Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Movies in August

I caught a lot of movies on cable this month; I'm not sure how that worked out. I saw the original Jane Fonda version of Fun with Dick and Jane, which made me wonder how badly the Jim Carrey/Tea Leone version would screw up its lowkey vibe. I'm afraid to find out. Dickie Roberts, Former Child Star was amusing, although not in the way that would be worth seeing twice. We Were Soldiers could have been the Vietnam War version of Band of Brothers, only it wasn't. I found it oddly not emotionally engaging at all.

Cop Out was directed by Kevin Smith, but not written by him. It's very obvious; it does not have any of his wit. I found the characters likeable, but there just weren't any jokes (unless you count the tagline on the DVD cover: "Rock out with your Glock out", which gave me a chuckle). Rope was our latest Alfred Hitchcock movie, and we enjoyed it. We always play Find Alfred, but for this one we also go to play Find the Hidden Cuts. It was seamlessly done, something all too easy to pull off with computers these days. There was a point when the camera followed the actors down the hall to the kitchen when it became clear that SteadiCams hadn't been invented yet, and yet it was no where near as jarring as that keeping-it-real hurky-jerky handheld camera stuff which got so popular a few years back (we hates it; it's distracting as hell). I liked his use of color too, and the cityscape looming out the window. Lastly in the category of films in English, Cold Souls, which stars Paul Giamatti as Paul Giamatti. It did feel like Being John Malkovich in a lot of ways, but it was a quieter story. Paul is working in a production of Uncle Vanya, but the angst of the play is getting to him, so he decides to let a new company remove his soul just until he's done with the play. But that has side effects and he quickly wants it back, only to find it's been stolen. He follows the trail to Russia, which has a burgeoning trade in taking the souls of Russian workers and selling them to Americans. The moment when he finds out who has his soul and what she's been using it for is priceless. A small but interesting film.

On to Bollywood then. New York is about the fallout of 09/11. John Abraham is an architecture student who is picked up for having pictures of the WTC on his camera after 9/11 and spends weeks or months held in an undisclosed location. When he's finally released, he vows revenge. Which to me, speaking in terms of story not legal definitions, doesn't exactly make him a terrorist; he's getting back at the people who specifically harmed him, the same as Mel Gibson would if you hurt his daughter, you know? The element of the story which I found most interesting, when he tries and then fails to reintegrate in society before deciding on revenge, is glossed over in a musical montage, and Katerina Kaif's character is criminally underused (there is a scene where she and Abraham are walking in Central Park and pass two randowm policemen and he starts to panic, but she holds his hand and walks him past the cops with such a fierce look in her eye; why couldn't the movie have had more of that?). Also the happy ending that comes out of nowhere feels really false; it relied on the three remaining characters having no real emotions about everything that just happened in the climactic scene and I felt a bit betrayed. This could have been a really good film but I'm afraid they flubbed it.

I had better luck with Wanted, another Salman Khan film which I had heard nothing but negative things about. Yes, it's a bit silly, another story of a cop undercover, the loose canon type who gets the job done never mind the risks or rules (Hollywood has plenty of those as well). I will agree that while the female lead is charming enough in her acting scenes, she can clearly just barely dance. I say this with great love, but it's an odd film where Salman Khan is your best dancer. But then this is not that film; Govinda turns up just long enough...




Aladin had Amitabh Bachchan as the genie of the lamp and Sanjay Dutt as a magician called the Ringmaster (he seemed to call himself that largely for one joke at the expense of a Chinese man). It was fun but not awesome. Kisna was an epic story set in the last days of British rule. It involved an Indian boy in love with a white girl, with the theme that duty comes before love. I felt bad for the Indian girl Kisna eventually married out of duty. I bet she had a fun life. Mehbooba was gorgeous with extravagant sets and the really big kind of song and dance numbers. I didn't really care for the ending here either, but at least the first three hours were entertaining.

Better was Lajja, a story about women and how society treats them. Which sounds preachy as hell, but this movie pulls all the tricks out of the bag (great dances, spot-on comic relief, a few really heroic male characters who get into fights but not ones which drag on forever) to make for a highly watchable movie which just also happens to have a message. Having seen Sita sings the Blues, the scene where Madhuri Dixit takes Sita to task for letting herself be tested by fire while performing her part in a play was awesome (it's a bit like someone playing Jesus in a passion play deciding to go off script and not get up on the cross, telling the audience they can all handle their own sins, thank you very much, and stop looking for scapegoats). This was from the same director as the very first Bollywood movie I saw: Andaz Apna Apna. I'd be hard pressed to come up with two more different films...

