- A quick note... 2003-06-17 14:42:41 EK: Yeah, it was a reference to Let's Classy, more of a "please have it this year," but sounds like it's not possible. I rather guessed that was the case. *Sigh* If it wasn't for the recent car work and having to pay my health insurance, I'd be willing to pony up for the $$$.
-
“It’s not that I like being around the cats, it’s just that I can’t seem to stop having sex with them.”
2003-06-16 00:37:17
Normally I’d just let a quote like the one above stand incognito for the very few who might get it, but I suppose this one is a little too far out there to stand solo without getting weird stares directed at me from across the e-room.
The quote is an apocryphal attribution to Ernest Hemmingway. Apparently, being one of the nation’s “real men” as displayed through his works and in his rather flamboyantly “manly” expeditions, Hemmingway was of the opinion that Psychoanalysis, with all of its intensely Freudian interpretation (at the time), was complete and utter bunk. The obsession with sex and the concepts of Oedipus complexes and the like irritated him to no end. Forced by his society standing into numerous social meetings with said psychologists, he was once approached by a psychologist who said (reciting from memory here) “So Mr. Hemmingway, I understand that you fancy cats instead of dogs. That’s very interesting.” Hemmingway responded with the sentence above. Needless to say, the room went quiet, and the psychologist scurried off elsewhere to find more tractable victims.
(One other quote, gleaned from my e-mail:
Morissey, former singer of The Smiths, who originally wrote and
performed the song "How Soon Is Now?" in 1984 had this to say about
t.A.T.u. in the U.K.'s Word Magazine:
Word: Did you hear t.A.T.u.'s version of "How Soon Is Now?"
Morissey: Yes, it was magnificent. Absolutely. Again, I don't know
much about them.
Word: They are teenage Russian lesbians.
Morissey: Well, aren't we all?)
I hope you’ll excuse a little incoherence here, I’ve been rather overtired for the last week or so. My night-person nature is catching up to me and the weekend was pure hell with me being unable to get in bed before around 4 or 4:30, which threw off the weekend, when I still had to get up early to tend to cultures and meet with friends...which then led to another late night. Bleh. That, and I’m working on my third Guinness.
I’ll start off with that great substitution for actual content, the quiz! This one comes from Jingoro, and I confess that I’ve cheated a bit by putting off the answers this long. For those outside of lj, the quiz works like this. Someone answers five questions passed on to them. That person then receives requests for five questions in their comment page. They provide, and so the system propagates. Frankly, I know I’m gonna regret this because I’ve no idea how to conduct an interview, even in a jocular manner, of my friends and lj-neighbors without striking something a little too close to home. So I’ve waited until the general flood died down in hopes I won’t get many requests. I did something similar a long time ago, and got someone very dear to me to burst into tears by accident. I’ve been more than a little wary ever since. Especially since I‘d been half-way sadistically expecting it.
Anyway, here we go.
1) Educational path aside, what would your dream job be. The kind that would be so comfortable to you you'd wear it like a good ol' shoe, content to ejoy every day of it, if it were profitable or not?
_No such job. My major problem is that I know no matter what pursuit I’d follow, no matter how much I think I’d want it and how cool it would be, or how interesting, or adventurous, I’d be bored of it within a year or two. Ideally, it’d be something that was unpredictable, changed frequently, and yet I’d still remain good at it. Travel around the world, but still have places left to come home to. Use skills that I’d mastered for years and still always be learning something new. Allow for mood swings wherein I don’t want to speak to another human being for a month, and then allow me right back into it. And doing something important, something that leaves a trace, detectable legacy behind without having to deal with stuffed shirts from the same field at faux-formal international meetings. Failing all that (and it does), a writer.
_Oh, and “education”? Fuck that. That’s gotta be the absolute last thing on the list. (Yes, even after _that_.) I ain’t training to be a teacher here...
2) We all have our buttons that people push. What's almost certain to set you off or put you in a lousy mood?
_Stupidly enough, being told something that I already know. Being told a joke whose punchline is a mile off, but a hundred feet high on a Nebraska plain, someone repeating a line from a film immediately after it’s said on the screen, someone reading the subtitles out loud, being told the same story over again by the same person ‘cause they can’t remember that they’ve already told it, or no one laughed so they figure we didn’t hear it all. Or especially when the same topic comes up on a mailing list AGAIN. The thirtieth time someone starts a long, unfunny movie quote and I just wish I could fast forward THEM. This also goes to explanations where I already know the excuses. Someone attempting to impress with an elaborate point I already know or could easily deduce. I remember getting stuck in an elevator with this comp sci major who tried to strike up a conversation with a particularly imbecilic observation about some commonly held saying. (Can’t remember it exactly, but it was roughly the level of “I wonder why people say “see you” when they leave?”) I swear I had to refrain from punching him in the face for being such an idiot. I think I learned this particular hatred from a friend of mine who used to adopt a “catch phrase” for himself and do his level best to incorporate it into EVERY CONVERSATION at least twice. It was the second most annoying thing on earth, especially since he seemed to get stuck on the same single phrase for MONTHS at a time. Star Wars was an endless well of witticism for him, and Spock’s “The needs of the many...outweigh...the needs of the few” accounted for 20% of his conversation for about three months straight. I swear, if anyone starts that up around me again, I will stop stabbing when they are no longer capable of speaking.
_Yes, I do realize how hypocritical this is, considering how much I tend to natter on with little sign of stopping. Somehow, I deal with it.
3) You can invite two people, who can be real people from today or any period in history, for dinner and an evening's entertainment. Who do you invite, what do you discuss. After dinner what do you do?
-Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Let’s just say they don’t make it to “after” dinner. (And make sure I’ve got the water glasses at the right place settings.)
_OK, actual answers. Hmmm.... I honestly don’t know who I’d like to invite for my own benefit. My heroes are all rather disparate, and I have practically nothing in common with any of them, nor they with one another. I’m not so naive as to think I could glean any of their genius, and I don’t really have any unanswered questions, except, possibly, the obvious question for Ambrose Bierce (“Where did you go?”) and that would hardly cover the entire dinner. However, there are some conversations that I would like to sit in on, which would either make me a lousy host or them lousy guests. Sitting across the table from a discussion on traditional magiks between Alistair Crowley and Alan Moore would keep me enthralled through a twelve course dinner. I’m kind of curious if a dinner with Joey Ramone and Sid Vicious would just result in the most stone-silent, awkward dinner ever. (No idea how they felt about one another.) And, I know I’m sounding more and more like a single-minded fanboy on this topic (I’m not actually that obsessed, or that idealized about the quality of his work, he’s just such a nice iconic figure) but having HPL sitting across the table from EAP would be an incredible experience. Just as I tend to idolize HPL, he did for EAP and to grant him the chance to speak face-to-face with his own favorite writer would be a major treat. Unless, of course, he turns out to have the same problem as me...
4) Go back in time, change something. You've got the time machine, the knowledge, the cure, or the gun. What's it going to be?
_I always hate questions like these, because the presumption on my part in making decisions for the formative history of the world is a hubris explored to the n-th power in every manner of fantasy and science-fiction. Killing Hitler would place a saner leader in charge of the Nazi party, and possibly result in the decimation of the English army, and eventually England, at the battle of Dunkirk. Destruction of the Nazi or Stalinist pogroms (somehow) might lead to the rise of less obtrusive but no less genocidal despots and systemic extermination whose results might be even worse without engendering the world outrage necessary to organize against it. Prevention of the tragedy of the Titanic allows for a accelerating wave of....well, “arrogance” is a bad term, but engineering arrogance towards size and scale, setting up an even more deadly disaster. Halting of 9/11 would mean the return of Hussein to power in Iraq where he could continue killing the Kurds. The Black Plague seems an obvious target, but I’m not so sure what effect it’s absence would have. Further intellectual acceleration on the part of European nations might lead to unbreakable world cultural domination due to the acquisition of more and greater power even longer before much of the rest of the world, and an end to self-rule in much of the world. If I were to choose anything, it would likely be some kind of alert to mobilize during Pearl Harbor. Even an ineffective attack on a US base by the Japanese bombers would be sufficient excuse for the US to enter WWII. Lessening the losses at Pearl Harbor might bring the war to an end a few years sooner, with much the same effect on world history, but with lesser loss of life. If not that, then I’d do something recent and generally harmless. Two years ago, offices of the Jim Henson company, with the money to fund Farscape’s final season.
5) Presume a little... there's a Mrs. Wagner out there somewhere, sometime, after all... take a wild guess what she's doing right now.
_”Presume a little?” Uh....ouch.
_Sleeping.
I’ve had a rather bad week in general. This chronically-overtired feeling that’s been dogging me for a week has led me to being exceedingly irritable and snappish when I haven’t been staring blankly ahead, trying not to drift off in the middle of important meetings.
On the other hand, there’ve been a few things that’ve irritated me no end. First of all, I’ve had to send out my first “un-invitation” for AWA, basically telling one AMVer group “sorry, can’t be a guest this year” in order to make room for some new blood. Oh yeah, let me tell you, that feels fun. I agonized over that stupid e-mail for hours, trying to be up-front without ever coming off as insulting or saying “you’re not good enough” in any way that might make for some bad or disappointed feelings at the con. AWA has now, mostly to the credit of Jingoro, grown into a major social event for AMVers. Now we’ve finally reached the critical mass whereby we’ve got more friends who want to have “guest blocks” than we have room if we want to give the new guy a chance as well. We’ve been expanding and gaining notoriety basically at the same rate in which the track itself expanded to encompass events, games, and projects, until now. We’re pushing pretty damn close to 24/3, and all the late-night stuff is in hours too weird to put anything we want a decent sized audience for. We’re outta room for extra, new guests as of this year. And Jingoro stepped down from directorship two years ago. Hmmmm......got out just in time, didn’t he....
To just add to the joy I’ve received from having to uninvite people whose AMV’s I love (and yes, at least one of them reads my lj, so I suppose this is retroactive sucking up, if you want to consider it that), I’ve recently received notice of underground rumblings in the AMV community, speaking out against our beloved south-eastern convention. His were rather nebulous complaints about the “politics” surrounding AWA and the AMVers who attend. I’d give his lj address, but I’m not sure I should, since this was sent to me via e-mail, despite an initial, thwarted attempt to post it in the post’s lj comments section. I think I can trust the individual in question to speak up if he doesn’t mind the assignation. Anyway, this was especially worrying because his comments section filled up with people agreeing with him. Now, I’ve only been in control of this for the last year and some number of months (less than 12, or I’m really screwed right now), but during that time, I’ve done everything in my power to prevent the build up of exactly this kind of “politics”....that is to say, any politics at all. AWA should be a con where AMVers can get together and just have fun watching Japanese animation set to music. Nobody snotty, nobody uppity, everyone just hanging out. To be perfectly honest, AWA is a small convention. Oh, it’s been growing, we’re hoping to top out at 4k this year, but its aim has never been size or comprehensive address of all of anime fandom. If people stop coming to AWA, it’ll scale back, not try and lure people in. Attempts to transplant J-pop groups into our con has been met with incredulous refusal. LARPS in particular aren’t welcome outside of the gaming room. Counter-genre costumers are regarded with....well....incomprehension at best. AWA is the only con I know of whose guiding principle is “this is our party...wanna join in? We’re watching some cartoons. So long as you behave yourself and don’t mind making your own fun, you’re welcome to come back anytime, but we aren’t here to entertain you. We’re here to entertain ourselves.” I’ve attended every AWA since the first one, and still remember when the con motto was “No Magic, no Klingons, and NO FUCKING VAMPIRES!” and it still doubled in size every year. People who are attending this year won’t even know about the ceremonial burning of the Magic cards, much less why it used to be done.
