortality, while Maude might well be obsessed with LIFE and still be resigned to her fate. Ashby's deadpan has always distanced his work for me, but Harold and Maude might actually hit emotionally.
Made close to the 1990 earthquake that struck Iran, Abbas Kiarostami's Life, and Nothing More... (AKA And Life Goes On) is, like his Close-Up, a fact/fiction hybrid in which he - through a stand-in - documents the aftermath of the disaster and people's natural resilience. It also a companion piece to his early masterpiece, Where Is the Friend’s House?, as a film director and his young son drive towards the locations used in that film, in addition to sharing the theme of desperately trying to reach a destination without knowing how to get there. Kiarostami's easy direction of children is on show once again, all the kids in the film feeling very natural, while Farhad Kheradmand is a natural empath as "the director". And while there's a touching reality in this film, there's also a meta-textual playfulness when one non-actor baldly mentions he's in a film while he's supposed to be playing a scene. But the film goes on and doesn't miss a beat. Resilience is in its DNA. Whether natural disaster or war, the complications for regular people are about the same, and later world events certainly give this one more power.
I like Pulp's music, but didn't come to it naturally in its own time. The first time I heard Common People, it was "sung" by William Shatner, but from there, I went on to enjoy a lot of their songs, especially from that era. About 10 years after the band broke up, they got back together for a tour ending in their native town of Sheffield. Pulp: a Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets is set in and around the show, showing parts of the final concert, talking to band members, and interviewing a lot of fans. It's a little thin on the ground for me (as many of these music documentaries are), and I wish there had been more discussion about the music itself. Or even the history of the band. I see what they're doing - because Common People is their most iconic song, and Pulp is arguably known as a "working class band", they spend a lot of time talking TO common people, but it's a concept that drifts away from what I find personally interesting. Looked like a great show, though.
Now obviously, I've already reviewed the two just-found episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan, technically sight unseen (using the narrated soundtrack and recreations), but there's nothing like the actual episodes (duh) because you have the actors' full performance and all the props (the magnetic chair, the visors) and special effects (Desperus, the spaceship in flight, Zephon without his hood!). Though we're still missing about half of the serial, I was excited to see poor, doomed Katarina's two remaining full episodes as a companion returned to the collection (she's more spaced out than I imagined) and Nicholas Courtney's first ever Doctor Who episode (and certainly see shades of the Brigadier in his Brett Vyon). It goes without saying that Kevin Stoney's always watchable, and the William Hartnell's Doctor is an impish and independent as he's ever been. The Nightmare Begins (episode 1) is quite good, with some shocking cadavers no one expected to be so gruesome, but Devil's Planet (episode 2) is a Terry Nation special, i.e. a lot of padding with people rushing about to fix a spaceship instead of sending it directly to Earth. Really, if it didn't set up Katarina's death in episode 4, you could practically skip ahead without noticing. That's a bit of an anti-climax (much like when they found a lost episode of... Galaxy 4. But beggars can't be choosers, and I'm not gonna spit on ANY found episode of Doctor Who. And wow, this print is in astonishingly good shape, which must be how they were able to release them so close to the find.
[1943] Sanshiro Sugata: Kurosawa's first film is already impressive, despite the war-time government cutting it down for both length and content. They never recovered the deleted footage, and cover those sequences with cards, so there's a certain sense of discontinuity here and there. And yet, I found what WAS there quite absorbing. It's a martial arts film of the sort we'll get out of Hong Kong in the 70s and 80s, detailing a rivalry between judo and jujitsu, and tracking one student progress, not through technique, but through martial philosophy. In his way, his opponent's cute daughter, symbol of a purity that he, himself, must achieve in his art. Perhaps it's because I'm a fan of this genre, but I found that quest ultimately quite touching. Kurosawa is already in full control of his powers - I love his transitions (I don't mean the trademark wipes, though he's using them already), his shots empty of humans and yet full of humanity, and his play on light and shadow. Susumu Fujita (who plays the title character) would become one of the director's most used actors, but this is also Kurosawa's first of many, many, many collaborations with Takashi Shimura (here, the girl's father). I believe that if it hadn't been edited down, it would be considered as highly as the post-war output - it's a blemish that many will not pardon.
[1944] A Canterbury Tale: Though it pays lip service to Chaucer's classic (indeed, might even make you think it was an adaptation at first), its "pilgrims" are contemporary to 1944, which is to say, part of the influx of people moving around in Britain because of the war (a British soldier, an American G.I., and a woman who lost her fiancé in Europe), and they don't entirely realize that they're on a pilgrimage, or that miracles could await them. It's the kind of film that both acknowledges the realities of the day (the sky casually filled with barrage balloons, the odd blasted-out ruin, women in official positions) and is meant as a pastoral lark away from the war. Our three protagonists, passing through a village that's on the road to Canterbury, spend their time trying to solve the mystery of a strange attacker who wipes glue on hapless women - low stakes and a fairly thin whodunit (perhaps more of a whydunit), but I wouldn't say that's what it's about. Walks through the country, presentations of local history, kids playing at soldiers - a rural sanctuary from the horrors of war - and ultimately, everyone might get what they want, or at least need. I don't think a film like this is made in peace time. Sheila Sim is particularly affecting, and props to John Sweet, the "aww shucks" American soldier who was not an actor, but simply a soldier who the Archers saw in a military base production. His acting isn't strong, but it's honest. Very charming, and the ending got to me.
