Movies

Les Maitres du Temps (1982) Animated Space Fantasy from Rene Laloux (La Planete Sauvage) and Moebius. Character animation is flat and thin, not making the transition from Moebius' drawing board to the hands of Hungarian animators very well. What might have been otherworldly or stylized only comes out harsh and unappealing. The backgrounds are the best part of most of this but it suddenly, like the aimless plot, comes together in the last ten minutes and becomes pretty good. Glad I saw it just to see it, but can't recommend it. 4/10

Mobile Police Patlabor the movie (1989) For a giant robot cartoon there sure wasn't enough giant robot. 80% is people talking to each other and walking around in their civvies trying to solve the mystery. 3/10

Island of Terror (1966) Genetics lab on isolated British island inadvertently creates invulnerable blobmonsters that suck your bones out and divide every six hours. SUCK YOUR BONES OUT I SAID! Very nice use of noodles in the reproductive scenes - I like when they use food to make the monster. Peter Cushing's magnificent hairline is the real star of this, like Day of the Triffids and Night of the Big Heat, classic example of the "reductive insularity" motif in British fantasy/horror. They live on an island so they take everything and put it onto a smaller island and it's like a microcosm. Lots of guys just going around doing stuff, then some monster stuff, then more guys driving around and going back the place they were before again. One cute girl per island, and she is only there to sob about how scared she is, and get ordered around by her scientist boyfriend. One of those movies I used to watch on TV because it was better than not having a monster movie to watch. Won't thrill or kill you. 5/10

Movies

Saturn 3 (1980), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) Two elaborate Space Fantasies which show the perils of trying to look cool. In Saturn 3 there's a guy, a girl, a mad scientist and a killer robot in a cave, but it's a really cool looking cave, and the robot is one of those very slow monsters you can't get away from that has obvious extreme vulnerabilities - its vital fluids are pumped through transparent plastic tubing looping around its body which it could just snag on a bracket and that would be it, but nobody thinks of grabbing a handful and pulling. Kirk Douglas was a great actor, and I have seen him do it many times, but he's got nothing to work with here. Ernest Borgnine could have done this. Farrah Fawcett as the girl seems to be working on her appropriate level though. In The Chronicles of Riddick there is this really cool guy who wears sunglasses and every line he says is "a line," like "remember when he said that 'line' and then punched that guy?" only everybody's lines are "lines" like they said "what would be the COOLEST thing they could say here?" - for EVERY line. Everything about it is about what would be the coolest thing that could happen, the coolest shot to shoot of it, the coolest armor or giant building, and it goes around the circle and comes back to where you started and crosses over the line and becomes Stupid again. It was written and directed by the same guy so I have to assume it came out the way he wanted it, but it seems more like they found an old bike gang revenge script they could get cheap and just puked money on it, then hired a lighting crew and dialog coach from a TV soap opera to make everything seem kind of cheap. At one point I thought "It's good that all those scenic artists and construction people got so much work from this." Tip - spend some money on a writer. 4/10 and 3/10 respectively.

Movies

A Deadly Invention (1958) I've got your "steampunk" for you, right here. Known as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne in the US, Karl Zeman's masterpiece, a superlative blend of live action and animation, presented in the style of steel engraved illustration. No other film until the advent of computer image processing combines animation and live action film so intensively in each scene. As is so often the case I saw part of this as a child, perhaps aged seven or eight, and I could hardly comprehend what I was seeing. I just knew I had never seen anything like it, or anything as bizarre and amazing. Today with my wider knowledge I feel the same. Based on Verne's motifs and ideas, it tells the story of a megalomaniac who finances his mechanistic plans for world domination by sending forth an attack submarine from his volcano stronghold, and I see now what an inspiration it has been to me all my life, how it seeded my mind with a fantastical worldview which determined my path in life and my interests and endeavors for years to come. I might say to Zeman as an acquaintance once said to Timothy Leary, "If it weren't for you I'd be a doctor now."

