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.

Big Trouble, Butte, America: The Saga of a Hard Rock Mining Town, and video games

Big Trouble by J. Anthony Lukas is about the murder of Frank Steunenberg, probably by members of the Western Federation of Miners in Caldwell, Idaho in 1905. Throughout the awesome book, he weaves in Ethyl Barrymore, Walter Johnson, Clarence Darrow, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, William Borah, and many more well-known people of the time, all of whom had some connection to the trial. Really, it's an amazingly well-researched book, and it's a shame that Lukas committed suicide before the book was published. I am a huge fan of sprawling historical epics, about society at the time as much as the "plot". This one has sections on theatre agents, detective agencies, baseball, lawyering, labor strife, forestry, the Spanish American War, racial strife, journalism, and... well... it really just covers so much. It may be a huge book, and it took me a few months to read it (with breaks for comics), but it's really good. I saw that PBS's Independent Lens was going to air a documentary about Butte, Montana and the mining industry there. Butte, America was only an hour long, and it focused much more on more recent labor troubles rather than the labor troubles that lead to Steunenberg's assassination, so I wasn't as into it as I thought. I wanted it to be much better than I got. Not to say it wasn't good, but I felt like it didn't go very deep at all. Ugh. Terrible pun.

Well, in the last three months, I've purchased five video games for the PS3 (The Beatles: Rock Band, Katamari Forever, Fallout 3, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, and Lego Rock Band) and one for the PC (Torchlight). Apparently, I do have too much money. I am singlehandedly keeping the video game industry alive. Well, at least I haven't purchased Dragon Age: Origins or Assassin's Creed II or any other games I've been tempted by, because my games are certainly taking up more than enough of my time as it is. Because that's why it was so long between posts. I am enjoying all of the games, and regret none of the purchases. Well, except for their effect on my ability to do anything else.

Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong, John & Yoko's Year of Peace, & The Beatles: Rock Band

Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong is funny. Of course it is. It's Patton Oswalt. The censorship from Comedy Central was distracting, and the commercial breaks disrupted the rhythm. Still full of hilarious things.

John & Yoko's Year of Peace is a fairly brief look at John Lennon and Yoko Ono doing crazy things trying to bring peace to the world. Good for them. The movie itself never really gets too in depth, and thus is only of interest for those who need to know lots but little important about John Lennon trying to get some peace.

The Beatles: Rock Band is fun. As an enormous Beatles fan for many years. Most of my earliest memories of sitting and listening to music (LPs!) include things like my dad's folk music, various kids albums (including a certain Sesame Street album with Let It Be on it), and Rubber Soul and Revolver (the American versions because that's what my dad had). My first... well, I probably bought all the Beatles albums before I bought any other CDs, but certainly my first two were Beatles albums. I enjoy playing Rock Band. Therefore, this game was designed for me. Especially because most of the songs are easier than Rock Band itself, so I don't feel as incompetent playing it. It has 45 songs, and only one sucks (I Don't Want You, stupid 7 minute long boring-ass song). So it's 44 songs of awesome. I am looking forward to rebuying even more Beatles music. Because I didn't already do this once. Damnit. At least I could rip my CDs to mp3s so I wouldn't have to rebuy the music then (even if that were possible, which it still isn't). The unheard studio chatter is interesting, the dreamscapes are trippy, and I have more appreciation for some of the less famous Beatles tracks. Not I Want You, because that one still sucks.

XXY, The King of Kong, Food Party & The Yiddish Policeman's Union

XXY is an Argentinian film about a 15 year old hermaphrodite who is struggling to find out where she fits in society, and society trying to come to grips with him. I think him, as that is what the end of the movie would suggest is Alex's choice. It's a shortish film, but great acting, and about something that a lot of people don't think about very much: hermaphrodites, and whether to allow them to make their own choices about what gender to live as. Few hermaphrodites are given that choice, as it is customary to turn them into women soon after birth. In many cases, however, this leads to a gender identity crisis and later decision to undergo a sex change operation. I would like to think that this sort of issue is well-understood, but it really isn't. And until the day when we can stop having huge articles in major magazines about the sexuality of some pop singer, I doubt that we'll ever have an honest discussion about gender identity.

