Treasure Island, oh my!
A friend found this poster for a showing of Treasure Island at his university. It is amazing and likely swiped from somewhere. But oh my god look at this thing!
The Black Book AKA Reign of Terror
I’m on a bit of a French Revolution kick, mainly because I’m reading that Tom Reiss biography of Alex Dumas, French revolutionary era general, ex-slave, hero, and dad to the novelist, Alex Dumas. It’s proving to be a pretty great read.
One thing that surprises me is the fact that no one’s ever done a Cthulhu mythos, French Revolution mash-up. So much of it seems like it would fit together: secret societies (the Jacobin clubs), the Cult of the Supreme Being, the master/pupil relationship between Saint-Just* and Robespierre. I could see it working and am surprised no one’s done it.
One thing I did find is this old costume drama from the 1940s called The Black Book. It’s one of those pictures where time and space can be conquered simply by showing a single silhouetted rider cross the screen while the music score swells. “… and he made full speed for Strassburg.”
What’s cool about it is that it’s directed by Anthony Mann. Mann started as a b-movie director, specializing in Film Noir and went on to make westerns and epics. The Black Book is made right in the middle of his Noir phase, so it plays out less like an epic of the revolution and more like The Maltese Falcon. Robespierre hires a special operative to find his missing black book. Several other factions want the book. There’s a femme fatale, a shady cop adept at picking locks, and double crosses. Yeah, it all descends into mad coach rides and women-in-peril, but at seventy-five minutes I won’t complain.
You can watch it at the Internet Archive or Youtube.
* According to wikipedia, Saint-Just wrote an epic poem in the style of Orlando Furioso, except with dollops of the Marquis de Sade heaped in. Yet another reason he’s perfect as a Lovecraftian anti-hero.
Snowpiercer
I finally saw Bong Joon-Ho’s Snowpiercer, and without so much as a spoiler alert I’ll say it mixes chem trails, John Galt the Social Darwinist, a wonderfully absurd school room scene, lots of ultra-violence, some fey aegyo, Tilda Swinton doing a creepy malevolent Ms. Marple the School Marm impersonation, and a nod to Ursula K. LeGuin’s “Those Who Walk Away From Omelas” all together to make a satisfyingly bleak action picture. Not to mention it has characters who are actually characters instead of character-shaped holes that set pieces go BOOM! around. (*cough* Pacific Rim *cough*)
Hopefully this talk about cutting twenty minutes from the picture’s US release to make it more “understandable” winds up being nothing more than horseshit. Unfortunately I doubt it, and the ending I saw won’t be the ending my friends see back in the USA.
Shadows of Lost Rivers
Here’s something.
Back at the beginning of this year Beneath Ceaseless Skies published a story of mine called “Shadows Under Hexmouth Street”. (That’s the link to it. You can read it later.) One of the inspirations for that story was an article I read about subterranean rivers in Greenwich Village. The article included an apocryphal story of someone fishing for blind crayfish through a manhole cover in the basement of their apartment building.
Today I found out about a documentary called Lost Rivers.
It sounds pretty neat.
That Avengers Film
The Avengers opened up here in Korea last week. Apparently this makes me the King of Spoilers now, because it hasn’t opened yet in the States. I liked it. I went in expecting Loud, Stupid, and Obnoxious — I should say I haven’t liked a lot of recent superhero movies — and was pleasantly surprised that it was only Loud.
First, say what you will about Joss Whedon he does do team stories well and this is a team picture, so it never feels like Iron Man or Captain America and these other people.
Second, jeez, a lot of people take spoilers and superhero pictures seriously. Between the online shouting from friends when I start to tell them about one scene, to the folks watching all the other movies leading up to this one. Pfeh. Can’t say I’m particularly bothered that I never saw Iron Man 1 or 2 or Captain America or the Hulk. I don’t care a whit about any of that.
Wu Xia Audience Round Up
Wu Xia was great. If it plays near you, go see it. And I say that even without having a clue what anyone was talking about the whole time. It looked like Shane meets Rashomon meets Sherlock Holmes meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and if you squint you can totally see how all that could work together. (Hero does something heroic, which makes cold emotionless detective curious how such a thing could be possible, which uncovers hero’s buried past as villain, which leads to hero’s villainous former associates tracking him down, which leads to kung fu.)
Anyway here’s the breakdown of who else watches wuxia movies in Korea that aren’t advertised for except on the internet and play only on one screen three times a day in a small city.
- Two other male-female couples.
- Old dude in factory work clothes (navy blue cap and overalls). He resembled the type of guy who says shit to my wife and I when we walk down the street together, but that’s me pigeonholing. He could possibly be a secret martial arts master or at least a pretty decent guy.
- Young guy on leave from the army with his dad.
- Older dude we saw earlier in the bookstore down the street asking if they had the current issue of some Socialist periodical. After the film he stood outside the theater shouting into his cell phone because his son had failed to meet him outside.
- Five well-dressed young guys who later mimed martial arts moves at each other while waiting for the elevator. Local university students? Film geeks? Martial arts geeks? Geek geeks?
Weekend Weekout
It’s Friday. I’m pooped.
The week was only marginally crazy. Next week is the school festival and talent show. Considering the number of 4th graders walking around with nunchuks, I think it’ll be pretty fun. There will also be song and dance numbers. On a side note, I’d completely lost track of the date and forgot all about Thanksgiving. Ah well, it’s a shit holiday. Who likes the Pilgrims anyways? Pack of Quaker killing bastards.
The new Donnie Yen movie, Wu Xia, is playing in town. It looks great. We might make tonight Date Night and check it out. Chance of it having English subtitles? Nil. But I don’t expect them. If it’s good I’ll see it again when it’s out on DVD. Maybe we’ll have Date Night again and watch it in one of the DVD rooms in town. Yes, they are sleazy. Yes, I still love them. They cater so well to the antisocial. Who cares if the clerk has to windex off the couch before he tells you it’s okay to sit down?
See you all next week…
Awesome Archer Guy
My wife feels guilty when we watch Korean movies and they’re not in subtitles. It’s not much of a problem since we tend to watch period action movies and I dig the fight scenes. (The Korean I know is limited to numbers, a few phrases to keep me from starving/dying of thirst, and jinja which is Korean for “No way!” You wouldn’t believe the mileage you can get out of jinja…)
And really in action movies are hard is it? You know the good guys and you know the bad guys and you know which characters are going to complicate things and you can see who’s doing what and where they are and whether or not the fight will be with bows or guns or knives or shish-ka-bob skewers or whatever. Really. It’s not hard.
But after the movie we’ll discuss it and my wife will fill me in on the more subtler bits of plot and whether or not the script was any good (normally they’re not, but she gives high marks to Reign of Assassins.)
She’ll also want to know what I named the characters, because she knows me and if I’m sitting there watching a movie and engaging with it I’m going to be making up the story and giving the characters names based on their costumes or characteristics. So I’ll tell her, “Yeah. That guy was Grumpus. And the other guy was Blue Eyes, and the girl was Lala and her mom was Mrs. Fred…” and you get the picture. Basically I’m free-associating.
Well, all this is to say we went to the movies and saw Awesome Archer Guy. It was about a guy named Hawkeye and his sister Wasp and their buddy Dudley, and some brutish Mongolians showed up when Dudley and Wasp wanted to get married, and Hawkeye had to track the Mongolians to save Dudley and Wasp and the Mongolians were bad-ass (especially Ryu Seung-ryong’s character) except for Prince Shiny Blue who got set on fire. He was a simpering putz.
The actual name of the movie is Arrow: The Ultimate Weapon, so you know I wasn’t that far off…
Yesterweird 