"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Sam Raimi's "Eat the Rich, but at the risk of gaining their traits, as cannibals believed", Send Help, stars Rachel McAdams as a dowdy mid-level corporate stooge whose career is derailed by the new a-hole bro CEO (Dylan O'Brien), and then they end up on a deserted island together. She's a Survivor nerd living her dream, and he's a venal, pampered idiot who couldn't survive alone. Hilarity ensues. The ladies behind me thought this was a romcom for a LONG TIME, based on their loud cooing, but I would have found that unacceptable. If there's a romance AT ALL here, it has to be a horror romance between a monster and a woman on the edge of monstrousness. It's Raimi, so it's a lot of fun despite liberally stealing from such films as Triangle of Sadness and Misery (hm, that gives me an idea, see below), with moments of gore, horror, and grotesque comedy. The ladies behind me sometimes said "Why!?", to which I wanted to answer: "Because Sam Raimi, that's why!", but held my tongue. To be clear, they had as much fun with it as I did, they just didn't know what they were in for. I don't let expectations rule my reactions, but I'm rarely that CLEAN of expectation!
At home: Elaine May is a triple threat in A New Leaf - acting, writing, directing - a very funny movie that seems inspired by the comedies of the 1930s, with arch banter and rich people falling all over themselves in a kind of performative love that often seemed descended from Oscar Wilde. Walther Matthau is absolutely ridiculous as an irresponsible dilettante who let the money run out and now plans to marry rich and murder the wife at the earliest convenience because he doesn't like to share. Enter May as a clumsy wallflower who is insanely rich, but doesn't act like it, preferring botany to high society. The first half of the film - the wooing - is delightful, always cutting for comedy and getting a lot of laughs. So could that be sustained once we got to the murder plot portion of the evening? Only two things could happen: Either he went through with it, which would be to dark even for this black comedy, either he turned a new leaf and actually fell in love with his dowdy bride. It's certainly one of these, but better done than expected. Had a lot of fun with this one.
I don't know that I've seen Romy Schneider more glamorous and sexy than in Innocents with Dirty Hands, and that's saying something. Chabrol's Hitchcockian thriller has a familiar set-up - a woman plots with her young, virile lover to murder her alcoholic, impotent, and very rich husband (Rod Steiger) - so much so the plotting kind of happens in off-camera. The real mystery is what happens next, because if the scheme worked, how does one explain all the odd discrepancies cropping up in the following investigation? And once THOSE are solved, how does the film keep going? But it does, excitingly so. Schneider keeps her motivations close to the vest, and her acting is up for it. Rather amusing is the justice system, with comic detectives trying to pull a Columbo on her while burping their vacation dinners, and her smooth con man of a defense lawyer.
An unusual mystery develops in Girl with Hyacinths, a Swedish Noir in which a young woman commits suicide and her neighbors decide to try and figure out why she did it. The film doesn't really give us a good reason for why the amateurs would go sleuthing, but the portrait of Dagmar Brink (Eva Henning) that is drawn from various interviews with the people who knew her is an interesting one. The short answer to the question is "depression", but the long answer is a puzzle slowly assembled before our eyes, and one with a potentially surprising answer. What seems clear from the off, is that no one truly knows Dagmar, at least not fully. Her life seems to be littered with men who didn't believe her when she told them she loved them, and there lies one possible tragedy. But is it all tragic misunderstanding, or is there something else under the surface?
Between its title and its obvious Noir tropes (like the flawed protagonist telling his story at the top), Edith Carlmar's Death Is a Caress has far less criminality than I was expecting. It's really more of a relationship thriller between a mechanic who ditches his fiancée for an older - and very rich - married woman (the latter played by Bjørg Riiser-Larsen, who could be Cate Blanchett had she travelled back in time). Both are volatile, and their love affair is built on shifting ground, so their friends are probably right to expect it won't last long. But what will they put each other through before push comes to shove? Despite being called the first "Norwegian Noir", it really tends more towards melodrama, albeit saucier than the American equivalent in either genre, so I was more enamoured of Carlmar's direction than the story. Her inventive transitions are worth the price of admission. That said, it's a well-acted, tragic romance with complex characters who keep frustrating one another.
Hey, Stephen King, show us on the doll where a fan hurt you that you would write Misery. One of Rob Reiner's classics during his impeccable 1986 to 1992 run, it stars Janes Caan as a writer of trash trying to turn his literary career around, but his #1 fan (Kathy Bates, in the role that made her a star) won't let him end his popular book series. I love the snowy location, I love the details of the house Caan is kept prisoner in, and Reiner knows how to ramp up the tension whenever Caan tries to cleverly get out of his predicament. Bates is absolutely loopy, moving from loving Christian to crazed potential killer, but I also want to give props to Richard Farnsworth and Frances Sternhagen as the homey local constables trying to crack the case of Caan's disappearance. I could have watched an entire movie about them. The anxieties of popularity have only been heightened over time, so Misery still resonates today. She's a cute pig, too.
