Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sarah Vowell books, video games, & Dandelion Fall

Neil deGrasse Tyson came to DC to speak on March 11.  I only started following him on twitter a few days earlier, so when he said that he was going to be at the Lisner Auditorium to speak, I was very excited, as was Ms. Albright.  So we trekked down there (mmm, under $3 for a hotdog, chips, and a pink lemonade for easy gulping) and sat through an extremely enjoyable a little over two hours of him blowing our collective minds (although slightly less if you'd been reading his twitter feed for a while, accessible at neiltyson).  He is, without a doubt, my biggest mancrush of all time.  He's so smart, funny, and just plain informative that it's a shame that he's not more famous.  But he is famous enough to get hate mail.  Awesome hate mail.  If you aren't watching NOVAScienceNOW, you are missing out on probably the most informative TV program ever.  I am completely biased, but man, he is as enjoyable in person as he is on TV.  If you want to have an intelligent day, just do a search for Neil on youtube and get some great clips, including the best tale of what happens when you get close to a black hole.

Dandelion Fall is a film by a woman I went on a date with in college.  Yep, I extremely briefly dated a woman who has made a film about a lesbian busker who's basically a kept woman for a fancy lady in New York.  With lots of artfully shot nudity!  Her most recent film, however, has won multiple awards.  This was actually much, much better than the other half a film I sat through on She Likes Girls 3.  Which is not a porn DVD, just a collection of lesbian short films.  I made it through about five minutes of the first movie which was a terrible lesbian vampire crapfest.  Maybe I'm holding it to too high a standard, what with my knowledge of lesbian vampires, but the acting was subpar.  I then realized that I don't usually like film school shorts and that the reviews for the disc as a whole were horrendous and that I only got it because I was friends with a director.  So I can safely say "Don't rent this disc for anything other than seeing Lauren Wolkstein's work.  Which is good."

I also listened (yes, listened, audiobooks are great) to The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Assassination Vacation, and The Wordy Shipmates, all by Sarah Vowell.  They're all entertaining and interesting, although Assassination is, by far, the best of the three.  The Party Cloudy Patriot just brings up horrible memories of the 2000 election, and The Wordy Shipmates is all about 17th century American History, which I don't find as interesting as the strange links between Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley's assassinations.  I recommend them all, with the caveats as listed.  And if you listened to the audiobooks of them, you get to hear famous people be other famous people.  My favorite is Conan O'Brien as Robert Todd Lincoln.

One reason for the lack of updates and actual content for the updates is that I beat Fallout 3 last month (woo! First platinum trophy!), a fun look at a post-nuclear DC, made more fun by the geographical inaccuracies, and started to play Final Fantasy XIII this month.  I've put around 20ish hours or so in so far, with a little bit of back-tracking when I screwed something up, and it's a very pretty game.  Not the best story or characters or anything, but Sazh is a lot less questionable from a racial standpoint than Barret "Mr. T" Wallace.  Gameplay is moving towards Progress Quest levels of interactiveness (I'm a Puma Burglar Panda Man!), but the Paradigm Shifting is not only a proactive approach to success in conflicts, it's surprisingly deep.  I still haven't made it to the opening up of the world yet, so it's still linear at this point.  But that isn't really that bad of a complaint.  Fallout 3 was possibly a little too open-world.  If it weren't for getting trophies, I would've been very confused about what to do.

Caseus Archivelox: Safe, The Rules of Attraction, & Blade II

2002-12-09 - 11:27 p.m.
I just watched Safe, the Todd Haynes film with Julianne Moore. And I can't recommend it highly enough. Very disconcerting movie, (in a good way, unlike Titanic which was disconcertingly long or Armageddon which was disconcertingly suck) and Moore was excellent. It is a great multi-layered film like Haynes's other films, and it makes me want to see Far from Heaven an immense amount. And I still want to see Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story more than any movie ever made. Mainly because it's illegal, but also because Haynes, while frequently frustrating, is one of the most talented directors out there. Anyway, Safe had so many good things that the few things wrong with it were overcome.

2002-12-15 - 11:06 p.m.
Last night I went to see The Rules of Attraction, and have decided that the movie had more style than almost any other movie I've ever seen. The travelogue of Victor's trip to Europe was absolutely stunning. It was pretty well done. A little too snazzy for it to be perfect, but it was easily the best thing that James Van Der Suck has ever done. And it makes me realize that I probably would like Bret Easton Ellis. And I'll get to him at some point.

2002-12-19 - 9:50 p.m.
I got Blade II in the mail today, and it really wasn't as good as the first one. A little too sequel-ly. And then there's always the fact that Del Toro made a much better vampire movie in Cronos. Would have been much better had it been more like that one.

