tdaxp

Forbidden City Cop's plot, such as it is, is of the evil Gum Kingdom's quests to conquer the Chinese Empire. The simpleminded and friendly Emperor is no match for the clever Gum barbarians, and from the offer of a concubine to the capture of a space alien, the Emperor believes & accepts every Gum entreaty. It's up to doctor who moonlights as an Imperial Bodyguard and inventor, Ling Ling Fat ("008", Stephen Chow), to save the day.

Chow's films are a combination of lighthearted physical comedy and commentary on culture. The recent Shaolin Soccer (2001) is a masterful example of this, combining the rise of an improbably sports team (a la The Longest Yard) with a realist examination of contemporary urban China. Forbidden City Cop is an earlier example of the same themes, deftly combining western imports (UFOs, the Academy Awards, spy thrillers) with traditional (ancient heroes, an Empire in distress) and contemporary (kung fu) themes.



The only downside was the subtitles, sometimes hardly readable because of their positioning on the screen. Still, the film was funny and cute, and I recommend it. I rate it 8 / 10.

Rent from Greencine. (Currently out of stock at Amazon.)

Dark Days is an amazing movie, and thanks to DVD technology it's even a better disk. Which this film. Watch these movies.

The film "Dark Days" chronicles the lives of "home owners" living under the Amtrak tracks in New York City. For the past twenty or thiryy years abandond sections of the New York subway were used as housing by the homeless. In the dark drank tunnels, the residents had guard dogs, locked doors, and thanks to the soviet-style infrastructure of the subway, electricity. Residents ranged from the mentally fried, to thieves, to a man you can't help rooting for. The documentary unexpectedly complicates as armed Amtrak police order the eviction of the hidden city. The ending is almost too cinematic to be true, though generally happy endings are dogged by the eventual deaths of three people you grow to know.

The "making of" documentary, called "Dark Days: The Making of A True Independent" tells the equally amazing story of how the work came to be. When the filmmaker says, "I wasn't thinking of making a film at worst," your first reaction is "of course....." Then you learn that had never made a movie before, had never used film before, and had never short video before. I don't want to ruin any of the incredible events from between the director hearing of the underground city to the multiple Sundance awards, because I want you to see for yourself.

Dark Days and Dark Days: The Making of a True Independent are both incredible. Dark Days itself slows down a bit in the middle, so the 40 minute mark may be a good time to fire of the making-of featurette. Combined, both make two solid hours. I rate this film 9 / 10.

Rent from Greencine. Buy from Amazon.

A pretentious train wreck of a good idea, A Prairie Home Companion is exactly like the film version of the radio show that it is. Only worse. While while A Prairie Home Companion is merely a pretentious few hours of nostalgia, the movie is a cavalcade of all that is perceived by stupid by a distant, out of touch elite.

The idea behind A Prairie Home Companion, for those who haven't visited Garrison Keiler's Lake Wobegon for themselves, is that one can somehow listen to a radio show from sixty-some years ago. Old style advertisement, music, and dramatic shorts make you think "this is clever" when you first hear it. Followed rapidly by "What else is on," because A Prairie Home Companion is far better as a nostalgia trip than either a recreation of the world that was. Nor it is very funny. A laugh every fifteen minutes isn't "funny."

In spite of these faults, the radio program at least knows what it is nostalgic for: late 1940s radio in the upper Midwest. The film only knows that it's a show for "stupid" people, and that all such country bumpkins are alike.

So one personality has a thick and painfully thick Minnesota accent. Two are cowboys, because presumably farmers and ranchers were coterminous in place and time. We have southern revival-style music mixed freely with paeans to specific Minnesota placenames. An "angel" walks with a soul singer, neither having much to do with the show's sense of place.



In A Prairise Home Companion, Hollywood presents up with a coalition-of-the-oppressed view of the past. Countryfolk are stupid, ignorant, and all the same. To complete the effect, throw in an arrogant businesslike Texan whose "eyes do not focus" and a suicidal sophisticate played by Lindsay Lohan. Yes, Lindsay Lohan.

I give it five out of ten. If you're into pain with occasional bursts of pleasure but don't have a knife handy, A Prairie Home Companion is for you.

Rent from Greencine. Buy from Amazon.

Catholicgauze, gnxp, The Metropolis Times, and ZenPundit have offered their views.

I could argue that it's a near-perfect example of the Romantic genre, and that the screen play appears to have been written by Ayn Rand.

I could say that it's brilliant embarrasses the emptiness of Hollywood, and it's empty translations of Alexander and Troy.

I could say that the very best review I've read comes from ComicBookResources.com, and that this film comes from the world of comics, says a lot about the greatness of a medium I have rarely directly enjoyed.



But instead, I will say this: If before the battle the Spartans had seen this movie, had known how their tale would be sung, they would be delighted.

Last night, Lady of tdaxp and I watched Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. The movie begins with a beautiful rendition of the flag of Kazakhstan:

The Republic of Kazakhstan is one of several Asian nations to prominently feature a Sun Disk on its flag. Other common elements are the Star, the Crescent, and writing:



The Star may be the most common of these symbols, and it’s often included within the other symbols.



So I mapped the countries of Asia by which symbol they used. Because stars are so common, I colored those states by other symbols (so, for instance, Iraq is classified as “writing" even though it has both writing and stars). Thus:



The Sun Disk radiates out from China. The origin is even older than the KMT’s adoption fo the symbol in the flag of the Republic of China. The Qin Dynasty also used the Sun Disk. However, just as the People’s Republic only uses the Star, so do its dependencies:



The destruction of the Sun Disk, as well as mutilation and attempted obliteration of Chinese characters, are the works of Mao Zedong, a noted psychopath. This is unlike, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, however, which is the work of Sacha Baron-Cohen, cousin of an expert on autism.