Joachim Trier's first feature, Reprise, starts with a whirlwind, romanticized future for two young writers just dropping their manuscripts in the mail, then rewinds to proceed more slowly through a more realistic version of events, where one of them develops a psychosis that prevents him from writing (and therefore an attempted "reprise" of his life after care), and the other more slowly gains success. The constant is their friendship, which defines their writing and their lives. The story wanders, and Trier uses a novelistic - Proustian, even - approach to the narrative, moving through time, memory, and "possible" events without fear. His many formal experiments mirror the type of writing the two boys are into. It's very much a case of the form matching the content. Purely as a story, it's full of strong observations about human behavior, with a great supporting role for Viktoria Winge. "Supporting" is the key word, here, as the best relationships in the film are those that support one another.
Miss Piggy is framed for a jewel heist she didn't commit and only investigative reporters Kermit and Fozzy (and the rest of the gang) can exonerate her in The Great Muppet Caper, a caper spoof that borrows from various cinematic eras. There are several scenes that could take place in a 30 comedy, the plot is from 40s Noir, the frothy Technicolor haute couture setting is out of the 60s, and yet, we're nominally in 1981. I'm not saying that's a bug, that's just how the Muppets roll. Similarly, you have all kinds of different comedy styles competing for attention. Word play: Quite fun. Slapstick: Not my thing. Recurring gags: Usually clever. Meta: Very much my thing and got the biggest laughs from me. Comedy performances from humans: There is such a thing as "Muppet acting", which can be very broad (Charles Grodin is definitely guilty of this), and I much prefer the more grounded approach of Diana Rigg here. Nice cameos by Peter Falk, Peter Ustinov, and John Cleese. Visual gags: Quite amusing. And as for making this a MOVIE, while the Muppets-only scene tend to be shot like they're on the Muppet Show stage, there's plenty of location work and a real obsession with showing the characters' legs and the Muppets doing in-camera action. It's The Muppet Movie's effects taken twelve steps further. At least one instance of a human in a Piggy costume, but otherwise, you'll often wonder how they pulled it off.
You don't really think of Hanna-Barbara as a studio that makes features, but Charlotte's Web was kind of their bid to give Disney some competition. As such, it has very detailed (if not as fluid) animation, with surprising body language and expression on the humans, and a Disney-like interest in nature. I didn't remember there were songs (fun ones) in it, only that it devastated me as a child. Growing older, a false memory made me remix it with the spider story from Blade Runner. It doesn't go that far - ha ha! - but it's still very clear about the suffering of the animal world. The plot revolves around a spider using her cleverness to save a pig from ending up on a plate, so the killing of live stock, and the short life spans of certain animals, is openly discussed. And while the theme is the importance of friendship, the film also teaches kids about mortality. Look, I was a sensitive kid, and I grew up to be a sensitive adult. Charlotte's Web still works on me decades on...
Apparently, they originally thought of doing Chicken Run with pigs, but I can't imagine it would have been the same story. "When pigs fly" is perhaps no different than "When chickens have teeth", I suppose. The imagery is of course taken from WWII POW camp movies like The Great Escape and Stelag 17 (one of the hen houses has that number written on it, quite prominently), but it also evokes concentration camps given Mrs. Tweedy's plans for the French Hen Resistance, so it's perhaps remarkable that the hero rooster is voiced by famous anti-semite Mel Gibson, I don't know. Of course, the REAL hero of the piece of Julia Sawalha's Ginger, the Mademoiselle Marie of the chicken coop, and though "Rocky" eventually helps save the day, there's a strong British bias to the film, where the American is an unreliable Johnny-Come-Lately and the British "birds" show a lot more heart and rivet their own escape. Famous for making many of my friends swear off chicken, at least, for a time.
[1925] The Lost World: Eight years before stop-motion pioneer Willis H. O'Brien's contribution to King Kong, he recreated Arthur Conan Doyle's lost world of dinosaurs, and while the creatures have a Plasticine look to them, he still gives them a lot of personality. And if you're going to feel something for play-doe animals, there's plenty of death and suffering for the creatures in this world to wring some pity from you. Because The Lost World is, despite the pulpy action beats, a naturalist's dream. Not only do the famous Professor Challenger and his team witness pretty well integrated monsters, but real South American animals as well. Being a product of its time, it does feature an unnecessarily blacked-up character, but while I groaned, I forgot all about it in the spectacular climax. The Jurassic Park sequels only wish.
[1926] The Black Pirate: I don't think I've seen a more gorgeous use of duotone (an early color film technique that uses pinks and greens) than in Douglas Fairbanks's swashbuckling spectacular. All the pirate tropes seem to be present and accounted for (okay, no parrots), but what seems a cliché now probably wasn't back then (not in the cinema sphere at least), and never yet so well realized in any case. Fairbanks is the clever victim of piracy who turns his fortunes around by defeating a pirate captain and taking his place (the better to subvert their plans), though his efforts - especially as they concern the royal hostage he falls for - are ever stymied by a right bastard whose loyalties are still with the dead captain. So it's a fun story, enlivened by some great action set pieces, and given the silent treatment, there is a LOT of that action.
