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| Monday, September 19, 2005 12:30 PM |
| Q&A, or My Longest Post Ever (Probably) |
 by Fëanor |
Q: Feanor, you've talked a lot about movie news and such lately, but what have you been doing, yourself? Why not give us an update, at great length and in excruciating detail, please!
A: Okay!- About a week and a half ago, poppy, Sarcasmo, and I all went to check out the first "preview" (read: cheaper) show of Vox Lumiere's Hunchback of Notre Dame at the Prince Music Theater. Basically what this consists of is a screening of the old silent version of Hunchback starring the original Lon Chaney, accompanied by live pop/rock music and dancing. The film, which I'd never seen before, is pretty good, although rife with the usual overstated acting and melodrama of silent films. And somehow, Vox Lumiere finds a way to make the film even more overstated and melodramatic, and its message even more obvious, by mirroring it (with a twist!) in song and dance on the stage below--sometimes with such deadly seriousness and self-importance that it's impossible not to laugh. It doesn't help that the dancing is almost all really bad. The choreography is very unimaginative and derivative, and some of the dancers have little talent or energy. It's like watching a bad '80s music video. The songs and performances are occasionally genuinely good; more often very, very cheesy and bad; and occasionally cheesy in a way that's very entertaining.
It's definitely an interesting idea, and it made for a relatively fun night. Plus, some of the dancers are pretty hot, and they're all wearing revealing punk-rock outfits. But I could see this being done much better by a really good choreographer and a really decent songwriter.
- A few days after we saw Vox Lumiere, poppy and I ran up to Ithaca to visit a friend of hers. I took lots of pictures, and recently posted them in the photography section of the website, but if you're not subscribed to my main site updates RSS feed (find it here:
 ), you might not have noticed, so I'll slap a link down here, too. While I was at it, I also posted some photos of our condo. Here are some of my favorites from the Ithaca set:
   
That last one, btw, was taken by poppy. We both took a picture while Jess was standing there, but I liked poppy's better, so I discarded mine.
- They have a film festival running pretty much year-long, every year up there in Ithaca, which is pretty fricking awesome. The night poppy and I stayed there, the most interesting screening was a collection of Oscar-nominated (and one Oscar-winning, if I remember correctly) short films, so we went and checked them out.
- Gopher Broke is a computer-animated film that I'd first heard about when kheara mentioned she'd seen it at the SIGGRAPH conference (at least, I think that's where she saw it). I'd tried to watch it online, but only the first minute or so of the film appeared to be available for viewing. I'd been curious to see the rest ever since, and now I rather unexpectedly got my chance. It didn't turn out to be a great movie or anything--just a little cartoon about a hungry gopher and the wacky and unfortunate things that happen to him in his quest to acquire vegetables to eat--but it was fun enough.
- Two Cars, One Night is a fantastic New Zealand film about the short, sweet romance that develops between a little girl and a little boy as they sit in cars outside a bar waiting for their parents. That may sound sickly sweet, but it's actually not; the kids are real characters, very funny and human. They are not idealized at all, and their relationship isn't overdone. The film is just a few simple, warm moments one night. The only problem with this one was that I was often unable to understand exactly what the characters were saying due to their thick New Zealand accents.
- Little Terrorist is what you might call a "message film," but I enjoyed it despite that. It's about a Pakistani Muslim boy who mistakenly ends up on the wrong side of the India-Pakistan border. He meets an old Indian Hindu schoolteacher there who, along with his wife, ends up helping him hide from the border soldiers, and then sneak past the landmines and back over the border to his family. In the process, the child and the couple learn that the people on the opposite side of that dangerous border aren't so different from themselves. Again, I know, it sounds super-corny, but the film tells its story well, mostly with tense editing and moving images, rather than words.
- Another computer-animated short, Birthday Boy is about a little Korean boy playing at being a soldier like his father, all unaware of the real danger of war, and how it can come home. This one was particularly short, and almost completely wordless, but very well-animated, and quite moving and beautiful.
- 7:35 in the Morning is an amazingly clever Spanish film that manages to be extremely disturbing and extremely funny at the same time. One morning, a woman walks into a cafe to get breakfast, following her regular routine. But this time, something is different... I don't want to give any more away, as discovering what's going on is part of the experience of the film, so I'll just let you watch it yourself.
- Possibly my favorite short of the night was the hilarious, traditionally animated (I think) Rex Steele: Nazi Smasher. It's a spoof of old adventure serials, and of the anti-Nazi propaganda films America was putting out during the war, and really of the whole style and attitude of '40s America: big tough guys getting the job done, and cute little girls with giant breasts helping them out. There are no important messages here, no moving statements about humanity. But there is a ton of fun, action, and laughs.
- Ryan is an entry in the rather small genre of animated documentaries. It's a computer-animated film made by a Canadian guy named Chris, and it's about another Canadian guy named Ryan who used to make animated films. It contains clips from Ryan's films, and actual audio from interviews with Ryan and his friends and family. Ryan and Chris and everyone else in the film are visualized as hideous, fragmented mutants, their interior faults and mental blocks made real and physical through computer technology. Chris spends the film trying to figure out what it is exactly that made Ryan stop animating and retreat from the world, and what it would take to fix him and bring him back. It's a painful film, as it probes deep into the damaged insides of everyone in it, especially the title character of course, although Chris Landreth, the filmmaker, reveals his share of deeply personal truths. It's a tough film, and it doesn't come to any easy conclusions. I don't love it, but it's undeniably well-made.
