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“I mean, the Crap-on in a Hat teams up with John Paul Sartre to battle nausea. Seems like a loosing battle to me.”
2003-07-12 00:25:23
Not expecting a particularly inspired entry this time, for a couple of reasons. Some mentionable, some not so much. First off, “The Witches” (lovely, if slightly more naive film adaptation of the Roald Dahl book about mice) is on HBO and providing just enough distraction for me to not be concentrating too hard. Second off, I’ve managed to misplace almost all the notes for the reviews, although that’s something of a blessing, as I really need to try and work on my concision. (Holy crap, spell-check liked that?) If I don’t start making these reviews shorter, I’m never gonna actually get a chance to watch anything else. And third off, you’re going to be subjected to the ever popular topic “What I did on my summer vacation” an essay subject that’s driven students from the literary arts in droves since the start of time.
So what is it that I did do on my summer vacation? Well, I went to see the relatives. Time for the traditional exodus up to the great state of cheese. Unfortunately I only had a week’s worth of time at my disposal, while my parents had two, so I was able to drive up with them, but had to fly back. The real problem, though, is that my vacation really is only the drive up. Once at my grandmother’s house, I have to make nice to everyone, entertain their ideas about fun, tolerate the general ruckus and multiple family reunions, and generally beat back the boredom with chores, films, and depressing talks. It’s really not that bad, but every once in a while I just want to sneak off somewhere and read or watch a flick and I can’t because it makes me look anti-social.
Speaking of reading, my portion of the trip up gave me an opportunity to dive headlong into the latest Harry Potter book. Was it any good? Well, I finished it (all 870 pages) in two days without hurrying...does that tell you anything? The following is an attempt at a spoiler-free comment or two, but read it at your own risk.
I really liked this one more than number four, mostly because it didn’t think it had to go back and review the previous novels’ plots for us. It granted a line or two of summary for each where appropriate, and then moved on, assuming we could keep up with the remarkably sizeable cast. Comments have been tossed about concerning Harry’s more surly nature in this book, and it is present to one degree or another (mostly in the first few chapters), but frankly I feel for him. I was waiting through most of the middle for Harry to stomp into Dumbeldore’s office and shout “What the HELL haven’t you told me THIS time?” I mean, this is the fifth time some key piece of information was purposely withheld from him that ended up endangering his life. Is Harry the only one learning from this? That said, when the final revelation came, it really wasn’t all that astonishing. The turnabout at the end of the first book was surprising. The turnabout revelation at the end of the second was very clever and came from a completely unexpected quarter. The turnabout at the end of the third was even greater. The end of the fourth gave us the key turning point in the series, although I think it was the least impressively written of the bunch. The revelation at the end of the fifth book mostly got a “Welll.....DUH.” outta me. I suppose it might be a shock to Harry, but the rest of us, who know that he stars in at least two more books, would’ve thought it obvious.
Then, of course, there’s the much talked about “death.” The thing that’s supposed to shock the reader and alter the series dynamic. Beh. A good character, I suppose, and a fairly interesting one, but I honestly never saw where it could go had it remained. I hate saying it, but I get the feeling that Rowling killed it off because she couldn’t figure out how to write the remaining books with it in there. And the WAY it died. Mystery curtain and podium and what the hell? What is it? Does anyone know what that place was supposed to be and why Harry didn’t ask about it?
Other than those two quibbles, though, I greatly enjoyed the book. There was a lot more of the school involved in this book, both in consideration of the characters (LOTS of introductions of other students) and in simple atmosphere of the classroom and university politics as well as exams and the unavoidable conflicts with Snape. Dumbeldore’s Army was great, and all the workings therein. (Saying more would be telling.)
Oh yes, and the “Defense against the Dark arts” position is empty again. (That’s not telling anything. It’s perfectly obvious from the very start that it must be vacant by the next book.) There’s an old saying that twice is tragedy and thrice is comedy. What is it at five times?
Harry’s romance was sweet too. A little clumsily handled, but, to my mind, entirely believable.
(Oh, anyone else under the impression that a few of the details in this book were shaped to address online criticism? There’s specific mention of a couple of black students, Harry does not get to lead Gryffindor to victory at Quiddich, nor gets the expected promotion, nor do spectacularly well at his tests. Black year for Harry.)
All that said, I’m not about to submit the Harry Potter series as the greatest books on the human condition ever. I know that we’ve all gotten used to the fact that traditionally child-oriented entertainment mediums have lately begun a shift in target audience up the scale towards the ever-important 18-25 age bracket, but we really do need to step back and keep in mind that these books in particular are CHILDREN’S books. Nothing wrong with reading them and enjoying them, but I’ve got a friend who went on a rant about them last night. “They’re just not any good! It’s the same story over and over again! The basic morals they’re teaching is that breaking rules is good! And the writing! God, don’t get me started.”
Jebus, dude. Calm down. Sherlock Holmes is the same story over and over again, and yet somehow his stories have endured. (Something mysterious happens. Holmes and Watson show up to investigate. Holmes attaches a great deal of significance to some trivial clue, but won’t explain why. Watson is puzzled. Holmes manages some phenomenal revelation of the culprit. Holmes explains the significance of the clue. The end.) The stories, first and foremost, are entertainment. I’ve heard people bitching about how Harry gets away with things. How everything goes his way. How he accomplishes feats of skill and luck over absurdly stacked odds. Well, DUH. He’s the HERO. Peter Pan never got skewered by Capitan Hook either. Harry’s a fairly faultless and lucky hero, but come on. It’s a book for children. You want Hermione to have gotten squashed by that Troll in the girl’s bathroom for the sake of realism? Why don’t we brood over the corpse of Bambi’s mom for that matter?
Oh, and it’s “teaching children that disobeying rules is right?” I grant that less credence than the people who claim it promotes witchcraft. I read a Roald Dahl book when I was little called “George’s Marvelous Medicine” wherein the little boy tries to POISON his vicious grandmother by mixing up a concoction of thirty medicines, oven cleaner, sheep dip, gasoline and anything else he can find, and, despite the fact that the “medicine” doesn’t kill her, but makes her grow forty feet tall, I never for a moment thought that the “lesson” was to try poisoning my relatives. These aren’t great texts of philosophy.
Or are they?
Ran into a blog that drew an unexpectedly appropriate parallel between the latest Harry Potter book......and “Atlas Shrugged.” http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/004254.html (AS Summarized and critiqued here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/ersatzinsomnia/1766.html#cutid1) Wow. Oddly enough, it sorta works. Students deciding one day to just up and leave when the system gets to warping their education too much. The imposed organization working against its own supposed ends via implementation of absurd favoritism and grudge-holding. Teachers making it illegal for students to study. Let’s see...that would make Hermione Hank Rearden, Harry is Dagney Taggart, and I guess Dumbledore would be John Galt in his mountain valley at the Order of the Phoenix.
Heh.
No, I’m not granting this much credence, but on a purely basic drive level, they have similar direction. It’s probably building on similar ideals rather than building toward similar goals.
So I ask my friend, “if you thought the stories were so bad and the writing so abysmal, why did you read the first four?” And he says “I can’t criticize them if I haven’t read them.”
*Sigh*
Ironically, he loves “Atlas Shrugged.”
Anyway, after rocketing through HP at such a rate, I set off to finish out my previous book, “The Serpent and the Rainbow” for which I had barely two hundred pages left. I barely finished it in the remaining week I was up in WI.
Man this is a badly written book.
“The Serpent and the Rainbow” is the non-fictional account of the author (Wade Davis)’s work in Haiti. Back around 1980, this “ethno-botanist” went to Haiti to investigate the possibility that the stories of “Zombification” and “walking dead” had some basis in fact due to the island’s long history of especially deadly and effective poisoners. The book is an excellent source for facts you never knew you wanted to know about Haiti’s history. Turns out that Haiti’s liberation from France occurred through a strange combination of slave revolt, guerrilla warfare, and mysticism. The mysticism is a strange homebrew conglomeration of religion brought over from Africa, with a strange modernization and partial melding with Christianity, bringing us what is commonly known as Voodoo. The particulars of the religion I’m not going to get into, largely because I’ll probably fuck it up royally and I accidentally left the book up at WI so I can’t check anything. But I remember a few interesting examples, like one of the houngan (“good” Voodoo (or voodoun) priest, as opposed to bokor, those working with evil and the dead, though the distinction isn’t nearly as clear as this) leaders of the revolution was guarded by two holy men defending him with flywhisks magically charmed so that they could deflect bullets. Anyway, slaves kept by the French plantation masters who ran or otherwise left servitude traveled into the hills and formed kind of guerrilla groups, maintaining contact with “agents” still on the plantations. Strange political power games rose up between the groups, involving elaborate intricacies and voodoun mysticism, but much of the strikes against the plantation masters were carried out through an enormous variety of highly lethal poisons derived from the animal and plant life of the island and a huge variety of ways to apply them. (Un-confirmable rumors of the time also held that the African tribes from which slaves were sold, and who often endured trials or rites of passage to leadership involving poisons, got rid of their especially proficient and dangerous chemists by selling them to the French...meaning that they came to Haiti with enormous expertise already.) Poisons and drugs thus hold a central and highly spiritual significance in the Voodoun religion, a houngan or bokor are experts at holding people sickly or killing them outright with little or no apparent cause.
Working from this basis, Wade Davis traveled to Haiti to try and trace some pharmacological basis for the Zombie legends. The first half of the book follows his trials and travails to try and integrate himself into the secret societies (traditional remnants of the original guerilla groups...sort of...it gets really elaborate) and to find a houngan who would give him the details about raising someone from the dead. What he found is really fascinating. He started from the case of two “recovered” Zombies, people who claimed to have been raised from the dead and controlled by bokor to work as slaves on their plantations. Two things of interest were found. First of all, both suffered from some degree of “damage.” Apparent neurological problems, incomplete recovery from their “zombie” state, etc. Second, despite their return to their previous homes, their families and surrounding communities would have nothing to do with them.
Long story short, Wade Davis eventually earns the respect of several houngan and secret societies, and provides some insight into the possible occurrence of zombies. Of course, the zombies are not actually the living dead. They do not die at all. Instead, someone marked for death by a houngan or bokor is watched carefully for a time by the holy man. Then, once the target’s daily comings and goings are known, he chooses a path that the target will walk over, and spreads a special powder on the ground in the shape of a cross. When the target comes into contact with the powder, they begin to sicken and die. When they “die” what actually happens is a state of extreme paralysis so deep that cursory examination by a doctor can find no sign of life. A ceremony is held, and the person is buried. If the houngan has no need of a zombie worker for his land, the story ends there. The victim either eventually succumbs to the poison, or suffocates underground. However, if the houngan requires a zombie slave, the newly deceased victim provides an excellent target. The exact religious interpretation here gets complicated, but what I remember of it is that the soul says the Voodoun religion, consists of two parts, the great good angel and the little good angel. The great good angel is like the animating force in a living being. It makes the heart pump, the lungs draw breath, etc. Over time, this angel dissipates with age, like a battery running down. The little good angel is, essentially, the individual personality of a person. Everything that makes you, you is in the little good angel. When a person dies of old age, the great good angel dissipates and the little good angel ascends to “heaven” (again, gets complicated and involves the mediators between God and the worshippers known as the “Loa”). However, when a person dies before his time, i.e. by disease, poison, or violence, the souls are confused. The great good angel hasn’t dissipated naturally, but still the body is dead. Because of this, the corpse requires seven days in the ground for the remaining great good angel to dissipate. The little good angel cannot ascend until the great good angel is gone, so it hangs around the gravesite. This is where the houngan or bokor steps in. The Voodoun priest is able to magically capture the little good angel in a receptacle (“soul jar” for those D&D players out there). One bokor even attempted to sell Davis one such jar when Davis said he wanted to “purchase” a “zombie,” leading to much confusion. He or his assistants then dig up the body, and call it back to life, with the assistance of a magical paste. The “calling” consists in many cases of a ceremony including dashing with cold water or ruthlessly beating the body while calling the person’s name. Now, theoretically, the houngan could raise any recently buried corpse which had died before its time....but what would provide a better target than his own handiwork? Those who died by violence or sickness might be too damaged to work the fields, but the work of his own specially-prepared poison magic?
So you see what’s happening....the Voodoun priest literally believes he is raising the dead, when he’s merely removing from coma a poison victim he provided. The magical paste provided might be an antidote, the beating brings sensation back to the victim, and the neurological damage from the poisoning results in the placid, suggestible state. Further, food provided to zombie workers often consists of a plant called the “zombie’s cucumber” a vegetable that contains a small amount of datura, a mild hallucinogen and mood-altering drug. (Datura is a pretty widespread drug in nature. Some Native Americans also smoked other natural sources of it. I think one source is the unfortunately-named “rapeseed” the grain of a wild grass.)
