"Accomplishments"
In
theaters: Though nominally based on the 1981 novel The War of the
Roses, just like the 1989 film was, The Roses takes the premise and
discards a lot of the original story, usually making different choices
where such could be made. It's still about a passionate couple destroyed
by one or the other's ambitions, culminating in a fight over who gets
the house, but it spends a lot more time watching the couple evolve,
grow distant or resentful, etc., so that we understand better how it got
to that point. The main twist is the gender switch on who the
successful (and therefore culpable) partner is. It also makes the Roses
British, allowing for wittier banter that only SEEMS to be
passive-aggressive because of centuries of emotional repression.
Cumberbatch and Coleman are, of course, highly entertaining. But having
Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon as their friend couple takes us further
into comedy, using the British-American attitudinal divide to comic
effect. The changes make it so it's not at all a rehash of the DeVito
film, worth watching in its own right because it's very, very
entertaining. It's also funnier ha-ha and more romantic. I saw it with
an audience that evidently didn't know the story (I chuckled at their
ooh-ahhhs over the house) and they were shocked when the relationship
went bad. I'm betting they would have rejected the 1989 version
outright.
At
home: I know it wasn't everyone's cup of tea back in 1989, but Danny
DeVito's The War of the Roses brilliant used, I think, what was then one
of movies' last great couplings, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner,
subverting romcom expectations by pitting them against one another in an
acrimonious divorce that ends in violence (violence? they actively
destroy what they love to spite the other!). While the case could be
made that the film doesn't foreground its characters enough to justify
its quick slide into a demented black comedy/thriller, the frame tale,
in my opinion, does. And it doesn't matter. DeVito's vision is
uncompromising and he crafts some great sequence like the potential
poisoning and the chandelier finale, does a lot with close-ups on eyes,
and boy, do I love that last shot of Turner, refusing that last possible
compromise. This movie is SAVAGE, and the Washington DC setting is
perhaps not incidental (in the book either), as it makes for a pretty
great metaphor for American society in the 80s onward.
In
anything is going to help a brilliant physics student solve time
travel, it's going to be the brutal death of his one and only love.
While I liked Loop (Brazil, 2009) well enough as a tightly-constructed
puzzle film, any experience with time travel narratives of this sort,
where time is solid and everything you do in the past was already part
of history, will make it feel predictable. It's essentially
Predestination, though it's easier to see the strings pulling the time
traveller this way and that. In fact, once you realize this is what's
happening, it's just a matter of defining the exact circumstances of
plot points the audience is well aware of and purposefully sees coming.
It's certainly a dark vision, where time travel overtly negates free
will, and the travel method is self-annihilating, not to use the word
suicidal. Once you give in to the paradox, your life is no longer your
own. You've cracked the code of the universe and locked yourself in its
pattern.
In
Omni Loop, Mary-Louise Parker has abused a mysterious form of time
travel for most of her life (clocking back 5 days whenever she wanted
to), and now she stuck in the last 5 of her life, desperate to change
her fate, perhaps with the help of a research student (the always
appreciated Ayo Edebiri). Set in a world that seems like our own except
that mad science is real (its vaguely futuristic places are real
locations), it plays on the tedium of waiting for death, perhaps feeling
that one is wasting the time one has left on the wrong things. It's a
journey that, not unlike Bill Murray's in Groundhog Day (though the
humor is quirkier and more low-key), will allow Parker to realize what's
actually important. I won't say everything I wanted explained was, but
still a very strong ending.
In
Ingress, writer-director-actor Rachel Noll's character can move between
quantum realities - not that she wants to - and after her husband's
death, she longs to find a reality where he is still alive. Perhaps the
"psychic" with connected abilities might be able to help her. It's a New
Age journey of sorts from paralyzing grief to letting go and moving on,
but more than that, given both leads' experiences, it's about letting
go of mind killers (if you'll allow the Dune-ism) that keep you from
living your best life. Perhaps our ideal reality is just one quantum
away, or if we get rid of the metaphorical sci-fi overlay, just one
self-actuating realization away. It leaves some mechanical questions
open for interpretation, but not frustrating ones. I really like heavy
sci-fi movies made with relatively little means and limited effects, so
this was definitely for me, even if I did find it a little slow at times
and wouldn't co-sign everything it implies about mental health.
[Lesotho]
As one might imagine from the title, This Is Not a Burial, It’s a
Resurrection is a fairly lyrical film, beautifully shot and exploring
heady themes through its sinister, but mythic, narration. However, it's
also got a straightforward enough plot, about an old woman who, having
outlived her entire family, starts to lose her faith and will to live,
embracing nihilism while her village is set to be displaced by the
construction of a dam. Will the Grim Reaper have its laugh and keep her
alive too long for her to be buried with her own? Mary Twala is
absolutely incredible in the role - what a face! - and the theme of
impermanence is deployed in brutal fashion. All things end, including
cultures on the altar of destructive progress, even Gods, we're told,
justifying some of the film's thoughtful Biblical allusions. Beyond its
specifics, This Is Not a Burial is about humanity's end, or multiple
ends, and whether we can stop of the wheel of time from turning or let
it take us underwater and drown us.
Having now seen a film from every country in Africa, we're off to complete Asia!
[Sri
Lanka] I know it's bound by its literary origins, but Funny Boy does
suffer from its change of setting about a third of the way in. Because
there's something very interesting about watching an 8 year old who
struggles with sexual identity - simply, at that point, liking "girly"
things - and asking big questions. So moving on to the kid's
adolescence, with its rote gay romance in an inhospitable environment,
is rather a step down. The section also parcels its time between the
main story and the racial violence in 1980s Sri Lanka, which the leads
largely avoid because they are rich until it can't be ignored anymore.
