"Accomplishments"
In theaters: I was never very interested in the fantastical middle bits of The Odyssey - I had gone off picaresques by the time I read Homer due to to an overdose of bad sword & sorcery novels in my teen years - and I didn't feel differently about them in Christopher Nolan's star-studded epic. At least he gave the supernatural elements are cool horror vibe that fit the story, and made it fairly clear without stating overtly that their function was to explore Odysseus's guilt and corresponding death wish, in a way paying homage to the "other" Odysseus, the one the original tellers and hearers could interpret as comedic excuses for not going home. Where I was always most happy was in his return home to his wife and her belligerent suitors, a story kept well alive by the in medias res reconfigured from Homer's technique into a more intricate structure that lends more power to events on Ithaca, and ties to Trojan campaign to today's realpolitik and the end of an empire (Ancient Greece, America...). Odysseus is an introspective soldier who knows he's committed war crimes and must face his own guilt, and as that guilt is uncovered in the film, we start to put the pieces together. Obviously, it looks great. It's Nolan. Couple (but only a couple) of clunky lines that want to stress the themes too strongly. It's Nolan. Perhaps best not to watch it in combination with 2004's Troy.
At home: I like magical realism, and I like Afrofuturism, so I wish I liked The Burial of Kojo (Blitz Bazawule, Ghana) more than I do. The crux of the story only really kicks off in the third act when the estranged brother betrays the other, forcing the latter's young daughter fulfill her destiny by finding him, and while the first two acts have some very interesting context, it feels like it's playing for time. A lot of interesting ideas, both in terms of film making and how the supernatural is invoked in a modern setting - dreams and visions, magical birds, strange reveals - but I often found it all hard to track. A little surrealism goes a long way, and we're in screechy dreams too often for my tastes. And if narration is something I struggle with, in this case, it was fine until it was revealed to be part of a frame tale. At its core, the film is about living with guilt and owing a debt to the dead - for what is a mystery until late in the game - but Bazawule is a bit all over the place in terms of style and content, and things don't come into focus nearly early enough for me.
What Pawo Choyning Dorji did for Bhutanese education reforms in Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, he does for the advent of democracy in The Monk and the Gun, which is to say, craft a delightful film out of his country getting dragged very recently into "modernity". In 2008, the monarchy abdicated and "gifted" the people with the ability to choose their own leaders, a gift most in the very rural nation didn't understand or think they wanted. A mock election was held to teach the population about this new form of governance (which, hilariously or terrifyingly, seems to include lessons of the kind of tribal adversity the Western world has floundered into). A local Lama has tasked a monk with finding a couple of guns so "things can be put right", lending a pervasive tension to the film, as Chekhov's gun must eventually be used. The monk's path will cross that of an American gun collector being tracked by the police. And in the village, a family struggles with how politics are already disrupting family (and for their young daughter, school) life. It's all coming at Bhutan too fast, and one wonders if their inexperience will make them use these new tools wisely or foolishly. I love where this goes and how it questions and explores what democracy means.
Brittany S. Hall is pretty great in Test Pattern, a drama that has her character Renesha roofied, raped and then carted around from clinic to clinic by her boyfriend, trying to do the correct thing, legally, which I'm sure isn't made any easier because the story is set in Texas. The frustrating bureaucracy is only part of the equation (one I thought we'd suffer through longer), the other is the boyfriend's masculine drive to get justice, while Renesha's reaction is, perhaps problematically, to accept and move on. Of course, she's in shock, but between the systemic failure of our systems to deal with this kind of crime, and the psychological effects of those crimes on victims, justice is a pipe dream, and its pursuit causing harm without any benefit. If we care, it's because the movie does a good job of foregrounding the relationship. We meet them when THEY meet, and by the eventual cut to the present day, we're invested in what seems a pleasant and supportive relationship. By the end, we don't know if it can survive these events (or if we want it to), but it's all very low-key. Depression Core slice of life. I respect it, even if I might have wanted it to have a harder edge, perhaps.
[1982] Class of 1984: While I don't dispute there was violence in schools in the 80s (indeed, ever), since even I'd seen physical altercations between students and teachers in, like, small town Canada middle school, this flick proposes that a mere two years in its future, thing have gotten so out of hand, youth gangs out of The Warriors have taken over and teachers can carry guns to class. It's an exploitation picture not so much based on true events than it is on local news hows that try to scare their audience to keep them watching ("What you don't know about _____ could hurt your kids."). So though there are some nice kids at this high school, including Michael J. Fox before he added the "J.", the bad apples are criminal psychopaths intent on making the new music teacher's life miserable. They go way too far (as you knew they would, and trigger warning for some very ugly moments), so he snaps and goes full Commando on their asses (as directed by Mark Lester who also made Commando). I can't take its ambivalent politics too seriously, so I thought it was a pretty fun violent satire, in the vein of Robocop, and it kept my invested.
