Diskage:
DVD • Kiss of the Dragon
CD-ROM • Empty
CD Player
• Soundgarden - Bad Motor Finger
• Mad Season -  Above
• System of a Down - Toxicity
• God Lives Underwater - Life in the So Called Space Age
• Metallica - ...and Justice For All

Books Lying Open
• The Encyclopedia of Things that Never Were, Michael Page & Robert Ingpen

Soul-Devouring Worry
• Maybe I could find something more productive to do with my time.

When I Grow Up:
• They'll invent some way to easily get photographs from the camera to paper, rather than just the computer screen.

Curse of the Day:
• May the days teach you much, but the years never know.

Daily Update
No news of note, as often happens on weekends, so I'll just faff some up here, and then faff more down lower.

Well actually there's one funny link, a series of pictures of a car sinking in a puddle.  Really.  It's on Rotten dot com, but doesn't have any gore or blood or nudity, for once.  You'll laugh, I promise.

One thing I'd noticed with the baseball playoffs is the lack of TV time for them. I figured they'd all be on FOX and/or ESPN, since that's where most of the regular season games were (none of which I watched, but I was aware that they had were on TV, if I'd wanted to see them.)  This is not the case in the playoffs.  They are being shown on various ABC channels, which include ESPN and ESPN2, but oddly enough the games aren't on the sports channels, where you'd expect them to be. They are mostly on something called ABC Family, which I've never even heard of and certainly don't have the option of watching with my $13 a month basic cable.  My dad has digital cable with about 300 channels, which basically translates into taking the channel surfer much longer to realize there's nothing on.  For this reason I just don't even bother turning on the TV when I'm at his house, unless I know something is on that I want to watch, usually Lakers or the Sunday night Football game. If they ever allow full cable customization, where you pay some amount each month for each channel, but can pick exactly which channels you want, (the others could be available on a daily, PPV type basis) I'll be a happy man. Of course that will never happen, since most people only watch about 8 channels, while having to pay for 50 or 80 or 300, and that's how the cable companies make their money.

Anyway, the baseball playoffs will clearly be getting their lowest ratings ever, since they're on some obscure cable channel (and the Yankees being out already certainly hurts also).  MLB should just do them on PPV, if all they care about is the money and not a wide viewership.  Given how Baseball is losing attendance steadily, and it's too boring a game to appeal to modern youth, you'd think they'd want it on network to get the widest possible exposure.

I'd been thinking this idly, and read this article on Baseball Prospectus that makes much the same observations, only more so.

MLB, and I'm not kidding about this, needs to swallow their pride when they sit down for their next TV deals. They need the playoffs--as many divisional games as they can manage and all of the League Championship and World Series--on network television, free to anyone who's got an antenna and can manage to stomach listening to Chris Berman pretend he's a broadcaster for three hours.

Take whatever they'll give. If it's $1, sign a short-term deal and write it off. Buy the airtime like Ross Perot if you have to and get someone else to sell the ads. Nielsen Media Research estimates there are just under 107 million households in the country. Pushing from a fourth-rate cable network that gets its ass kicked by FX to a national audience is at least another 20 million eyeballs, and the increase in visibility (low channels = higher viewership) would bring even more.

I'd point out what a better job the NBA and NFL do (the NHL might do better, but I haven't watched Hockey since Gretzky left LA, so I have no idea) but this (Sunday) morning I was hoping for a good early game, before the local team (SD Chargers) plays later today from Denver.  The obvious early game would be Raiders vs. Buffalo, which features two excellent teams, both in the same conference as SD, and the Raiders are their biggest long term rival.  It's not on.

Another good early game is Miami and New England, who are also in SD's conference.  It's not on.

In fact there's no early game on CBS at all, for some bizarre reason.  FOX has an early game on, but they always show the NFC, while SD is in the AFC.  Still, Tampa is playing at Atlanta, and that's a great defense vs. Atl who has the best young quarterback in football, so would be fun to watch.  Not on.

