"Accomplishments"In
theaters: I've read a lot of reviews that have placed 28 Years (Even)
Later: The Bone Temple higher than the previous instalment, but to me,
it's still a "middle part", more concerned with telling its stories than
exploring the more relevant metaphors of Part 1. That said, one could
do a lot worse than focus your energies on Ralph Fiennes's brilliant
performance as Dr. Ian, who gets one of the best moments in 2020s cinema
here. But it's still a thing of parts. We're invested in his touching
relationship with the giant Alpha Samson, but keep getting distracted by
the Satanic cult of the Jimmies that has absorbed young Spike, or the
pregnant girl who seems like she's going to be a protagonist until she
isn't. Turns out, Erin Kellyman, one of the Jimmies, was more important
all along. Eventually, the two main plots converge in a most satisfying
way. A lot of laughs in the theater, and a lot of smiles from my own
seat, too. Nice tease for Part 3.
Does
Hamlet work as a tragi-comedy? That's the experiment at the heart of
director Robert Hastie's version, available in theaters through National
Theatre Live, with Hiran Abeysekera in the role, and my answer is...
partly. Pushing the comedy makes for an entertaining show, but in
isolated moments. As a whole, I think it falls a little flat. For
example, we get an amusing Polonius from Geoffrey Streatfeild, and an
expressive comic performance of Ophelia by Francesca Mills (the Time
Bandits series), but to make the play work as a comedy, decisions have
to be made that naturally undermine the tragedy. Alistair Petrie's
Claudius is likeable to the point of clashing with his actions. The
comic pace makes Abeysekera's soliloquies fly by with no time for the
audience to reflect on the language. Actors often seem to be on the edge
of corpsing (I was going to say breaking, but the pun was too
inviting), and when they're not, they're all tears and snot. I'm not
sure the balance is ever sure. But as with any "experimental" Hamlet, I
like a lot of the innovations. The finger guns/real gun confusion being a
manifestation of Hamlet's madness is a very cool effect. Hamlet being
able to hear and comically react to other characters' asides is fun.
There's a Blockbuster t-shirt that has to be a reference to Hamlet 2000.
Hamlet on mike during the Mouse-Trap. And I do like the diffusion of
the play's innate misogyny achieved through cross-gender casting. I love
a female Horatio and Tessa Wong is a good one - I believe her sass and
her heartbreak. Making the First Player a woman (Siobhan Redmond, the
Big Finish Rani) is very interesting, as it creates an alternative
mother figure for the Prince. And of course, a lively, modern Ophelia is
always more welcome than the all-too-fragile classic portrayal. So I
did have a good time with it even if, in the final analysis, I don't
think the experiment quite worked.
At
home: I hate John Wayne, but I like Howard Hawks, so it was only a
matter of time until I finally watched Rio Bravo, a film whose
reputation preceded it. That opening presenting the initial situation
without any dialogue is masterful indeed, but after that, it's all
disappointingly straightforward. After putting an outlaw in jail, the
town is under siege by his family, which should be a powder keg, but
it's all a bit too relaxed for that. And honestly? Call it my bias if
you like, but I blame John Wayne. He's basically got two speeds -
bemused and tired - and I don't think either fit the film. Slot in any
other leading man and I'd think more highly of the picture. His romance
with Angie Dickinson, visibly decades younger than he is (I'm older than
Wayne now and he still looks 15 years my senior), is a case of her
doing all the work. The chemistry only goes one way and her character is
even written to be in a relationship for two, putting words in the
other's mouth, etc. I just don't buy him in the situation. Dean Martin
and Ricky Nelson are good deputies and even give us a couple songs... I
can see why this was so successful at the time, there's someone for
every generation. For my money, Dickinson steals the show. Now if only I
could blank out the left side of the screen...
I
think I prefer John Wayne as a heavy, and in Red River, he may start as
the nominal hero, but his ambitions regarding his cattle drive soon
expose an unethical tyranny in him that was, if you've been paying
attention, there from the beginning. His protégé, played by Montgommery
Clift, is our actual hero, though parallels between the two men are
consistently drawn to create doubt. In addition to eventually inspiring
City Slickers (for which I am eternally grateful), Hawks more directly
presages Rio Bravo - Walter Brennan's Groot could be Stumpy 10 years
earlier, and Joanne Dru is the same kind of love interest Dickinson is
in that film, i.e. pulled right of one of Hawks's screwball comedies.
There's strong suspense, solid action, and a lot of production value
(how many movie cows WAS this?!). The one thing I don't buy is the happy
ending, not after everything that's happened.
