Frist movies at the flim fevistal this weekend gone. By a weird quirk of fate they were both highly naturalistic films about the consequences of poverty in the Western world, and both titled Name and Name.
Wendy and Lucy (USA, 2008)
Wendy is a young woman. Lucy is a dog. Wendy has very little money and is trying to get to Alaska. Dog goes missing. It’s sad and carefully observed, with almost no plot – it’s all about character and situation and, just quietly, the wider picture of a society where money no longer flows. There’s an admirable economy of backstory – you hear one phone conversation with Wendy’s family, who aren’t very supportive; she flips through a photo album hurriedly and you glimpse a photo of a baby. The focus stays firmly on the present. It’s a good film.
Samson and Delilah (Australia, 2009)
Samson and Delilah are aborigine kids living in a tiny community some distance from Alice Springs. The movie tracks their courtship, which is the strong thread that makes it bearable as they cope with a society that offers them nothing. The film is almost wordless, occasionally shocking, and impossible to resist. Another good ‘un.
Category: Things I’ve Seen
Half-Blood Prince (2009)
While all the pointy-headed liberal elites are off at the flim festival, we got to watch the new Harry Potter. It was good! I liked it!
I think what I like best is that it just doesn’t care. “Chum,” it says, “I’m adapting book 6 of a gigantically successful 7-book series. I don’t need things like ‘narrative’ and ‘causality’. All I need is those kids and a selection of the most impressive British actors I can find and then I can bloody well do what I like with them!”
The film is almost incomprehensible on its own terms, but for the initiated it’s great. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I particularly enjoyed Jessie Cave’s Lavender Brown, whose completely over the top scenery-chewing, in the hyper-real world of these books, curled all the way around again to start ringing true.
Also great: every visual gag involving Luna.
Seen: I’ve Loved You So Long (2008)
Il y a longtemps que je t’aime – French serious drama about Kristin Scott Thomas getting out of prison and she, her sister and her sister’s family, adjusting to her return.
It’s a nicely-drawn film if a bit too neat in some of its angles, e.g. how it works the cute-children and lovely-grandpa lines shamelessly. It all works well, however, largely thanks to the incredible presence of Scott Thomas. She is amazing to watch, utterly believable, heartbreaking and frustrating by turns.
I never quite fell into this film, but it definitely paid its way. If a moody, melancholy drama in the unhurried French style sounds like your cup of tea, this will not disappoint.
Michael Bay
When I get frustrated at how Michael Bay* does visual storytelling, waving my hands and shouting “coherent sequence of images” and “not crossing the line” and “ignorance of a film grammar built up through trial and error over a century” while flecks of spittle fly across the room and my eyes get progressively more bloodshot…
…I sometimes wonder if this is how people felt when their kids started listening to rap music**.
And this thought bothers me.
* no i have not seen transformers 2 and probably wouldn’t go even if Pearce bought me a ticket like he did for the first one
** or Elvis, or jazz, or whatever
Assorted notes
Got Filament issue the first in the post. It’s really nice! Well-put together physical artifact = awesome. Content is smart and has a good rhythm. We liked it very much. Can get your copy here.
It was Bloomsday yesterday! Here is a comic of Ulysses with neato notes and guides. Related: Ulysses as a Twitter feed.
And here is the meal Dan of Freshly Ground made for me and Cal. OMG NOM NOM.
Alien: The Prequeling
I can’t let this pass without comment.
It’s the 30th anniversary of the release of Alien this year (a couple weeks ago on May 25 to be precise). The anniversary has been marked by word emerging that a new Alien film is in the works.
Wikipedia entry for the “space jockey” alien from the first film: “In the bonus materials of the special edition Alien DVD, director Ridley Scott expresses the opinion that a film exploring the backstory of the Space Jockey would be an interesting direction for the series to take.”
Tom Rothman, co-Chair of Fox, 28 April, answering a question about whether something is going on with Ridley Scott and Alien: “I think he’s toying with the idea and that would be great for us. I mean, it’s always been a matter of, really, if you can get the originator to do it that would be the greatest thing, so I’ve got my fingers crossed, all of them.”
Tony Scott, Ridley’s brother and partner, May 29: “Carl Rinsch is going to do the prequel to Alien. He’s one of our directors at our company.”