This...abrasive....attitude had gained popularity in those sectors of anime fandom who were sick and fucking tired of going to anime conventions that turned out to not actually be about anime after all. I mean, we all love Bruce Campbell, but what the hell does he have to do with animation? Why does he have a panel? Why are there thirty people running around a convention devoted to anime fandom in long black capes with their arms crossed in front of them reciting at every turn “you can’t see me”? Should I have to dodge a Battalith in a panel on voice actors?
It also gained popularity in those sectors of fandom that were really, REALLY tired of being pandered to. Much to the director’s astonishment, they discovered that there are a lot of guests and stars who appreciate it when they get invited to a room party, and it’s NOT because they’re a guest or a VA for some fan-scuzz’s favorite character, but because some staffer really thinks they’d be a great person to drink with. With a bare few exceptions (such as the famous hunt to find Amy Howard, the voice of Nova from Starblazers (now Amy Howard Wilson, DIRECTLY thanks to AWA)) no VA, actress, producer or animator has ever been contacted by AWA seeking to be a guest. They’ve always come to us. The message is simple. If you don’t already want to be here, we don’t want you here. It’s our party. You’ll harsh our buzz. (Hell, Dave sneaks off to the hotel hot-tub at least once during the convention.) God knows I enjoy their kind of party, and it doesn’t involve sitting and waiting for someone to come up and entertain me. It involves making friends and renewing old ones over a beer, geekish conversations about Japanese animation, catching a couple of shows, sure, but not spending the whole con in ANY single room, meeting a couple of guests in a room party (pretty please EK?), maybe holding my own (haven’t yet...unless you count the VAT), getting in on some stupid in-jokes (WWMMD), and just collapsing after it was all over.
Unfortunately, as is always true, size mutes everything. To say that this trend was apparent in the first four or five AWAs is putting it exceedlingly mildly. Every year there’d be two or three guys at the final “bitch session” (complaint session about the convention where you can talk at the directors directly) who’d managed to just “not get it” for the whole convention and who were just pissed off that, upon paying their entrance fee, they weren’t the close personal friend of every staffer at the con. Hell, there was one guy who, in a quaivering voice, said essentially that at _last_ year’s con.
Screw you buddy.
You can’t make the effort to try and be sociable with someone you’ve never met before? Say hi, ask ‘em about their costume, purchases, AMV, opinion? Your loss. I’m one of the shyest guys you’ll ever meet, and I’ve gone from never having seen any of these people before in my life to the director of the biggest AMV contest in the country since I began attending AWA. If my introverted ass can make that much progress, I’ll guarantee you, making the effort will find SOMEONE that’ll make you glad you came to our little party.
But the size of the convention now certifies the arrival of entire cliques at AWA. Before, you were kind of forced to socialize with complete strangers because of the size of the con. You’ve already seen that guy sitting next to you in two other panels, you might as well introduce yourself. Now, you and ten of your friends arrive and travel in a cluster. Or maybe all those costumers you recognize from Otakon...you can go join them. And go to dinner with them. And hang out at their room party. And basically spend the entire con insulated against anyone you haven’t already established a friendship with. Then, the only thing you notice about the convention is that it ISN’T trotting out to entertain you every ten minutes. Or you can’t get into that room party with the people you snubbed earlier today. Thus the con must suck, right?
Then, on top of all this, came AMVs. AMVs at AWA are something of an anomaly. Why? Well, I was introduced to AMVs way the hell back before there even was an AWA, back when “Anime X” (don’t bother searching, all you’ll find are porn sites) was running the anime room at Dragon Con. More specifically, back when Dave Merrill (con chair of AWA) was running “Anime Hell” from 11:00 till whenever at Dragon Con. He used to show the weirdest stuff you’ve ever seen at those shows, and in-between cuing up the next clip of the farting preacher or “Bad American Dubbing,” he’d slip in some AMVs of Jeff Taterek’s work, or the film group he used to do parodies with: Corn Pone Flicks. (Anyone who lists “AMV legends” without these guys doesn’t know what they’re talking about.) When Anime X decided to start up their own convention based on what they saw going wrong at all the conventions they’d been to before, it was only logical that AMVs sneak in there somewhere.
The AMV contest, something of a new trick in and of itself, was initiated by a fellow AMVer, Jingoro, who ran it for seven years. In the long tradition of blaming the predecessor, the complaints now being issued about “AMV politics around AWA” I blame entirely on him. And one other guy, but we’ll come to that. Jingoro started the contests without an altruistic thought in his mind (go ahead, ask him). He wanted videos. The best way to get videos, was to hold a contest. That way, people sent them to him by the crate load merely for the honor of being judged against others of similar talent, and he ends up with a pile of that most rarified item in all of anime fandom, the AMV. (In the era before computer editing, an AMV usually meant that the maker was either rich, capable of field-stripping a flying-erase head in thirty seconds, or sneaking into a TV film editing lab after hours.) The first contest had...I think...twelve entries, (Not bad for a convention of 300 people...) and spiraled rapidly out of control from there. Last year we had as many submissions as we had ATTENDEES in the first year. The first few years of expansion were entirely due to Jingoro getting the word out down the old tape-trading networks, and, quickly after that, through bulletin boards and the like. From there he built the AWA AMV collection and contest brick by brick, constantly pushing for more and more room, more and more space, until it had the second largest room all to itself for the entire con. He’s the one responsible for getting everyone together, for inspiring dozens of new AMVers (myself included) by providing the collective boot in the ass to “get the fricking thing finished!” (wwmmd) in time for a convention so it could actually get up there on the screen where everyone can watch it. He’s the one to provide a central watering-hole for all the AMVers out there who’ve never met or never been aware of one another to come together and find out that they really aren’t disembodied fiends of annoyance and repetition on the AMV.org board. (Naturally, when they all do collide, good-natured drunken revelry erupts. Especially from Hsien.) Why is this an anomaly? Well, first off, the VAT track has grown into a kind of self-sufficient beast that threatens to break loose and go tromping off destroying city blocks and stepping on pedestrians. Jingoro, it turns out, did all the “pushing” on the official end of things before handing it over to me. The only step up the track could really make now would be to a full-blown AMV convention, which is a bit too much of a step towards exclusivity (specialization is for insects!) with too little gain. The second is that Dave, the con head, doesn’t really like AMVs. While you all reel in shock and horror, let me say that he doesn’t actively hate them, he’s just really tired of them, and he gets to say that, ‘cause he was there at the beginning of the hobby. (This also acts as a public service announcement: Whoever you are, Dave does NOT want to see your AMV. Even if you’ve carted your laptop all over the con. All it will do is irritate him and keep him from doing things he regards as more fun. Some idiot cornered him last year and showed him....a Linkin Park video to Eva. Gahhhh..) VAT, however, has been well-run enough in the past and constantly fills up with attendees, and never causes trouble, so its presence is tolerated at the con.
The other key aspect of all this is Quu. I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to state that Quu is probably the best known person in the whole AMV “community.” (Of course, I’m terribly bitter because I was working for the track long before him and receive not one tenth his recognition. ;P )This, of course, is accomplished by the fact that, like a slow creeping horror, he’s taken over the submission processing of about 50-70% of all the US cons that run significantly-sized AMV contests, as well as attending a large number of them. Everyone goes through him, and woe betide those who fuck up their entry. (Not really...most of the time. Except there’ve been a few cons who most pronouncedly do NOT want him handling their entries, and told him so in terms so certain as to be abruptly offensive. No, I’m not gonna tell you who they are, because that would be petty snubbing retaliation, and is beneath me.)
So, the year before last, this all gets handed over to me, and now I receive this complaint that tells me, essentially, that Jingoro and Quu did too good of a job.
What the hell am I supposed to do with that?
Essentially, the e-mail complained that AWA is “overranked” in the community. That AMVers are now holding back their best stuff and sending it to us rather than the other conventions across the US. That there’s a feeling that the awards at AWA are the only ones that “matter.”
My initial response?
“Hoody-Hooo! More videos!”
Of course, I have to get serious now and address the actual issue rather than rejoice at running the “only AMV event that matters.” The assertion, on the face of it, is absurd, of course. Our contest is just as arbitrary as every other AMV contest around the country...perhaps moreso since we don’t poll the audience for the results. (Being the petulant children we are, we wanna give awards to the videos WE like, not those elected to the station. (Excepting Pro.) Besides, who wants to tally all those votes?) Any increased significance we might derive merely comes from the larger submission base. Despite the fact that we give away...what...five times? the awards of any other contest, the competitors like it that theirs was chosen out of such a large pool of competitors. That’s what we’re trying to do here, spread around as much good feeling as possible among all the competitors. (Hence the tradition of giving Expo’s grand prize to the most out-there, off-the-wall video, not necessarily to our favorite. Arbitrary awards could hardly inspire indignance.)
As for people holding entries back...that could be any number of things involved. We don’t enforce trolling rules (except, of course, if you try to submit the same video to us two years in a row...we keep track of our own records, thank you very much) so it makes no sense to not send it out to another contest. (Rule formed with exactly this in mind.) If people are holding it back with the intention of making AWA the “unveiling” event for their video, then they could go ahead and send it off to other cons afterwards.
Likely, what’s really happening here, is AMVers regard AWA as a “timepoint.” A kick-in-the-ass to finish up their project to send it off to us, whereas other conventions they might strive for, but give up on their deadlines with an “oh well.” Why? Likely the audience. Since AWA is known for AMVs, a lot of people want their video shown to their peers, gathered all together at AWA, rather than just the largest number of viewers, which you’d get at any of the really big cons. In other words, if we weren’t here, the vids would get done more irregularly, but much later. Finally, it’s possible that they send videos to us, because the length of the track means a better chance of their video getting played. Unfair to other cons who don’t have a dedicated track? Sorry, but that’s not a’ changin’. It’s more fair to give joe-shmoe a chance than tell him he doesn’t get one ‘cause we’re depleting other conventions’ pools. Simply put, most conventions run their contests as a gathering of the elite. Your videos get shown only if they’re good enough to make it into the final 2 or three hour block. We’re not interested in drawing distinctions and disappointing people. You send us a couple of videos, at least one will get shown. (When you’re in the room, if possible.)
The next two bits were rather more confounding and distressing. To quote:
“It feels more and more that if a creator doesn't attend AWA, see the right people, hit the right party (just like Hollywood or, to use AWA's own metaphor, Cannes), etc. that recognition takes way more work. People vote for their friends, put them over at panels, and with that even a mediocre editor can become big.”
The first thing that needs to be noted here is that he admits elsewhere to never having been to AWA.
Now I admit I don’t know what specific incidents he’s referring to here, but I think this is completely a case of mixing up cause and effect. Jingoro was an AMVer from the old school, and he started snatching up and persuading other AMVers he knew of to come down and attend or compete at AWA. They did the same with their friends. When the VAT began as an independent track, they were all already here. AWA directly inspired several of the better known makers out there, and specifically cajoled others into attending. So it isn’t that you “get recognition” by attending AWA, it’s that if you get recognition, we try and persuade you to attend. And the issue about creating an AMV elite, where you have to know the right people and attend the right parties, is absurd. Ask around of anyone who was actually at AWA last year, and tell me if anyone was snubbed away from the AMVers (all gathered at a table talking outside the VAT track until 3 AM). Given the opportunity (ie, being at the con and not being a royal jerk) AMVers seem ready enough to be friends with anyone who shares their hobby. Thus, the formation of La Familia, or so I understand (ran myself into the ground by that point).
