Scott Pilgrim, Under the Banner of Heaven, Terry Sanford, Hear the Wind Sing, & Pinball 1973

Scott Pilgrim is finally finished. And only two weeks before the movie comes out, could you really expect me to not have preordered his Finest Hour way back when. Which just makes me wonder why I hadn't even talked about the series in any depth yet. Scott Pilgrim is quite good. Well, he's a forgetful jerk who makes me feel dirty, but he's also full of awesomeness. As are the books. Sure, the first one starts out without Bryan Lee O'Malley having found either a consistent drawing style or evenness in plotting. But once the League of Evil Ex-Boyfriends shows up and the series kicks into overdrive, he gets to the heart of what makes 20-somethings tick. There was ridiculousness, there was fighting, there was fanservice (and the immediate mocking of said fanservice), and an ending that was very far from sucking. I need to get O'Malley to sign the last two issues. Just to match the signed first four. I am looking forward to whatever he ends up doing next. And the movie wil be awesome as well.

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is Jon Krakauer looking at the history of Mormonism, with a focus on the polygamist sects, as a fight against "normal" American society. Having watched the first three and a half seasons of Big Love, I may have been more familiar with the story than I would've been without having seen it, since whole plot threads are straight out of history. Mormons are squicky. And knowing more about the history, and the stuff that they don't want you to know about the murderous tendencies of the official church, just confirms that. Mormonism may be the most American of all religions, but being an American Religion isn't really good. We tend to kind of be dicks.

Terry Sanford: Politics, Progress, and Outrageous Ambitions is as far from being about dick-y Americans as you can. Terry Sanford is a hero to any progressives with Southern ties. He was an FBI agent, a volunteer paratrooper in WWII, a liberal Democratic Governor of North Carolina during the Civil Rights era, president of Duke University for fifteen-ish years, a Senator from North Carolina. Who lost to his former driver who had switched parties due to fighting over who was going to run in 1986 for the seat Sanford won, but only because he had a heart attack a month before the election. He also helped to stop the civil war in Nicaragua that Reagan and North and Bush helped to prolong by funding the Contras. He was a great man, and although this book barely mentions my boss (who would be very important in Sanford's last two campaigns), I liked it. Sanford has a fascinating life story, and I enjoyed reading it.

Hear the Wind Sing is Haruki Murakami's first novel. Only published in Japan, and in a limited run of helping young people learn English, along with his second book, Pinball 1973. Neither are particularly good, although they definitely presage Norwegian Wood in both content and tone, being set in the late 60s and 70s in a real Japan. Hear the Wind Sing is not weird at all, while Pinball 1973 starts to bring in the strange characters that dominate his later works. Don't read them unless you're very into him, because there is a good reason for them not being published in English here. Besides the fact that they're very short.

Inception, Zombieland, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, & Le Corbeau

Inception is Chris Nolan just sayin' "Try to follow this, and if you can't, well, at least you get to see a fight in a spinning hallway." I'm not sure what more I can add to what's been written about this. I loved it, want Joseph Gordon-Levitt to get more roles, want more Lukas Haas, and want there to be a sequel: "Inception 2: The Sleepquel". If you haven't seen it, go out and see it. I cannot recommend this highly enough. It's Nolan's best film, hands down. For those who have seen it already, check out this clean chart of the dream sequence, which I think is the clearest and most accurate version of it. I do think the people who are listed as in Limbo end up there by the end of the film. And if you haven't seen the video about the score, check it out here and read about Hans Zimmer's thoughts on it.

Zombieland is a romantic comedy. That happens to be a remarkably stupid romantic comedy. There are zombies to enjoy, and there are long stretches that work well, but the actual romance is bad, and everyone in the movie does very stupid things, almost constantly. And the big "secret"? Woo? Honestly, it was just another thing that was a good idea but the execution was a little short of successful. It was so close to being a great film, but sudden turns to the very stupid by previously very smart people lead to stuff that doesn't make any sense. Come on, the film is better than that. Or at least, I want it to be better than that.

