"Accomplishments"
In theatres: So undertone is formally like Pontypool (ooh, I loved Pontypool), but for podcasters (hey, *I'm* a podcaster!)? Built for me to see it, but let me preface right away by saying you shouldn't use this little Canadian horror flick as your podcasting "best practices". It's, in fact, an abominable way to run a podcast, although I certainly can't fault its atmosphere, and I bet that in real life, it would get a Blair Witch type of following. But it's a movie, not a podcasting procedural, and in fact, its whole vibe made me suspect a lot of what we were seeing/hearing wasn't real. I have to say "hearing" because this is a stylistic piece about scary sounds, so of course I had to see it a theater with unusually noisy patrons. Shout out to the person loudly clearing their throat, then snorting more mucus back there, every minute and a half. Or how about the old couple who came in late loudly talking like the lights were still up. Or the group of stompers coming up and down the stairs at various points (toes and heel, kids!). Because of the sound design, you never knew if that sudden beep or bag crinkle came from the movie or from the seat behind you. Talk about jump scares! Anyway... undertone is about a miscarriage demon that may or may not be in the house with Nina Kiri's Evy, who may or may not be trapped in some kind of pre-partum hallucination. I enjoyed the ambiguity, but the lady behind me shouted curses at the screen when the credits came up. Redeemed my experience, honestly.
At home: Barry is a hitman who wants out and decides to become an actor, surely not the best choice for someone used to hiding his face. Bill Hader's four-season comedy series is a great satire on Hollywood and the personalities we associate with actors, but oof, it's also very dark. Its main themes are the capacity to change who one is, or at least fake it until you make it, and emotional manipulation, conducted on the audience, by the acting coach on his students, and by the true villain of the piece (Fuches played by Stephen Root), the guy running Barry. But it's also about consequences, and that's a brave position for comedy show. Like actors who must "use" their trauma and therefore must exploit the consequences of the past (Barry's PTSD being one of these), the show isn't precious about its status quo. Once we meet a character, we follow them even if their lives don't intersect with Barry's for X number of episodes, at least until they meet an untimely end. Because if consequences are central to the narrative, you can't escape your past actions, and Barry, despite being sympathetic, has a violent past that begets more violence. And this goes on until the fourth season feels less and less like a comedy. I can see why the finale proved controversial. But while I recognize the characters as comic types, and the world as an outrageous spoof, I mostly felt tense watching. Tense and more than a little depressed. That's not necessarily a problem.
Cynthia Rothrock gives one her cutest performances in Lady Reporter (I don't think any of her other flicks include a pillow fight - even this one is too brief), but what is up with her hair continuity? I'm going to guess that it was shot over months, while she was doing other things (other "Inspector Cindies", and kind of slumming it in Mang Hoi's first of two directorial attempts. The Sammo Hung stunt team member is comic relief in his own picture, and the comedy is pretty bad. That Cantonese humor gets lost in translation and turned into very weird dialogue. The story of an American agent sent to ferret out a counterfeiter using a newspaper press to stamp money would have been more interesting if her cover as a journalist would have lasted longer. Unfortunately, the title is forgotten once the assassins come out of the woodwork. But the last two fight sequences are worth it for martial arts fans. I especially love Rothrock's steel-toe high heels. Those have got to hurt!
Contract Killer AKA Hitman was Jet Li's last Hong Kong film before going on to play villains in American movies (starting with Lethal Weapon 4), but yes, of course, not JUST villains, but I mention it because getting his start as a monk character in the previous decade typecast him as a pure and innocent character for most of his Chinese output. And that's true here in SPITE of playing a hired killer. He still loves his mom, helps little kids win stuffed animals at the fair, and can't stomach taking a dad away from his son. He's not a very good killer. But here he is, teamed up with Eric Tsang (a favorite), a con man posing as a hitman agent, trying to track down the "Killing Angel", a vigilante that has offed a powerful criminal boss who left a revenge fund for this eventuality. Simon Yam (another favorite) is the cop on everyone's trail, which includes our boys and a veritable League of Assassins vying for the bounty. It's fun, and it's got some fine action set pieces, though none are as good as the final three-on-three. The winning cast takes it one step further for me.
