Re View

I revisited my teen years recently by viewing Ken Russell's Women in Love (1969) and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist (1970). In my youth I saw both of these movies multiple times, which might just possibly have to do with the fact that both these films have a lot to do with sex.

Both these films were clearly of their time, created in a period in which barriers were not merely falling, but being blasted into oblivion by dedicated saboteurs carrying plastique on their backs through the sewers. Women in Love was the first theatrical release that featured full frontal male nudity, a fact that impressed some of my women friends as much as Glenda Jackson's breasts impressed me.

Even given their vintage, these films hold up remarkably well. Though they're both filled with the sorts of questions people were asking in the late Sixties, but they both have a story to tell, and it's the story that pulls the viewer through.

I noticed this time that both films are stylistically post-Godard. Godard had done his job of deconstructing cinema, and both Ken Russell and Bertolucci were left with trying to make sense of the bits and pieces left lying around. Each in his own way, they both did a pretty good job.

Among the things that haven't survived from my original viewings is the sorts of questions I was asking of the films. As a teenager I was frankly bewildered by the human beings that surrounded me, and one of the things I wanted from cinema was an explanation of why humans do what they do. Now, with forty years' more experience, I just see these characters working away at their s0lutions to life, and I just think, Oh. That.

The Conformist is about an Italian professor named Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who becomes a Fascist spy for Mussolini because, as a child, he killed the man who was trying to molest him. That motivation was a big What the hell . . . ? for me even as a teenager, but I was willing to cut the film some slack because of my own ignorance of human behavior. Now I'm older, and I'm less willing to make the leap of faith that the film wants me to take. I don't know why defending yourself against a paedophile would make you a Nazi. I just don't see the connection.

Be that as it may, Clerici views himself as an outsider, and feels he needs camouflage. To give himself a kind of normality, he marries a brainless but sensual bourgeoise, then goes off on a secret mission-cum-honeymoon in Paris to set up for assassination an anti-fascist professor who had formerly been one of his mentors. Once there, he finds himself attracted to the professor's wife (the gorgeous Dominique Sanda), who is in turn attracted to Mrs. Clerici.

The Paris interlude, filmed in luscious color by Vittorio Storaro, is utterly seductive, all warm colors and beautiful vistas. The scenes in Fascist Italy are stark and drained of color, and are mostly filmed against the brutalist architecture of Rome's model Fascist suburb, EUR.

The violent climax to the Paris section is wonderfully, horrifically done. And the final scene, when Clerici comes completely unraveled on the night of Mussolini's overthrow, is just brilliant.

What fails in the film are the human motivations. On this recent viewing, I kept asking myself, Why is he behaving this way? Why is she sleeping with him? Why is he waving that gun around? Why is he so moved when he meets the prostitute? What the hell is he after? The film provided no answers. Trintignant's acting style, with its sudden grand gestures and abrupt switches in mood and tempo, suggest that he was as bewildered by his character as I was, and was determined to exaggerate the character's contradictions at every turn. Or maybe that was Bertolucci's idea of direction.

In retrospect I think I was seduced not so much by Bertolucci, but by his cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. The film was just so freakin' beautiful that I was swept up in it whether I understood it or not.

Women in Love has survived into the present century rather better. The characters are a good deal more comprehensible: We have two sisters, the conventional schoolmarm Ursula (Jennie Linden) and her artistic sib Gudrun (Glenda Jackson), who is named after a Viking lady who was about as good at family life as, say, Medea. Ursula gets involved with a school inspector named Rupert (Alan Bates), and Gudrun finds herself pursued by Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed), a mine owner. I kept wondering if his name was a contraction of creepy rich.

Ursula wants a man to love who will love her exclusively, whereas Rupert vaguely wants a sort of vaguely polyamorous, polysexual lifestyle in which everyone sort of vaguely loves everybody, preferably in a big naked heap in front of a roaring fireplace. Gudrun, like her namesake, is a kind of natural destructive force, spontaneous but not caring much about anyone, and Gerald is obsessed by her in a possessive, unhealthy way. He's an extremely rich stalker.

Ursula and Gudrun each lose their virginity rather unpleasantly on separate nights of extreme urgency, in which kindling cohabits with death. The rest of the movie constitutes their revenge on their partners.

Ursula keeps pointing out to Rupert that, insofar as he admits that he loves her, she should be quite enough for him, and it's useless to go yearning after others. Gudrun keeps goading Gerald into one violent jealous outburst after another, and it becomes clear that one or both of them is going off to a bad, nasty death.

And all the while they talk. Rupert keeps babbling about spontaneity and naturalness and his vision of free love and how men should love each other as well as women, and Gerald keeps pointing out that he's just not built that way. Ursula smothers Rupert in monogamy. Gerald follows Gudrun on his knees while shaking his fist at her. And Gudrun, who is the only natural person in the story, does whatever the hell she wants. Usually it's dangerous.

The film does a good job of pointing out that these stances are only possible because these people are privileged. All but Gerald are middle class, not rich, but they've got enough money to explore life's possibilities, and the proletariat around them do not. Russell keeps reminding about this by showing us scenes of Gudrun and Ursula walking through packs of soot-blackened miners while prattling about their relationships, along with occasional shots of limbless First World War veterans begging in the streets. Class is clearly an aspect of what's happening here.

Whole swatches of dialog from DH Lawrence's novel are thrown whole into the film. Nowadays that would be rather brave thing to do, but back then movies were expected to mean something. Even so, the novel is an invisible subtext running through the film--- there are gaps, sort of, in the movie that I expect can be filled in by the book. (I haven't read the novel is decades, either, so I could be wrong.)

The film fails when Ken Russell is trying to do something shocking or provocative, because forty years on we're no longer shocked or provoked. It's all overstaged and overwrought, with annoying, blaring violins telling us that something dramatic and important is happening. (That said, it's all fairly restrained for Russell.)

I quite enjoyed my brief visit to adolescence, though I'm glad I'm no longer that young and that bewildered. I don't think I ever learned much about human beings from the cinema, I did that by trying to be one, and (usually) failing. Still, you've got to give credit to these films for actually daring to search for meaning, something the current cinema, with all its merits, is too small to do.

More Happy Internets Praises!

entertheoctopus has reviewed This Is Not a Game.

. . . This is a novel that’s truly of the internet age; most of the behind-the-scenes action happening in the pages would have been inconceivable only a decade ago. However, that doesn’t mean that readers have to be familiar with the tech to appreciate the story. This is Not a Game is at its heart a good suspense novel, a technothriller for the Facebook generation that will keep readers engaged until its final pages. Highly recommended.

I Am Reviewed

This Is Not a Game has scored a couple good reviews!