Carl Rinsch is a director of commercials. The one doing the rounds is this: (here are others)
I’ll always have a soft spot for the Alien flicks. I first watched Aliens with a friend on an illegally dubbed copy hired from a friend’s older brother; we watched it in the afternoon and had to turn it off halfway through and do something else for a while because the ride was so intense. It remains to this day my favourite film, and my nomination for the most well-crafted film of all time. The Alan Dean Foster novelization of Alien was the first horror story I read, before I saw either film. I love the first film dearly, am a fierce defender of the third film, and think the first 3/4 of the fourth film has a lot to recommend it. I bought all the comics, which in many ways featured the best development of the source material and incidentally were my gateway into the broader comics scene. I paid actual human money for the Colonial Marine Technical Manual and two different editions of the Walt Simonson adaptation of the first film. I own a children’s book that is a genuine spin-off from the Aliens universe. And, of course, my translation of the Aliens mythos into roleplaying form means I’m still known as the Aliens guy around the NZ RPG scene, almost ten years after my last Aliens game*.
I love these films. And I have to say, I’m not wild about a prequel, Ridley Scott or no Ridley Scott.
There are mysteries to unfold, certainly. What was the nature of that space jockey alien? How did the Company know to send the Nostromo to that planet? Had there been human contact with the aliens before?
Is there a film in those mysteries? I don’t see it, myself. The mysteries around Alien are classic examples of questions that don’t need to be answered. They’re like the questions in the original Star Wars that were answered by the prequel trilogy – the answers served only to diminish the originals by closing down possibilities of meaning. What had felt rich ended up feeling empty. (Besides, Michael Jan Friedman wrote a novel that answered all those mysteries. Incidentally, it also featured the only appearance of New Zealand in the entire Aliens mythos.)
So I’m hoping this film won’t come to pass. In fact, I’m hoping that we do get a remake or a reboot instead of a prequel – the franchise is too lucrative to be abandoned for long, so I’d prefer something that didn’t try to weave itself into the margins of what has come before but instead made a forceful restatement. It would fail, sure; but at least it would only fail itself, rather than failing the original as well.
On the other hand, a 30th anniversary Aliens relaunch that I am excited about: a new comic series from Dark Horse. Rock.
* for those waiting for news of the next one, and I know you’re out there: I wouldn’t be holding your breath…
Review: I Love You, Man (2009)
You want to know one of the worst feelings in the world? Walking out of the cinema after sitting through the credits gags for Paul Rudd-starrer I Love You, Man and seeing your wife on the floor surrounded by worried people. Yeah, that’s down pretty low in the emotional state rankings.
ILYM is a bromantic (zing!) comedy that carefully hits all the beats of the standard rom-com, but sets them between two guys who may or may not end up being friends (SPOILER: they end up being friends). The cinema was pretty hot, and Cal said she wasn’t feeling well and was going to head for the toilets, so I went to join our other moviegoing buddy, Pearce. He’d had to bail on sitting with us because on his other side was one of those guys you really don’t want to sit next to during a comedy. He laughed a lot at the comedy beats that weren’t really laugh-out-loud funny, and made I-don’t-know-what noises at the comedy beats that were actual LOLers. I don’t blame Pearce for bailing, because this movie was setting the guy off regularly. ILYM delivers some good gags, some real pearlers, but really that’s not the main appeal here. The charm of the movie is, in fact, its charm. Paul Rudd is great, all the more so for wrapping his everyday-guy persona around markers that would normally be signals of deviance in a Hollywood movie – he gets on way better with women than men, he’s not into drinking too much alcohol, and he liked Chocolat. Jason Segel as The Friend is even better, working his trademark overlong bro-hugs and expressive shoulders into a character who is just plain likeable, even when he’s being annoying. (And to its credit, the film knows exactly when he’s being annoying.) So we stayed through the extended gags in the credits, good fun but inessential, and went out of the cinema and I was hoping that Cal would be all right, and then I saw her on the floor, sitting in a bit of a daze, surrounded by people. I tell you what, that’s not a feeling you want. And I still sort of feel that I should have walked her out of the cinema to the toilet when she said she wasn’t feeling well, even though I know that really there was no call to do that, and it wasn’t neglectful of me to sit down and watch the credits and laugh a bit more at Jon Favreau’s minor role as the mean guy, and Andy Samberg as the cool gay younger brother, and to consider how the perfect RomCom ending itself served to highlight the hidden complexities of male friendship.