Caseus Archivelox: About Adam

2002-09-20 - 10:44 p.m.
I watched About Adam tonight. Kate Hudson wasn't too good. Frances O'Connor was the girl I would have gone for. Stu Townsend not only can't spell Townshend, he picked Kate Hudson over Frances O'Connor. Which is bad. Who wouldn't go after some grad student who's writing a dissertation that probably has very little interest? The movie itself wasn't too bad, nothing too good, but enjoyable, I guess. Movie Addition was About Adam = Belle Epoque + Pulp Fiction, set in The Snapper's Dublin. Which proves that a movie can be much less than the sum of its parts. There was a somewhat short riff on Victorianism and Vampirism, something I touched on somewhat in my Lesbian Vampire paper. I appreciated that.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910, Runaways, Preacher, Dollhouse, & Better off Ted

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910 is the first issue of a three-part third volume of Alan Moore's most detailed series. Basically, it's 1910, a new king is going to be crowned, and there's a vision of the future that suggests an apocalypse in downtown London. So the next version of the league has to stop it, meeting characters from the Threepenny Opera (who sing songs based on it), along with Jack the Ripper (along with a surprise answer to who it was, even if it's not a surprise for those who've seen The Ruling Class), a thinly veiled Aleister Crowley, and more (just take a look at this list of characters in the series). Of course, it has it's requisite sex and violence, along with a section at the end which references 2001: A Space Odyssey and then on the next page, The Story of O. Basically, it (and the earlier League books) may not be the most important comics of all time, but they're certainly near my favorite comics of all time. This was better than The Black Dossier, but not as good as the original two volumes. Yet.

Runaways was started by Brian K. Vaughn in 2003, and then restarted a couple of years later, and then taken over by Joss Whedon after Brian took over the Buffy Season 8 comics. So I wanted to read them, and I have. Not as good as I personally would have liked, but a generally enjoyable "Don't trust anyone over the age of 18 (later increased to 19)" story about six teens who see their parents sacrifice a teenage girl and realize their parents are all very, very evil. And then the series continues, adding in new characters to replace dead ones, having a psychically linked velociraptor from the future show up, magic, the 1900s, robots, and have cameos from much more famous comic book superheros (it's a Marvel comic, so it's Wolverine and Captain America (along with Kingpin and The Punisher) among others). Basically, I liked it, I'll continue to read it, but it just confirmed that I don't actually like superhero comics in general.

Preacher is gratuitously violent, gratuitously naked, and gratuitously profane (in both word and religious senses). I loved it. There were vampires, crazy ultra-religious types, horse thieves, inbred southerners, a sex-crazed Nazi Harvard-educated lawyer, a disgruntled astronaut (in one of my favorite bits), a war in Heaven, an orgy, a seriously misguided fan of Kurt Kobain who becomes a rock star, and more. Just a great series, and I'm a little disappointed I won't get to see an HBO miniseries based on this. Read it. I want to apologize for not having read this before the last month, as I read the first two collections years ago, but I wasn't buying comics then, and I never read past that, and then I tried one time after that, but I kept getting sidetracked, so I finally just started over.

Dollhouse and Better off Ted are two shows that are too good for network TV. And almost got cancelled as a result. I joined a save Dollhouse facebook group before the show had even started to air, because it was a Joss Whedon show on Fox airing on Friday night. After a rough (well, very rough) first five episodes, with only the previously mentioned Middleman episode particularly good, but once we got to Man on the Street (which Joss had promised would be the beginning of the show being awesome), the show became awesome, and by the end was as good as his earlier shows (Alan Tudyk was great). I didn't even mind Eliza Dushku. Better off Ted was a workplace sitcom. Boo, right? Non-boo. It's from Victor Fresco, who did Andy Richter Controls the Universe (which I purchased on DVD based on the remembering it was funny and my love of the "I'm building a temple to you, made out of shrimp, in my stomach" line, and did not regret that purchase one bit), and stars Jonathan Slavin (also from ARCTU) and Portia de Rossi. The two leads (Jay Harrington and Andrea Anders) are acceptable, but de Rossi, Slavin, and Malcolm Barrett are definitely worth watching the show for. Slavin and Barrett are Phil and Lem, two genius scientists who are like an old married couple, but with science! And de Rossi is the utterly insanely demanding boss. Basically, it's a little wacky, but very funny. I recommend watching both. But it just depresses me about how good ARCTU was, and how pissed I was it got cancelled. I didn't remember it lasting almost two seasons though. So, good on Fox?

Baby Mama, The Ten, Paprika, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, & The Long Kiss Goodnight

Baby Mama is basically like the worst of 30 Rock this season, the generally silly adoption subplot (but still funny), except, you know, without it being remotely funny. Good thing: using Be My Baby over the credits. Bad thing: sitting through the rest of the film.

The Ten is a bad sketch comedy movie about the ten commandments. Done by most of the State, you'd think it would be funny. Especially with Paul Rudd, Adam Brody, John Hamm, Winona Ryder, Ron Silver, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, Jason Sudeikis, Justin Theroux, Liev Schreiber, Jessica Alba, Oliver Platt, Janeane Garofalo, Rob Corddry, Rashida Jones, and Bobby Cannavale in the cast, but pretty much everyone of them does some of their worst work. And anal rape jokes are... not funny. Basically, extremely disappointing. Sometimes I really should just listen to the reviews.

Paprika is a great movie, twisty and turny, an anime that actually works. Probably because it's by Satoshi Kon, who also did Millenium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers. He's really a very talented guy, and he does a pretty good job with a very complicated story of a group of scientists who have invented a machine that allows people to watch and get involved in other people's dreams. This leads to crazy dream sequences and excellent weirdness. Strange and awesome.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is basically worth watching for three things: the constant mocking of CSI: Miami's David Caruso's ability to be a terrible actor with sunglasses, Jason Segel's comfortableness with showing his penis, and his Dracula puppet musical. Other than that, it's a semi-enjoyable romantic comedy, but I don't quite understand why Russell Brand is a famous comedian. He was kind of enjoyable, but all the stand up of his I've seen has been just vulgar and not actually funny. But man, I would so see that Dracula puppet musical many times. I can't wait for Segel's new muppet film. Him singing the Muppet Show theme song was fun.