[1983] Mr. Mom: The reason nerds didn't want Michael Keaton to play Batman, Mr. Mom is basically a feature-length sitcom where every scene is a sketch on the same premise - what if the parent who stays home with the kids, does all the choresm and watches soap operas was the MAN, and the WOMAN was working long hours to put food on the table. Hilarious, right? It's pretty basic stuff about gender expectations, and if it wasn't inhabited by recognizable comedic talent of the era (Keaton, Terri Garr, Martin Mull, etc... Christopher Lloyd's role is too small to count, however), it probably wouldn't be as surface likable or memorable. What it really lacks is stakes. It seems like Keaton's character was always fairly present in his family life, and accepts the new role without initial conflict, and events continually conspire to restore the "natural order" by the end of the film, which it will without real conflict, not even the sense that lessons were learned.
Books: When your favorite author of the past 35 years has gotten too old to keep doing it, and writes one last book to say goodbye... Julian Barnes's Departure(s) is, for me, devastating. He's been a thought companion for decades, and in this last, rather short volume, he continues to treat me like one. The conversational style, his ruminations on death (his own, after exploring his wife's in Levels of Life) and memory, an intersection with a "story" about old school friends who became a couple then and back again later (his role in which becomes a a biographical illustration of what we may leave behind, in terms of impact and memory), and that gut punch of an ending. It's all for me. And those like me... I'm sure there are other me's out there. Form is suited to content, with plenty of digressions, jumping back in like a diarist to answer a question posed earlier or double back on a memory that has proven wrong. The evocation of Proust is like a decoder ring. Writing/reading the book is like taking that spoonful of soggy Madeleine, and the effect on this reader was a strong sense memory of some of his earlier books, and of moments in my own life, forcing me to double back and read passages I missed because my mind was elsewhere, but my eyes kept mechanically going down the page. Or perhaps I was trying to make it last longer...
My academic interest in mini-comics and Canadian comics converge in John MacLeod's The Mundane Adventures of Dishman, an 80s mini-comic out of Guelph, Ontario, reprinted at Black Eye Books in the stiffest hardcover I've ever seen. Though it causes no problems in the reading of it, the pages are practically cardboard. What is the bond on these things?! Now, I dabbled in mini-comics in the early 90s and was happy if I sold 20 copies of something. MacLeod's slice of life superhero serial - about a high school teacher who develops the ability to teleport dirty dishes back into their cupboards without a speck on them - could get up to 1000 sales per 8 page flyer! And it deserved that level of success (or "success", as we in the non-profitable trenches sometimes pronounce it). MacLeod's art has a strong illustrative quality and his story is amusing and, in spite of the fanciful premise, true to life. Dishman's second life is destructive to his relationship, but he's a positive influence on his world, if perhaps in a small way. The nature of the beast perhaps made it a foregone conclusion that Dishman's "to be continued" format would deny us that continuance, and this despite doing a couple more strips online in 2018 (included, as well as the Satan's Six back-up published at Topps). For what it's worth, I would have kept reading.
RPGs: Issue 2 of The Midway Masks is a Techno-Triassic Extinction Event tie-in issue (not any sillier a crossover than actual DC comics), "Uncivil Disobedience". We started the session in medias res... and I rolled the absolute worst superhero identity possible - Kid Virus would have been great to make human villains sick (like a microscopic Infectious Lass), but robot dinosaurs and cyborg Kamen riders? Well, one of the players has an actual background in microbiology, so he helped a lot with his suggestions. The Masks are peripheral to the event, just crowd control, saving people from an incidental fire, and eventually fighting ONE Robosaurus Rex. And while I rolled spectacularly well last time, real dice crap this issue. It would lead to my filling up with Potential and "levelling up", but still a rough start. We had longer to play with, so this was followed by subplots for each character (my dad lost his job and didn't tell anyone - Chris King's little brother was a shit in the comics, too), and then a full plot in which a psychic hijacked some Starros and used them to hold the city for ransom by hacking all its systems. It gave the Masks a chance to use their base's abilities (spellbooks, courtesy of our Hawkgirl), and while Hawkgirl is great at bashing things, and Telkine's telekinesis is off the charts, it's the Dial that often gives us the edge, because it's a total wild card the GM can't prepare for. My colleagues weren't sure The White Collar - with her powers over paperwork - would be of any use, but I was kind of excited, actually. Sadly, we didn't have the time to explore what it meant for Hugo to transform across genders, but looking at my random hero table, there'll be other opportunities.
Origin: Starting with the found image and working my way back, I was inspired by the idea that a dialed identity would be microscopic and invisible to his allies and foes (what a waste of a costume!), so I dubbed him Kid Virus, the hero who swims through your bloodstream (but the wings give him the ability to go airborne and ride a cough). He has virus and infection-like effects on foes, but here, he had to be more clever. It's like the Heroverse is trolling him.