Gary Wolfe at Locus sez that "This Is Not a Game begins at a full run, with superstar ARG developer Dagmar Shaw trapped in a hotel in Jakarta while the city is under a violent seige due to the collapsing economy . . .

" . . . the plot involves murder, corporate espionage, revenge, and [spoiler deleted] . . . Williams, from his own experience, knows how these games work and how the participants react, and the result is that This Is Not a Game succeeds only as a suspense novel, but as an incisive portrait of a subculture for whom reality is increasingly contingent, and increasingly mediated."

And meanwhile, Rob over at Bookspotcentral sez, "I guess you could say this novel is well timed. It depicts a number of financial disasters taking place in various places in the world. One of its messages I suppose, is that money is an idea. Or to put in in Magritte’s terms, look at a dollar and you see a symbol of wealth, not wealth itself. Somehow I doubt this will cheer up the bankers who managed to help their business to the brink of ruin . . .

"Throughout the novel Williams makes the reader very aware that what is happening on the surface may not be what is going on at all . . . Especially later in the book this creates slightly paranoid atmosphere that reflects the state of mind of the main character. As Dagmar discovers layer upon layer of seemingly unrelated events that are somehow related the game and reality become increasingly hard to separate . . .

"If you enjoy a good (techno) thriller this book is as good as it gets. Events frequently outpace the main character keep her, and to an extend the reader, off balance. Williams captures the paranoia, desperations and frustration of the main character very well, without making her helpless. Dagmar is used to being in control of the game, when she eventually cuts the strings that move her the result in interesting, unexpected even . . . "

Reviews Too Late: Haibane Renmei

People kept recommending this series to me, so I went looking for it on Netflix.

The series concept and characters were created by Yoshitoshi ABe (that's how he spells it), and was produced by yasuyuki ueda (also sic), both of whom worked together on Serial Experiments: Lain.

What Lain and Haibane Renmei together seem to indicate is that the creators are using the medium of anime to make 13-episode, stylized, moody, highly original art films.

Which is fine with me. It beats the hell out of watching Warhol's Empire for eight hours.

We open with a young woman falling head-first from a lovely blue-and-white sky. She is garbed in a white robe, and accompanied by a crow who interacts with her in a lively way, then tries to support her by tugging on the hem of her robe. The crow fails, and the girl continues to plummet toward the earth.

It turns out that this is the dream of Rakka, a Haibane, as she grows in her cocoon. Aside from being spontaneously generated in a pod, Haibane differ from humans in that they resemble traditional angels. They have grey, nonfunctional wings, and halos, which can be difficult to attach at first. (Rakka has to stick hers on with tape and wire.)

[Haibane means "ash-wing," though creator ABe prefers "charcoal-wing" in English translation. (Possibly because "charcoal" gives a larger color palette, from black through ash-white.) "Renmei" means "confederation." The series is also subtitled Une fille qui a despiles grises, "A girl with grey wings." No French is otherwise used in the series.]

Rakka wakes and is taken into the Haibane community, consisting of about a dozen individuals. There are a number of children and teenagers, but seemingly no adults. All were hatched either as a child or adolescent, all born more or less functional and with language skills. Once born they seem to age normally. (The fact there are no adults would seem to point in the direction of a sinister secret.)

The Haibane live in an old mansion called Old Home. (The English words are used throughout.) Old Home is in a town called Guri, which is filled with normal people. The technology level seems to be late 20th Century, though there are no automobiles as there is no place to drive. Electric power is provided by a wind farm. The town and its environs is surrounded by a wall which the inhabitants are forbidden to touch or even to approach. Beings called Toga--- they look like masked humans garbed like shamans--- are the only people allowed through the gate, and they bring things from outside that the townsfolk can't make for themselves.

The Haibane get their names from the dreams they experienced while in their coccoons. ("Rakka" means "falling.") The elder Haibane (all of whom are female) have jobs in town, but are forbidden to own money. Instead they get coupon books that allow them to purchase goods. The folks in town consider it good luck to give them things. There is another group of Haibane, both girls and boys, that live in an abandoned factory on the other side of town, but there is unexplained tension between the two.

The opening episodes consist of Haibane and people being extremely kind to one another, and for a while I wondered if there was going to be any conflict at all.

Trouble enters paradise when one of the Haibane, um, dies.

Turns out that sometimes a Haibane will get an urge to wander off into the Western Woods, then on their "Day of Flight" turn into a beam of light that shoots up into the sky.

Rakka witnesses this and gets terribly upset. (It may be my personal take on this, but I'd find death a lot less ominous if people shot up into the sky as a beam of light . . . It would seem a hopeful sign to me.) Rakka then spends several episodes asking anguished existential questions. Her wing feathers begin to turn black. Her particular friend Reki ("Gravel") gives her medicine that washes her feathers clean again, but explains that the black feathers are a pretty dreadful sign.

It is strongly suggested that the Haibane are recently reincarnated humans, placed within the sheltering walls of Guri in order to work through traumatic episodes in their past lives. (Since none can remember their past lives, this is actually a tall order.) Those who can't work out their problems become "Sin-Bound," and their feathers turn black. If they're still Sin-Bound when their Day of Flight comes, Something Bad happens to them.

It turns out that Rakka's friend Reki is not only Sin-Bound, but was Sin-Bound from birth, born with black feathers. (It is strongly suggested--- the series never actually tells you anything--- that Reki ended her previous existence in suicide.)

The last few episodes chronicle Rakka's desperate attempts to save her Sin-Bound friend before the Day of Flight comes.

It's significant that the Haibanes' dreams are so important, because the whole series has a dreamlike quality that sets its action in a place beyond our reality. The series is very gentle and slow moving, and there are no villains anywhere in the story, only people who need help and other people willing, if not always able, to help them.

At times I grew frustrated with the series' slow pace--- you could pack the whole story into a two-hour feature without losing much of the story--- but on the other hand it was sometimes a relief to spent time with some genuinely nice, if not precisely angelic, people.

The story seems a highly personal work from Mr. ABe, a working out of his own private symbol set. The wings and halos are borrowed from Christian imagery, but the metaphysical setup is far from Christian. And it's lovely to look at.

If you think you might like a series about nice folks in which nothing blows up, then this may be the thing for you.

Coraline 2D

We saw Coraline the other day, and for some reason I was not enchanted. (My reaction to the book was enchantment from Page One, or thereabouts.)

I spent the entire film admiring the movie's technical achievements, but I was never caught up in the action, and the odd thing is that I can't figure out why I wasn't caught up. Usually I can tell why a film doesn't work for me, but this time I can't work it out.

Possibly it's because the film was a 3D film, and our local theater doesn't have the technology, so we saw it in 2D. A lot of the film's scenes were built around the 3d concept.