It parallels two types of prejudice, intersecting where our "funny boy"
falls for a member of the other ethnic group, but it's still two rather
disparate stories jostling for attention. Some controversy surrounds
Indian-Canadian director Deepa Mehta not being Tamil herself and getting
the minority "wrong". I don't have the background to evaluate it. All I
can attest to is that the film looks beautiful and colorful, at least
initially, turning to acidic tints in the back half, and that she gets
good performances out of the children.
Books:
With the usual caveat that I contributed to a piece to the book, I
bring you a review of Outside In Can Live With It: 171 New Perspectives
on 171 Star Trek DS9 Stories by 171 Writers. This series' remit is that
everyone find a new take (whether in form or content) on each episode
(in this case, including crossovers with the other shows), and I don't
know if it's my own bias, but since Deep Space Nine is my favorite Star
Trek series, it seemed that a fair few writers involved either had never
watched it before and/or wanted to rip it apart. That's certainly a
different angle for what I consider the Trekverse's critical darling,
but it bugs me. In this line, I much prefer someone exalting a terrible
episode, than unreasonably criticizing a good one. That said, that's not
the bulk of the book and may just be a "me" thing. I guess it makes me
sad that they couldn't find 171 fans of Deep Space Nine for this.
Generally, this volume has fewer "gimmick" articles (which are fun,
don't get me wrong) and more thought-provoking commentary, especially up
front, as DS9 warrants. The show was about big topics like war,
religion, parenthood, capitalism, terrorism, and via Dax, gender
identity, especially in retrospect. And the collection of essayists
(some recognizable names from the worlds of Trek and Doctor Who) does
that justice. And it ends on the perfect note.
RPGs:
Our Torg Eternity game had left our heroes in an Egyptian tomb,
fighting mummies and solving puzzles to get a powerful artifact, and
they continued to pretty smartly do so despite an incredible amount of
reality surges (and disconnections) and mishaps. Indeed, our
Frankenstein's Monster was transformed again by one such incident, into
his PREVIOUS Nile Empire form as a Super-Wrestler! And he couldn't have
been happier. Between his obvious glee (despite what I thought was some
pretty fun Frankenstein shenanigans this past year), and our Demon
Slayer still cringing at no longer being a long-range damage dealer
after two transformations, I'm starting to think transformations are
bad. And yet, I'd been told by players outside my game that it was a
great opportunity to switch things up and have fun. Oh well. One of my
favorite pseudo-mechanics in the Nile Empire is the ability (or let's
say encouragement) to treat the narrative as a movie, so I like to CUT
TO: the next scene. In this case (and with player approval), they come
out of the tomb and are immediately surrounded by the bad guys. CUT TO:
Them chained up to a post, the powerful treasure in the villain's hand.
This leads to an escape and a chase, first in the villain's Phantom
Special (shouldn't have left it behind), and then on top of a train. It
got pretty crazy, probably because high-octane pulp action is my groove
as a GM.
Best
bits: Mishaps are fun for our Haunted Deadlands Preacher because they
are caused by the ghost of his former love whose death he caused, so
stuff like bullets flying out of his revolvers and her eventually
tipping the train into a ravine... that's a real toxic relationship. The
Realm Runner started waltzing with his compatriots to trick the
mummies, sending his partner towards the undead in balletic violence.
Last session, the latter's player played a Cosm card that made "someone
come back from the dead" and chose Dr. Grimm, an arch villain that had
appeared 5 times already and whose arc I was done with (I noticeably
grumbled because I had no room for him in this multi-chapter story). My
fix: The Hooded Cobra (a villain introduced in the Day One adventures)
reveals himself to be the Grim Cobra (moua-ha-ha), as Grimm bumped him
off months ago and took his place. Well, *I* thought it was clever. In
the car chase, the Super-Wrestler avoids a goat herd, but does so well I
allow him to grab a goat with his arm out the window and throw it into
the back seat at the Aztecan Demon Slayer (the joke is that he's also a
Were-Bat and had eaten goats before to satisfy his bloodlust, though the
players snicker about what else he's doing behind closed doors -
role-players, amirite?). Well, our Aztecan uses his "beast possession"
powers to drive the goat in front of the pursuing vehicles and make at
least one crash (I decreed the goat was fine). The Preacher was sniping
drivers left and right from a window-sitting position and causing loads
more accidents. When the Wrestler saw fruit stands by the side of the
road, he HAD to ram them, it's cinematic law. (He threw a grapefruit in
the back seat, the Aztecan did not "possess" it) On the train, the
baddies fire heavy artillery from the top of a car at the PCs, ripping
up the roof and floor of that car - the Wrestler, near unconsciousness,
drops through, but uses his great strength to climb the underside if the
train and pop out on the other end, where a Shocktrooper's face gets
smashed on the coupling claws. Meanwhile, the Grim Cobra has unhooked
the locomotive and after suffering two Setbacks and a Mishap (this was
crazy), accidentally killed the train conductor just as the engine sped
up to dangerous levels. Well! That sent the Cobra flying off the train
into the abyss, the magic artifact flying in the other direction. The
Demon Slayer turns into a Were-Bat to catch the gemstone while the
Preacher heads for the controls to slow the train down. But he mishaps
and the the train starts to fall, so the Were-Bat has to go and rescue
him as the locomotive falls and explodes directly on the villain. No
body was recovered.
Comments