10/10

Movies

An Old, Old Story (1968) and The Singing, Ringing Tree (1957) - two fairy tale movies about the difficulties involved in wooing arrogant bad-tempered princesses, both presented as colorfully and unrealistically as possible, filmed entirely on fantastical and often surrealistic soundstages. The former and more recent is Russian and presents the story as a puppeteer's dream, based on the classic fairy tale of the Magic Tinderbox. It tends more toward the stage musical, with half a dozen song and dance numbers which are competent but not thrilling, and its Soviet ideology is clear in the unflattering depiction of royalty, and the victory of the proletarian hero. The latter and older is German and tells a fairy tale I had never before encountered but which contained many familiar motifs involving magical bargains. In this case the princess must be deprived of all her luxuries before she confronts the flaws of her own character and regains her beauty. By far my favorite of the two, it is filmed in Agfacolor which, at its best, provides intense pure colors that thrill the eye. The sets are huge and elaborate, and the magical transformations are splendid. The one oddity is that it is not dubbed into english, simply given an english over-narration, but it becomes acceptable quite rapidly. Rating: 6/10 and 8/10 respectively.

Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962) Fairly high concept for such an economical production - space explorers of the 21st century landing on Uranus (ha ha, I know, it's like a butthole only it's a planet) encounter a telepathic being that uses their memories and desires to captivate and control them. Most of their desires involve the pastoral scenes of their youth and women in negligee. I had a love-hate relationship with this as a lad, seeing it three or four times on TV and never really knowing if I liked it or not. I enjoyed it a bit more now that my own desires more closely parallel those of the protagonists. I appreciate the technical details of the production too, and appreciate what went into it. There is a stop-motion one-eyed ratosaur, a giant cave spider attack, and the telepathic monster itself appears in a number of different guises - including a large glowing brain, and most delightfully to me a literal piece of tripe with a fake eye stuck in it! GENIUS! A little tedious, but at times there are lots of bright colors and moving shapes which counts for a lot. 6/10

The Astounding Tripe Monster!!!

Dream - with cussing

"All you assholes get the hell out of my house!" I shouted. "Wait a minute," one of the assholes pugnaciously replied, "we've still got a fight on our hands - how about on the front porch?" "Fine," I said, " go fuck yourself out there if you want."

Movies

The Inhabited Island (2008) Russian-made all-out science-fantasy spectacle. Some movies I have to turn my brain off to enjoy, but this one turned my brain off for me in about one minute. I was continuously boggled by one outrageous spectacle after another. Somebody dropped a dumptruck full of rubles on this thing and it looks expensive every second. It's a hero's journey into the land of shadows to save the world, but it hooked me right away. It helps a lot that the hero, played by Valery Stepanov is absolutely gorgeous, a blue-eyed blonde god, and that the detailing and design is so very intense throughout. Two hours of astonishment, and it's only part one of two. I guess this really woke up my inner teen-ager, because I really liked it. But what is it like, you may ask? Okay, it's probably a guy thing - the few women are secondary characters. What if Star Wars had a heart of Soviet steel? What if Battlefield Earth wasn't utterly atrocious? Hero Maxim's squid ship is hit by an asteroid while he's talking to his gramma on the space phone and he crash lands on a planet under a permanent pall of cloud, crushed under warring materialist-fascist governments' mind control radiation machines. There is no other world to come from because they live on the inside of the sphere. He must apply his super-spaceman knowledge and skills. But the huge road-train, the vast grim city, his alien memories recorded to make a television spectacle, being sent as a rebel mutant to the re-education camp where they must comb the woods to find and destroy the autonomous death machines left over from the last war, the lush detail of it all is what sold it to me. All the wow moments of The Fifth Element and Blade Runner, all jammed together and thrown at you every five minutes. I even liked the fight scene and that is rare. 9/10

It may have helped that I prepared myself by watching:

Nude on the Moon (1961) Two men go to the moon and find it looks just like Florida except for the topless moon people who communicate through twisty wire antennae on their heads. An amazingly primitive excuse for showing women with their shirts off. So badly acted that even the simplest actions are performed unconvincingly, so cheap and crude that they stand there talking about what a spectacular sight their spaceship is and THEY DON'T SHOW IT. Lots of shots of two guys wearing dime store kids' pilot helmets and colored tights, jotting notes and taking photos with an old shadowbox reflex camera. The irony is that the only real nude on the moon is a male infant - everyone else is wearing shorts. Fun in a stupid boring way. Any movie with that many breasts in it rates at least 5/10 no matter what.

