"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Honestly, I think Frankenstein is one of the best things Guillermo del Toro has ever done. Like, of course, it's impeccably designed, with del Toro evidently emptying his Warehouse of Curiosities onto the prop table, creating a highly stylized 19th-Century Europe - that was to be expected. But he really splurged on the casting and we get great performances all around, including Oscar Isaac as the volatile Frankenstein himself, Jacob Elordi pulling a Doug Jones as the Creature - great movement and presence - and Mia Goth as a witty Elizabeth better matched with Victor than most in her interest in the creepy aspects of nature. I especially appreciate the changes and expansions where they add further layers to the essential themes of the novel. Of course, the story is a reaction to Science killing God, and therefore Victory making himself God warrants his creation should try to destroy him. But it's also an Oedipal father-son story, and expanding on Victor's childhood, his difficult relationship with the father he will become, and obsession with his mother's death (keep chugging that milk, Vic, we see you!) is an excellent addition. Del Toro also subtly points out that the relationships in the story may be analogous to those of the poets present that stormy summer at Villa Diodati - Elizabeth as Mary, William as Shelley and club-footed Byron as Victor, perhaps? Del Toro has waiting so long to finally make his Frankenstein film that he puts everything into it, and I feel like I could return to this adaptation again and again and find new things to appreciate.
At home: An acrimonious divorce in the '70s caused Cronenberg to make The Brood. He got remarried, but became a widower in 2017. That caused him to make The Shrouds. I can tell it's a personal film, because I'm not sure I entirely understand it. Vincent Cassel plays a Cronenberg stand-in who has invented a sensor shroud that allows him to see and monitor his wife's corpse, suffering from a grief that really doesn't allow him to let go. Though an atheist, he creates a kind of shared afterlife for them, obsesses about her cancer, and beds women that either look exactly like her (Diane Kruger) or might as well. In fact, when you think he's let go, you realize he really hasn't. It's Cronenberg, so it's all about the BODY, the horror of it, the beauty of it, and power of it, and how it might be repurposed by technology. There's a deep mystery here, one that involves a number of competing conspiracies, but it's a mystery without a proper solution. I resented getting invested in it, only to discover I had to look at the film through a more poetic lens. But then, by refusing to let go of his wife, perhaps our lead is as good as dead himself, in which case, his mind is only creating reasons to remain interested in the ever-disappearing BODY and nothing is else matters.
A bona fide Canadian horror classic, My Bloody Valentine was shot in a Cape Breton mining town very early in the careers of several ubiquitous Canadian television icons (Street Legal's Cynthia Dale and He Shoots, He Scores' Carl Marotte, for example) and though I don't recommend it for its acting generally, its use of the setting is great (there's even action inside the mine) and the kills are original and gory. The lore is kind of told like a campfire story: Twenty years ago, the fictional town of Valentine's Bluff held its last Valentine's Day dance on account of a traumatized miner serial killing party goers. But this year, the kids aren't afraid of to make the good times roll, and the revived tradition brings the killer out of the woodwork. In addition to the clever kills, the movie has some other interesting twists, like the rivals for the presumed final girl's attentions teaming up to save her, although the Big Twist(TM) is rather predictable, or at least, guessable. One to watch as a double-feature with (the admittedly better) Black Christmas.
When the new girl in school makes friends with one who's obsessed with witchcraft, the latter's wild imagination proves as toxic as it is infectious. Poison for the Fairies is a horror film through the eyes of children and we never see a proper adult's face on screen. It uses the crazy, macabre stories of childhood, the invented lore, the questionable games, to create psychologically justified chills. There are moments where you believe in Veronica the pre-teen witch. But no, you're an adult, she can't possibly be. Unimportant. We've been cut out of the decision-making like the other adults in the film. Things will happen quite outside our purview. Nasty things. Things to make a child cry and scare a parent to death. Like Flavia, I similarly got thrown in with a bad friend when joining a new class. No witchcraft, but we did play an awful lot of Dungeons & Dragons. And four years later, he piledrived me into the living room floor for winning a game of chess and broke my glasses. Never suffer a witch to live, folks...
It was only a matter of time before the kaiju kraze that followed in the wake of Godzilla would cross over into samurai films, and Daimajin is that crossover. It just comes very late, is all. For the most part, Daimajin is a perfectly watchable chambara film about a village being oppressed by a warlord after a coup that has sent the ruling family's children up into the "haunted" mountain. Nothing remarkable there, except for the promise of the supernatural, and eventually, the mountain spirit, made manifest as a giant wrathful statue, does hear the people's cries and attacks. And boy, what an attack. Those last 15 minutes make any kind of impatience on the audience's part worth it. Great integration of the giant monster into the action using a wide variety of tricks (and on at least two occasions, I was like, WHAT?! HOW?!), and from this alone, I can see why they'd want to immediately green-light a couple more. So stay with it (it's not a bad watch just as an atmospheric samurai flick), it'll pay off.
After 100 years, it's incredible to find 1925's The Phantom of the Opera so crisp and beautiful, though the restoration work is necessarily a Frankenstein's monster of different versions, including some shocking color sequences in the middle. Beautiful tints throughout, crisp interstitials... but that's just luscious cream over a fine version of the story, filled with atmospheric sets and props, and incredible set pieces like the falling chandelier and the flooding chamber. Lon Chaney is the Phantom, and it's no surprise his make-up is iconic, but I'm quite disappointed in the mask. Taken from depictions in an illustrated version of the novel, it nevertheless looks less than theatrical. It could pass itself off as a normal face in a crowd, and looks goofy up close. Mary Philbin as the woman he loves to the point of kidnapping is an expressive actress, but her movements are strange, like those of a marionette. I went back and forth as to whether it took me out of the film or was a great thematic choice for a woman under the monster's spell. In the end, the great visuals win out, as they perhaps should, in a silent film.
