Freckles & Doubt

As promised, I trundled off to see Thor on Wednesday evening, which in the event was a bad idea. Not because it was a bad movie, but because Wednesday evening before a public holiday was unholy busy (I thought it would be safe with Thor being near the end of its run, but nuh-uh), and I have a well-defined bite-people response to crowds. It's also a godawful way to watch a movie - the theatre was filled with chatting, sweet-paper rustling, cellphone beeping, and lame laughter when Agent Coulson asked if Thor's training was in South Africa. It was also a fairly small cinema, which mitigated against the big-screen immersion experience I wanted quite apart from the crowd disruptions. It's a bad sign when you know perfectly well there's a Joss-directed Nick Fury easter egg after the credits, and you can't bear to stay in the cinema long enough to see it.

Still, while I couldn't quite give myself to the film in the way I think blockbuster popcorn fantasy, particularly superhero fantasy, requires, it was a lovely movie. A bit odd, to come out with the prevailing impression that Thor, and particularly Thor, was sweet. It's an extremely character-driven film; Thor himself is a sort of naive, simple jock character who's all about the buddy experience with Sif and the Warriors Three (and I do love a good ensemble superhero battle, possibly as a result of ineluctable D&D imprinting); his character arc and development are inevitable but rather endearing, and the moment of self-sacrifice surprisingly poignant and real.

I was impressed with Chris Hemsworth in the role - he's amazingly likeable, quite apart from being quite amazingly ripped. (The scene with him in jeans and no shirt produced a sort of gasping, self-fanning impression of "...shoulders... (faint)" which is nicely echoed by Jane Foster and which suggests the concept of "godlike physique" has been properly embodied). Hemsworth had a good chemistry going with Portman, it was a believable attraction, and rather pleasing to see female astrophysicists doing their maverick, dedicated thing. Fumbling, goofy, doomed, mortal/immortal geek/jock romances ftw. Also, hooray for Kenneth Branagh, and his beautifully British tendency to cast really good actors. Odin and Loki were also excellent, and I am absolutely behind the concept of Idris Elba as Heimdall.

I loved the film visually - Asgard itself, while occasionally overwhelmingly gilt, has some moments of true magic, and the flat, dramatic wastes of New Mexico are an interesting counterpoint. Also, all the flashy special effects bits with Thor and the hammer made my simple, pervy-superhero-fondling heart very, very happy. Plus, bonus deep space panoramas. The visual designers clearly have a love affair with the Hubble telescope, as do all right-thinking people. The heavy astrophysics/Einstein-Rosen bridge stuff is also surprisingly effective in grafting the whole unwieldy mythological Norse edifice onto a contemporary science-fictional setting. Really, Iron Man shouldn't exist in the same universe as Thor, but the film's lightness of touch, and general refusal to explain gods-as-aliens beyond a certain point, actually made it work.

So, yes. I liked this film. Another one for the DVD collection, which is less of a testament than it may sound as currently the DVD collection has acquired a Katamari-Damacy-like momentum and is attracting practically anything to its giant, accreting mass with little actual care for quality. This one, however, I'll watch again. Leaving aside my characteristically helpless "yay superheroes!" response, I like these people.

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(1) I gloss the subject line because it's going to be absolutely incomprehensible otherwise. My late father used to recite the little piece of doggerel it came from quite often, in an absolutely characteristic index to his sense of humour. The rest of it goes: Thor the thunder god rode out,/mounted upon a filly,/"I'm Thor!" he cried./The horse replied... &etc.

Is it weird that the scenes of Gandalf digging through piles of parchment looking for One Ring info in the LotR movie made me want to be a librarian in Minas Tirith? Because, dear sweet cosmic wossnames do they need one. The dweeb they dug up to talk about athelas in the books is clearly incompetent. I have added to my List of Soothing Mental Exercises For Use In Insomnia the construction of a happy alternate identity becoming Gondor's primary knowledge specialist, and ruling all those piles of parchment with an Inkstained Iron Fist. There may be pauses for hitting very hard on Faramir. (Other Soothing Mental Exercises For Use In Insomnia: Designing Sybil Trelawney's Divination Classes, and Which X-Men Ability Would I Have? [Flying, for a start. A lot of my Superman fixation is about the flight. Which is another reason why Smallville is irking me, but hey, Clark still cute, in that stunned-puppy sort of way]).