- Speaking of tough films, I found the final short, Wasp, nearly impossible to watch. It's about a desperately poor British single mother with four children, all little girls. They're a tight-knit little group, and can be fiercely protective of each other. But then the mother runs into an old crush unexpectedly. She hits it off with the guy, and she's anxious to hold onto him, so she pretends the kids aren't hers, and sets up a date with him. Problem is, she has nobody to look after the children, and almost no money. So the kids end up hanging around outside the pub foraging for food while their mother's inside on a date. As you might expect, various agonizing episodes ensue.
Even though I spent most of my time during this movie not watching it, and groaning and squirming painfully in my seat, I can't say it's bad. In fact, it's very well made and acted, and is really an excellent little film. I just never want to see it again.
- Speaking of film festivals and reviews thereof, and of site updates, for that matter, you may be interested to know that my diary of this year's Philadelphia film festival is creeping ever so slowly toward completion. That link is to the latest entry, which I posted not quite a week ago.
- Still on the topic of site updates, I finally relented to poppy's insistent requests and reversed the blog archive page so that it's ordered the same way as the index page: the latest posts are now on top and the oldest posts are on the bottom.
- On Friday, some friends and I checked out a little performance at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe (jeez, what a mouthful; I liked it better when it was just called the Fringe Festival) called Shakesploitation. This was basically three short comedy skits reimagining Shakespeare's plays. There was Othello redone as a blaxploitation film; a sequel to Romeo and Juliet called Romeo and Juliet II: Apocalypse in which the lovers return from the dead as flesh-eating zombies; and, my personal favorite, Ninja Hamlet: The Burning Fist of Denmark, in which Hamlet is retold as a chop-socky kung fu film, complete with bad dubbing, a training montage, and a dude with really fake white hair, beard, and eyebrows. It was all very silly, some of the skits went on a bit long, and a few of the jokes misfired, but all in all it was a very fun time.
- Saturday was another successful game day. As usual, a big thanks to everybody who came, and I hope you had as much fun as I did, because I had plenty. Special thanks to Yagathai for humoring me by joining me in drafting Diceland armies and fighting with dice. I am now resigned to the idea that I won't be able to host a Diceland tournament of my own, but playing it every once in a while is good enough. And who knows, maybe one of these days there will be a convention nearby and I'll be able to join somebody else's Diceland tournament. I should get a great big suitcase with specially molded foam sheets to hold all my dice, and walk in with it handcuffed to my arm, wearing a black suit and black sunglasses. Heh. Heh. Except that would be crazy. And I am not mad! Not mad...
- Yesterday, poppy, Super Tarzan, and I checked out The Conformist at the Ritz at the Bourse. It's an Italian film about fascism from the '70s. But I didn't really know much about it going in; to tell you the truth I've wanted to see it for quite a while now based solely on its cinematography. I saw clips of it in the documentary Visions of Light, and they were just amazing.
Well, turns out the movie is indeed absolutely beautiful, from beginning to end. The camera work, set design, lighting, costuming, direction, and editing are all flawless. The acting and dialogue are pretty fantastic, too. The film is stunning, moving, powerful, sexy, funny, brutal. Unfortunately, it also goes on a bit longer than it really needs to, and some of the things people do in it just don't make much sense (it was also too loud, but that was the fault of the folks at the theater, not the folks who made the movie). Still, it's a great film, and I recommend you watch it, even if for the visuals alone.
- After The Conformist, poppy and I stopped at a used CD store near us and picked up a few more discs. I got You Can Play These Songs with Chords by Death Cab For Cutie, and I just listened to it for the first time this morning. It's pretty good! I still think nothing else I've heard from them has been as excellent as Transatlanticism, but all their albums are full of good, competent indie/pop.
- I started the new GameCube game poppy got me, Tales of Symphonia, last night and so far I'm liking it very much. It's a goofy fantasy anime RPG adventure. The combat is not turn-based, but whatever the opposite of that is called (live action?), almost like a 3D fighting game, with combos and everything. Cool stuff. I'm still learning how it works, but I'm definitely hooked.
- Also last night, I watched the first half (and change) of the Eagles game, which I had taped in order to go see The Conformist. It's excellent to see the team firing on all cylinders again. That first touchdown pass, with McNabb shaking off a few defenders to fire off a long, beautiful pass to TO down the field, was classic Eagles. They still let a few opportunities slip away from them, but in general they were operating smoothly, like a powerful, deadly machine. The only thing I'm worried about is Akers. We need him, damn it! Although it was crazy fun to see random other players out there kicking the ball for a change...
Q: All right, all right! Enough about you, for God's sake. How about giving us some more movie news and stupid internet links again?
A: Okay!
- Thanks to kaitzi for this rather odd internet quiz, which I know many of my friends will enjoy playing with:
Which Eddie Izzard line are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
- Here's another quiz, which has actually been around the blog block already, but which I'm just now finally getting to. It answers a question you have probably never wondered about yourself.
You are a stone key, and you unlock old and magical secrets. What you have to offer is powerful and difficult for many to understand, but invaluable to the few who can truly grasp it. Give the things you have carefully and wisely, because not everyone will use them for good.
What sort of key are you and what do you unlock?
brought to you by Quizilla
- Some bad news today. Turns out Keith Richards won't be appearing in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel after all, and George Clooney won't be the voice of Optimus Prime in the upcoming live action Transformers movie. I am sad.
- Today's This Modern World (subscription link) seems sadly (though also funnily, of course) believable. Also on Salon are some great quotes from old Billy Clinton on some of the actions of the latest administration.
- Those indietits. I just don't know.
- Also, arrr. (It's Talk Like a Pirate Day, me mateys.)
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