BuysWhile on the road for a small improv tour, we stopped at a French-language book store where I picked up a volume of Gogol short stories. I don't mind reading Russians in French translation. This taps into an old improv inside joke where I kept threatening hoity-toity teams who thought they were more cultured than we who live in the "regions" that I would impose an "in the style of Gogol" on them. (They would usually blench.) Who's hoity-toity NOW, jerks?!
"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Nope's Keke Palmer and Black Panther Oscar-winning songstress SZA are best friends with money trouble in One of Them Days, a kind of comic Odyssey through the 'Hood as the two women try to beat the clock to replace the rent money unwisely spent by a bad boyfriend. But things get worse and worse and their schemes push them further into the red AND tests their friendship to the core. It's a good premise, made better by the really very funny cast of quirky characters that help or impede them on their quest. First-time feature director Laurence Lamont (who came up working on music videos) laces in lots of visual gags and lets the audience discover them naturally, while screenwriter Syreeta Singleton juggles satire, wit and crasser jokes in a pretty effective cocktail. Different parts of the audience laughed at different things, but weren't resentful of the moments that didn't tickle them. Ultimately, this can only work if the leads have chemistry, and they do, quite a lot, with each other and with the rest of the cast. A lot of fun.
At home: Anora might just be Sean Baker's most traditional film despite its untraditional structure. It starts out as a very Sean Baker film - a sex worker (check) meets the son of a Russian oligarch and gets her chance at a dream life, and it's all played with Baker's usual realism and absence of "plot devices". But then the childish boy's family gets involved and it turns into a crime picture. So I was keen to see how Baker would handle a trope-heavy genre. I wouldn't call it Baker's usual fare - perhaps more like a cross between the Coen Brothers and Shane Black - but it sure is funny. A real, but absurd situation arises, creating three of the most engaging "goons" in film history, and Baker SITS IN IT. What would normally be a single scene becomes an extended, and therefore especially funny, sequence, and you don't know who to feel sorry for (everyone, probably). Anora IS at last 15 minutes too long, but without that epilogue it can't as powerfully make its point about the sadness of seeing the world through a transactional filter.
I don't know if it's a shame or if we dodged a phaser blast with Star Trek: Section 31. It was originally supposed to be a series, but Michelle Yeoh's post-Everything fortunes turned it into a single film... and it shows. Chapter headings perhaps belie the idea that this special ops/heist(ish) mission would have taken place over an entire season, and it's really the only way the various characters completing their arcs would have actually had an impact. As is, characters' personal gags suddenly know a resolution, but we're not invested enough to care. Worse, it then does a bit of sequel bait that makes it feel like a pilot that wasn't picked up. Thing is, Section 31 tries VERY HARD to be "cool" and "funny", but its just a chase for a MacGuffin that feels like one of those streamers co-written by the Netflix algorithm. Between its colorful locales, jokey banter and characters with super-powers, it really wants to be Guardians of the Galaxy, or perhaps James Gunn's Suicide Squad. But it doesn't really want to be Star Trek (nor that it easily fits continuity). Even the abominable direction doesn't follow the style, with especially obnoxious editing ruining a LOT of scenes. Not without its moments, but a big mess. (My weekly Star Trek reviews will get back to this in a few weeks, with a much longer analysis, but I shouldn't expect too much of a reevaluation.)
After Sibelle Hu and Cynthia Rothrock stop an assassination attempt with their martial arts and stunt work, Sibelle is put in charge of training a new all-female police squad in The Inspector Wears Skirts (AKA Top Squad in Western markets where the video cover is Rothrock in a bra, which of course, never happens). It's another of Golden Harvest's "Yes, Madam"-type flicks, but skewed towards comedy. It's really more like Private Benjamin with Honk Kong action (and Rothrock!) used as bookends. Not to say there isn't fighting and stunts in that long middle part, but there are more stake for the actors than for the characters. But even though the movie is far more concerned with the girls' dating life than any kind of police work, it's still fairly charming. I always love Kara Wai (My Young Auntie) in everything she's in, and the other Academy students are well differentiated. In terms of action, I'm annoyed that they speed up some of the martial arts, but there are some very fun gags here. Jackie Chan produces so you get to see people getting hurt in the credits. It's not really what's advertised, but it's not unpleasant.