But still, 3D's only a gimmick. It's not like I really missed anything. The strength of the film should be in the script, and so far as I can tell the script was fine.

I was also aware that the music really wasn't enhancing the film's action. As music it was complex and interesting, as a film score it was second-rate Danny Elfman.

But I've enjoyed films with distracting scores before. What went wrong here?

Reviews Too Late: Lust, Caution

You know that if it's a serious Chinese-language film, it's going to be a tragedy. No one in China ever gets a happy ending. Ever. Not even fictional characters.

That's Rule #1. So I never figured I'd ever mistake this film for, say, It's a Wonderful Life.

Yet when Netflix informed me that Ang Lee had made a movie I'd never even heard of, I hastened to rent it. This turned out to be Se, Jie (2007), released over here as Lust, Caution.

Ang Lee may well be the best filmmaker working in cinema today--- I mean, look at the dude's record--- and Se, Jie turns out to show all of Lee's strengths--- his attention to composition, his carefully-assembled, convincing period details, and his mastery of emotional nuance.

I also saw why the movie didn't exactly break box-office records over here. It's a grim, tragic melodrama where all the good people suffer and die, where the triumph of evil is so commonplace as to be routine, and where the lengthy, highly explicit sex scenes bring no joy to anyone. How many Hollywood rules can you break in a single film?

Much of the story is told in flashback, but in my summary I'm going to dispose of the framing device. The story (as opposed to the first scenes of the film) open in Hong Kong in 1938. World War II has been going on for several years (at least in China), and even relatively privileged college students are caught up in the action. Our freshman heroine, Wong Chia Chi (Wai Teng), joins a theater group that stages patriotic plays in order to raise money for China's defense. She doesn't so much want to be an actress as want to hang around the group's charismatic director, Kuang. (Who is played by Wang Lee-hom, a Chinese-American pop singer so massively famous in Asia that his renown probably eclipses that of the rest of the cast and crew together. He is also responsible for the term "chinked up," which he coined to describe his eclectic musical style.)

To everyone's surprise, college freshman Wong turns out to be a very good actress. Which aids her when the members of the theater group figure out what they want to do on their summer vacation--- a completely goofy scheme to assassinate a traitor, Mr. Yee, who runs a pacifist organization supported by the Japanese.

The group are good enough actors to create a false identity for Wong, that of Mak Tai Tai ("Supreme Wife Mak"), the wife of fictional businessman Mr. Mak, who unfortunately is played by one of the troupe's less gifted actors. ("Tai Tai," literally Supreme Supreme, is an obsolete term for senior wife, from back in the day when Chinese men got more than one.)

Due to the inept acting skills of her "husband," Wong has to carry the deception pretty much on her own, and worms herself into Yee's circle by befriending his own wife, Yee Tai Tai (Joan Chen). Mr. Yee is very attracted to her, and she plans to decoy him away from his guards and to a secluded location where her friends can kill him, when one of her fellow thespians asks the crucial question, "When you're alone with him, will you know what to do?"

Well actually she doesn't. So, in a grim deflowering scene, she sacrifices her virginity to the one member of the troupe who actually possesses a little sexual experience, and who turns out not to be Kuang, the one she actually wants.

Turns out it's for nothing. Yee is called out of town before he can be killed, though the group does succeed in assassinating one of Yee's friends, in a gruesome scene designed to show just how many stab wounds an amateur band of murderers require to actually kill someone. (Reminiscent of the scene in Hitckcock's Torn Curtain, where Paul Newman and Julie Andrews try to kill someone who just . . . won't . . . die . . . one of many Hitchcock references in Lust Caution, by the way, an hommage not so much to Hitchcock's cinematic style as his murky, morally ambiguous, sexually dangerous world-view.)

We now jump four years to 1942. Wong is now living as a poor relation in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, though she's still attending college. Mr. Yee is now a minister in the collaborationist government of Wang Jingwei--- basically he's the Minister of Torture, and carries out many of the interrogations himself. But he's beginning to realize that, since the entry of the U.S. into the war, he's living on borrowed time--- he and the Japanese and his cause (such as it is) are doomed. He's become a nihilistic murdering torturing madman, living with the knowledge that all the blood, all the screaming, all the death will do him no good, and will in fact doom him.

Wandering around Shanghai, who should student Wong run into but her old friend Kuang, the love-object that got her into this mess? It turns out that shortly after the Hong Kong fiasco, the theater troup was recruited by the actual Chinese secret service, and are now operating in Shanghai. Their daffy plan of assassinating Yee has not gone away--- in fact they'd like to revive it, this time with better planning and logistical help.

Wong is still dumb, or desperate, or bored enough to say yes. So "Mak Tai Tai" comes to life again, infiltrates the Yee house as a guest, and is soon involved with Mr. Yee, having desperate, often ugly sex with the man she intends to lure to his death.

The ambiguities of the situation are many. Mr. Yee, a sadist by profession, has a lot of violent, twisted sexual issues to work through before he can become human enough to actually engage in something as normal as adultery. Wong, on the other hand, is a good enough actress to fake anything she needs to, but is she really faking it a hundred percent? Or is part of her responding to what remains of Yee's humanity?

Fortunately for all this, Ang Lee got himself a pair of top-notch actors. Yee is played by Tony Leung (Chiu Wai). Known as "Short Tony" to distinguish him from another male ingenue of the 80s, "Tall Tony" Leung (Ka Fai), Tony Leung Chiu Wai was a star of action and romantic films, and also was one of the "Five Tigers of TVB," a huge Cantopop singing star. He's matured into a distinguished, subtle actor, thanks in part to director Wang Kar-wai, who's cast him in a number of films. Leung is on record as being a big admirer of Robert de Niro, and he's got de Niro's silence down pat, the way de Niro can remain absolutely still and simply play a scene with his eyes. Leung is absolutely wonderful in this.

Even finer is the lead, (Rebecca) Wei Tang. I was astounded to hear this was her first film. She nails absolutely every scene, including those in which she has to distinguish faking it from not faking it, and also from not being sure whether you're faking it or not. (She plays a character who has to pretend that she enjoys being raped. Wei Tang's take on Ms. Wong's acting style was breathtakingly right.)

There are a lot of explicit sex scenes, some violent and hard to watch. They're not erotic, they're clinical psychopathology in action, and call for astounding bravery on the part of the actors. (Unfortunately Wei Tang was punished for them, as her ad campaign for Pond's was banned by the Chinese government.)

There's an absolutely riveting scene where she talks to her handler about having sex with Yee, and that the only way she can endure the abuse and violence is to visualize the resistance breaking down the doors and shooting Yee so that his blood and brains splatter all over her. Her control is so disturbed and frightened by this that he orders her to be silent and follow orders--- keep screwing the guy, in other words, but for god's sake don't tell us what it's like.

