You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Movies: Days 2-5

So it's now Monday. One advantage of doing something like this movie thing is that it makes the time you're spending away from work seem that much longer – it feels much more like a week than a weekend since I was last in at work. Unfotunately, I've just been called about one of the coordinators having problems that the people left behind can't solve, so I'm going to have to go in tomorrow morning and see what I can do. (Which sucks, frankly, but at least they're not demanding I miss movies.

Speaking of missing movies – I've now missed two, which is something of a personal worst, I think. The first, A Lion in the Room, I missed yesterday due to a mistake in scheduling. (It was on during two other films I'd booked to see with C.) The second, Last Supper, I missed, as far as I can tell, because my first film today, Avenge But One Of My Two Eyes, started late... so even though I jogged from the Paramount to the City Gallery, the person on the door quite reasonably said that I was too late to go in.

But let's go back to Saturday.

* * *

Saturday morning C and I went to Kiroku and the Sorceress, a French-made animated version of a traditional African tale of Kiroku. It was nifty, both in the way some things were stylized (the fetishes, the sorceress) and the way that some things were decpicted realistically. For example, Kiroku is asking his mother why the sorceress is so angry and evil, and his mother is telling him about his grandfather, a wise old man in the mountains; but while this is going on, Kiroku is crawling under the mat, and putting a ladle on his head, curling up to sleep, and generally acting in a baby-like fashion. It was pretty neat.

Then we collected Hix and Morgue, and headed out to Kapiti to continue Phoenix. (Phoenix was a Primetime Adventures game we played several months ago. We'd come up with a noir-ish setting somewhere in rural America where a Waco-like cult was doing something sinister. (You can read more about the previous games here.) This time, we talked through episode 8 (where the sherrif, Molly Kelso (played by me), has been captured by the cult, and the teenager Terri (played by Debbie) has gotten away with the teacher (Boyd, played by Morgue) and her boyfriend, Tom; Tom's little brother, Saul (played by Luke), had been left behind. We decided that it would end with Saul being hunted down by the other kids, Lord of the Flies-style, and after appealing to the head of the cult (Carl) as a father-figure, he would still have to enter The Room. (“The Room” was a reoccuring threat within the cult – there were definite elements of some sort of social conditioning (no-one was allowed to refer to the person while they were in The Room), but it was strongly implied that Something Else went on in there. In the meantime, Tom was not recovering, and Terri realised that the cult had done something to him while he was in The Room, and that she had to break back in with him and get them to reverse it; and the authorities had settled in to start a seige, and the teacher, Boyd, had been unable to convince them to back off; so he snuck into the compound, was captured, and, unfazed, asked to be taken to Carl. (Molly, having managed to stop Carl breaking her by needling him until he attacked her, was left to the mercy of Lacie, an abused girl who Boyd had been unable to help, and who'd run away to the cult; Molly had punched her in the face with a shotgun butt while trying to get to Carl in the one-woman raid that got her captured.)

So that's how we started the final episode of series one of Phoenix – the FBI and ATF at the front gate, just as Carl wanted them; Tom collapsing in a sezuire in a storm-drain as he and Terri sneak back into the compound; Boyd captured; Molly being beaten in a locked room; and Saul in The Room. The first scene was Carl letting Saul out of the room, taking him to the roof, and telling him that he had a very special role to play: someone had to die that day, and Saul would have to choose.

Boyd tried to get through to Aaron, Carl's second-in-command, and didn't really succeed; Terri had to make a choice about leaving Tom concealed and proceeding by herself, or selfishly bringing him into danger, and let her cowardice get the better of her; and there was a chilling conversation between Molly and Lacie, where Molly got Lacie to see that she had let Carl get her into the position that she was just as hurtful and hateful as the parents she'd run away from. (All the while, Molly is getting the crap kicked out of her, of course.)

Rather than giving a blow-by-blow, I'll just give a quick outline – it was revealed that this was just the latest in a series of cults, and both Tom and Saul (and maybe others) were the cult leader's literal children, altered in some way towards his vision. Carl intended Saul to shoot him, to absolve the children of any blame, and to seal his heart against others; the other cult members were members in the compound were meant to provide publicity, to raise Tom's profile for him to eventually lead a cult of his own in an even more “effective” manner. Saul worked this out, and decided that he had to kill Tom; Terri tried to stop him, and ended up shooting Tom herself by accident. Molly managed to escape, and save some of the children (by hiding in The Room, ironically); Lacie sacrificed herself so that Molly, Boyd and the kids could be safe.

