Too Fond of Books

I've been thinking about "It Follows" ever since I saw it, mostly in two ways: 1), what the hell was up with that ending, and that plot twist, and that plot element, etc. and, 2) intellectually, I know this is impossible, but I don't want to turn off the lights because what if it is there?! I've seen horror movies before that lingered for a few days, but this one shows no signs of letting up and it's a rare movie that can scare me for this long. It's also a beautiful movie, another reason that it's sticking around in my brain, with its empty houses and landscapes, the whole thing feels like an exploration of a hollow shell. This film also reminds me of a particularly fiendish RPG that a player came into knowing only the most basic of rules, and upon leaving, said player knows very little more than what they started with, only that there was... this thing and there were rules and consequences, and there was an unrelenting sense of dread from start to finish. Seriously, there is only one jump cut in the whole movie (and it's reasonably warranted by the setting the characters are in at the time) and the rest is this perfectly timed to build tension and inevitability. So I want to recommend this movie to all and sundry. There is minimal gore if that turns you off, but the threat is not minimized because of this; there is character development of both obvious and subtle varieties; and there's a lovely sense of timelessness and universality that, again, a lot of movies (horror or not) want to capture but fail.

So, go. See it. Not alone.

My subtitle for the last installment in this franchise was, "The Hobbit: Everything's Coming Up Arrows!" and after careful reflection, I came up with a few more for this final chapter:

The Hobbit: Everyone Has an Ironic Steed!
The Hobbit: Women and Children First!
The Hobbit: Orcs are the WORST. (Also up for consideration: the title above, and Orcs are the jerkiest jerks ever.)
The Hobbit: Wait 'till HR hears about this!
The Hobbit: No, seriously, let's catch the express bus to Gundebad, we can hitch a ride back afterwards.
The Hobbit: Not without my mommy-/daddy-issues! (Close second: Family is sooooo embarrassing.)

I don't mean any of these in a mean-spirited way; I really did enjoy the film, and there are so many beautiful elements in it that I'm willing to ignore a lot of weirdo plot contrivances (most notably that the map of Middle Earth that I thought I had pretty clearly in mind was *completely* wrong.)

( Spoilers, I suppose... )

In summary: Lots of fun all around. I've read some pretty negative reviews of this film, and I'm not sure what the reviewers went into the film wanting. It's called "The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies," not "The Hobbit: Peter Jackson sat down and asked YOU what you wanted out of a Hobbit movie," for gosh-sakes. There are five armies, there is a mountain of cursed dragon gold, and there are more than a few heroes. What did everyone expect, Citizen Hobbit? The Maltese Dragon? I don't know. Anyway, I thought it was fun and diverting, and that's exactly what I wanted when I went in, so that was perfect.

A lot has been written on Gone Girl, both book and movie, lately and I've been impressed at the topics of discussion that have come up because of it, mostly because they are things that people do not like to talk about: the failure of marriage, as an institution, to provide for all parties involved in a way that compensates for all the sacrifices they make and the identities that people assume to cope with that failure. When I watched the movie with a single friend of mine, I turned to her at the end and joked, "So, hey, feel like getting married now?" and she laughed but then vehemently replied, "No way." Actually, the audience at the showing I saw was pretty worked up throughout the whole thing, and I think there were a lot of people around us thinking much the same thing. Marriage isn't usually a villain in any equation, and seeing it act like that here is at turns awkward (Amy's diary monologues about wives who control their husbands like Dancing Monkeys) and outright disturbing (Nick's sheer cluelessness about what his wife does with her time; Amy's multiple, casual re-fabrications about her life.) People around us laughed at some points, but it was an uneasy, restless laughter that left a sad tinge to the credits.

The other thing that really impressed me about the film was the number of facades that the movie presented us with: Amy and Nick's house is a blank, bland slate, colored in beige and wimpy green (not actually verdant, just the pale cousin of bright, lifelike green); Nick's bar is as generic as it gets (almost down to the level of grit on the windows, which I got the feeling the set decorators measured to be absolutely, disgustingly perfect); and all of the landscapes in the movie are either empty (the vast fields that Nick and the army of volunteers comb through, or the vague blankness of the cabin in the Ozarks where a pivotal mistake is made) or prefab and fake (Nick's office has no decorations, only a computer and a desk, cementing his status as "fake professor.") I kept expecting the characters to go around to a back of a building, only to discover that it was just a false front on a Hollywood backlot. It's a shell of a movie--a beautiful, exquisitely constructed shell that's hollow on the inside, just waiting for one of the characters to come back and truly inhabit it.