This entirely inconsequential post possibly brought to you courtesy of devouring the entire Questionable Content archive since Friday, something that seems to be making me even more vague and lateral than usual. Also, I have a new skirt featuring deep red cherries on a black background. The Dean likes it.

I think I need more tea. I think the five-day weekend I have starting tomorrow, courtesy of a sneaky use of leave time adjacent to a long weekend, is arriving not a moment too soon.

Anyone for Fiasco! this weekend?

Tron Legacy, /trɒn/ /ˈlɛgəsi/,-n. An entirely predictable entry in the lexicon of pointless sequels. An absurd farrago of occasionally stylish visuals lacking all script coherence. A clichéd mess. A locus of wooden acting and uncanny valley. Loud.

On the upside, it was at least an air-conditioned theatre, and I rather liked the music. But it's a bit sad: the original Tron, while now wildly dated and itself no miracle of the scriptwriter's art, was at least interesting and groundbreaking and had something vaguely resembling an idea in its head. This didn't, other than the obvious one of "let's make lots of money."

Great, now I have the Pet Shop Boys on my brain. Sigh. I'm going to bed. Possibly in the bath. Filled with cold water. Cape Town continues hot, by which I mean aaargh.

Movie club last night, this theme mine, and it finally settled out at "Movies about dance under extreme weather conditions": Singing in the Rain and White Nights. Secondary theme: conceptual whiplash. Also, Really Good Seared Rare Beef Fillet On Rolls, which seems to be establishing itself as another recurring motif in these evenings.

I'd forgotten how much fun Singing in the Rain is; how much of it is slapstick (mostly courtesy of Donald O'Connor, who suffers from an intriguing combination of hyperactivity and a rubber face), and how incredibly, incurably self-aware and ironic the whole thing is - about musicals, about film-making, about acting. It's not so much a musical as a commentary on musicals, which I think accounts for some of the more over-the top elements - the hamming, the goofiness, the extended, excessive musical numbers wedged into the plot at the drop of a hat belonging to the faint shadow of an excuse. It also made me realise that I've been spoiled by Fred Astaire, who is an accomplished dancer to an extent which makes Gene Kelly look rather sloppy. But it was a hugely fun watch, and sent all three of us wandering around thereafter singing "Singing in the Rain" joyously and largely unconsciously. I'm still doing it.

White Nights is an altogether different kettle of fish, assuming they're depressive Russian fish with dancers' muscles and half-assed political pretensions. It's a truly weird movie which I cannot actually say is "good" on any meaningful level, but which has managed to haunt me all day with its images, sequences and oppressive atmosphere. I wanted to re-watch it because the only thing I remember about it from my schooldays (I think I may have seen in the theatre with my mother when it came out, which was, whoa, 1985) was that incredible, blissful, unbelievable sequence with Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov doing a sort of modern dance/ballet/tap fusion in perfect step despite completely different body styles, in an empty practice hall, for no other reason than the hell of it. To me this is what dance is about - mutuality, synchronisation, the sheer pleasure of moving in harmony. It's the stylised and publicly acceptable embodiment of good sex. This film is scripted in giant, half-formed clichés; it has "Russian Communism Bad!" written all over it in letters of fire; its actually very good cast struggles against chronically poor pacing and the uneasy mixing of dramatic tropes with those of a spy thriller and a dance movie - but its dance sequences are pure joy. Neither Hines nor Baryshnikov are any good at all as actors when you give them actual words to say, but they communicate incredibly powerfully when all they have to do is move. Also, bonus points for the most deliriously decontextualised performance of Porgy and Bess I have ever seen.