The King of Kong is the great documentary about the world record for Donkey Kong. Of course, it's horribly biased, but I don't entirely care about its accurateness as history (so I'm actually looking forward to the fictionalized version coming to theaters soon-ish). It tells a extraordinary story with a huge asshole of a villain and an all-American hero. I never actually played Donkey Kong or most other arcade games (I have fond memories of the X-Men arcade game and the Simpsons arcade game, but not much else), so the bit of history was interesting, although I knew about the kill screen before, probably from reading a review when this first came out.

Food Party is a show on IFC. Normally I would ignore a weird cooking/craft/bizarre show. But I actually am friends (it's true, Facebook friends and everything!) with one of the cast members of the show. So I felt I had to watch it. I wasn't able to make it through any of the episodes on the website, due to the screaming and crappy sound, but the show itself was slightly better quality filming, and I actually laughed a few times, recognized my friend easily in his multiple roles. Will watch again.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a Michael Chabon novel I'd been meaning to read for a couple of years. And I finally started earlier this year until I was so rudely interrupted by my habit of buying and then reading comics. As a huge fan of The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay and Wonder Boys, and to a lesser extent his other works, I somehow put off reading it myself. I did, however, buy a copy for my dad pretty soon after it came out. I loved the book, and highly recommend it for anyone with an interest in Yiddish, policemen, alternate history, and a great detective story. As the complicated history and plot of the book would be far too complicated for me to get into in any detail without just reading the wiki page, I recommend you just read the wiki page. At least the setting part, as the plot is twisty and kept me guessing.

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

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Sex & Fury, Female Yakuza Tale, & PTU: Into the Perilous Night

Sex & Fury and Female Yakuza Tale are the last two pinky violence movies I plan on seeing for a while. There's just so much naked Japanese women I can take. I never, ever, though I would say that, but, yep, there is a limit. Sex & Fury actually has non-Asian characters in it, speaking their native languages, which is a nice bonus. And one of them is Christina Lindberg, of Thriller (or They Call Her One Eye), providing some naked non-Asian for those of you so inclined. Apparently, she's an English spy and they were trying to start a new Opium war in Japan (this was set in the early 1900s), and our hero Ochô gets involved. She's a pickpocket and a gambler (in one of the worst gambling scenes of all time, making five card draw look boring as hell) and needs to revenge her father's death. Basically, the most impressive thing in it was the naked fight scene after Ochô gets surprised in the bath. Impressive camera work not to show her pubic hair. Female Yakuza Tale picks up the story of Ochô a little later, when she gets involved with some yakuza gamblers and a plot to steal from some yakuza by replacing real drugs with fake drugs. Oh, did I mention that the opening credits to it were another naked fight scene with Ochô, although less skillfully edited to not show her pubes? And that the drugs were smuggled by a group of women in their vaginas, which had to be measured to see how much each could carry? And that most of the film had naked women in it? Including a huge naked fight scene at the end where all the women got naked for no apparent reason? Sex & Fury was actually sort of good, but Female Yakuza Tale just had a couple neat scenes (I mocked the naked credit sequence, but it was probably the best scene in the film) and many, many too many naked women.

PTU: Into the Perilous Night is Johnny To's story of what happens when a Hong Kong policeman's gun goes missing, and the PTU has to go find it in one night. It's not nearly as good as either Election or Exiled, let alone Breaking News, but it's not terrible. Apparently, after my pinky violence kick, I went on a Johnny To kick, so look for reviews of more of those coming up whenever I get time to watch them.

What's taking time is Rock Band 2 (OMG, you guys, totes awesome!), Little Big Planet (Sackboy is adorable!), and, um, Ms. Albright. I don't regret any of those.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End & Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has Geoffrey Rush back, which is a definite step up over Dead Man's Chest. But it's also racist, with pretty much all the Asian characters complete stereotypes. At least the main pirates have some type of obvious thinking going on in their heads, every single other character is wafer thin. And do I have to mention, again, that the only female characters in the film are a god in human form and Keira Knightley? As if it needed to be more of a sausage fest. Basically, far, far, far too long, stupid, and just an insult. And still not as bad as the second one. Geoffrey Rush is just that good.

In order to get the bad pirateness out of my mouth, I went ahead and purchased Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty. Unfortunately, it was not really a search for booty (of either the pirate or rapper kind), but a search for things to make searching for Clank easier. But it was about as fun as Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, which this follows in time. I hate jumping puzzles, and feel that they're there only to piss me off, due to my lack of spatial awareness, but even though I struggled with one stupid part of jumping on some moving platforms and walking along a thin beam, I still got over four hours of enjoyment from the game. And for only $15, not a particularly bad purchase. Because, as a Ratchet & Clank game, it was funny, and you can never have too many drunken robotic pirates.

