The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Pluto Files, Being Human, Life, & lots more TV

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is about the life of an obese Dominican and the history of his family tied up in a story of the Dominican Republic and the fuku that colonization has brought upon the world. Being both a history buff and a nerd, I really loved the book. It's just the kind of thing that I love. I'm enjoying the fact that there's books like this that are winning things like Pulitzer prizes. Because that means that I'm either becoming more literary, or, more likely, the literary establishment is becoming nerdier. I wonder when the first bit of fan fiction will win a major writing award. I really hope it's some good old Luke/Han Solo slash.

I finally actually watched The Pluto Files, and it was just as enjoyable as I was hoping. Neil deGrasse Tyson is just so engaging, and he makes science so interesting. Who doesn't make science interesting were the people who did Being Human. Which was a three part series about the evolution of man, but was pretty darn boring. Life, on the other hand, had annoying narration from Oprah Winfrey, but the footage in HD is worth it. I didn't enjoy it as much as Planet Earth, but it's hard to argue against HD nature footage.

In network TV news, Justified, the new FX series with Timothy Olyphant based on Elmore Leonard stories, is pretty enjoyable. Pacific isn't as good as Band of Brothers, but it's still fairly enjoyable. The Ricky Gervais Show, although based on podcasts, is funny, and Karl Pilkington is a magnificent moron. Community continues to be the best thing on free network TV. Treme, if you aren't watching, is a proud successor to The Wire. This is also about a city and people that is being failed by the institutions that are supposed to have protected it. There are so many things about this show that just make me giddy when I watch it.

Titus Andronicus at St. Stephens Church 4/16

I first heard about Titus Andronicus about a week before the show, so I wasn't really familiar with them. They were fun, though, and I have since enjoyed the albums. The openers, Sleeper Agent! and Amateur Party, were both bad. I normally avoid heckling bands loud enough to be heard by the bands themselves, but there was one very drunk person who was heckling, and I can't say I blamed him. The lead singer of Sleeper Agent! was coming very close to punching himself in the head. And the music was ugh. They both had good "liberal" lyric-ed songs but the musicianship was lacking. Titus was talented and made it worth the $7 with a can. It was a benefit for We Are Family DC, so it was for a good cause. I don't regret going at all, but man, the place was hot and unpleasant, smelled terrible, at least one person was dry heaving on the way out, and the many hipsters standing outside a church in my neighborhood smoking and drinking wasn't cool. But it's hard to skip out on a show less than a block from my place with a band I like.

White Dog, The Baron of Arizona, Forty Guns, The Steel Helmet, Fixed Bayonets!, Hell and High Water, & Merrill's Marauders

Apparently, about two years ago, when Eclipse released a collection of Samuel Fuller films, I decided to add a bunch to my queue, and thus, you're going to be reading brief (or not so brief) reviews of a bunch of Samuel Fuller films. Starting with White Dog, a movie about a racist dog. Which, considering the recent episode of 30 Rock with the Black Dog was kinda useful. It's a pretty 80s film, with some completely unnecessary slow-motion, and the confrontation with the original owner was kinda hilarious in an unintentional way, but I liked the film more than the message. Which I get is a little bit of that people can be horrible to animals and it's better to kill those animals rather than try to fix them. Because that's about the only thing I got of it.

The Baron of Arizona is his second film as director, after I Shot Jesse James, and it's the weird, but true, story of a con man who tried to steal Arizona. Yeah, you read that right: back in the mid-late 1800s, a con man started to forge a huge amount of documents (and rock carvings) in order to convince people the King of Spain had given this family almost all of Arizona, and then he married "the last remaining" one, and tried to pull one over. It failed, and the movie simplifies his redemption (in reality, it's not clear if he ever was redeemed, and it's more of a depressing penniless begger ending than in the movie where he still has the love of a good woman and he confesses. Interesting movie from a historical standpoint, but it's pretty darn on the nose for most of it. The lynching scene was really well done, and Vincent Price (yes, Vincent Price!) as the con artist makes the film much more worthwhile than it should be. Also, screw Arizona.

Forty Guns is a mediocre western, with Barbara Stanwyck. With musical interludes. It's very odd to think of Samuel Fuller directing this. And yet, not only did he direct it, he wrote it. Sure there's violence and the movie is pretty messed up, but that musical interlude at the open-air bathhouse is painful. And a lot of the dialogue is horribly cheesy. And extremely Freudian.