AWA is no stranger to charges of “elitism.” These are, simply, bunk. The fact the charges are now leaking into the VAT is only to be expected, and will be dealt with with the same contempt as the con treats the more general charges. In truth, AWA is being run by the last couple of true anarchists. (Except Stan and Lloyd. If they were anarchists, the whole device would’ve collapsed years ago.)
“On a side note, I wonder just what the heck people feeling overloaded by AMVs
or not into them bother doing at AWA. The guest list isn't exactly what I'd
call motivating, and the events list is always shadowed by the VAT and AMV
panels/events. There isn't even a cosplay worth talking about.”
Now this is just mean. You’ve never attended the con, yet you insult the guest list, belittle the track planning, and claim we’re a one-event con. AWA was entertaining as hell for the six years before creation of the VAT, and remains so today. See rant at top of post, where it starts “Welcome to our party.” We don’t pander, we don’t sit you down in front of a clown for three days. We’re throwing a party that we enjoy. If you like that kind of party too, great! If you don’t like it, sorry, but we’re not stocking things to keep every possible interest entertained with bright shiny objects. DIY. Oh, and the cosplay. The way it’s run elsewhere didn’t work for us. So we run it differently.
To his credit, the writer did state that he knows of no solution to these problems, and was more bringing up what he saw as a rising difficulty. However, I have to say that most of his issues were really more faults in interpretation than anything else. AWA provides a unique atmosphere for gathering and befriending between and among AMVers, but it doesn’t have to be unique. Concerted efforts are starting to grow in other conventions to hold AMVer dinners and the like, so it seems the pattern is spreading, not becoming more concentrated in the “elite” that attend AWA. Any problems with uneven distribution of videos has only really cropped up in the last few years, and I’m certain it will even itself out over time (aided to no small degree by Quu being the central distribution hub). I don’t want to seem like I’m picking on the writer in this post, but he ranted publicly, and I should have the opportunity to rebut.
On the subject of more aggravation from the past week (and it’s to a much milder degree now, as it’s been nearly a week since I started this entry), I’ve decided to give up on playing Halo. Patrick’s been having two-machine games after anime for the past couple of months or so, giving me my first opportunity to play this game that everyone raves about online. I enjoyed it for a good while, but, not owning an X-box, I am forever condemned to end up in the lower half of the rankings. Normally, this doesn’t bother me. I know I’m not that great at the game, or at FPS in general (though I can manage 2nd place in CS with fair regularity), especially when Glo, Jimmy, Hiro, or DRAGON show up and join in, but it occurred to me about halfway through the game last week that I just wasn’t enjoying myself any more. I’d spawn, run around for a minute and a half, and then get sniped, or hit with a shotgun, or try futily to shoot down a hovercraft, and then have to start the whole process over again. This isn’t whining about not being as good as everyone else, it’s whining about not being good enough to keep myself from getting bored. Not living long enough to sort out my basic position in the level, (there’s a few I just can-not sort out to my satisfaction), get the twitch reflexes down (excepting the “oh SHIT!” button....a controller malfunction that makes you jump, throw grenade, and switch weapons at the same time), happening upon a tank only to discover someone’s set it there to snipe potential users, etc. etc. I enjoy FPS as a great carnage relief, but I’ve done badly enough to loose interest in having fun, and end up playing for retribution, which I can’t achieve, and thus just getting more and more aggravated. That I don’t need, so I’m just dropping the game.
In a completely hypocritical extension to that whole schpiel, I’ve re-installed Warcraft III. *Sigh*
One final bit of annoyance....I do not especially appreciate being told to STFU when I’m trying to help by someone I considered a friend, even if it is in jest. Something to keep in mind.
On the less irritating level, there’s some good news in from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Essentially, a case in which a Jonah Hex comic was up on charges concerning their parody of Johnny and Edgar Winters got off on the fair-usage clause, and the eighth circuit of appeals decided that first amendment rights are also protected in the case of video games, polishing it off with something of a tongue-lashing for those who would try and censor them. (Making it illegal to rent or sell video games to minors.)
“We reject the County's suggestion that we should find that the `graphically violent' video games in this case are obscene as to minors and therefore entitled to less protection. It is true that obscenity is one of the few categories of speech historically unprotected by the first amendment. ^Å But we have previously observed that '[m]aterial that contains violence but not depictions or descriptions of sexual conduct cannot be obscene.' ^Å Simply put, depictions of violence cannot fall within the legal definition of obscenity for either minors or adults."
In the decision's concluding paragraphs, the Court addressed the County's language that the goal of the ordinance was to assist parents in policing the content their children encounter. The Court wrote, "We do not mean to denigrate the government's role in supporting parents or the right of parents to control their children's exposure to graphically violent materials. We merely hold that the government cannot silence protected speech by wrapping itself in the cloak of parental authority. To accept the
County's broadly-drawn interest as a compelling one would be to invite legislatures to undermine the first amendment rights of minors willy-nilly under the guise of promoting parental authority."
Essentially, the eighth circuit stated that they don’t intend to let people violate the first amendment rights of MINORS, effectively refusing to act as the parents to every child in the country. Horay! Score one for the US letting parents raise their own children according to their own ideals!
I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of commuting lately, because, unaccountably, the three D&D games I happen to be in, have all started meeting regularly again. This is something of a problem for me. I was really only in the three of them in order to get in about a game a week, because one was suffering from severe whipped-itis (wifey wasn’t letting the DM run the game for a month at a time....which would play right into the D&D stereotype if not for the whole “married” thing), one’s DM has the absolute worst job in existence, and the other lost most of the campaign when his house flooded. (Just a few inches, but all the notes were on the floor. Now, suddenly, they’ve gotten their act together simultaneously and the games are all back on. Two of them live way the hell down I-75, meaning I have to drive from the interchange all the way out to Winder. Fortunately, I managed to find my old CD player and the converter that lets it run through the tape player, and a friend of mine lent me some old radio plays. Since the drive is about fifty minutes on a good day, that translates to just over an episode of the radio play, or about a full CD of music.
I’ll leave the CDs for another time, but you might be interested in the radio play. My friend James lent me a little wooden box set of episodes from “The Shadow....radio’s strangest adventurer!”
The Shadow, of course, was a kind-of superhero who showed up in the early 30’s in pulp magazine form and had a radio show from about ‘37 to ’54. These days there’s something of a cult following surrounding “The Shadow” and he, very occasionally, shows up in crossovers with Batman or some associated revival in comic book form. Any legitimate revival of what is perhaps the founding father of pulp fiction heroes was dashed mercilessly to the ground with Alec Baldwin’s ridiculously campy “The Shadow” in 1994. Not really camp on the scale of the original Batman film, but basically insulting enough to the memory and the original purpose to cement in the minds of today’s viewers the image of a campy man with the improbable name of “Lamont Cranston” trading bon mots with the two-hundredth descendent of Genghis Kahn and chasing an atomic bomb as it rolls down a spiral staircase. Let’s see....imagine if “Casino Royale” had preceded all of the James Bond films. Yeah, about that degree of damage.
Shamefully enough, I have to say, almost everything I knew about The Shadow came from that awful film. So I jumped at the chance to listen to some of the original radio shows. Listening to these shows had two major effects on me. A) I really wish there had been more than eight shows on the tape box set, and B) I really, REALLY have to buy some Pennsylvania Blue Coal. After all, it’s the solid fuel for solid heating comfort.
The shows themselves are almost ludicrously period. Every show begins with the maniacal cackle of The Shadow, delivered by the one and only Orson Wells. Wells on radio is Wells amplified. He has that same sort of over-dramatized manner in his voice as William Shatner, only the pauses and inflections muted down to a reasonable level. Nonetheless, his speaking style is distinct enough that I suddenly recognized it from a dozen different parodies and homages in old Warner Brothers’ cartoons and films from the time. He has a great Snidely Whiplash-style laugh with which he intimidates lawbreakers, and then wheezes out a menacing “The Shadow knows......” immediately followed by the announcer, who declares “The Shadow! Radio’s strangest adventurer, whose voice strikes terror in the hearts of sharpsters, lawbreakers, and criminals!”
“Sharpsters”.....I love it.
The funniest thing, though, is that the show apparently had the same sponsor for its entire run. The chosen episodes for the set must’ve stretched across decades, but at the beginning, end, and a commercial break in the middle, we were always told about “Pennsylvania Blue Coal! The superior anthracite specially mined for home use! Available in four convenient sizes, egg, stone, chestnut, and pea! Order a trial ton today!“ We were also told, at varying intervals, how 50% of all winter colds and flu can be traced to uneven off-again/on-again heating, and that was why we should buy Blue Coal! It’s superior quality is the reason that sales have seen a 10.5% increase over sales at the same time last year! The coal, you see, was colored a harmless aquiline color at the mine to make it easily distinguishable.
I do kind of wonder what they used, though. That’s a LOT of pigment. (Apparently it was the Glenn Alden Coal company’s home product.)
So, what about the Shadow himself? In common life, he was Lamont Cranston, man about town. But when crime raised its ugly head, he donned the cloak and cowl of “The Shadow,” a mysterious figure who had the power to render himself invisible. According to the little I could glean of his backstory from the radio plays, Lamont Cranston spent a great deal of time in “the Orient”...here apparently including India, where he became a master of “Mesmerism” (hypnotism) from the yogi masters of the art. With this power, he could “cloud men’s minds so that they could not see him,” admittedly a much more practical way of rendering oneself invisible than the complex and ludicrous methods used by the comic book superheroes. On the other hand, it was a fairly interesting insight into attitudes towards the “orient” at the time, a land of mystery, intrigue, and strange, magical traditions. Though I’m not at all certain, I think these plays and the Shadow himself was produced during a great deal of worry about the “Yellow menace.” Not knowing much about the “orient,” much of Europe and the US thought it possible that China could suddenly burst its borders and take over the world in a solid flood of humanity.
For the first four episodes, I was convinced this invisibility was his sole ability, as he would show up at the inner conference of a villainous individual, cackle manically, and either delay the villains until the cops arrived, or provoke a firefight in which the villains usually ended up killing one another. Later, however, he demonstrated an ability at reading minds, and in one memorable episode, he stops an insane sharpshooter from dropping a live hand grenade into a parade crowd by mesmerizing the killer into holding onto the grenade until it explodes. All in all, he’s sort of a Batman-like character, concentrating heavily on detective work. Strong, but not super-strong, but relying heavily on fear, trickery, and his few powers to get at the core of the crime. Unlike Batman, he had the sense to carry a shortwave radio around with him with which he would radio for help when he needed it. The radio transmission went to his “boy Robin,” (except, of course, that Lamont preferred the company of _women_ ) the beautiful Margo Lane. She, sensibly enough, forwarded the call to the POLICE. (Margo also serves as Lamont’s “Watson”, the person to whom our hero explains his plan to so the audience can hear it.)
I thought you all might like a quick summary of the eight shows in the box set my friend lent me.
“Bride of Death” was an interesting place to start. A rich elderly woman in a small New England town falls under the sway of a man calling himself “The Prophet of the Ancient One” (sounds Cthulhuoid to me...) who hypnotizes and drugs her into believing she’ll gain eternal life if she sacrifices her young ward, the daughter of the town minister, to his ancient god. The Shadow evades the Prophet’s man-eating Cougars and discovers that it’s all an elaborate ruse to bilk the woman out of her money on an insanity charge. Trapping and killing the Prophet, the Shadow then puts Margo Lane in IMMINANT DANGER OF BEING LYNCHED, but his mysterious voice manages to talk down the crowd.