Bubble, Heading South, Cloverfield, Triad Election, Voices of a Distant Star, She and Her Cat, The Descent, Mouchette, & Life on Mars? series finale

Bubble is Steven Soderbergh messing around with HD on an extremely low budget. Which is really obvious from the film, with completely inexperienced and bad actors in it. It's filmed in Belpre and Parkersburg, West Virginia. There was a brief period of time where I considered applying for a job at the Bureau of the Public Debt in Parkersburg, and then I was told never to work there unless you are married and have a family. Because Parkersburg is horribly boring. West Virginia in general is a state I prefer to avoid, but I had to drive through a lot, and so I became familiar with the interstates. And while the scenery was occasionally very nice, it's certainly no better than Virginia, or rural Ohio, or Pennsylvania, all states I have far fewer problems with. But apparently, Parkersburg does have black people, so that's a bonus I wasn't expecting. Anyway, bad acting, a boring story, and the only good thing is that it was only 73 minutes long. Even at that length, I was bored.

Heading South is set in Haiti in 1978, at a resort for older white women who have sex with younger black men. It was probably a movie my parents liked more than me, and looking, yep, they did. I guess that Charlotte Rampling was good, but I just didn't care about the characters. I didn't see myself in any of them at all.

Cloverfield probably was a better idea than execution. The plot holes were big enough to drive an enormous monster destroying New York through, let alone that I didn't want any of the characters to live. So I guess the film was ok from that aspect, but the shaky cam just made me horribly sick. But yeah, its immense opening weekend was at least partially due to me. Sorry everyone.

Triad Election is the sequel to the quite good Election, set two years later, and just as effectively mocking the Triads, although I think this one is better. Not much more to add than that, because I recommend it.

Voices of a Distant Star is a 25 minute anime film done in seven months almost entirely by one guy, Makoto Shinkai (who currently works for an eroge company making opening films). Based on the talent he shows here, maybe I should check those out. You know, for research purposes. No, really, he's pretty talented, and the short is the heartbreaking story of two junior high school friends/more who are separated by the need for the girl to go into space and fight aliens in a giant mecha suit and they keep in touch by sms which takes longer and longer to get back to earth due to the traveling through space thing. So sad, and so freaky to think that we will eventually start having to worry about how long it takes for messages to travel, even as the delay on satellite feeds now drives me crazy. If anyone wants to know why I will never leave this planet unless I have to, that's why. Because I need my messages to arrive immediately.

She and Her Cat is a short five minute piece also done almost entirely by Makoto Shinkai and included on the same DVD. It's about a cat falling in love with his owner and well done.

The Descent is a slickly done caving horror film. And through the beginning of it, all I could think was that that was a bad idea from a safety standpoint. Yes, I'm a caving nerd. I had problems telling a few of them apart, especially after they got all dirty. But it's very effective, and Neil Marshall shows that Dog Soldiers wasn't a fluke, and that he knows horror well enough to not just fall into the tired old tropes all the time.

Mouchette is another Robert Bresson film about people who don't fit within society, this one about a 14 year old girl who is the daughter of a dying mother and a drunken bootlegger. Unfortunately, I felt like Bresson just put all the things in the film without ever really trying to show any empathy for the characters. Lots of bad things happen, and there doesn't seem to be any real point to it all.

I also, this weekend, watched Infernal Affairs, The Departed, and The Wizard again. One of these three is not like the other. And the first two were just as good as the first time I saw them. The Wizard was another of my childhood memories ruined. Did make me want to play Super Mario Brothers 3 again. I want to praise Life on Mars? as an excellent show. And fear for the David E. Kelley written remake that may appear on TV when the writers' strike is over. The only thing that could have made it better was if BBC America didn't have to edit the shows to fit in commercials.

Rock Band post

I normally would have posted this post about my experiences with Rock Band here, but I figured that considering it was asked for there, I would post it there. I am not sure if anyone doesn't read that and does read this, but anyway, go read that post. And realize it may be one of the nerdiest things I've written ever. In like a week.

Also, in other PS3 news: Everyday Shooter is awesome, as is Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. Assassin's Creed is quite fun for a while, but some of those informer missions are just annoying as hell. I am waiting (im)patiently for Little Big Planet. And for more good Rock Band DLC. And Gran Turismo 5 and for the Final Fantasy XIII games, all soon to come in 2009ish. If I'm lucky.

