"Accomplishments"
In theaters: I'm not sure why, given Boots Riley's other work, but I wasn't quite ready for how weird I Love Boosters was going to get. I expected (and wanted to see) a high-fashion heist flick that told The Devil Wears Prada what it could do with itself, with wild costumes and the director taking changes with the storytelling. But where the satire was relatively subtle in Sorry to Bother You, it's pretty heavy here, and its utopian notions about activism feel rather simplistic as a result (despite the pretentious Marxist deconstructionism). I think the difference between the two films is that Sorry had a more focused strangeness, whereas Boosters keps asking me to include a completely new strangeness every so often and it distanced me from the film. That said, there's a lot to love here, including the cast and the way employee abuse was taken to its satirical extremes. There are swipes at the media, at A.I. slop, at propaganda, at pyramid schemes, at relationships... Riley has so many ideas and perhaps thinks he'll never be allowed to make another movie ever again, so if it feels like it's too much, I think that's justified. But I wasn't ready for the overload.
At home: Somehow, Albert Brooks managed to make a satire about reality TV in 1979. Real Life is an often uproariously funny film within a film, in which he (as the most venal and insecure version of himself) proposes to film an ordinary family for a year, which he pitches as the next breakthrough in cinema. So how long before he thinks it's boring and feels the need to inject some excitement? And further, doesn't observation change the observed, so you'll never get a slice of "real life"? Charles Grodin and everybody's mom in 80s genre pictures, Frances Lee McCain are the heads of the family, and they've certainly been Heisenberged. The funny thing - aside from those helmet cameras - is that it IS 1979, and they don't know what they're doing. Brooks and crew are "in the show", as it were, not made invisible through the magic of editing, and the idea that a whole year would fit in a single movie (it's specifically NOT television) is bonkers. They do the same things reality TV does - force the drama, get the subjects to talk about things - but they don't know to hide it. Things go pear-shaped almost immediately and Brooks is heading for one of his trademark anxiety attacks, and it's beautiful. Not to mention prescient.
Referencing the exact time the Communist regime fell in Roumania, 12:08 East of Bucharest shows life in a small Romanian town through three men. One is producing and hosting a local television show ABOUT the Revolution on its Anniversary (but not a round-numbered one); the other two - an elder planning to play Santa Claus for the kids in his building and a teacher with a drinking problem - will be guests on the broadcast. This is all context to help the audience decide if things are any better 16 years after the vaunted Revolution than they were, before jumping into the most awkward real-time "panel show" in the history of panel shows. Dry comedy at its best. The host is unnecessarily pedantic in his questioning of whether the town participated in the Revolution or just celebrated it, and everything hangs on competing and partial testimony about a very small event indeed, even if it did happen. I sort of wanted to see the three men go back to their Holidays after the show, though I don't know how much more closure that would have produced, especially in a story that tells us the mechanisms that bring closure are so unreliable.
Though it's in the drama category, Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days deserves a place in the thriller section. Sheesh! Once the story gets going, things got tense, but I but my nails through the last half hour when you'd think everything was over. Anamaria Marinca does a lot with a little as Otilia, the friend of a girl who got pregnant and needs an abortion (Găbița). The latter is absolutely not ready, emotionally or practically for what's needed, seeing as such things are illegal in Roumania. But while the situation is no doubt overwhelming for her, the film is more concerned with Otilia and what SHE has to go through. It's a hard film, and you may often wonder if Găbița's pregnancy is just one in a long line of bad choices, but if we judge her harshly, can we not at least find empathy for her friend who is just as much a victim of the system (and in some ways, more)? Tough realism that forces you to confront the fact that women will get abortions whether you personally like it or not, and is THIS how you'd want them to do it? And while you could say that of many abortion movies (Vera Drake, Story of Women), I don't think any are as SCARY or NERVE-WRACKING as this one is.
I don't think I've ever seen a police procedural that proceduraled as hard as Corneliu Porumboiu's Police, Adjective does. Holy hell. It's the story of a narco cop who hopes to find a supplier lest his boss force him to arrest a teenager for smoking dope, which is still very illegal in Roumania, but is a harsh law he doesn't agree with. It's a lot of walking down streets, sometimes tailing a suspect, maybe a bit of paperwork or eating dinner on the fly, often in real time. Oppressively mundane, but at its core is an interesting theme - laws and rules are subject to change or interpretation - and many moments cleverly relate to it. And if a law IS subject to change (either from a higher authority, or from person to person), is it moral to treat it as absolute. One might say nothing really happens in the film, except internally, but I've never seen a climax like THAT one. And as for the resolution, it's so dry I had to down a litre of water afterwards and I'm still parched.
Sometimes, you just need to crash in front of some trash TV for an extended period, and that's how I ended up watching both seasons of Last One Laughing UK in one go. It's sort of a social experiment: They put 10 British comics in the same room (twice, to date) for six hours, and if they crack up twice, they're out of the game. It's also an experiment in lean reality TV, because they produce six episodes out of an afternoon and are done, certainly perfect for UK light entertainment, which has tons of stand-ups and other comedians on tap. The main barrier is that they force themselves not to laugh (or are deadpan royalty like Richard Ayoade or Romesh Ranganathan), so it can feel awkward, especially when they pull "jokers" and have to do a routine for the group. Even they can't be personable on stage as they can't giggle at their own jokes, which is often how stand-ups work. Somehow, it still made me laugh, and it helps that I knew most of the comics involved through other shows like Taskmaster, Would I Lie to You, or their own programs. I'll show a preference for Season 1, as the comics seem too wise in Season 2 (having seen the first, presumably) and the show starts hiding the laughs to craft "reveals", but it doesn't break the tension for the audience in the same way.