The Long Kiss Goodnight is overwritten crap. When every single line is acting like it's the greatest line ever written, and characters are stupid but somehow able to stop time so they can run away from an explosion, then it's crap. There were some good lines, but not nearly enough to carry a film, especially one that basically killed Geena Davis's career. Also it was weird to see Craig Bierko play a badass. He's a musical comedy star.

Bounce Ko Gals, Drunken Angel, In Between Days, The Prisoner of Zenda, Midnight Madness, & The Apple

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Caseus Archivelox: Forgotten Silver, The Devil's Backbone, & Cronos

2002-04-13 - 1:55 p.m.
It was Peter Jackson Film Day. First was one I hadn't seen before Forgotten Silver, it was a mockumentary about the first filmmaker to use sound film and color film, and tried to make a 4 hour long biblical epic with the help of the communists and some corrupt American producers. It was really funny. Next was Bad Taste, which I skipped about ten minutes in the middle of because it was somewhat boring seeing those ten minutes again. It was definitely a low budget film. Then I watched all of the Frighteners, because I hadn't seen it in a while. It was good. Sort of silly serial killer at the end, but most movies have that. Well, most movies that have serial killers in them have that. Coolest thing about the movie is that Dammers tries to drown out Lynskey's screaming with Sonic Youth's version of the Carpenter's classic "Superstar". Then I watched almost an hour of Dead Alive. I decided that I only wanted to watch the Kung Fu priest scene, and the entire zombie massacre at the end. If I need to watch them again, it's not like I really have a problem.

After that I went back to coordinate the 9:30 showing of The Devil's Backbone. The movie was a really really good ghost story. Very atmospheric and had some good scares, at least according to a girl in the audience who screamed a lot. The movie only had a couple jump scenes, most were shots where the camera panned, tilted, or tracked away from a character to the disturbing thing, fully anticipating a sort of scary shot. Not really screaming quality scares. But the movie was incredibly well made. I think that Blade 2 is probably a better film than Blade. I really want to see that. Especially because of the midnight film Cronos. That was a great reimagination of the vampire mythos. Too bad there weren't any lesbians in the movie. Guillermo Del Toro is a really talented director, and even Mimic (easily his worst film, no matter how bad Blade 2 may or may not be) shows flashes of brilliance.

Caseus Archivelox: Gosford Park & Lesbian Vampire Paper

2002-04-02 - 12:29 a.m.
I then went to see Gosford Park. I cannot tell you how much I recommend that movie. It's my third favorite film of last year. Behind only The Fellowship of the Ring and Amelie. Those who don't like Gosford Park do not like good movies. It's just that simple. The same can be said for the last two as well. Well, maybe not for FOTR, because those who don't like it hate movies that are literary adaptions of some of the greatest books of all time, that just happen to be an incredibly well made, casted, written, and everything else movie.

Altman is a sort of acquired taste, but the movie is so well constructed, even when it gets into its plot, that you cannot help but love it. Also, Bob Balaban is a god. Even if the movie is terrible, he is excellent.

So I then wrote my Lesbian Vampire paper for the next four hours or so. It turned out very well, as I got to use biting, cunnilingus and fellatio in the same sentence. I'm proud of myself. Here's the sentences I'm most proud of in this paper: Biting can be seen as a sexual act in and of itself, and the similarities to cunnilingus and fellatio are made even more explicit in later vampire films. The vampire's bites are occasionally even seen as kisses by both the viewer and the victim until it is too late for both: the viewer is sexually excited and the victim is dead, or, worse, undead. I almost used "the viewer is erect", but I realized that that would be a little much.

Let the Right One In

Let the Right One In is the best vampire film since... well, I honestly can't remember the last vampire film I enjoyed this much. Certainly not since I started this blog in June of 2005, and according to Netflix's vampire section, none. That can't really be right, but I am struggling to think of one. Nosferatu is great, but that's honestly the only one that's at the same level. Considering all the vampire films I've seen over the years, it's amazing that I don't hold more of them in higher regard, but so few films are as enjoyable as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, and fewer still are anything other than unintentionally campy (or, more annoyingly, intentionally campy) retellings of Dracula or some other silly story.

It's the touching story of a young bullied boy with divorced parents in a suburb of Stockholm, and how his life is changed when he falls in love with the girl next door. Who just happens to be a vampire, a more feral vampire than from traditional vampire movies. It's not so much the story that elevates this film above other vampire films, but it's the visuals and tone: the suburb is consistently covered in snow, and short of a couple of scenes during the day, filmed at night, giving the apartment complex's playground a foreboding look that adds to the tension. Everything about the atmosphere of the film is perfect. I cannot recommend this film enough. Although see if you can find a screener copy.

(Don't read either of the next two links unless you have already seen the movie. Or hell, don't even read the second paragraph because it's a big spoiler for both the movie and the book.)

Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with the DVD, not the fault of the movie at all, but of the DVD producers. The subtitles have been changed and for the worse. The DVD actually defaults to the English dub, which was horrendous, so I quickly switched to the Swedish and English subtitles, but had I known it was going to be this simplified version, I would have just found a copy of the screener. Weirdly, I saw this blog post linked from Slashfilm yesterday, and it was then posted to Monkey See, A.V. Club, io9, and Metafilter today. I am not the only person bothered by this. Good. It is unconscionable for DVD producers to do this to films. You can mess with bad dubbing, but the subtitles should be as close to accurate translations of what's going on on screen as possible.