Though its set-up is based on Dial M for Murder, A Perfect Murder makes the murder go wrong differently, and therefore becomes its own thing. And it's pretty entertaining on that basis, even though its last reel is pretty typical of 90s thrillers. My other complaint is the role of the police detective - crucial in Dial M - who is here played by David Suchet, and doesn't figure prominently enough. When you have Poirot himself staring at you with his piercingly clear eyes, you want him to hound the guilty and crack the case himself. I remember there was a bit of a hullabaloo back in the day because Gwyneth Paltrow had to play the wife of her "uncle" in real life, Michael Douglas. Perhaps they hoped to put more butts in seats by evoking something sensationalist, but it's much ado about nothing. Her sex scenes are with her con man lover (Viggo Mortensen), and her relationship to Douglas pretty cold. Decades from those press junkets, the thriller isn't as hard-edged as the neo-Noirs of the era - the cast is too likeable for that, even the baddies - but it works well enough. You're never too sure what the characters are thinking exactly, which keeps you engaged, and the film offers some good tension builders and surprising twists.
Sometimes you (re)watch a movie and it's so peak its era that it plays like a nostalgic retro piece. Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion is exactly that, peak 1997, with its fashions, colors and music. It FEELS like it was today's idea of the 90s. But then, it is, itself, a nostalgic commentary on the late 80s - which happen to be my own high school years (Romy and Michele are only two years ahead of me) - and soon turns to those fashions and that music. I don't know how well the flashbacks hit the period, but the soundtrack, there and at the reunion, is generally great. I've always found this movie to be quite cute, Mira Sorvino especially, and of course, personal crush Janeane Garofalo (particularly hilarious in the film, sounds like her own material). We get wild fantasy scenes without a by your leave, and then the truth is kind of similarly fantastical. It's just goofy and as guileless as its dumb blonde leads. It's about a sweet friendship and values being yourself over the kind of success that impresses other people but doesn't make you happy, and I'm all for that.
[1938] Pygmalion: My Fair Lady without the songs! And one could easily add, without the overt romanticism. Obviously closer to playwright Bernard Shaw's intent, we get in Wendy Hiller (in her first feature) a more believable Eliza Doolittle than Audrey Hepburn's. She has the kind of face that's both hard (for the street urchin) and aristocratic (for the lady she becomes), and in terms of performance and writing, isn't trapped in a romcom set-up with Leslie Howard's effete Henry Higgins. And when discussing how this all relates to the Pygmalion myth, it makes a major difference. In the later case (and look, I love the musical on its own, frothier merits), Higgins creates a woman he can marry, but in the 1938 adaptation (and the play itself), his creation outgrows him. He gives her the tools required for independence - which is what she asked for - and so she doesn't need him anymore. Instead, she demands his respect and his friendship, and the relationship - wherever the audience wants to imagine is going - remains more embattled. Eliza isn't turned into a "lady" so much as a "woman", or if you prefer since we're dealing with Victo-Edwardian social classes, a "person". Consider how she is treated as an object in early scenes, then how she fights to be given the dignity afforded a human being. That's what Shaw was getting at, and the Howard-Asquith version does too.
Books: The Eighth Doctor on the "slow path" hits the First World War in Doctor Who: Casualties of War by Steve Emmerson (his first of two Doc8 novels) and in terms of the main plot, it's pretty traditional Doctor Who despite the lack of a TARDIS. It's normal for there to be "something wrong with the earth" since the show had its origins in Quatermass, and when the Doctor is trapped on Earth (like the 3rd was), things start bubbling up from under the ground. It's also pretty usual - especially in the novels - to have a living element more or less create zombies or possessing people - and it's not my favorite plot. And I'd be more forgiving if this wasn't also the plot of the previous book. At least the theme of war, and its recreation via magic clay in Yorkshire farmland, gives the story more relevance, but the villain who is bringing these things to the fore is surplus to requirements. WAR should have been the villain, and its psychic damage shouldn't have needed an extra pair of hands. But then the purplish prose is often repetitive and needed editorial pruning. What DOES work very well is the Doctor's relationships with the villagers, in particular the old rural policeman and the near-romance with the county veterinarian (is that a "vet" joke?) who severally act as his companions. Both are lovely and memorable and it's too bad they'll have aged out by the time the next novel's setting rolls around.