All this said, it's not a "fun" film, or a simple narrative. The book is easy to read--Flynn's sharp-witted prose just slides by like nothing else is happening and as a "need to know what happens next" type of book, it shines. The film is like that, too, relying on an excellent script from Flynn and reasonably quick pacing. But neither of them is a settling experience, and both of them made me feel like I'd watched someone else's homemade, creepy porn by accident. I'm still trying to brain bleach out a few of the images and sentiments. They're both worthwhile pieces of work, but not for the faint of heart, or those who want black-and-white endings.

At the movies:

The Wind Rises/Kaze Tachinu: A beautiful and effective movie, and well worth seeing on the big screen, especially if you have any interest in aircraft, imagination and the creative process, or Japanese history. I could wax rhapsodic on so much in this lovely film, but the most important highlights include:

1) This is an unconventional biopic, in that there is no clearly defined villain for the hero to defeat, but a series of specific engineering and historical obstacles that influence his designs and decisions. What emerges instead of an A-to-B-to-C-to-ending plotline is a portrait of a man's soul, and a careful exploration of the question, "what if something you create is used for destruction?"

2) The backgrounds, especially of the protagonist's home and Tokyo in its early days, are simple beautiful and, like so many Ghibli films, lovingly depicted in a spectacular amount of detail. I cannot wait to watch this again on DVD to see all the little things that I missed this first time around.

3) I never thought that I would ever be interested in aircraft design (especially for war) in anything other than an academic way. To my great surprise, this film convinced me entirely otherwise.

4) The dream sequences in this are the best part. I would give almost anything for the lucid experience the movie portrays, and for the elegant, relaxed depiction of beautiful and terrible things.

In sum: see it in theaters if you can. It's not appropriate for very young children, and even older children may find it a bit dull. (There is intense, extended dialogue about rivets, wing design, fuel line placement, and tuberculosis.) The English dub turned out to be very nicely done, but I'm eager to hear it in Japanese, too.

Veronica Mars: I enjoyed this very much, but it felt more like a pilot episode of a new series instead of a feature film--which, don't get me wrong, would have made my day. If the credits had started to roll, only to be replaced with the words, "Veronica Mars makes her return to TV in 2015," I would have been on my feet cheering, because this film gave us a lot of interesting plot points that could easily extend into a season-long plot arc. In Veronica's absence, Neptune has gotten better and worse, and all the characters have grown and changed in (mostly) interesting ways. I did love seeing Veronica getting back into her girl detective mode with very little difficulty, and I like thinking about the ways the plot could go. (Wallace and Mac's new jobs alone could provide enough plotlines to keep a season humming along nicely, too.) It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I saw it in the theaters.

In books:

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs: I've been thinking about this book on and off ever since I've read it, and not in entirely good terms. It reminds me of the days when I would binge-read a long, completed fanfic and only later think, "Wait, what the hell did I just read?!" (Cassandra Clare's "Draco Dormiens" series springs immediately to mind in this category.) Like a really good fanfic, this book had its strong points: eerie vintage photos accompany the narrative and help set an overall creepy tone that mostly holds up pretty well; the pacing is fast and furious and the stakes appropriately high. But also like fanfic, there are too many points in this story that felt overly contrived or rushed, and in this case, I couldn't shake the feeling that someone had made a set of specific suggestions for Riggs to follow and instead of holding true to this vision, he cleaved too truly to the suggestions, for better or for worse. This book is already in development for a movie (Tim Burton is currently attached as a director) and the franchise opportunities must be sending up dollar signs for the studio and publisher. I only hope that future installments allow Riggs to reclaim his own vision and develop the characters more completely and in a less, well, fanfic-y way.

In graphic novels:

Blue is the Warmest Color, by Julie Maroh: The artwork in this is simply gorgeous. There's so much depth and emotion wrapped up in all the shades of grey, and when the color blue does appear, it's startling and effective. (I think the story lost a bit of momentum when full color was introduced about two thirds of the way through.) The plot I didn't love quite as much; it read like an opera, a little like La Boheme updated for a gay coming of age story set in France in the 1990s, complete with a tragic ending and tragic-comic middle. But there's an undeniable pull to the story, even though it's familiar and sad, and I like the framing device of one of the characters reading the other's diary to recount the events of the story. It's also explicitly erotic and honest about the main characters' desire for another. I really hope this book makes its way onto required reading lists at colleges around the country, and not just as an object of controversy.