Less bothersome, especially due to the adaptation by the original author are the changes that were made to the story from the novel. SPOILERS: I never once got the impression that Eli was supposed to be a eunuch from the movie, and the one shot of Eli naked from the waist down to me was just her vagina sewn up due to either torture or to avoid being raped by Håkan. Not that Eli was actually a castrated boy. The book may have spelled that out, but the movie allowed it to be much more ambiguous and that worked better, I think. I got that Håkan was a possible molester and clearly what Oskar was going to end up being like in many years. The changes to Oskar to make him a more appealing lead were nice, although the use of Pig as a slur doesn't work with the actor who portrayed him. Anyway, all of these changes just make me think that Ebert wasn't wrong to refer to Eli as a he. Well, Ebert refers to Eli as both in the review.

Caseus Archivelox: The Wolf Man

2002-03-14
In this incredibly short and flimsy movie, I was immediately turned off by the introduction of Lon Chaney, Jr. as “The Wolf Man”, removing any doubt as to who would be inflicted with lycanthropy. I hate when movies are ruined by trailers or poor decisions by the movie studio. Even if that had not been mentioned at the beginning of the movie, the movie is not scary. The makeup was fairly weak, and the transformations were nothing special, and no advance over Dr. Jekyll’s ten years earlier. Even for a Universal Horror film, it was below par.

The shots of the fog going through the Welsh countryside were nice, but the rest of the movie was disappointing when including those scenes. Talbot’s love interest was horrible. She was obviously there because she looked nice, rather than for any acting talent, which was obviously completely absent.

Werewolf movies are about man’s baser instincts taking over, as vampire movies are about repressed sex, and as a movie under the Hays production code will ultimately fail to be about a man succumbing to his animal instincts because a movie cannot show what would be necessary in order to show that fall from grace fully.

Caseus Archivelox: Black Sunday, Lust for a Vampire, & Brides of Dracula

2002-03-14 - 12:16 a.m.
I spent today watching vampire films. Well, actually the first one doesn't really count, as it was "Black Sunday" the Mario Bava Italian horror flick, not the crappy movie based on the crappy Thomas Harris novel. It's a witch that was killed in the 1600s, and in the 1800s was revived and needs the blood of her descendant who looks just like her to complete her resurrection. So it was sort of a lesbian vampire film. Not as much as I had hoped though.
So I then watched the end of "Dracula's Daughter" again, and then saw "The Wolf Man". Disappointing.
I went off to Visart to look for lesbian vampire films. I failed miserably, because the selection was horrid. I couldn't find anything for a while, but finally found the second, and supposedly the worst, of the Carmilla Karnstein trilogy of Hammer Horror films, "Lust for a Vampire". It was hidden in the Samurai section, even though it said file in horror on the box. It's just basic softcore from the early 1970s. Bah. Damn lesbian vampire films. Too much nudity, not enough vampire. I doubt I'd be able to find any of the hardcore lesbian movies, as I'm not going off to Railroad Video any time soon, even if there are a few hardcore lesbian films out there.
The question I have for this movie is why a supposedly lesbian vampire would fall in love with a male writer. It makes little sense, and the film itself looks more like it was filmed on video. Problem is that the vampires can walk around during the day with no apparent ill effects, and day and night switch back and forth a lot in the midst of scenes. Of course, the women are beautiful, and look nice naked. That's unfortunately a very poor reason to watch the entire movie. If you don't have the balls to rent hardcore porn, then you shouldn't rent softcore because the acting and other qualities are similar.
The problem with these films is that they are weak on meaning, and strong on sucking. And sucky-ness.
An interesting similarity in the two actual lesbian vampire movies that I've seen is that when the women either fall in love with a man or need a man to protect them, they are well on their way to death. Society and male heterosexual love and its gaze destroys the strong lesbians. The nudity itself is, of course, there for no reason other than to titillate the male audience who is watching the movie. And the strong female characters who reject the patriarchal society are very different from most other softcore porn with females there more to excite the male viewers. The lesbian vampire turns the patriarchal society on its head, and this is why I am writing my long paper on lesbian vampire films.
But before I watched the movie, I watched "Brides of Dracula" which was a good Hammer vampire film (with no real lesbian content, even as it had some small female-to-female attraction). Peter Cushing is a great fun actor. The movie is nice and colorful, and has a great ending.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, The Terror of Tiny Town, Death Note, Death Note: The Last Name, & more

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Caseus Archivelox: Dracula’s Daughter

