This Week in Geek (11-17/09/17)

"Accomplishments"

In theaters: Let me preface my thoughts on It by saying I am not any kind of Stephen King fan, have not read the book, nor even seen the TV mini-series from, cleverly enough, 27 years ago. So I didn't see the theatrical release with the kind of fond nostalgia that seems to be driving the box office. Perhaps that's why my opinion tends towards ambivalence. At least as to the horror, which felt like a series of barely connected set pieces whose cheap effectiveness was too predicated on jump scares to really engage me. I get it, it's about an illusion-casting fear monster, and that comes with a variety of possible effects, but I don't think it follows its own rules, not about its powers, not about its weaknesses, and not about its modus operandi. Where the movie does work is with its excellent underage ensemble cast (can't wait to look back on this like we do the superior version of this story, Stand By Me, and its star-making), and the often funny dialog. I like Bill Skarsgård as the clown too. And there's a lot playing in the background that you'd only catch on subsequent viewings, which means it certainly has replay value. Just going by the conversations I've had this week, It is likely to age quite well. Will I check out Part 2 when it comes out? If it's in 27 years, I'll probably be dead. If it's soon (it's slated for 2019), then probably, for completeness' sake, but I'll lament the loss of those young actors.

At home: Clouds of Sils Maria is a thoughtful, meta-textual meditation on aging and how it changes one's perspective. Juliette Binoche plays a shade of herself, an aging actress offered a part in a revival of the play (and subsequent film) that made her famous, this time playing the older woman's part. Running her lines with her assistant played by Kristen Stewart in the younger role, also the role of an assistant, at time playfully confuses as to whether we're hearing the play or a real conversation, as Binoche's hatred of the part starts to make their working relationship toxic. The third cog in this machine is Chloë Grace Moretz as the young star meant to play the role Binoche USED to play. We're meant to draw comparisons between the three actresses, their roles and the roles those roles are playing, and over the course of this finely tuned but often ambiguous character study, come to some kind of realization about accepting change and owning our new selves. The film doesn't spoon-feed the audience, leaving us to interpret a moment, a glance, a gesture, but then this is about acting. Let's let the acting do the work.

The Princess and the Frog is Disney's kooky remix of The Frog Prince fairy tale set in 1920s New Orlans, with a soundtrack to match. Music is very important in New Orleans, and it various styles are pretty well represented in the music, though the ratio of songs-to-story ratio is perhaps a bit skewed in that direction. But while it's a perfectly diverting tale, it bothered me that everything I knew about Louisiana was in this. The bayou, voodoo, begnets and gumbo (so the lead has to be a cook), Mardi Gras, riverboats, Cajuns, a Southern belle calling her father "Big Daddy", rich white folks and poor black folks but also inbred rednecks, even a character called Evangeline. That some of these should be part of this nevertheless glamorous/enchanted world is perfectly fine; all of it feels like someone is ticking off boxes and steeps the story in cliché and stereotype. Don't get me wrong, I liked the heroine, I liked the old-fashioned animation, I liked that it dared kill off a character. But I didn't really believe in the romance, and the world itself felt forced.

Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame stands shoulder to shoulder with the Mouse's other great animation achievements of the 90s, but like its lead, it is strange and a little misshapen. The strangeness comes from how ADULT it is. The villain, Frollo, is motivated by lust for the gypsy Esmeralda, and his misogynistic hatred of the woman who forced him into sin. Religion is tackled head on (it takes place in a cathedral, after all), highlighting the "faithful"'s hypocrisies. And it's violent, Victor Hugo's Paris a real powder keg and nest on inequity. And I love it for all those things. But it's misshapen thanks to a trio of tonally deaf comedy gargoyles. A little of them goes a long way, and we get altogether too much of them. The comedy goat and slapstick action worked well enough without this addition, and their featured song, in an otherwise gorgeous musical production, has the audience reaching for the fast-forward button. On the question of whether it is faithful to Victor Hugo's book, I was encouraged to tell this story: There's a tedious and much-mocked (at least, in my household) chapter in the novel called "Paris à vol d'oiseau" ("A Bird's Eye View of Paris") which stops the action to bring you the 18th-Century equivalent of a long Wikipedia article about the history and architecture of Paris. We mock it for its clumsiness and for Hugo possibly fobbing off an old non-fiction essay to a literary magazine that week in lieu of prose, while also appreciating the readers of the time didn't really have access to this richness of context any other way. Now, how could an adaptation of Hunchback be any good unless it actually did the Bird's Eye View? Believe it or not, Disney's keeps returning to it visually, in jokes, and by stressing the right plot points. I was amused and impressed! Now somebody edit me a version where the Gargoyles aren't so omnipresent.

Misfits' fourth season is easily the weakest of the entire series, finally doing away with what was left of the original cast (not at all satisfyingly), and finalizing the ensemble that will take us to the end. On the edge of that knife, it's hard to remember a time when any of the super-powered truants on community service on the show were sympathetic, as the ones we know aren't vert likable, and the ones we don't have yet to find a place in our hearts. To make matters duller, most of the stories don't really center around powers, to the point where near the end, one character wonders why they couldn't use their powers to get out of trouble, and it's like this big epiphany. Of course, by this point, the powers aren't very interesting. I still found it watchable, mind you. The characters start to grow on you over time - the new probation worker is pretty funny - and if you like shock comedy, I can't say the show's lost its tone. Only its groove.

