Buys
Video game sales... picked up Immortals Fenyx Rising and Far Cry 3-5.
"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Is it wrong to have liked the Mean Girls musical more than the original of 20 years earlier? And it's not so much the songs as the jokes and casting. If this is to be accounted the fourth version of the story (first the book, then the movie, then the stage musical, and now this), Tina Fey has, across the three latter iterations, refined her comedy writing. There are more jokes and they're generally funnier - I get more of a 30 Rock feeling from it. The story structure is more efficient and tighter - to make room for musical numbers, I imagine - Cady is more believably innocent, Regina much fiercer, Janis actually gay (which makes Cady's turn more outrageous), Damian funnier... and the race-related comedy that was a hit in 2004 absent. Mad props for the casting of the parents with Jenna Fischer absolutely looking like she could be Angourie Rice's mom, and the same for Busy Phillips and Renée Rapp. Amusingly, the movie is a modern, social-media savvy retelling that also seems to acknowledge the original also happened, advancing the returning teachers' lives and winking at the past in clever ways. Having no experience with the Broadway show (or its soundtrack), I can't comment on the changes made there, but as a movie musical, it has some fun, but I can't say I got earwormed by the songs or anything. I might remember the words and images, but not the music. On that end of it, it was just okay.
At home: I saw the original Mean Girls with a room mate when she tried to institute a "chick flick Sunday" at the apartment, though it never really got off the ground. And for some reason didn't review it then. Rewatching it after I've seen the 20th Anniversary movie musical might poison the well. I suppose my evaluation is kind of the same. I like Tina Fey, but some of the comedy and plot points have aged badly (why isn't Janis actually gay, for example?). Shlocky teen film director Mark Waters lets in a lot of dead air. Lindsay Lohan plays it like a Disney Channel TV movie and Rachel McAdams is kind of miscast as Regina (my first encounter with her was as a "good girl" in Slings & Arrows, and though I like her portrayal here when she goes into full revenge mode, I don't always believe her as this evil queen bee (perhaps no one can outdo Renée Rapp in the role, in hindsight). The best feature is how Cady sometimes sees the "girl world" as a safari from her upbringing, coming back to this fantasy several times. You can definitely see how the story lends itself to the musical format, replacing the narration with songs and the slapstick and jungle sequences with dance numbers. Iconic, in its way, but the story benefited from modernization.
I think calling out SLC Punk for being an American version of Trainspotting is probably right, even if a character called Heroin Bob is dead against taking drugs. There's the same anarchic spirit, the same kind of soundtrack (except I don't like it), the same kind of narration, and plenty of drug-fuelled POVs. It's no Trainspotting, but it does feel personal to writer-director James Merendino seeing as he's a Salt Lake City native himself, and presents its punk scene under fire with some love. It's punk under American puritanical conditions, punk rebelling against itself as it tries to get out from under the shadow of OG Brit punk. The story keeps bouncing around as Matthew Lillard (who should have had a very different career based on this - he carries the film) tells anecdotes that send us careening into flashbacks willy-nilly. It's an anarchic structure that is probably meant to evoke "punk", even if the thesis of the film is that the punk ethos isn't viable and like other youth movements, is something you necessarily outgrow. Lillard's Stevo is thus living through the death of punk, not as a movement (others may take up the baton), but in his own group. It's the death of youthful idealism, ironically dressed up as fatalism. It's kind of depressing, actually.
A relatively early Motern Media production, Monsters, Marriage and Murder in Manchvegas feels to me like a spoof of one of those beach movies from the 60s. The characters are teens played by adults (or in this case, adults who act like teens), getting up to a little romance, some involved pranking, a number of novelty songs, a bit of detective work (as a plot decides to show its face), and perhaps meet... a cryptid? Hey, it's all par for the course in these kinds of mash-ups (I'm reminded of MST3K classic Catalina Caper which has a random mermaid), and Motern's crew is very interested in folk tales, cryptids and local legends - they would return to this kind of thing only a few years later with Riverbeast. They've already got the deadpan comedy, and the dad (as usual, Kevin McGee) is so dry, he had me laughing out loud several times. Obviously, it's make with little means, but as usual, that's its charm. I perhaps can't shake the sense that this is a first draft of the Riverbeast movie, but it goes different places (TOO MANY places?) and stands on its own.
Only Luc Besson's second feature, Subway starts with the energy of his action films to come, like he's a man trained on Hong Kong cinema, but loses the plot in the middle part and never really makes its various parts come together coherently. It is therefore a movie I want to like more, but can't. Christopher Lambert plays a safe-cracker and would-be blackmailer who runs from his victim's men and the police into the Paris subway system, which is many stories deep and filled with what Shakespearean scholars would call "zanies" and X-Men readers "Morlocks". He somehow starts a band down there (which includes proficient drummer Jean Reno). There's also the matter of Isabelle Adjani as the victim's long-suffering trophy wife who Lambert has fallen for on sight. Lots of quirky elements, from hairstyles to locations, an inept policeman called Batman, a thief on roller skates, an elliptical finish, and the music... A couple songs (including one to die to), some diegetic drumming in the score, and otherwise that mid-80s sax rock that proudly proclaims this as an action movie of its era. So many weird little touches, but the convoluted plot and the slow pace in the second act made my attention wander. But I feel like it's one that might grow on you after a rewatch or two.