Movies

Up in the World (1956) British comedy starring Norman Wisdom as the proletarian oddball whose bizarre errors cost him jobs, who enrages his superiors, makes a huge ass of himself, skewers the foibles of the rich, sings a song on a ferris wheel and inevitably marries the cute girl. The exact analogue of Mexico's Cantinflas. Donna stuck with it longer than I expected but I did warn her. It was surprisingly funny at first, before the plot started, then settled down into schtick and formula. The most surprising thing was that I found it on the Russian shelf at the library - with my ability to sound out cyrillic and knowledge of where they put the subtitle information on the back I would have gotten it anyway just to see what it was, it looked kind of crazy, but when I saw it was Norman Wisdom I realized it was a Russian release of a British film - dubbed in Russian with the English soundtrack as second option. Anyway, it was one of that kind of movie, with the goofy guy creating chaos but saving the day and it ends with a wedding. Oh, and there's a nightclub scene, always a plus! Gotta have a nightclub scene. 6/10

Movies

Appleseed (1988) A classic of anime. If you like this sort of thing, you really ought to read the manga - this is made a bit generic by its translation to cel animation, while the original art has a liveliness and intensity that is truly memorable. Nevertheless, the story is complex and intelligent, the settings and concepts are imaginative. Film - 6/10; Manga - 10/10

Movies

I haven't been keeping up with my viewing here lately because I've been spending more time reading tutorials and manuals online so I just get kind of tired of words on a screen, but I will try to catch up here. I got a set of Golden Age of Televison live broadcasts because Donna wanted to see the original version of Marty, which we watched, and we also watched The Comedian starring Mickey Rooney and Edmond O'Brien. They were interesting to see, and very impressive in their execution, but didn't leave us thirsting for more so I returned it to the library. Donna like Marty more than I did.

We also watched Night and the City (1950) - another of Jules Dassin's unique stories. Richard Widmark is a frenzied two-bit hustler who thinks he's finally found his big thing. All-around excellent production and well worth seeing. 9/10

On my own I have seen:

Los Cronocrimenes (Timecrimes) 2007 - a tense, complicated and jarring time travel thriller. More of a feel-bad movie than I usually care for but well presented and thought out. I sure wouldn't do what that guy did - listen, if you start jumping back in time don't go trying to "fix" things. That's where they always go wrong. 7/10

Moon Zero Two (1969) Hammer studios' space crime adventure. I saw part of it on TV when I was a teenager and now I have finally seen it all. Lots of nightclub scenes which to me are vital to any SF film. Full-size moon buses on huge soundstage sets, entertaining and thoughtful set and costume design, adequate acting and story. Don't kill yourself trying to see it, but it's okay for a slow evening. 6/10

Also been watching a lot of old Russian cartoons because they do a lot of cutout animation, as well as trying to find extremely crude and simple animation to see just how little one can get away with for character movement without becoming too boring to watch - Mel-O-Toons are right on the border, Mr. Piper cartoons and Clutch Cargo/Captain Fathom are way over the line. That's what all the online study has been for - learning animation.