Even though the film runs over two hours, and the scale of the film is large--- there's a completely colossal set that re-creates Shanghai in the 40s--- I kept getting the feeling that this is one of Ang Lee's more personal projects. His own family survived the occupation, and he's trying to be faithful to their memory. He's revealing his (or their) own ideas about love, sex, lies, China, and humanity. He's revealing himself no less than his actors.

Perhaps he is suggesting that in order to survive its own history, China has to pretend that it enjoys being raped.

The film was based on a story by iconic writer Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing), which I will now try to locate.

Newly Reviewed

This Is Not a Game has been awarded a starred review in Publisher's Weekly.

Williams (The Rift) weaves intriguing questions about games, gamers and their relationships with real life into this well-paced near-future thriller. Game designer Dagmar specializes in creating “alternate reality” games that muddle the line between fantasy and reality. Trapped in riot-torn Jakarta, she reaches out to the gamer community for help. Once back in Los Angeles, Dagmar is caught up in a web of murders and financial manipulation that she begins to blend into her latest game, using the community of players to solve clues and sift through large amounts of data. The line between real life and the game blurs as the action builds to a satisfying and thoughtful conclusion. Though the technology talk occasionally becomes intrusive, it's convincingly written; the characters are realistic and absorbing, and the story deeply compelling. (Mar.)

Who am I to disagree?

Reviews Too Late: Generation Kill

On the recommendation of Ian and others here, I checked out the HBO series Generation Kill, which then inspired me to read the book by Evan Wright, which I was enjoying until I lost my copy before I could finish it. (If you've got the book, please return it. The library wants it back. Thank you.)

Evan Wright was a reporter embedded with the Marines' First Recon Battalion during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Recon Marines, for those who don't know, are an elite group trained to operate in small, independent units for purposes of reconnaissance, ambush, and setting up sniper attacks. Their teams generally operate under their NCOs, and the officers mainly stay home in Pendleton or wherever and do the paperwork.

Of course, war being what it is--- a vast collision of fuckups--- First Recon wasn't used this way in the war. Instead they were given a bunch of broken-down thin-skinned Humvees found in other units' scrap heaps, were provided with inadequate amounts of gun oil, batteries for night vision gear, intelligence, and food, and then told to roll hell-for-leather to Baghdad, driving deliberately into every Iraqi ambush along the way.

Instead of operating under the command of the NCOs the men knew and trusted, they were placed under the command of officers they didn't know, and for the most part soon learned not to trust at all.

The officers, who normally would not have seen a lot of action, soon realized that this was their one chance for glory and promotion. It is safe to say that most of them would happily have charged to victory over a pyramid of their own soldiers' dead bodies, and that their failure in this ambition was chiefly due to their own incompetence. The panic-prone captain known as Encino Man, for example, was prevented from calling artillery down on his own position only by virtue of the fact that he completely bungled the radio protocols. Another officer, Captain America, was fond of randomly shooting into buildings and of bayoneting captives.

The battalion operated under the command of a man who used the call sign "Godfather." While he was clearly intelligent and dedicated, it's also clear that he was ambitious to the point of recklessness. Among his other accomplishments was ordering his battalion into a Passchendaele-like wave assault on an airfield he believed to be defended by enemy armor, when (1) all his command were in thin-skinned vehicles, and (2) the battalion possessed absolutely no weapons capable of damaging tanks. Massacre was only prevented by the revelation that the airfield wasn't defended at all. (The Iraqis had realized well before the US command that there isn't a whole lot of point in defending airfields when your whole air force consists of smoking holes in the ground.)

Godfather also had a George Patton-like obsession with grooming standards--- as if his unit, rolling through one ambush after another, didn't have enough to worry about, they were now obliged to care about mustache length.

It was not surprising, then, that the inept officers soon began to conspire against the one officer who stood out due to his decency, caring, and competence.

So . . . what did HBO make of this story? Seven hours of riveting television, that's what!

The series is filled with terrific acting, superb writing, and that air of authenticity that comes with having a couple real First Recon soldiers playing themselves, and showing the others how Marines behave.

Particularly well done is the sensation of driving into the fog of war. This is reportage, not big-screen Hollywood drama. The viewer knows only what the soldiers knew at the time--- and quite frankly, it's enough to scare you silly.

Of course, to watch this series you have to spend seven hours in the company of Recon Marines. Which is to say among young men who are profane, arrogant, racist, voluble, macho, sexist, and trained killers. There is one whole female American in the whole series, and when she turns up they treat her like a whore.

Seven hours gives the creators a chance to treat each character as a rounded human being, rather than the usual squad of stereotypes (the All-American, the Token Minority, the Kid from Brooklyn, the Intellectual, etc). But because this is TV, some of the characters are composites, and some liberties are taken with the personalities of some of the characters. (I have to wonder what the real-life Corporal Trombley thinks of his portrayal as a racist cracker eager to grease Iraqis, whereas the book showed him more sympathetically as a half-trained newbie desperate to prove himself among his more experienced comrades.)

The series was filmed in Namibia and South Africa, which doesn't exactly look like Iraq, but at least looks more like Iraq than Southern California.

The book has won an award from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.

Jon-Bob says, check it out.

Oo-rah. Carry on.

Reviews Too Late: Sukiyaki Western Django

So what do we call this one? Soba Western, maybe?

The only thing I know for sure is that Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest gets another workout.

The gore-soaked Red Harvest was first adapted for the screen in Roadhouse Nights (1930), apparently a seriocomic version starring Charles Ruggles. Then Kurosawa stole Hammett's plot for Yojimbo (1961), still by far the best adaptation. Then Sergio Leone made A Fistful of Dollars (1964) using the story, and Sergio Corbucci used it again in another spaghetti western, Django, just two years later in 1966. Then Walter Hill returned the story to the USA for Last Man Standing (1996), with Bruce Willis, and with Akira Kurosawa given story credit.

All of these versions--- except maybe the Charles Ruggles--- get plundered for the latest adaptation, Sukiyaki Western Django, written and directed by Takashi Miike, who is better known for extreme horror and yakuza films.

We open with a frame story starring Quentin Tarantino, who plays a gunfighter named Ringo living in Japan a couple centuries after the twelfth century Minamoto-Taira wars. (The film's creators have realized that in order to get Western distribution for some piece of Asian weirdness, it's best to get Tarantino involved on some level or other. At any rate, Tarantino is the only Westerner in this Western.)

Ringo does some serious six-gun violence to some bad guys while remarking, "the sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that to florish is to fall. The proud do not endure, like a passing dream on a night in spring; the mighty fall at last, to be no more than dust before the wind." (He does about as well with this line as you might expect.) Then he settles down to eat some sukiyaki brewed up by a local woman who is obviously impressed by his mad skillz. The set in which this scene takes place holds two important visual icons, a Western windmill and Mt. Fuji, which between them pretty much define the cultural landscape on which this film maneuvers.