2002-01-31
Considering the fame of “Dracula” and the fact that I’d never heard of “Dracula’s Daughter” before, I was somewhat surprised to find that “Dracula’s Daughter” seemed like much less of a hack job than “Dracula” was. Part of this can be ascribed to the lesser importance of the actual Dracula myth (which severely limited the ability of “Dracula” to create any new ground in cinema), but I think the more interesting feature of “Dracula’s Daughter” is its importance in queer theory.
Dracula’s daughter is the first filmic lesbian vampire, and as such is historically important to see how she is portrayed in the movie. Her male helper (who looks like a mixture between Phil Hartman and Christopher Reeve) is somewhat androgynous and is unable to leave what is obviously a one-sided relationship with the countess. He does her bidding with only one short whine that she had promised to turn him into a vampire instead of another character. The only interesting aspect of his character is his similarity to Cesare from “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, another reference to one of the most influential movies of the silent era.
The countess herself is a fairly strong female character who, even after the first murder of a man, has a predilection for “painting” young women in various states of undress. If this movie had been made later, I have no doubt that she would have used nude models instead of just asking for her to uncover her shoulders. But she is a predatory lesbian, who destroys all the women she touches, and thus, the countess must destroy Lili. At least, from the dominant male and societal perspective, that is what occurs, although in reality, Garth’s inability to help the countess fight against her vampiric (lesbian) tendencies is more at fault for the deaths. Zaleska is, by far, the strongest female character in the Universal horror films, and that contrasts starkly with one of the most annoying male leads in Garth. He tortures the woman who loves him unconditionally, ignores warnings, and goes after a woman who is just using him. Zaleska fights against what has been her lot in life, and although she fails, that attempt is not seen in many of the Universal horror films, let alone by a female character. But in the end, she is destroyed not by a man, but by her failure to stay queer and her falling in love with Garth.
The fact that Zaleska looks to a psychiatrist to solve her vampiric tendencies is an interesting twist on the vampire myth. But she cannot solve her vampirism by psychiatry, as it is part of her, and is destroyed by opening herself up to the male psychiatrist. The same could be an argument for accepting lesbian tendencies. She cannot solver her lesbian by psychiatry, as it is an accepted part of her, and is destroyed from a queer view because of her falling in love with a man.

Caseus Archivelox: Dracula

2002-01-29
Considering how many horror films I have seen and enjoyed, my taste for the Universal Horror films of the 1930s and 1940s is mainly limited to James Whale’s darkly comic takes on the genre’s conventions and classic scenes. This movie did not change my mind on them one bit. Besides the inevitable shortening of the plot and the horribly histrionic acting of many of the actors (which is not as necessary for sound films as it is for silent films), there is little to like in this fairly drab version of the Dracula myth. Bela Lugosi labors over every word, as one would expect from someone who did not know any English before starting the role, and his Dracula “acting” is really limited to looking at the camera with a rectangle of light on his face. If someone with more talent had been directing or writing this movie, it could have turned into something much more rewarding, but instead it is a fairly weak Dracula story. Renfield is creepy, but should not have been raised to being the star of the film (as he has been here, because the other male characters are incredibly flat and poorly acted).
Anyway, I just wanted to complain about that movie. The horrible bat effects did not help it much either.
One of the nice things about the movie is the restraint with which it deals with what is normally a main feature of vampire films: blood. The only blood that I remember seeing was when Renfield poked himself with a paperclip. I do not remember even seeing Dracula bite anyone’s neck or seeing any bite marks on anyone’s neck. It is almost as if the vampire parts of the story are being hidden behind what is essentially a creepy story of a foreigner attempting to steal away a woman from her fiancée. Almost all parts of the supernatural aspects of the story have been removed. It is more of a gothic story, with extended scenes of people arguing about the existence of vampires, than a true horror film. Very little is scary in the strictest sense, with more emphasis focused upon the fact that it is almost a story that could occur today. Ignoring the times when Dracula turns into an animal, or the times when he cannot be seen in the mirror (which is driven into the audience’s mind to make sure that they do not miss that subtle shot), it is a fairly traditional spook story.
Another thing about the movie is the fact that it is subtly anti-Semitic, as Dracula wears a Star of David on his cloak and is scared by crosses. He is also a foreigner threatening the well being of the young women of England (and the American audience). “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”, but I think that with Browning’s history, I would not be surprised if he was anti-Semitic.

Caseus Archivelox: Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens

2002-01-17
This being an unofficial version of Bram Stoker’s famous novel, Dracula, due to the copyright issues brought up by the Stoker estate, the names were changed. Even with the different names, this version of the novel is far superior to most other versions, as there is not the sense of camp that dominates most entries into the vampire filmography. The first vampire film has some of the clichés of the vampire subgenre fully in place, as was inevitable from its being based upon Dracula. However, it does diverge significantly from most vampires, as this is the first time that a vampire is shown to be destroyed by direct sunlight and Nosferatu is the ugliest vampire in movie history: nothing has come close. And most significantly, from the name Nosferatu, which means “plague-carrier”, comes a thinly disguised treatise on the dangers of sex (i.e. venereal disease).
As Nosferatu must sleep every night in the dirt from graveyards that held plague victims, he can be seen as the embodiment of the plague. As he kills, rumors of the plague surround the murders. Hutter himself is an incompetent who is unable to either stop or kill Nosferatu, and the strong feminine character of Ellen is an interesting contrast. The book on vampires also says that the only way to kill a vampire is for a woman without sin to offer herself to the vampire and make sure that he is still there when the cock crows. The effect of offering herself to the vampire can be seen as sex, and coming into contact with the “plague-carrier” must cause her death, but the fact that the plague is brought out into the open, will save many others. The animal nature of Schreck’s makeup (especially the two front rat-like fangs, rather than the more recent use of canine fangs) emphasizes the dehumanizing nature of the plague. Also, instead of the main animal being linked to the vampire being a bat, a wolf and especially rats are more closely related to Nosferatu, making him seem even more abnormal (even for a vampire) than future versions, where the foreign Count part of Count Dracula was emphasized rather than the vampire aspect.