Cal’s okay – of course she is or this would be a very different blog post – it was just the heat, we figure, she fainted and was still woozy for a while. A nurse and her boyfriend who were also in the cinema had taken charge and called an ambulance so we all waited around until they came, and the officers ran a whole battery of tests and gave her the thumbs up. So that was good. She’s okay. The nurse and her boyfriend, it turned out, were sitting right behind Pearce and the Weird Laughing Guy and when Pearce got up to move they figured he just hated the movie. So did Cal, actually, because he leaned over and said to her “I have to get out of here” or something like that, but he just went and sat up the front. He enjoyed the movie. So did I. It will not rock your world, it isn’t a stunningly clever comedy of manners, but it is some good laughs and good times and it delivers with sincerity, the guy friendship felt genuine and even more surprising the romance between Rudd’s character and his fiancee felt lovely and honest too. It was just a nice film to watch. I recommend it. But if as the credits roll your wife says she isn’t feeling well, go out into the lobby with her, just to make sure she’s okay. The closing gags are good fun but seriously, you don’t want to laugh away and then walk out and realize your wife has been down on the floor without you there to help. That’s a pretty uncool way to end your night watching this three-stars-out-of-five, maybe-three-and-half-stars movie.
Man on Wire (2008)
This post is to encourage you: do not hesitate. When the chance arises, watch this film.
This film is about a dude who walked on a high wire between the Twin Towers in NYC back in the 70s. It’s one a lot of people have been talking about, and it has been universally praised. I’m joining in that chorus of good words. And I say this knowing that the overwhelming thumbs-up completely failed to motivate me to watch this film. It was Cal who brought it home to watch when she wasn’t feeling well, and only then did I realize how true the positive word had been.
I was talking about it afterwards (the thing about this film is that you have to talk about it afterwards, it’s hard not to) and the person I was talking too wondered how such a thing could be done; how you could move from the roof of the tallest building in the world, to shift your weight on to a wire above empty space. How could you possibly take that first step?
The first step is talked about vividly in the film – the wire-walker remembers it very clearly. But the bigger question of how he could take that step, he doesn’t address, in fact none of those involved do, not outright. But this question animates the film. Everything you see and hear contributes to a comprehensive answer. By the end, you understand exactly how he could take that step; in fact, you realize that there’s no way he could not.
So: seek this fillum out and give it a good, solid watch. It’s hilarious and hair-raising and it will hook you. It’s great. And afterwards you’ll want to talk about it.
Dollhouse Roundup (no spoilers)
Watched the last episode of Dollhouse the other day.
Back in March I said that integrating the procedural into the serial would determine:
whether Dollhouse will be remembered as an incredible one-season show that took a little while to hit its stride, or a weird one-season oddity with great ideas and poor execution.
Turns out it was the first one. The show really delivered the goods in the second half of the season, giving solid hits on meaty ideas as well as fun plots and the twisty-twist goodness you want from a conspiracy show. It was in no way perfect – some of the reveals were undercooked, with the Alpha backstory in particular not being what I hoped it would be – but it still made me happy to be watching it. And the ideas – it gleefully kicked the lids off a half-dozen issues and tipped them out, raising many questions about identity, gender, power, memory, rights…
It also gave me my favourite TV moment of the last few years, where Victor was in the chair with the [X] imprint and being asked questions. You’ll know the one if you’ve seen it.
Anyway. I recommend it. Clipshow the first five episodes then get into the good stuff.
Snail Chase In Wellington
Hear ye hear ye: delightful friend Ed’s film The Last Great Snail Chase is playing at the Film Archive in Wellington this Friday and Saturday (7pm both days).
This is a chance to see this very interesting, expressive and entertaining film on the big screen (or, indeed, at all).
Here’s an interview with Ed about the film at Lumiere, a couple of reviews at Flicks, and my post about seeing the premiere two years ago.