We then move to a Western town called Utah or Yuta, which is still divided between the Minamoto and Taira clans, here using their alternate names of Genji and Heike. Genjis dress in white, and Heike are in red. Into the town rides a nameless gunslinger, played by Hideaki Ito--- who in real life is a total Western freak, and who provided his own costumes for the film. (I had last seen him playing the Minamoto emperor in the supernatural thriller Omyonji.)

Red Harvest follows, along with the occasional freaky cross-cultural moment. (At one point the Heike leader points out that the sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things, and that this means the Heikas are doomed. His followers are downcast, but then Boss Heike pulls out a copy of Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part I. "Don't you know your Shakespeare?" he demands. "This is the War of the Roses! The Reds win!" He changes his name from Minamoto no Yoshitsune to Henry, and his followers cheer up and charge off to battle.)

Unfortunately these goofy moments are too few and far between. Mostly the film is a standard spaghetti western, in this case with extreme cruelty and ultra-violence. The Japanese actors speak English throughout the film, and few of them are comfortable with either the language or the slangy period dialect (Imagine a samurai barking out, "What are you fixin' to do, stranger?") Some of the Engrish is incomprehensible: I recommend employing the subtitles.

There are some terrific manic moments, some wacky comedy, but mostly it's a remake of A Fistful of Dollars with dollops of Buddhist philosophy.

I wish it had been stranger. I'd recommend re-viewing Yojimbo, or even better re-reading the book.

Reviews Too Late: Lain

Serial Experiments: Lain (1998) is a kind of philosophical novel lightly disguised as a shojo anime. The frame story suggests it might be aimed at 13-year-olds, but the subject matter is--- not more grown-up exactly, but one that deals primarily with existential issues. I'm not sure what an actual 13-year-old would make of it.

There's very little violence, no sex, and little of the focus on relationships that one might expect in a shojo. Instead, we get a lot of dialog about the nature of reality, and of modern anomie and alienation. If Albert Camus decided to write an anime, this would be it.

Lain Iwakura --- who may be named after the late Mac Observer writer Rodney O Lain, who committed suicide in 2002--- is in junior high. Lain is a bit young for her age, somewhat socially retarded, though she has a posse of friends who try to convince her to be interested in the sorts of things that teenage girls are supposed to be interested in. Her chief friend is Arisu--- Japanese for "Alice"--- who is pretty clearly named after the Lewis Carrol character, but is in fact a very practical, feet-on-the-ground sort of Alice who will absolutely not go down the rabbit hole even as the apocalypse beckons and the rabbit hole seems the only remaining refuge.

Lain lives in a hideous world of urban alienation, suggested by the design's striking de-saturated colors (reminiscent of Boogiepop Phantom), a technique that creates strong divisions between light and shadow and tends to reduce people to anonymous silhouettes. When commuting to school, Lain stands by the train door staring out at the world, but is never shown going through the door. Her family consists of a snooty, uncommunicative older sister, a computer-geek dad who might care for her if he could be torn away from his viewscreen, and a mother whose chief mission is to prevent communication at all costs--- whenever conversation threatens to become meaningful, she pointedly reminds Lain of chores that have not yet been done.

The opening scene is of the suicide of another schoolgirl, Chisa, who topples from a tall building with a blissful smile on her face. A few days later, Lain and some of the other girls start receiving emails from Chisa, who informs her that she isn't really dead, but has abandoned the flesh and met God ("Kami-sama").

Lain decides to upgrade her computer so as to be able to receive more complex messages, a chore her geek dad is happy to help her with. Her friends also drag her to a hacker nightclub, Cyberia (a reference to the book by Douglas Rushkoff), where people keep mistaking her for a "wild girl," also called Lain. A local hacker, who had earlier ingested a microchip that speeded up his time sense, starts shooting up the club. Lain confronts him and tells him that there's no point in killing people, since everyone's connected anyway. This revelation terrifies the madman and causes him to shoot himself in the head.

Eerieness ensues. Weird psychedelic patterns lurk in the shadows. Lain begins to be followed by a couple Men in Black (who are actually two of the series' more sympathetic characters). We find out about a quasi-Masonic hacker order, the Knights of the Eastern Calculus--- "Knights" for short--- that is looking for God online. Online gamers begin to be pursued by spooky otherworldly children, who then kill them. Other versions of Lain begin competing for people's attention. Lain's computer expands until her room is full of circuitry bubbling in eerie green cryogenic fluids. Lain's sister begins to receive mysterious messages ordering her to "fulfill the prophecy." When she runs into another version of herself in the front hall, she goes catatonic and can only make modem sounds. A giant glowing image of Lain appears in the sky and is seen by thousands.

Chisa, the girl who committed suicide, drops out of the story early on (though she has a cameo toward the end). She's the trailhead, and once Lain gets on the track, Chisa's job is done, and the story forgets about her.

It is revealed that Lain's family isn't her real family, but actors hired to play her family. She is actually a construct, created by a scientist named Eiri Masami, who subsequently threw himself under a train. He also created her software, with which she is able to control reality both online and off.

We are also given a lot of lectures, some by God Himself. They reference Vannevar Bush (who tried to put together an early version of the Internet in the Forties), Majestic-12, Timothy Leary, Ted Nelson and Project Xanadu, John C. Lilly, and, um, lots more.

There are references to Cordwainer Smith and Marcel Proust. I'm sure this is the only work of fiction that unites the two.

God, in one of his lengthy monologues tells us that when the Internet (called "the Wired" in Lainspeak) is sufficiently mature, it will merge with the human collective unconscious using the Shumann Resonance as a carrier, at which point physical incarnation will become unnecessary and we all get to live in the web all the time and worship Kami-sama all the time. Rapture of the nerds!

But consider the source. Kami-sama, it turns out, is a rather shabby sort of god who appears to be literally held together with gaffer tape. In reality he's Eiri Masami, who uploaded himself before committing suicide, and who has proclaimed himself God and wants to get everyone permanently online so that they can worship him. He begins to deconstruct reality. Practically everyone dies, or flips their wig.

Lain--- who actually is the Internet, incarnated by Masami for reasons that I don't believe he ever explained--- begins to fall for Kami-sama's line, but is dragged back from the brink by her sensible friend Arisu just as the world approaches its twilight.

Lain = Internet = Kami-sama. But she's a rather retiring sort of goddess, and in an act of Buddhist self-abnegation begins to erase all record of herself from existence. In the end she's a sort of blissful ghost, seeing to the happiness of the other cast members, and drinking tea and eating madeleines with the actor who played her father. Or perhaps just a hallucination who looks like him.