I've seen a lot of Korean time travel romcoms that specifically refer back to the 1990s, often very cheesy K-TV projects, and Back in the 90s (AKA Alternative 2528) is part of that canon, but from Thailand. Wearing its Back to the Future DNA on its sleeve, it nevertheless begins in a world of people glued to the cell phones and lands an accidentally transported teenager to one of pagers, library research and alternative rock. A time when his parents were his age, which means he may or may not have to ensure they get together. But even if not, maybe there's another soul to save? While the production is very "TV", with a repetitive score, cheesy visuals and cartoonish slapstick comedy, the movie presents a very cute couple of romances - I certainly haven't seen such a pager-driven romance before, not even in the era when it's set (but I suppose this is a 2015 perspective, replacing phones as we use them now) - and it's always interesting to look at stories like this from other countries, even if we don't get the cultural touchstones (like who all these alternative bands are). Remake this in the West with references I actually get and make it look more like a feature, and I would probably give it half a star more.
Sylvia Sidney puts in a very cute performance (or dual performances) in Thirty Day Princess, playing a down-on-her-luck actress roped into standing in for a foreign princess who catches the mumps just as she's about to embark on a U.S. tour that could save her country's economy (and the real princess too). Cary Grant - though already 30 at this point - looks very young as the newspaper man who thinks it's all a scam, but falls for her faux-royal charms. I could definitely do without the royal fiancé/spoiler as Vince Barnett both overeggs the comedy pudding and can't sustain any kind of accent from one sentence to the next, but this is otherwise a pleasant enough romcom set-up. The 1930s made lots of economic fantasies featuring royals and millionaires, often in a rags to riches-type story, so it's easy to lose one in the shuffle. This one surprises, however, by showing quite a bit of poverty, and people being irate at bankers specifically. You can really see Preston Sturges' fingerprints on the script.
While generally well-regarded, Sam Fuller's Forty Guns doesn't really work for me. This is an O.K. Corral remix party where Barbara Stanwyck essentially plays Pa Clanton and falls in love with Wyatt Earp, but the pacing is off. At first, she's more a force of nature than a character, galloping through the screen with forty men in tow like it's a visual gag. The middle of the film develops her, but the heroes are definitely the Bonell Brothers who get deputized almost as soon as they walk into Tombstone. Flirtations with a female gunsmith actually lead to a different brother getting married, and no lie, I had trouble distinguishing the two elder brothers from one another, which was kind of confusing. In any case, any feminist good will the film garners from me with its casting is all shot by the end when Stanwyck of course has to choose her rather one-sided love over being a rich, connected rancher. I like how Barry Sullivan isn't interested in her for moral reasons, but Hollywood must Hollywood. Fuller's Noir credentials are strong, and he does provide some dark moments and a lot of witty dialog mixing gun violence and double entendre, but I'd have much rather been in Stanwyck's perspective from the onset, as her situation is more interesting than Yet Another Gunslinger's (TM).
Big, painterly landscapes equal isolation and loneliness in Certain Women, a triptych by Kelly Reichardt (First Cow) with beautiful cinematography by her frequent contributor Christopher Blauvelt, adapted from three short stories by Maile Meloy. There are thin threads connecting the three stories, including the wintry Montana setting, and of course, certain thematic underpinnings. But as with most "anthology" films, it's a thing of parts, and those parts are pretty uneven. I could have honestly stayed in Laura Dern's segment for the length of a feature. She's a small-town lawyer struggling to make a male client listen to her advice, and had it been developed further, some of the legal stuff might have resonated more. The middle part is the one least likely to elicit excitement, despite Michelle Williams' participation. She's a woman trying to get a dream house built, often at odds with her husband and daughter, and it doesn't really go anywhere except in the subtlest sense. But everything is forgiven with the last story, which has farmhand Lily Gladstone crush on young lawyer Kristen Stewart with heart-breaking results. We're in Reichardt's world of subdued colors and even more subdued incident, a world of interior lives. And if there's a motif tying these three or four women together is that no matter their accomplishments, they are unheard. Many, many instances of them not being listened to (by characters of both genders), but not for lack of communicating their needs or ideas. In all cases, would have made better full features, or benefited from a more interlocked script, but I like what's there.
