This Week in Geek (10-16/09/23)

"Accomplishments"

In theaters: I fully expected Gran Turismo to be a big fat ad for Playstation, but oof, that first half-hour... That's straight up Evangelical in its fervor. Despite being a true story, well-worn formulae are at the wheel for much of this (one suspects these elements are the Hollywood manipulations that never actually happened). Things settle down once we get into the racing, which is pretty strong  - you do get caught up in it - even if Blomkamp can't quite decide what graphics to use to tell us where Jann (Archie Madekwe)'s pole position at any given point. Ultimately, this entertains based on its characters. Madekwe is endearing, but David Harbour is really the star here. He's as funny as he is tragic as the former racer, now chief engineer, and he gets all the best lines. Orlando Bloom's marketing guru is a jerk and needs to be balanced out. Everyone else is a cipher and hardly needs to be there, give or take the evil guy in the gold car.

At home: The six-part Gamera Rebirth anime series is unfortunately by the same people who brought us those three horridly dull Netflix Godzilla movies, but while there's some ropy dialog (or something is lost in translation), it's got 1) better characters - four interesting kids at the heart of this, and Gamera is of course all about saving the children - and 2) a better story, one that involves all the monsters of the classic era and ends in pretty epic fashion (give or take the post-credits scenes that take the epiloguing too far). I do wonder who they think this is for, at times, because there's a lot of foul language for a Gamera story. I mean, okay, but it's so kid-centric, the F-bombs feel out of place. And while the kaiju action is fierce and well-choreographed (sadly, Gamera doesn't play the xylophone on Zigra's back), like those Godzilla specials, the CG looks unfinished and doesn't integrate well with the more traditional anime look of the backgrounds, technology, and human characters. What is up with that? Barugon and S-Gyaos are probably the best realized (the former always having been my favorite), but that's not saying much. These creatures all look like CG constructs before you put on the textures and lighting. I wouldn't say that's reason enough NOT to watch the show, but it's distracting for sure.

The experiment is interesting and the production lucked out. Jury Duty promises to show us the American judicial process through the eyes of a juror as some kind of all-access documentary, but in reality, there's only that one juror who is himself, and everyone else is an actor. It's a con of Leverage proportions, built on branching scenarios, improv, and reality TV tropes. They sling so much insanity at Ronald, that he probably couldn't see the strings being pulled, but also full props to the actors who are very naturalistic in their deliveries, even when their characters are pretty zany. I thought they were pushing it by using someone who was a recurring character on Parks & Recs (and in many things besides), but he went unrecognized. James Marsden as the doucheyest possible version of himself plays the annoying celebrity pulled on a jury, which is always amusingly cringe. There's the case, but by sequestering the jury, and delaying elements of the trial as often as possible, the show does lean on reality TV, and therefore, on Ronald making human connections with the people around him. When I say they lucked out, it's because this guy does step up, takes justice seriously, but also has that sort of helpful attitude we too often reserve for strangers. Makes me want to see a season where the person isn't so nice, but for now, the show gives you a positive feeling (which a lot of reality TV doesn't). And it makes you want to know just how this was done - well, you're in luck; the 10th episode is a making of/retrospective! It did leave questions on the table, but the answers weren't hard to find online.

I enjoyed Computer Chess enough to check out some of Andrew Bujalski's other directorial efforts. Results stars Cobie Smulders and Guy Pearce as personal trainers at odds with each other, so it's... a romantic comedy? Well, yes, but you're not always sure it is, though it eventually puts me in mind of Much Ado About Nothing (a good place to go, in my book). When you're dealing with highly formulaic genres, I always think it's a good idea to hand it over to an indie writer-director because it'll put a new, unformulaic spin on it. In this case, I think the results (ha) are generally charming. These are people who, for all that talk of fitness and working on oneself to self-actualize, really don't have their shit together except in the physical department, so the world isn't chosen at random. The catalyst for this relationship is a nouveau-millionaire played by Kevin Corrigan, who is divorced, depressed and - what starts with D and means pathetic? - and he's an interesting character in his own right (if not more so). Same lessons there, but from an untrained perspective. So our two leads really have no excuse for their fear.

It's debatable whether the ending works, but the set-up to So Long at the Fair is a fun one. 1896 Paris, the famous World Fair (used to some effect), the great Jean Simmons is an enthusiastic young woman whose brother disappears in the night at a fancy hotel, and everyone tries to gaslight her and say he never existed. It's kind of too bad for us too, because David Tomlinson (yes, the dad from Mary Poppins) is really quite funny, and you'll easily care about the brother-sister dynamic. We miss him as much as Simmons does. Dirk Bogarde might be her white knight, and it's also pretty fun to see him so young - I'm used to him playing middle-aged college professors and the like. Ultimately, this is about how polite the British are - to a fault, since it means they can be stepped out like welcome mats - and how rude the French art (a lot of comedy is derived from this at first, but it eventually manifests in a wild version of "the customer is never right". A thrilling premise, a fun comedy execution (definitely evoked The Lady Vanishes' tone), but it's melodrama that lets it down. Still worth a look.