So why is it tolerated? Why would a community allow such a thing to go on? Before all the atheists start waving their hands around about the repressive and fear-instilling nature of all religion, Davis proposes that it’s actually the other way around. In the latter half of the book he explores the society surrounding the Haitian religion (there are some good pieces about the Loa “riding” worshippers) and discovers that it is the society which employs the houngan. When a member of the society essentially becomes a real bastard (working to deny someone their land, cheating on their wife, constantly nagging their husband, abandoning their children, disrespecting their family, becoming rich at everyone else’s expense) someone, often a member of the person’s own family, will secretly “sell” the person to a bokor or houngan. The holy man will “judge” the case, often calling on the judgment of other holy men to determine if the “selling” is justified (there’s even a jurisdiction system in place). If so, then the holy man will administer the poison, and the system proceeds. If not, the “case” is turned down and ignored. It acts like a kind of nation-wide vigilante terror system for getting rid of the nastiest bastards of a town. Therein lies the horror of the _original_ zombie story. Voodoun worshippers don’t fear the zombie, he’s just a brain-damaged field worker risen from the dead. They fear BECOMING a zombie. The zombie poison works in such a way that the victim, though unable to even blink, is aware of the world around him as he sickens, “dies,” attends his own funeral service, is buried in the ground, and then brought “back to life” through the voodoo ceremony, but having lost most memories, his name (zombies are given new names upon resurrection, “re-baptizing” them) and his willpower. Honestly, that’s a much better horror story, but one that’s a little difficult to tell with an original twist. Legends and fiction writers have built on the concept to give us the salt, sewn lips, and brain-eating concepts.
So what’s the poison? Bet you think I’m gonna say that Davis never found out. Wrong. He gets a few good samples of different versions of the powder by halfway through the book and takes them back to NY, along with specimens of all the component parts. The parts include dried plants, fish, poisonous toads, a nematode worm (stuck in a sack with the toad overnight to “enrage” the toad and “concentrate the toad’s poison” according to the houngan), and shavings from human bones. (Apparently some graveyards in Haiti have been raided so many times that there’s practically no complete corpses left.) The botany and zoology department examined the component parts closely. Most were found to be effectively biologically inert. The toad was indeed poisonous, but only in a skin-irritation fashion, and to a very small degree. There was a trace of datura in the plants. But the real find was the fish. It was poisonous. And you already know of it. Since you’re an anime fan. The fish is called “Fugu” by the Japanese. Yup. Several species of Blowfish are native to the Caribbean, and their poison is a powerful paralyzing agent. Hell, the Japanese folk remedy for mild paralysis by Fugu is to bury the victim in sand up to his neck until he recovers. (Sorry, no idea why that would work, or if it does.)
So the mystery is solved and zombies are (sort of) real?
Well, Davis certainly thinks so.
Me, I’m not so sure. For one thing, it’s all too pat. Everything rolled up into one package, and yet not widely cited. Davis even got a zombie-like trance duplicated in lab rats, and yet I haven’t heard of this. When taking an anthropology class back at Emory, zombies were mentioned as an entirely culturally-created phenomenon, where the society “rejects someone, calling them and treating them as dead until the person begins to act the part”. Elsewhere I’ve seen publications proposing a neural and spinal disorder as the origin of the zombie legends. Although this might be a case of shoddy research on the anthro text’s behalf, or simple out-dated-ness, it seems to me that if Davis’s work were so irrefutable, everyone would know it. I mean, this is a fascinating account with twists and turns and integration of legend and actuality and is just so frickin’ _cool_ that why isn’t it being used to raise money for further research somewhere? The book is nearly twenty years old, and it hasn’t been expanded upon? (Standard progression: scientific journals are two years behind “cutting edge.” Popular publication are seven years behind.) Anthro and archaeological departments the world over should be interested in this. Hell, isn’t there some basis for a humanitarian problem here? Institutional slavery? Widespread poisoning? Exploitation of the brain damaged? It’s like picking up a science journal from the 50’s and discovering a study that claimed to have completely cured cancer 100% of the time. You may not know the details of the science involved, but you’re sure that it’s not completely accurate, ‘cause SOMEONE would have said something. Further, though I can’t give you a reference, I’m almost certain that I’ve heard of someone refuting this work. What I think is going on here is another “cold fusion” incident, but occurring in the field of anthropology and pharmaceutical biology, fields whose own obscurity and dullness in the public eye would mute any incident of popular fraud. (Purposeful or accidental.) Much the same could be said on the sociological front about the society built around the voodoun practices. The real cincher, though is that Wade Davis comes out smelling like a rose from every situation. A white (“blank”) man goes to Haiti to learn the most closely guarded secrets of their religion, and barely gets into any trouble with anyone? Comes out the hero of the entire community? This is what we call the “Pocahontas/John Smith test for believability.”
Having said all this, though, the book is still a wonderful source for the bloody history of Haiti, and all the petty big men its had to suffer under before and after liberation from the French. (Haiti’s the only country to have had a successful “slave revolt,” but its governments since then have left much to be desired.) It’s also a great source for insight into the Zombie legends and the “Voodoo” religion workings as well as the society surrounding it. (There are a dozen “correct” spellings of voodoo. I picked one and ran with it.)
Unfortunately, the man can’t write his way outta a paper bag. Well, he’s not that bad. But the whole story is told in an almost swashbuckling melodramatic air. We get teary-eyed new-age spiritual writing about his observing the rites at a holy mud bath. Ecstatic action-filled sequences of a voodoo ritual with colorful adjectives and adverbs and metaphors and feelings, and if you dig really deep you might be able to figure out what was actually going ON. It’s not even well written melodrama, but the hackneyed, drunkenly swaying portrayal of a religion by someone who really wanted to write fantasy as a kid. (Yeah, yeah, I should talk. Hey, takes one to know one.) Look, this story is exciting enough without you saying that “dark secrets played about his eyes as he considered me.” (Not a direct quote, but a fairly good example.)
So my entire vacation consisted of reading? Nah, just thought I’d get those outta the way.
The whole family was scheduled to be there this year, but not for real encouraging reasons. They were all planning on getting together to discuss Grandma’s will.
You might be able to guess where this is going.
When Grandpa died everything passed to Grandma without any real fuss. However, Grandma got a good look at the will and discovered that it hadn’t been updated since about the 70’s. If she dies, whackety-whack, taxes whips away an enormous amount of the estate, the government sells the house and lands to the fastest bidder, and splits the remains six ways. Leaving one sister (the one presently taking care of Grandma) without anywhere to live, and bulldozing the family homestead for more condos. Grandma instructed everyone to come to the reunion with proposals for how the will should be rewritten.
I snuck to the furthest corner of the house, they all went on the deck. Much discussing began. Then came much yelling. Then came much crying. Then it started raining and they all moved inside to where I was sitting. Then came more yelling. Then I moved. Then they moved. I was literally fleeing around the house trying to stay out of range of this “discussion.” So far, lots of hurt feelings, nothing resolved.
In a similar vein, we found a bunch of baby rabbits on the back lawn. I’d just mowed (no I didn’t hit anything) the entire expanse of my Grandmother’s yard the day before when Squeaky (Nutmeg), one of the four housecats, comes trotting up with something in his mouth. He’d already caught a vole (which managed to escape) and half a chipmunk earlier in the week despite the bell on his neck, so this was over his quota. (I’ve nothing against cats satisfying their natural instincts, but all the Hanson cats are fat already.) Sharla got him to drop it, and we found out it was a baby rabbit, at a guess about ten hours old, fortunately unharmed. Eyes closed, about four inches long, an inch thick, with a light dusting of grey-black fur covering it, tiny little legs and little curled back ears. It didn’t have enough fur to stop being creepy and be cute, and looked kind of like a miniature Daschund. A bit of hunting turned up the rest of the litter. About five others squirming about in a little pile. Four feet off the edge of the stone walkway. In the middle of a completely clear, newly mown patch of grass with no cover anywhere near. The hell? There’s only three things I can think of to explain this. 1) Momma rabbit is an idiot. 2) Momma rabbit got spooked by Squeaky snitching one and was in the process of moving the nest...to the middle of a clearing...see #1. 3) Momma rabbit got spooked by Squeaky while in labor and...things fell where they did. The last seems unlikely since they were all dry and clean.
So, we corral the four cats back into the house, pile up some grass clippings in a cover over the baby bunnies so the crows don’t find them, and wait for momma to come back and relocate them.
Then the storks arrive.
No, really. My Grandmother’s house sits on the edge of a marsh. Every year we get a flock of ducks that land in the river, but pop over to the Hanson household for some of the corn Sharla scatters out for them. This year, we attracted a bit more. A mature pair of Sandhill Cranes and their two chicks come stilting their way across the lawn to their own designated corn patch twice a day. By this time, the chicks are juveniles, only four inches or so shorter than mom and dad and bedecked in brown and white feathers. They usually pick at the corn for ten or fifteen minutes and then go root through the compost pile for bugs. I wouldn’t describe them as “tame” but they’re pretty permissive and only object (clack loudly at you) if you get closer than about six feet or so. They eat only ten or fifteen feet away from the deck, even when the family reunion (31+ people) are all standing there looking at them. One even came up to the house and attacked the window when he spotted Squeaky sleeping on the couch inside. Squeaky was unconcerned. He’d figured out about glass.
So they come stilting across the lawn, a good distance from the baby bunnies....and one of the juveniles plucks another baby rabbit off the lawn. The other one spots this and they get in a fight over it, each eventually getting a bite. Then they find another. Somehow, two of the rabbits had been stranded way down the lawn near the raspberry patch. Fortunately, that’s all they find, and, having filled up on rabbit, only pick at their food before bobbing off again. We spend most of the rest of the day waiting for momma rabbit to show up again. Eventually she does! With poppa rabbit! (I think.) And they CAN’T FIND THE BABIES. Or won’t. Jeez, it’s not like we moved them. They’re right where we found them. At any rate, they hover around the area, within a few feet of the squirming horde, and then run off. Come back a few times, but never make a move to evacuate. Right before dark, my cousin Jennifer went out to “check on them” for a minute or two before I call her back inside. Three minutes after she leaves, momma Raccoon, who has four kits of her own, and who was watching Jennifer, comes down outta the tree to see what Jennifer found so interesting. We shoo her away, but the battle’s effectively lost. The Raccoon knows where the nest is, momma rabbit doesn’t. Between her raiding and our shooing, momma rabbit’ll never get close enough to find her children in time. By morning the nest was empty. Technically, we never saw momma Raccoon get all of ‘em, but I somehow doubt that momma Rabbit got any out in time, seeing as how I spotted her sitting six feet away while momma Raccoon started tearing up the makeshift nest.
I’m not sure exactly how all that was metaphorical to the will discussion going on inside, but it somehow feels appropriate.
In much, much better news, my younger cousin David brought his girlfriend along with him when he came up for the reunion. This was the first time in about three years that I’d seen him (our vacations kept missing each other) and the first time I’d met her. Her name is Sunny (middle name Day.....poor kid) thereby ensuring that song was stuck in my head for the two days our visits overlapped. I wasn’t sure what to think of her at first, as all I knew was that she was a vegetarian (necessitating at twenty minute grocery search for “tofu crumbles” before they arrived), but she passes in all the appropriate capacities. For one, she’s a bit of a goof, which means she’ll fit right into our family. More importantly, she enthusiastically wanted to join us when all the cousins snuck out to see “28 days later” and has a comparable knowledge of horror films despite the fact that David doesn’t like them. Same for animated films. She also happily hung out in the Half-Price bookstore with us cousins for three hours, no complaints. This was good, as the next day, at the family reunion on the fourth, David announced that she wasn’t actually his girlfriend, she was his fiancée. The only real grounds for objection are that she apparently likes the comedy stylings of Tom Green. (That’s it! Outta the family!) On the other hand, she’s a big time athlete. By the second day she had us cousins out and renting kayaks (well, a tandem, a single, and a canoe) to go out on the lake. Me, I’m not a big fan of direct sunlight, or exertion, but I went along for their sake. I chose the canoe, something I regretted for the rest of the day, because no one told me the kayaks had rudders. I can’t steer a canoe to save my life, and most of the effort went into corrective drifting than forward motion. Anyway, we paddled down the river into the lock, out onto lake Mendota and over the University’s Student Union, hauled everything out of the water, went in for lunch and ice cream, dropped ourselves back in the lake, back to the lock, and out where we started. (At the very, VERY end, right as we’re hauling everything out of the water....I fall in. Damn.) For the first time _ever_ I applied enough sunscreen and don’t get burnt except on one little spot above my right ankle. Unfortunately, I ended up pulling all the tendons in my right forearm....or something....and it started aching badly halfway through dinner. Got home and stuck my arm in an ice chest for twenty minutes. Didn’t quite do the trick and I got all pissy and self-absorbed. Then I drank three Guinness and got all maudlin and self absorbed. Next morning we line up for the family pictures, and twenty minutes after that I’m out the door for the plane.