Sean Baker is the new king of naturalism and in 2012's Starlet, he shows that naturalism doesn't have to mean rambling mumblecore. The characters are real, the performances unaffected except where the characters themselves take on an affect, and we're heading for the kind of emotional reveal that still belongs to the world of movies. Dree Hemingway is an adult film actress who finds money in a yard sale item and having kept it, befriends the crabby old lady she took it from (Besedka Johnson). Starlet is the cute dog who acts as a catalyst for many events, and if a "writer's hand" is ever felt on the plot, it's usually organically, through an animal who wouldn't know a pen from a chew toy. Motivations are important, but hidden from us, only slowly discovered. If guilt motivates Hemingway's Jane at first, it soon gives way to an evident thirst for a mother figure. Johnson's Sadie is more closed off and, not unlike Jane, we spend a lot of time trying to divine what she's thinking. Engrossing slice of (unusual) life.
An early Sean Baker, co-directed with his usual producer, Shih-Ching Tsou, Take Out is almost a documentary. We spend a lot of time in a working Chinese restaurant (I'm a little obsessed with its menu) and follows a delivery boy striving to make enough money in one night to pay off the debt accumulated by his smuggling into the United States as New Yorkers of all stripes nickle and dime him. A LOT of this movie is Charles Jang's Ming Ding standing in doorways as various non-actors pay for their food, or else biking through a rainstorm (not sure how they captured this - a single night? - but it's BRUTAL for the actor). And yet, there is suspense as we get sucked into its rather mundane dramatic beats, and I couldn't help but feel sick to my stomach near the end as I was wondering if Ming would succeed at all. It's quite a strong statement about the life of undocumented immigrants, but also just of jobbers in low-wage situations. It's bleak, but not without its moments of grace, and I do love me some grace.
Books: Already not a big fan of the extant episodes of The Celestial Toymaker, Gerry Davis and Alison Bingeman's adaptation is only marginally better. It obviously paints on a broader canvas, as it's not limited to very obvious studio sets and its lumbering dolls are more viscerally horrific than anything on the show. But it doesn't fix the serial's core problems, even those relating to production. For example, it still removes the Doctor from the story by making him invisible and even silent as if not having Hartnell on hand were a literary problem also. Maybe having him more active in the story would have allowed SOME explanation of the dreadfully undramatic trilogic game, which is even less interesting in prose. Steven and Dodo have some moments, since their sections are overall improved by the theater of the mind, but you still can't get me to care about a world where anything can happen and the characters are consistently breaking the rules as explained. It's just "surreal" nonsense, which on television, at least has the virtue of being visually interesting. On the page, it's just nonsense.
If you see a Donald Cotton Target adaptation, GET IT! They're funny, witty and use unusual and interesting perspectives on stories that he, in almost every case, improves on. The Gunfighters is his third and last (in order of episodes, not sure about publication) and it's a HOOT! The fight at the O.K. Corral episode is retold with a lot of verve - every sentence a comedic gem - by Doc Holliday's biographer, as a kind of Doctor Who dime store novel. Cotton fixes his own script in a number of ways, like - I know you're going to ask this - removing all but one instance of the dreaded Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon. I don't hate the device, but it's not for prose, and besides, it was meant to create a western mood and tell the story beyond the visuals. The novelisation takes care of that anyway. Cotton makes his guest stars much more interesting with easily identifiable shticks (some of which, like Ringo's love of the Classics, are historically true, but weren't in the show), so even the dialogue is improved. He also makes our leads much more active, especially in the finale where, on the program, history just took its course with the TARDIS crew only bearing witness. This is definitely the best version of this Doctor Who tale (if not of the fight itself, plenty of other choices for that, mine being Tombstone).