Another possible game is Pittsburgh at New Orleans, which features two good teams.  Not on.

So what is?  New York Giants at Dallas.  True, they are both 2-2, but both are bad, boring teams, very lucky to not be 1-3 or 0-4.  More to the point, they're boring, with no exciting players, and are both in the NFC. Of the eight games on right now, this is the 5th or 6th best match up. Why it's the only game visible in San Diego right now is a mystery, and is probably a leading cause of yard work.

The NFL has weird rules about how many games can be on in each market.  The local team is always on, unless they are at home and don't come near a sell out, and there are always 3 games on total, either 2 early games and 1 late game, or vice versa.  Then there's the Sunday night game, and Monday night game, which are always on everywhere, since that's the only game on at the time.  Sunday night is only on cable though.

They usually do pretty good at putting the more interesting games on nationally, with their priority being teams from your local team's conference (which can be a double-edged sword, if there is a great game on in the other conference and you're stuck watching something else), but have certainly dropped the ball today.  I've got the Dallas/NYG game on with the sound off, but I'm not paying any attention.  It's crap, as expected, only one score so far, and not much offense, and I don't care who wins at all.  Dallas just missed a field goal that hit the upright, after failing miserably on a fake FG earlier.

I'll probably turn it off before half time and turn the set back on around 1 when the late games begin, so I can get some work done in the mean time.  More work than this pre-blogging, that is.

And later, when I did, the late games weren't any good either.  San Diego got splattered in Denver, and the other game on was Stl vs. SF, and it was a slaughter also.  Good day to just turn off the set and get work done.  Pity I'm only realizing that now, as I write this on Monday morning.

I've put it off for a couple of days, and don't really have anything else to faff on about, so I guess here goes.  Short form per movie, at least.

Pulp Fiction

I have yet to watch the DVD, so no comment. I've seen the VHS version of it probably a dozen times though, and I wrote a thing about it a week or so ago that's never gotten posted here.  Yet.

Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarentino's film, is just unbelievable.  I've seen it numerous times, but just watching it again tonight it strikes me how many truly great scenes it has in it.  I'm not exactly the first critic to comment on the quality of the film, almost everyone loves it, (100% from Rotten Tomatoes) but I must belabor the point.  Ebert has taste, his initial review of it goes 4 stars, and he's added it to his Great Movies essay listing as well.

I saw ''Pulp Fiction'' for the first time at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994; it went on to win the Palme d'Or, and to dominate the national conversation about film for at least the next 12 months. It is the most influential film of the decade; its circular timeline can be sensed in films as different as "The Usual Suspects," "The Zero Effect" and "Memento"--not that they copied it, but that they were aware of the pleasures of toying with chronology.

But it isn't the structure that makes "Pulp Fiction" a great film. Its greatness comes from its marriage of vividly original characters with a series of vivid and half-fanciful events--and from the dialogue. The dialogue is the foundation of everything else.

I was going to write down the better scenes in the movie and reminisce as I did it, but it occurs to me now that I'd be detailing virtually the entire film.  What I love is that the scenes keep building and building, with multiple climaxes.  Just like my second wife. Well, not really.

Take the scene where Butch has to get his watch.  There's the blow up in the hotel room, then calm and driving.  He arrives at the apartment and all seems cool, before the shock of the gun on the counter and the burst of violence. Then there's cool and driving, and you think it's over.  Until he sees Marsellus and there's a second of chaos.  Then recovery, and you think it's over, and shooting begins and a short chase.  Butch appears to have won, then the shop guy interferes and all is calm for a bit. Then Butch escapes and you think it's over, before he gets the sword, setting up Marsellus to use a shotgun and deliver several of the most memorable lines in movie history.  "I'm a get medieval on your ass!" Then Butch leaves, and at last it actually is over.

