sf, stats and stupid neighbours
Monday, 16 January 2006 01:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtIt seems to be Ancient SF B-Movie Week back home in Extemporanea City: I capped the recent run of dodgy 80s classics by watching Barbarella last night. It's one of those movies that SF movie critics feel impelled to reference early and often, so actual experience of it was somewhat overdue. Well, now. What an amazingly entertaining piece of hokum. In fact it turned out to be nothing whatsoever like anything I expected, although I'm not actually sure what I expected; certainly not the oddly Monty Pythonesque feel it had at times (circa Erik the Viking: surreal, black, comic, slightly stilted). Interestingly psychadelic visuals, not just the weird trippy floating fractal thingies, but the sets, especially the labyrinth. The movie is often quoted as an embryonic instance of a strong female hero, but in fact that's a load of bollocks: she's symbolic of nothing except her sexuality, and is shunted passively between situations created and controlled by others, either men or demonic women. Annoying, but often very funny; the weirdly passive and clearly meat-between-the-ears angel was an entertaining male version of the same sexualised passivity. And Barbarella's endless succession of skimpy costumes was played with such deliberate over-the-top irony that I couldn't even take offence.
Of course, my enjoyment of the film was probably heightened by the fact that we watched it more than somewhat sloshed, after the usual jo&stv visit had turned into an impromptu Sunday evening braai, with wine. (Important to celebrate the Evil Landlord's recent installation of a wine rack). Our Nasty Neighbour was in top form: she has this amazing way of giving vent to shrieks of rage and volleys of swearing the instant we light a braai, followed by loud, obvious slamming of windows. Last night reached a new low, with her shouting "Selfish pigs!" over the wall. From her reaction, any social manifestation on our part is equivalent in her mind to a massive party continuing until 3am, with loud music and shouting, followed by fireworks and the random release of clouds of mustard gas. In fact, there were four of us, we went inside at about 8.30, and we weren't talking loudly, playing music, or making a particularly smoky fire. We'd be a lot more likely to be sympathetic to her problems if (a) they were reasonable, and (b) if she had any other way of expressing them other than a temper tantrum. Stupid woman.
In between the sf movies I've also discovered a bunch of new graphic novels, courtesy of confluence, who pushes them like a pimp. I am hooked on Hellboy, which is beautifully drawn, wildly atmospheric and studded all over with happy folkloric references that are making me drool and purr. I'm also retroactively impressed with the movie, which seems to me to have reproduced the feel and to some extent the look of the series, even if its plot was somewhat Hollywoodized. I also enjoyed Scarlet Traces, which is a sequel to Wells's War of the Worlds; unfortunately, although this was visually and conceptually stunning, I found it somewhat poorly plotted. I was also very unimpressed by the three issues of Serenity, which is amazing artwork but otherwise insubstantial: Joss is not usually this thin on the ground, plot-wise. Disappointing.
An interesting point arose in this morning's random browsing. Rotten Tomatoes have released their 2005 Golden Tomato awards, which always interest me because they track and evaluate film reviews and manage to assign them some kind of numerical value in terms of how the film was received. Significant to note: in the top 25 wide release list, the top 5 are fantasy films of some sort - Wallace and Gromit, Harry Potter, Batman Begins (which I must see again, incidentally), King Kong and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The next five include Star Wars and Corpse Bride, for a total of seven out of ten. The ranked listing across both wide and limited releases clearly pulls in the art-house movies, as there are, by contrast, only 8 fantasy films in the top 30. One can infer several interesting points: fantasy is very popular, studios are making a lot of fantasy movies, they're pumping a huge amount of money into wide-release blockbusters, and both audiences and critics really like them. The year's theme is clearly "anyplace but here". See the happy human race, running pell-mell into cultural disaster with its head firmly buried in the sand!
Of course, my enjoyment of the film was probably heightened by the fact that we watched it more than somewhat sloshed, after the usual jo&stv visit had turned into an impromptu Sunday evening braai, with wine. (Important to celebrate the Evil Landlord's recent installation of a wine rack). Our Nasty Neighbour was in top form: she has this amazing way of giving vent to shrieks of rage and volleys of swearing the instant we light a braai, followed by loud, obvious slamming of windows. Last night reached a new low, with her shouting "Selfish pigs!" over the wall. From her reaction, any social manifestation on our part is equivalent in her mind to a massive party continuing until 3am, with loud music and shouting, followed by fireworks and the random release of clouds of mustard gas. In fact, there were four of us, we went inside at about 8.30, and we weren't talking loudly, playing music, or making a particularly smoky fire. We'd be a lot more likely to be sympathetic to her problems if (a) they were reasonable, and (b) if she had any other way of expressing them other than a temper tantrum. Stupid woman.
In between the sf movies I've also discovered a bunch of new graphic novels, courtesy of confluence, who pushes them like a pimp. I am hooked on Hellboy, which is beautifully drawn, wildly atmospheric and studded all over with happy folkloric references that are making me drool and purr. I'm also retroactively impressed with the movie, which seems to me to have reproduced the feel and to some extent the look of the series, even if its plot was somewhat Hollywoodized. I also enjoyed Scarlet Traces, which is a sequel to Wells's War of the Worlds; unfortunately, although this was visually and conceptually stunning, I found it somewhat poorly plotted. I was also very unimpressed by the three issues of Serenity, which is amazing artwork but otherwise insubstantial: Joss is not usually this thin on the ground, plot-wise. Disappointing.
An interesting point arose in this morning's random browsing. Rotten Tomatoes have released their 2005 Golden Tomato awards, which always interest me because they track and evaluate film reviews and manage to assign them some kind of numerical value in terms of how the film was received. Significant to note: in the top 25 wide release list, the top 5 are fantasy films of some sort - Wallace and Gromit, Harry Potter, Batman Begins (which I must see again, incidentally), King Kong and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The next five include Star Wars and Corpse Bride, for a total of seven out of ten. The ranked listing across both wide and limited releases clearly pulls in the art-house movies, as there are, by contrast, only 8 fantasy films in the top 30. One can infer several interesting points: fantasy is very popular, studios are making a lot of fantasy movies, they're pumping a huge amount of money into wide-release blockbusters, and both audiences and critics really like them. The year's theme is clearly "anyplace but here". See the happy human race, running pell-mell into cultural disaster with its head firmly buried in the sand!