I think White Nights may have weirded jo&stv out far more than the classic musical I was afraid they'd hate, but I'm very glad I saw both films again. Now I'm going to go home and load up that dance sequence, just because I can. In fact, here it is now. I love the discipline here, the mutuality, despite the fact that the body language is poles apart - Hines all loose-limbed and floppy, Baryshnikov perfectly controlled, but with the unbelievably evocative power which only a top-flight, classically trained dancer can impart to steps which are, technically speaking, slumming it.



And then I'm going to watch my entire Fred Astaire collection. While regretting, with every fibre of my being, that I stopped taking ballroom dance classes, because people flying with their feet on the ground is beautiful to watch, but it's better if you can do it yourself.

Latest movie club last night, Jo's theme, that being "unsuccessful superheroes" (and, I have to say, supper consisting of superlatively good rolls with rare fillet steak and salad, on the Whole Earth Market principle, and tiramisu, because I felt like making it). We watched Mystery Men and Kick-Ass, which was an extremely interesting experience despite the fact that neither are great movies. Both are highly uneven in tone and effect; both have glorious moments of humour, commentary or heart, and inglorious moments of slapstick, camp, gross-out, or predictable, glossy Hollywood stupidity. They make me realise how much of a steel-boned electric eel the superhero mythos is; how it twists and turns in the film-maker's grasp, and frequently turns to sink its six-inch teeth into the unsuspecting camera's eye.

Mystery Men is actually bearable for a Ben Stiller movie, which from me is something akin to high praise. It has dated rather; I suspect some of its inversions and assaults on heroism would have been fresh at the time, when they seem old hat now. (I can certainly see its influence on Doctor Horrible). It is blessed with a mostly highly accomplished cast who seem to be enjoying themselves to an almost indecent extent, and production values which appear to have consisted of giving the art director a very large budget and a very large supply of very good drugs, and then locking them in a room full of B-movies. I loved the look of it, although it also made me realise that Western civilisation needs to feel very, very embarrassed about disco. And if nothing else, it won my heart by the delirious rightness of a supervillain called Casanova Frankenstein. (Geoffrey Rush, as usual leaving no scenery unchewed).

Kick-Ass is something else entirely; I can now see why there was so much of a furore over it when it came out, although, true to hypocritical type, Western civilisation needs to feel very, very embarrassed about the fact that it got its knickers in a twist about an 11-year-old girl saying "Fuck" a lot when it should really have been chilled to the marrow by the 11-year-old girl merrily and bloodily dismembering people with a dirty great sword. I'm a bit saddened by the way in which this film missed being a very bleak, black, vicious commentary on the nature of violence and moral polarity (what Tarantino could be if he wasn't a dick), copping out instead to a feelgood Hollywood ending which removed most of the teeth from the issues. I am, however, pleased to see that Nic Cage managed to sneak away from Nic Cage's Hair for the duration of the film, and deliver a performance bizarrely able to exist in the same sentence as words such as "nuance" and "restraint". Chloe Moretz was brilliant. Chloe Moretz is always brilliant. We are watching Miss Moretz's career with considerable interest.

To tell stories of superheroes is to grapple with the nature of agency, of individual responsibility, of violence, and no more so than when you attempt to do it ironically. Ironic superheroes lose the glossy, effortless ease of the heroic intervention, and thus deconstruct their own assumptions; they blow apart comic-book innocence to deal, inescapably, with the fact that at base all superheroes are crazed vigilante serial killers. Superhero conflicts dramatise the fact of our own human nature, which is unpleasant. The classic superhero defeats human evil, but it's not so simple when the gaze is ironic. Mystery Men turns that moral spotlight inward to the superheroes, Kick Ass turns it outward to the world, but under both spotlights we have to confront that people are either weaklings or bastards, the world is fucked and needs fixing. The black/white simplicity of the superhero dissolves under the postmodern gaze, and quite right too.