Hong Sang-soo's Tale of Cinema starts with the story of a suicidal young man who, on the eve of his dreadful act, accidentally(?) comes across an old crush and spends the night with her. A death pact is forged, but she decides to bail out of it and saves his life. Cut to a second story, in which a film director is ambivalent about an old class mate from film school dying in hospital. There's bad blood between them, and we'll discover his reasons over the course of the film. He comes across the actress who played the girl in the first part and through an almost visible cinematic transformation, the person who seemed the first character becomes the second. Hong Sang-soo doesn't go so far as to make himself the dying director, but it's definitely meta. Our protagonist is obsessed with the short film we just saw as "real" and its actress, for reasons that will become clear. The Tale has something intriguing to say about where ideas come from, and how we relate to stories when we see ourselves in them. We blur reality and fiction in this way, use characters' catharses as our own, adopt their thought processes, and in celebrity culture, confound actors for their characters. It could possibly have hit its points harder, but only at the risk of becoming a little gimmicky.
By its fifth instalment, The Thin Man Goes Home, the series has abandoned adapting Dashiell Hammett mysteries in favor of an "original" story. Not to say the other sequels were dead-on Hammett; they were continuations of the MOVIE Nick and Nora, with the comedy banter amped up, their having a baby, etc., but this one leans so far into sitcom tropes that the as-usual okay mystery feels like an afterthought. The Charleses go to Nick's home town to visit his folks, where he might finally get some reconciliation with his father who was always disappointed with his decision to go into law enforcement. It's a tepid conflict at best. Even if we're in the boonies somewhere, Nick keeps meeting people he knows, including one of his criminal pals who's out there selling postcards. We're just following tropes no matter what at this point. There's entirely too much slapstick for my tastes, a lot of it using the dog. This is par for the course, but to make Asta perform, there are obvious animatronics, or the camera is undercranked or spooled in reverse. It looks so dumb. But what really disappoints me is that the movie keeps humiliating Nora. In an effort to bring back the weird comedy domestic violence of the first film, she even gets a spanking in front of the in-laws. She's sent on a fool's errand to get her out of the way, and even if she accidentally brings back some clues, she continues to foolishly accuse people event he audience know are guiltless. And that's just criminal.
In terms of premise, When Strangers Marry (later retitled Betrayed) is B-movie director William Castle remaking Hitchcock's Suspicion. You can hardly get someone more innocent-looking than Kim Hunter as the new wife of a travelling salesman who seems responsible for a murder, as she comes to suspect. He certainly looks guilty, but you want to hang on the other man in her life because he's played by Robert Mitchum who's always had more edge. With only two choices, it's not much of a mystery, but you might go back and forth between them before the solution. It makes for a fair, if melodramatic, thriller, and though Castle isn't Hitchcock, he's still a director with flair and doesn't mind showing it. Amusing for us nerds is the head detective in the affair being played by Neil Hamilton, so you can totally head-canon this to be one of Commissioner Gordon's early cases. He didn't Batman on this one, but as a 65-minute matinée, it works on its own terms.
And now our Companion Film of the week... The Blue Parrot is an okay British noir mystery (I'm not sure we can call it a thriller though it does have its pulpy moments) with some interesting performers in the cast - especially in hindsight. Doctor Who's Jacqueline Hill is second billed and the most interesting person in here as an undercover cop. Fawlty Tower's Ballard Berkeley and Dad's Army's John Le Mesurier are here too, in good supporting roles, and you might recognize other faces as well. So it's a real shame that the film's actual lead, Dermot Walsh, is such a bore. He plays the American G-man on loan to Scotland Yard (are we really trying to appeal to the American market with this Soho-based murder mystery? if so, maybe don't mock his gun ownership, I hear they frown on that). He's got ridiculous hair and even more ridiculous jazz ambitions. No, if you're watching this, it's for a look at a young Barbara Wright, 10 years before she stepped into the TARDIS.
Books: I'm not entirely sure what to think of Marvel's Grand Design line. I love the idea of handing name-brand characters over to indie cartoonists, and if anyone should tackle a Kirby-stamped book like the FF, it's Tom Scioli (Gødland is essentially a Kirby riff), but Fantastic Four: Grand Design didn't go as far as I wanted it to. I certainly respect the idea of crafting a pop art item that recaps the Lee-Kirby run in fast-paced 25-panel pages, with quirky dialog and a stream of consciousness approach to story-telling, as well as the occasional Kirby art steal. If you're a comics fan, you'll recognize so of the poses. But it's still a big recap despite the modern recontextualization and references to alternate media FF. Where it gets fun for me is when Scioli walks off the map towards the end - things get weirder and weirder as he allows himself these deviations - until we're basically in a parallel universe. Worth it for these reinventions, and you know, I didn't mind the bits that were "Marvel Saga on speed". This was two very dense issues, so to make it heftier, they threw in the classic FF story "This Man... This Monster!", a fine tale that is also retold in the body of the work. Plus art pieces and bibliographical notes.