Ahh flying. Up into the wild blue yonder. You know, I’ve always felt closest to God when I’m flying. Probably because I always spend the flight in near constant conversation with him. Fortunately, you see, the armrests on my chair always happen to be directly attached to the most key support beam of the plane, and I am thus in charge of holding the plane up during the flight. (Not an easy thing with all those pulled tendons from the day before, but I somehow selflessly maintained my grip throughout both the initial and the four hour connecting flight.) Somehow the man next to me discerned by vigilance as a sign of uneasiness (as if!), and he assured me that this little bit of turbulence was nothing. Why, when he was a paratrooper in the army, he was on a plane just like this, clear blue day, when they hit a patch of dead air and plummeted nearly a thousand feet before leveling out.
Somehow this did not reassure me.
And now I’m here.
Bleh.
Finally, ta review. As you’ve guessed from the above, it’s “28 days later.” Now, to be honest, I don’t think this is the movie I thought it was. Mike brought along a preview for a new zombie film to a party a few months back, but I could’ve sworn that it was Australian, not British. This flick most definitely takes place in Britian. Most of the actors are British or Irish. Could still be Australian made, but doesn’t really feel it. Does feel very non-Hollywood, though.
Warp speed, ‘cause I’m loosing interest and the backlog’s gotten ahead of me.
A group of radical animal rights activists, in their typically deluded fashion, break into an animal research laboratory in England. Unbeknownst to them, the chimps inside are part of an experiment being conducted on anger and blind rage. In order to study the biochemical phenomenon, the scientists fashioned a transmittable vector (probably a virus or something similar, as it appears to multiply in response to available hosts, rather than a drug or enzyme that would be incapable of the later scale of acceleration shown) that triggers the “fight” half of the “fight or flight” instinct but good. They “free” one of the apes, and, surprise, surprise, it lunges out and attacks one of them. Things go pretty well downhill from there. (Especially for Jennifer, who, at 15, somehow talked her mom into letting her see her first “complete R-rated movie in the theater.”...which I pointed out was a lot of modifiers. *Sigh* They grow up so fast...)
Now we jump ahead “28 days later” and join our protagonist hero, lying comatose in a hospital...uh...hammoc with tubes running in his arm. He’s just woken up from a coma, and is more than a little concerned that he can’t raise anyone in the whole hospital, even after he found himself some clothes. (Full frontal nude scenes warning.) This bit actually works really well as the hero “Jim” wanders about a deserted London, encountering more and more disturbing absences. At one point he finds a central notice board that’s filled with hundreds and hundreds of “missing person” signs, as well as “I have lost my mum and dad, can you please help me” signs. Vicious
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Oh hell, I don’t care anymore. Just lost half a review to a sudden restart (on the computer's own) and the typing is so fucking stressful for my word processor that it can’t go five letters without stalling for half a second. Fucking annoying.
Net result: 28 days later: good zombie flick (anyone who tells you that it’s not a zombie flick is a fucking literalist who doesn’t know what they’re talking about) that somehow turns into “Lord of the Flies” by the end when our straggling survivors encounter the remains of a military squad. Also, a hell of a lot of windows in this film.
“League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” actively insulting in so many ways that I was on my way to a full review just by listing the problems with it. Dorian Grey was the best addition in all respects, and the only really good scene in the whole thing is his fight with Mina Harkness, but even he had so many bad scenes with overblown sophistry that the character came out as a net suckage. I seriously haven’t the time or effort to tear this apart now, but I’ll probably come back to it since it pisses me off so badly. Bad plot, writing, drama, character development, source interpretation, action choreography, even camera placement. Bad Bad Bad. A few moments here and there that came out good, which elevates it to about a 2 on a six-point scale, but really not worth your time. Somewhere between Avengers and highlander 2.
“Sinbad the Sailor” (Saw this one just a few hours ago. Tried to join the gang to see “Pirates of the Carribean” but when I got there early I found it sold out, so caught this show solo. Hey, two pirate flicks in one season!) Very, very good. Honestly funny in many sections. Plot not entirely predictable. Some really cool animation (although a touch heavy on the CGI in places) ESPECIALLY WITH ERIS. Just her manner of moving around was cool as hell. VA needed just a touch of fine tuning. Some bits had dialogue delivered a bit more frantically than the animated characters showed, and vice versa. Michelle Peiffer turned in an honestly good if not stellar performance as the goddess of discord. Action was really kickass, especially in the beginning. (Want to watch that on slow-motion just to see what was done.) A few dramatic moments that didn’t go over as well as they should, but really interesting dramatically. Distinct, entertaining characters, even when it’s just the ship’s crew. Went for the high-speed bickering “they hate each other now but will fall madly in love at the end” dialogue during climactic battles with Godzillian sea monsters and pulled it off very well. (PS, anyone ever heard about an actual legend of the “Book of Peace”? New one on me...)
That’s it for now, should help you all with decisions about which films to see in the deluge this summer. Still have to see Pirates and T3 myself.
Now it's time to tell my computer to go fuck itself and go to bed. - : EMERGENCY MISSIVE 2003-07-10 23:23:00 I’VE JUST RETURNED FROM SEEING A SNEAK PREVIEW OF “THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN.” THIS IS A BAD BAD FILM. IT’S AS BAD AS WE FEARED, AND A LITTLE WORSE. IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE GRAPHIC NOVEL, THIS FILM IS ACTIVELY HOSTILE TO YOU EVER BEING ABLE TO ENJOY THE GRAPHIC NOVEL. *cough* Yeah, it really is that bad. There are a few cool moments, a couple of minutes scattered here and there where the actors nail their characters pretty good, but the rest is all bad special effects, horrible plots, rotten (ROTTEN) writing, and bad acting. Actively insulting to your intelligence. Imagine if someone had made “Big Trouble in Little China” with less talent, more money, and the campy writing was actually the writers trying to write straightforward drama. On a scale of 1-6 it gets a 2. If you go to see it as a “bad” film, you might enjoy it more, but I was hoping for at least “good” and was crestfallen within the first few melodramatic lines. I put it somewhere between "The Avengers" and "Highlander 2."
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Me dumb.
2003-06-26 13:45:01
Gahh....correction.
Got the maker of "Blackbird" wrong. It's Zabet, not Kwasek. Check it out here: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=8527 -
Stupid LJ limit...read previous first.
2003-06-25 23:16:56
Next up, a considerably cheaper film that also had a myriad of editing problems...”The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Closet.”
Whoops. “Grave.” Sorry. (Hey, when you’ve got a good joke, milk it for all it’s worth.)
So, “The Night Ellen came out of the Grave” is a....damn. “Evelyn.” OK, try again.
The night stuff happened is movie by Emilio P. Miraglia so filled with weird editing and stilted plot advancement that I reached the end of the flick with no clear idea of who the bad guys were. I filled up seven little note sheets with notes to myself about the sheer oddity of the story and the weirdness of the acting. I’ll try and distill it down for you a bit.
The flick starts off with a lunatic rappelling down the outside of the asylum. (But doctor, I didn’t see any harm in giving him the 27 foot bedsheets he asked for!) Though plagued by cataracts (that look an awful lot like irregularly frosted glass held in front of the camera lens) he then participates in a one man track and field event towards freedom, only to be stopped at the gate.
We jump....somewhere...in time and a person we...think...is the mental patient is now out and about and picking up prostitutes in his funny-looking squashed European car. The prostitute, who, despite being Italian in another film, now claims to be Irish, takes 500 pounds (Oh! Hey, must be Britan...looks like Italian villas, though.) and is taken by the crazy man out to a partially demolished castle to “do the dirty.” Along the way, the man A) checks to see if she’s a real redhead, and B) makes an excuse and swaps out the plates on his car’s bumper. (Oh....clever. That one goes in the little black book.) Anyway, we get a few minutes of wandering about (encountering a portrait of the red-headed “Eveyln”) before the crazy guy escorts her to a well appointed and nicely upholstered torture chamber, which doesn’t even phase the girl. (Apparently she’s seen worse kinks.) Then, suddenly, she screams and he kills her. Fraction of a second action, and we cut to the next scene.
Hmmm....edited for television? Possibly, although some minor nudity survives, there are weird blocks that feel like commercial breaks in here.
Cut to a Doctor driving by and seeing smoke from the crazy guy’s burning of the body. He seems mildly concerned. “Another attack?” He asks. “Excuse me?” I ask.
Cut to the preparation for a séance. Apparently in an effort to alleviate the stress that KIDNAPPING AND KILLING PROSTITUTES is bringing down on the main character (crazy guy), his friends ’ve decided to try and contact the spirit of his dead wife, Evelyn. (No one even considers going to the cops. Guess that’s just not done.) We get introduced to a mysterious séance artist and a woman in a wheelchair. She channels some images of a woman walking about and a bunch of mumbling about them needing to be together again. It works sufficiently to produce some cheap special effects and knock crazy-guy outta his chair. Meanwhile, Evelyn’s brother, the groundskeeper extorts money outta whoever’s nearby.
Then we cut to a fox pen, (for fox-hunts...so terribly British, don’t you know) where crazy guy (I can’t for the life of me remember his name) gets fixed up by his old cousin George with ANOTHER girl-who-does-it-for-money. (His motto is “a different girl at least every other month.”) She works as a dancer in what must be the 1971 equivalent of scandalous heavy metal band videos....performance art where she dances around a coffin to truly horrible music. (Sort of like if Jimi Hendrix did strip club music.) Again, he checks her hair. (Oh! Hey! It’s Erica Blanc, the star from Succubus! I am so gonna start kicking ass at “six degrees” eventually.) She goes into a dance routine for 1000 pounds. Allan (THAT’s his name) seems even less interested in this rather pathetic performance than we do. He persuades her to wear a pair of thigh-highs. Suddenly the editor spazzes out again, and, with no transition, he’s choking her with a whip. Then Allen discovers the drawback to making her wear the boots. She hoofs it and hides in the nearby family crypt...where Evelyn is buried. He follows her, tries to kill her, passes out, and when he awakes her body is gone.
Fortunately, the good doctor knows exactly what is needed to cure Allen of this nasty habit. He needs to get married!
WHAT?
Yes, the plot really is that spastic.
Fortunately, cousin George comes to the rescue, dressing in a flamingly gay outfit and taking Allen to a Great-Gatsby style party where he runs into Carol Burnet (no, not really) dressed as “I Dream of Jeanie.” Driven together at the edge of the party by the truly awful late-60’s rock band trying to incorporate the recorder into their “sound,” Allen stalks Carol Burnet as a potential wife. (Who next? Lucy Ricardo?) They go to her place, and in a remarkable twist, Allen DOESN’T kill this one and has sex instead. (“Whoa! I was missing out on this? Hell, I’m sorry I killed all those others!”)
And suddenly, they’re married! And the mansion where he killed all the other girls is being restored! And staffed by an incredibly creepy set of identical qadruplets! Who are never mentioned again!
Where the HELL is this going? Now the blackmail artist / groundskeeper is pissed about the marriage!
Cut!
Hand from off screen takes glass of milk off of table!
Cut!
Allen complains about missing milk! Wife professes that she saw something! What? WHO KNOWS?
Cut!
Wheelchair woman has affair with groundskeeper!
Cut!
Allen plays solitaire and hallucinates Evelyn calling him! Then gets cataracts!
Ladies and gentlemen, your eyes do not deceive you! Things are happening in the film that refer to parts which were cut out! Commence the no-sense-making! The audio is even lost a couple of times. Not the print’s fault, it’s a good copy of a complete mess of a film.
Wify’s hair changed color! No one notices! Now she’s blond! (“So much has happened....” LIKE WHAT? PLEASE EXPLAIN IT TO US!)
The wife makes a deal with the groundskeeper to open up Evelyn’s tomb, only to find it empty. Fortunately, the story starts getting a little less complex by killing off characters. The groundskeeper gets bitten by a rubber snake and buried. (Actually not a bad scene. Second best part of the film, with a gradual, painful loss of consciousness as the groundskeeper gets moved closer to his work.) Aunt Agatha, the wheelchair-bound member of the cast, experiences a miracle! She can walk! But not far. Takes six steps, and gets beaten to death with a giant potato. They later find her body partly eaten in the fox-pen. (Are foxes typically scavengers? I’m curious.) Someone actually says “surely this must have been an accident.” Yeah, she beat herself to death, climbed out of her chair, pulled herself into the pen, and closed the door behind her. Perfectly logical. *Headslap.*
Oh, wifey’s hair goes back to red. And comes outta the Hedi pigtails. No one notices. Then a bunch of other half-baked stuff happens. Eveyln’s portrait gets stabbed. Carol Burnet (out of that hairdo she doesn’t really resemble her any more)is driven to drugged drink. Allen finds the empty crypt in a rainstorm, something that looks like a zombie is wandering around. Evidence is found that the undead have been stealing their silverware. Most of the film’s climax happens in the graveyard, in the dark, in a rainstorm. Consequently I can’t see anything. General gist appears to be that Allen thinks he finds a living-dead Evelyn, and is driven insane. More insane. Finally.