There were definitely moments of, “well, that's super-creepy”; it was pretty damn good, and lived up to our memories of the other game, which was no mean feat. We then had dinner, and decided to play another game of PTA, but something more silly this time; something EXTREME!! And thus ******, the TV series (based on a 1990s movie, based on a 1980s US TV show, based on a 1970s Hong Kong TV show) of illegal hover-board racing and giant mecha (controlled by the police). To give you a feel for the show – the opening sequence had the three different hoverboarding “gangs” (The Syndicate, The Scrabblers and The Outcasts) uniting to honour one of their fallen, Johnny Hero, who died running while boarding. They did this by crashing his funeral, stealing the coffin (with their hoverboards), putting it in the futuristic equivalent of a eighteen-wheeler truck, setting it on fire, and shooting it off a ramp to explode over the city in what they saw as a modern equivalent of a viking funeral. There was a lot of high-speed racing scenes, outwitting the police “Bulls” (giant mecha who could leap on jets for extended periods), and posing for status. It was daft, but good fun, and actually held together pretty well. :)

The only downside was that we ended around 2AM, and I had to drive back because I had five films the next day.

* * *

Okay, this is going to be brief, because I have to check my work email, fix any problems that have arisen today, and still get enough sleep to deal with five movies tomorrow. :)

First thing on Sunday, C and I saw An Inconvenient Truth. (We'd bought tickets seperately, but C ended up sitting behind me, and Jenni & Lee were sitting a few seats over from C.) I thought it was everything I want in a documentary – interesting, engaging, with enough background to the facts to give you context, and tied together really well. On one hand, Gore talking about his family (the car accident with his son, the fact that his family stopped growing tobacco after one of the members got lung cancer) set off my heart-warming-drama-meter... but these are presumably things that actually happened in his life, so why not draw on them to make points? After all, he's very explicit about being part of the documentary. And while they mentioned the fact that Gore was basically defeated by somewhat... dubious dealings in Florida, and later mentioned the whole Katrina disaster and debacle, they certainly didn't go, “Hmm.” or anything like it. It does make one wonder what the last decade or so would have been like, if we'd had a Gore presidency.

I didn't go to A Lion in the House, though I had a ticket, because I am a dumbass who didn't realise it clashed with two other movies.

C and I then went to Animation Now, which Jenni had warned us would be... disappointing. She wasn't wrong; a few good ones in a sea of mediocre stuff, and nothing like the awesome Jasper Morello. Still, you never can tell when some excellent stuff will turn up there.

C's final movie of the day was I for India, my first film at the Film Archive. It took us a while to get there, mainly because I thought I knew where it was, and was terribly, terribly wrong. Luckily, C used her librarian-senses to detect the archives innate library-ness, and steered us in the right direction. This was quite a cool documentary about a doctor who leaves India in the 1950s to get more training in Britain, buys two film cameras, and sends one back to his family so that they can stay in touch. As well as this footage (with his family alternately scolding him for not being there, and begging him to return), there is a bunch of recent stuff that the daughter making the documentary shot, as well as some BBC footage of around the time – Margret Thatcher talking about preserving British culture from immigration, sections on the British Health system relying on immigrant doctors, stern British gentlemen addressing the camera for the benefit of these newcomers saying, “This is a switch. A switch. This is a light. A light. When I flick the switch, like so, the light will come on.” Quite interesting, especially the parents having to deal with one of their daughters going off to Australia.

C headed home, and I headed out to another documentary -- Jonestown: The Life and Death of the People's Temple. I knew about this tragedy in general terms, but I had no real context for the Jonestown massacre, and the story was basically told by the witnesses: former members of the cult, or relatives of members; one of Jones' adopted children; and the aide to the Congressman who went down to Jonestown to investigate, and was gunned down as he was leaving. I think the saddest thing was that there was the hint, the suggestion that it was a group that might have worked and succeeded if the charismatic head hadn't become crazy. (Hix asked me if they looked at the conspiracy stuff at all; the answer is no, it wasn't mentioned at all. Given the kind of schenanigans that the CIA has admitted to being up to at the time, I can easily imagine them doping his food with LSD or what-have-you in attempt to make him act crazy and discredit him with his congregation; but I can equally well believe that he went bonkers by his own damn self.)