Impressive, neh? If nothing else, you have to give the creators credit for reading widely!

But does it add up to more than the sum of its parts? Whole subplots are either forgotten (like Chisa and the whole "fulfill the prophecy" thing), or they turn out to be Lain's hallucinations, or one of the other Lain's hallucinations, or Kami-sama's, or the hallucinations/projections of Lain pretending to be someone else. The Knights and Cyberia and the madmen and the spooky murderous children seem to be trails that don't lead anywhere in particular. The series seems a little short on plot for its 13 episodes, many of which are just one damn psychedelic thing after another. Writer Chiaka Konaka has a background in horror, and horror (especially Asian horror) doesn't have to make sense.

Here's my problem: when reality is completely plastic, and at best temporary, and when characters are equally conditional, can we possibly care about their fates? When everything is nothing, then nothing is at stake.

But since the series is in large part about alienation, could it be that the creators anticipated this objection, and dismissed it ahead of time? Maybe we're supposed to be alienated from the series.

Maybe I'll have to see it again. Though I don't think I loved it well enough to actually do that.

Lain is a series both visually and intellectually stimulating, though your brain may find itself hungry again after a few hours.

Reviews Too Late: Le Chevalier d'Eon

Le Chevalier d'Eon is a fantasy/horror/occult anime series ostensibly based on the life of a real character.

Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont was a member of le Secret du Roi, a back-door diplomatic initiative carried out by Louis XV, who could not trust his own ministers to carry out his policies (because they were a bunch of stupid, scheming aristocrats, basically). D'Eon served as both a soldier and a spy, and allegedly dressed as a woman in order to infiltrate the court of the Russian Empress Elizabeth, claiming to be Lia de Beaumont, a (presumably fictional) sister.

D'Eon later became ambassador to England. After the death of Louis XV, he was recalled, but refused to leave, and afterwards offered his secret diplomatic correspondence for sale. Louis XVI gave him a pension, and he returned to France, but insisted on being treated as a woman rather than a man. Louis indulged him in this, and d'Eon spent the rest of his life living as a woman. He fled to England during the Terror, and earned a precarious living as a fencing master, and by giving fencing exhibitions in which he fought in skirts. After his death, the autopsy showed that he was physically a male.

What does all this have to do with the anime? Nothing much, but d'Eon de Beaumont's story provides two things that seem to provide eternal fascination for the Japanese:

1. Rococo

2. Cross-dressing

Our story begins with the murdered body of Lia de Beaumont floating down the Seine on a boat. The word "Psalms" has been written in blood on her coffin. She has been stuffed with mercury, which prevents her from decaying, which in turn disqualifies her for a church burial. (I have no idea if this was actual Catholic practice or not.)

Because she wasn't buried in holy ground, Lia's spirit is condemned to wander the earth--- and partly for these reasons, partly for others revealed later, she's really pissed off.

Lia's younger brother, d'Eon, is a junior member of Le Secret du Roi. He is young and naive enough to believe absolutely in the rightness and majesty of "Louis XV, who is in God's grace." He swears to avenge his sister, and is soon hip-deep in occult conspiracy.

On one side of the conspiracy are the members of Le Secret, who are directed by the (serene, lazy) king and by his queen, Maria Leszczyńska, who in this telling is a powerful sorceress. Her agents are identified by the letters nqm, the Hebrew word "naqam," meaning "to avenge." She also has conversations with the skull of a little girl known as Belle, who spies for her on the psychic plane. She is aided by Anna, d'Eon's betrothed, who is governess to Prince Auguste, later Louis XVI.

Opposed to the king are the Revolutionary Brotherhood, led by the Marquise de Pompadour and her chief henchman le Comte de St.-Germain, who seems to be Foreign Minister. St.-Germain has in his employ Cagliostro and the latter's wife Lorenza, and is working in the interests of the Duc d'Orleans, who they plan to make king in place of Louis. (Or maybe they just want the Orleans money and patronage.)

Sorcerers--- "Poets"--- base their power on the Psalms. The Psalms are treated in this story much like Buddhist sutras are in Chinese vampire films--- basically as spells that, as in Chinese vampire films, can be used to animate the dead--- who appear as horrid zombies with their blood replaced by mercury, and with the letters H^O written on their foreheads. (The carat stands for three dots in the shape of a triangle, which I seem unable to render here.) H^O stands for "hommes optare," a Franco-Latin phrase that seems to mean something like "(men) (to desire)"--- the series seems a little careless in the use of infinitives--- but which perhaps more useful as an anagram for "metamorphosis."

(The series as a whole is fond of mixing French with Latin, and with anagrams in general. The closing titles always remind us that Lia d'Eon is an anagram for Lion Dea.)

All this information is dumped on the viewer within the first three or four episodes. I advise taking copious notes.

This series is saturated with Christianity, but it's not Christianity as Westerners understand it. It's a very Japanese take on Catholicism, mixed up with Chinese Yellow Paper Magic and the sort of occultism that, back in France, gave us the Affaire of the Poisons.

Anyway, d'Eon--- remember him?--- finds that his investigations into his sister's death are cut short when the Duc d'Orleans has him arrested. He escapes with the aid of Robin, a boy page sent to his assistance by Queen Maria, and by Durand, another real-life member of Le Secret, and who in this story was in love with Lia. D'Eon also acquires the aid of his real-life Maitre d'Armes Teillagory, his fencing master, one of Louis XIV's old musketeers, who is addressed throughout by the Japanese word as "sensei," with all that this implies. Teillagory suggests they call themselves the "Four Musketeers."

The Musketeers are attacked by mercury-stuffed zombies. D'Eon is possessed by the spirit of his sister, who slaughters zombies left and right while quoting liberally from the Psalms of Vengeance. D'Eon is horrified by the depth of his sister's anger.

The Musketeers bust the Duc d'Orleans scheme, and the Duc is arrested. One of his accomplices, the Russian statesman Mikhail Vorontsov, escapes, and the Musketeers pursue him to Russia and the court of Empress Elizabeth. Conspiracies are met with counter-conspiracies, and the result is the ghastly death of most of the nobility and royalty of Russia. Lia continues to animate her brother's body, usually with violent results.

In Russia we meet the incredibly young Maximilien Robespierre-- or is he incredibly old?--- who possesses the volume of the Royal Psalms, which when activated by human blood not only predict the future of the royal house of France, but can project mighty sorcery. Our heroes pursue Robespierre to England, where they encounter his sensei, Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of the Hellfire Club, and his posse including the Earl of Sandwich and and the poet Paul Whitehead. Their own magic motto is Novus Ordo Seclorum.