Hard to believe The Unbelievable Truth is Hal Hartley's first feature because it feels like it's all there already. An askew romantic comedy about a radical girl obsessed with doomsday who falls for an ex-con credited with killing two people, its decoder ring is in the characters thinking Molière wrote tragedies (which made me laugh out loud, so you see what kind of person I am). The movie continually upends what's expected of a romcom, and of a Molière comedy. So the unreasonable rich father of those plays who tries to marry his daughter off is here a blue collar guy who's desperate to send her to college and make something of herself. The parents try to prevent the match, and later absurdly try to push her into his arms. Characters do not arc towards "better" but towards "worse". And yet there are theatrical solutions that wouldn't be amiss in Classical theater. Hartley's theatricality creates a nice bouncy banter that while "written" still feels natural and is amusing when it needs to be. Already, here, he's experimenting with repeated lines, something that will take its ultimate form in Flirt.

On the surface, Trust features a similar set-up to The Unbelievable Truth, with a high school drop-out falling for an older man, blue collar parents, Long Island locations, and many of the same actors (though notably, it's Martin Donovan's first collaboration with Hartley - he would become a regular). The question asked by the title is who can you trust, and in this universe, the two leads can't really trust anyone but each other. Which is to say, I'm not sure they can trust themselves. They're almost each other's consciences, but are pushing one another to do what they were always going to do, which is Hartley's usual push at conventional storytelling. Donovan is an electronics expert whose ethics get in the way of keeping steady work. Adrienne Shelly is a pregnant teen contemplating abortion, but it also playing detective to find a baby snatcher. Each of their parents are toxic and untrustworthy (as is anyone past the age of 30). And it's still a comedy! I found this one highly amusing, but also relatably dramatic. There's one shot in particular, where Shelly sits between the baby and the presumed baby snatcher that speaks to a generational unhappiness. But what if we replaced suspicion with trust? And more importantly, endeavored to be worthy of that trust? One of my favorite Hartleys.

At 55 minutes, it's not quite feature length, but Surviving Desire is so full, it feels like it is. When Hal Hartley uses movie tropes - like musical/dance numbers in this - it's always so WEIRD. We recognize the movie grammar, but it's like a language you know in an unfamiliar accent. Martin Donovan is a Russian literature professor stuck on a single paragraph and on a beautiful student, in a universe where everyone speaks as if they were writing a paper dissecting life, themselves and each other in academic terms. I can see why people compare Hartley to Goddard, but I never feel the French experimentalist gives his characters the same depth of emotion Hartley does. Yes, they speak in a way that is unnatural and theatrical, but the actors are more than voicing the text, they're living and believing it. Surviving Desire is ultimately about the need to be acknowledged, and there are many scenes, memorable by their oddity, that speak to this, like Mary Ward in the book shop and Rebecca Nelson as a madwoman asking passersby to marry her. Donovan is thus a man who stands in front of a group for a living, and still yearns to be noticed, but existential malaise prevents anyone from being noticed, since the other (and even the self) is unknowable.

Hal Hartley ends his unofficial "Long Island" Trilogy with Simple Men, his first three full features exploring male vulnerability - a theme he never entirely forgets even if it's not center stage after this. Two brothers (a career criminal and a college student) go looking for their father (a radical) after he escapes from jail. They encounter a couple of alluring women in the country and there hangs the bulk of the film. While the younger brother is seeking confirmation that his father isn't a cold-blooded murderer, as if he can't move forward without unlocking the secrets of his heritage, the heartbroken elder promises to seduce and not be seduced by the next pretty woman to come into his life. There's also a sheriff in town who falls into day dreams of yearning. So male vulnerability (as opposed to the more toxic "fragility"). Talk a good game to hide your needs and lack of fulfillment. Rationalize your failings as quests and ploys, but we know the score. But can you transplant a tree without knowing too much about trees? Trees, like men, are pretty simple when you come right down to it. All the bonus points for the Sonic Youth track and accompanying dance number.

It is very strange to see a Hal Hartley film that has money behind it. No Such Thing has Iceland locations, make-up effects on par with Buffy's best, and Sarah Polley playing against Helen Mirren and Julie Christie. It also feels like a misstep. On the surface of it, it kind of asks what would happen if Belle took the Beast out of his castle and into the world. And ultimately, it's about what monsters represent, why we created them in the first place, and what happens when we stop taking them seriously (i.e. allow our own monstrous behavior to go unchallenged). Mix in some satire about the media and its role in all this and you get something that's by turns too pointed and too obtuse, an existential short film extended to meandering lengths by pointless digressions. Sarah Polley is terrific, though I sometimes wonder what her character is thinking. Beatrice seems underwritten. Everyone but the monster does. I want to like it more, but it made me listless and I draw themes out of No Such Thing almost despite itself.