I Am Legend, The Polar Express, The Silent Partner, Overlord, Early Spring, & Equinox Flower

I Am Legend is pretty bad. The first parts, where Will Smith... oh, I mean, Robert Neville is wandering around a badly cgi'd New York City (and badly CGI'd deer and lions) are at least serviceable, but once the CGI'd vampires/zombies start dominating the screentime, it goes right off a cliff and never recovers. I watched it on HBO, so I didn't get to see the alternate ending in great quality, but I saw it online, and it certainly is better, although I wonder exactly why the studio had them change a happy ending to a depressing one. Aren't happy endings what Hollywood wants? Neither was particularly good, and the whole final siege scene was pretty much crap. Blargh. There's a good movie in there somewhere, but bad bad bad special effects just ruined it.

The Polar Express is a bunch of people dead behind the eyes, and the few people not played by Tom Hanks. The animation was off, because the eyes looked dead, and the faces didn't move right. Also, the movie was stretched to the point of pain. Barghle. Why did I sit through this? Stupid.

The Silent Partner has a great performance from Christopher Plummer as a crazy guy who robs a bank where Elliott Gould, Susannah York, and John Candy (!) work. But Elliott Gould took the money first. So Plummer starts about getting the money from him. It's written by Curtis Hanson, he of L.A. Confidential and Wonder Boys fame. As such, it's an interesting little film, with nudity and violence against women (the second of which I was kind of uncomfortable with). But certainly goes to show that the 1970s were a very good time for movies.

Speaking of the 70s, Overlord was originally made in 1975, but vanished for about 30 years until it was redone by the Criterion Collection a few years ago. It's the story of a mild-mannered guy who joins the British Army during WWII and is on one of the first landing crafts to hit Normandy during D-Day. He struggles through basic training, and really is not the soldiering type. And all through this he is terrified by a vision he has of being shot while running up the beach. But the real reason why this film is interesting is the large amount of archival footage provided by both the Imperial War Museum as well as German film archives. John Alcott, who worked with Stanley Kubrick many times (including the brilliantly shot Barry Lyndon), matches the film stock perfectly. Not just a touching story, it's also one of the best movies about D-Day, even as it ends before any real fighting has happened. Definitely recommended.

Early Spring makes me wish I didn't feel this compunction to watch every film by directors I enjoy. It's a more biting film than many of his others, focusing on a salaried man's affair and hiding it from his family and coworkers, but still they all feel like he's telling a similar story in a slightly different fashion. Technically proficient, and with the same strong performances, but definitely of decreasing value to me watching them. Equinox Flower at least doesn't have a title of Relative Time Season. It's really close, but not exactly. The hero of this is a hypocrite about relationships with daughters, and it's about how the women in his life gently push him into the present with their roles in society. The use of color actually fits with the idea of pushing a somewhat backwards looking guy into the present, as Ozu finally moves into color filmmaking.

Gone in 60 Seconds, The Lives of Others, Prince of the City, & The Lost Boys: The Tribe

Gone in 60 Seconds is not the Angelina Jolie-Nicholas Cage film. This is the original, the one referenced in Deathproof. The acting is amateurish at best, as most of the cast had little to no experience, it's all about the ridiculousness of the plot: stealing 48 cars in two days. It's stupid, it's kinda crap, and it's far too long. But it does have a 40 minute car chase scene at the end. Of an hour and forty minute long film. Basically, you can skip the first hour and still know everything that has happened beforehand by reading this sentence: Insurance worker has to steal 48 cars in two days and steals 47 with little hassle but the last one is a problem and so he has to escape from the vast majority of the Carson City police department. The car chase was clearly a labor of love, as the writer/director/star/every car in the film owner/producer also stunt drove many of the cars in the film, and it's occasionally impressive, but ultimately, it's just an excuse for the car chase. If you like them, then the movie is worth watching, if not, avoid like the plague on bad dialogue and performances the film is.

The Lives of Others beat out Pan's Labyrinth for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. I kinda preferred Pan's Labyrinth. This is a great film, touching, with a realistic ending that makes sense within the film. But I also had a problem with a couple of the slightly-anti-woman aspects of it, and the fact that it felt like it could have been set in any particular totalitarian state near the end of its run. Those are just minor problems in an excellent with an otherwise extremely strong pair of performances by the policeman and the playwright. It just felt kinda dreary and like it'd been done before, while Pan's Labyrinth was full of inventive scenes and didn't immediately feel like anything I'd seen before (even as it brought to mind Alice in Wonderland and Labyrinth).

Deliver Us from Evil is another depressing film, this one about a Catholic priest who goes through a few parishes in California in the 70s and 80s sexually abusing girls and how the Church covered it up by sending him to another parish rather than, you know, actually doing anything about the fact that this priest was raping kids. This is a main reason why I don't trust organized religion: it puts humans into positions where they "talk to God" and therefore have people trust them far more than if they were just a normal person. Plus, the whole "Priests have to remain celibate" just leads to them repressing a normal sex drive and becoming sick and twisted. Sure, some, maybe even most, priests are not pedophiles, but some of them are complicit in the coverups, including the current Pope. It's disgusting what religions are able to get away with in the name of "God". The world would be better off without organized religion. Watching these families still struggle with the abuse thirty years later was heartbreaking.