X-Men: The Last Stand, Superman Returns, & Inland Empire

X-Men: The Last Stand begins my 2006 minifest, apparently. For a bit of interesting trivia (hahaha...), this was directed by Brett Ratner (one of the worst directors currently working) who was originally attached to Superman Returns at some point, but moved over to film this after Bryan Singer left this film to film Superman Returns. I wish Singer hadn't switched. Ridiculous action scenes (in the bad way), stupid plot twists, and far too much Storm. And why the hell did they make Colossus American? I always liked him since I used to play as him in the X-Men beat-em-up arcade game. Oh, wait, he was in X2, but honestly, I gave up on the series pretty soon after watching the second one. So is killing a bunch of beloved characters and the like what passes for a good film nowadays? If so, beh. I can't imagine this film making many people happy. It was insanely violent, and not good.

Superman Returns would have been far better with Kevin Smith's script. That's Tim Burton's fault. Also, this is apparently why Cyclops was killed so quickly in X-Men. Had to be the guy better than Superman. Now, there's a serious problem with Lex Luthor's plan: it makes no sense. If he starts killing everyone on earth why does he think that the military wouldn't just come in and kill him? They're not going to be affected by a Kryptonite island. Also, the overuse of religious imagery bothered me. Kate Bosworth is clearly in her young 20s, making it highly unlikely for her to have been a famous reporter five years earlier. Come on, casting director, at least pick someone of a more reasonable age. The five years later plot requires older actors, and this doesn't have them. I never thought I'd praise the earlier Superman as a restrained film, but it's better than this overlong film.

Inland Empire may be Lynch's greatest film ever. Alternately, and more accurately, it's the film where Lynch went off the deep end. I didn't understand much of anything. The Polish scenes and all the other things may have made a somewhat reasonable film if they were just a bunch of shorts, but three hours of bizarre, with dancing to The Locomotion and At Last. Along with far too many closeups and dark. Ugh. You might like it, but only if you want to spend three hours being extremely confused.

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.

Darwin's Nightmare

Darwin's Nightmare was a depressing documentary about the destruction of the ecosystem of Lake Victoria, due to the introduction of a bucket of Nile Perch about forty years ago or so. And how that has destroyed lives by killing off almost all ways to live there except prostitution and fishing. It's a huge downer. Because Europeans don't seem to understand why the destruction of the ecosystem is so bad, and the Tanzanians don't seem to mind either. They're exporting the fish and importing...? Guns, germy Europeans who abuse the women, and Big Mouth Billy Bass. Oh, and a destroyed ecosystem and economy that leads to kids huffing and fighting over rice. I wasn't overly impressed with the film itself, which attacks pretty much everything, but that's probably because, while extremely liberal in many ways, I'm far more interested in capitalism and free trade due to my economic background than others who might share some of my other beliefs. Like giving everyone a musket to protect themselves and banning every firearm that can fire more than four times a minute. If you can't kill your deer with that, go back to playing Counterstrike. The kids do play Counterstrike still, right? Should I have said Halo? I'm so out of touch on FPSs. Anyway, if you see one documentary about how we're destroying our world as evidenced through enormous fish and huffing kids, watch this film.

49th Parallel, Where the Buffalo Roam, Vice Guide to Travel, & Virtua Fighter 5

49th Parallel is another Archers production, this one a propagandist piece trying to stir up anti-Nazi feelings in both America and among the dirty, dirty Québécois. Those dirty, dirty Québécois were pro-German because they hated the English. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend, apparently. Plus, who doesn't love the Vichy government? Anyway, it has Laurence Olivier playing a French trapper with a bad accent. Were they just trying to piss off the Québécois? Because that would have done it for me. The story is that a German U-boat gets sunk off of Canada and the six German survivors have to get home somehow, fighting through Olivier's accent, Glynis Johns's naivete, Leslie Howard's smugness, and Raymond Massey's desertion. Or something like that. It's quite impressive, but ultimately, it's just a well-done propaganda piece that runs a little too long. Really, that's about all you would expect from it. Powell and Pressburger were consummate professionals, and they did a fine job.