Annnnnnddddd......it was all a trick! Carol Burnet was wearing an old fright mask in a plan initiated by cousin George to commit Allan and inherit his wealth. George gets the money, Carol gets the real estate. Except George double crosses HER too. Suzie (Erica Blank) shows up after Carol gets poisoned, and gets stabbed by Carol’s death throes. That’s why her body was never found. Unfortunately for the conspirators, Allan and his doctor show up to arrest them. Seems the conspirators were set up by the two men. Not that they tried to stop any of the killing, though. George puts up a fight and gets dunked in the pool, where Allen dumps a load of “Acidicum Sulphorum.” ( ? Is that Sulfuric Acid? In powder form? Sitting next to the pool? Good Lord. That doesn’t work on so many levels I don’t know where to start.)
Cousin George gets chlorine overdose and is dragged away by the cops. The end. Everyone seems to forget Allen’s one successful murder of the first prostitute. The one where he incinerated the body. Oh well. Boys will be boys.
Oh my dear Lord in heaven, this was a bad film. Horrifically edited. This may be the single worst job of editing I have ever encountered, and that’s saying something. Large portions of the storyline just didn’t make sense. There’s a medallion that keeps showing up which is never explained. There’s the mysterious milk. The fact that the family seems to tolerate Allen’s eccentric habit of killing prostitutes. It didn’t help that the lip-synching was so bad. There were so many plot holes, it would take longer to describe them than it would to watch the film. In short, never, ever get talked into watching this film unless you’re really desperate for some MST material. Films like these are only good for recalibrating your estimation of “bad.” Something occurred to me that I almost hesitate to mention, as it further amplifies the badness by comparison....but it occurs to me that this may be an attempted remake of “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Ig.
Next up, just because there might be someone strange person out there who hasn’t seen it, The Animatrix. I’ll keep this brief ‘cause it’s late and this’ll mostly be preaching to the choir. On the other hand, there are ten tracks. Briefly? For an animation nut like me, this was better than Matrix 2 itself. Roughly twice as good.
For those of you who’ve been under a rock for the last year, the Animatrix is nine animated shorts taking place in the imagined world of the Matrix, to one capacity or another. The directors are a bunch of recognized animators (or at least directors of animation) who were invited into the project and given nearly free reign over the subject and style.
First up is a two-parter that was released on the web in promotion of the disc, “The Second Renaissance” parts I & II. The first half is inventive, excellently animated, and terribly severe. The second half is all the stuff we already new, rather thin on details, and tends to focus on how badly the ‘bots beat humanity. Others have humorously torn apart the problems with the basic premise (http://www.machall.com/index.php?strip_id=193 http://www.machall.com/index.php?strip_id=194 and http://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=20030512), but the Wachowski brothers wrote these two, and they can’t even understand why feeding off of human body heat does not equal perpetual motion, so what did you expect? Brilliance? Settle for coolness. The director, Mahiro Maeda, known for “Blue Submarine 6”...an anime that extensively used CGI and yet didn’t completely suck, does his best with what he’s given, and makes out like a bandit for most of it, although the robots hauling rocks up the pyramid construction base was a little silly. (Guys! We’re computers! There’s got to be a more efficient way to do this!) Really, though, other than the part where they tell us ridiculous facts already established in the first film, the rest of it works really well. Less well in the second half due to resource burn-out.
Next up, we’ve got “Final Flight of the Osiris,” the bit that was put out in theaters on the front of Stephen King’s latest flick “Dreamcatchers.” It’s also written by the Wachowski brothers, but there’s so little actual writing in it that it doesn’t suffer because of it. A hover-ship encounters a great horde of sentinels tunneling towards Zion and rushes to get word of the attack out as their ship is torn apart. Ties in to events just prior to the second movie. The animators are the last gasp of Square’s movie division right before they were dissolved for not conquering the world with “Final Fantasy: The Movie.” Damn pity, because if anything, they demonstrated how cool they could have been. (The animation quality, especially in the human models, is also a good step up from what we saw in FF.) Three major parts, first a somewhat silly but cheesecake-intensive virtual fight sequence in the Matrix where the characters get slowly stripped down to “bare essentials” while fighting blind. (Both cheesecake and beefcake are presented for maximum audience appeal.) Second part, they’re pulled out of the virtual world to witness the Sentinel drill. When spotted, they start up in a hopeless running battle against the pursuing Sentinels, slowly getting overwhelmed, torn apart, and their gunners killed one after another. Finally, the girl re-enters the Matrix to drop off a message to Zion and performs a beautiful head-first dive down a dozen stories to the pavement that makes the whole disk worth the price of admission. Man that looked cool. Then everyone dies.
Numero quatro is “Kid’s Story,” another direct tie-in to the film, and thus _also_ written by the Wachowski brothers. See previous comment for why this doesn’t ruin it. On the other hand, the tie-in is little more than a cameo when an overexcited fanboy bugs Neo at his homecoming. The director is Shinichiro Watanabe, director of Cowboy Bebop and (co-director) of Macross Plus. He lives up to his pedigree with a unique and stylish take on a very simple project. The main character is a kid who suspects the truth about the virtual world he lives in. When found out by the agents, he flees through the halls of his school on a skateboard and, when trapped on the roof, takes a voluntary header, managing in the process to “self-substantiate” or pull the red-pill blue-pill bit through his own independent willpower. Neo picks him up from the vats once he awakens. If they don’t do something clever with this in the third film, they’re idiots. Anyway, the style comes from the animation. Beautiful backgrounds and carefully detailed characters start disintegrating at the appearance of the agents, carefully defined lines blurring and smearing in the action sequence that follows, until some figures almost reach a Bill Plympton-level of sketchy, abstracted simplicity. Really damn cool, as it seems to represent a breakdown in the matrix as the kid starts “waking up.” The kid himself converts from strong inked lines to cross-hatched shading pencil-work, and the slightly shifting features from frame to frame that are the sign of hand-drawn work. Get it? Instead of computer-assisted? Heh. It goes even further to distended, freakishly distorted figures and incompletely-filled-in color blocks.
Shinchiro Watanabe also directed “A Detective Story,” number eight on the disk. Here he had more creative control as there was no direct tie-in, and he was allowed to write the whole thing himself. If anything, this made it all the cooler. A detective particularly skilled at intuitive locating is hired by a mysterious voice to locate “Trinity.” Following clues and a partly-clouded invitation to follow her (it was hidden in an obscure “Through the Looking Glass” reference...one I particularly appreciated) he ends up with Trinity on a train full of Agents. They have a brief meeting, during which they befriend one another. (You know, even in animation, there are some people who just cannot seem to wear the Matrix latex-fetish gear properly. There’s an attitude, stance, and aspect to it that keeps it from seeming natural or appropriate. Always screams “I’m an actor” rather than sinking into the character. Badly superficial. This carries over into the animation a bit too. Maybe it’s the voice or writing. I dunno.) Anyway, cornered by the Agents, the Detective, despite being really fucking cool, doesn’t quite make it and gets to go out a hero guarding Trinity’s escape. (Oh, and his cat is really cool too.)
Next up is number five, “Program.” Written and directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, who is best known for his work in Ninja Scroll, and the second Vampire Hunter D, but his debut goes all the way back to 1984 with “Lensman.” As might be expected from that lineup, the piece is really damn pretty, but also the most facile, simplistic and empty of the bunch. A pair of awakened fighters are relaxing in the Matrix with a fantastical feudal-Japan competitive fighting game. Halfway through, the guy tells the girl that he’s betrayed the others in order to return to the relative peace of enslavement by the computers. He wants her to come with him, and confesses his love for her. She’s outraged and attempts to escape, but ends up forced to kill him. Then...surprise! It was all just a test of her loyalty. She slugs the guy and walks out of the room. The piece was really just made for the sake of the fight, and that’s kinda dull, just a sf/x spectactular with nothing really special about it. He’s showed more inventiveness in fight choreography in his other works. Here it’s just swords that slice stone, and a few space distortions during pursuit.
Number six is “World Record,” a pretty good piece that, until about ten seconds ago, I thought was done by Peter Chung. Actually, it’s a work written by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, in an uncharacteristically fight-absent sequence, and directed by a young student of his named Takeshi Koike, whose previous directorial work “Trava” I haven’t heard of, but am very interested in. I think it’s fair to say that the animation style does lean towards Peter Chung, with the strangely over-extended character designs (especially in the utterly....odd...faces), spastically flailing limbs, and the hyperobolization of the human form into an odd grotesquery of muscle and sinew. Uh...I mean all of that in the most complimentary manner. Oh, and the trainer, who looks a bit like Vanilla Ice, has this weird hyperactive gesturing that seems to be lifted directly from Chung’s book. Anyway, this is a story of an athlete, a sprinter specifically, whose determination of spirit actually outstrips the abilities granted people in the Matrix. Much like Neo is capable of “bending the rules” to perform absurd physics-defying actions, this sprinter is capable of willing himself beyond the physical capabilities of the properties assigned to his muscles. Thus, his efforts are starting to crash the Matrix around him, and he is moving towards a “self-substantiation” similar to the Kid. The Matrix sees it coming, however, and sends a slew of agents to watch over him. It’s especially dangerous, you see, because if the Matrix crashes due to his efforts, it will be witnessed by everyone in the stadium. As he approaches the breaking point, he actually wills a torn muscle back into place, and accelerates out of the reach of the pursuing (presumably blocked from audience view) agents, and crashes into full awareness in his bio-pod. A passing sentinel spots him and corrects the error. When he returns to the Matrix, he finds his virtual body crippled, wheel-chair bound in the hospital. He makes one last futile, but heroic effort, and collapses. Nice tragic story.
Number seven is my favorite of the bunch. Written and directed by Koji Morimoto, we know him as the genius behind the original “Robot Carnival” and (I think) the “Magnetic Rose” segment of “Memories. The story here is perhaps the simplest of them all, but the most brilliantly demonstrated. Simply put, a young Japanese girl, hunting around for her missing cat, follows a bunch of young (10-13 yrs.) hoodlums to a local “haunted house.” The house is actually a glitch in the system where the Matrix is breaking down. Physical laws are askew within the place. Sections rain constantly. Long absent lightbulbs flick in and out of existence. Glass unshatters. A tin can sits an inch off the ground. A massive degauss artifact blows through. People’s shadows don’t match where and when they’re standing. Birds get caught in mid-air by a differential time field. Frickin’ cool. I used to dream about finding a place like that when I was a kid. This expresses succinctly why I love animation. It’s a world where things like this can exist as easily as could a scene of a family eating breakfast. Animation is a massive open toybox to play in where the impossible is as easily created as the possible. The kids are also perfectly imagined. They’ve found the perfect secret hideout, and they’re hanging out playing and experimenting. Testing the world around them in perfectly innocent fascination. Truly, only a child or someone with a mind of open imagination could appreciate such a place. Making a game out of being able to hover off the ground, or vary your descent. It’s the ideal child’s playground. Of course, it has to be taken away. Agents show up, clear everyone out, and defragment the place thoroughly until it works properly. You can really see the influence of Robot Carnival here in the simple presentation without explanation, and the exploration of a phenomena merely for its own sake. By far my favorite of the whole disk for that, and for the pure mystery of the events in the house.
This is followed by everyone’s least favorite. “Matriculated.” This is what happens when you give Peter Chung a lot of money and a free reign. Have we learned our lesson? The story is simple, it’s now long in the future, beyond the Matrix, and the war is still being fought. A new technique has been adapted, though, of entrapping and persuading the independent AIs in sentinels to join the human cause. In an odd, for Chung, intersection, the robots are all computer animated while the humans are all more traditionally made. We start with a human luring two sentinels into their capture chamber with the use of the ever-popular monkey-bomb. (She carries an aye-aye around with her for no apparent reason. Well....that’s not really true. The monkey is apparently an assistive sentinel-spotter for her, but it’s still really absurd. Why a monkey?) The new sentinel design is pretty cool, but almost impossible to describe. When they capture one of the sentinels, the humans hook it up to a mini-matrix of their own design and attempt to persuade it into seeing things a human way. Unfortunately, Chung’s penchant for the weird gets really out of hand. Like psychedelic lava-lamp out of hand. No one ever speaks to the sentinel, they just trick it into pursuing them into increasingly weird and transformative events, which range from the funny to the dumb. My theory is their conversion works on the “oh God, make it stop!” motivation. The figures also have that Aeon Flux distended body form to them, which only gets more emaciated and weird when in the human-Matrix. Anyway, other sentinels attack and end up mortally wounding everyone in the place. The sentinel they’d been talking to apparently finally made up its mind, just in time to see the head “converter” die, and kills off the rest of the sentinels. We fade out with the new sentinel taking up the human’s old job, sitting on the shore, looking for someone new to convert. (P.S. Matriculated means “graduated.”)