Prince of the City is a long film dependent upon a performance from Treat Williams. As such, he's actually the weakest thing in this otherwise sprawling epic of cleaning up police corruption in New York City. Especially towards the end of the film, it starts to drag and it's mainly due to Treat being not nearly as good then as earlier. I won't complain about the strong supporting turns by Jerry Orbach and Bob Balaban among many others, but at least some of the blame for Williams's dragging performance is at the feat of Sidney Lumet. The film is too long at almost 3 hours long, and all the supporting characters are hustled in and out fairly quickly, many making their mark, but also requiring a huge amount of knowledge of which characters are which and their relationships, some of which gets confused. It may not have a powerhouse performance from Al Pacino like Serpico, but this feels much more realistic. It's a shame that it gets away from Lumet towards the end.

The Lost Boys: The Tribe is terrible. And cheesy. And Corey Feldman and Corey Haim aren't enough. Eesh. Oh, and if you are watching it for Two Corey action, don't bother, he's only in a scene at the very end, and in some alternate endings included on the DVD. He's not a starring role Netflix suggests. The main characters barely register, and the stunt casting of Angus Sutherland to replace Kiefer was offensive. Angus is terrible. It's just not worth the attempted nostalgia trip. Watch The Lost Boys again, or Near Dark (a better 80s vampire film, even if it doesn't scream 80s as much).

The Painted Veil, House of Fury, Vampire Effect, & Gen-X Cops

The Painted Veil is racist. Yeah, I'll come right out and say it. The white man has to come out into the boonies to save the savages (in this case the yellow people) from themselves. But that's not all: the only people noted in the opening credits are white. Even Diana Rigg (who is, admittedly, somewhat famous in the west), who has a tiny role, is mentioned in the opening credits, while Anthony Wong (the first in my little Anthony Wong mini-fest) isn't mentioned, even though he has many scenes, and is actually the third best thing in the film behind the scenery (stunningly gorgeous) and that Toby Jones is having sex with some hot Asian. Which is just funny, since he's basically known for playing Truman Capote. Actually Toby Jones in general is quite good, and I liked him in this. But the love triangle in the center of the film is just overwrought to an extreme, and once you have characters going into an epidemic of some kind, at least one of them has to die. It's just a rule of epidemic films.

House of Fury is stupid. But fun. It stars Gillian Chung (she of the Edison Chen Sex Scandal, and apparently a small role in W. as an escort dancer???) as the daughter of a government agent who has to protect former spies who then has to save her father's life from the American assassin who was crippled by a former spy. Sure, there's other parts to it, like some ridiculous martial arts sequences including a dining room table (of which there were at least three different ones throughout the movie), a remote control, and, for some damn reason, absolutely no dolphins. Why the hell was the brother a dolphin trainer? That doesn't come into use at any point later in the film. Have these people never heard of Chekhov's Gun? The movie did have Charlene Choi in a glorified cameo with some of the only humor in the film, if you consider "Do you want to French kiss?" and then saying, "Time's up" before the guy has a chance to reply. So there was your bit of Twins for the film. Pretty much the only things worth watching were the martial arts sequences. Because the movie was a mess. But on blu-ray. So go Hong Kong, I guess. Maybe put out some better films on it.

Vampire Effect is a Hong Kong vampire film, but not with hopping vampires, but more traditional ones. The version released in the US cut out 19 minutes. Apparently, those scenes make the film make more sense. I would hope so, because it would be hard to make a film that made less sense. This had a good cast, and Donnie Yen is a talented guy, but Edison Chen is kind of a dick, and The Twins were mediocre in this, with about the only bright spots being Anthony Wong (who still is the best thing in any film he's in), and the Special Guest Appearance by Jackie Chan and the Special Friendly Appearance by Karen Mok. But the fight scenes were too wire-based and frequently nonsensical, especially the final one, and the internal consistency was lacking immensely.

Gen-X Cops is another Jackie Chan produced film, this time with him as a fisherman. I have a serious problem with the anti-gay humor in a lot of Hong Kong films. It's like gay people are completely acceptable to make fun of. Well, it bothers me immensely. Also, the HIV joke clearly played into that. The frequent switching from English to Cantonese was distracting as well. But the excuse to have Jaymee Ong speak in her Australian accent... I've long said that Asians with Commonwealth accents are hot. And although the Australian accent was a little off for a Canadian, I didn't care. Basically, the non-gay stereotypical of the three undercover cops were attractive as were their girlfriends, and some of the fight scenes were good. But it was ridiculous and the special effects were pretty bad. I think it's come down to me watching recent Hong Kong action films almost entirely due to the cheese (and cake) factor rather than an expectation of them being watchable.

Buffy Singalong, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, & The Human Beast

Friday night I went with friends to see Once More, with Feeling on the big screen. And sing along to it. The Washington Post has a write up, but somehow I don't think I had any pictures taken of me anywhere. Just imagine me as Giles in I've Got a Theory/Bunnies/If We're Together. And it'd probably be slightly better than my actual costume. There were not nearly enough costumes for my liking, as I didn't see any, and only a few Sunnydale t-shirts. The District is a boring place of people unwilling to have fun. I am including myself in that. I was also extremely disappointed that my popper didn't pop. I wonder about what that means. But the show was immensely fun, bunnies are awesome, it was nice to see that there were a lot of Buffy fans in DC (although the one time I was walking around DC with Firefly, I did discuss it with a stranger), I sang along to every song, spoke along to my favorite lines, and I now have vampire fangs that taste terrible. I think I might need to soak them in something minty because ew. At least before the next screening in November.