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Movies in July

In July I got myself another big box of Bollywood movies. But first the non-Bolly.

Ocean's 11, the original Frank Sinatra version. The first half was aimless, the actual heist was better, but the ending was just depressing. The boys enjoyed this mostly as a glimpse to what Vegas used to look like (four casinos on a stretch of road, never out of sight of the desert, basically).

Speaking of George Clooney (well, we were inferring him above, yeah?), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind pretty much clinched my opinion that Clooney directs some great stories. Also, Sam Rockwell is awesome in everything. This movie was very strange but very interesting.

I finally saw Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and it has not been overpraised. Humphrey Bogart slowly losing it over a couple of sacks of gold dust is completely mesmerising.

The Warlords is a Jet Li movie that reminded me a bit of Scarface in that it involves a bunch of guys acting all gangsta until their entire world collapses around them. A cautionary tale. It also has Takeshi Kaneshiro, whom I saw recently in Red Cliff. Then I looked him up on Wikipedia and realized I'd seen him in all sorts of things from House of Flying Daggers to Chunking Express, so I'm a bit embarrassed it took me this long to really notice him. I like him; he's one of those actors who listens really well (giving speeches is easy; reacting to another actor giving a speech is much tougher to do in a captivating way, I'm thinking).

When the boys were at camp I went out to the movie theater twice, to see Inception and Salt. Inception is just as cool as everyone but the haters says it is. I also quite liked Salt, too. What a perfect name for a popcorn movie. Liev Schreiber seems to finally be getting lots of interesting work, which is cool.

One of the blogs I followed was on about Aguirre: The Wrath of God, only I can't remember which one. (Jerry Coyne?) At any rate, it's a strange movie that reminded me of a lot of other movies, only when I looked it up later it turns out it's actually a strange movie that inspired a lot of other movies. An interesting film, although not one I'm likely to watch again.

And then comes Bollywood: God Tussi Great Ho was just as bad as I had heard. It's the Bollywood version of Bruce Almighty starring Amitabh Bachchan as god, which sounds like it could be cool. Oliver watched this one with me, and when Salman Khan's character meets god for the first time, Oliver wondered how he knew which god it was. One of many potentially interesting questions the movie doesn't ask. The special effects were unbelievably hokey, but apparently ate the whole budget, as it looked like it'd been shot on video and not film. Plus, the songs weren't even any good.

Kambakkht Ishq is set in Hollywood and has appearances by Sylvester Stallone and Denise Richards plus that guy who's Justin Long's boyfriend in Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Sadly, it was one of those movies where the script was writing itself while they filmed, I'm guessing - silly and nonsensical and not very good. But Akshay Kumar is likeable even in crap films, and the title song is groovy:


Paa was interesting, with Amitabh Bachchan as a 12-year-old with progeria and his son Abhishek Bachchan playing his father. Abhishek's character is a politician trying to make a point about how politics doesn't have to equal corruption. Sadly, his whole plot line was dumped in the end, and I really wanted to see how all that came out.

Drona also stars Abhishek Bachchan playing a superhero who's really a mythological figure (think Thor, only he has a really shiny magic sword). He's also more laconic than Batman. The Big Bad in this one would have been creepier without the Ed Grimley hair-do. This wasn't really a great film, but I liked their story.

Veer I had heard was a bad film, and I went into it with low expectations, so low I was actually working on something else when I put it in and wasn't really reading the subtitles, just getting by on what little I could pick up by listening. By the end of the first dance number, I was completely sucked in and left my work undone to watch the next two hours. This movie is probably just as lovingly researched and historically accurate as, say, Troy. It's also as bombastic and fun as Troy, with one on one combat with swords and shields in front of massive city walls. It might be too lowbrow for the critics, but I loved it. Here's the first number which got my attention; check out all the little elements that make this so almost a Viking scene (like the big vat they keep filling their beer mugs from, and that carved pillar in the middle of the room):


Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Books in July

In my head, July was a month where I did nothing but write, write, write until I finished the rewrite on the novel. But apparently I was reading quite a bit as well. I remember the books, but I don't remember finding the time to read them. Writing warps my mind that way, I think.