Mystery Men's play with violence is mostly to undercut it playfully (I rather fell for the concept of a "non-lethal tank"), but occasionally to redirect it senselessly - the fate of Captain Amazing was horrible and perfect (and Greg Kinnear is great. Why haven't I run across him before?). Kick-Ass is more interesting: the way in which wrong and right, good and evil, shifted between the characters and the hero/villain axes, was endlessly fascinating. Big Daddy is mild-mannered and says "Darn it!" where his daughter is cheerfully psychotic and says "Fuck", but he's the one who's perverted a child into a killer. The bad guys are murderously amoral druglords except when they're transfixed in front of the Youtube version of superhero violence, in which case they're ordinary guys uncomprehending before the bloodily psychotic. The usual ramifications of identity and masking in the superhero tropes here multiply endlessly out into the world at large: it's no accident that the dweebish central character is playing the Gay Best Friend ploy, it neatly shadows the inherent conflict at the heart of the idea that the immoral becomes moral when you're hiding behind a costume, or a mask, or a label.

Neither film, ultimately, worked particularly well. Mystery Men should have come with a warning label "CONTAINS EXCESSIVE CAMP" on the box; its self-consciously ridiculous extremes too often overcome its heart and humanity. Kick-Ass has the potential to be a genuinely dark and disturbing meditation on violence, our desensitisation to it, and our willingness to accept it under the guise of mythology; it cops out, however, losing conviction and courage to deliver, instead of the warped moral lesson of an eleven-year-old serial killer, a feel-good Hollywood ending. It's a sadly lost opportunity, although I have to admit that any version of the film which remained true to its potential would have been almost unwatchably dark and twisted.

I personally prefer my superheroes unironic; I'd rather be charmed by illusions of agency than horrified by the realities of violence. But these were interesting films, and however flawed, have at least achieved something in that they've made me momentarily ashamed of my investment in the myth.

Phooey. Unspecified bastards leaped over the garden wall this afternoon and kicked down the side door into the garage. This did them no good at all, as the alarm promptly went off, and they seem to have departed without actually taking anything. Annoying for us as well as them. I must say, though, it's curiously comforting to arrive home to an unexpectedly kicked-down door, to find the armed response company already reassuringly in possession. Wandering through a potentially devastated house is much less unpleasant when there's a nice, large dude with a gun taking point. For some reason, however, this is making me want to re-watch all my Vin Diesel movies. I may be incurably frivolous. It'll also have to wait until I've finished randomly watching Lord of the Rings, which is reassuringly full of nice, large dudes with swords.

I was off work yesterday with the gastric bug which seems to be doing the rounds, and am consequently disclaiming all responsibility for the more than unusually wayward nature of this post. Not eating much for thirty-six hours is making me rather light-headed. This is, however, possibly why, despite the assaults of South African crime and the lining of my own stomach, I'm in a vaguely up space. I shall now go and hit d_hofryn for all the latest in Castle, Fringe, Supernatural and Vampire Diaries, and then shall callously ignore it in order to vaguely perve Arwen, Aragorn and, for some reason, Boromir. I really like Boromir. I think it's the way he says "They have a cave troll."

Marking ate my weekend. OK, not quite. Marking and trying to write moving, eloquent, sophisticated papers on vampire Snow Whites ate my weekend. Om, nom, nom. In fact, not even. Actually, socialising ate my weekend, so I had to cram all the marking and paper-writing into the edges, where it worried the legs of my trousers, snarling. This three-career lifestyle isn't all that, when you get down to it.

friendly_shrink and her Nice Man braaied for us on Friday lunch, it being, of course, Braai Day; for some reason large and delectable meals for lunch - or possibly the gin - knocks out the day totally. Then we did movie club on Friday evening, of which more anon. Saturday was mostly eaten by traffic, as first_fallen had her birthday lunch in Hermanus on top of the whale festival, which, while a pleasant occasion full of lovely people I don't see often enough, means two hours to get from one side of Hermanus (Pop. 25 125) to the other, falling over the one horse on the way. Sunday was eaten by resentment, in between marking and paper-writing, because what I really need weekends for is down time, and I didn't get any. Phooey.

Movie club was stv's choice, and the theme was apocalypse. Post-apocalypses. Post-apocalypi? (Very heavy: my next one is going to be dance movies, just to retaliate). Anyway, we watched The Book of Eli and 9, which were definitely both on theme.