There are so many extras on this disk that I haven’t even been through them all yet. You’ll have to browse them yourself. In the end, I really loved this disk because it provided over and over again the thing I liked most about Matrix I and was entirely absent from II. The wonder, surprise, and terror of the initial discovery about the truth. When everything and everyone starts going weird and the impossible starts happening around you. That’s the essential greatness of the Matrix. Everything else has been done before, but the dissolution of reality as you know it, both literally and metaphorically, is the real genius of the series.
OK, that’s all for now. Damn, came so close to catching all the way up.
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CHUNG! CHUNG! CHUNG! CHUNG! CHUNG! CHUNG! CHUNG! CHUNG! CHUNG! CHUNG!
2003-06-25 23:15:45
First off, something of an apology to those at the party over the weekend. I’m sorry if I seemed a little stand-off-ish or irritable while I was there. Mostly it was due to a bunch of minor irritations and disappointments that had built up over the week and culminated in me missing out on some stuff I’d been looking forward to. See, my weekend got accidentally screwed behind my back. It started out with a scheduling conflict (on my own time, for once, not AWA’s). I knew Mike’s party was lined up for nearly the entire weekend. Sunday was out, because I always need that time to get up to speed for the coming week at work, relax, get a full night’s sleep, etc. Friday was the regular gaming day for Brandon and crew. Saturday was the regular CoC gaming day. The latter two wouldn’t have mattered much to me if Chris’s regular gaming day hadn’t been canceled on Tuesday.
Yeah, three gaming days. Remember how I said that nearly always at least two of them got canceled on me? Well, here we go. Tuesday’s game got canceled for reasons I’m still a little fuzzy on. The only info I have is “something about the DM and a head injury.” That was funny five days ago. Now that I still haven’t heard anything, it’s progressing rapidly towards worrying. That left me with Mike’s party and the other two gaming days. Well, Brandon’s game is huge. We had seven players gathered around the table last week, with people showing up late and unexpectedly being able to make it. Whole thing was fun, but it’s just hard to get that many people all moving in one direction, or even up to date on the story, since we’re all chatting inbetween-time. Lots of people on lots of different pages. So, basically, they could do without me for a week. The CoC game on Saturday only had four people involved, including the DM (“Keeper” in this game). More importantly, the Keeper was _me_. (Basically running an intro session for two interested new players and one veteran. Something of a milk run, somewhat straightforward plot, evident clues, and beatable monsters. On the other hand, one of the newbies is a traditional D&D powergamer, and thus far is just horribly confused. They’re investigating an unusual mob hit in 1923 New York, and after a full 8 hours of gaming....are still trying to figure out what’s going on, wondering where the monsters are. My favorite thus far is when they talked their way into the 21 club, B.S.ed their way upstairs into the exclusive area, got into a poker game with _the_ Frankie Yale, and then couldn’t figure out what to do.) That made my presence rather paramount or the whole thing would be called off. So, my decision was made for me. Bow out of the party for Saturday, but come Friday for the food, fun, and movie. (More on the flick later.)
Saturday morning I get an e-mail telling me that the game was off because one of them was moving and another was helping him out. Had I known that, I could’a made it to Friday’s game, knowing I could make the party on Saturday. Bleedin’ hell. Two games canceled, and the only one that actually happened I accidentally bow out of. And on top of that, I’m gonna miss the NEXT two weeks of games as well, since I’m headin’ up to the great WI for a short summer vacation. I might as well roll up new characters when I come back, I’ll be so far outta step.
The irritability also came from the fact that I had another experiment on Thursday this week. Went so-so, but I got the blood sample in at the more traditional hour of about 3-4:00, meaning the work ran until about 5:00 the next morning. These things have started fucking up my sleep schedule more and more lately, especially since we seem to be getting a more regular supply of blood, and I don’t have any more “lucky weeks” where they can’t get a sample and I get to bed at a reasonable hour.
So that’s all the reasons for some of my awkward silences, tooth-gritting consternation, etc. I did have fun, it’s just that I can’t really decompress in the presence of others, and I’d had a lot of frustrations that week.
Second off, for Jimmy: Hey gander, this is goose. Guess what _I_ just bought? If you find the new 10-movie box-set entitled “Deadtime Stories,” you can hold off on buying it and just borrow mine. This looks to be a good’un.
Third off, for sixstop:
Bioluminescence of fireflies. Get a pen and get settled in, this could take a while.
The cheap answer to your question “how do fireflies glow” is easy. A quick googling found this: http://iris.biosci.ohio-state.edu/projects/FFiles/biolum.html
Which tells us that the reaction occurring in a firefly’s ass is:
luciferin + luciferase + ATP --> luciferyl adenylate-luciferase + pyrophosphate
followed by:
luciferyladenylate-luciferase + O2 --> oxyluciferin + luciferase + AMP + light
Which is, of course, not what you asked. I could also go with the really cop-out answer when you ask “how” this reaction occurs, by saying “no one really knows” which is, sorta, true, but it’s only on a level that a researcher in the field would care about, that is, the exact structure and mechanism of action of the luciferase at every minute fraction of a millisecond while the reaction is going on. What your real question is, is, “how is the firefly able to produce light by reacting two chemicals?” More specifically, “without bursting into flames.”
This will take a little bit, and a crash-course in some organic chemistry.
First, we look at the components. “Luciferin” is the really interesting substance here. This is the source of the light, and is a compound produced for specifically the light-giving purpose by an organ in the firefly. (Another quick google points out that this is just a generic name for bioluminescent substrates...telling us nothing about the chemical structure. Fireflies produce very different chemicals than deep-sea anglers, but they’re both called “luciferin.”) It’s also a substrate in this reaction, meaning that it’s a component that gets used up in the production of the light. Second in line is “luciferase.” The name is made of two parts, “lucifer,” meaning “light-bringer” (yes, the angelic name of the Devil does, in fact, mean “the bringer of light”) and “ase” meaning, “acts on.” (Or more correctly, “processes”.) This chemical is an enzyme, a complex, large bundle of protein strings balled up in just the right way that it will react with luciferin, and only luciferin, grabbing hold of it, performing some complex, very specific chemical reaction on it, and then letting go when the luciferin has been turned into something else. This latter part is the “we don’t know how it works” part. Finally, there’s the ATP. ATP is the universal abbreviation for “adenosine triphosphate.” ATP is basically the way all living cells store energy. There’s a few other ways that energy can be stored, but they’re all variations on this molecule (GTP being the next most common) and are variations, usually, just to be certain that they act in only certain contexts that are slightly different from where ATP is needed. (Think of AC and DC power. Both energy, slightly different applications.) ATP, though, is the most efficient. All the energy we get from food and sugars is finally processed into ATP. For all that, it’s a remarkably simple little molecule. You can see the diagram of it here: http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/atpstruct.gif
The body ribose group (yes, the same central compound from deoxyribonucleic acid-DNA) from the purine base Adenine (one of the components in the DNA “ladder”....it’s the “A” in GATTICA, and is paired up with “T” –thyamine- when DNA assembles) has a number of “phosphate” groups attached to it. With one, you get AMP (mono-), two you get ADP (di-) and with the maximum of three, you get ATP (tri-). ATP is NOT attached to DNA or RNA in any way, and exists as its own little molecule stashed away in cellular storehouses for when the cell needs them. (Not really, it’s more complicated than that since it’s also a signaling molecule, but I’ll keep this simple.)
ATP is basically like holding a wound watchspring. The “phosphate” groups are really bulky and charged. Pressing them in close to the adenine so it can react and form one molecule takes a good bit of energy. When it’s all assembled, it’s convenient to think of the molecule as “just barely holding together.” Even moreso the more phosphate groups are attached. (Thus ATP has more energy than ADP, etc.) Think about closing an over-stuffed suitcase. The phosphate has to be pushed hard against the forces repelling it away from the AMP, like you have to push hard against the elasticity of clothing to get the suitcase closed, but once you get the latch in place, you can let up. Undo the latch, and clothes go flying. The energy that you put into the suitcase in order to close it is converted into flying clothes when the latch is undone. So when the suitcase is closed, it’s “holding” a significant amount of energy. (ATP is assembled by another complex process involving other enzymes...again, more detail than I bet you want, but it all gets traced back to trapped sunlight energy gathered by plants in photosynthesis.) ATP is just a way of toting this “flying everywhere” energy around to where it can be put to use.
See, this is all about energy. The ATP comes along and latches into the luciferase. There the watchspring “unwinds” by throwing off the phosphate group in such a way that the mechanism of the enzyme gets wound up at the same time that the luciferase is grabbing the luciferin. (Which happens first isn’t known.) If you look at the names in the two products of the first reaction, one is the cast-off piece of thrown-off phosphate, and the second is basically the enzyme, substrate, and “watchspring” all stuck together in a working mechanism. Now we have an enzyme ready to go to work with the right component attached. Now what? Looking at the second reaction, we basically see that we just add oxygen to that big mechanism, the oxygen gets used up, and we get light. That really doesn’t help, though. Where does the light in the second reaction come from?
OK, take that pencil. Draw yourself a quick X-Y graph. The distance along the bottom of the graph is “progress of the reaction,” basically with two values, “before” and “after”. The height is “energy level of compound.” Draw a dot over “before” about 50% up the height of the graph. Then draw a dot over “after” about 10% up the height of the graph. The first dot represents what we have at the very start. Our substrates. For the moment, we’ll just ignore the enzyme’s action, and the ATP’s action to get the enzyme ready. So we’ve just got “luciferin + oxygen” at the first dot. At the second dot, we put the final chemical product, oxyluciferin. You can see here that luciferin and oxygen are “holding” more energy than when they finally get joined. If we apply the previous metaphor to luciferin instead of ATP, luciferin is the suitcase when it’s closed and ready to spring open, and oxyluciferin is when the suitcase is lying open with clothes thrown around the room. By reacting the chemicals together, the final product has much lower energy, so energy is, overall, “given off” by the reaction. (If the reaction went the other way, you would have to shove energy into the compound, and thus it would “absorb energy.”) This “given off” energy is light.
Now, what determines these “levels” of energy? Greatly (GREATLY) simplified, it’s determined by the molecule’s structure. Oh boy, how to explain this?
Think of a hydrocarbon. Like in petroleum. An example hydrocarbon is a single, long chain of carbon atoms strung in a long string, bound to one another. Down the length of the “string” all of the “side bonds” (two for each and three on the ends so each “C” has four bonds total) are to hydrogen atoms. Now imagine this molecule floating in space. “Stored” energy is present in each of the carbon bonds, just like the closed suitcase. Now heat it up a little. The molecule doesn’t have any more bonds, but now it’s got some more energy, in the form of added heat. The molecule responds to this increase energy by “moving more.” It doesn’t just move around in space more, (which it can’t do very much since it’s so large) but it moves itself, rotating around it’s C-C bonds, spinning crazily. It also stretches and shrinks its C-C bonds, “vibrating” between short and long, and “wagging” them back and forth like a dog’s tail. Now, cool it down and loop one end of the chain around and attach it to the other end so it forms a circle (cyclo-hydrocarbon). (You’ll have to get rid of the other two hydrogens.) Now heat it up again. The hydrocarbon is restricted in its movement. You’ve added more heat to it, but it can’t move around as freely, rotating as randomly, because now it’s fixed in a circle. But, somehow, it’s gotta get all that energy IN, because it’s at the higher temperature. It does this by taking in more energy and doing MORE of the vibrating to make up for the fact it can’t rotate as much. So, at the same temperature, the two different forms are vibrating at different energy levels. We could make this more complicated by adding double-bonds (C=C...can’t rotate at all around them), but I think you get the point. For the sake of sanity, that’s as close as I’m coming to dealing with entropy in this, especially as it concerns multiple products.
So, basically, when a chemical structure is “restricted” i.e., wound up on itself in such a way that it can’t move freely, it’s “holding” more energy than if it was unwound so that it could move more freely. Like ATP. In ATP, the energy is stored by restricting the movement of the phosphate molecule (which would be just floating around freely otherwise) in a molecule where it really can’t move around a lot. To make a new metaphor, the “freely moving” molecule is a pile of rubber bands, and the “restricted” one is a de-shelled golf ball. If you start cutting the rubber bands on the golf ball, it releases energy by snapping back. (Or, eventually, by launching half of the solid core at your head and the rest of the rubber bands coiling out onto the floor like some kind of worm. Scared the hell outta that 6-year-old me.) This is all about putting that “snapping” to good use.