Recent Viewing

Whisky (2004) Watched with Donna. The first Uruguayan film I have seen, the directors cite Kaurismaki as an influence in the closing credits, and it shows - maybe a little too much. The taciturn owner of a sock factory (a tiny shop with three employees) and his shop foreman must pretend to be married while his brother, also a sock factory owner, visits from Brazil. This is the kind of movie in which nothing is explained, there is very little dialog and no establishing shots to show the environment or locales - but that's not bad really. I hesitate to use the word intimate, but it is about the people and learning to see what they are inside when they show little on the outside. You aren't going to learn much about Uruguay from this but it is a comedy insofar as it provides a few quiet chuckles, and is a pretty good movie about people which you may not forget right away. 8/10

Cherry 2000 (1987) [TV] Melanie Griffith sleepwalks her way through this scifi action movie. They seem to have had some money to spend on sets, and deserve credit for the Boulder Dam locations, but mostly it's just go into the deadly zone to find the fabulous object, have gunfights and blow stuff up in the old quarry. Griffith needed a far better movie than this to bring out her subtle qualities. 4/10

Beast In Space (1980) Directed by Alfonso Brescia a.k.a. Al Bradley. The last of his series of five SF films and by far the lousiest. It uses the same sets, props, costumes and effects sequences as the rest, but this is the porno movie of the series and seems as if he had just given up trying. It's all equally dreary and uninteresting, whether they are walking around in a cave or crummy little hallway set, or squirming around kissing each other on the chest and leg. You know that I despise superlatives like "worst ever" as more revealing of the user's ignorance than their knowledge, but in this case it leaves me wondering how to adequately convey the place of these five movies, and this last one, in the history of cinema. I can only say that as a combined work it is unique. This should only be seen after having endured the other four, but preferably not at all. 1/10

Recent Viewing

White Sun of the Desert (1970) A spaghetti western with an unlikely hero holed up in the old mission with half a dozen women, armed with a machine gun and a box of dynamite against a bandit army. Except the hero is a Red Army soldier just trying to get home, the old mission is a ruined mosque on the shore of the Caspian Sea, and the women are the harem of the bandit chief. All treated with the usual combination of wit and tragedy - good clean fun. 8/10

Mafioso (1962) Watched with Donna. Meticulous factory supervisor revisits his folksy home town in Sicily and learns the true meaning of family. Sicilian family. Even though you know from the beginning that he is sure to end up in a terrible situation before the end of the story, it is relentlessly amusing throughout. Convincingly detailed with sunscorched cobbled streets and huge platters of amazing food. Extremely entertaining, surprising in its developments and highly rewarding overall. 10/10

Rusty Knife (1958) Acceptable Japanese noir has its moments - including a chase scene in huge trucks and an almost hilariously overacted gangster suicide. Nothing really spectacular, but a good workmanlike job. A very young Jo Shishido doesn't survive long. 6/10

Movies

Twice Upon a Time (1983) Apparently there is a long story about the fate of this animated oddity, but it is obvious from the first moment that it was simply too odd, too visually inventive and conceptually skewed to provide the monetary return which denotes success under the lash of capitalism. (My copy is from a vhs of the unbowdlerized original edition.) It is innovative in style and technique, primarily cutout animation, with additions of live action and video, teaches no lesson and has no moral other than that happy dreams are better than nightmares. It is silly, witty, and fun, and made me boggle with admiration at the outstanding and unique visual style. Marshall Efron voices the villain. 9/10

Gardening Advice

This is the time of year when big tubs of fresh chickpeas show up at our local supermarket. They are crunchy, nutty and green, each rattling in its own stiff wooly bubble. At almost $4 a pound a cheapskate like me begins to think of growing them for free. The first year I tried it nothing came up, so the next year I sprouted them for a few days and was rewarded with a thicket of short hardy plants. Their stems are thick and square, standing straight up - the blooms are white with a purple center it's almost black, a target the bees love. The best surprise was that the fuzzy pods coat their hairs with a sour/salty exudation you can lick off your fingers, making them nature's self-salting snack treat. If you have a couple of square feet of garden to spare, try it. I'm sprouting mine now and in a couple of days will plant them. I just use the same kind I cook - they aren't hybridized into some kind of infertile abomination like amaranth and some other grain crops are.

Movies

Gog (1953) Offbeat "mad machines" story. Not always exciting but visually entrancing from the beauty of the color and set/costume design. I haven't looked it up but it was obviously made in 3D from the way things keep getting pointed at the camera. Interesting to see William Schallert getting crushed by a rampaging robot, and the chrome double-rotor helicopter is fabulous. 6/10