Spooky thing that stayed with me – Jones announcing over the loudspeakers each night that he was sending out someone that they knew, someone that they loved, who was going to tell them that they wanted to get away; but they'd be lying, and it was a loyalty test, and it would be an act of betrayal if they weren't turned in.

Finally that day, I saw Three Times, a love story played out by the same actors in three different time periods. The first, set in the 1960s, was my favourite; some very tender moments. The second one I had trouble staying awake for; it was set in the 1910s, and moved even slower than the first. The third was present-day, and all right; a lot more nihilistic and narcissistic than the first.

* * *

Monday, I started out with Avenge But One Of My Two Eyes, which is a quote from Samson to God just before he brings the temple down on the Philistines, killing more then than in the rest of his lifetime. It was another Israeli/Palestenian documentary, but this time only featuring the Palestinians in passing, and mostly focusing on the stories the Israelis were telling themselves about themselves, especially the Samson story (and how glorious it was for him to kill so many to avenge his humiliation, even though he himself died in the process) and the Zealots at Masada (who killed themselves and their families rather than submit to the Romans). There was also some scary footage of the Israeli racist movements, jumping about and singing rock songs about “Revenge on Palestine”.

I was then meant to go to Last Supper, about the tradition of last meal requests for death row prisoners, but because they started my first movie late, they wouldn't let me in at the second venue. So I went and got lunch... and then got rung up at work, and was told that someone had a problem that I had to come in tomorrow to deal with. Hoo-rah.

Then I saw Factotum, the story of a writer drifting from one job and one bed to another in a sort of hard-boiled, narrated slice-of-life. I think it was a good film; it just wasn't a film I enjoyed, particularly.

And finally, the documentary Waves, about the experience of Chinese students who come to NZ to do their secondary and tertiary education. Very interesting stuff, since the film-maker was able to give examples ranging from a girl who dived into the new opportunities, taking Design and Music and making friends among the other foreign students and Nzers, to the girl who only really talked to the other Chinese students, stayed in her room, and kept her watch on Bejing time. While I liked the film, the question and answer session afterwards was a little frustrating, as the filmmaker never seemed to quite answer the questions that were asked. She did say, quite rightly I think, that the experience for NZ-born Chinese is totally different, since they're not part of the whole one-child family thing.

* * *

Coming into the home stretch... I came home, went through my mail, and then went into work at nine to explain I had fixed all the problems that the person had brought up the previous night, as there was enough detail in their email to let me do so. I said, “Hi,” to a few people, and then it was back home to hang up some washing, and back into town.

The first film I saw was One Day in People's Poland. The basic idea was to take one day, and look at some of the documentation that the spy apparatus of the Polish Communist government generated; reviews of magazines (“too positive towards the West”), descriptions of the movements of individuals (“Target and wife retired to the bedroom, and engaged in intimate activities for fifteen minutes. The wife then read aloud several pages from a travel book, and target and wife discussed those pages.”), and public broadcasts. One of the former Weta coders (who is Polish) was there, and he was laughing about it; he said that he didn't remember a lot of it, but he remembered sharpening arrows and shooting at each other as a kid, and how all the broadcasts were full of useless facts (like the number day of the year it was) to disguise the fact that nothing was allowed to be said.

Next was a nice French farce, The Valet, where a bumbling everyman is paid to pretend a supermodel is his girlfriend to throw off the wife of the man she's having an affair with. Not a deep or unpredictable film, but pleasant, and funny, and I could easily imagine watching it again.

Oxhide, on the other hand... well, it's interesting, insofar as it was all shot on one camera, with three people, in one tiny apartment. And it turns the fact that the camera is fixed, and the light is poor, to its advantage. But it is slooooooow; of the films I've seen, it's the one that lost the most people, both in absolute terms, and (more importantly) percentage-wise; I think maybe a third of the people left by half-way? It's a shame, because it's a film that I'd've liked to have liked.

Finally, I saw The Passenger, where Jack Nicholson swaps idenities with a man who dies in the same hotel somewhere in Africa. It was okay, and did some interesting stuff (like pointing out how questions can show more about the person asking them than the answers would tell you about the person being asked), but I can't imagine seeking it out to watch again.

* * *

And so, I'm now up-to-date. Maybe someday soon, I'll have a chance to actually catch up on other people's blogs. :)

Posted by svend at July 26, 2006 12:07 AM