The Steel Helmet is the first film made about the Korean War and it's also a lot about race relations in the first integrated war. It's not a particularly subtle movie, with the North Korean they capture explicitly talking about how we mistreated both blacks and Japanese, especially during their service in WWII. I'm impressed that it was made at all, what with some soldiers being cowards, the racist actions of America being such an important plot point, and the fact that the black guy doesn't die, but the temple scenes would never have been made today, what with all the shooting at Buddhas.

Fixed Bayonets! is about a rear guard action during the initial retreat in Korea. A platoon is left behind to stop the North Korean advance, and the troops are slowly freezing to death and dying one at a time. The main star of The Steel Helmet is one of the gruff sargeants here. I really didn't care for most of it, and the fact that the North Koreans didn't attack in force, or even try very hard before they did surprised me. But the scene in the minefield and the final North Korean push weren't too bad.

Hell and High Water has Richard Widmark as a submarine captain who is enlisted by a civilian group of scientists who are interested in stopping the Communists from starting WWIII. And there's a woman aboard a submarine, which, thanks to a friend of where I work, there will be many more of next year. Which is completely ridiculous that it hasn't happened before now. Submarine films are always exciting, and this one is about average for a submarine film. The use of Cinemascope in a submarine film was an interesting choice, but it definitely contributes to the claustrophobia that is very important to cover in a film.

Merrill's Marauders is based on an Army unit of about 3,000 volunteers in Burma who went behind enemy lines and beat the crap out of the Japanese under the ultimate command of General Joe Stilwell. He rode them as hard as he could before they succumbed to the jungle and the superior number of Japanese forces, soon after the movie ended. I am pretty sure I watched this back in the days when I'd watch anything that was about a war, but I didn't remember anything in particular about it. I did enjoy seeing Stilwell be a hardass.

My Neighbors the Yamadas, Broken English, Appaloosa, & Europa

My Neighbors the Yamadas is an animated film from Studio Ghibli's Isao Takahata, who did Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, and Pom Poko. This is an extremely episodic film, with no overarching narrative at all, just bits and pieces in the life of a family in Japan, based on a comic strip. Which makes sense, since the usually no more than a minute or two segments feel like setting, setup, punchline. That said, most are very true to life, and enjoyable, although the ending sing along to Que Sera Sera is not really needed. I understand that you kind of have to have an ending to let people know that the movie is over, but I felt it should be more like life, and just kind of end, rather than some big production number.

Broken English is a film that really didn't make much of a mark on me. I guess I kinda liked it, but the story of a hotel fixer who is unlucky in love until she meets a Frenchman and then goes to Paris to meet him just felt ok. It wasn't bad, and Parker Posey was good in the role, but it felt like someone wandering through life not knowing what to do until a random coincidence gives everything a happy ending.

Appaloosa is a pretty good western, anchored by strong performances from Ed Harris and, especially, Viggo Mortensen as lawmen who come into town to take down Jeremy Irons. He's protected because he was friends with Chester A. Arthur, so it's much harder than they'd expect. Definitely an enjoyable film, and felt like a great twist on the western genre.

Europa is Lars von Trier messing with you. But instead of following Dogme 95 rules (in spirit if not exactly), he messes with switching between black and white and color film, characters moving from foreground to being in scenes in rear projection, and it's all set in a story of post-war Germany and the Werewolves. You know, if I had seen this film before I started to hate von Trier so much, I probably wouldn't hate him. It's a balls-out film announcing himself as bored with film and saying that you have to pick a side, either with the status quo or trying to make the world a better place. And the lead in the film makes the wrong choice, and ends up in a pretty amazing drowning scene in a river. But von Trier really is just messing with you.

House of Cards, To Play the King, & The Final Cut

House of Cards, To Play the King, and The Final Cut are parts 1-3 of a British miniseries about the rise and fall of the Chief Whip of the Tories, who becomes Prime Minister and then has to keep power. They're based on a series of novels that diverge from historical record after Margaret Thatcher steps down. The first one is about how he gets power, and is, by far, the strongest. At the end of the first book/movie, the source and series diverge, as in the book, Urquhart dies, while in the movie, Mattie dies. This means that the series allows for sequels, although the author himself wrote sequels to the movie rather than the book (not unlike Jurassic Park). Ian Richardson is great as the slimy Machiavellian minister, and he makes the second two worth watching, even as they lose much of what made the first so great. To Play the King has Michael Kitchner as a Prince Charles stand-in who has become king after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and helps make the drop-off much less than in The Final Cut. Which adds a bit of backstory and kind of comes out of nowhere, not fully clicking. The entire series is a great behind the scenes look at how a Parliamentary system might work, although in a very cynical way. You might well think that I enjoyed it immensely, but I couldn't possibly comment.