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Wednesday, December 23

Art

The Iron Giant

42 Days of Summer #4

Directed by Brad Bird
Written by Tim McCanlies and Brad Bird from a story by Ted Hughes
Voices of Eli Marienthal, Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick Jr., Christopher McDonald, and featuring Vin Diesel as a big inarticulate monster
1999, 86 minutes


In a small town in Maine in 1959, people are mysteriously dying of cancer.  Like, all of them.  A young boy points the blame US government nuclear "tests" and sets out to...  No, wait, that's Iron Giant II.

...

In a small town in Maine in 1958, a young boy gets the Christmas present he always wanted: A genuine Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Mk VII self-assembling killbot.  Things go awry when the usual Sirius Cybernetics QA problems arise and the killbot switches operational modes without password confirmation.

I know some people love this film, but I'm just not feeling it.  It's neither good enough for me to rave about it, nor bad enough to elicit an entertaining rant, nor is it a flawed work whose faults can elicit an interesting discussion.  It's just there.  Perfectly fine.

I do like the fact that when the adults see the giant killbot, they say, oh, right, giant killbot.  It's the late 50s, we have giant killbots now.  I'd like to compare that with the original story, because this film was made in the 90s, but the story was written in 1968, and a typical 50s or 60s film with similar subject matter would feature a great deal more running about and shrieking.

I don't like the laziness of the characterisation of the government official, whose actions would in reality have caused the agonising deaths of everyone in the film.  Happy ending my arse; this film has a MESSAGE, and the message is DUMB.

Oh, maybe I can rant about its flaws after all.

Two and a half autonomous repair systems out of four.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:24 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Tuesday, December 22

Art

Brave

42 Days of Summer #3

Directed by Brenda Chapman, Mark Andrews
Written by Steve Purcell, Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, Irene Mecchi
Voices of Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly
2012, 93 minutes

Merida, a young princess of the Nac Mac Feegle, horrified by the Kelda's plans to marry her off to another tribe, conspires with a hag to turn her mother into a newt and her brothers into tadpoles.  This backfires when a fire-breathing salamander arrives and lays waste to the kingdom.  Now only Merida and her trusty poodle, Macguffin, stand between the Feegles and utter bewailment.

This film looks pretty - probably the best-looking Pixar film I've seen, and that's saying something - and it's great to see strong female characters, even if they're complete idiots.  But this is a children's film from start to finish, failing to grasp for something more the way Pixar have succeeded at many times (Toy Story, The Incredibles, Up).

It's unexceptionable, but unexceptional too.  I'm left with just two observations:
  1. There's a reason we used to burn witches.  Nowadays we'd just sic the FDSA on them.
  2. Did the Kelda ever apologise?  Everything that happens in the story is her fault.  She's loving and protective and dumb as a bug.
  3. It reverses - again, though in a different way - the previous night's film, in that the moral of Brave is that there's nothing you can't fix with determination and courage and a willingness to utterly rewrite the rulebook.
Two and a half ravens out of four.  I think it's the weakest Pixar film I've seen, but that's with the proviso that I gave up on Cars after only a couple of minutes and don't count it.  And that most Pixar films are brilliant.

Next up: Brad Bird's The Iron Giant.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:38 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Monday, December 21

Art

42 Essences

As a daily quickie, something that captures the essence of something.  

Essence #1: Postmodern Jukebox


(Postmodern Jukebox seem to default to ragtime, but this is one of their best songs and also one of their best videos.  It's the essence.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:18 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Art

42 Scores Of Summer

Not talking about film scores, though I might do that at some point.  Just talking about how the scoring system works.

I give each item I review a score out of four.

Four things (the things vary) means the film (or whatever) was everything it could have been and everything I could have wanted.  It's rare for a film to do both; I'm not objective in my ratings and don't pretend to be.

Three things means the film was very good, well worth watching, and recommended.

Two things means the film was... Adequate.  Or perhaps it was well-made but didn't grab me, or it grabbed me but was badly flawed.  Something you might watch on a rainy afternoon and not count your time wasted.

One thing means the film was not very good at all.  Not recommended unless you are feeling particularly perverse.

Zero things is a stinker with no net merit whatsoever.  A black hole where talent and money went to die.

Negative things indicate a film that is not just without merit, but actively makes the world a worse place.

And finally, five things - out of four - indicates a film that is so remarkable that it made me recalibrate my conception of what our species is capable of.  This doesn't happen very often.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Art

Twelve Monkeys

42 Days of Summer #2

Directed by Terry Gilliam
Written by David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples
Starring Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, and Madeleine Stowe
1995, 130 minutes

Bruce Willis is James Cole, survivor of a global bio-warfare plague unleashed in 1996 by a terrorist group known as the Army of the Twelve Monkeys.  He is sent back in time to try track down an unmutated sample of the virus to help scientists in the future - our future, his present - create a cure or a vaccine.  Madeleine Stowe is Dr Kathryn Railly, a psychiatrist who helps Cole when he inevitably gets locked up in the nuthouse.  And Brad Pitt is Brad Pitt, a nut who turns out to be [spoilers go here].

But this is a Terry Gilliam science fiction film, and that means two things.  Three things.  First, the future looks like it was disassembled by ferrets, reassembled by raccoons, accidentally set ablaze, and finally extinguished by a tidal wave of moose piss.  Second, the present looks like a Baltimore dumpster fire.  And third, nothing goes well for the hero.