• Book of Eli: interesting film, beautifully shot, lots of desert and bad guys with guns. It was flawed by its attempt at a twist, which it absolutely and completely failed in any way whatsoever to justify with the actual, you know, events of the movie. Phooey. On the upside, rather well acted.
  
• 9: interesting film, beautifully animated, lots of ruined buildings and giant evil steampunk machine things with glowing eyes. It was flawed by its attempt at a script, which it absolutely and completely failed to deliver in any way resulting in plot coherence, logical decision making, or anything resembling, you know, enough actual characterisation to create motivation or a reason to identify with these little rag-doll people. On the upside, very cute twin archivists.

I'm glad I saw both movies. I won't be adding them to my collection. But there was popcorn. And a three-day weekend, which was mostly characterised by being over. Sigh.

Quite apart from my unrepentant love of cheesy fantasy B-movies, there are really only three reasons for me to trundle off and watch The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which I did this morning in the slightly hysterical company of jo&stv and the Evil Landlord. They are:

1. Early imprinting on Dungeons and Dragons, which means I'll pretty much watch anything with wizard battles in it, as long as it isn't an asinine adaptation of a beloved text (hence no Last Airbender or Dark is Rising for me);
   
2. Extremely low expectations of the film giving rise to high expectations of frequent opportunities for righteous mockery;
   
3. A certain curiosity as to the probable performance levels of Nic Cage's Hair.

Nic Cage's Hair in the event offered an uncharacteristically subdued performance in this film, suggesting that its scenery-chewing career is under revision, possibly in search of slightly more Oscar-baiting roles¹. It also didn't help to have it partially extinguished under That Horrible Hat for large portions of the film, and the Hair is almost certainly speaking sternly to its agent on that front:



However, in categories (1) and (2) the movie certainly delivered: while the cheesy wizard battles were flashy and entertaining, as befitting any film bearing Jerry Bruckheimer's name, the movie was most fun in its cheerful participation in the inevitable mockery. The really quite horrible and clunky dialogue, along with the absolute predictability of the plot, was resurrected at any moment when it might become unbearably wince-worthy by deliberate undercutting, ironic tongue-in-cheekness, and happy geeky undermining of heroic stereotypes. (And what's with that? geeks are so the underdog cliché of the moment. Bring me Scott Pilgrim, stat, it's time it was done intelligently.)

The cast are serviceable rather than inspired, and while Nic Cage is really turning into a truly terrible actor incapable of giving any degree of realism to his lines, there were some small portions of scenery left mostly ungnawed. It's okay: Alfred Molina and the Hair got to most of them later. The best performance was from the special effects, and bonus points for dragons and mirrors and Tesla coils, oh my, as well as a rather creepy disembodied Morgan Le Fay. Also, this being a Bruckheimer, car chases, foot chases, paper chases, Chinese New Year dragon chases, fire, floods, giant flapping gargoyle thingies, rather sexy animated bull statues (not a spoiler, you completely see that coming the moment you see the statue), and the shorting out of the complete New York metropolitan area in the service of saving the world. Extra bonus points for wolf puppies, the Depeche Mode crack, and for tuning your Tesla coils to the girl's musical preferences as a dating strategy. Geeks rule.

We had a blast. I can't recommend that you go and see this movie, because the trick to enjoying it is to go in knowing full well it'll be absolutely terrible. This is not a recommendation. But it's an unpretentiously terrible film: you need to relax and let it do its schtick, something that's fast becoming a skill necessary to surviving Hollywood blockbuster dreck. It worked for Prince of Persia too. Next week we're watching The A-Team. News at 11.

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¹ The in-car conversation on the way to the movie entailed an increasingly wild set of speculations on the complex private life of Nic Cage's Hair: its dedicated personal assistant, its demands for star billing separately from Nic Cage, its tendency to leave hair on the furniture and piddle on the rug, its battles with the mullet typecasting, leading to an addiction to seedy night-life, the bottle and cheap women, with concomitant drunken ravings when Nic and its agent arrive yet again to drag it home from a booze dive at 3am. Get stv to do the drunken ravings for you sometime. Also, I shall never forgive Jo for her image of Nic Cage's Hair going down on a floozy. Must bleach brain now, repeatedly. So must you. And it won't be enough.

