Weekly read/watch meme
List of Fantasia movies:
- Evangelion 3.0: with more resignation this round -- I suppose if anyone did tell Shinji "Don't do what your dad says, he's trying to end the world," Gendou would just be like, "I took that into account in my Xanatos gambit!" and back we are at square one: apocalypse.
- Drug War: the latest Johnnie To. Combination of Mission Impossible stylish action, HK actors-playing-roles meta, toilet-level vérité portrayal of the SEAsian stimulant trade (crime and punishment) and the awkward fact that Chinese movies are not allowed to show the recreational effect of drugs realistically ever. High body count... for a Johnnie To movie, which is saying something.
- The Complex: the latest Nakata Hideo. Weak execution on the ending -- Dark Water staked out the same emotional ground and was more affecting -- but I guess it's nice to see one of these that's not purely Bad Mom feminine guilt (and where the guilt is explicitly misplaced all around).
- Far East Fragments: short film omnibus with some anime. I've been looking for a Youtube of the Korean Misandry Witch, but no luck.
- I'll Follow You Down: indie SF featuring Gillian Andersen and Haley Joel Osment.
- Mistaken for Strangers: the documentary on The National I wrote up a bit on Tumblr.
- Slipstreams and Eclectic Sheep: more short films, SF focus this time. A number of these were very good. I like SF shorts as an extension of the idea that short stories are the best medium for SF -- in commecial film, blowing an interesting SF idea up to feature length usually just means adding action sequences.
- I Am Divine: affectionate documentary. Divine lived and died as if he'd made a bargain when very young and forgot it until it was called in -- and not a bad bargain, at that.
- DJXL5 Decadent Zappin' Party: the 10th anniversary!
- The History of the Devil: not a movie -- a staging of the Clive Barker play by the Title 66 indie theatre group at Cinquieme Salle. The production had a lot of moving parts and costume changes; everyone involved seemed to be younger than the play itself. Both text and staging were sloppy, enthusiastic, and compelling. It was absolutely not what I expected? More a cross between The Master and Marguerita and Sandman than Hellraiser. Dense enough that I decided two scenes in that I'd have to acquire a text copy just to parse the dialogue.
- Thermae Romae: rejigs the manga storyline into proto-romcom plus love letter to kaizen ideal of progress. Time travel and bathroom humour survive intact. Main Roman characters are played by Japanese actors, which... I kept picturing the casting director who got sent out with a photo of the statue of Antinous. A lot of careful historian consultancy onscreen, mind you -- someone told art direction that those pillars would have been painted pink, and yes there were black and brown-skinned people living in Imperial Rome.
- Berzerk II and III: as beautiful-looking as the first, and in the end they managed to cram in all the necessary storytelling, I think? Don't know if it's meant to continue in more movies or OAV or whatever (now that they've set up the characters/plot threads missing from the TV series).
- Tales from the Dark: three short films (three more in a second omnibus I'll have to track down). Hong Kong is the market that, over the past decade and half, took the "Asian ghost movie" template and refined it into a form of urban fantasy. Simon Lam brings the social commentary, Lee Chingai the spirit detective-comedy, Fruit Chan the texture of urban anthropology. Well -- it's not Dumplings, but bless Lilian Lee, what is?
- The Conjuring: all-out 70s period piece a la The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, etc. Vera Farmiga's ruffled blouses and maxi skirts! In 2013 one gets to see some very good actresses in horror movies -- Lili Taylor, Jessica Chastain -- it's a relatively female-oriented genre, as oft noted, preoccupied with dangers/fears/guilts that are merely feminine reality blown up to Stay Puft size. Which is why social conservatism is an underlying force in horror, or rather a recurring fallback position: the devil is by definition what disrupts the natural order of heterosexual marriage, parent-child relationships... It's always a visceral emotional relief in these movies (Nakata's too) when the menfolk take charge with their solar, science-based pragmatism, pooh-poohing ghosts and whacking heads off zombies. If there's a subversive message, it's that the male approach to the problem doesn't -- usually, ultimately -- win, and certainly not by itself. (It doesn't here, despite Andrew O'Hehir's analysis.) But the further back in time you go, the more the patriarchal aspect gets played straight.
- Attack on Titan, four or six episodes thereof: it feels like the story is just getting started. Great monster, though -- the Titans would have sounded ridiculous to me if someone had straight up tried to explain them, but as presented they hit that SCP Foundation sweet spot of haunting inexplicability.
- The Venice Syndrome: a documentary on how Venice will be emptied of residents by 2030, due to an overrun of tourists, lack of infrastructure investment, and all around failures of municipal governance. Sobering, but features some great portraits of said residents -- real cap-C Characters.
Anyway, the real Lorraine Warren was in the Amityville doc I watched last year, and their real life house is just like that. What provision she's made for that stuff after she's gone, I'm sure I don't know; maybe the Church gets saddled with the lot. XD;