In “The Temple Bells” Lamont nearly has his cover blown when an evil Indian woman from his past turns up in town smuggling opium to the young socialites. She has a few tricks up her sleeve as well, namely a set of bells that, when rung during a snake dance, will destroy Lamont’s spell of invisibility. The Shadow thwarts her readily by swapping out her trained cobra with one of a more violent temper. This was the first of numerous times when the Shadow was nearly thwarted just by locking up the room he was hiding in. The Police eventually show up to sort things out.
After these two shows I was getting worried. It was starting to sound like The Shadow was a kind of early narcotics squad. The other episodes, however, had nothing to do with drugs, or the “yellow menace.”
By far the best of them all was “Society of the Living Dead.” Exceedingly convoluted, the title refers to a crime ring that manufactured forged passports with names off of tombstones. The real action circled around the crime boss who kidnapped his soon-to-be father-in-law and business partner and then faked the man’s death. Then he tried to get the man to sign a suicide note and confession to securities theft to get his killer off the hook with investigators. The kidnap victim was being starved in his own family’s burial vault alongside the coffin and corpse used to fake his death. When The Shadow tracked them down, the crook turned off the lights to be on even footing and then locked Lamont in the vault. Further, he shot up his partner in crime in the process. There’s a whole ten minute sequence where the crime boss starts filling the vault with water to drown them all, the dying kidnap victim is greedily lapping up the water while climbing on top of the floating coffin, and the partner in crime begs the Shadow to lean him against the wall so he can die of his bullet wounds and not drown. A real nail-biter, but the cops show up in time to empty the vault and gun down the fleeing killer.
“Poison Death” was also pretty dramatic. A lunatic poisoner, using the name of the Shadow is killing whole families and no one can figure out how he’s doing it. Lamont determines that it’s through introduction in the water lines to the block, and then tracks it to the city’s head sanitation department chemist from peculiar marks on his typewritten demands for money. The chemist has just finished an especially large batch and douses Lamont’s hands with acid when the Shadow tries to apprehend him. The episode ends in a desperate struggle atop a city water tower, Lamont having climbed up with bleeding hands, and ends with the chemist’s shouted admission of guilt to the police below before he topples to the ground.
“The League of Terror” involved a gangland intimidation of witnesses. The Shadow tracks the group down to a yacht anchored in the bay with the help of a brave young woman. He thwarts the crime boss’s kamikaze attempt to blow up both him and the approaching harbor police by simply, invisibly, snipping the wires.
In “Sabotage” the Shadow does his country a great service by tracking down a wartime Saboteur who’s been damaging ship engines and boilers at the maintenance yard, so they’d blow up the ship upon testing. The mechanic turns out to be working for a German psychologist (?) who’s almost immune to the Shadow’s tricks. He appears, for a moment, to get clean away, but Lamont planted the Saboteur’s own bomb on board his speedboat, and the explosion delivers the spy’s just desserts.
In “The Phantom Voice” Lamont spots falsified testimony in court, get this, by spotting BAD DUBBING on a film entered as evidence. He tracks the matter to a professional voice impressionist who didn’t know what the soundtrack was going to be used for, but gets shot by the crooked lawyer just before he can give evidence. He manages to record the confession on a “wax record” (that should date this pretty profoundly), along with an after word added by the Shadow. (When the record is put into evidence, the lawyer announces that the voice is that of....the SHADOW! Followed by all the overwrought organ music that always accompanies this announcement. I was half expecting the judge to should out “Get that pipe organ out of my court!”)
Finally, in “The Silent Avenger” a man sentenced to death browbeats his brother, the shell-shocked WWII sniper and veteran, into getting vengeance on the jury, judge, bailiff, and mayor who condemned him to death. The plot is so simple and effective that the sniper manages to kill off the entire list excepting the mayor. Expecting the attempt to be at a city parade, the Shadow finds a likely roost and intercepts him atop the steel girders of a partially-constructed building. Expecting trouble from the shadow, the sniper had armed himself with a couple of hand grenades. When he threatens to drop one in the crowd below, the Shadow hypnotizes him into holding on to the grenade until it explodes. In something of a break of style, the Shadow goes all weepy over this one, saying that it was every man’s fault for training this man to kill in time of war, and yet expecting him to respect life in time of peace.
These radio plays are really great. If you have any taste for period melodramas like these, I suggest you look into them, although I’ve no idea where you’d find even this box set now. I’m pretty sure it was sold about five years ago in the convention circuit, but I haven’t seen it since. Though some of them may not sound it, the plots are rather simplistic, almost to the point of absurdity on occasion. (Lamont derived the poisoner’s methods in a few minutes while the police could find no source for the deadly contagion.) The characterization is more than a little stereotyped, but these days I find more people who take that in humor than offense. And then, of course, there’s that Orson Wells voice.
Yeah, yeah. Movie reviews. OK, some short ones. I’m tired and adult swim is almost over.
Finding Nemo
No brainer time! This is a film by Pixar. You know, the people who brought us Toy Story and every other funny thing that’s been computer animated in the last five years. It’s a film about fish. Lots of bright primary colors.
Should you go see this film?
What are you, stupid?
Of COURSE you should go see this film. It’s frickin’ PIXAR. If you’re a fan of animation as a medium or funny, fairly family-friendly movies at all, and you haven’t seen this film you better be either broke or dead. And if you’re broke, sneak in!
OK, got a little carried away there.
“Finding Nemo” is the latest offering from people who do better computer animation than anyone else. It’s the story of a father and son clownfish who live in a spacious anemone on the edge of the continental shelf somewhere off the Australian coast in the Great Barrier Reef. The father, Marlin, lost his wife and all but one of their eggs to a barracuda (at least it looked like a barracuda, but we never got a real clear look) before any of the eggs hatched, so he’s really overprotective of his son, Nemo, especially since the younger clownfish has a “gimpy” fin on one side and can’t swim real well.
One day, while on a school (heh) field trip to the shelf edge, Nemo is captured by divers. Thus begins Marlin’s expedition to find his son. The divers left behind a diving mask with an address on it, and Marlin uses the address to find his way to the appropriate harbor. Meanwhile, Nemo ends up in a dentist’s office aquarium with a bunch of other fish. Most are store-raised, but one, Gil (voiced by Willem DaFoe...the Green Goblin) is also from the “big blue” and is constantly coming up with ways to escape. Nemo, it turns out, is key to his plans because he’s the smallest fish in the tank, but the attempt requires more courage than he can muster at first.
Meanwhile, Marlin has hooked up with the real star of the film. “Dory” a blue tang fish who at first agrees to lead him to the boat that just passed, but suddenly wants to know why Marlin is following her. Turns out she has a problem with short-term memory. A REAL problem. Now, I know this sounds like a joke that would get old quickly. But it just doesn’t. Dory is voiced by Ellen DeGeneres (who I swore for the first half of the film was Paula Poundstone...showing that there really is very little difference between them other than the way the pause between jokes) and somehow manages to make the same joke, over and over again, without it ever getting old. She’s flat out hilarious with her on-again-off-again knowledge of reading and whale-language. She’s constantly fascinated by Marlin’s retelling of the loss of his son (the reason they’re on this trip), and yet she seems to be the only one who can take absolutely everything in stride.
That’s lucky, since they have a lot of encounters on the way to the Australian coast. They run into an AA meeting for sharks who’ve sworn off eating fish (this bit really fell a little flat with me...just felt a bit too forced and the humor too flat) hitch a ride with surfer-dude sea-turtles that clock in at a hundred and fifty years old (a touch forced, but not too bad), avoid the bioluminescent fish in the depths, the jellyfish in the heights, the attitude of crabs, get swallowed by a whale, and manage to not get swallowed by seagulls with the assistance of a helpful pelican. (You know, I think the seagulls were specifically designed to look like the evil penguin from Wallace and Gromet’s “The Wrong Trousers.”) Why would the pelican help them? Why because the story of Marlin’s incredible journey has been preceding him. By the time he reaches the coast, his son has already heard about his adventures from the pellican, and it’s given him the courage to go through with the escape plan, as well as initiating a few of his own.
Happy endings all around, father and son get reunited, Gil makes his escape with everyone else, and the father has learned the important lesson of how to “let go.” Also an excellent sequence where Nemo gets to rescue Dory.
So, how is the flick? Well, I’d argue that it’s aimed slightly younger than most Pixar fare. There’s a sequence about four minutes long that’s basically just Dory making faces while trying out different whale calls. I found it a tad long. Or rather, I would’ve, if it wasn’t for the fact that there was a six-year-old girl sitting next to me who just about laughed herself sick. See the film with a child for maximum effect. The story was a little more straightforward than, say, Toy Story 2. On the other hand, while keeping it rather simple, it doesn’t talk down to you either. The initial sequence with the Barracuda, and the shark attack sequence were exceedingly fast and violent, though relatively short, but might be too scary for very young children. It’s funny pretty much all the way through, and any complaints are pretty minor things. (I think they could’ve done with one less fish in the tank. Not any specific one, but I think there was just one too many fish to keep easy track of. The bubble-fish, the mirror-fish, the puffer, the shrimp, the germ-obsessed, Gil, and Peach seems one too many characters.)
The animation is STUNNING. When I say this is the closest I’ve seen computer animation approach photo-realism, I’m not kidding. The reef and water animation looks as near perfect as anything I’ve ever seen. (Though I’m no expert.) The only exception is the humans. For some reason, Pixar seems to have real trouble bringing to life honestly human-looking figures. I mean, I know it’s supposed to be a charicature of humans, but even considering that, they look a bit like putty-forms on pink sticks on occasion. The people who got sacked from Square’s animation department should sign on for Pixar and round out their abilities. (Step in the right direction, if not perfect.)
‘Couple of nit-picky things. (Yeah, humor me. It’s all I’m good at.) Back in third grade we had a saltwater aquarium in the classroom with a couple of clownfish and an anemone, so naturally, I had to do a report on them. Thus I seem to remember that the clownfish is protected from the anemone by a coating of slime on its skin, not that it’s “used to” stings. (Not sure if it would protect it from jellyfish, though.) Also, if the aquarium got that dirty it would screw up the oxygen balance in the water and suffocate all the fish. Also, I really hope Australia’s water plant doesn’t just dump everything into the bay, untreated. Good for the story, though.
Oh, there’s one joke at the end of the credits, but no bloopers this time round. Dang. They might add ‘em later, though.
I was gonna add a review of “The Night Eveyln Came Out of the Grave,” a touching story about the difficulty of accepting homosexuality in zombie society, but I haven’t the energy to tackle that particular piece of crap tonight. Short version: film editor went in with a weed whacker and assembled a film that, at best, made no sense, and at worst, bored the audience to tears. If you are offered a showing between now and when I review it, turn them down.
-
Big brother is watching you...
2003-06-05 19:35:06
Omnistrata: Just noticed that, did you?
Gambitt: Hell, I'm glad to know that there are still a few people here who read this thing. I kinda figured all my hits were from the obessive compulsives who just nabbed whoever happened to pop up on the "recent entries" list, took one look at the length, and hightailed it.
As to "why disney sequels"? Simple. In search of gems. I love animation. All animation, as an art form. There's an ENORMOUS amount of animation out there that you've never heard of, even anime aside. The Disney sequels are actually starting to pile up, and I understand at least two of them were really pretty good. Aladdin III, and the recent Peter Pan one. I'm simply too curious to let anything new slide by when it's free and I've got the time.