That's about twenty minutes of the 2.5 hour film, and the rest of it's just as good. If you haven't seen it, do so, no verbal depiction of events can do it anything approaching justice.  My first viewing I wasn't that impressed, mostly since I was watching it while visiting my grandparents and had to keep the volume low.  Mostly all I noticed was how much was going on and the amazing amount of profanity.  It wasn't until the 2nd or 3rd viewing that it all really started to sink in and I could appreciate the artistry and quality of it, and the poetry of the dialogue.

Angel Heart

This one feels like I've written about it as well, but I guess all my recent writing about the film was in ICQs to various people.  This is a great movie.  It's cheesy and somewhat campy, but the first time you see it, your world is rocked.  There is an amazingly clever plot, and at the end when all is revealed you sit agape in wonder and horror.

It's very violent and bloody, so not for the squeamish.

The movie is about a private detective in the 1950's, Harry Angel, who is hired to track down a missing person.  The trail leads around New York to old voodoo shoppes and black churches, and then to Louisana, where it gets even more voodoo-y and bloody, and the plot thickens like last week's gumbo.  Mickey Rourke is great as the detective, DeNiro gets to smile and gnaw on the scenery as the mysterious Mr. Cypher, and Lisa Bonet wears sun dresses unbuttoned to the waist and shows her little titties off nearly as much as her winning smile.

The first time you see it it's a 10.  Subsequent viewings are less effective, though it's still an enjoyable film.

Brotherhood of the Wolf

I wrote briefly about this one yesterday, and don't have all that much to add.  The movie is, as I said, an action, kung fu, swashbuckling, supernatural, monster movie, murder mystery, period piece, told as a flashback, set in pre-revolutionary France.

I loved the scenery, the photography, the lighting, the sets, and the first hour of the plot.  Up until then it's sort of a Hound of the Baskervilles mystery, where there is some sort of huge and mysterious monster roaming around, killing people, defeating the efforts of hunters, and we don't see it, just the damage it does and the bodies it leaves behind.

The filming techniques are very good also, with lots of super clear close ups, slow motion, gratituous camera tricks, and more.  That sort of thing usually puts me off, but here it's done well and is enjoyable.  There are some great slow motion/high speed camera techniques using water; people standing and fighting in heavy rain and another where a woman falls into a small pond, and in each there are several shots of just the water as it splashes up.  You can see every single drop clearly as a person falls into the liquid, and in super slow motion it's just beautiful.

The movie has lots of fight scenes, and ultimately devolves into just one big long battle, unfortunately.  I enjoyed the mystery and investigation more than the last hour, but it's still pretty good over all.  A long film, nearly 2.5 hours on DVD, but not boring.  I'd recommend it.

Kiss of the Dragon

This is a recent movie, starring Jet Li and Bridget Fonda.  It's set in Paris and stars Jet Li as a Chinese policeman fighting corrupt French cops.  Fonda plays a whore who is trying to get her daughter back from the evil French cop.

The plot is very minor, just a way to set up endless fight scenes, most of which are very well done, if usually somewhat silly.  I'll buy that Jet Li can beat up all these other people, though how many of them are available is often absurd.  But the fact that he must have 500 bullets fired at him, usually from close range, and only gets hit once (and then it doesn't even seem to bother him) was a bit silly.

One silly thing was that the start shows him smuggling a pistol in a hidden compartment in his luggage.  The French cop takes the gun, saying he won't need it that night.  Of course 5 minutes later Jet Li is fighting some Chinese guys who shoot at him several times, unsuccessfully, so he really did need it.  And then his gun is used by the corrupt cop to murder someone, as a way to try and frame him.  After that he must have 100 chances to get a gun, usually after killing half a dozen guys who had guns of their own, but he never takes one, and never uses one. So the only reason for him to have a gun in the first place was so that it could be taken away from him and used to try and frame him.  If he's never going to use a gun, why would he bother to smuggle one into France in the first place, especially when he's a policeman, and the French police who meet him know he has his own gun and accept that?  It's a pretty lame plot device.