Where the Buffalo Roam was a sometimes worthwhile, but mostly worthless "adaptation" of Hunter S. Thompson's writings. Really, it just didn't work. Fear and Loathing worked, because it actually felt like it was a story and was trying to keep (internally) consistent, but this was just far too episodic, and far too slapdash, to be anything but Bill Murray's Thompson impression for 90 minutes. Plus, the soundtrack on the DVD wasn't the same as the original, which always pisses me off. Stupid recording artist organizations don't understand just how much better something is when it's allowed to be how it was originally planned. Just like Tour of Duty had Paint It Black taken off the opening credits to the show on DVD, it messes with how the film feels. I bet it worked much better with the original music. The Neil Young musical parts were at least effective.

Vice Guide to Travel is a trainwreck. The few shorts that were interesting (Pakistan, Bulgaria, Beirut, and Paraguay) were more than outweighed by the terrible choices that ruined what could have been worthwhile ones (China, Rio, Congo, Chernobyl, and the extra of the crazy guy rambling on about nothing). Well, that last one never could have been worthwhile. I do wonder why Spike Jonze was even included on the DVD. He added nothing except as a sort of audience that could have been done by actually having the correspondent address the issues in an articulate manner. That would pretty much have improved all of the shorts, actually. And I liked the Bulgarian one in the booklet about running from gangsters after winning money in a casino rather than going over just how easy it is to purchase a nuclear warhead, which really is disturbingly easy, and that could be why so many films since the fall of the Soviet Union have dealt with that. Chernobyl was ruined by their inability to do anything other than be very very drunk and look at a Geiger counter. Thanks, that was... boring. Maybe if you had actually found any of the mutated animals you were obsessed with, then it would have been better. Rio was terrible due to "Trace Crutchfield" and his asshole persona he put on. Basically, the ones that actually tried to deal with issues were better than the ones that just had people get trashed and try to look at crazy things. What a surprise: getting drunk does actually change your performance. I felt dirty almost the entire time I was watching, and it actually made me feel dirtier than any other time I've been exposed to Vice and their media empire. They have managed to put out some good music on their record label, but there is not that much else to recommend them.

Also, the lack of movie watching was due to three things: 1) I held off on watching a movie for much longer than normal from Netflix (it's all good though), 2) I have almost finished watching Dead Like Me (look for my half-assed comments on that when I finish it later this week) and 3) I bought Virtua Fighter 5, and have been trying to unlock lots and lots of stuff. It's a fighting game, and I have at least two characters I'm acceptably good at, so that makes me happy.

Bells of Innocence, Antoine et Colette, & Les Mistons

Bells of Innocence apparently cost $2.75 million. I am pretty sure it all went into the coke the writers were taking when they thought this was a good idea. Wow, it was outstandingly bad. Every single person in the film was a terrible, terrible actor. Even Mr. Chuck Norris. And the names... Jux Jonas, Oren Ames, Conrad Champlain, Joshua Ravel, and Lyric? Seriously? I swear some 12 year old's D&D character is named Jux Jonas. Or, I guess, since WOW is so popular, some Horde warlock is named that. Are warlocks even an option there? I don't know, and I don't need to, really. It's bad enough I know that the two factions are the Horde and the Alliance. The more I know, the more likely I am to get involved in that crackrock. The movie is amateurish in every possible way. The ADR (or Additional Dialogue Recording, for those of you who didn't spend too much time with film nerds in college) was atrociously obvious. And I was rooting for a nuclear holocaust to wipe out the film crew on set. Too bad that I knew that wasn't going to happen. I kept hoping though. The set itself, the town of Ceres (nice overuse of Greek and Roman mythology and names to just point out how sacrilegious those people were), looked like it was only one street, and they just kept changing camera angles. Good for them for that though, because otherwise I never would have noticed that the same fence kept going behind them when they were walking down the street. Oh, the movie is so terrible it's somewhat enjoyable, but man, that 97 minute running time felt like I was in hell forever. Soooooo long.

I also saw two Truffaut shorts, Antoine et Colette and Les Mistons. The second one is a story of five pubescent boys who torture an attractive older girl because they don't know how to express their real feelings for her. And the first is a sort of sequel to The 400 Blows, but instead of it being about a juvenile delinquent, Antoine Doinel has grown up to be a young man who is very impressive with parents but not as impressive with the woman he's in love with. No, I have absolutely no connection to either of these protagonists. They were both around 20 minutes long, and Antoine et Colette was actually from a collection of films, Love at Twenty, that included four other foreign films. Apparently, it's unavailable anywhere. So maybe the other films were nowhere near as good, or something. Because this was great. I'm looking forward to finishing off the Antoine Doinel collection in the upcoming weeks.