Today was my first seminar meeting, one of the Victorian literature ones I used to teach, which I've resurrected by way of keeping me sane. Just before I headed off to the venue I realised that the pile of class handouts I'd carefully had copied last week each had an extra page. This turned out to be because I'd accidentally included a faculty agenda in the pile of masters when I took it to the copiers, and no-one actually looked at it during the copying process to realise that the one page was an error. I looked for that agenda everywhere, too. 25 extra, useless copies. This sad little tale tells you absolutely everything you need to know about the dual or triple professional existence I try to lead at the moment, its inherent antagonisms and its occasionally heart-stopping failures. (It could easily have been a deeply confidential document, and I might easily not have noticed until I'd handed it out to the class). We won't get onto the unhappy need to activate Paper-Writing Brain in the presence of Curriculum Advice Lack Of Brain. It's just sad. No-one wins.

On the upside, talking about having your mind thoroughly bent, we saw Inception yesterday. Oo, er. And possibly Cor! or Lawks! Damned good film: intelligently scripted, conceptually interesting, beautifully cast. I am a complete and total sucker for anything about dreams, given not only my own frenetic dream life but my literary adherence to Lewis Carroll, Lord Dunsany et al, but this is particularly well done. The basic heist-movie framework, and the teamwork that entails, provides a solid frame for all the weird dreamy stuff, which is in the event convincing and pleasingly unreal. I could have done with less of the noisy masonry collapses, but I suppose everyone's version of dream-dissolution differs. I also loved the not-quite-openendedness of the last image. Clever. I may need to rewatch it to work out the finer details of the various kicks, but this is no hardship at all. Cool film. Great cast. Recommended.

I am coming to Scotland in August! To give a conference paper on Neil Gaiman and Tanith Lee and weird inverted vampire Snow Whites, which I have still to write, but pshaw, details! This is all being paid for by the faculty, who are thus currently high on my list of Favourite People, at least until they dream up another set of horrible jobs for me. But the important thing is, I'm coming through Heathrow and have booked my tickets to stay two nights in London before heading Up North. I'll arrive on the morning of the 9th August, and leave for Glasgow on the morning of the 11th. Far-flung exiled London crowd, who's around then? Can we Gather in a Pub or adequate substitute in the usual ritual fashion? There are too many of you I don't see often enough, or at all (bumpycat, I'm looking at you here!). Also, I've had offers of accommodation from starmadeshadow and Scroob - whose doorstep will it be most convenient for me to turn up on? do you want to arm-wrestle for it?

Gosh, I'm all excited about this. *fans self*.

I am on leave today and tomorrow, allowing the lingering vestiges of glandular wossname to exit my system by means of determined lounging about. Despite this I have managed to re-watch Iron Man 2 (still grin-inducing second time round), have the car serviced (clutch much smoother! it's like magic, I can take off without ripping involuntary wheelies), and read an awful lot of hot cyber elf-sex (Justina Robson, who is kinda fun and not nearly as schlocky as it sounds, and who I shall probably review in detail sometime). And, of course, entirely ignore the World Cup (other than about 10 mins of amazing Bafana butterfootedness in between episodes last night) in favour of watching large amounts of STNG while knitting, which means I'm onto the stripy bit of this scarf, which is kinda cool.

And which leads me to the next vital question. Do they let you take rosewood knitting needles on planes these days?? Because it's SAA, and the inflight movies are non-personalised and always unbelievably bad, and I have to do something to prevent myself from losing it completely and feasting on the flesh of the living somewhere over Tamanrasset. Last time it was Rush Hour 2 and an earnest, syrupy, American rugby film which I followed with involuntary horror and perfect comprehension despite refusing to wear the headphones. Honestly, we should get danger pay.