BuysRecently grabbed the whole Designers & Dragons series or books (70s through the 00s) in ebook format.
"Accomplishments"
In theaters: More somber than Sarah Polley's other films, Women Talking nevertheless finds small moments of humor to break up what is a very serious film about serious things. The women of a religious colony, having outed systemic rape by the men of their community, much make a choice - do nothing, stay and fight, or leave - and ask the women and girls of three families to debate the options and come to a decision for the group. It's a logical puzzle that deals with security, family, morality, faith, ambition, and more. One of those conversation films that could have been a play, but a deeply interesting one, and masterfully acted by Foy, Buckley, Mara, everyone really, though the secret MVP is Sheila McCarthy. Ben Wishaw is the only man allowed at these proceedings (as secretary) and his role serves several purposes. One of these is as a kind of sin eater, taking on a general male guilt for what has been happening in the colony, but there's an ambiguity as to what he might actually be guilty of personally, if anything. There's room in his performance for it. But another role he fills is that of the "woman" as the world order is reversed - he's the one who, if he speaks, does so out of turn, who is silenced, if only by the culture of the room. He feels what these women have felt all their lives. It's the female experience writ very large and intense, but remove the issues from their specific context here, and it still speaks to society at large. This one's sticking with me.
At home: The international cut of Supergirl suffers from a poorly-cropped frame (the Director's Cut has fixed this), but benefits from 20 minutes more story than the dimly-remembered theatrical cut (while the Director's Cut is definitely too long). What we have is an actually pretty charming piece of film, despite a lot of problems. The Superman formula is in place - a very green actor in the role surrounded by big stars, the villain has a second banana, a weird planet with a father figure, and the production's feeling that the Supers can do anything the script requires no matter what powers are actually ascribed to them in he comics (like Supergirl's ability to magically change her appearance - but there are some notable differences. With a witch as the villain and moments like Kara waking up in the woods next to a rabbit, there' something of a Disney fairy tale feeling (with a touch of Midsummer Night's Dream about the romance as well). There's a plentiful lack of urgency as Kara/Linda decides to (pointlessly) get a human identity, or our heroine stands around watching chaos happen before finally intervening, but I like those fish out of water sequences. Helen Slater brings to it the same quality to the screen Christopher Reeve did as Superman, and no matter what demerits I want to give the picture, I am charmed by her. We also get some pretty good effects, a visit to the Phantom Zone, and the best flying sequences of the 80s. So yeah, I'm way more positive about this one than I thought I'd be.
A relatively slight "true story", The Duke benefits from a really very entertaining performance by Jim Broadbent, as a "man of the people" always trying to make a point to the government for perceived injustices. He's the guy who finds loopholes to not pay a tax, you know. Helen Mirren gets her licks in as well. In 1961, Kempton Bunton was accused of stealing (or as he would put it, borrowing) a Goya from the National Gallery in London (then returning it). The trial sequences, no doubt pulled from the actual record, are a lot of fun, and one wishes there'd been more of them. But the film is more interested in giving the characters context - who were Bunton and his family - acting as a kind of character witness so that you ultimately side with him. Perfectly fine, even sweet, and the direction throws in some split screens to make it feel a bit more 60s. Fun music too. I will give it half a star more for explaining a scene from a film of the time, which has stood as a hidden reference to current events (at least to modern/non-British audiences) until now.
The story of The Pied Piper is a rather cursory one om general pop culture. Flautist promises to get rid of town's plague rat problem in exchange for money. The town reneges. He leaves with the town's children. Jacques Demy's adaptation therefore focuses on more characters - the corrupt leaders of the town, including some terrifyingly abominable church men, the scientist trying to cure the plague, a girl to be married to a rich noble, a limping assistant... Yes, the Piper is in it too, sympathetically - if broadly - portrayed by Donovan, who provides his own songs. With Demy, you might expect a full-on musical, but I don't think it counts. There are several diagetic songs, and of course the flute anthems, but no one except the Piper is ever involved. It's a charming piece, full of recognizable actors, but it ends a bit too abruptly for my tastes. I would have liked a bit more of a reaction from Hamlin. But above all - and this is important - The Pied Piper is a movie about funny hats.
With a title like Karaoke Crazies and a group of quirky losers trying to make a go of a ghost town karaoke bar, there's every chance this Korean flick will be a raucous comedy. But no, it's almost relentlessly SAD and goes to some very DARK places (even for a black comedy). I say almost, because it has a lot of heart. The owner of the place, though himself a trauma victim, essentially takes pity on others like him, and in so doing, builds a supporting family around his business. The bar - Addiction Karaoke - is well named. Everyone has an addiction of sorts - sex, alcohol, money, gaming, but perhaps most of all, loneliness - but getting people addicted to karaoke is something they'll have to work together to achieve. And in their personal transformations lies the key to the business' own. Worth the viewing, but leave expectations at the door, they can only be subverted. So what's it going to be? The loud room, or the quiet room?
