"Accomplishments"
At home: I loved the first season of Extraordinary and wondered where the characters would go after their main subplots had been played in Season 1. Who are Kash and Carrie (oh my God, I just got that!) when they're not a couple about to break up? What's next for Jizzlord when his old family tracks him down? I wasn't too sure about the former, but like where it ended. The latter provides a major villain for the season, taking fun shots at influencer culture in the process. But of course, this was always principally Jen's story, the manic pixie nightmare girl who is one of the few people on Earth not to have developed a super-power yet. I quite like her journey, which involves a very funny mind palace and brings is several times into very touching territory. A series so absurd and blue shouldn't make me feel so many feels! It's not right! Or so right. And the soundtrack continues to be a solid highlight, so excuse me while I check my usual places for a listing of the music and get down to listening to (mostly) trash chick rock again.
If you've read Ernest Hemingway's "The Killers", it may be hard to fathom how this short story could be turned into a feature film. It's just not long enough. 1946's Clifford Siodmak adaptation therefore chooses to EXPLAIN how the "Swede" got himself into the kind of trouble that would bring a couple of hit men to the tiny town where he's been living the simple life of a gas station attendant for years. And while it's strong Noir (well scripted, well shot, with a strong debut performance by Burt Lancaster as the doomed man), it's also chock full of Noir CLICHÉS. You have the boxer turned criminal, the femme fatale, the insurance investigator, the convoluted scheme... Something of a greatest hits album, which I didn't feel respected Hemingway's written dissection of masculinity - that a man might just face the music because it's the "manly" thing to do. I'm not making a judgment on Hemingway's masculine ideal, only that it doesn't really figure in The Killers' "solution". But those first couple scenes, straight outta the story, are really good, with real menace coming off the title characters... who sadly then disappear from the narrative for most of its length. Proposes a good mystery, but leaves me a little ambivalent about its conclusions.
I'm not sure really use 1956's The Killers to study Andrei Tarkovsky's emerging style since 1) it's a student film and 2) two other students are credited as director (how communist!), but as a lean, strict adaptation of Hemingway's story, it strikes me as a valuable comparison to the longer American versions. What we get here is the short story, nothing more, nothing less, and therefore a more elliptical work that leaves you wondering/imagining what happened and what WILL happen. It's well done, especially the pacing and suspense, even if it is a little strange to watch Soviets do a seminal American tale. Were there rules about what American material could be cleared for such adaptations? Is it because it's a gangland story that makes the U.S. seem unsafe and depraved that The Killers was fine for a university-financed short film? Probably. The lack of resources, yet fidelity to the source material, does provoke a bit of black face, so audience be warned.
Don Siegel's 1964 version of The Killers really leaves Hemingway behind to craft a remix of the 1946 film (script courtesy of Star Trek's Gene Coon). The scene in the diner is completely gone, and so the killers (Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager, who make great bullies) walk into their victim's place of employment and shoot him. Done. The man (John Cassavetes) stands there and takes it, though if the other characters didn't mention it constantly, I don't know that it would necessarily read that way. The twist on the original film's inventions is the removal, distortion or streamlining of 1946's Noir clichés, doing away with the insurance investigator, for example, and instead making the title characters do the work. Marvin's becomes obsessed with the moment and as things come to light, wouldn't mind retiring on the missing heist money. All the names are changed and though it's got a similar structure as the 1946 Killers, the plot points are different, and Siegel pushes it more into the action category, the Noir towards the lurid. Not sure I buy Angie Dickinson as a Femme Fatale - she seems genuinely loving - but the ambiguity is what makes it interesting. The heavies: Ronald Reagan (his last film) and Mr. Roper, a weird combo that took me out of the movie whenever they were on screen. Both Henry Mancini and John Williams supplied music, but he look is 60s TV, with the old desert back roads and studio lots (I guess we moved off of Florida faster than it seemed). I was entertained, and they certainly didn't make the same movie Siodmak had, but they also didn't make Hemingway's story either! Given the film's DNA, I was expecting better.
A contest between two directors, 2LDK (it's Japanese apartment nomenclature, 2 bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, see?) had to be shot in 8 days with only two actors. These are two roommates with very different attitudes, both actresses up for the same part. At first, you can hear all their thoughts, bouncing between lines that are exposed as passive-aggressive, but the tension between them soon moves across a line that marks a point of no return (is that a mixed metaphor? regardless). Violence in the Japanese splatter style ensues, and you're never quite sure if you're in a metaphorical battle, a metatextual audition for "Yakuza Wives", or some form of reality. It's probably all three, but the ending does make a choice for you, and makes me pine for a couple of alternate, more clever endings that crossed my mind. Nevertheless, for a quicky made with little means, Yukihiko Tsutsumi's entry for this "film duel" is fun and has a lot of grit.
I would call Special a blackety-black comedy, but it's really a drama, albeit an absurd one. And absurdity can often fuel the perception of something as a comedy. Michael Rapaport is a meter maid with crushing self-doubt who, on a whim, joins a pharmacological study, then starts exhibiting super powers and becomes a vigilante. The movie wastes no time showing us that this is a grand delusion based on the comic books he likes to read, but still treats the superheroics as "real", with Big Pharma villains coming after him convincingly and real-world consequences to the violence. I'm not sure there's actual commentary on anti-depressants, though some might think so. It almost seems more like Mazes & Monsters with comics instead of D&D, though I'm pretty sure the production isn't trying to create a comic panic. Rather, Special is an exploration of what kind of psychosis might provoke superheroics in the real world, and has its protagonist (Les, ironically enough) work through his mental health issues and achieve catharsis and change. Do we need to be "special" to feel valuable? Rapaport gives a poignant performance in service of the answer.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy presents three thematically-linked stories, and it's those links, along with the title, that give his mundane slice-of-life tales a sense that great forces - psychological and cosmic - are at work in our lives, forces that take us into the territory of poetics. In each story, two things: A web of coincidence creates a chance encounter that one character describes as Dramatic Meeting. And characters will go in with one intention and end up doing something else with greater conviction. If the film is about regret, it's largely about overcoming that regret and moving on. Where there is ambiguity, it's the sort of every-day ambiguity that comes from not knowing another person (or even oneself) fully, and ultimately it's in the service of finding some grace in the world, and therefore, some poignancy for the audience. Each story is better than the last, and though each is small, private, and essentially just a conversation or series of conversations, each feels momentous in its own way. Unadorned cinema at its best.