It would be true to say The Savages is the likely the Doctor Who serial I remember the least about. Aside fro a companion's departure and a potential attempt at covertly replacing William Hartnell, none of the details really stuck in my mind from reading ABOUT it, or listening to the audio, watching reconstruction, etc. It is a kind of old-fashioned SF, but in Ian Stuart Black's crisp and pacey adaptation of his own story, it takes on the feeling of an Original Series Star Trek episode (not that the show had yet aired back in the day). We're introduced to a society of haves vampirically draining the life force of the have nots (sure sounds familiar) and the Doctor infecting someone with his innate revolutionary spirit and moral sense. If these episodes hadn't been wiped, they would be much more important to the canon than they are now. They represent a shift in Doctor Who storytelling, where the Doctor arrives with an established reputation and where he heroically "does the right thing" for entirely selfless reasons. Thankfully, Black's adaptation can still be enjoyed as a manifestation of that sea change.
As with his previous effort (The Savages), Ian Stuart Black's The War Machines is a classic science-fiction story adapted to Doctor Who's format, or rather, it's NEW format. Taken out of context, this tale of robot invasion in the heart of London, using actual landmarks to hide the alien problem, and a very active Doctor who able to call in the troops, could have been ripped right out of the new series. In 1965, however, this was a new kind of story for Who, an incoming producer's new direction, but also a little like it was made by people who didn't know or understand the series as was. A bit old-fashioned and straightforward nonetheless, but modern eyes will be taken by the prophecy of an Internet and malicious A.I. It also introduces new companions and what is still the most unceremonious shuffling off of one. And very doofy and clumsy robots. The adaptation describes them differently and creates action scenes that are far more exciting than what was possible on television. Black also manages some interesting passages from the machine mind's perspective, and gives much better reasons for the Doctor's sudden authority. The concepts just play better in prose, though this story would never revolutionize prose science-fiction.
RPGs: This week, the "Realities TV" adventure wrapped in our Torg Eternity game, and thankfully, the PCs knew enough to get out of the studio rather than face the massive opposition they might have otherwise faced. This is one of those scenarios where the climax is essentially a battle between two outside parties and you probably should let them go at it. Three Technodemons, a dragon, an Aysle champion, a wizard and 30-40 goons? Yet, let them have it while we escape with the people we were sent to rescue. Of course, it wasn't as easy as all that since it was a full moon (why I use a calendar) and the team does have a lycanthrope... The road back to a rendezvous point is an adventure in and of itself, and I've pit the PCs against ghost cars - Christine meets Mad Max - and we left things in the middle of THAT. Gives us a chance to use those vehicle rules we so seldom take advantage of, though I've yet to see much in the way of stunts.
Best bits: There's a card in the Destiny deck that the players never use - Maelstrom - which prevents ALL characters from using Possibility energy for more than a full turn. And despite being in a situation where he might have needed to Soak damage, the Freedom Magician decided to play it - he was fine (but took the knee to the Technodemon Producer), and it allowed our Monster Hunter to explode some dice on the Director (Dr. Grimm's last Cosm clone), cutting him in half with a gun blast with no hope of reprieve. The Hunter of course turned into a Werebat during the big fight and was killed by the Aylish gladiator, but of course, not permanently. Still, he got to draw from the Permanent Injury deck and was rewarded(?) with a nasty scar (lowered Charisma, and now a Scar card may come up that ruins his social interactions). Since he was going to resurrect thanks to the curse, they dragged his body around, trying to keep the helpful nurse they were rescuing from trying to fix the bat-man (which she thought was a poor mutant), seeing as he might eat her when he woke up. Another, less important, rescue got eaten instead when the Act ended and the Bat woke up. As for the next adventure, it started with a Tortuous Visions card being played, which allowed me to indulge in gory image-making based on what I knew was to come. The Realm Runner, driving the getaway vehicle untrained, almost swerved into a boulder. Some good road fighting tactics against the possessed Lamborghini, even if the rolls were bad and they didn't work, like emptying a gas can at the back to create a slippery, ignitable slick. Fighting a possessed combine cutting through a wastelander compound, the Monster Hunter figured out he could use his ghost bullets to shoot at the "empty" cockpit, and actually hit something. The Frankenstein tried to meta-game and do the same with ordinary weapons despite being told he didn't have the Hunter's insight. He spent a lot of resources to get a result I then completely dismissed. Thankfully, our Monster Hunter is also an alchemist and had an oil on hand that could turn any weapon into a "ghost bullet".
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