In the world of, um, sequential art (OK, manga and comic books), I read volumes 7-12 of Full Metal Alchemist, which I love more and more the less it's like the anime series I've already watched three times. This story is so seriously cool. Perhaps I love it so much because as soon as I finish a volume I hand it off to Oliver and he devours it and then we geek out about it together. Good times.

I also finally picked up the Alan Moore I got with my Christmas money, volumes 3-5 of Promethea, which I think is my favorite of his. I can qualify that, it might not be my favorite story of his, but it's definitely my favorite art. It's just gorgeous (although the story and themes rock too). I also read two The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, namely The Black Dossier and Century:1910. It's like the coolest fan fiction ever, weaving in all the great fictional characters. But I've been getting less of that vibe as I go and the story moves more into modern times, and I'm beginning to wonder where he's going with all this.

I read one nonfiction book, the very interesting Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. The book came out just as the subprime shit was going down, and the edition I read had some appendices where he discusses just how much what he was saying in the first place was borne out by everything that happened. It's just a shame he didn't get heard sooner. Apparently economics is driven by economists who believe that everyone behaves rationally when it comes to money, and that's something we can depend on, can take as a constant when doing the math, so to speak. This book is about how that is sadly just not true, with lots of examples from experiments he's done, although once he's stated his point it feels so intuitive it's hard to believe anyone could think otherwise.

I happened to read that book after it came up on Boing Boing, which is as good a segue as I'm going to get to Cory Doctorow. I've previously read Little Brother, which was teh awesome. In July I read his first two novels Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is set in a far off future where there is no reason to work since no one needs anything, but the economy is based on reputation so everyone is always looking to do something cool, like super-geek-out Disney World rides. A fun read, especially if you love Disney World (I do). Eastern Standard Tribe was darker, twisted and funny. Having since read a few more Doctorow, I would say his themes are generally variations of the conflict between those who make, and those who want to control what is made. Which I find terribly interesting, if at times almost depressing when it seems like a losing battle (more on that in Books in August).

Lots of Backspacers with new books out, which is always cool. Only the Good Spy Young by Ally Carter is a great next volume in the series. The plot thickens, the stakes get higher, new facets of some characters are revealed. I love this series.

Shades of Gray by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge is also a sequel, although this to me feels more like the middle volume of a trilogy than another of a long series. It had that The Empire Strike Back kind of feel to it, anyway. The world building goes deeper, the characters form the sort of strange of-necessity alliances that are always the coolest thing in comics. I've waited forever for a cool novel about superheroes, and this and its predecessor are exactly what I longed for.

Moving out of genre to literary, I read Kings of the Earth by Jon Clinch. If Amazon.com wants to pull a 1984 a pull this back off my reader, I'm pretty well covered since I underlined almost all of it anyway. Yes, the language is that perfect. Every sentence demands to be read aloud. But I particularly loved the nonlinear sequence spread over multiple characters. First we're in 1990 and then we're in 1931. We're in Audie's head, then we're in his brother's, or his nephew's. There's not a thread that's being followed, at first it seems all over the place. It reminded me of when I was a kid doing one of those pictures you paint with water. I used to like to get the brush as wet as possible, then hold it over the page and let big, fat drops fall on a few different points of the picture. Then I'd watch as the drops spread, making the blues, reds and greens come to life, bringing out more and more of the picture until they started to spread into each other, to connect and eventually cover the page. The plot of this reveals itself like that. It was hypnotic, I couldn't stop reading it. Remember what I said above, about not remembering reading these books? Well this one I do remember, because I devoured it all in a day, accidentally clocking extra miles on the treadmill because I wasn't paying attention, serving dinner late because I was cooking with one hand and holding the Kindle in the other (and I need two hands to underline - sorry, dinner!).

Now I'm not sure what happened but some of the books seemed to have lost their underlining on my Kindle. Not sure how that happened (Kings of Earth is happily unaffected), so my closing quotes are a bit skimpy this go around:

Wouldn't economics make a lot more sense if it were based on how people actually behave, instead of how they should behave? - Dan Ariery


The side of the refigerator was mossy. The man from Syrcuse said his Boy Scout training must be failing him because he'd been given to understand that moss grew on the north sides of trees and this was the east. One of the troopers suggested that maybe the conventional wisodm didn't apply to iceboxes. - Jon Clinch

It is very hot, and I am turning the color of the Barbie aisle at FAO Schwartz, a kind of labial pink that is both painful and perversely cheerful. - Cory Doctorow (Eastern Standard Tribe)