(Best "hidden gem?" Offa the top o' my head...Cats Can't Dance, and maybe the first Fritz the Cat, for vastly different reasons.) -
“Anyone here seen death and a salesman?”
2003-06-04 00:24:35
(First off, let me just apologize to Gambitt for ignoring his last couple of journal entries. I go so long between entries that I forget he's responded. Bleh, my bad.)
“And that’s why he won the Oscar”
(I’ll put a dash ___________ where I stopped writing this last week. World got in the way, and some of the comments are a bit dated now.)
Not a great deal of interest this week. Most of my “free” time has been spent at work revising, rewriting, and regurgitating some fairly important tech writing for the boss. Things are not going well there. Through no fault of my own, but nonetheless affecting me rather severely. I’m probably not allowed to discuss it, so I’ll leave it at that. On the other hand, right after my bout of whining in here last week, my boss actually gave me a “pep talk” outta the blue. Not so bad. ‘Course the tune was changed by the next day, but my ego only requires the occasional scraps to maintain my charming personality.
Delving into the realm of fantastical diversions from my depressingly mediocre life, TV was rather momentus this last week. First off, of course, was the end of Buffy. I’m of two minds on the concluding quality of the series finale. On the one hand, I got this feeling that the entire cast and writers had run out of series steam about two episodes early. The constant amping up of the villians basically led to nothing, the army of unbeatable elder vamps are suddenly much less deadly (it took the Buffster what, three episodes to dispose of one and all of a sudden they’re dropping left and right at the hands of the junior squad?), the deaths were pretty much dictated by who it WASN’T obvious was going to die (save the nerd, whose been asking for it ever since he joined, don’t kill Buffy, making it five for two, and take out Anya who’s been wandering the background sets for seasons and SPIKE who’s supposed to show up in Angel next season) leaving the only really interesting bits as the destruction of Sunnydale and the awakening of all Slayers worldwide.
(OK, have to interrupt here, but OH MY GOD ARE YOU WATCHING ADULT SWIM? Can they DO that on cartoon network? They are on some serious drugs down the street there. And now they’ve got a hedge as a guest star on Space Ghost!)
Anyway that’ll have interesting repercussions if they follow up on it in Angel, but mostly I think they failed to top out in the “must confront something bigger and eviler at the end of every season” category. They spent too much of the season building it up that by the time it actually got here we were bored. Hell, the preacher was the most interesting villain in a long time, and he hadda split in the first five minutes.
On the other hand, I realized what they did with the writing was actually a return to form. Buffy’s been depressing and weighty for so long that when they suddenly returned to the quips, jokes, and fairly bubble-headed humor of previous seasons I didn’t really recognize it until they were well into a “fresh toll-house cookie” metaphor. Ludicrous and amusing, and the real reason I started watching the show in the first place. Hell, my favorite character used to be Oz, ‘cause he got all the great deadpan lines. The “Burninating Trogdor” reference (once it was pointed out to me) was perfect. All in all, an OK episode with some great moments, but not one of my favorites.
On the other hand, Justice League actually managed to capture my attention for three solid episodes with a new (I think....new to me anyway) episode. A scientist goes back in time with a laptop worth of information and helps the Nazis to win WWII. The JLAers, through a coincidence, are the only ones aware of it in the Nazi-controlled present, and are forced to travel back in time to help the allies win. Got all that? OK, that wasn’t the fun part. The fun part was the fact that they run into the Blackhawk squadron and Sgt. Rock and the Howling Commandos. Period comic book heroes I only ever heard of second-hand, but are practically legendary. On the other hand, the story was stupidly predictable and still managed to stretch its handful of plot points out into three full episodes. As far as I can tell, the majority of the JLA episodes is just devoted to people making things explode. Planets, spaceships, robots, whatever. Just so long as the plot involves lots of explosions, or possibly cameos, then the show can continue. Otherwise, tough luck.
Speaking of Nazis, Adult Swim has started playing new (to us) episodes of Lupin again, and exceeded all expectations by actually playing the Nazi episode. At least I think it was the Nazi episode that everyone always talked about. There were certainly enough Nazis to qualify it as “the Nazi episode.” At any rate, it was the episode that everyone was certain would never air on US television, what with the supporting role of a foreshortened Hitler and all, and CN went ahead and showed it anyway. As far as I know, they might’ve cut the most offensive few minutes out of it, but still. Damn. CN gets my support so long as they’re willing to go out on a limb like this for the fans of an obscure (to US audiences) Japanese cartoon from the 70’s.
I’m just sorta drifting here, so I’ll plunge into the reviews in the interest of saying something worth reading. (Damn, and I haven’t even had any Guinness. Slow night.)
First up, a quick treat, animation! Not just animation, but sub-par Disney product! The Disney network (which for some reason GaTech pays for) has had a bunch of their recent straight-to-DVD sequel releases come up for rotation on the channel, and they’ve piled them into an 8:00 block on Fridays called “let’s get Anim8ted”. Disney animated sequels are perhaps the best example of why I do these little reviews. Here’s something that is, more likely than not, going to suck muchly. But I like animation. Almost all animation, except for the stuff that is directly insulting to my intelligence (Beavis & Butthead, anything by Spumco, etc.). So I’ll happen upon things like this, watch ‘em through, and every once in a while trip over a hidden gem that I think everyone else should see (like Balto, which was surprisingly good, and Balto II which had a few good moments). And I can ward everyone away from the truly hideous, mind-melting crap like “Secret of Nimh II” which should be disposed of in biohazard containers.
Disney sequels are a special case, though. Much of the creative impetus that used to be the hallmark of Disney animation way back when they were the unquestioned quality leaders (when Walt was alive, etc.) seems to have leaked out as the company got complacent and did its best to avoid offending anyone. So we get pablum and dross, predictability and beautiful, soulless lightshows (Treasure Planet...sorry Nigel) with occasional flashes of brilliance (The Emperor’s New Groove) that nonetheless doesn’t really break any new ground due to the apparent need to fill the show with calming, reassuring messages more to instill confidence in parents as to the quality of their electronic babysitter than to shield the perfectly capable minds of toddlers from any image that might move them to emotion. (Hell, I watched “Watership Down” as a tot, it disturbed the hell outta me, and I think I’m better for it.)
Ha! Gotcha! That ain’t really true. Disney’s been slowly getting better. They found their sense of humor again, toned down the message-drive a touch, and started writing some mildly original stuff. They also let Pixar do their thing even though Disney owns them. All in all, heading in the right direction after crap like Hunchback and Hercules, having realized that some adults were going to see these flicks sans kids.
But it IS true for the sequels. Or the ones I’ve seen anyway. Starting back with the first animated sequel Disney made, the crap that was Aladdin II, they set the tone by not being able to get their star, Robin Williams, to reprise his role, filled it up with horrifically sub-par songs (including one sung by Iago...yeah, Gilbert Godfreid), and dropped the budget down a well. For the most part, I’ve stayed away from the sequels since then, venturing partway in to confirm suspicions, and then finding something better to do with my time. But all the sequels I’ve seen are, at best, aggressively mediocre. Not “oh God, turn it off” (see the seemingly infinite stretch of “Land Before Time” sequels) bad, but bad enough to wish you were watching something better.
Which sequel? Oh, possibly the one with the worst potential. “Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventure.”
Hey, I was curious.
The original, of course, was Lady and the Tramp, one of the great, but lesser trumpeted Disney classics from (Holy Cow! They did damn good work back then.) 1955. It tells the love story of a uptown cocker spaniel named “Lady” and a streetwise mutt named “Tramp.” To be honest, I don’t remember much of the story progression, but several of the scenes stuck with me over the years, including the meatball bit, the scene with the Siamese cats wrecking the place, and the bit where Lady gets muzzled. And, of course, Rosie’s big scene in the pound. End of story, Tramp ends up adopted, happily ever after.
The sequel takes place many months after the end of the first film. Uh, I think. I’m guessing on the puppies’ age here. It’s ironic that it feels like such a foreign time now, but the setting is plainly in the mid 50’s, judging from the cars and “Norman Rockwell Americana” feel to the surroundings. Anyway, plot in a shoebox, the Tramp has settled in to his new home life and had puppies of his own. The sole male (who naturally looks exactly like Tramp) is named “Scamp” and he bridles at the restrictions of home life. Namely, taking baths and not jumping on the furniture. Spotting a bunch of junkyard dogs tormenting the dogcatcher (it’s good to hear that Don Knotts is still getting work....or at least his impersonators are) and especially one cute “PC glowing” bitch (excuse the use of correct terminology) he decides to go out and sow his wild oats. The head dog of the junkyard pack agrees to let him in, if Scamp passes a couple of tests first to prove his capability. Thus follows the standard “frat guys mess with the new kid” sequence. There Scamp learns about his dad’s true history, the dogs learn about his lineage, and Angel (the bitch) angrily reproaches Scamp for giving up the family life she wants so badly. The head dog gets Scamp caught by the dogcatcher, Tramp comes to the rescue to take him home, the head dog gets abandoned, and the family adopts Angel. Happily ever after. For some reason, the whole thing happens during Independence Day celebrations.
So how was it? Aggressively mediocre. It was essentially the first film over again with a twist or two, the main characters very young, and the gender roles reversed. The attitude, however, was completely different. The first film, what I remember of it, was essentially a potboiler, but well crafted, romance story from the 40’s or 50’s (Tramp as a Rhett Butler, and Lady as a Scarlet O’Hara. Casablanca moments of tension.) overlaid on animals to give it a unique twist. Standard “society would frown if they knew” romantic conflicts, the like. The sequel is plainly a kid’s movie. Everything simplified for consumption, socially clumsy, and conflict that basically consisted of an after-school-special on bullying and peer pressure with a “so’s your ol’ man” accusation as a topper. Seen it dozens of times before in every format and form. Yawn.
The animation...felt about on par with the original, technically maybe a little higher. (The original may have been a bit more artistic, but I’m running on vauge memories here.) No major screw-ups in motion or perspective, except for an odd habit of cutting out of still-frame jokes far too early for the audience to register them. A hatstand of chewed hats gets about ten frames when it should have gotten thirty, stuff like that. Other than that, technically a workaday piece.
It did, however degenerate into crap every ten or twelve minutes. That was when everyone started singing.
Someone get this through to Disney: STOP THE MUSIC. You haven’t had really memorable songs in several years. (If I remember right, their best songwriter from Mermaid, Aladdin, Lion King, and Beauty and the Beast died of AIDS.) The songwriters for these sequels are asleep on the job. Disney, it is perfectly plain to everyone at this point that the only reason you’re putting these songs in the sequels is that you don’t have enough plot to pad out an hour. You’re conveying in song something the characters just SAID. Use it to tell us something NEW. Jeez, a song about hating restrictions at home, a song explaining the junkyard, a song about tramp, a song about missing home, a song with Angel. I think I missed a couple more. Look, the original was a musical, but it had GOOD songs. Hell, I still remember some of them, and I haven’t heard them in God knows how long. The Italian song outside the restaurant, the Siamese song that tormented so many grade school music classes, and the best of the bunch, Rosie’s “He’s a Tramp”. The last one especially used to get compiled all the time in “best moments of Disney” collections or TV specials. The ones in this sequel pale to translucence by comparison. They’re essentially just wastes of time instead of the high-points they’re supposed to be.