RPGs: This was the night I would lose my Call of Cthulhu character. Well, perhaps. According to the rules, if he spends a month+ in an asylum, he could be salvaged, and being the only character from the start of the campaign, and at this point, the only one who has ANY connection to the larger meta-plot, the other players seemed keen on getting him treated and back in action. But I'm getting ahead of myself... This was going to be ("hell or high water", according to the Keeper), the final chapter in the TARDIS Cube saga, as our characters ran from Nazis and broke into the Louvre in the 1940s, and were then offered to finish what we started and heal reality by bringing back a certain mirror from 1632 Venice (thankfully, right AFTER the plague). Paris was a bitch because we didn't know the language (even though, I, the player, am a native French speaker) and all my ideas for the Charm skill would only have worked if my character knew future history (WWII some 10 years in the PCs' future). So when we were asked to complete the mission in Venice for the aliens, I asked for some means of translation. The skill implant is powerful - my character is a best-selling AUTHOR and his Venetian (makes a nice code language for the party, at least) is 25% better than his ENGLISH now (while all other PCs now have heavily-accented English as a result of this). In Venice, we save a child from a fire, get invited to the palace where the mirror is, and our trans sailor blurts out all the time travel stuff to the Countess, who turns out to be some horrible monster that breaks my mind. I was all set for Phelps to be left in the past, or eaten, body and soul, by a vampiric horror, but no, I somehow always get incredible dice results when it really counts, and Phelps makes it through the portal, back to the Cube. His beloved cousin/tag-along NPC is killed, however, and as we reappear in my New England home, she lies eviscerated at our feet. I had been warned I had passed the Sanity threshold, and so my mind breaks. I grab every book I can and start scribbling over the pages, becoming one of those Lovecraft protagonists who tell their stories from a padded cell. If Phelps returns, I will turn him from the obstinate non-believer he was to a conspiracy theorist who believes in everything and more. What this will do to his book sales is anyone's guess...
We've been down one player for a bit in our Torg Eternity, but our old pal Furn (Justice Legion, Hong Kong Action Theater, Evernight - is it proper to list campaigns like they're movie credits? - oh, and the Lonely Hearts podcast) lost his group and has agreed to join us! Just as an observer this week, but his presence will be sorely needed. This is still the Operation Soft Sell side-campaign, so his character will be Training Wheels for whatever he comes up with for the main story. And "Training Wheels" will be a gun guy to add some much needed firepower to the group. Because combat seems to be ramping up in the back half, and players are either ignoring the threats (as they do with the pirate-infested waters of the Philippines (the setting is a resort cut off from the world by the War, as they look for a place to plant an experimental stela), or the GM lets them get out of combat rather easily (like having the Edeinos tribe dimthread out once their leader has been knocked out). Gamists will cry foul, but I'm not letting side-encounters lead to Total Party Kills. This was otherwise a session focused on role-play, meeting NPCs, and exploring a couple of small islands, with a murder investigation in the middle because one of the Gaunt Man's horrors is prowling about (harking to Orrorsh landing in this part of the world back in Original Torg). I knew how to integrate Furn's new character in the next Act, but since they haven't planted the stela yet, it's given me other ideas for how to do it a bit earlier. Stay tuned.
Best bits: The resort sequences had dumb comedy courtesy of the Street Ninja and his claims that his parents had painted the Philippines as a hell hole. This was an inside joke, because his player's wife is part Filipino and I was amused to hear the next morning that, when the session was described to her, the inclusion of an Aswang gave her flashbacks (these are essentially Man-Bats and I was merely riffing on the fact that our main game has a werebat PC). Also on the beach was the Psionic Insider being forced into a Romance by a sexy model who's clearly in it for the selfies and clicks. (Scanning her mind to confirm all this is of ethical dubiousness.) The Psi was quite useful in convincing the local warlord that they were guiltless of the strange murders with a passionate speech. The Hacker felt she didn't have much to do in the jungle, naturally, but she still crafted a bodybag for the Aswang before they dumped it off a catamaran with a rock around its neck (we know from our main game that these things don't DIE). The invading Edeinos are used to jungle warfare, but not so good on beaches, with the Psi throwing sand in their faces, and upon the play of a Setback card, suggesting the leader step on a poisonous jellyfish and lose his shit.
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