[1961] A Woman Is a Woman: I have been told by the Cinematic Orthodoxy that Jean-Luc Godard is hilarious, actually, and that I just don't get it. Of the ones I've seen, Une femme est une femme comes closest to that description, and I quite like the "jokes", tough its central conceit is a joke repeated too often. This is a takedown of the musical and you can just about imagine Jacques Demy's more sincere take lurking around the corner. Essentially, the music keeps swelling and aside from one particular instance (does it undo what Godard was trying to do? jury's out), the characters DON'T sing. They might speak with a certain rhythm, or move in choreographed ways, or repeat phrases as if they were refrains, but they don't normally sing. It goes on a lot and the sound design is frankly obnoxious in the first half-hour (or perhaps we get used to it and it's all the way through). Between that and Anna Karina's muddling accent, I was rather glad for the subtitles. Karina is very cute in this, so I'll give her a pass anyway. The one-note nature of the experiment means the other jokes are precious, though I still feel like Godard throws them away - the argument with book titles is a good example, as it just stops as it was getting good. There are also swipes at Truffaut (with a Jeanne Moreau cameo), text on the screen, broken fourth walls, and it all ends in a pun the subtitles can't handle. Godard is always throwing stuff at the wall to see if it sticks, but as usual, it ends up feeling like a collection of clever ideas packaged in an unsatisfying whole.
[1962] Harakiri: Without a doubt commentary on WWII veterans, how they were treated in Japan, and martial propaganda that sought to erase the country's failure. In a time of peace, samurai from defeated houses become destitute ronin, some desperate enough to show up at councilors' door asking to be allowed to commit ritual suicide in their courtyards. What are they supposed to do with these wretches? Give them money so they don't have to commit harakiri? Help them along to the afterlife? Teach them a harsh lesson about faking it? Tatsuya Nakadai gives a powerful performance as just such a samurai who seems in earnest, but also has another agenda, one that could involve revenge, or just expose what the martial code of honor is really about. As he shows up at a rich councilor's door asking for honorable death at the top of the film, you know you're going to live in flashbacks for most of the film. But director Masaki Kobayashi (Kwaidan) keeps the mystery of this visitation alive until the end, and crafts some wonderfully suspenseful sequences around a simple idea. The stark cinematography is wonderful, too. As a chambara film, it withholds the samurai action until the end, but for actions fans, the wait is worth it (if you felt it at all - the tragedy is too riveting for that). One of the greats.
Books: Kevin Alvir's first graphic novel (at Top Press) is (let me take a deep breath) Lisa Cheese and Ghost Guitar Book 1: Attack of the Snack, and it's a crazy, action-packed yet endearing indie (even mini-comix) experience with definite echoes of Jack Kirby (in some design elements, sure, but largely just in the way it throws everything into the pot to create "pure comics" - you'll see what I mean). Lisa is a humanoid unicorn with a robot arm and anger issues from an Asgard-like dimension hoping to find her own way in Earth City. Her dreams of becoming a folk singer are stymied by a black magic-using restaurant chain that attacks her local Chinese bakery, drawing her into an action spectacle that includes ghosts, superheroes, giant broccoli monsters, burger ninjas, and a demonically-possessed supervisor at work. And despite it all, it's really a coming of age story where Lisa has honest thoughts about her family life, insecurities, and aspirations. The indie-ness is sometimes a problem - the action scenes sometimes get lost in thick abstracting ink lines and Alvir's speech bubble placement can be confusing - but there's so much earnestness and imagination on the page that I will be coming back for Book 2.
RPGs: So it's a return to the main campaign for Torg Eternity, and Team Beta has a new member, an Apostate priest from the Cyberpapacy who, in his former Core Earth life, worked at CERN and believes in the God Particle above all else. Heretical! To put him through his paces, a simple adventure where a Spanish priest and the relic/Eternity Shard he protects must be smuggled out of the cosm. This is an adventure hook detailed in the CP Delphi Missions and both the church and relic in question are very real indeed - the Cathedral in Coria, Spain, holds the tablecloth alleged to have covered the table at the Last Supper. However. the scenario is incredibly brief - two scenes against the usual three, and even so, the players are supposed to make a choice that really turns this into a single scene. So I added some complications and a climax involving a misuse of the artifact in a demon-summoning ritual, with the twelve apostles of the Antichrist possessing hostel residents. The Apostate didn't die (and proved a powerful healer AND damage dealer), so it's a win. His shtick about the Godmoji is pretty fun, too, but he faced a lack of acceptance from the other PCs because they've always been characterized as a-holes who don't need help from anyone. Who will warm up to him first? A more "social" scenario next time to get those gears moving.
Best bits: The Realm Runner engineered a setback for the initial demon by having him step into a puddle of holy water. The Super-Wrestler ran up the old city walls' ramparts, piledrived a Church Police officer, then dropped the portcullis on top of another two, spiking them dead. The PCs all have "spoofed" Piety Points on their GodPhones, but the Wrestler scored some real ones when he responded to the Church Police's prayer-like warnings with an unprompted "Amen". Only 5, but it may prove important some day. Somehow, they found it in themselves not to kill the possessed hostel residents (avoiding Corruption rolls without my having to hint at them), and mostly avoided the "anti-apostle horde" thanks to the Apostate playing a Resistance card that brought help (which DID kill a couple people, but they didn't know what was happening). The Demon Slayer's magic club proved very useful when the evil spirits were shocked out of their human bodies, as it can cause damage to ethereal entities. The Realm Runner did most of the steps to read the counter-spell, but it was the Apostate who put a "Vade Retro Satana" finish on it. Similarly, everyone got in on the devil summoner, but it was the Apostate who finally boiled him out of his last Wound with Hellfire.
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