This film has none of the problems of Sky Captain: Smartly written, tightly directed, and with terrific performances from both the leading and supporting casts.  The one weakness is that Terry Gilliam can't help being Terry Gilliam and laying on the fevre dream icing a couple of layers beyond what was really needed to bake this particular cake.  But given the overall craftmanship of the piece, I'm willing to forgive him that foible.

This is not a happy film, though.  It's not entirely bleak, but a consistent theme is that there are some things you simply cannot fix.  If this film and Groundhog Day ever collided, their mutual annihilation would be visible from the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy.

I give it three twelve monkeys out of four.

Next up: Pixar's Brave.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Sunday, December 20

Art

Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow

42 Days of Summer #1

Directed and written by Kerry Conran
Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Angelina Jolie
2004, 106 minutes

Were it not for the leaden acting, incoherent script, sophomoric direction, and trite score, this film might have...  Wait, that doesn't actually leave much, does it?  Or indeed, anything at all.

I could say that some of the sets look nice, but there aren't any sets; the entire film was shot on digital green-screen.  I could say that some of the action sequences are good (the only saving grace of the last Die Hard film) except that frankly, they're not.  I could say that the Art Deco-inspired art and architecture and colouring made this a visual treat, but I'd be lying; it's about as visually striking as a fallen soufflé.

The chemistry between the lead actors is actually negative; the plot makes less than zero sense.  I literally had my head in my hands several times towards the end of this film.

I wanted to see this when it first came out, and even bought the DVD, but somehow never got around to it.  I'm sorry that I eventually did.  Even after hearing that it wasn't very good, the vague idea of it I had in my head was vastly better than what Conran actually made.

I made it to the end, but at one point I wandered into the kitchen to get a drink without pausing the movie, and I never do that.  I can see the screen from the kitchen, but still...

Rotten Tomatoes gives it a rating of 72%, which is absurd.  It tanked at the box office, and deservedly so.  Even at 106 minutes - not long for a modern feature film - it needed to be cut drastically.

I rate it one tiny elephant out of four.

Avoid.

Next up: Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:15 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Wednesday, May 06

Art

Our Team Of Highly Trained Ninja Moths Hard At Work

Yesterday this sweater had full-length sleeves.

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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:52 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Sunday, December 28

Art

Musical Interlude II



Thank you for watching.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled millennium.  Whether you like it or not.

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Sunday, November 23

Art

Slow On The Uptake

Just realised today that the 11th Doctor is Peter Pan and Amy Pond is Wendy.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:47 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Friday, July 25

Art

Full Fathom Five My Monkey Lies

Full Fathom Five, Max Gladstone
The Rhesus Chart, Charles Stross

Two new additions to existing fantasy series by two of my favourite writers.  Not the best time for my Nexus 7 to suddenly die.

Full Fathom Five is the third in Max Gladstone's Craft sequence (Three Parts Dead, Two Serpents Rise) which merges Vancean fantasy with the corporate thriller, so the key plot element shared by the three works is a sort of necromantic forensic conveyancing.  In this world, gods and souls are not just real, they are public utilities and currencies.

Our main characters on this outing are Kai, who constructs bespoke demigods for a fantasy-Hawaii-based spiritual mutual fund, and Izza, a street urchin with an unexplained hotline to Heaven.  When one of the idols managed by Kai's employer is endangered by the failure of a risky investment, Kai dives in (literally) with a last-minute leveraged buyout offer, and her life starts to unravel.

There follows a great deal of running around, getting hit on the head (literally, figuratively, or spiritually), unexpected betrayals, unexpected fidelities, and in the end triumph pulled from the jaws of a thing with lots and lots of teeth, which is pretty much the same formula as the previous two books.  

Which works just fine for me.

Full Fathom Five expands on the scope of the first two books, showing us that the events of the three stories are not just happening in a shared world, but follow closely on one another, and are perhaps directly related.  That leaves me looking eagerly forward to Gladstone's next entry in the series.  I'd be ready and willing to buy more standalone novels as long as he keeps writing, but if he can take the series to the next level, so much the better.

If you liked the first two books you won't want to miss this.  If you haven't read any of them, start with Three Parts Dead; while the books work in any order (so far) it's the easiest to get into.



The Rhesus Chart is the fifth in Charles Stross' Laundry Files  (The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue, The Fuller Memorandum, The Apocalypse Codex) that follows the trials of British civil servant Bob Howard, a former computer scientist corralled into working for a super-secret division of MI-6 tasked with defending the Universe.  The series is a cross between the classic Cold War spy thriller and Lovecraftian cosmic horror.  (Indeed, the recent Laundry Files novella Equoid involves Lovecraft himself.)

This time out....  Frankly, this time out is disappointing.  The previous novels involved adventure, danger, action and excitement, even if Bob didn't want any part of it.  This novel never leaves London, much less Earth; it never really gets beyond second gear.  Though the story is told in first person, a good half of the action takes place when Bob is not present, and is told by reconstruction or after-action report.

This applies even to the climactic scenes of the novel, which turns a Pyrrhic victory into merely a damp squib.  It's still a decent read, but given how well the series started out, this latest outing is so much less than it might have been.  I would not really recommend it either to a new or an established reader of the series; instead, pick up Equoid and the other short works.

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