Plus: Excellent story, atmospherics, and twists. Fun characters.
Bad: Too long. Somehow... "French"
Another review: Catholicgauze
7/10 Stars



Plus: Good concept
Bad: Terrible execution, the jokes aren't funny, better alternate histories exist

Read instead: Guns of the South
6/10 Stars



Plus: Fun, simple, story. Oddly deep and philosophical at times. Very respectful of the game.
Bad: It's called "Doom."
8/10 Stars

Lady of tdaxp and I spent this beautiful Indian summer evening watching an amazing film, The Call of Cthulhu. Distributed the Howard Philips Lovecraft Historical Society, directed by Andrew Leman, and written by Sean Branney, The Call of Cthulhu is a triumph of art, literature, and film.

The Call of Cthulhu (Found Among the Papers of the Late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston) was written by H.P. Lovecraft in 1928. Lovecraft, a horror writer, amateur astronomer, and blogger (well, actually "amateur journalist"), was first and foremost a poet. The story, which threads the shorter tales The Horror in the Clay, The Tale of Inspector Legrasse, and The Madness from the Sea, was inspired by Lord Tennyson's The Kraken:

There hath he lain for ages and will lie,
Battening on huge seaworms in his sleep;
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die

And indeed, the entire tale is poetry amidst poetry, as in the narrator's second-hand description of a third author's couplet:

Of the cult, he said that he thought the centre lay amid the pathless desert of Arabia, where Irem, the City of Pillars, dreams hidden and untouched. It was not allied to the European witch-cult, and was virtually unknown beyond its members. No book had ever really hinted of it, though the deathless Chinamen said that there were double meanings in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred which the initiated might read as they chose, especially the much-discussed couplet:

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.

Ironically for a tale by a poet, the movie The Call of Cthulhu is silent. Completely. It is made in the style of a silent movie from 1928. Some music videos over the past few years have tried this style -- Red Hot Chili Pepper's Otherside, for example, and Smashing Pumpkin's Tonight, Tonight -- but none have done it this well. The movie is not knowingly ironic, it is not a comedy, it is not take itself lightly. The Call of Cthulhu is a serious attempt to recreate a horror tale from the 1920s in the style of 1920s Hollywood. It succeeds brilliantly.

That's why it was a Seattle International Film Festival Selection.



The Call of Cthulhu is the best Lovecraft adaptation I have ever seen, it is the best silent film I have ever seen. The Call of Cthulhu is a masterful executed labor of love. Watch it.

The Call of Cthulhu is available for rent from greencine or purchase from Amazon.com . It runs 47 minutes, and includes an excellent "making of" documentary.

More reviews are available from the HPLHS. A trailer is also available.

Of course, there are humorous adaptations, too.

Comfy chairs? Check. Wireless network? Check. Getting a universal remote to work with my DVD/TV system because I lost the previous one? Check.

I believe I am moved in.

Met with the professor I am teaching under this semester -- he seems very cool. The schedule is arranged nicely.

As the day ended, Lady of tdaxp and I watched Inside Man. Disappointing, (and because most of the movie is executed well and promises something quite wonderful) painfully so. A good movie marred by a tacked-on ending. I was able to pinpoint as it happened the exact moment the film should have ended. Instead, an eternity (whatever the actual runtime) of boredom and cliches. It made me nostalgic for A Clockwork Orange, The Negotiator, Resevoir Dogs, or for that matter any crime film that is actually good. (Lady of tdaxp thinks the movie is set up for a sequel, but too much is undone in the last few minutes for it to be purposeful.)

Last night Lady of tdaxp and I watched 2046, a 2004 movie by writer/director Kar Wai Wong. The movie is a gorgeous and well crafted hymn to responsibility. The films is strongly Randian, with characters that could have come from the worlds of Alisa Rosenbaum (a suffering writer/philosopher, an admiring femme fatale, and an oriental version of the couple in We the Living among them).

At first glance 2046 appears to be a train-based science-fiction story (an apparent homage to Atlas Shrugged). Only as the film continues do the nature of the "future" and "past" storyline become clear, and Kar Wai Wong deserves praise for the way he unravels meaning, and the way the storylines beautifully complement each other.

2046 is the antithesis of Celephais, a tale by H.P. Lovecraft written in late 1920 (a story previously featured on tdaxp).

There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life. But some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests; and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy.

2046 is available from Amazon.com, greencine, and other fine distributors.

M. Night Shyamalan is best known for his 1999 movie The Sixth Sense. That movie became famous for a last scene that completely changed the meaning of nearly every scene that preceded it. The country was swept up by the wonder that writer/director Shyamalan created through that twist ending, and the rest of Shyamalan's career until now has been an attempt to re-create that moment.

The two movies that followed The Sixth Sense, 2000's Unbreakable and 2002 Signs, were not able to reach this goal. The ending of Unbreakable was nearly identical to The Sixth Sense (they even use the same actor -- Bruce Willis -- for the protagonist), while Signs aimed for a feeling of warmth by the end instead of a change in meaning.

Shyamalan's fourth film -- The Village -- was a return to the medium that made him famous. It was not just the movie's "twist ending" -- nor the identity and nature of the Creatures surrounding The Village, nor the properties of the forbidden woods -- but that it was a horror tale in the greatest tradition. Indeed, The Village reaches further into the horror genre than The Sixth Sense did, showing us not just a strange world that should not be, but a familiar world that must not be.