I
like the conceit behind Rustlers’ Rhapsody a lot. You start out
watching an old bubblegum western from the 40s and suddenly the film
becomes a contemporary one, in color, with a dirtier Old West. Had they
made this 10 or 15 years later, post-Unforgiven, the contrast would have
been much starker and said more, but as is, 80s westerns (such as they
were) are still pretty hokey and cliché-laden. Rhapsody, though an
underrated little comedy (and not a music despite the title), doesn't
really know what it wants to say, of anything. Yes, portrayal of the Old
West has moved on, but the Singing Cowboy (Tom Berenger) and his horse
still have their "powers", including the meta-textual ability to know
what's going to happen because all westerns are the same. There's some
Airplane-style humor, some slapstick, some referential humor - it was
made by the director of Police Academy - a bit of everything. I suppose
it rides in the shadow of Blazing Saddles, if anything. Andy Griffith
plays the rather harmless heavy. Marilu Henner and Sela Ward are the
sexy femmes vying for Rex's attention, but not TOO sexy... It really
seems like we're still playing by Rex's rules. A little out of focus,
but kind of sweet and definitely fun, too.
Audrey
Hepburn's second caper movie after Charade, How to Steal a Million is a
fun bit of business from director William Wyler (at the tail end of his
illustrious career, but he's still got the juice). Hepburn is the witty
daughter of an art forger who is forced to steal a fake on exhibition
at a Parisian museum before it is tested and her father is exposed. For
this, she recruits an art thief she caught in her house (and what a
house! one of the coolest spaces in cinema!) played by Peter O'Toole, a
man she is obviously destined to fall in love with, but who may not be
what he seems. There are a lot of moving parts here and they all come
together beautifully. The forgery humor, the romcom, a third man who
wants to possess her and her art, the lo-fi procedural heist, a comic
performance by frequent Hepburn collaborator Moustache... and things
don't always go the way you think they will. It's not Charade, but close
enough.
Though
tagged as a drama, These Three can't help but benefit from William
Wyler's deft comic touch. If not for the "school thriller" element, it
could easily just be a romantic comedy, and maintains its wit even after
the horrible child's destructive lie. Miriam Hopkins and Merle Oberon
open a school together and both fall for Joel McCrea's folksy doctor who
lives never door, and boy, I really feel for Hopkins here, so obviously
smitten with him, but early on realizing he was more (or entirely)
interested in her best friend. And then her meddlesome moocher of an
aunt (Catherine Doucet) forces herself on them as well... But if the
drama works, it's because young Bonita Granville is such an evil brat. I
don't believe in spanking - and certainly didn't appreciate it when it
was done to me - but Mary Tilford is one of those "bad seeds" cinema
(and sorry to say, life) gives us sometimes to make us question our
"spare the rod" convictions. And that frustration you feel at the
manufactured scandal? That's how you know you're invested. Wyler would
remake it with a more scandalous lie in The Children's Hour, but I might
prefer the original.
I
love the kind of chances Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed takes. It doesn't
retell the first film, or even keep close to its themes. Rather, it
continues Brigitte's story, now haunted by Ginger's ghost and trying to
keep the wolf inside herself at bay, even as the Werewolf Daddy closes
in. Brigitte is older, so we ditch the puberty metaphor in favor of a
struggle with addiction (the wolfsbane she feels forced to take) and set
the action largely at a rehab center where her autonomy is taken away
from her. So can she escape before the wolf is out and kills everyone?
The movie doesn't even stick to that single premise and just keeps
moving forward organically. Now, I watched it for Tatiana Maslany in an
early role - she's the creepy kid who's obsessed with comic books and
therefore entranced by her new werewolf friend - but Unleashed really
stands up regardless. You know you're watching Canadian horror when the
heroine fights the monster with a curling stone! + half a star right
there.
While
there was room for a continuation of Brigitte's story after Ginger
Snaps 2, they decided to make a prequel set in 1815 Canada with Ginger
Snaps Back: The Beginning, and if you try to actually see it as an
origin story for the werewolf curse as it is portrayed in the first two
films, you might hurt yourself. Instead, I think I understand it as an
Elseworlds - a RETELLING of the story using the same cast in similar
roles. Again we gave two sisters, Ginger and Brigitte, who end up on the
bad end of lycanthropy, except in a historical setting. And the
"retelling" part is why it never quite lifts off. Whether or not in ends
like the first film did is academic - the movie leads us to believe it
will, and therefore feels like a retread. It's definitely got its
qualities. Good production values thanks to shooting in an actual fort
turned national park - which Canada is filthy with - more onscreen
werewolves than in any other instalment, and Ginger looks positively
badass in her cloak. It many not be the end of the trilogy we craved,
but you can't see the franchise never took any chances.