Absurdist off-color humor rules Hell Was Full, a collection of Branson Reese's webcomic, and it's a lot of fun. We're used to the format of the 3 or 4 panel strip. Set things up, hit us with the punchline. But Reese's punchlines don't come from left field so much as from (let's use the title) Hell itself, right from underneath, taking a bite out of your nethers in passing. A good punchline is one you don't expect; his are punchlines you CAN'T expect. Crazy, dark, often blue. Nowhere else can you come to expect talking poops and dicks in strange places, but also literary and art history references, and the fearless kind of satirical use of trademarked icons that would bring the Disneys of the world on one's head. As a wink to the strip's online origin, he also includes "alt text" at the bottom of most pages, either the original mouse-over jokes or new to the book, commentary on his work that acts as supplementary punchlines. (Little Known Fact: I had mouse-over jokes on every image I post on this blog, but as a lot of people navigate to the site with their phones these days, and phones don't really work like that, it's like screaming into the void! Unhinged laf!)
RPGs: My Torg Eternity players are openly appreciating Operation Soft Sell's focus on infiltration, and I'm letting them fly with it, too. Though we had to take care of a small zombie problem aboard a drifting cargo ship at the top of the session, the next Act was all about a heist to steal a powerful artifact from an underground lab, and they set the rules. They did the research, they made the plan, and they eventually enacted it, and it could have gone much worse. Good prep allowed them to bypass a number of pre-set potential problems. The theft did put them on a path intersecting with an actual heroic SHIFT team also after the artifact who didn't know who they were (they're deep undercover), and no matter who wins the fight, the heroes lose, sort of thing. After a couple rounds, they decided to talk and the black ops mission was given priority over the white ops mission. Soft Sell's mechanic for NPCs with Destiny cards worked well, but I didn't get to do too much with it.
Best bits: Even though a storm was a-storming and the deck was awash with sea water, it didn't stop the Street Ninja from lobbing four zombie heads at a swing. Twice. But when a full horde of Infected starting coming out of the cargo containers, it was time to make a mad dash for the speedboat.
The prep included procuring executive suits (the Hacker had "a guy") and making name badges, as well as switching a key card off a high-level scientist working at the lab (beautifully executed). Research, of course, with the Street Ninja bringing a package to the reception to see the security level (high) containing a child's drawing (because when a player was asked what to put in the bogus package to "Mr. S", he didn't know what he was being asked (distracted) and held up the drawing his kid had handed him (why he was distracted). Said Street Ninja then went down to the sewers where homeless men told him there was a warm door to sleep next to, leading into the a lab subbasement. When they were all ready for the heist, boom, each player/character thought they were doing a different plan (laf!). "Okay, we need to talk about it some more." Side-mission to drop malware on a computer on another floor, to pay off a favor: Fun stuff, bamboozling an employee to get access to their computer (and an improvised DSR), as the Psionic Insider made like he was from head office and admonished them for their search history (whatever that might be). Street Ninja called him Mr. S, so the employee also remembered they'd gotten a mysterious package for him, which bought more time for the Hacker to complete the malware operation. After a hacking Mishap set off an alarm in the lab, the team delayed the guard response by making a warehouse worker park a forklift in front of the elevator, then sped off in an automated underground train. After that brief train-top fight with the Heteroclites (who acknowledged their name was ironically bad because Team Beta, our main campaign team, also has a terrible name - consider that "bêta", in our native French, also means "dumb"), they drove off into a side-street that seemed to disappear a moment later, a perhaps connection to Eternity Street, the main team's HQ. One player was heard to utter an expletive at that, nyuck nyuck.
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