D.J. Mendel is a renaissance man without a rudder in Meanwhile, a one-hour wonder from Hal Hartley that truly encapsulates the notion of the jack of all trades who is master of none, much less master of his own destiny. Meanwhile seems to me an existential piece about what happens - both good and bad - while you sleep, while you spin your wheels, while you're not making your mind, or not looking in the right direction. Life goes on and you're not its main character. Indeed, Mendel's Joseph is hustling so he can BECOME a main character, but he's consistently stuck in supporting roles, helping everyone as a kind of subconscious drive despite his own ambitions. At the same time, there's certainly a sort of Messianic overlay on top of this (given the ending, perhaps, or I'm responding to American lit's other old saw, the failure of the American Dream), but if so, Joseph is a bumbling, everyday kind of Christ figure. Hartley fans will also enjoy this anti-epic for various Easter Eggs relating to the Hartleyverse.

Airplane!'s place in movie history is undeniable even if the genre it lampoons, the air disaster movie, feels oddly archaic, and I thought I had I soured on it long ago after a friend of mine made the "Don't call me Shirley" joke once too many times. Watching it again (with the risqué parts included - THAT wasn't on TV! - and here I thought Scary Movie's vulgarity was its own innovation), I can't say I get EVERY reference, as I'm relatively weak on popular 70s movies), but it wins by having a PLOT. Or close enough... a lot of subplots don't really have a pay-off. That's where the spoof comedies of this era beat out the "____ Movie " of the '00s. The joke per square inch is lower, but there's more story. And the Zucker/Abrahams team knows it's introducing a new style, because it starts pretty normal and the jokes get more and more rapid-fire until they're wall-to-wall by the last reel. Sure, I could do without the racially-motivated gags and Captain Oveur's weird pedo sequence, but the deadpan quartet of Graves, Nielsen (who make a career's last act of this), Bridges and Stack is a highlight, and I mostly smiled and smirked through the picture.

For me, Airplane II:The Sequel is on par with the original. It's not as groundbreaking, but it packs in more jokes (whether they all fly is up to you) and has fewer of the kind that annoyed me in the first one (it's less racist, for example). And for genre fans, this is the one that spoofs various science fiction movies of the era, sporting the Battlestar Galactica theme for some reason, but hitting Star Wars, E.T. 2001, and Star Trek along the way. In fact, I thought William Shatner was in this more, but his bits are pretty great. He joins Bridges and Graves as the great deadpan comedians to have graced these movies with their talents. We see a lot of characters return from the original either at Robert Hays' trial, or in the main plot, which has Ted and Elaine once again have to save a plane from disaster, except this time it was headed to the Moon. Audiences at the time probably enjoyed the repeated gags (there would have been two years between their experiences), but watched back to back, there's a staleness there. But enough new material not to feel too repetitive, at least until the curtain call that plays like the movie's greatest hits.

When I saw Airheads in 1994, I wrote it off as a stoner comedy and a complete turkey. I was wrong on both counts. The characters are dumb, but aren't on drugs. And it's not a turkey, merely... fine. And entertaining on its own terms. There IS something a little retro though about this hair band making a big fuss about rock'n'roll post-grunge, like its writers were not quite "with it". It's not so much that I can't believe The Lone Rangers wouldn't exist (plenty of would-be guitar heroes are stuck in the past, and they DO reference that "Seattle shit", but the whole environment seems to be stuck in Bill & Ted land, with even the "cool" radio jockey not quite understanding these "young people". But otherwise? Brendan Fraser is sympathetic as the front man who almost accidentally takes over a radio station to get his tape played on air. Buscemi is Buscemi. And Sandler and Farley are early enough in their careers that they don't mug the movie out of shape. And you have Michael Richards in there doing a hapless Die Hard riff. And ultimately, even if it feels a little out of time (which is fine, watching this 20 years later, I'm out of time too), it does understand the anarchic spirit of rock'n'roll and has fun with it.

There's something quite off-putting about On-Gaku: Our Sound at first. The character designs are crude, as is their integration in the watercolor backgrounds, but then you realize it's by design. There are too many beautiful elements included (hands, body language and transportative musical moments), and form matches theme if you think of the kids in this story as "outsider artists". When instruments fall into the lap of thuggish teenagers, they spontaneously decide to form a band. Absent any knowledge of music, they find their sound... but are they ready for prime time (i.e. a local music festival?). On-Gaku is the opposite of what you imagine when you think of such narratives. The characters claim enthusiasm, but aren't expressive, the front man in particular, who gives us blank looks and few words, usually at the end of long pauses. You understand these boys as intimidating gang bangers, but not as artistic souls. But maybe every truant is just finding a passion away from leaving that life behind. It all culminates in a spectacular show where the kids - and the animation - are set free. It doesn't look it, but it's just lovely.