Another massacre, this one of the English nobility, ensues. Dashwood kills his disloyal student Robespierre, but he is resurrected. Lia totally kicks Dashwood's ass. George III abdicates to become a monk. (?!?) The surviving members of Dashwood's order flee to the New World, where they presumably become the American Founding Fathers.

We discover from all the infighting that the Revolutionary Brethren are not exactly united in what sort of revolution they intend. Dashwood and Pompadour want to chop away the rot surrounding monarchy in order to strengthen it; Robespierre wants to destroy all royals and establish a republic.

Nor are the members of Le Secret and the Four Musketeers without their own private agendas. King Louis is trying to hide a secret that would rock his throne, and for that reason is faithless to all. Conspiracies pile up. Reversals abound. The meaning of Versailles--- vers ailles, a book of poetry, i.e. the Psalms, is revealed. (This appears to be a false etymology, fwiw, but it helps to provide a truly cool climax to a major subplot.) Lia and d'Eon repeatedly get the crap kicked out of them. Most everyone dies tragically, except for d'Eon, who manages in the face of repeated betrayals to remain true to his own beliefs, and who narrates the story in his old age.

The plot is amazingly complex, and I'm not entirely convinced the writer Tow Ubukata succeeded entirely in tying up all loose ends. But it's a wonderfully stylish, intricate work, visually impressive, occasionally scary, often genuinely moving.

It's sort of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer set in the 18th century, except with a more complex mythology.

For everyone who's into cool swordfights, zombies, and eccentric aspects of 18th century history.

Reviews Too Late: Saints and Soldiers

There's nothing for setting the tone like beginning your film with an act of moral cowardice, just to let everyone know where we all stand. This we find in Saints and Soldiers, a World War II drama--- "Based on Real Events" ---which opens with the Malmedy Massacre, which as history (but not Bill O'Reilly) knows was a slaughter of American POWs by soldiers of the 1st SS Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler panzer division under the command of Obersturmbannfuhrer Jochim Peiper (a swine).

In the movie, the Germans kill the Americans not because they were ordered to, or because it was standard practice for this outfit, but because they overreacted to an American prisoner's attempt to escape. The massacre is shown to be the Americans' fault, just like Bill O'Reilly says.

Lord knows we can't have a World War II movie that shows the SS as bad people. We might offend the Nazis!

After the massacre, four escaped soldiers meet up in the woods and decide to make a heroic march 20 miles across country to the American lines, thus duplicating the feeble-brained decision of soldiers in another dimwitted war film, Battle of the Bulge, in which survivors of the Malmedy massacre make it all the way to Bastogne, 32 miles away as the crow flies.

(In fact, the town of Malmedy itself was still in American hands, and real-life survivors had a walk of only a few kilometers.)

Of the three survivors, one is a Dim Country Boy, one a Tough Sergeant, and one a Jewish Atheist from Brooklyn, the latter encompassing in one person no less than three of the necessary categories for members of a rifle squad according to Hollywood rules.

The fourth is more interesting: he's a shellshocked Mormon, prone to visions of dead civilians he's accidentally killed, but an exceedingly deadly fighter when he's in his right mind. He and the Sarge are both paratroopers. In real life, the airborne hadn't entered the battle when the action of the film starts, so the film comes up with an unlikely reason for their presence. Since they're not actually jumping out of aircraft at any point in this film, the necessity of their being paratroopers escaped me.

The unit is soon joined by a shot-down British aviator, carrying a roll of film that contains a Vital Secret that must be got to the allies as soon as possible. This is so implausible that the screenwriters never explain what the Vital Secret actually is. (Possibly a closeup of the swastika on Jochim Peiper's underpants.)

Most of the film consists of the cast members trudging through the snow while engaging in clumsy dialog meant to reveal character. (The British flier actually asks the other characters to each tell him a secret, which--- we have already established that they're all idiots--- they do.) The Jewish Atheist and the Mormon debate the existence and the benevolence of God. The debate is never resolved, but the action of the film tends to tilt us toward the negative.

God save us from tedious action films! Many scenes of shivering GIs trudging through the snow while engaged in pointless dialog turns out not to be your guarantee of thrills and suspense.

When we finally get to the action, it's not bad. The film made excellent use of a bunch of World War II re-creationists that they hauled up to the snow-covered mountains of northern Utah.

Most of the cast die heroically, stupidly, or arbitrarily, which is realistic enough. The Vital Secret is passed on to the Allies, who--- as a consequence, no doubt--- win the war.

I'm still wondering what the real-life basis for the film is. My guess is, "There was this battle, it had Germans and Americans, we'll put that in our movie."

By the way, when the British pilot falls into a river, he comes out without his mustache. I thought I'd mention that to show just how closely I view these films.

My advice is to watch Band of Brothers all over again.

Reviews Too Late: Kamikaze Girls

So having finished This is Not a Game, and having finished--- I think--- the Big Mystery Project I Still Can't Talk About, I sat down with relief and pleasure to view Kamikaze Girls (2004), which on one hand is a coming-of-age story set in Japan and on the other hand is about aliens, or at any rate alien cultures not suitable for export.

The movie is based on a novel by Novala Takemoto ("Wild Rose"), who is pretty eccentric himself, being a pot-smoking, heterosexual designer of lolita fashion described as having "a young lady's charisma." (Needless to say, he's also a science fiction fan.)

The Japanese title of the film and novel is Shimotsuma Monogatari, "Shimotsuma Story," and has nothing to do with kamikazes one way or another.

The film opens with Momoko, the heroine, zooming across the rural Japanese countryside on her motor scooter. She's hit by a truck carrying a load of cabbages and flies through the air, mentally saying goodbye to her grandmother and useless father. At which point she remarks, "This is a pretty short movie. Maybe I'd better start earlier," and she does.

Momoko (Kyoko Fukada) is the product of a broken home who opts to live with her father, because he's less conventional and more entertaining. He's also a failed yakuza and a forger of Versace and Universal Studio products. When the legitimate owners of these copyrights come looking, he has to relocate to rural Shimotsuma.

This is a problem for Momoko, because she's a "sweet lolita." Japanese lolitas have nothing to do with the novel, or with leering Humberts, but are a subculture who dress up in elaborate lacy costumes inspired by Victorian baby dolls. Momoko eats mainly sweets, or at any rate pink things, while dreaming of living at the rococo court of Louix XV.

At any rate Momoko, prancing with her parasol down rural roads while avoiding the buffalo flop, does not find a lot of support for her lifestyle in Shimotsuma, where everyone gets their clothing from the Japanese equivalent of Wal-Mart. She doesn't seem to mind this. Despite the frills, she's a surprisingly strong character, with a rather depressed but realistic view of humanity. She doesn't expect much from people: she prefers a world of fantasy.