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired makes me feel bad for Roman Polanski. That makes me sick. He's a messed up dude who likes to rape young teenagers. Who also happens to be one of the most talented directors of all time. Director of one of the two movies that still freak me out in Repulsion (with The Shining being the other). Director of one of the best film noirs to come out after the 50s in Chinatown. Director of one of the best Holocaust movies ever in The Pianist. Director of one of the best Hitchcockian movies since Hitchcock's death in Frantic. Director of the best movie to ever deal with Satanism in Rosemary's Baby. Director of the best Polish film of all time in Knife in the Water. And raper of at least one drugged 13 year old girl. Who got off lightly and then skipped out on a horribly messed up sentence due to a judge who should've been dejudged. And this documentary makes me feel sorry for him. It's quite a good documentary, but then again, I'm a guy who has never been raped and who loves his movies. I may not be the best judge of Polanski.

Le Corbeau is Henri-Georges Clouzot doing a very brave thing: writing and directing a movie in Vichy France about the dangers of spying on one another and not being unified in the face of someone who wants to destroy someone for petty reasons. Actually, that comes out sounding less impressive than I meant it to be. It's sort of about someone who's going to take revenge for reporting people to the government for collaborating with the Nazis or the Vichy, and the film was financed by the Germans. The film itself isn't as good as Clouzot's later films like Quai des Orfvres, Wages of Fear, or Les Diaboliques.

Our Man in Havana, The Man in the White Suit, What a Way To Go!, & Far from the Madding Crowd

Our Man in Havana comes in this ridiculous Martini Movies package, with instructions for making martinis and picking up women. What the hell? It's a Carol Reed spy movie, based on a Graham Greene novel, starring Alec Guinness and Noel Coward, it needs nothing else to recommend it. Guinness is a vacuum cleaner salesman who embezzles money from the British government to run a spy ring in pre-Castro Cuba (filmed in Castro's Cuba due to it attacking Batista's corrupt regime), and the ridiculousness that ensues. It's funny and well-made, everything you'd expect. And it ends with two terrible cleaning puns. How can you hate a movie like that? I certainly can't.

The Man in the White Suit is the second in my little Alec Guinness mini-fest. It's about a dude who invents a suit that cannot get dirty. And everyone wants it destroyed. It's an Ealing Studios comedy, so there's a comedic sheen, along with some very clever plot twists, even if it never quite gets to loud guffaws.

What a Way To Go! is a Shirley MacLaine starrer, with Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Gene Kelly, Dean Martin, and Dick Van Dyke starring as her husbands. Each story of how they made millions and then died is told in a different film style: French New Wave, big budget Hollywood, musical, and silent. It's also a comedy. That isn't funny. But clearly cost a lot of money. Comedies, as a general rule should be funny.

Far from the Madding Crowd is very long. There was an intermission. It's also based on a Thomas Hardy Novel. So it was very depressing. Good acting from Terence Stamp and Julie Christie, but mostly just very depressing.

Chocolate, Sex Machine, & World Sinks Except Japan

Chocolate puts forth the interesting idea that the first step to being a muay thai master is to be autistic. It's also offensive in that sense. Let alone all the transgendered individuals in it. However, it was directed by the guy (Prachya Pinkaew) who did Ong-Bak (mentioned in my review of Tom Yum Goong), and stars a young girl as the star, doing ridiculously awesome things in an ice factory, a butcher's shop, and on the side of a building. If you were wondering how people didn't die in the film, just wait until you see the end credits, which is pretty much showing people having serious injuries. It explains some of the quick cuts in the otherwise well-done action scenes. Definitely see this if you like ass-kicking women. Also, it could've been much cooler: IMDB says "The film originally included Zen watching scenes from Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies, but these scenes were eventually cut due to licensing problems. The ice factory scene was originally shot as a split screen of Zen imitating the exact same moves she had seen Bruce Lee do in a fight scene. It showed a clip of Bruce Lee doing his fight moves at the same time as Zen was mimicking Bruce Lee's moves. The warehouse scene was shot in a similar fashion, but this time it showed a split screen of Zen imitating Jackie Chan, wherein she would do her interpretation of a Jackie Chan fight routine." I wish there hadn't been licensing problems. I want to see that movie so much.

Sex Machine is a wacky Japanese pinku film about a woman whose son has fighting cockroaches and so do most of her suitors. I honestly cannot recall why I added this to my Netflix queue. It's very short and softcore porn. Only one of those two are things I tend to like in movies. Maybe if it had been more like the original title: "The Strange Saga of Hiroshi the Freeloading Sex Machine". That would've been better.

World Sinks Except Japan is a satire of Japan's relationship with the rest of the world. As a satire it falls flat. As a movie it falls flat. I basically kept watching because I wondered if it actually had anywhere to go. But nope, it just ended with a stupid Dr. Strangelove "homage" and me wasting my time. Boo.