Books: Ingrid Chabbert's Waves is as beautiful as it is devastating. It's the story of a stillbirth and the grief that accompanies it, throwing a woman's world into darkness, followed by acceptance. Intimate and truthful. And Carole Maurel's art is perfectly suited to the subject. Her characters are cute but realistic, and she knows how to create special effects too. Moments of realization in polarized black panels... letting characters be alone with their emotions on a page... and best of all, the color work. After the tragedy, the color washes out completely and slowly starts to return, so subtly that you might not even realize when it began. I am not ashamed to admit that I wept through the back half of the graphic novel, if not outright SOBBED when I realized this was biographical (from the back text piece) and what it must have taken to put the experience into words and see it recreated in Maurel's powerful and touching images.

In The March of the Crabs trilogy, Arthur des Pins takes his cue from a quirk of nature - that the common crab can only move in two directions and is therefore trapped on a line that only intersects with a few others - to create a whole narrative that only shows its promise in volume 1 (The Crabby Condition), and asks whether only evolution could be bring these little fellas to turn from their destined course, or if it's really a question of mindset. And though the focus is on comically-talking crustaceans, there are also humans who intersect with this story and may or may not be as single-minded as the crabs. Des Pins' cut-out animation-style illustrations are perfect for this, rendering the world of this French beach in charming, colorful shapes. And if the set-ups can seem a bit long to get through - almost like gag pages that don't have much motive strength, the first volume ends on a great note that is sure to make you immediately pick up the second. Vol.2: The Empire of the Crabs escalates almost everything. The plot threads have more driving force, the eco-fable that's been bubbling in the background starts to take shape, and the satirical elements are better defined as we move from evolution (what animals do) to REvolution (what societies do). The Revolution of the Crabs (Vol.3) is pretty wild. Des Pins stretches himself as an artist - it's probably the most inventive of the three books - and the story takes a lot of unexpected turns. Evolution here really is societal, with the crabs overrunning the beach and finding religion, daring Armageddon. You do get attached to some of the crabs, so Revolution threatens to sour your disposition towards them, but I think it ends on the best note it can, taking us back to Vol.1.

RPGs: My Torg Eternity players finally head into Aysle proper, crossing the really cool tunnel/bridge that links Denmark to Sweden and spending some time in the Malmö area, uncovering clues as to just what the heck the Cyberpapacy (and as it turns out, three other cosms) are after and where it might be. It's so convoluted, we had to stop the action to recap everything. The players are sort of hitting up against one the Laws of Aysle, which is that there's a quest under every rock and behind every door. I'm almost playing it like an RPG video game (or MMO) where every NPC seems to have a mission to give. And our Paladin is always up for it while the others groan. Of course, this was also our reunion with our Super-Wrestler, as the player had been benched for Real Life reasons(TM) for the summer, and he celebrated by suplexing a Nile Empire Shocktrooper into a table as the citizenry shouted his name. It's good to be back. It's a lot of set-up for the next several sessions, and the crew gains a useful guide too. Though we didn't finish the Act, we did have time to resolve a big 4-piece montage to set the team up to infiltrate a threatening Viking camp (who might know more about the location of the mysterious treasure). The gates open... the curtain drops.

Best bits: In a bar fight, the Monster Hunter catches a mug of powerful brew thrown by a drunk; he downs it like the coolest guys, and takes Shock coughing up this paint thinner. To get past guards asking an unreasonable price to get out of town, the Super-Wrestler convinces them to play double or nothing with a arm wrestling contest; sure, but they'll play against the scrawny Realm Runner, if it's all the same to him. (Psionic Energize and possibilities don't even cheat him into a victory - an Opponent Fails card does it). GM: All set to describe a Klein Bottle as a mysterious object. Player who teaches high school physics: "Why don't you just say it's a Klein Bottle?" I ended up giving him a bonus using it, and it was fun to see his arm twist around into its inner dimensions not long after he got it twisted at the gates. When the Wrestler rolls a mishap on an important Stealth test, the Realm Runner pulls out a Cosm card that wins him some possibilities in exchange for his friend falling into a bear trap. 4 Wounds?! Soaking and First Aid get rid of them, but there were many jokes about one character pushing the other into a trap. Introduced the notion that the Lilla Torg Football Club sports center is a Core Earth hardpoint because of the word Torg in its name (it means Square, so Little Square, in Swedish, but it's obviously an inside joke).