Now, these “levels of energy” that a molecule has are expressed as “vibrational states.” When a molecule switches from one conformation to another, in this case, due to a chemical change, the atoms that were vibrating or wagging or rotating around their bonds switch to a different rate of vibrating, etc. because some of the energy is going into moving differently. If they’ve moved to a lower vibrational rate, then energy is released to the environment. If they’ve moved to a higher rate, then energy is taken from the environment. (And the beaker gets cold.) In this specific case, it’s released as light.
Why?
Because of the specific jump in vibrational states. Because of the specific amount of energy released in the specific way, the energy comes out at a wavelength that is seen as light. Most of the time in other reactions it comes out in a wavelength that we can’t see, in an amount too small to detect, or in a situation where it just gets absorbed by the rest of the organ as heat. The firefly, though, has a membrane that is transparent to this particular wavelength of light, so it just shines out where it can be seen.
So, that explains everything except why the ATP was needed. If the products are lower energy than the substrates, why do we need this watchspring? The problem is that the line from point A to point B on your graph isn’t straight. Draw a smooth, curved line from point A to point B, but go up a “hill” from the start so that there’s a point “C” at about 80% the height of the graph. Essentially, the reaction needs a “shove” to get going. It has to get enough energy to get up to the top of the hill before it can release all of it to glide down to point “B” at 10%. This is another conformation thing. Your suitcase is “stable” (i.e. not moving on its own) either when it’s latched or when there’s clothes all over the room. Any other position, and it will move on its own until it reaches either “latched” or “exploded.” Now, pretend you’ve got a hook-and-eyehole latch for the suitcase instead of a fancy push-button one. In order to get the suitcase from “closed” to “open with clothes all over the room” you have to push down on it again in order to get the hook undone. In other words, despite the fact that “open” has less energy than “closed” you still have to put a little more energy into the suitcase to get from A to B. ATP is providing that energy. Sort of.
See, there’s also the enzyme. A good part of the “hill” has to do with the entropy (energy of randomness) of the two molecules (luciferin + oxygen) running into one another in just the right way to cause the reaction. Luciferase takes care of this by carefully grabbing both parts and jamming them together just right for the reaction to occur. This is expressed by a smaller hill. (Draw another line from A to B, but with a C that only reaches 60%.) The ATP “unwinding” into the luciferase provides enough energy to get over THAT hill, but not the bigger, previous hill. To get up that hill would require a lot more energy...most likely heat, which would move the molecules around so rapidly that the chances of the two components hitting one another in just the right alignment would go up....but this would involve cooking the bug. (Because of effects like quantum tunneling, the reaction will occur without all this fuss, but in such small amounts as to be nearly undetectable.)
So, the full sequence is; ATP partly winds up luciferase, releasing the extra phosphate groups. Luciferase grabs luciferin. Luciferase grabs oxygen. The ATP finishes it’s clockwork by providing enough energy to shove the two together. Oxygen and luciferin react and release light. Luciferase releases AMP (expended ATP), and the oxygenated luciferin. Repeat.
I hope you’ll excuse me from not having answered this question during the party after I’d had a few beers.
Everyone hold onto something....we’re going to segue!
I have, in the past, used a phrase in my movie reviews that may have confused a lot of people, mostly because I think I’m the only one who knows what I mean by it. The term is “vicious.” That’s really meaningless in the context of a movie. I don’t mean viciousness of the characters or the actions exactly, but more a viciousness towards the audience. But not direct abuse of the audience. I meant it to be a word describing particular brutality of emotion in manipulation of the audience. But not to the extent of trying to gross the audience out or make them jump or anything of that sort. This is more a triumph of drama.
Hmm...
Everyone knows what a powerful film/book is, right? It’s a story that pulls us in. Makes us feel for the characters, not necessarily because they’re likeable or sympathetic, but because they’re so strongly developed, believable characters. They speak to us. A “vicious” story is one that chooses to use this power for EVIL. It’s pulling you into a story while simultaneously abusing you for your utter involvement. Emotionally hurting the audience because they’ve “opened themselves up” to the story. Except the viciousness isn’t dependant upon surprise. Viciousness isn’t the pitbull biting down on your leg, it’s him adjusting his grip when you’re too weak to get away. In the most powerful incidences, it’s using remarkable skills as a writer or artist to pull people into a story, make them feel for the characters, all the while telling the audience that it will end badly. They end up hoping against hope that it could be true, all the while knowing that it won’t be. (This is all very different from “vicious humor” which is merely viciously breaking commonly accepted taboos and limitations in abuse and pursuit of humor. Like www.Somethingpositive.net. Though humor derived from “vicious” works could further punish their audiences, being “vicious” on a couple of levels.)
Ladies, hike up your skirts. We’re gonna be wading pretty deep in the next section. If you’re easily offended or unwilling to discuss uncomfortable or socially taboo subjects, skip down to the Hulk review.
I _love_ vicious works. My favorite movie of all time could be seen as an incredibly vicious work. There’s nothing like a vicious work to shake off the complacency engendered by one too many happy endings and demonstrating the true breadth and scope of the audience-creator interaction. Whenever I use the term “vicious” it should be taken as the highest compliment, as it means I was successfully engaged and pulled into a story even when I knew I would be hurt because of it. Films that attempt, but don’t quite manage it, merely end up as dark comedies, watching hapless characters meander through their paces towards inevitable destruction. No one laughs at the vicious nature of a work.
Johnny the Homicidal Maniac was both a “vicious” and “viciously humorous” work. “I Feel Sick” was much the same. The end of the live-action “The Professional” film was a little bit vicious. Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” is very vicious. Now and Then, Here and There is a VERY vicious work, although I’ve yet to see all of it. Kwasek managed to further distill the viciousness of Now and Then, Here and There down into an almost toxically vicious AMV in “Blackbird.” So much so that I caught on to the underlying story within the first few seconds of the video and was struck all the harder for not having seen any of the show before then. One of the reviews I hope to get to tonight is of a very vicious series.
But for a truly distilled work of “viciousness,” one where it truly is the defining point of the work, I’ll have to point you to something that I happened upon this last week. It’s a webcomic I came to through another person’s lj list of his favorites. The comic is, simply, “Jack.”
http://jack.keenspace.com/
First, a few necessary disclaimers. Right off the bat, it should be mentioned that it’s a furry webcomic. This, of course, means that 50% of the anime community will dismiss it out of hand, out of a conscious distancing between themselves and the reputation that “furries” have managed to gain themselves over the past few years. The irony there is staggering, but not entirely unjustified. The suddenly-built reputation as a group of far-end fantasy fetishists is certainly building on well-tilled ground seeded over and over again at generic conventions by that most visible member of the furry community, the erotica artist. Ever since “Omaha the Cat Dancer” and/or “Fritz the Cat” the idea of “funny animals having sex” has garnered an almost absurd amount of attention from slathering fanboys and the artists who make a living off of them. Hell, I remember artists in the D*C “artist’s alley” having portfolio books of furry porn since before I was old enough to legally see them. They’ve also managed to infiltrate or be subsumed into the hyphenated groups for added weirdness. Now, I mean, the human libido is a seriously fucked up device. It’s the least logical of all emotionally-driven responses in an otherwise logical beast, and the compensation for year round fertility in humans appears to be the insertion of totally random trigger sets for arousal. I’ll never be the one who condemns people for what starts prompting their particular procreative urges. If the internet has (unwillingly) opened our eyes to anything, it’s to the enormous variety of kinks and fetishes out there (God, I gotta get a popup killer), but still, “inflatable-furry-latex-girl-on-girl-bondage” is getting so freakishly specific and fantastical I can’t even figure out which end of the scale it’s off of.
It is, to some degree, also the fault of the furry community that they’ve garnered this opinion. I’ve never been to a “furry-con” and I never plan on attending one, but the face they present the public there only seems to confirm the first impression one gets by typing “furry” into any search engine on the web. A small sub-set of the community has managed to set themselves up as representative of the entire group, and have yet to be seriously contested in that respect anywhere other than their own little worlds. Images like those found by Somethingawful don’t wash outta your head with any amount of scrubbing, and interviews like the one done by MTV (that managed to come away with the impression that it’s all just a gay fetish community) tend to stick around in people’s minds. (Yeah, yeah. I laughed myself sick too. But that doesn’t mean it’s right.) Meanwhile, entirely innocuous webcomics that would never dream of going anywhere outside of the family-friendly zone are made sticky and smelly by association. Hell, three or four have snuck into my daily cycle. Ozy and Millie (http://www.ozyandmillie.org/) is a harmless, and occasionally amusing daily strip which has more in common with Calvin and Hobbes than “Omaha”. “Newshounds” (www.newshounds.com) provides me with my daily dose of frustration over the tunnel vision of someone else’s political spectrum. “Funny Farm” (www.funnyfarmcomics.com) gives me an occasional chuckle, as well as crossovers with much funnier strips, and “Gene Catlow” (www.genecatlow.com) has a fairly engrossing storyline moving at an absolutely _glacial_ pace.
Come on, let’s face it. If anime had been a touch unluckier when it finally burst into primetime with pokemon and DBZ, the whole medium could have been judged by yardstick of the hentai titles that were pouring into the country at the time and decided that we were all women-hating perverts. If the internet had been as prevalent as it is now, all the reporters would’ve known how to use search engines and would’ve come upon their first Ryoko/Ayeka/Mihosi three-way, Wingbird comic, or lemon fan-fic in ten minutes. There, but for the grace of God go we.
Now, having said all that, I must be about to say that the comic I mentioned, “Jack” is entirely harmless.
Nope.
Oh GOD no.
If anything it’s worse.
Jack is one of the most viscerally violent webcomics I’ve ever come across. I don’t disturb easily (nawwww......really?) but there were a few images in here that hit me like I haven’t been hit since “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.”
And oh God is it “vicious.”
“Jack” is the story of death and hell. Or rather the stories. Vignettes, story arcs surrounding particular incidents or particular souls. “Jack” himself is the grim reaper, but he’s also something more. You see, it seems that hell is “ruled” over by seven figures, each representative of one of the deadly sins. They, themselves, are also sinners condemned to individualized eternal torment, but, due to their station, have a bit more liberty and power in their moving about in hell, a fact that each, excepting Jack, seems to take full advantage of. But the fact remains that they are in hell. Believe me when I say that, from the few histories we’re told, they each deserve to be there.
Jack, however, seems to be the only one of them who is genuinely penitent, though it does him little good. The fact that his torment places him in the position of the Grim Reaper is particularly clever on the part of the writer. You see, his is the sin “Wrath,” and, as such, he is condemned to forever tend to the results of anger. Thousands of times a day he must stand by and wait as some psychotic bastard goes through the motions of execution in a city street, or some argument gets out of hand, or some sick monster feeds upon the weak. Then he must greet and guide each soul away from its earthly body to condemnation or beatification. Chase down those of the wrathful that would run from him, and comfort those taken by wrath. As a further irony, he is not allowed to remember the sin for which he has been condemned to hell, so that he is daily tormented by wondering what he could have done to condemn himself to such a position. For a good while I thought the “Jack” was a clue, and he was ol’ spring-heel Jack, but later revelations disproved this. (For reference, in Dante’s Inferno, the Wrathful were condemned to remain in a river of slime when they tear and mangle one another. Those who committed violence to others are placed in boiling blood guarded by centaurs who made sure they never ventured out. The comic’s version strikes me as infinitely more appropriate. Dante’s Trilogy may be a great classic, but much of it has been creatively improved upon in the last 700 years.)
So that’s why it’s vicious? Oh no. Not even the tip of the iceberg. For starters, much of the story has the feel of a personal investment. As though the author is working through events that’ve had a profound effect on him. For starters, the second story arc lets us see what we all hope happened five minutes after Columbine. (No, he’s not being so insensitive as to do a direct transference, but it is a story of a school shooting, and it is strangely gratifying. (http://jack.keenspace.com/d/20010330.html) He dedicated that story arc to the idea that everyone eventually gets what they deserve.) The seventh story arc went even further as Jack and a slowly increasing number of souls stand by and watch as a disgruntled ex-office worker holds his old work hostage. Forbidden to interfere, they know that he will eventually kill everyone, but survive to write a best-selling book himself.
Violence alone isn’t necessary for the vicious aspect, though. Some manifests in particularly appropriate punishments that are entirely mental, such as Arloest’s.
Essentially, the comic is an enormous, involved, morality play, something one sees very little of these days in any medium. The rules of heaven and hell are strict and irrevocable. People unwilling to explore Christian doctrine even in the contexts of fiction like this will want to give this comic a wide berth. Suicide, for example, is a mortal sin. One that, alone, could send you to hell. The current story arc involves a man (uh...fox) who commits suicide while home on bereavement leave from trench warfare in WWII. Seems his wife died after burying his stillborn son. Unable to face the front again, and despairing over his wife, he hangs himself. Although Jack mentions some other mysterious sin, he does state directly that they might as well skip judgement, as the suicide is enough to condemn him to Hell. (There’s some weird aspects of the whole process that appear to have been introduced for storytelling convenience. Jack, for example, is apparently empowered to take some souls straight to hell, but is to-the-letter loyal to every other rule.) Of course, when he finds his wife in Hell, it appears that the story he heard wasn’t entirely accurate.