Mi-so is a young woman living in poverty in Microhabitat, so decides to cut a big ticket item out of her budget. Not the whiskey and cigarettes that are her only pleasures. No, instead she foregoes paying rent. And thus begins a controversial picaresque, as she visits various old friends and asks to crash there for a night or more. And while the circumstances of each address, whether tragic or comic, aren't ideal and force her to move on, she does tend to bring a sort of healing to each friend. Whether they appreciate it enough or not really depends. Personally, I'm a little like Mi-so. I've depended on the generosity of friends, but in turn, often offered sanctuary to friends even if they couldn't pay their proper share of the rent. So if she wants a place to crash, I don't see a problem. I live a little far from Seoul though. Microhabitat is poignant study of a true free spirit, limited neither by judgmentalism nor ambition, and how people tend to see others as a burden rather than look at them for what they can contribute. Very affecting.
Michael Winterbottom's first film collaboration with Steve Coogan was 24 Hour Party People, a rambunctious portrait of Manchester's music scene from the mid-70s to the early 90s, told through the perspective of Factor Records founder Tony Wilson. He (like many of the musicians who lived it) has a bit part in the movie, which combines fact and folklore to tell its story, and is upfront about "printing the myth" rather than the verifiable truth. If he actually made postmodern comments in life like he does in the film, then its postmodern vibe is well warranted. And because Wilson was a television presenter, Coogan keeps breaking the fourth wall to frame the story AS a television presentation, so I'm inclined to think the postmodernism was factual. Coogan also mixes in his trademark ad libs, but they don't take over the movie like they do in The Trip series (also with Winterbottom). The style definitely enlivens what could have been a montage of moments. Lots of young-looking faces that were about to become big deals in the flick too - Sean Harris, John Simm, Christopher Eccleston, an unrecognizable Andy Sirkis, and blinbk-and-you'll-miss-him Simon Pegg... Fun stuff.
And now, this week's Companion Film. Jackie Lane (Dodo) never stared in any films during her short acting career, so I'm going to replace her with Jean Marsh (Sara Kingdom), one of Hartnell's pseudo-companions... The Changeling starts with George C. Scott on a snowy road with his wife (yay, Jean Marsh!) and daughter, and then a terrible road accident and he loses both (nooo, Jean Marsh!). He moves West into a haunted house and things proceed from there, with the young ghost reminding him of his daughter and forcing his investigation into a very cold case that has ramifications at the highest levels. Well-made and well-paced, The Changeling has some interesting "haunted" bits and seance tricks I'd never seen before, but is it frightening? Not particularly as it feels more like a supernatural detective story, though full points to Trish Van Devere for selling how terrified SHE is. Ultimately likeable, but it doesn't exactly fulfill the title's promise. The title has nothing to do with the changeling folklore (which makes you expect the little girl to make a comeback), except metaphorically. The other promise it fails to make good on is the "and Jean Marsh" credit. It's the smallest role on the film! Still, if you want your sci-fi alumni, you do get a little more of John Colicos (Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica) and Barry Morse (Space 1999)!
RPGs: The monthly Call of Cthulhu game started a new plot, but not before our kindly Keeper allowed month to go by so our characters could do their own thing. Mine wrote a bestseller about the previous case, and yeah, this is going to be the story of some amazing dice rolls. Phelps' colleagues didn't fare so well - one of them fell even more into the booze, the other now has the inexplicable aspect of a 13-year-old girl, down from 16, down from 60 - but this was going to be Phelps' story to shine in. Now, my character doesn't believe in the supernatural and is in deep denial about the events of the previous scenario (when he falls, it'll be from a great, self-constructed height). And the denial continued after he received a letter that his cousin had been found dead in Arkham, Massachusetts, weeks after passing in her old mansion. Phelps had received a letter from her just two days before, however, so while he couldn't lend credence to the tales of body swaps and witchcraft Odessa had written to him about, the idea that she was dead seemed suspect indeed. So off he goes to attend a funeral and see to her affairs (crushing debt and the estate willed to some cult). Rain. The Hound of the Baskervilles. A drunk stranger in the house (who we should trust because he's a replacement PC in case someone loses theirs... man, good thing I'm not GMing because that would be my way to hide a major betrayal). An emotional roller coaster as Phelps decides his cousin isn't dead, and then that she must. Phelps is such a boisterous man that here I got to play him on the down turn, dour and sarcastic. Let's just say lawyers should proofread their letters before sending them. It was also a way to distract focus from him and let the other players have a go (it was clearly HIS story, but he didn't want to engage with it). As we prepare to turn in, strange clues are found, which will be the focus of Session 2's recap. And those kingly rolls? Phelps got his friends away safe from that giant, rabid dog (with the help of his cat Lucifer, naturally, ever the lucky charm). Intimidating the stranger was where I rolled a 1 (on 100), and in my head canon, he was so scared he became a would-be PC. Phelps dodged other bullets, generally rolling crits. Oh he's going to fall from a great height indeed.
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