Misfits Series 5 is a return to form, in my opinion, with stronger subplots, a greater focus on super-powers in the real world, and characters that yes, now feel sympathetic. There's a bit of having your cake and eating too with the ending, but it's not an unpleasant cop-out, managing comedy and triumph as well as tragedy and emotional closure. The raunchy laughs are ensured by making powers sexual in nature, which is not new for Misfits, but the idea really goes the distance here. And for those waiting for it, they address what it might be to become legitimate superheroes in this universe, as a prophecy hints there will be. As usual, expect the tropes to be taken down savagely, but it does provide the cool super action we were denied in the previous season. The show may have lost itself along with its original cast, but it finds itself in the end.

Is there room on television today for an episodic time travel show where each week, you see a different historical era/event come to life (à la Time Tunnel or Voyagers!)? I think so. Timeless isn't particularly ambitious (even if it does have a conspiracy myth-arc that runs from episode to episode), but it does a good job of using Western Canada's historical TV/film tradition to make such a program possible, much as older American productions did with studio back lots. Notably, the show has a pretty good handle on the details of history, doesn't auto-translate foreign languages for the travelers, addresses the discomfort of having a woman and a black man back in history, and doesn't mind the timeline being changed when things go awry. The cast still sometimes suffer from being stupid about time travel (a major pet peeve of mine, still mostly under control), but that's really down to the world's worst Delta Force operative. The historian and the pilot both do much better. I could easily see this show shift from the mission-centric format to something wild and more far-ranging, so I hope it gets a decent run. The set-up is a bit old-fashioned, but I don't think this is as plain as early reviews suggested.

Doctor Who Titles: Dario Argento's Inferno is about... what IS it about? It can be a bit of a head scratcher, but it's more or less about a guy who comes to New York to find his sister, who's been investigating a coven of witches in a demented building built on a Hellmouth (my conclusion, but it might explain why so many characters go mad, as if the architecture unlocked a dark force). In Argento fashion, it's more about the feeling than the plot, so the lighting and music are expressionistic, and the story leaves a lot of set pieces unexplained. Some call this film a mess, others say it's underrated. I fall somewhere in the middle. The stilted performances and terrible dialog do drag it down some, and you're unlikely to admire much about it except the water/fire bookends, but there's obviously something to it, and it fascinates even if it rarely clarifies its intent.
#The TARDIS lands in the film... In his weirdest horror story since Image of the Fendahl, the fourth Doctor, accompanied by the second Romana, traces an ancient evil to an evil murder palace in New York. Maybe with Time Lord exposition, we can understand what's happening.

Oscar Pool Stash Forced Watch: From the same mind who gave us Underworld, and seemingly (though not actually) in the same universe as Van Helsing, I, Frankenstein is another of those high-octane classic monster mash-ups dripping with CG that I've come to - loathe would be giving the subgenre too much credit - be bored by. While I don't dislike the third act finale (silly plot and all), the premise isn't so much bonkers as it is random. Essentially, there's a hidden war between Demons and angelic Gargoyles, and Frankenstein's Monster is an unwilling agent of the latter, against the former who want to replicate Frankenstein's experiments to create an army of soulless bodies they can possess. Tonally, this should be fun, but the movie takes itself too seriously, with nary a joke in its 90-minute run time. The first act is all exposition, a massive, stinky info-dump, dragging so long, you've lost interest before ever getting to the good parts. There's really no reason a movie with Yvonne Strahovski (not allowed to kick ass?! why did you cast her?!) and Bill Nighy should be this dull. But no, she's there to receive a recap of the info-dump at the mid-point of the film (sigh), and he spends half his time in the kind of mask that was already hokey on Buffy and with his silky voice distorted. There are clever bits in here, but they're not stressed properly, lost in the video game flow of extended fighting. The DVD has two commentary tracks (yay, me), the director's filled with more exposition that didn't make it into the film and some unintentionally funny delusions about his own work, the producers' rather redundant and boring. Two featurettes - making of and monster design - complete the package.
#OscarPoolResult: Only the worst go back in the pile, and this is not the worst. No re-pooling then, but not giving it a featured place on a shelf either.

Books: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson, a cult short story collection from the 70s (which spawned many others, I read it as part of The Callahan Chronicals, which collects the first three), about a bar where all sorts of crazy SF things happen, in addition to nights devoted to tall tales and competitive punning (oh, there are groaners). I only really knew it from the GURPS role-playing supplement. In this first collection, Robinson paints a picture that's still relevant today because it exalts man's capacity to love and forgive. And just like in our world and era, it's something that's sorely lacking, and you'd dearly want a place like Callahan's to exist. Most stories follow a similar structure, starting on the interplay between regulars, then listening to one of their stories or a guest star's, and finally the patrons putting their hearts and minds together to "solve" the problem. The formula is clever and flexible, and the writer's wit and liberal empathy palpable. Rightly called a classic.