It’s not a complete loss, though. Angel is nicely designed (looks a little like a miniature Souichiro with only one ear bent over) and is the best voice actress of the bunch (Alyssa Milano), although Scamp suffers mostly because all of his lines are so trite and inane...which his character is supposed to be, but doesn’t help us like him any.
The best bit, though, is so quick you might miss it. I live for those few moments in almost every movie where everything just clicks, and some effect is pulled off perfectly, so I’m willing to be satisfied if a film can manage that just once throughout an otherwise blah work. The morning after Scamp runs off, the cameos show up (Terrier and Bloodhound....Siamese cats also put in an appearance later). The three girl pups, whom we shall call “prissy,” “haughty,” and “dumb” because that’s exactly how much character development they got, come running out with the news. Prissy and haughty go at it, both shouting out “Scamp’s run away” in that confused muddle of voices you always get with groups of children. Dumb can’t quite get it all out and just yells out a panicked “WHAT THEY SAID” when the others finish. For some reason, the panicked, pointing spaniel pup struck me as hilarious. Just a glimmer of perfect comedic timing. That was enough justification of the movie for me.
In summary, don’t bother. It’s not as bad as you think it is, but that doesn’t make it good. I should clip that piece out and post it somewhere so everyone can see the only good part and skip out on the waste of time that is the rest.
On to the next...
It’s often been pointed out that just about any quotation from any source can be made to sound spooky or even horrifying when said in the correct voice. I remember a comedian once demonstrated this particular truism by reciting the first few lines of “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” in the voice of Vincent Price. Such is the case with the latest film that I caught at the 10:00 showing on Friday, “Identity.” It begins with a particularly haunting quote: “As I was going up the stair / I met a man who wasn’t there / He wasn’t there again today / I wish, I wish he’d go away.” Our unseen recitationist claims to have invented the rhyme himself, but it’s actually a slight alteration of a poem by Hughes Mearns:
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today
Oh how I wish he'd go away.
Which is a little poem that seems to have snuck in everywhere, in slightly warped fashion, as it’s a little something everyone remembers from childhood a little differently. In fact, I’m finding a dozen different versions, all attributed as the original. I’m also finding it used as an illustration of EVERYTHING. From modern man’s philosophical problem with the existence of God, to the “situation of the National English Ballet,” to gardening and pesticides, to the physicists’ trouble calculating the weight of emptiness (on a galactic scale), to the frustration of quantum physics, to a romantic obsession with ghosts.
There’ve been re-writes:
“The other day upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I think he's with the CIA".
(MAD)
See, I was curious about the quote. Did Mearns mean it humorously? Was he referring to something in particular? Or is it just Carroll-style word play. Well, I can’t figure it out, and it’s driving me nuts. All anyone will say is that it’s from “The Psychoed” by Hughes Mearns, but I don’t even know if that’s a poem, or a book, a collection, or what. Whatever it is, Amazon.com doesn’t have it,. Mearns himself seems to have drifted into obscurity when he died, although he was apparently an educator of some sort. (His textbook Amazon has....but not The Psychoed.)
My bet? Humorous word-play. Why? There’s a companion poem I found:
As I was sitting in my chair,
I knew the bottom wasn't there,
Nor legs nor back, but I just sat,
Ignoring little things like that.
______________________________________
The film itself is quite good, with a number of twists and mysterious turnarounds and a “big secret” that the cleverer in the audience will be able to spot, but if I say anything more than that, I’ll ruin the show for you....so those of you who are planning to go see this John Cusac thriller should stop here with the knowledge that, while it might not go down as one of the top ten suspense-twist films of all time, it’s definitely memorable enough to make the top fifty (if you leave out Hitchcock, since he tends to bloat the whole ranking), which is a rare enough event these days to make the film worthwhile. A little gore, a lot of violent, wince-inducing death, but most of the action happens in a flurried blurr of waving hands, tearing clothes, and red. Go. See. Now.
For the rest of you, those with no intention of checking this flick out due to heart conditions, difference in taste, or the excessively squeamish, those who’ve already seen it, and those who’ve stretched their movie-watching buck too far as it is with all the much-higher profile flicks of the dawning summer, I’ll give the flick a proper, tell-all review.
Now, of course, the film is a “twist” flick, with a big secret overawing everything and altering how we look at events, interpret actions, etc., much like “The Sixth Sense.” On the other hand, the twist isn’t what you think it is. The film plays an admirable shell game with the audience, one that I fell hook, line, and sinker for, despite having been given a hint by friends beforehand. They told me that “it’s a twist film, but it’s a twist I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere before.” This, naturally, intrigued my cynical self, as I approach most horror films with the conviction that there’s nothing new under the sun. As a result, I was watching the film with an eye towards other film parallels. Not really trying to be a know-it-all snot, but curious if I could draw a parallel no one else saw. This actually started getting in the way of my spotting the real clues and hints, but I’ll give you a feeling of how I was watching by inserting the apparent parallel in parenthesis. See, there’s a large cast in this film, ten independent people trapped in a horror film, and I kept going over the options with each character as they started dropping sequentially, narrowing the options (HA! Ten Little Indians.)
We start by hearing the poem recited by a voice on a recorder. There must be a particular way of mike-ing an actor so that you get the strange, wet sound in the voice. The subdued, slowed but not slurred speech, where you hear each and every soft wet click of the tongue on the teeth, the slight, scummy “pop” when he opens his mouth, the hot heavy breath as he considers each question. The voice is being interviewed, apparently by a psychiatrist, about something. The voice seems to have trouble stringing together relevant answers to any of the questions, and constantly wanders into its own little world. Not obscene or violent, but trivial matters, state capitals, and the like. Meanwhile, we watch a man leaf through piles of writing, court documents, and the like. A phone call results from his toils and wakes a judge. Apparently, new evidence in a serial killer case has come to light the night before his scheduled execution, and they need to hold an emergency review hearing on the plea of insanity. The judge begrudgingly agrees and sets the meeting for, essentially, immediately, despite the full-scale thunderstorm raging outside. We start cutting back and forth at this point, and much of the sequence is a bit muddled in my head. Hmm. Detecting a theme in these reviews. We begin cutting to a series of travelers who are all converging, entirely coincidentally, on a rather run-down, out-of-the-way motel. Though it is coincidence that brings them all there, they aren’t entirely innocent. We’re presumeably jumping back in time to earlier the previous day, as the thunderstorm we saw outside the judge’s window is only just getting up to speed. Each character is introduced somewhat retroactively, jumping around wildly and confusingly in time and place to an excellent, rather creepy effect, but for simplicity, I’ll stitch them together here. A high-priced call girl (who is later named as “Paris”) is speeding through the desert (somewhere in AZ) with her top down (the CAR.....perverts) and while fumbling for a lighter accidentally flips open a suitcase and looses some of her accessories. A family (very Minnesotan mother, strangely...simple...father, and a silent young (5-6) boy named Timmy) come along the road much later after the storm has started and get a flat tire from one of Paris’s discarded stiletto heels. The father crouches in the rain to fix the flat.
Here’s where the feel of the film is set. Timmy, inside the car, gets lonely, and taps on the window to get his mother’s attention. His mother comes around to the road-side of the car (uh-oh) and smiles at him. Then she takes a step back (UH-OH) and the two smile at each other for what feels like a full minute....because we all know what’s coming. Another car, a limo, speeds by and collides with the mother, tossing her down the road. The father, nearly incoherent, clasps her body and screams “What have you done?”
The movie was right there....right there in that moment, and I missed it. I should be ashamed, but to be honest it was well crafted enough that I can’t be blamed for not seeing.
The limo, as we back up and retroactively introduce it, was driven by John Cusack, who was ferrying around Rebecca DeMornay, playing Caroline Suzanne, a bitchy 80’s has-been actress. John, being a good guy, ignores DeMornay’s insistence that they just drive on, and gets out to help. It doesn’t look good. Mom’s unconscious, and has a three-inch wound opened up in her neck (we see the scar later, it’s not really shown here). Cusack piles the woman and the rest of the family he didn’t hit with a car into the limo, over DeMornay’s objections (and having to break into her part of the car, since she won’t let them in), and they drive in search of a hospital. They all drive until they see a dry-rot little motel by the side of the road, and pull in. The injured, family, and bitch are offloaded, checked in by the creepy-in-a-Deliverance-fashion owner, and John strikes out again to try and reach a nearby hospital.
Lessee....
Limo driver
Movie star
Mom
Dad
Timmy
Hotel Clerk.
A couple open slots left....
Cusack finds out quickly that the road in either direction has been washed out by flooding caused by the continuous rainstorm. In the meantime, he happens upon Paris, whose car has died, hit a phone pole, and taken out the telephones to the motel. She hitches a ride, only to have Cusack wreck the limo in a vain effort to ford the cataract shaving away the grading on the collapsed road. Another young couple, newlyweds, it turns out, pulls up in a pickup and John questions them roughly about having a cell phone. No one, it seems, has an available phone that works. They all hitch back to the motel to try and determine their next step.
Call girl
Newlywed girl
Newlywed guy
Maybe a couple more.
One last car pulls up. Turns out it’s a remarkably gruff and grumpy federal officer transporting a criminal. OH! That’s how this all ties in, right? This is the mental patient scheduled for execution being rushed to his midnight trial.
Federal Officer
Prisoner
As if on cue, we flash to the judge’s house where nearly everyone has gathered. The missing one, of course, is the patient himself, who’s been delayed by the rain. They begin without him, mostly since judge “grumpy” Wapner is pissed about being up at that hour, so they start in with accusations about withheld “lost” evidence concerning a diary of the convict speaking to his mental state, which apparently led to the death of six people at a motel several years ago. At this point, I’m thinking that the storm in the desert is taking place in the past, and we’re seeing the eventual result of all this, with six dead being the foregone conclusion. Clever, huh? But I think it has been done before, even if I can’t put a title to it.
Now things start to get convoluted. We go back to the motel and find hints and suggestions, unanswered questions and impossible mysteries cropping up among our motel guests.
The first one off the bandwagon is the actress. She’s recharged her cellphone and is wandering around out in the rain trying to find some reception when she goes missing. The limo driver, however, happens upon her and, much to our relief, she’s just drying her hair.
In the Laundromat.
In the dryer.
Whunkata, whunkata, whunk.
The rest of her is nowhere to be found. (Se7en!)
This little revelation explodes our happy little group, and we start learning things. Random things. So many random things, in fact, that we can’t determine which ones are important. Clever, tried and true way of fooling the audience. We learn that the limo driver used to be a cop (The Mousetrap!), that the newlyweds got married under false pretenses, and the girl isn’t really pregnant, that the hotel clerk has a vitriolic hate of “whores” (Psycho!), that the Father isn’t really that...together...a man (Rear Window!), that the drugged up prisoner has escaped from where he was handcuffed to the toilet (oh Hell, pick one...), that Paris is heading to Florida to raise Oranges, that Ray Liotta has a stained hole in the back of his shirt, etc. (And, of course, Ten Little Indians) All of this is revealed with character-building segments of interaction. Some of it feels a little bit forced, but the majority of it is well crafted and natural-sounding, even for a non-Cusack fan like myself. (Don’t hate him, just don’t consider him much.)
Interestingly, they find a hotel key with the former actress. It has the number “10” on it. A bit puzzling at first, but soon enough we can see the pattern. The newlywed husband goes down next with stabbing pains in his stomach. He’s got room number “9” on him. There’s a red herring here that would take longer to explain than it actually fooled me, so I’ll just state the obvious. That there’s a countdown on here...