In Comics:

Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon & Hawkeye: Little Hits: I liked both of these slim trades. The artwork is nicely stylized and punchy, and it seems authentic to its many subjects. Hawkeye as a character becomes more and more well-rounded, although I will confess that some of the other characters (especially the multiple ladies vying for his attention) tended to blur together. But the stakes are high and righteous, and the villains appropriately scary/ruthless/cruel to make the stories have real teeth. My favorite installment of the both volumes shows up at the end of #2, where the story is told entirely from Hawkeye's dog's point of view. This might sound like a cutesy gimmick, but it defies all expectations and leaves almost all the other previous stories gasping in its innovative and touching dust.

At the Movies:

The Monuments Men: OK. So, the internet joke is that when you bring up the Nazi's to win an argument, you automatically lose (or so says Godwin's law.) In the case of this movie... well, I can think of no better way to say this: The Monuments Men Godwins itself. I blame this bizarre phenomenon on the fact that the script relied heavily on telling and not showing, the story often undercut its own suspense, and the characters, although sometimes engaging, were mostly a collection of cyphers and stereotypes. ( More, with spoilers... )

tl;dr version: It's not the worst movie ever, but I think you'd be better off saving your admission costs and buying the book instead.

The LEGO Movie: Everything is awesome! Ha ha, no, not exactly, but as kids' movies go, this was funny and clever, and you could really do a lot worse. Generic Lego Construction Guy Emmett lives his life according to every instruction manual possible, but, through a bizarre series of coincidences, comes to realize this way of living is shallow and meaningless, and it's up to him to be the hero of his own narrative. I liked this story for its overall message that sometimes the best thing you can do with toys is play with them, and that there's no right or wrong way to do this, as long as you're being creative and true to yourself. There's also a certain shade of "Generation Me" to this movie that grated, and I will say that I was disappointed that the female characters didn't have more to do. (Wonder Woman, in particular, was chumped out several times. I suppose that Superman got equal treatment in this respect as he was annoyed by Green Lantern, but it didn't seem comparable.) But I like any movie with a slightly anarchist take on childhood, and the Aristophanes shout-out sealed the deal. It's a lot of fun, and the opening sequence reminds me of the best Japanese music videos that I watched on Space Shower TV years ago, super kawaii and genki, and hard to resist.

In books:

Thanks to Goodreads' list-making capabilities, I have a record of the 57 books I read during 2013. Of those 57, I didn't finish 3, for reasons related to lack of time, boredom, or disgust. Out of the remaining 54, 4 were non-fiction (which I'm proud of, since I'm always trying to read more non-fiction; left to my own devices, I know I'd be stuck in an endless loop of shoujo manga and urban fantasy that wouldn't really teach me anything new about the writing process or the world at large.) 14 were graphic novels or manga, the best of which was Saga. I'm eagerly awaiting the third trade paperback of this excellent series!

In general, I've stayed away from reading that was excessively dark this year, mainly because I just didn't have the mental energy to deal with sadder subject matter. In this spirit, I'm currently reading I Am Malala and Tiny Fey's Bossypants at the same time--I read Malala's book until I get too sad, and then I switch over to Fey's as a counterpoint. It's a slightly disjointed reading experience, but it's better for my soul. (It does help knowing that Malala's book has a reasonably happy ending, too.)

I'm not sure how many books I'll challenge myself to read in this coming year, but I certainly hope to beat my record this year.

At the movies:

Somehow, I've managed to see quite a few movies this year, which is a miracle of sorts. I still haven't seen American Hustle, but it seems as though that will definitely linger in theaters for a few more weeks, so I still have time. I saw a lot of movies this year on Netflix that were pretty good, and I also managed to see a lot of things in theaters. My favorites are "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" and "Frozen." (I kept imagining these two as a sort of messed up double feature, in that order. They're both about familial relationships, and the mental traps that we set for ourselves and each other.)

There aren't any movie properties in 2014 that I'm chomping at the bit to see (at least, not that I'm aware of) but I'm sure there'll be some great things anyway, regardless. :)

( Like the tin says: spoilers! )

In non-spoilery bits:

* Did anyone see it in 3D? I think there were a few sequences that might have been made more exciting with that, but I'd love to hear what you thought of it.

* How does everyone pronounce Smaug? My Dad, when reading it aloud to me, always pronounced it as "Smog," but all the actors had a thing with "SmOWgh" going on. Other than my Dad ironically referencing the annoying pollution problem, was he totally off the mark? :S

* We shelled out for Arclight again (*sighs*), at a 21-and-over showing. I still think movie chains that encourage alcohol consumption are missing out on potential merchandising profit by not offering drinks that are relevant to the movies being shown. For example, I would have bought mead at a Hobbit showing, or I would buy a martini at a James Bond showing, etc. etc. But it was the same old liquor, and overpriced at that.