[1918]
The Cook: Silly buggers in a restaurant with Fatty Arbuckle in the
kitchen and Buster Keaton stealing the show front of house. I was gonna
say don't order the brown soup, but really better to not order anything
from the menu at all. Agile leads and fun gags, but I guess they ran out
of ideas in the last 5 minutes and moved to a pointless new location.
[1919]
The Doll: I associate Lubitsch with charming, humorous dialog, so how
do his films play in the silent era? Well, there are certainly some of
his trademark verbal jokes in the interstitials in addition to his
sophisticated comedy set-ups, so I can only imagine how stoked he was
when sound came in. A baron's childish nephew refuses to ever get
married, runs to some greedy monks, and they convince him to "fake" it
for the dowry. The idea is for him to purchase a life-size wind-up doll
and marry THAT, but amusingly, the doll he wants is damaged and her
model takes her place. I note that Ossi Oswalda (the "doll") made
several silents with Lubitsch that I think I need to check out. She's
funny and expressive in a Meg Ryan kind of way. Now, this whole thing is
already happening in a toymaker's playset, so I guess she really is a
doll, but don't think about it too hard. It's just a conceit to justify
cardboard sets, panto horses, and whimsical special effects. Lubitsch
didn't sound after all.
[1920] One Week: That first week after
the wedding is important to any couple. They have to watch out for
bullies capturing the bride, following instructions on their IKEA
build-a-home, and the odd train. It's honestly one of the most inventive
and cutest things Buster Keaton's ever done (which is saying
something), and his bride, Sybil Seely, gives it her all as well
(including some unexpected near-nudity, yipes!). Incredible builds,
crazy car stuff, wonderful gags. I wish it actually lasted closer to a
week, but I'll gladly take the 25 minutes.
[1921]
Based on a folk tale, Fritz Lang's Destiny benefits from his
imaginative special effects as a manifestation of Death whisks a girl's
fiancé away to the underworld. She desperately tries to convince a weary
Death to release her beau, at which point he tells her three stories -
in a sort of reverse Scheherazade (or am I just thinking that because
the first has an Arabian Nights feel?) - in which lovers have been
unable to prevent their deadly destinies, each story using the cast of
the frame tale. If I were the girl, I would point out that the
difference between Death's stories and mine was that MY fiancé had no
actual cause of death! But anyway, it's device Lang uses to cover a lot
of exotic ground, with the final Chinese story, about a wizard and his
randy assistants, has a lot of opportunity for cool visuals. In the end,
the girl will have one hour to save her husband-to-be, and the folk
tale really takes no prisoners when it comes to trying to subvert the
natural order. A cool silent, but the anthology element makes it a bit
diffuse.
[1922] Cops: Buster, Buster, whatchoo gonna do? Whatchoo
gonna do when they come for you? He accidentally commits a bunch of
crimes, which is amusing, but a lot of the gags are dated head
scratchers. Not his most resonant work, but I wouldn't say he deserves
to go to jail for it.
Books:
If Tom Scioli co-authored a New Gods riff in Godland, his American
Barbarian is essentially Kamandi with shades of Thundarr the Barbarian.
It's Kirby with a potty mouth, right down to the moments of mixed media.
I'm a fan, and the collection's introduction by Rob Liefeld is perhaps
the best thing HE'S ever written. Huge splashes, big ideas, crazy action
(yeah, let's throw some OMAC in there), and even crazier character
designs. Basically - if you need some kind of premise outline - there's
this evil pharaoh with tanks for feet called Two-Tank-Amon, and he's
rampaging through postapocalyptic America. Our lead is a
once-in-a-lifetime warrior with tri-color hair whose family is massacred
by the would-be conqueror, sparking an insane struggle that includes
dinosaurs, time travel, and elder gods. Love it.
The
last and least volume in Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series, The Galaxy,
and the Ground Within was very obviously written during lockdown, or as a
reaction to it. After an orbital disaster, three travellers and
grounded at a pitstop run by a woman and her kid, and the five hang out
while things resolve themselves "off-screen". The twist (if I can call
it that), is that there are no humans in the cast, and as usual, there's
a connection to the first book (Pei is one of the characters), but it's
not part of some larger story. In fact, while there's a third act
crisis, the book has very little in the way of incident. It's the
novelistic equivalent of a hang-out film, filled with conversations,
largely about the species and cultures represented and how they differ
with each other and still find meaningful connection. Chambers is very
good at creating memorable characters and giving them touching moments
of grace. She always squeezes my heart at least once. But if I called
this the least in the series, it's that it really needed a plot. Good
world-building, nice characters, heart, but the balance is off.