Enter Ichiko, played by bad-girl rocker Anna Tsuchiya. Ichiko wants to buy up all Momoko's stash of fake Versace. Ichiko is a "yanki," which seems to have little to do with actual Yankees, but appears to refer to people devoted to extremely individualistic behavior. Ichiko is also a member of an all-girl biker gang, "bikes" in this cases being scooters, because this is still rural Japan after all.

What being an individualistic yanki has to do with bikers who all act and dress alike is one of those contradictions that the movie is destined to explore.

In any case Tsuchiya's performance as Ichiko is remarkable. Swearing, swaggering, spitting, and talking Japanese like a guy while dressing like a schoolgirl from Hell, Ichiko is about as genuine a biker as Momoko is a genuine Versailles courtier. The artificiality of their behavior is highlighted by the scenes of Shimotsuma, with its rice paddies and water buffalo, against which their stances are played out.

As the movie progresses, we find out who these kids really are. And it's Ichiko's machismo that proves fragile, while Momoko's individuality is shown to be based on true inner strength. It's Momoko, in the end, who ends up taking on a girl gang with a baseball bat. (Which I mention just to show you that the film isn't entirely about dressing up.)

Despite a complete lack of interest in either frilly fashion or biker gangs, I found myself liking this film a lot. Part of this is the extremely witty way in which the movie is assembled: lots of cross-cutting, ironic visual commentary on the action, satire on consumerism, burlesque, parody, and clever use of music. The plotting is quite keen. The teen angst is real but we're not forced to take it any more seriously than it deserves, and the two principals are attractive.

I'm sure the jokes didn't all translate, but there were plenty left over.

Reviews Too Late

My life of late has sort of sucked. I got really sick. I spent vast amount of time trying to get my taxes done on time. I went to the Jack Williamson lecture in Portales and hung out with Patrice Caldwell and Connie Willis and Steve Gould. (That was the part that didn't suck.) Then I came home and got sick again, this time with a totally different virus.

Still, I seem able to put words together in a semi-coherent fashion, so I thought I'd inaugurate a new feature, Reviews Too Late.

Since I live in the country, it's a 75-mile round trip to see a movie. Which means that I usually don't see them till they come out on DVD, six months or so after they've hit the theaters.

Still, I watched a bunch of movies while I was doing my taxes, mostly action films where I only had to look up when explosions were going on. And I have opinions. So why not share them, now that it's too late to make any difference in your life?

So call me quixotic.

Shoot 'Em Up

Okay, so the title pretty much tell you all you need to know.

This movie opens with the seedy Mr. Smith, played by Clive Owen, eating a carrot at a bus stop. A hugely pregnant woman staggers by in a state of terror. She is followed by a nasty man uttering threats against her life. Mr. Smith intervenes, kills the nasty man, and saves the woman. Good on him.

But then it turns out the nasty man has about fifty friends, all in black leather trench coats, all heavily armed.

Mr. Smith, by contrast, has a pregnant woman and a carrot. He soon finds himself delivering a baby in the middle of a firefight in which he kills all fifty assailants. (I don't think I'm giving away much here, since this all happens in the first ten minutes.)

The fifty assailants each turn out to have fifty friends. The mother is killed. Mr. Smith is left with a baby and a lot of lead flying his way. So he finds a lactating hooker and . . .

Well, stuff ensues. Chase scenes alternate with firefights, unless of course the firefights and chase scenes happen at the same time. Points for Paul Giamatti as the unconventional bad guy ("Do we really suck or is this guy really that good?"). Points for imaginative use of a carrot. ("Eat your vegetables!") Points for the cinema's only chase scene featuring skydivers, guys zooming around the sky shooting automatic weapons at each other. Mr. Smith kills people while sliding on grease, while watching TV, while operating shotguns by remote control, and while having sex ("Talk about shooting your wad.").

If you don't mind movies in which the entire sountrack is gunfire and heavy metal music--- and apparently I don't--- then this is a lot of fun. The movie isn't meant at all to be taken seriously (Steven Seagal, take note), and that's all to the good.

And check out the bonus features on the DVD. which shows how writer/director Michael Davis animated the entire film, shot for shot, on his Apple before he so much as shot a single live-action frame. He got the studios to finance the movie by showing them the movie on his computer!

This, my friends, is a major paradigm shift.

300

Wow. Gay fascist porn.

And it's bad gay fascist porn. Watch humorless Aryan bodybuilders chop their way through swarms of mixed-race and Negroid subhumans in an orgy of computer-generated blood spatter! And even with all the CGI available, and the three hundred promised by the title, there never seem to be more than a couple dozen of our heroes.

There are only two women in the movie, and both get raped. (Thank you, Frank Miller.)

I'd make relentless savage fun of this movie, but Robot Chicken already made the perfect parody.

The thing that really offends me about this film, however, is that the success of this movie means it will be at least a generation until Steven Pressfield's superb Gates of Fire is made into a movie.

Kiss Me, Deadly

I have related elsewhere my singular history with Mickey Spillane. Now I've seen what is doubtless the best movie made from his work.

This film is so crazed, so demented, so weirdly psychotically paranoid, so totally far out there, that it took unanimous raves from French film directors to save it from obscurity.

We have Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer--- not as Spillane portrayed him, a brutal New York psycho obsessed with justice--- but a seedy, brutal L.A. gumshoe who makes his living by getting his secretary, Velda, to sleep with rich husbands, then blackmailing them. The Hammer-of-the-film truly enjoys violence, enjoys inflicting pain, and enjoys his hideous, creepy misogyny.

Meeker's not terribly sympathetic in the role, but the rest of the cast is pretty good. We've got the young Cloris Leachman in her first role, the excellent Maxine Cooper as Velda, and the young Jack Elam as a thug. (There is something very desperately wrong about the very idea of a young Jack Elam, isn't there?) We've also got Hollywood stalwarts like Juano Hernandez, Paul Stewart, and Jack Lambert.

Directing is Robert Aldrich, later responsible for such macho fare as The Flight of the Phoenix, Ten Seconds to Hell, The Choirboys, and Ulzana's Raid, plus the Gothic kink of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and The Killing of Sister George. This movie shows that he's learned all the lessons that German Expressionism had to offer--- we've got all the weird camera angles, the shadows, the looming doom. (All ways to make a low-budget film seem interesting.)

We start with a naked woman running down the road in a trenchcoat, and end with nuclear annihilation by way of treachery, torture, bombings, and beatings. Even today, the utter nihilism of it all is breathtaking. I can't but wonder how a Fifties audience would have reacted.

Kiss Me, Deadly is the film that created the trope of the Glowing Thing in the Box that was later used to such effect in Repo Man and Pulp Fiction. This is, I have to say, its best use.

Spillane supposedly hated the movie. He was wrong.