* In the trailer park: Christopher Nolan's new project is inscrutable, other than using stock historical footage; "Edge of Tomorrow"/"All You Need is Kill" is either going to rock or suck, but it's still hard to tell which; and "Jupiter Ascending" looks like the Wachowskis are attempting something completely ambitious, visually speaking.

In Movies:

Gravity: Yes, the soundtrack is overbearing, but WOW this is a movie about a woman, and it is often tense and frightening, and I was impressed at how often the filmmakers made the audience sympathize with a female character--heavens! It's so simple that it's revolutionary! And the shots of space were just lovely. All in all, I'm really glad I saw this on the big screen, and in 3D... for the first time in, well, ever, the extra money seemed really worth it for a "you are there" experience that I don't feel like I've ever had before. I also think Ryan Stone is a character who needs to be up there next to Ripley in terms of putting up with so much crap from one story.

In Comics:

Saga, Volumes 1 & 2, Words by Brian K. Vaughan and pictures by Fiona Staples: I've been meaning to blog about this for a while now, but I'm loving this work, which is like Perdido Street Station twisted into the Star Wars universe. It's relentlessly imaginative and violent, and I'm a little surprised at myself for liking it so much. Staples' artwork has a lot to do with that--all the characters have unique and interesting faces, even when they're covered in blood or contorted in suspicion. So amazing.

Empowered Special: Nine Beers with Ninjette, Words by Adam Warren, with pictures by Adam Warren and Takeshi Miyazawa: To be fair, I was already on this bandwagon, but DAYUM this one-shot really ups the pathos! It's so persuasively sad throughout that I wondered if Warren made himself cry at any point during the process. It's also a really good counterpoint to the normal series, which is usually quite irreverent fun. Miyazawa's artwork is a nice plus, too.

In Manga:

Gate 7, Volume 4, with pretty pictures and random words by CLAMP: I'm a little amazed at myself for jumping on his bandwagon at all, because I thought I was pretty much done with this whole series, but then I picked up Volume 4 and it did not disappoint as much as I thought it would. My original quibbles are still there (Chikahito does not behave like ANY teenaged boy I have ever met, the meta-conflict is confusing, Hana is still weirdly sexualized, etc.) but for once, this volume's story works fairly well, and even though there are some familiar CLAMP tropes here (adorable child secretly planning to torture everyone, for example), they seem reasonably new and interesting in this story. As usual, the artwork is a thing of beauty, particularly the attention given to a spirit tiger that aligns itself with the main characters. Hana's magic is still gorgeously rendered, too. It's so hard to stay mad at CLAMP!

Somehow I've made it to lots of movies in the past few months and not blogged about them! To whit:

Man of Steel: This is one of the most beautiful movie soundtracks I've heard in a long time; it sounded hopeful, which is a quality a lot of music aspires to, but very little actually achieves. The main theme was gorgeous and subtle, and I liked the way it slipped around the edges of scenes and moments. The rest of the movie... well, subtle and gorgeous aren't words I'd use to describe it, but it wasn't terrible or terrific. It just was. I liked seeing smart!Lois Lane, and I loved the scary female villain, Faora, and there were several very good examples of showing and not telling, most notably the first truly heroic act Clark attempts as an adult. (If running onto a burning oil rig to rescue its trapped workers isn't super-heroic, then I don't know what is.) But the whole of the film felt rather flat and contrived. It didn't help that General Zod looked a lot like Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute on the "The Office" (I kept expecting Zod to try and sell paper products or beets to the bewildered people of Metropolis) and seems to have attended the acting school of "Come on, skull, pop out of my skin!" Maybe bargain matinee-worthy if you've not seen it and/or are invested in the Superman mythos?

Much Ado About Nothing: As counterpoint to all the bombast of Man of Steel, this movie is all fizzy and spritely fun until it's suddenly not, which I think is more Shakespeare's original's fault than anything Whedon or his cast did wrong. I'm convinced that Amy Acker was born to play Beatrice; she embodied the role in every good way, and I was so happy to see her showing off her marvelous range and dramatic gifts all over the place. It's a strange little story--contrived drama! star-crossed lovers! dumb assumptions about foolish things!, but I knew that going in, based on the title alone. :)

The Heat: It's not Bridesmaids, but it's respectably hilarious and actually has quite a bit of tension and pathos at its core. I think Paul Feig is trying to sneakily jumpstart a national dialogue about terribly lonely people and how they live their lives (or don't), and the majority of the pathos lay in both of the main characters tackling that solitude they'd built around themselves, or that other people had built around them. It was actually a little touching to see genuine feelings and personal growth in the midst of violence and profanity. Definitely get out and see this if you have the chance; it would be nice if this made a nice little profit and showed the studio, oh, hey, lots of people would like to see more movies with cool ladies in them! Surprise! Sarcasm!