The most fascinatingly horrific bit, though, is the discovery the prisoner makes. He flees straight away from the town and sees lights in the distance. Coming up close, he finds a diner where he breaks in and starts hunting around, until he looks out the window....and sees the Motel.
He’s in a Möbius strip world.
Quickly discovered, the prisoner is beaten into unconsciousness by his state ward, despite the man’s protestations of innocence. They leave the hotel clerk to watch him, as Mom is finally waking up, but the moment he looks away, they come back to find him beaten to death with a baseball bat. That’s “8”. Blame starts shifting wildly around, especially when they find an unrelated corpse in the freezer. The hotel clerk protests innocence, but makes a run for it in his truck. Timmy tries to run to his father across the street, right in front of the truck, and the Father gets smeared across a wall by the hotel clerk when he rushes to stop him. That’s “7”.
Everyone’s thoroughly freaked now, and conference, only to discover more uncanny facts. They all have the same birthdate. They all have names derived from state capitals. Mom passes away in her sleep, only to have “6” found next to her. People freak. Big time.
Cusack foists Timmy on the newly-widowed girl and tells her to get in the car and just drive away, trying to outrun whatever it is that’s coming for them.
Anyone think it works? Right! BOOM!
Car goes up in flames. That’s “5” and “4”. ‘Course, there’s a break with form here, and that should tell you something. This one tugged at me a bit when I saw it, but, again, I didn’t catch on. Two at once was new. So was such a flashy death. So was the sort-of witnessing of deaths.
Moreover, there was the whole absence of corpses thing. But wait! The remaining three go back to check it out, and all of the corpses have disappeared. No sign of their presence, just complete deletion.
Good time to cut away? Why not. We cut back to the makeshift hearing with the storm still raging outside. A man enters and announces that the prisoner/patient....has arrived.
Huh?
Now, I actually suspected this concept when the car exploded. That one was too flashy and too dang convenient, so I started mulling it over in my head. People trapped in a twilight zone episode, all with weird personal details matching exactly, all apparently tearing one another apart, all stuck in a raging maelstrom, and then all disappearing one by one. And on the other hand, you have the mental patient, a balding, slightly obese man with the idiot-grin of the severely medicated. Of course. The whole thing is happening in the patient’s head. The talk of multiple-personality disorder earlier foreshadowed it. Just to get it through to the slow folk in the audience (a concession blessedly absent until this sequence) the psychiatrist at the table talks to the patient, and gets one of the personalities, Cusack’s, of course, to surface. We’re told that this whole sequence is an attempt to bring the patient’s personality together by confronting and destroying each of the split personalities. One of the personalities, we’re told, was responsible for the six murders in that motel so long ago, and Cusack is told that he has to make sure, whoever it turns out to be, that the killer-personality does not survive, or the patient will be put to death.
I hate to say it, but bullhocky. Though you don’t hear about it much in Hollywood because it makes for such wonderful plot twists, most psychiatrists will tell you that “multiple personality disorder” doesn’t actually exist as most people understand it. Entirely separate personalities utterly unaware of one another and capable of acting independently towards different goals is the realm of the comic book and soap-opera novels. Most people who appear to have MPD are actually manifesting a severe kind of “dissociative disorder.” Incapable of dealing with something they did or something that was done to them, the patient insists that it was someone else, someone stronger or weaker than themselves. Several highly publicized exceedingly severe cases (“Cybil”) have imprinted the idea of MPD on the public, and it’s sort of grown into legend status from there. A fine distinction? Perhaps, but it does speak to A) the capability of a criminal to commit some horrible act again, and B) the culpability of the patient for actions in his past. In other words, getting rid of “Psycho Bobby” won’t prevent another killing spree, because Bobby was the one who did it in the first place, and being unable to handle it, invented “Psycho Bobby” to take the blame. (Not consciously...but you get the idea.) So what’s the point? The point is that the Judge wouldn’t (or at least SHOULDN’T) commute a man on his way to the electric chair on the assertion that “the bad personality is gone.” Different arguments can be made, but that one wouldn’t hold up under a panel of experts.
Anyway, back to the movie. Cusack, knowing the score, flashing back into the motel, realizing that they’re down to three, knowing he ain’t the one, and suspecting that Paris isn’t the one either, decides to investigate the other leading man, figuring it was his best bet. Thus comes the last revelation: The files in the federal agent’s car prove that the feds were transporting TWO prisoners. Liotta killed the cop and posed as him for their getaway. Convinced of his guilt, Cusack hunts him down, and the two end up killing each other.
That leaves Paris, the ex-prostitute, to drive off into the sunset to Florida to raise oranges. The judge pardons the patient, and the psychiatrist accompanies the paddy wagon back to the institute. This leaves us with a slightly obese bald man with the mind of Amanda Peet in an orange grove. How’s that for an uncomfortable image?
Wait.....
What’s this? In the soil here? A room key? Number one?
Now, ask yourself. Who was really the only person seen as responsible for any of the deaths? Who was unaccounted for when each of the bodies were found? Who really caused Mom’s death? How about Dad’s?
Way back at the start of all this I stated that the scene with the Father screaming “What have you DONE?” was the entire movie. It really was, because it directly showed you something that revealed the entire story, if you were clever enough to see it. You see, he wasn’t screaming at Cusack, the limo driver.
He was screaming at Timmy.
This whole world was in the patient’s mind, right? Each personality was roughly equal in effectiveness, and strength has nothing to do with stature in such a world. The boy lured Dad out in front of the speeding truck. Positioned Mom in the path of the oncoming limo. Had the opportunity to gut/beat/decapitate whoever he wanted. Because we, the audience, don’t habitually pay attention to the little kids in the film unless they’re in trouble. Truth be told, I was feeling too sorry for the kid throughout to even really consider him as the killer. (Though I did have a brief flash of “Children of the Corn.”) I mean, both parents, two different cars, same day? What are the chances? What are the chances indeed.
Paris doesn’t make it.
Now that I’ve spelled out the plot for all you people who didn’t want to miss out but don’t have the time to actually watch the film, what’s the verdict?
Very well written, excellent twists and turning of the screw. (It even explicitly mentions “Ten Little Indians” and “Poltergeist.”) Deaths sudden and horribly violent, but not terribly gory. This film really likes loud “bangs.” It was their startle device, present in pounding on a locked door, struck by cars, lightning, explosions, the like. It also worked well, horrifying even when it was expected. (And scaring the bejeepers out of the woman two seats up and forward of me who wouldn’t put away her flippin’ cell phone. I could hear audible “oh NO”s coming from her seat a few moments before an expected “bang.”) There are a few awkward moments, particularly in Timmy’s final revelation, which looks a little absurd for all the horror it implies. The film steps down slightly in quality as it charges ahead, leaving the distinct impression that more thought was given to the earlier portions than the latter (Liotta and Cusack become just a little two-dimensional by the end), and it might have been slightly better executed if the patient’s appearance had been just a little later (I may have mixed up the order a bit here), as the revelation that the prisoner _wasn’t_ the patient gave me a bit too much to go on, anticipating the big secret of the film. These are minor quibbles, though, and this film should be on any suspense-fanatic’s wishlist. The weird thing is, though, that apparently twenty minutes have been cut from the film for the US release. This is particularly weird, since the short versions are usually the European ones for horror flicks. The US usually only cuts for the more tawdry sex scenes. (Nudity’s OK. On screen sex? Sure! But no disembowlings on the continent in this day and age!)
Now, because I’ve got quite the backlog here, another flick from Jimmy’s “Fright Night” box set.
*Sigh*
It’s starting to get to me that I can never seem to plough through these fast enough to make an honest assault on Mt. DVD. The problem is that the ones on loan from Jimmy are in the ultra-thin CD cases, so their deposition hardly lowers the mount by a quarter inch. There’s frickin’ BOX SETS in that pile. Three dual-DVD cases of Farscape season 2 and 3! A tin collector’s edition!
Eh. I might call off the reviews for a while. The write-ups take longer than the movies do at this point.
At any rate, the latest one that Jimmy lent me was quite a while back, but I haven’t had a chance to watch more than one side of it, partly because Jimmy’s had a lot of work recently and I knew I wouldn’t’ve been able to get it back to him, and partly ‘cause of all the movies at the theater I wanted to catch. (Matrix II, X-2, Identity, and Finding Nemo) Plus, all of my RPG games this last week were on. I actually play in three different games on different days, but they’ve been canceling left and right for the past three months so I’ve been averaging about one a week. Then, all of a sudden, everyone gets a free day simultaneously, leaving me with too many games, all across town from one another, and not enough time to sleep. (Or write reviews.) I’ve gotten my evenings back, though, what with X-men evolution, Futurama, and Family Guy all “lapping.”
Anyway, the cheap 70’s horror flick this time is “Satan’s School for Girls.” Whooo.... this one should be rich, right? Well, kinda. Jimmy handed this one to me with the two word summary “wasted opportunity.” That is kinda true. I mean, it’s practically a porn title, right? Instead we’ve got another made-for-TV Satanism-spook flick. Sure, there’s a lot of girls running around in their nightgowns...but these appear to be nightgowns of Victorian origin, heavily quilted and stretching to the floor. But, on the other end of the scale, it’s not really that bad either. Certainly less boring than that “Good vs. Evil” snorefest I reviewed a while back. There’s a simple plot here, but one with a nice twist, a few better-than-average acting performances, and it even got an honest-to-God “jump” out of me twice. Surprisingly, it’s co-produced by Aaron Spelling. Hell, I’m told it’s even got Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd, the original Charlie’s Angels in it, but I never watched the show, so I’ll be damned if I can spot them. Might even be the leads for all I know.
The film starts off with a car chase. Minus one car. A woman is driving frantically down the road, constantly checking behind her, despite the fact she sees no one following. (Apparently she’s heard about Satan’s hot-rod.) Pulling off for a moment, she rushes to a phone booth to make a call, but doesn’t get through, and cuts her attempts short when she’s approached by a bum. (Emphasizing her paranoia, the bum just walks up once she leaves, and picks up the cigarette butt she had been smoking.) Actually a pretty good scene, and stylistic of what’s to come. The woman arrives at her destination, only to find the riverside house empty when she’d expected someone (her sister) to be there. She frantically locks herself inside, only to discover that the thing, something just off camera, that she’d been fleeing from, had been waiting for her here. By the time her sister Elizabeth comes home, she’s been strung up in the rafters.
Elizabeth refuses to believe the police report of suicide, and begins to conduct her own investigation. (Oh, don’t they always.) Which leads her to her sister’s art school. Now there are two things to know about Satan’s art school for girls. First, Satan has an excellent landscaper. Second, everyone drinks. A LOT. Elizabeth enrolls in the school to go undercover and begin investigating. First up on the list of suspects is the headmistress, whom everyone calls “the Dragon Lady.” (Bit of a story here...I’m told by my father that “the Dragon Lady” term originated from the old “Terry and the Pirates” serial comic strip. There was a mysterious woman in the comic who was always controlling things behind the scenes, acting as a mastermind. She was also distinctive in that she wore a long, concealing trenchcoat (think “Carmen Sandiego”) and apparently it was heavily implied (for the era) that she wasn’t wearing anything UNDERNEATH it. Puts a new perspective on “the old Dragon Lady” doesn’t it?) She offers Elizabeth wine. Later she hangs out with an appointed “welcome wagon.” They offer her brandy. Later on, there’s a wine-party where everyone walks around with a full glass of hard liquor in their hand. You know...if it wasn’t for the fact that all the students are girls, I’d swear.......Oooohhhhh.