I
love Baltazar & Franco's comics for kids, references for adult
comic book nerds, but they definitely benefit from shorter strips
delivered in issue-length bites, where a cast of characters and
attendant gags can build up over time. See Tiny Titans, Superman Family
Adventures, Ah Yeah Comics!, etc. And they do try to chapterize the
graphic novel ArkhaManiacs, but some of those chapter stops are just
interruptions. Did editorial try to squeeze more pages out of a very
simple story? The book stars you Bruce Wayne being fascinated with the
residents of Akham Apartments, all of them fun versions of Gotham City
supervillains who help bring out a certain quality Batman will most
certainly have, but no one ever talk about. The story is charming and
amusing, as usual, but it also feels like it's playing for time, like a
project that started as a few issues of a series, and changed formats.
But didn't change ENOUGH.
Now
that we've played through it (see below), a review... The Fires of Ra
is the campaign (or "Mega") adventure for the Nile Empire in the Torg
Eternity game, and it's one of the better ones. The world of pulp heroes
needs to be chock-full of action and adventure, which this is, while
also giving us a "world tour" of the cosm that even includes scenes
unfolding on Core Earth (too rare in the game's published material). The
plot concerns a WMD developed by Pharaoh Mobius and the supervillain
team that wants to horn in on his action, with possible consequences for
your world map, which is what I want from my Mega-adventures. The other
books in the line usually supplement the scenario with a small
sourcebook section, but not this one. It should have, because the later
chapters feel rather padded and you could have taken out an Act or even
two. I, myself, cut out several distractions and reserved them for
stand-alone sessions, and the Amazon Island bit, which was a highlight,
doesn't REALLY connect with the finale, and really SHOULD have (this
society could have been the included sourcebook, for example).
Conversely, the finale could have been expanded upon more than it was,
with villain strategies and more aftermath options. Feels like they
rushed the last couple chapters. There's still a lot to recommend in The
Fires of Ra, including a cool tomb raid, neat supervillains, the
aforementioned Amazons, a brush with a High Lord, and (not to be
underrated!) built-in breaks between certain chapters to go off and do
other things to avoid the sense of sameness that comes from adventuring
7-10 sessions in a row in the same cosm.
RPGs:
Final Torg Eternity game for one of my players, at least for a while,
and he was kind enough to play his Deadlands Preacher to the end of the
The Fires of Ra. We've decided it was a good time to put all the
characters on pause and play Operation Soft Cell, a Pan-Pacifica
"undercover" scenario that wouldn't work with ol' Team Beta. The three
other players will be making infiltrators in the comic weeks so can
start on that months' long side-mission. But as for the FoR finale, the
PCs had to sabotage the MWD vessel while fighting a supervillain team.
Then the Nile Empire's High Lord shows, but Mobius is more focused on
punishing the villains, which allows our heroes to race for their jet
before the ship crashes into the sea. Normally, this would have been a
pretty simple chase to see who gets to the jet in time, but the party
split up, confusing the issue. I think it made things more interesting,
but also much deadlier. The adventure ended with everyone alive (but
Preacher separated from the group), but all out of Possibilities, out of
Destiny cards, and in one case, having passed out. Honestly, I was
tempted to have them blow up with the ship, leaving their fates unknown
until after Operation Soft Cell.
Best
bits: Some pretty good partner-switching during the hero-villain fight
(good use of Maneuver attacks). While the Realm Runner and
Super-Wrestler jump down the shaft to take the normal route back to
their ship, the Preacher and Aztecan Warrior are trapped "behind enemy
lines" so to speak and instead but through the bridge windows, fighting
the wind to walk to the jet (in a hangar out back) from the outside of
the crashing ship. The Preacher gets blown off and ends up holding on to
a motor, crawls inside, and only through a test of his Faith (a literal
Hail Mary), which I allowed because he really didn't have Science nor
Air Vehicles, he started the rotor so he would glide down safely (but
was never found by the recovery teams, so was his miraculously sent back
to the Deadlands?). Their way barred by fire, clever teamwork card play
made a Core Earth jet pilot break in on their coms. They asked him to
blow a hole in the ship on their position so the explosion might blow
the fire out. It also created a gap between Mobius and the Aztecan, who
jumped down and found himself back with his teammates. As Mobius flies
off with their ride home, the Realm Runner pulls a last-minute flashback
where he's forcing the others to wear parachutes and so they all tumble
through the air and into the drink, pushed forward by a massive
explosion.
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