The underrated Michel Piccoli plays the eponymous character of Max et les ferrailleurs (Max and the Junkmen), a police detective hard up for a collar that will stand up in court, i.e. where the culprits are caught red-handed. And so he sets out to manipulate small-time hoods into going for a bigger target, largely through a prostitute who hangs out with the gang, but does he play the game TOO well? This is a story of entrapment to the Nth degree, and it has some very unusual tension builders, largely thanks to a subtle performance by the vivacious Romy Schneider. I'm not entirely sure about the ending, mind, but the film very nicely portrays cops as jobbers with quotas that have little to do with morality. More traffic tickets are handed out at the end of the month, but I doubt people are actually driving worse, you know? Now imagine an undercover cop had put the idea of running a stop sign in your head... I guess I gotta track down more films signed Claude Sautet.
Well, lookee here... Les choses de la vie (The Things of Life) is Sautet's first hit, and also his first collaboration with Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider, centring on a car accident that's dissected in the cinematography, just as we'll dissect the events leading up to it. Piccoli is an outwardly content man - he loves his girlfriend, is on good terms with his ex-wife, has a family who loves him, and he's not exactly suffering on the financial side of things either. So why was he being so reckless on the road that day? Does it have anything to do with his ambivalence towards commitment? Sautet is just incredibly good at building tension even in a relationship drama (it only FEELS like a thriller by the way he approaches the subject). Every time Piccoli is on the road - and he often is - you start getting worried. And even in the material set after the accident, there are reasons to wonder and worry. It's very well done, and examines, in the final analysis just how human bonds are forged and through what processes, and sometimes perhaps only through a kind of reckless abandon.
I don't know if it's in Sautet's writing, or just an ineffable quality possessed by Romy Schneider, but she once again plays a woman who is frank and no-nonsense in César and Rosalie, a woman who feels she is free to do what she wants, when she wants, and with who she wants. Yves Montand is the ebullient César, a charmer who nonetheless gets jealous and insecure when an old boyfriend (Sami Frey) comes back into the picture. And the very thing César fears is the thing he creates with his ugly reaction to a perceived rival. There's certainly something interesting in the fact that he's a junk dealer - a destroyer - while Frey's David and another former flame are artists - creators - though this may only be texture. Once again - especially with The Thing of Life in mind - cars drive themselves angrily, creating suspense along the way. The novelty, however, comes from the complicated relationship between the two men. I'm unsure about the ending, however, but it doesn't spoil anything, really. Isabelle Huppert fans take note: She has a tiny role in this as the Schneider's sister.
Agnès Varda's The Creatures is a very odd film, and I don't think it works, but it's still intriguing enough to warrant a viewing. Michel Piccoli and Catherine Deneuve are recovering from a car accident in a resort town and he, a writer, starts to imagine and write stories involving the citizenry. Among those stories is one about a mad scientist causing people to act according to their worse natures for a monochromatically-red minute, and Piccoli gets into a chess game with him over the souls of various people. It's a writer's tale, wanting the best for his characters, but also requiring them to suffer for the story's sake, and so it's the director's story too. The added frisson is that these are real people (in the story), and the film blurs the line between what's real and what's part of Piccoli's imagination. And between the accident, this structure, and various potential clues, the audience is completely within its rights to wonder if Deneuve's character is really there or just another figment. I don't care for the answer, or lack of answer, which accompanies (or doesn't) the abrupt ending. The color filters, interesting special effects, and chessboard motif running through the film elevate the material, but I'm still a bit baffled by it, and not in a good way.
Books: I remember having trouble getting through Christopher Bullis' 7th Doctor novel Shadowmind and putting my reading of the New Adventures on hold for more than a year. Faced with Vanderdeken's Children as the next book in my Eighth Doctor Adventures read-through, the same thing happened. But to be fair, this may be Bullis' best Doctor Who book. The Doctor and Sam are well written and the science fiction mystery - a giant spaceship with one end somewhere in some other part of time and space, being fought over by two cultures - is interesting and full of genre-switching twists. That said, Bullis' problem, here as in Shadowmind, is that he's catering to his own characters too much. In this case, they are pretty varied and I didn't get lost despite there being a cast of dozens. And yet, wouldn't it have been better if Sam had been taken by the "ghosts" early on instead of that photographer? Wouldn't that have kept the main characters in the game for a larger portion of the story? Isn't the Doctor a bit of bystander in this one? Throw in an ending that's a little thick with technobabble, and you've got... well, Bullis' best effort, but in no way a standout of the line. I'd even call it skippable.
Web: Yesterday, this blog hit 10,000 posts. So... there's that.
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