Books: In the same way that I decided to read one "season" of the 8th Doctor Adventures this year, one every 2 months, I decided to do the same with Simon Hawke's TimeWars series, since I had only six books left to go through. The Argonaut Affair (Book 7 of the TimeWars) is a step into the series' new direction. We now have a "congruent" universe opposed to ours, and either it's closer to our mythological past than our proper history, or someone out there is creating creatures OUT OF mythology. And we have a new member of the team who has to prove himself. So we're on a trip with Jason and his Argonauts, wondering if we have to interfere or help, and Hawke's weaknesses have plenty of space to shine (as it were) - plenty of repetitive conversations about what's going on, things told second-hand, etc. But it's still a quick read, with lots of action in the Harryhausen style, and there's some fun to be had with "humanized" versions of mythological heroes.. Looks like the back half of the TimeWars is going to go into even crazier literary concepts and indulge in the fantastical, but the given reasoning works better than that of the cosmic space opera stuff suddenly introduced in previous chapters.
I have some interest in mini-comics because I used to make them. Obviously, I didn't have the kind of success Matt Feazell did with Cynicalman, but I nevertheless understand the impetus and the process. So it was quite fun to revisit the format with Feazell's Cynicalman... The Paperback!, a tome that includes all 12 issues of that 1980s mini-comic, and at least as many pages devoted to other strips he drew in the same stick figure style, featuring characters in the expanded Cynicalverse, usually written by friends. It's a little off-putting to suddenly be reading about Stupid Boy, Antisocial Man, and Cute Girl, but they ARE connected to the larger piece and are equally amusing and unassuming. The reproduction quality on some of the earlier strips isn't too good (I'm not surprised), but things get better around issue 3, and one might take exception at the layouts leaving so much blank space at the bottom of every page (the comic wasn't in the same basic format), but the fact that ANY mini-comic would be collected is an achievement unto itself. I knew about Cynicalman because of the one professional issue published by Eclipse back in the day, but seeing the origins of the characters in "The Paperback!" took me back to my own efforts and, more broadly, holds the very cool message that anyone can tell their story no matter their level of craft. (Just say no to generative A.I.!)
RPGs: Having lost a player, at least temporarily, our Torg Eternity goes on a side-mission with, per force, different characters. Instead of SHIFT (or the Delphi Council as the game calls the main org), these characters are working for Operation Eris, a clandestine group that wants to send them undercover in the former High Lord's entourage to see what he's plotting on the margins. Pan-Pacifica has secretly taken over much of Asia and imposed its criminally corporate structure onto willing governments on the basis of protecting them from the zombie plague Pan-Pacifica itself had introduced. Three new characters were made: The Street Ninja who is a martial arts combat monster, the Hacker (a rare female PC for my boy gamers), and the Psionic Insider, a well-connected "face" with fulgurkinetic and telepathic powers. I had promised less combat than in our normal game, being more of a spy thriller, and we started on a number of investigations and interviews to even FIND the former High Lord. We didn't get too far before the first fight killed one of the PCs mid-session (see below for my combination GM's grace/we're not gonna make YET ANOTHER PC at THIS point solution), but that can happen when one's instincts are for a different type of character (indeed, the "face" in the main campaign continually acted as "face" even those their Charisma was more prone to turn NPCs off). We'll get there. It's all a work in progress. And like wow, the decks was STACKED against the PCs, literally. Bad cards came up in every one, PLUS terrible dice rolls, multiple Mishaps (even some random NPC doctor crit-failed on healing a PC's wounds)... It's like the system didn't want us to start a "new" game.
Best bits: Had the players introduce their characters by telling the group how they were recruited into Operation Eris, and what they're relationships were after four weeks of training - fun stuff. The Street Ninja is a big dumb jock (much humor derived from that), the Hacker thinks she's the leader or at least equal in stature to even the team's handler, and the Psionic loves to tell jokes the others don't get. When tracking the High Lord to Malaysia, one PC used his considerable Melee Weapons skill to get information by challenging a contact at batting practice. When being shot at from above galleries in a warehouse, the Psionic put his coat on a chair and kicked out of a smoke pellet cloud to draw fire. However, being at the center of everything, even under a conference table being shot all to hell, nothing could save him and he was killed. When the other PCs were recuperating in the car, they hear a tap on the window. It's their old friend, the Psionic, telling them their handler wanted to try a cheap clone on the mission to see if such agents were worth it, and the PCs weren't let in on it to see if the clone was convincing. Damn convincing, they said with their hearts beating out of their chests before they dumped the putrefying fake into a dumpster. I also like how there have been moments of honor for the PCs - I miss this in the regular campaign.
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