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl is a sort of revisionist look at her, but I question whether anyone could possibly have thought that Hitler wasn't evil, or at least horribly anti-Semitic. Then again, most Germans were anti-Semitic then. It's disappointing that she just sort of shrugs off any problems with book burnings or anti-Semitism. That she is so intent on trying to minimize her culpability for all of it is so obvious that her claims lost quite a bit of their effectiveness. Having seen Triumph of the Will, there is no doubt that it's a masterful work of propaganda, but it's also an utterly repulsive film. But at least this 3 hour long documentary has an intermission. Plus, nudity! Dead Jew nudity! African nudity! Floppy Nazi nudity! Master race, my ass! Note the very important comma. I'd only seen bits and pieces of Olympia before, but that one really is an impressive film. And only a little racist.

The Human Beast is another Jean Renoir film. I think I'll just go take the rest of the Renoir films out of my Netflix queue. Ah, there. Much better. It's one of those films that's only really known by its original name, not the translation, which is why I'm referring to it as its translation. Also, he's pretty bad in his role in the film. Beh.

The Quiet American, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Initial D, & Three... Extremes

The Quiet American is a book I've been wanting to read for years, at least since I first read about the making of the Michael Caine film (which I really love, you know, just in case you couldn't have guessed from it being me) and it being held back for being anti-American. Which it is, completely deservedly due to our constant screwing up of a variety of countries through stupidity. The book itself sort of surprised me, especially with the ending. (Really, that's how you're going to end it? What does that say about the world if everything goes that way after the American gets killed by the commies?) Also, lots of opium. It's actually far better than either movie, as would be expected, but I was more impressed with just how accurate Graham was in his impressions of what would happen and just how much more he knew about the situation rather than the Americans. I also read this essay about the differences in the films, the book, and reality. It's interesting, if you're familiar with all of them, which you probably aren't, considering there were only 2,913 ratings of the 1958 version on Netflix (far less than the 225,852 ratings on the 2002 version).

Sunday Bloody Sunday is a sort of depressing look at a love triangle with the only twist that it's a Jewish doctor and an older woman for a younger man. It's a John Schlesinger film, who's very up and down, with good films like Midnight Cowboy, The Falcon and the Snowman, and Cold Comfort Farm, along with dreck like The Day of the Locust and The Next Best Thing. He also did Marathon Man, the movie that is extremely disturbing for the garotte scene alone. I found this film most interesting for the answering service, which was just a cranky old woman who was basically lying to a bunch of people about messages if she felt like being vindictive.

Initial D is full of pretty cool car stunts, and is all style, no substance. I imagine it's basically just like The Fast and the Furious, but with actual talent involved (the team behind Infernal Affairs, who apparently made a film called Forlorn City with the good Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Shu Qi, and I clearly need to see), so I can completely see why they felt like ripping it off for Tokyo Drift. And anything with Anthony Wong is worth watching for his performance alone. But my favorite thing about it is the fact that it has a dubbed version and subtitles. And they're not the same. I am a huge fan of terrible subtitles, although I bet that the subtitles track the actual dialogue far more than the dubbing. The jokes in the subtitles are far funnier than the dubbing as well, as there are fewer gay jokes and more crossdressing and prosititution jokes. And the voices in the dubbing are horrendous. Weird that the main girl, Natsuki, was played by Anne Suzuki, who was in Snow Falling on Cedars, quite a good film. Also weird: the ending of the film with respect to the relationship of Natsuki and Takumi. I guess it really is just a love story about a guy and his car. Speaking of which, watching the videos for Gran Turismo 5 on the Playstation Store made me want to get that game lots. And there are quite a few other games I want for the PS3. Could this possibly mean that purchasing a PS3 rather than buying a PS2 and saving the extra money wasn't a terrible decision? Well, Blu-Ray porn has something to say about that!

Three... Extremes is a three-part anthology film (and apparently this is the second collection of these films?) with parts by Fruit Chan (who I hadn't heard of before first reading about screenings of this film, but is a good Hong Kong director, maybe?), Chan-wook Park (overrated Korean pain director), and Takashi Miike (Japanese awesomeness). So the three films are pretty much horror films, although only one had any aspects that have become cliché as an Asian horror film (creepy long haired ghost). As any anthology film goes, some are better than others. Dumplings, Fruit Chan's film, is about Bai Ling making dumplings from aborted feti as a sort of anti-aging remedy. It made me extremely sick. The crunching sounds when she's eating continue to make my skin crawl long after watching it. Really, just ick. And the scene in the bathtub towards the end was extremely squicky. Highly recommended to anyone with a strong stomach. And anyone who wants to see a gorgeous film (shot by Christopher Doyle, my favorite cinematographer) with a non-good Tony Leung. Cut was crap. Chan-wook Park does a little crappy self-referential junk which is just violence for the sake of violence. With a twist at the end. Hey, just like Oldboy, that vastly overrated film. What a surprise! Maybe his I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK will be better, since it isn't a revenge film at all. JSA was good, and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance at least seemed like you didn't hate everyone in your film, and then, what? Some actor must have pissed in your Cheerios, because that's the only excuse. I should have liked it with the vampire aspects, but nope. Box, on the other hand was one of the creepiest things I have seen. And it's also the one closest to the Asian horror cliché, with the sister of the main character creepily wandering around. But the film was extremely well-made, and what's the scariest thing imaginable? Twins. There's also contortionists, small places, fire, and being buried alive. And the final reveal. Oh, man, it really freaked me out. So I salute you, Takashi Miike and Fruit Chan, and give a big raspberry to Chan-wook Park. I recommend the film, even with Cut, because you can always skip ahead. Yay for DVDs.