Tom Scioli's "graphic biography" of Jack Kirby, The Epic Life of the King of Comics, was surprisingly hard to put down. Especially given that 1) I'm not a fan of biographies and 2) I was already pretty familiar with the life and times of the world's greatest comics artist. And I do mean "times", because telling the story of Jack Kirby is often like telling the story of the American comic book. He was there nearly from the beginning, put a big stamp on the Silver and Bronze Ages (I once argued that his Fourth World series marks the actual start of the Bronze Age), and his work is still inspiring artists, comics, movies, today. But it's also the story of a man disappointed by his chosen business, who rarely got the credit he deserved and though a scrapper in life, was never able to navigate the office politics that so often pulled the rug out from under him. Because Scioli uses a fictional first-person voice in the book, the danger, even if it's based on interviews, is to make it sound like he's whining about how unfair the world is. The book admits some of the facts are in dispute, but if this congregation of research is true, Kirby is responsible for A LOT MORE of what we take for granted in the Marvel and DC universes. Scioli is no doubt biased - a lot at his other work shows a deep love of the King - which makes his graphic biography of Stan Lee intriguing, but it still feels legit. How he has handled Kirby's illness and death is particularly poignant, and at that point, I'm ready to forgive any inaccuracies that might have slipped into the narrative.
Collecting the first 12 issues of the Fourth World pastiche series, Gødland Celestial Edition Book One has Joe Casey and Tom Scioli really do pastiche. Gødland is neither parody nor spoof, but tells its own story "in the style of", and even updates that style to its own era (the mid-2000s). Casey, for example, uses Kirbyesque bombast in the dialog (and most pleasurably, in the "next month!" pages), but it's today's bombast, today's pop culture references, today's lingo. Similarly, while Scioli is affecting a Kirbyesque style, none of the characters are OBVIOUSLY analogs of any of Kirby's cosmic superheroes (whether the DC, Marvel, Pacific or Topps ones). The universe is BIG, but the focus is fairly narrow. We follow Adam Archer, astronaut empowered by an enlightened alien race, and his three sisters who act as human helpers (and in one case, perhaps as foil). Plenty of strange villains with odd concepts pull him into action, even as he starts, in this first year of the book, to get a handle on just how powerful he really is. The action is wild, the visuals crackle, the dialog is often amusing, and the world-building always novel and interesting. It's funny in the way only pastiche is, so I'm not sure it will work as well for readers who aren't fans of Kirby, but I like comics made for comics fans since, well, I am one!
RPGs: Finally wrapped the first "adventure" in our monthly game of Call of Cthulhu, as the murderous stage magician finally came out of the mirror dimension transmogrified into a monster there's no way our characters were prepared for. Of course, it started where the previous session ended - with the photo-journalist, the deceptively old 15-year-old heiress, and my cat Lucifer trapped on the wrong side of the dimensional veil. Phelps got the cat back easily (9 lives), but after acing his Sanity roll, dismissed the whole incident and inspired, started writing a novel based on what he THOUGHT he saw. At least until the "E" key broke (you can't do a whole of writing without the "E"). I was trying to imply that the answers might come to him magically through a Literature roll. Didn't work out, so his friends were left trying to find a way to signal him through the downstairs lounge mirrors. The photog made some miserable rolls and was further transported to the future, bringing back an old paperback of Phelps' unwritten book from upstairs (a nice, weird touch from our Keeper) and some quality babbling, but they did make it home. Next stop, the speakeasy to rummage through the magician's effects, but the Keeper had been eavesdropping on our plans because every notion of breaking mirrors to trap the killer were stymied (for example, by having the main one built from steel rather than glass). There's also a mobster one our collective ass, but he becomes cannon fodder when the monster jumps out of the mirror. None of us are physical types (though the heiress was rolling magnificently on every "muscle" task) and all we had was a Derringer (and its one pea-sized bullet). The creature ripped the photog's belly button right off (true detail), the mobster (who could have been allied muscle) was ripped in two, we were barrelling towards midnight and I had been up since 4 AM. Phelps would boast, so I will too: It's his idea that won the day. There were two mirrors in the room - the magic one and the dressing room vanity - so I repeated the incantation once again and we pushed the mirrors together to box the monster in and trap him in a dimensional loop. Finally, all those hours of Portal paid off. As a novelist, Phelps was well-suited to spinning a yarn to the police about what happened in that room - a fantastical tale of a Thuggee cultist with a giant saber, but more realistic than the shambling horror that happened to be the truth. Great skill-improvement rolls in the epilogue, too.
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