Fast and Furious 6: This was surprisingly excellent in many ways, and its diverse cast and largely gender-balanced script put so many other movies to shame that... well, I'm going to say this, even as I disbelieve I'm espousing the statement as a whole, but: HOLLYWOOD COULD LEARN A LOT FROM THIS MOVIE AND ITS SUCCESS. Ahem. I didn't think this was a waste of time at all, not by a long shot, and Yebisu and I have been having a very entertaining time ever since catching up on the ones in the middle of the franchise that we missed (which, so far, haven't been as good #6.) I did tire of the macho slugfest towards the end, but that's how I feel with a lot of guy movies, so... still, as a whole, it was awesome, fun, and entirely stupidly entertaining. (Also: Han/Giselle = OTP forever!)

In the trailer park department, other than the Hobbit, Part 2 trailer, I think I've not seen anything that I've been super-excited for. I was doing pretty well with The Conjuring trailers until the one that was with The Heat started pushing my "OMG-Children-In-Peril" button, so that one's back in the DVD watch pile.

In Books:

Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter, by Darwin Cooke: The artwork in this is fantastic--I love the way that blue wash turns into noir black as the story unfolds and the overall visual style is Mad Men meets James Bond. But the gender issues in this story are disturbing enough to make this read two stars instead of three or four: women are disposable dolls and bodies, to be screwed and left for dead, or made into helpless pawns. This book doesn't do well by its male characters, either. By the end, I started to feel like this was masculinity via vein-popping caricature (I'm not kidding about the vein thing--it's actually a minor plot/descriptive point.) If you enjoy noir detective stories and are willing to ignore the strings of violent and cruel deaths, you'll probably enjoy this quite a lot; unfortunately, I couldn't bring myself to do it.

The Art Forger, by B. A. Shapiro: In all fairness, this book really isn't a bad piece of writing and shouldn't be lumped in with the one above. However, it does fit into the category of "can't believe I read this" due to its detailed and fascinating explanation of how a forger goes about recreating (convincingly) a famous/stolen piece of art, in this case, the Degas painting stolen from the Gardiner Museum in Boston. I liked the main character, although I couldn't believe how naive she was, given the past that she was coming from, which unfolded in fairly riveting detail throughout the story. Impressively, a lot of the minor characters are fleshed out in interesting and perceptive ways over the course of the book, instead of just remaining stereotypes. This was an easy and fun read, and I found myself very invested by the end. This is a book, though, that I wished I'd saved for the beach, because it would be perfect for a leisurely summer afternoon: engrossing, but not too challenging one way or another. I do recommend it for that!

At the Movies!:

The Great Gatsby: Uhm, wow. Yeah, I actually saw this movie, and I'm still wondering what the hell was up for most of it, or why the audience was expected to care about any of the characters and their whiney, pathetic, little lives. On the other hand: CLOTHES! SPECTACLE! METAPHOR! Seriously, the costuming and set dressing alone were so pretty and amazing that I was willing to forgive a lot of bullshit... but there was an awful lot of bullshit, and it went on and on, too. It got to the point where I started to go in little thought circles that went like: DiCaprio, if you say 'old sport' one more time, I'm gonna walk out of here and... ooo, wait, what's Carey Mulligan wearing now? SHINEY. And OMG DiCaprio's pink suit is so handsome that I just can't think about any of the stupid stuff right now... and look at Jordan's dress..., etc. etc. So, I suppose if you really love clothes and fashion, and crazy parties writ large on the big screen, this is the movie for you, but if you don't like to hear about Rich White People's Problems, perhaps seek out another movie.

Two side notes about this film: 1) I had been worried that the current trend for out-of-period music in period pieces would engulf this movie in annoying volume, but it was not that bad, and the soundtrack makes effective use of some lovely Gershwin music right when it's most needed to complete the spectacle, so that's a plus; and 2) I have no idea why would you ever need to see this movie in 3D. Aside from snow falling and the car chase, there is nothing that would be improved by special effects and pinch-y glasses. Save your $4, people!