Vampire's Kiss, Louis C.K.: Shameless, Demetri Martin: Person, & Thieves Like Us

Vampire's Kiss is Nic Cage overacting, occasionally doing a really bad Ed Sullivan impression (I think unintentionally), and also doing an English accent (also really bad). According to the IMDB, it was intentional. But man, it just got on my nerves so much. If I hadn't been playing Final Fantasy XII at the same time, I would have turned it off. Plus, with the ending, I'm not sure exactly what the point of it was, except possibly that assholes who are ridiculously attracted to women (the particularly predatory ones frequently are referred to as vampires) might just do anything to impress them. That he clearly was insane really didn't change much. Apparently, the vampire aspect is just a figment of his insane mind. Thanks 1980s. You really know how to make a bad movie. Also, Joseph Minion, who also wrote the great After Hours, clearly had no real talent. Because apparently he took ideas from someone else to write After Hours, and he did nothing else remotely good since then.

Louis C.K.: Shameless was pretty funny, but not that much was particularly new, especially if you have seen his appearances promoting the special, or his sitcom. It even uses the same theme as the show. That's not to say it wasn't funny, but standup works better when you don't already know how the jokes are going to end.

Demetri Martin: Person was hilarious. I enjoyed it immensely. I would have enjoyed it even more had I not had so many problems with the amount of commercials. Sometimes it would be a commercial, and sometimes it would be a little short film he did for Windows Vista, and sometimes it would be a full commercial break. What's the deal with commercials, Comedy Central? And what's up IMDB? Not important enough for you? Just the beginning skit is worth watching for, and then it keeps going, and keeps being funny. Watch it. Ladies.

Thieves Like Us is a film I'd have seen much sooner had it, you know, been available on DVD in the US. Is Altman just not popular enough? Damn the man. It's a slightly off-kilter story about three Mississippian bank robbers who escape from prison and go back to robbing banks. But the youngest one falls for a girl who is addicted to coke. Note that this is 1930s Deep South, so it's the Coke that comes in a bottle. Full of typical Altmanisms, although the overlapping dialogue was actually pretty limited, and it was replaced with an almost constant radio narration, occasionally commenting upon the action, and sometimes just enhancing the scene. It's clearly an Altman 70s film, in the best ways. Plus, without it, Nurse Ratched would have been someone else, as Louise Fletcher was seen by Milos Forman because of the film. Which basically means that even if you hate the film, it's a very important film anyway. I did notice similarities with They Live by Night, which, after checking the IMDB makes sense since they're both based on the same book. At least the assumed (by me, making an ass out of you and me...d...) moral ambiguities in the original novel are allowed to exist in this film, unlike the Hays Code neutered earlier film.

Non-movie apology & PS3!

And with that, I'm caught up. However, don't expect me to see as many films in 2007 as I did for most of 2006. I bought a PS3, and I have to play through some games I missed since I don't have a PS2. But if you ever catch me humming along to the Katamari Damacy theme, well, that's the price you pay for me getting a PS3. Plus, you know, I'm running out of movies I haven't seen. And what's up with an insane amount of hits from Europeans looking for a blog named Caseus? I think that there might be a European sex blog with a name similar to Caseus. Man, if only I had a sexblog, I'd be raking in the cash. Everyone wants to read my comments on hoohoos and penii!

Hercules, Tony Takitani, 2046 DVD, Affliction, & The Children of Heaven

Well, I've seen Hercules. The Disney animated version. Why did I watch it? Think of the geekiest reason you could possibly imagine, and then go geekier. I watched it because at some point, in the next year, I will own either a PS2 or a PS3, which will allow me to play Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2, both of which feature parts of Hercules. And I wanted to know a little about it before playing those. And it was on the Disney channel when I had some free time. See? That's pretty darn geeky. As for the movie itself, Megara was attractive, and James Woods was enjoyable, but man, those songs sucked and their abuse of Greek Mythology (why is it that they use Hercules rather than Heracles like every other Greek name in it?) was horrendous. Why did they have Hera be his mother, when her hatred for Zeus cheating was the reason for all of his struggles, not Hades trying to take over Mt. Olympus? Damn things like that just pissed me off mightily. And while the CGI, especially during the fight with the Hydra (which wasn't killed by fire, for some reason), was mediocre, it was in a cartoon which didn't bother me at all.