So, all this drama and violence is why it should be kept out of reach of children, right? Well, yeah...but I haven’t told you about Drip yet. The only other sin to approach the importance of Jack in the storyline is Drip. Which sin is he?
Lust.
Uh oh.
A serial rapist and murderer while alive, he is condemned to remembrance, aware of every iota of his sins while alive, and able to recreate them as many times as he likes with those damned souls in hell desperate enough to bargain with him, but unable to ever feel what he felt from it while alive, making it all a hollow act with no gratification. Many of the stories linger over Drip, and the sick games he forces others into in Hell. The comic pulls no punches in this department, and is the biggest reason to completely avoid the comic, rape being one of the true final taboo subjects of today’s society. (For those who worry, it is not, in the least, displayed as erotic, but rather as sick and depraved. That alone sets it on a shelf above a lot of anime Hentai titles.) On the other hand, the net effect is one of the most disturbing, horrifying, and thus totally appropriate visions of hell I’ve ever encountered. Better than the abstracted, ill-defined Hell of Niel Gamian’s “Sandman” or any of the leeching titles that fed from it, better, but perhaps less poetic than Dante’s stratified, orderly world of nine levels, more visceral and appropriate than the hackneyed, repetitious Hell of red devils and pitchforks we get in animation or comics, and less “well isn’t that clever” aspect of so many Twilight-zone-ish worlds of ironic suffering.
The story itself, as much as there can be said to be one, is rather confusing. The timescale is somewhat warped, so there’s no clear line of progression either from the beginning of the comic to the present installment, or even from one timeline event to another. There’s a reference to 9/11 long before Jack goes to pick up the WWII suicide of the latest arc. Jack encounters and recognizes a character he’s “previously” met during an event that has to have taken place long before he’d been introduced. As clumsy and hole-filled as it sounds, I think it’s intentional, as the story plays around a lot with the time and memory aspects of Hell. Damned souls repeating the same day over and over again with no memory of the upcoming events.
That being said, there are a few threads that seem to be leading somewhere. There’s the angel Farrago who’s taken an interest in Jack, and who’s wings were torn off at some time in the past, in some thus-far unexplained manner. There’s Fnar (internet shorthand for “for no apparent reason”) the unborn child who died under some unusual circumstance that places him in Hell, but prevents hell from hurting him (although his parents, who are also in Hell with no such immunity, can hurt him). Though he visits his mother repeatedly, he has yet to see his father, who, it’s been hinted, is Kane, the sin “Envy” who also watches over the suicides. (I can’t for the life of me remember which mortal sin suicides were associated with. Dante had the suicides grow as brittle trees in the seventh circle of Hell, and after final judgement their earthly bodies would hang in those branches, but there’s no clear line drawn to one of the mortal sins. I would guess either Sloth or Wrath, the former from a desire to escape the responsibility of life, the latter as wrath directed at oneself.) The only sin not yet introduced is “Sloth” appropriately enough.
Good God, anything else? Well, there is some sex in the comic, but that’s really something of a step down from everything else going on. There’s also something of a prevalence for same-sex couples in the comic, a trend that I’ve noticed in furry circles as being almost as widespread as lesbianism in anime. (No, Jack does not send you straight to hell for being gay. Jack is not short for Jack Chick.) Also, there’s an occasional deviation into sillyness, but that usually only lasts for a page or two. No major crossovers that I know of, although Jack did step over into Gene Catlow to pick up a couple of souls from the previous storyline, and Gene encountered Fnar and Vince in a visit to this comic, but you don’t need to travel to another comic to keep up with this one. It was more of a cameo than a crossover. (On a bit of a side note, the author seems to have a rather good grip on the processes of cancer and chemotherapy targets. The process mentioned whereby a tumor “persuades” nearby blood vessles to branch out and “feed” the tumor is called “angiogenesis.” Blocking of angiogenesis is a pretty solid field of research, but it’s only part of the necessary picture.)
All in all I have to say that it’s a good thing this comic is “furry.” Not only does it make the characters a bit more distinct and easily recognizable, but many of the scenes I think would have been truly unbearable to read if not for the fantasy distancing of animal figures. The comic’s been around for quite some time and has a backlog of about three years. Some of the story arcs feel like repetitious rewrites of earlier ones, specifically the “my lover is sick” bit, but it’s tolerably varied. If you’d like to check out just one story arc to see if it’s worth following, I’d suggest “Games We Play in Hell.” It’s arc eight on the contents page here:
http://jack.keenspace.com/Contents.htm One of the most severe and vicious of the bunch. (Oh, you need to know that “Vince” is the sin of Averice. He ran a worldwide cult advocating live sacrifice in an enormous power-play for world domination. Also, Bob&Lisa are the sin of Gluttony. It’ll make sense when you get there.)
Movie time!
Of course, you already know what it is that I’m going to be reviewing. Anyone out there who took a look around while standing in line for the new Harry Potter book knows that “The Hulk” came out this last weekend.
I’ll go ahead and get the verdict outta the way, because you’ve probably heard the news from everyone else already. I enjoyed the Hulk. Parts of it. Other parts were....well...boring. I am the king of enjoying flicks for the sole good parts out of it, so this does not bother me much. A lot of other people will be highly dissatisfied. Possibly yourself among them. The fact that parts of the Hulk could be boring should tell you a lot.
The problem stems from _why_ I though some parts of it were boring. And it’s a big problem. But at least half of it resides with me. (A good part of the rest resides with the complete jackasses sitting directly behind us who thought they were incredibly hilarious in making fun of the movie before it even started. Set us up to feel embarrassed for even looking forward to such a film. That, and a LOT of cell phones.) You see, I discovered by the end of this film, that I’m not actually a fan of the Hulk himself. It’s not that I dislike the character, it’s that I don’t even really know him. When I was a kid, I was actually something of an intellectual snot (noooo....really?) towards comics. I believed the hype that said only babies under ten read comics because they were all about guys in tights beating up one another in the battle-of-the-month repetition. Despite my snobbery, I’d occasionally snitch a comic or two, but “The Incredible Hulk” was the epitome of the stereotype about superheroes. I mean, how much intelligent plotting can you get out of “Hulk SMASH”? I avoided it for much the same reason when I started picking up comics again much later in life. To this present day, I’ve never read a single issue of “The Incredible Hulk” in any incarnation. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t seen him in comics, though. Marvel is famous for their crossover stunts, and the Hulk showed up in a couple of my other comics on occasion. When he did, however, he never brought anything from his own book over. He was usually an out-of-control force raging across the deserts or populated areas with the heroes desperately trying to reign him in. He was rarely intelligible, and the stories involving him were never complicated.
This, apparently, was not the case in his own book. There, there was a good deal of the “tormented scientist” aspect about the book, great levels of bureaucracy, complex tiers of opponents, plans within plans. Until I went to see the film, I didn’t know that.
In short, I went to the theater expecting to see a Godzilla flick. Out-of-control monster seemingly impossible to even slow down, goes rampaging across the Nevada deserts tearing tanks like tissue-paper, and forever evading pursuit. Instead, what I saw was an X-files movie. “Boring” is pretty descriptive of the come-down from one to the other. For example, it takes nearly fourty minutes to get to the first occurrence of Banner “Hulking-out”. All in all, the Hulk only gets in four fights. First with the inanimate objects in his lab, second with a bunch of Hulked-out dogs, third with the US Army, and fourth with the villian at the end. Doesn’t sound too bad? Well, it isn’t, but that’s in a two-and-a-quarter-hour movie.
So, what’s the story? You’re kidding, right? You think you already know the story, don’t you? Don’t be too sure. We start back before there even was a Bruce Banner. (Those of you saying “David!” right now should be ashamed. The TV series changed the character’s name to David because they thought “Bruce” sounded too gay. “Rule number one....no poofters!”) We start with Bruce’s father, who, it turns out, is a bio-geneticist in the 70’s. We know it’s in the 70’s not just because of Bruce’s apparent age in the later, contemporary timeframe, but because he’s sporting one of those brown scrub-brush moustaches that could only exist in the era of polyester and disco. He looks vaguely like Meathead from “All in the Family.” Anyway, following the ever-popular “couldn’t get permission for further primate experimentation” storyline, Bruce’s father secretly resorts to trying to implant the regenerative properties of starfish and some lizards into his own genetic makeup. It fails, but it also doesn’t kill him, which is a big step up from the previous results with lab animals. Unfortunately, he then has sex. His wife gives birth to a son, Bruce, and, suspicion aroused, the father tests a blood sample from his son. He’s shocked and troubled to discover that some of the genetic modification he performed on himself was passed on to his son.
This shock isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. Gene therapy, the insertion or alteration of specific genes in a genome, does not affect every strand of DNA in a patient, just in the relevant, targeted tissues. For example, gene therapy in blood disorders would specifically target the stem cells in the bone marrow, with great pains taken to avoid affecting the liver, heart, etc. This is by design, as the more tissue there is affected by a gene therapy, the larger the chance that something could go horribly wrong. In fact, the chances of something “fucking up your kids” is so distinct from something “fucking _you_ up” that it’s given a different name. The latter is a mutagen. The former is a teratogen. Things that are teratogenic may even not be dangerous to adults, but have severe effects on developing fetuses. The most famous teratogen, “thalidomide” had no adverse effects on the mothers at all, but resulted in massive deformities in children. Further, the ability of a specific chemical to fuck up the male genome in such a way that it would alter his children is (AFAIK) unheard of. Deformities in children due to toxin exposure rarely have anything to do with damage to the genome passed on by the parents, and have much more to do with damage via the shared blood pool post-conception. (I.e., Fetal alcohol syndrome has nothing to do with the mother’s genome.) A chemical or gene therapy altering the male genome in the spermatozoa would be about a billion times more likely to either render the man sterile or fuck up the DNA so badly it couldn’t even mate with the female DNA, to the same effect.
(Oh, I’m not pooh-pooh-ing the event in the movie. The six-trillion-to-one shot is accepted. I’m just explaining the father’s not anticipating this particular eventuality.)
At any rate, the father, when his illicit experimentation is discovered by the military commander at the base, abandons his research, removes the failsafes from the nuclear reactor at his work, and drives home. We get a brief flash of the old duck-and-cover techniques...and then things get a bit blurry. Purposely so, as it proves to be a revelation later in the film. Later on, we get a mushroom cloud over the Nevada desert. Which is, naturally, absurd. If it was a reactor that went up, you wouldn’t get an atomic explosion. At worst, you’d get a Chernobyl, where the reactor would catch fire, sending great gouts of radioactive smoke up into the sky.
Strangely enough, what exactly happened at the lab is not explained. At all. Possibly it’s a setup for a sequel.
Of course, this doesn’t follow the Marvel history of the character. I’m not entirely sure why it was altered in this way. Originally, Bruce’s father was just an abusive man, whose abuse of his wife and son created the “Hulk” split personality in Bruce, always held in check until the transformation brought on by the gamma radiation. Possibly it was just a way to bring in the military bureaucracy earlier in the story. Perhaps it was just a way to tie in the “hot” science of bioengineering and gene therapy to the “cold” science of nuclear physics. We aren’t impressed with the three-wing-fan design of radiation anymore, we want the spiffy horned evilness implied by the “biohazard” sign. Whatever the reason, the background actually works fairly well. There’s some mystery, some variant, enough to keep us interested, and a springboard for the upcoming story. The only real complaint is about the intro credit sequence. Eventually, Marvel is going to have to swear off any fancy CGI opening involving the double helix. They’ve used it here and in X-men, and I think in Spider-Man as well, the only variation being a preponderance towards green in this one. (Hmm....maybe a live/dead or tubulin stain.) Swirly and mergy and flashy and blah. Whole lotta nothing in that title sequence. Like watching a fast lava lamp.
Flash forward to present-day Bruce. Adopted at a young age, and having no memory of his childhood with his real parents, he’s convinced they died. He, himself, has become a scientist, working at Berkley (Dr. Buell should be pleased) on stimulating regenerative powers in animals. Fortunately, no one has to worry about security, since the place is guarded by a walk-on cameo of Lou Ferrigno. (the Hulk from the old TV series...he gets one walk-by while talking to Stan Lee. I don’t begrudge them that. They’ve both more than earned it.) The work gets in another piece of “hot” science, nanotechnology, as their regenerative technique involves saturating an animal’s skin with nano-machines, then activating and powering them with a shot of gamma radiation. (Flung-off electrons...IIRC...its been a while.) They localize at a wound site, then work to close the wound. Then they make the animal explode. That last bit is the problem area for their work. (Although it does provide one of the best jokes.)