The other thing that's silly, while also being sort of cool, is Jet Li's magical acupuncture needles.  He can use these to poke a person and instantly paralyze them, put them to sleep, or even kill them.  With one tiny needle that's less than a centimeter into the victim's body.  Right.  Uh huh.  You just have to accept this though, it's like the Vulcan neck pinch where it's obviously a magical joke, but it's just part of the fantasy construct of the world it's used in.  I was going along with it until the very end, where he kills a bad guy in spectacularly gory fashion with one poke in the neck, and then I just laughed.

The other odd thing was that they were actually in Paris for it, but aside from one opening scene where he's taking a cab from the airport and they pass by every famous landmark in Parie, the movie could have been filmed entirely on a soundstage in Hollywood.  And probably was, for all I know. At least 98% of it takes place inside various sets that exist primarily to be destroyed in a huge fight, and could be in any city on earth.

There is one other scene on a boat touring along a river, and it's a nice view of Paris, though we see about 30 seconds of that, and then 10 minutes of a fight inside the boat, which is an obvious set. That scene was the first time the assembly line of bad guys seemed silly, since Jet Li is on a boat with a guy from the Chinese Embassy, and suddenly there are about 5 bad guys.  How did they get on the boat?  Of course once he deals with those there are another 10 guys, and then about 15 more on top of the boat, in black ski masks, for no apparent reason.  He gets up under a bridge, and yep, there's a bad guy under the bridge too, shooting madly at him while he leaps from girder to girder.  They had time to get ahead of the boat and put a guy underneath a bridge, just in case?

They do have some fun with the ridiculous amounts of bad guys though; when eventually he is in a police station and walks into a room, and it's entirely full of about 30 guys in karate outfits, in some sort of hand to hand combat class.  Yes, ninja cops.  It's good for a laugh though, as Jet Li looks around at his "out of the frying pan, into the fire" enemies.

He must defeat and/or kill upwards of 100 people in the movie, apparently all corrupt French cops.  Most of the fight scenes are very good, he's sort of a more deadly Jackie Chan, since he uses props and tables and such, and it's always this little lone Chinese guy against hordes of much larger white people, but when Jet hits people they tend to stay down, instead of just getting back up time after time like in the more comical Jackie Chan movies.

I enjoyed it, and I'll watch some of the fight scenes again, but on the whole it's a pretty dumb movie. It's really just a Kung Fu porno, where the plot is entirely incidental and exists solely as a set up to the action scenes.

Akira

This is perhaps the most famous and one of the best Anime films every produced.  It's from 1988, and is a full length movie, still the most expensive Japanese Animated feature ever, as far as I know.  You can see where the money went, since nearly every frame features super-quality drawing.  It's not quite to the quality of the classic Disney films, when everything was done by hand before there were computers, but it's very good.

The plot isn't as good as the artwork, unfortunately.  It's got at least a dozen scenes where the viewer will think, "Oh please." so you have to actively disengage your internal logic-o-meter to really enjoy the film.  The characters aren't bad, if a bit cliché, but it's the action that sells things, and there were at least half a dozen times while watching it where I was just stunned by the action.

There is destruction and death here on a scale I've never before seen in a movie.  Not that war films don't have higher body counts, but in Akira there are numerous scenes with buildings collapsing, bridges buckling and plunging into the water, bombs going off, etc, and every time you can almost count the individual bricks or bullets.  The drawing is incredibly clear and detailed in the destruction, and as walls crumble, floors give way, and people dangle from a collapsing bridge, other people pulling them up to dubious safety, you can see everything.

The scale of action increases steadily also, as some of the characters gain more and more super psychic powers, and start launching mind blasts that rip through entire buildings, stop lasers, stop tank shots and send them back where they came from, battle death rays from space, mutate into 50 story blobs, and more.  I'm making none of this up, I assure you.

The imagination of things is amazing also, with characters having very vivid fantasies as they are freaking out from their growing psychic powers.  One awesome scene features stuffed animals coming to life, growing to be 20 feet tall and looking very scary as they destroy a hospital room and try to kill one character.  That's not a great example, but while watching it I frequently found myself amazed at how clever and creative the events and animation were.