Tony Takitani's name was... Tony Takitani. Tony Takitani the movie is a fairly faithful version of one of Haruki Murakami's short stories, this one published in the New Yorker in 2002. This one, unlike a lot of his short stories actually has an ending, even if it's just a big bunch of depressing. And about the only thing it doesn't have that most of his stories have is cats. Well, cats and supernatural activities. It is a well-constructed film, with lots of slow camera movements showing characters alone, even when in public, emphasizing the theme. I'm actually surprised that Murakami allowed anything of his to be filmed, but this one seems like it was simple enough for him to allow it. Even if the end was different, and there were some other minor differences within it, even if a lot of the dialogue and narration were directly from the story. But if he's allowing films to be made, I really hope that he never allows anyone to screw up Norwegian Wood. I believe I would have to get violent were that to happen. I actually would love to see someone try, but any script changes would have to be approved. If I had the money, I'd pay to make the movie. Anyway, Tony Takitani was possibly the slowest 75 minutes ever made. But it was also extremely well made and accurately portrays the story.

I lost a hell of a lot of text about the 2046 DVD because I was writing it in Gmail and it disconnected in the middle. Damnit. It's probably a good thing because all I did was say how great the DVD was, that the CGI was intentionally like it was in 2046, that Tony Leung's English is very good and he should make a good American film at some point, and that I go goofy over the women in this movie. I also wish that the first deleted scene were back in the movie, as I think Gong Li needed another scene to look gorgeous, tortured, and hot. The alternate ending would have made what was clearly implicit in the rest of the movie blatantly explicit, thus detracting somewhat from the movie. The second deleted scene was interesting, as it did allow a little more insight into Chow Mo Wan, but it would have broken the barrier between the "present" and "future". All in all, if you loved the movie, but haven't seen the extras, it's well worth at least renting to see them.

Affliction was just an excuse to try to get some Oscar nods for Nick Nolte and James Coburn. In that it was successful. Otherwise, it was just another one of those terrible abusive father ruins kid's life movies. Even if it took a little longer than it normally would in this type of movie. Really nothing too special about anything in it besides the two actors. Willem Dafoe is boring as hell. So is the movie for extended periods of time. Were it not for the good acting, there would be nothing separating this movie from any other Oscar bait that is nowhere near as good as it thinks it is.

The Children of Heaven is basically a Disney movie about the poverty that exists in Iran. Baran, a later film from Majid Majidi, was actually good, this one not so much. I wasn't too impressed with the child actors, as anyone who's seen lots of movies knows, child actors are almost always the worst thing in a movie. When you have them as the main parts of a movie, it just is a bad sign for the movie. I don't care how novel it is that it's an Iranian film, I didn't get that much out of it. Maybe the movie is good for some people, but I just kept getting bothered by the kids and their extremely forced acting. It's much better when you don't have the kids trying to act sad or happy.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, The Manchurian Candidate, Mysterious Skin, & Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children probably makes little sense to someone who doesn't already know these characters and the basic plot of FFVII. I also imagine that it might help to read some reviews of it to see if you can pick up the plot, since most of it doesn't really get explained. I also appreciated that Tifa had more clothes on this time. Before was sort of ridiculous. I also would have preferred that there was more Aeris, but since she's dead, I guess we can't have that. Makes me somewhat interested in seeing what they could do with new technology and FFVII. Well, I guess we can always just accept that the new games will have to keep us busy.

The Manchurian Candidate was ok, but didn't need to be made, nor did it do anything new for the story. Denzel was ok, as were Meryl and Liev, but none really did anything new. Beh to the making of this movie.

Mysterious Skin is one of those, yay for pederasts movies. Wait, it was one of those pederasts are terrible movies. Quite a few more of the latter than the former. Acting was very good from that young alien, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I was a little shocked I actually liked a Gregg Araki movie. Did not care at all for Doom Generation. If you're up for a pederast movie, and for seeing Dawn in a good role, then see this movie.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire felt like it was just trying to fit in as much plot as possible, and thus just spent lots of time on the plot and not enough on allowing characters to do much. Plus, it didn't take nearly enough advantage of Katie Leung's accent. There were actual gasps in the theater when she spoke. Is a thick Scottish accent coming out of an Asian girl that surprising? Really? I like to think that it was just the audience. So yeah, I saw the movie in a theater. Does make me want to read the book, since it appears lots of interesting things happened outside of the scope of the book. JK needs to write quickly.