Anyway, Elizabeth quickly investigates most of the teachers. The creepiest of them all is the social psychology teacher who keeps a rat maze full of his test subjects in the middle of the classroom. And the rats seem pretty uncomfortable as well. They’re constantly squeaking in alarm throughout (really damn annoying) and the tests seem to concentrate on the effect of indefinitely extended frustration...switching where the goal (cheese) of the maze is, tormenting them, etc. Also, she starts talking to the girls and a few things start standing out rather plainly. There’s the proto-goth with the dream-borne obsession over a particular room, the girl who freaks out after one of the psyc-professor’s lessons, and the mysterious cleaver-wielding figure that Elizabeth sees in the basement when she goes exploring. (One of the two times I really jumped in the film.) Then some of the girls start checking out. Suicides to resolve their rapidly accelerating depression and panic attacks.
Surprisingly, to all the horror fans anyway, the headmistress actually seems duly concerned by the events. As do the teachers. So the question becomes, if there is a conspiracy, who, exactly, is in on it? The film does an excellent job of keeping that secret for most of the film, and keeps a genuinely spooky and atmospheric feel to the show with above-average performances all around. The power on the campus goes out a couple of times, so the characters wander around in the dark carrying old-fashioned hurricane lamps, stalking halls in nightgowns with everyone expecting monsters to launch themselves at any moment. In the end, Elizabeth happens upon some of the actual conspirators after they’ve done away with the one nosey professor who could have stopped them...the social psych prof! In a fairly good turnabout, it seems that, while being driven into a paranoid state by the evil in the academy, he was actually trying to warn the girls through the example of his rats. Constantly frustrated by changing goals and randomly altered outcomes, the rats were becoming entirely passive, and thus susceptible to any suggestions or authority imposed upon them by their larger brothers or the professor. This is an actual phenomenon found in lab animals when behavior is “punished” randomly, often with no reason or causative effect whatsoever. Dogs standing on a grid that’s randomly electrified will try for a while to sort out some causative factor they can influence, but will eventually just lie down and whine, trying not to move or do anything that they interpret as inflicting “punishment.”
Anyway, the psych prof gets offed in a fairly horrible way as the conspirators close in on him, and Elizabeth comes across his body suddenly when the sopping wet corpse slumps out of her car, the second time I actually jumped. To the film’s credit, Elizabeth is hardly a “damsel in distress” either, as she does most of the investigating at her own impetus, never panics even when the corpses start falling around her, and comes up with plan after plan when each one successively fails.
In the end, Elizabeth finds that her sister commited suicide to escape the Satanic conspiracy when they attempted to recruit her. Learning very little from the experiment, the conspiracy attempts to recruit Elizabeth who, unsurprisingly, refuses, and burns the school down in the process. Surprisingly anticlimactic, actually.
Just as intriguing as what happens in the film, though, is what the film is saying. One thing I’m slowly learning is that these Satan-occult-scare films almost always have _something_ to say on the social or psychological level. Here we’ve got an art school whose official policy is “Embrace Everything, Condemn Nothing.” A school with “drink-ins.” A ten minute sequence on visual relativism with optical illusions. A behavioral psych professor studying the negative effects of non-constant goals and standards. And all of it linked to Satan. Now let’s think. What exactly could this be trying to tell us? Hmmm. Nope. Just too damn subtle for me.
I really don’t mind these messages getting slipped in, however obtrusively. It’s just another layer to examine, a cultural history to dig through. Some people might object to the film for its attempt to strong-arm ideals with the threat of mental or religious condemnation, but I’d find that particularly ironic coming from groups who, for the sake of preserving their own manner of pressing objectionable ideals on people through art, hold that art is merely an aspect to be examined, not an active force capable of nefarious influence on impressionable minds. (ie. if this flick is an attempt to cow people into obedience to the church and rejection of certain “modern ideals”, then the infamous “piss Christ” is, at least in part, an attempt to shame people away from religion. If one is permitted, than so is the other. If one is sufficiently objectionable to be banned/removed/condemned, than so is the other. Making a work of art with certain ideals or political statements in mind does not magically force people into obedience to those ideas.) Horror films could, theoretically, be seen as ultimate morality plays. The argument has been made countless times with the slasher flicks. (You know “the abstinent girl is the only one who doesn’t get knifed.”) But to do so is generalization of a particularly blind sort, ignoring entire subgenres that refute such an assertion. Hell, “House of 1000 Corpses” refutes that right off the bat. What about “Prophecy”? Or, on a closer inspection, “Exorcist”?
On the other hand, this was a rather sub-par print they chose to convert to DVD. Lotsa scratches, and anything that presents too large a block of red bleeds hideously all over the frame.
All in all, something of a hidden gem. No titillation, so stay away if that’s all you’re looking for, but a fairly well told, nicely acted, simple story. The only major screw-up would be when the girls stand around holding their book of worship to Satan....The “Malleus Maleficarum.”
Uh....no. The “Hammer of Witches” was the witch HUNTER’S book. It was published in 1486 by Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kraemer, and was essentially a lexicon of daemonography and supposed witch, warlock, and Satan-worshipper’s activities. In truth it was more of a compilation of legends and some of the more vicious fairy-tales re-examined through the lens of Catholic orthodox thought during a time of superstitious panic. Regardless, that’s a bit like holding a Seder meal through text gleaned out of Nazi propaganda. The Satanic book of choice would be the “Black” or “Satanic Bible.”
On that note, I leave you with a quote from Sunday’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force:
“Sex with animals? There’s no TIME man!”
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eggs eggs eggs
2003-05-30 03:35:52
OK, I don't normally write these spur of the moment, but I have to tell someone this or I'm gonna burst out laughing, and she'll kill me if I do that.
So one of the junior members of our lab is making supplemented DPBS and has just finished sterilizing it when she brings it over to me.
"Is supplemented DPBS supposed to look all turbid like this?"
"What did you do to it?"
"Just sterilized it."
"How?"
"In the autoclave."
"In the autoclave...."
The autoclave is basically a big steam oven we use for killing any signs of microbial life in our trash and on glassware, in solutions, etc. Except it shouldn't be used to sterilize supplemented DPBS. Normally, you'd filter supplemented DPBS to sterilize it.
Why?
Well, because of what it's supplemented with. See, we're using it to suspend red cells in for about 14 hours, so they've gotta be pretty happy in it. We do that by taking DPBS, which is just a pH balanced salt solution, and add stuff like insulin, transferrin, etc.
That's just to keep the signaling kosher. To keep the membranes in good shape, you've got to add protiens to the mix. 0.6 g of Human proteins, specifically, since you're dealing with blood cells (potential leukocyte problem).
Which protein?
Albumin.
Some of you just caught on.
Albumin is a pretty solid portion of the serum fraction of blood. It's also the stuff in eggwhites that turns from translucent snot to shiny white cholesterol-laden goodness when you fry it.
There was a bottle of boiled human eggwhites on the table next to me.
By ACCIDENT.
Sometimes this job actually pays off.
And now, 'cause I'm gonna be here a long time tonight and I'm bored, BBT's survey.
1. What three smells evoke a strong emotional response in you, and why? (e.g. food, perfume...)
1. Campfire mornings. There's a very specific scent in the air in deciduous forests on late summer or early fall mornings when everything is damp with dew and you've just crawled out of a sleeping bag into the great outdoors. I hate it. It smells less like "good clean earth" and more like damp grit and stale ash that you'd desperately like to wash off your skin and out of your hair, but can't, and it's coating every mouldering leaf or gritty twig you touch as you roll the grimy tarp of the tent into a stale-smelling bag and head home to get some honest-to-God sleep. I don't like camping. My parents did.
2. I rarely encounter it anymore, but there's a kind of chemical twinge smell in some plastics that was fairly ubiquitous in toys when I was growing up, especially the cool white-plastic glow-in-the-dark ones. Always makes me think of where I grew up.
3. I don't know if physical revulsion counts as an emotion, but autoclaved biohazard always evokes this from me. Our biohazard isn't particularly nasty, just media (cell food liquid) and blood samples, but opening the autoclave door to a wall of steam with the vaugely-organic, strongly-bleach smelling vapors is just stomach-churning. Worse, someone always spills their agar in the autoclave, and it bakes off for a month and a half, adding to the organic-toxic smell.
4. (yeah, I'm cheating.) Old books. Hold a book up to your nose and rapidly flip the pages. There's a dry, slightly musty smell in older books (once most of the preservative has evaporated out) that just makes me want to sit and read.
2. What three specific sounds do you really love, and why? If you can't explain why, don't worry.
1. A cat's purr. I've never known a more perfect expression of contentment in anything.
2. The opening notes of "Back in Black" by AC/DC. The theme music of Gods.
3. Rain and wind at night when I'm curled into bed. I never sleep harder than when there's a steady downpour going. Lightning's a bonus.
3. What three specific sounds do you absolutely hate, and why? If you can't explain why, don't worry.
1. The telephone ringer. It's rude, intrusive, and highly annoying. It's also gotten pretty bad. I've been known to scream obscenities at the phone from across the room if it's interrupting anything.
2. Ken Williams. I'm not going to go into the whys and wherefores, but not a single syllable has ever exited this crass, loud, boorish simpleton, and he's become a icon for all the stupid people in my life that annoy me. I curse under my breath whenever he opens his mouth.
3. Lounge singers. You know, the finger-snappin' patter-insertin' banter. Made "Mack the Knife" entirely intolerable to me in english.
4. Name three of your guilty pleasures and why you enjoy them. ("Just because" is acceptable.)
1. Guinness. Dur. (From a ceramic cup, lacking a stein.)
2. Crappy old horror flicks. Durrr. (Preferrably with #1.)
3. Discussing old superhero comics on mailing lists. Satisfies my deepest, hard-core geek.
5. Name three of your guilty displeasures (i.e. things you feel bad for not liking) and why you dislike them. ("Just because" is acceptable.)
1. Clubbing. Hate it, and I really wish I didn't, since I've been wanting to expand my social circle beyond hobby and work related friends.
2. Dancing. Too self-concious to just do it, to self-concious to know if I'd be any good.
3. Social "peer" mixers. Receptions at society conferences (for researchers). Too intimidated by the accomplishments of those around me to promote my own, too bored by it all to feign interest in obscure ligand-140 and it's possible role in apoptosis.
6. You're famous! A toy company wants to make an action figure of you. What three special, unique SUPER-XTREEM ACTION features would it have?
1. Super blogging! Give him a topic, pull the string, and watch him NEVER SHUT UP!
2. X-treem compression! Press him into a 3" square cube and watch him live his life normally!
3. Color delusions! Keep him awake for 48 hours and watch him start to hallucinate!
7. You wake up one morning to find a time machine crashed in your backyard! Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, you go back in time for a bit of fun. Which three eras/locations do you visit?
1. Whitechapel, 1888, just to KNOW.
2. Roanoake, 1587. Ditto.
3. Providence, Rhode Island, 1937, to deliver an exquisitely bound edition of complete works and biography, complete with devotions and dedications from those influenced, to the old gentleman as he lay dying. The fact that he never saw any of his work published in a book form strikes me as an especial injustice.
8. Optional if too personal: While back in time, you decide to change three things in your own past or in world history. (The grandfather paradox is not in effect.) Which three things do you change, and why?
Leaving world history aside:
1. I would have gotten her name.
2. I would have said yes. (Dammit.)
3. I would have at least tried.
JOURNAL: MCWagner (Matthew Wagner)
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