Best bits (crossover event opening): Wings or not, someone put the image of the hero riding a cold virus like a horse, so I did it. It was also our microbiologist's idea that I extinguish a fire with carbon dioxide from bacteria (forgot the name, but there's a common paramecium that does this, so I milked them for CO2 (the things kid remember from biology class, right?). It made one person choke and collapse, so I had to go in and provoke an adrenaline spike and wake him up before he died. Only the volatile Telkine kept his cool as Hawkgirl went berzerk on a Kamen Rider and though I tried to make him reject his cyborg implants, I kept failing until the timer ran out on my Dial (in medias res is risky) and exploded out of his head. Lots of guilt, but things got worse. A wounded Batman rescued me, but it was the Mike Barr Batman from Outsiders, and he chewed me out for all the wrong reasons before handing me an explosive batarang to end the fight. I lobbed it at the robot dinosaur and "saved the day", but Hugo was so put out, he couldn't even enjoy Nightwing - his personal hero - giving him an emergency communicator. Mope, mope, mope.
Origin: The White Collar is just a pun that fit this image. I imagined a hero who only works on white collar crime, and is therefore a super accountant, union rep, and because there was a computer hack component to this story, I decided was also an expert at computer systems (not that it actually helped). The satchel would prove important to doing more in a fight.
Best bits (the rest of the issue): Because Batman had just adjusted my stats to push Superior, I decided to confront my dad about his losing his job, and gave him "until Comic Book Day" (he doesn't know it's Wednesday) to tell mom. In the Sanctuary (in the backrooms of Midway City Museum), we had to assemble objects that related to the situation for an information spell. I grabbed the original town charter and gasped when it was consumed by eldritch energies (I guess it came back after, but it was a nice moment anyway). Hawkgirl (whose parents work here) had a very funny bit where she's running around with the museum's industrial router with a guard running after her. Given the events of the first chapter, we rewarded Telkine with leadership on this mission and he did well (we've now each had our turn). Once the Starro connection was revealed, and a face hugger was flying towards the White Collar, I pinned it to the side of a desk with one of my hard graphite pencils (told you the satchel would come into it) and asked what does Starro need with a starship (I mean, 3.8 million dollars). Only by putting it on as a mask could I get all the info so I did (acting reckless alleviates Guilt, so it suited my purposes). The WC faked financial records on her cellphone to confuse the villain and one telekinetic flick later, he was on the ground. Before the timer ran out on the H-Dial, I quickly called whatever subdivision of LexCorp used to employ my dad, and turned his dismissal into a clerical error. You just gotta know how to talk to HR (with superpowers). I've been assured there would be consequences.
Last Torg Eternity session for a bit - let the rest of the summer pass, with all its trips, events, and players either selling their houses or having a baby - and that gave me the chance to re-synch Acts with sessions (you may have heard me whining about it for the past couple months). Of course, that still required a bit of padding at the end, which I'll come to. We left the PCs on an oil platform in the path of a hurricane. Their mission, to help an oil rig team move the thing to a location just beyond the Living Land border as an observation post/launch base, but there are odd Edeinos aboard and time is of the essence. To his credit, our Realm Runner made less violent contact than had been had in the previous session and a satisfying diplomatic outcome was arrived at. It sort of extended to the stray Megalodon who attacked the crew when one of the platform legs got stuck and the Super-Wrestler had to dive in and fix it. The Aztec Demon Slayer found a better way than strict combat, which also meant the session was going to run short. So since the platform would now be just off Living Land waters, I invoked a random Wonder that would drift towards them, an unmelting iceberg with a figure inside it, and I let the players decide its nature, more or less. When one of them said it might be the one that sank the Titanic, I made it deviate and head FOR them, as if it had boat-seeking capabilities. When the Realm Runner asked if he could sense its cosm of origin, and said "you tell me" and he chose the lost cosm of Akasha, and so it was. The Wrestler still decided to blow it up with C-4 from a distance rather than investigate further, so the session came to an end fairly early anyway. Had to audacity to complain he didn't get any answers, too!
Best bits: While the Wrestler certainly got to roll a Corruption test as red snowflakes liquefied on his face from having exploded - judging by the Mayan-style shield slamming into the deck - Captain Akasha, he wasn't the only one on shaky moral ground. When the Cyber Apostate found one of the dead riggers' phone and answered a call from his wife, it proved a crucial clue to what was happening, but his refusal to address the situation with her, telling her the oil rig was "going into a tunnel", while hilarious, isn't how you want your clergyman to behave. The Realm Runner found the Edeinos priestess and made contact after rolling away from a helicopter tumbling in the wind towards him. After the Megalodon cut one of the tugboat's lines to the platform, the Slayer used his power of Beast Possession to literally "jump the shark", controlling the beast into dislodging the obstruction in the leg mechanism. When it came to rehooking the tugboat, I asked each player to come with a plan if THEIR PC were to do it and we got four very different ideas to pick from. While I would have loved to see the Meg pull a line to a tugboat (especially since no one knew the Slayer was in there - a member of the boat crew was giving his prone body mouth-to-mouth the whole time) would have been a hoot, they went with a still epic scene where the Wrestler pulls a fallen crane's chain to the boat as a replacement. There's no further fight with the giant shark because the Slayer swims it away as far as he can before he snaps back to his body. Amusingly, the Apostate converts the techno-worshipping Edeinos who think of this platform as a holy island to his brand of techno-worship, filling their heads with stories of the Cybergod, which they interpret to mean the next level after they've fully adapted to Core Earth. Could prove a problem for the Cyberpapacy in South America...
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