[Papua New Guinea] There's something quite interesting going on in Cannibal Tours because the documentary flips the script on the usual way of doing something like this. While natives of Papua New Guinea ARE interviewed, we're really following white tourists visiting the country's traditional villages, then getting the natives' frank reactions. Translation is everything and it shows people who may have traditional lifestyles - or at least lean into them for tourism's sake - but are really just regular folks, and it's the tourists who seem bizarre even though the audience nominally shares their culture. Look, I'm from Acadia, which its own minority culture in Atlantic Canada, and I've worked in the tourism industry and suffered some pretty wild opinions and expectations from Americans and Quebeckers who thought we were quaint. I'll never forget the lady who, in a historical village (you know those recreations of the past that act as cultural amusement parks), was upset "we" lived liked this, present tense. Uhm.... You did drive here on a highway, right, m'am? Cannibal Tours is more universal than it seems.
[Federated States of Micronesia] Papa Mau: The Wayfinder was essentially made to bolster Polynesian identity, reminding us of activist efforts in the 70s that led to the construction of a traditional canoe and trip from Hawaii to Tahiti and then contemporary efforts to do the same to once again reinvigorate the culture. A worthy subject, but the budget is strictly public access television, so we don't really accompany anyone on these trips and file footage is sparse.
Books: From the lore about The Banquo Legacy, Andy Lane and Justin Richards must have hacked this Eighth Doctor novel more quickly than usual because it replaced another that was on the schedule. It doesn't feel like a rush job. In fact, it's one of the better EDAs I've read. Set at the end of the 19th Century, it uses the twin accounts of a lawyer and a police detective to create a great Gothic atmosphere - Gothic bordering on Lovecraft - a mix of murder mystery and unholy science experiments. Doctor Who has a long tradition of spooky manors which this taps into, though had it been made for television, we might consider some episodes Doctor-Lite, and arch our eyebrows at the momentary recasting of Compassion (shades of The Mind Robber). But the narrators/leads are up to the challenge of keeping our attention when the Doctor isn't present, largely due to their great prose (and apparently eidetic memories). A more omniscient narrator could have explained things better, of course, especially the nature of Banquo Manor, if it indeed had an intrinsically strange nature, but the genre being emulated requires things to remain mysterious, and so we'll happily allow it.
RPGs: We came just short of the climactic scene of our Amazon Island adventure this week in Torg Eternity (so no news item yet, sorry), featuring two fairly strong "duels" between our group and the Nile Empire emissaries. The first was a banquet where the PCs had to impress the queen and not make too many social faux-pas while being goaded by the smooth-talking villains. The other was a sportsball match on horseback to see which team was favored by the gods. Let's just say the PCs didn't do badly in the former, but had a more resounding success in the latter. No time to celebrate, however, as its seems a civil war is brewing among the Amazons (which could explain a few things) and the PCs are caught in the middle. On the whole, a good session with plenty of variety, strong use of cards, and some role-playing opportunities.
Best bits: The Super-Wrestler chugging down live octopus at the dinner while secretly rolling for Willpower because it was trying to crawl back up was a highlight (shame he lost points with a massive burp at the end), but one should mention the Realm Runner's intimidating poison soup-slurping stare. The sporting event was - thanks to a Chorus card of my own design - narrated as if it were game of television, favoring the PCs who had convinced the commentators they were better horsemen than they actually were. Some cool moments there included a number of horse-propelled slaps to the opponents' faces and a couple of brutal runs at the main supervillain, but if the baddies lost, it's mostly because they kept getting hit with Setbacks (interpreted as them trying to cheat and getting their goals taken away). And then there's the Glory moment. An traitorous Amazon kicks a broken statue's head rolling towards the Aztec Demon Slayer and he rolls to jump over it. Massive roll, ends up jumping ON it and reversing it in his opponent's direction. But he's very close to the 60 required to allow the Glory card in his hand to be played, so the Deadlands Preacher plays Catharsis (another Greek-inspired card I created for this adventure), shifts his wounds to the Slayer who gains Possibilities (he was out of resources), enough for a bonus roll which puts him over the top. Not only will this moment be talked about all over the island, but it'll refill everyone with hope! And this, on a Setback round for the PCs. In fact. the Realm Runner shoots the head of a statue so it comes tumbling down, rolling towards everyone who WASN'T in the path of the other head. Well, you've got to keep the heroes on their toes.
Improv: The "Lucid Dreaming" improv tour has brought us to my home town of Edmundston (may it live in infamy), where the public could choose from, as usual, three genres to spark a fully improvised play - Reality TV, Dystopian SF, and Mafia Story. Big blow to the production, one of our performers tested positive for COVID two days before the show (the one who was supplying the drive, at that), so we had to scramble to find a suitable replacement on such short notice. Shouldn't have worried - our pinch hitter Anthony Leblanc was actually picked to be the main character, a bootlegger's son who was afraid to take on the business, especially considering his sister (Renée Perron) had much more of a head for it. Yes, it was a "Mafia" story, if a rather comedic one, about running booze, then guns, then umbrellas, as the audience changed the "simulation" on us in every Act. The ensemble was completed by Mathieu Bossé (the godfather) and myself (the disloyal goon), chasing an ending that would define what it is to me a man in this (or any) world. Bit of a kumbaya ending to keep things light. Fun was had by all.
Comments