Anyway, Bruce has just finished breaking up with Betty Ross, the daughter of a high-ranking but emotionally distant military general, “Thunderbolt” Ross, the major military thorn in Hulk’s side from the comics. Nonetheless, Bruce still works with her, and we spend an interminable amount of time establishing A) the work shows no immediate sign of improving B) this is depressing everyone C) there’s an outside company who wants the work for military applications D) Betty is somewhat estranged from her father E) Bruce never knew his parents F) a bunch of foreshadowing about anger and repression and all that. Yes, it’s character development. Yes, it’s plot development. But it’s SLOW. Damn slow. It’s also really predictable. The research is ALWAYS on the verge of loosing funding. They’re ALWAYS understaffed. They’re ALWAYS hoping for a breakthrough to save their asses. The girl ALWAYS politely rebuffs the nerd’s clumsy advance/attempt to reunite. It’s a tradition in these films. You could make a wild guess, skip forward fifteen minutes, and not miss anything except the exploding frog. (Oh, a friend pointed out that Jennifer Connelly looks a LOT like Karen Allen from the first Indiana Jones movie. Damn, never noticed that before.)
The only unique plot point is the ominous janitor. First of all, he’s Nick Nolte. That’s always a bad sign. Nick Nolte showing up in your film is a sure sign things are about to go from bad to worse. (It’s also personally disturbing to me ever since someone told me that he’s an occasional transvestite. If true, more power to him, but it’s a mental picture that scars my brain.) Second of all, the man keeps dogs. One, specifically, is a poodle. Not the toy ones, but a rather vicious, tempermental full-size one. I’ve heard it said that poodles are so vicious because they know they look silly and hate the world for it. That said, it’s still a frickin’ poodle. I have trouble taking them seriously. Especially in a film entitled “Hulk.” It is, however, very weird, which is also a good indicator that “this man will make things go badly.”
Things get ominous. Then they get oppressive. Then ominous again. Then there’s lots of research. Then more. Then ominous again. Then you go get popcorn. When you come back, it’s finally time for the accident. An electrical malfunction in the gamma bombardment chamber sets off all the electron guns simultaneously, and Bruce bravely (and stupidly...the radiation exposure level drops off exponentially with distance from the source...six feet back and he still wouldn’t have gotten a 1,000th of the dose) throws himself atop the device to protect the other researcher trapped in the chamber. Despite the exposure to the “nanomeds” and the gamma radiation, he doesn’t pull a Kermit and blow up. On the contrary, he’s feeling incredibly good when he wakes up in the hospital.
At least until Nick Nolte shows up again. He reveals bits and pieces of the plot (he’s actually Bruce’s father, finally out of the klink after a 30-year stay) and invades way too much of Bruce’s personal space before he takes the hint and leaves. On the way out he says “We’re gonna have to watch that temper of yours.” Which is a great line. But it’s only a really great line in the previews, because it doesn’t really fit the dialogue here. Which means it was written specifically to “sell” the movie to the public. I hate that. Damaging the movie in order to make better trailers. Gahh...
Bruce, tipped off by his father, starts looking into his own genetic code. FINALLY we get the first transformation scene. A few days later, Bruce gets frustrated over his findings in there, further angered by a telephone message from Betty, then trips over his father’s mop bucket, which just pisses him off. (I understand from a friend who DID read the comics that the fall of night probably also had something to do with the triggering.) Transforming into the Hulk, he tears through, ripping up the lab, knocking out the walls, and eventually tossing the electron-gun apparatus (wait....it’s spherical...which means all the guns were pointed inward...which means the frog should’ve been inside....ah screw it) out through a wall. (Which is probably about 6 million dollars down the hole.) He runs into his father, and they share a tender, horrifically weird moment together. (We can now see why Bruce has such weird father issues. He has a weird father.)
A couple of things here. 1) I was not impressed by the performance here either by the actor or the CG. The first appearance of the Hulk should be a phenomenal event. Something awe-inspiring, something to send chills up your spine. Horrific destruction only partly seen, and not fully understood. Immense objects tossed around. Shaking of the camera. You know the like. This is the single strongest character in the Marvel universe, right? 2) The CGI wasn’t shabby. A little odd in parts...I wasn’t expecting them to try for subtlety of emotion in the facial features...I was just expecting rage. Maybe a “Hulk SMASH” once or twice...which I’m sorry to say we didn’t get at all. But the actual destruction? Fun, if a bit lower-scale than I was expecting. 3) When he wakes up the next morning and is told that his lab is destroyed, he isn’t nearly distraught enough. He should be asking about his notebooks, backups of the computer harddrives. Damage to the incredibly expensive equipment owned by the department that he has to account for. This is his LIFE’S WORK. If my lab was destroyed like that and declared off-limits, I’d be frantic. Unless it was utterly obliterated. Then I’d just kill myself. Or leave the state.
Anyway, no one knows what happened, but Banner is under suspicion because general Ross (who put away Banner’s father) had just traced Bruce’s lineage and put two and two together. (He’s not really sure what it equals, though.)
Believe it or not, there’s now more intrigue. The frickin’ HULK has showed up, and we’re still in X-files mode. There’s accusations. And conspiracy theories. And investigation. And Betty trying to stick up for him. And the return of jackass from the previous bit of story-building. Fortunately, Nick Nolte applies another jumpstart to this ol’ Chevy (‘come on girl...turn over...) by MAKING THREE HULK DOGS AND SENDING THEM AFTER BETTY. Uh...OK... There’s something about revenge on Ross, and jumpstarting the Hulk again, but frankly it’s just an excuse for the first real good fight, so I don’t care. THIS fight is fuckin’ fun. (It climaxes with the Hulk smashing a poodle.) The Hulk squares off against three gamma-irradiated dogs about twice the size of Shetland ponies. A mastiff, a bulldog-mutt, and that weird poodle. They bound around the trees, knocking one another around like boulders colliding, but in the end the Hulk wins out and completely destroys Betty’s truck. It’s really a great fight, and a feather in the cap of the CGI guys. (Note...the Hulk does not yet own the athletic-cut purple pants that are his uniform. Apparently Bruce favors REALLY loose-fit boxers. One wonders if Betty’s renewed interest has anything to do with this. Or perhaps Hulk had a really good reason for being so pissed off the first time....constriction.)
And.....MORE FUCKIN’ INTRIUGE. *Sigh* Betty betrays Bruce in the interest of helping him. Bruce gets drugged and taken to Black Mesa facility (we couldn’t control a dimensional portal to an alien world...so we’re gonna try keeping the Hulk in a Box instead!), where Ross controls things until he doesn’t. Meanwhile, the super-villain shows up. Bruce’s dad experiments on himself with a duct-tape electron gun and becomes.....The Absorbing Man!
Whoa. Left field.
The Absorbing Man was apparently an old Thor villain. A convict who somehow gained the ability to either take on the properties of anything he touched, or pass through any material whose properties he took on. Thus he could become steel, titanium, electricity, etc. This is another neat little s/fx scene, culminating in my favorite part of the film where he surprises and kills a security guard who walks in on him.
The Hulk project, meanwhile, is taken over by the assigned jackass who decides the best way to get a sample of the Hulk to study...is to piss Bruce Banner off. In an utterly predictable eventuality, they can’t contain the enraged Hulk, (who has one hell of a Frisbee game) who is angrier than ever because he’s remembered the real sequence of events on that fateful day. It seems that dear old dad tried to kill his son out of fear for what he would become, but accidentally killed mom instead. That’s the why-for he was in prison those thirty years.
We’ve finally reached the point I was waiting the whole movie for. The Hulk makes it to the surface, and engages in a running battle with the US army. Again, this is just fun. Swatting away helicopter missiles, hopping on the hood of one and rattling it around, tearing the turret off of a tank and shaking all the soldiers out (bullets do nothing because of the “nanomeds”), snatching a rocket out of the air, biting off the warhead, and spitting the explosive through the tail rotor of a pursuing ‘copter. And the jumps. Whooo....that was cool. The Hulk could never fly, but his stupidly powerful legs could propel him almost into orbit, letting him play hopscotch with state boundaries. His one act of kindness, where a well timed jump prevents a passing jet from colliding with a suspension bridge, comes back to bite him on the ass, as the pilot carries him up to the atmosphere ceiling where the thin air makes him pass out. There’s an ultra-cool sequence in Bruce’s unconscious here, but it’s too cool to ruin it for y’all, and contains one of the two lines the Hulk actually does speak.
He wakes up, destroys most of San Francisco’s trolley line and curbside parking, but calms down when Betty shows up, and reverts back to Banner.
Ross takes over once again, chains banner between two enormous microwave generators (to cook him if he starts to change) and watches him. Oh yeah. That’s a solution. Banner’s dad, who turned himself in without telling anyone about his new powers, gets permission to see his son before going back to jail. When he does, he waltzes up, takes enormous bites out of the scenery while delivering a speech that sounds cribbed from Future Hulk’s book (one of the few story arcs I know involving the Hulk occurs when Banner gets tossed into a possible future and finds that the Hulk personality took over completely, turned out to be near immortal, and implemented a “rule by the strong” philosophy to justify his world domination), and then takes an enormous bite out of the microwave generator’s power cable. Absorbing all the electricity and pissing off his son in the process, he converts to lightning (hat tip to Zaxxax) and hauls his son out to the middle of nowhere. See, the mutation in the father is apparently unstable, and he needs to absorb his son’s power to stabilize it. Yeah. Outta nowhere, to nowhere.
What follows is more of what I’d been originally expecting. The Hulk duking it out with an enormous, improbably composed and powered super-strong supervillan. Converting to stone, metal, water, and ice, the father tries to maintain contact with the Hulk to keep absorbing the power. Hulk responds with his only other line “take it all,” gets really phenomenally pissed, and releases more of the gamma-radiation induced power than the Absorbing Man can take, blowing him from a sentient frozen lake into a million tiny raindrops. Then the military drops a gamma bomb on Hulk, and everyone assumes that’s the end of him.
Whatta climax.
I mean, I liked the fight with the Absorbing Man, but the entire justification for his presence was really weak and contrived. I understand that Ang Lee was forced to add the villan as a tack-on at the end of the film to keep his funding, but still. And the ending. Major plot hole. Why didn’t they drop the gamma bomb when they were chasing him earlier? Why did they even remotely think that the bomb would work? Where did the bomb come from? To just add to the randomness, the denouement shows us that Bruce isn’t dead, but acting as a doctor to an isolated central American village. In the end, it doesn’t really feel like the Hulk’s movie. Just a movie with the Hulk in it. It’s not like it’s anyone else’s movie either...everyone’s just going along with it, slightly out of focus, filling out a corner or slat of the structure. No one’s acting was really exceptional, except for Nick Nolte, who achieved levels of weirdness rarely accomplished outside of cheap cult films. I was especially disappointed by Eric Bana’s work as Banner. He just didn’t leave much of a strong impression on me, no strong character aspect, other than his amnesia and fear of what it was hiding, came through in his performance...but that could easily have been the script talking. The Hulk himself came out fairly well, although I caught some hints of Shrek-ness in the face whenever some subtle emotional expression was attempted. (Incidentally, Shrek 2 is coming out soon....gahhh.)
Now, something must be said about the editing.
The thing that must be said is “ow”.
Now I realize that Ang Lee was trying to somehow integrate the comic-book feel into the story. He decided to do it with sudden enormous split-screens of white borders, and once even a morph to a full comic page. Then there’s the wipes, the slow slides, the pic-within-a-pics. Hell, all we were missing was John Woo’s frickin’ pigeons. OK, yes, it was clever. But it was horribly overused. And placed badly. Basically, it was stuck in places to pad out uninteresting scenes and try to make them interesting. Bruce is being taken to a remote military base? Well, why don’t we have three “panels” all looking at the helicopter flying. Then a couple looking at the base. Then a couple looking at the jeeps. Then a couple looking at the soldiers. Then a couple looking at tanks. Then some more of the desert.
A’ight, Bruce is going to a military base in the desert. WE FUCKING GET IT. Jeebus. The most egregious example, but not the only one. God help us all if this becomes the new “bullet-time.” Someone just tell Ang Lee to CALM DOWN. And let up on the photoshop filters too. I think the gamma bombardment was just an emboss filter with some watercolor additions. (Credit: Nigel) The CGI transitions managed little more than being weird.
Final verdict: do NOT go to this film expecting a Godzilla flick. You’ll probably enjoy it more than I did. If you’re going to see it, see it in the theaters. The good parts are 100% better for being on the big screen. AMV editors may find this a particularly difficult flick to sit through without the occasional shout of “WHY? OH GOD WHY?” directed at the film editor.
JOURNAL: MCWagner (Matthew Wagner)
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