There are a lot of ways the movie could be better, mostly in terms of character action and motivation, and it's illogical at times, with a relatively unsatisfying conclusion, but overall it's certainly worth watching.  You'll want to watch at least half of it again, just to see the animation and destruction that goes on at times.

Record of Lodoss War

This one was the big disappointment. 

Record of Lodoss War is a famous Anime series, 13 parts originally, from 1991. It was on Japanese TV, and has since gained numerous sequels and much Internet fame as it's sold in a box set.  I paid a lot more than that for it, so buy it from Amazon.com and you'll be less annoyed.

The story is set in a fantasy world, based on the classic D&D land.  Dragons, animal monsters in armor, wizards, elves, dwarves, and humans.  It's all anime-styled though, with massive oversized swords, super power attacks, and relatively mediocre animation. The actual animation is not that good, in terms of the frames per second, but the drawing is top notch.  Makes me wish they'd had double the budget and could have done more individual frames.  There are about a thousand websites with images from the show, but these are usually pretty small and just character shots, and I didn't think those were the most interesting parts of the show.

The best art I thought was the monsters and the dragons.  They are gorgeously-rendered, so crisp and detailed, with heavy use of black and shadow to make them look so three dimensional and vivid. If I had a DVD player in the computer I'd get some shots that I think do it more justice.  Alas. The packaging is gorgeous also, and it features some nice artwork.  This is a thumb of the box art, sitting on my desk.

Click for full size view.

Click it to see this shot in full size.  There are 2 DVDs, and this part folds over and goes into a slide in sleeve, which you can see on the desk above it. Sorry about the angle, but if I took the shot straight on the reflected flash would wash it out.

DVD case flap close up.

Here's a close up of the right side, with that cool (evil) dragon.  The artwork in the show looks exactly like this, super detailed and vivid.

The two guys here, with the dragons, are good and evil.  You can probably guess which is which by the colors.  They have two sacred swords of good and evil, and the dragons are tied to their side as well, though they don't appear all that often.  Click the thumb to see the right side, or click here to see the left side in full size.

The basic plot is that the land (Lodoss) is a mystical continent with various ruling kings, in the feudal monarchy style of so much fantasy.  Thousands of years ago the entire land was nearly destroyed in a huge battle between the forces of light and darkness.  Each side has a massive dragon that is sort of their force personified.  The evil and the good dragon battled, along with their human and monster forces, but have been asleep since then, though various lesser dragons are still roaming around.  The dragons in this are how dragons should be; enormous, hundreds of feet long, and basically forces of nature.  They swoop overhead and send down fire breath from hundreds of feet above, frying the puny humans before they even see it coming.  Of course they're still likely to die if you stab then in the nose with a spear that's less than a toothpick in size to them, but this is just one of the many logical fallacies in the show.

With the set up of the world, the action of the 13 episodes is a party of adventurers who are on their own individual quests but work together, and their progress through the world as it girds for total war, and the forces of evil attempt to revive the ancient evil dragon.  The party is exactly what you'd expect.  A she-elf, giggly but powerful and very cute.  A dwarf, old and bearded, gruff, very strong.  A thief, joker and cynic, skilled with throwing knives.  A cleric, young and innocent and kind, healer and fighter with mystic energy.  A mage, peaceful and reserved, but powerful with sorcery.  And a fighter.  This is the one where anime styling takes over most heavily, since instead of being a Conan-type sword master and powerful leader, he's instead a teenager, young and impetuous and unskilled, but clearly very determined, and clearly destined for great things.

In addition to these there are various kings and soldiers and a couple of mercenaries.  The enemies are all archetypal as well.  Evil back-stabbing sorcerers, all-powerful and mysterious witch, power-hungry warlords, and tons of anonymous minions.  The enemy monsters are great, mostly subhumans, half wolves or bears or dogs, all slavering teeth and blood lust, wearing their battered and cheap armor and fighting with much more savagery than skill.

The world and characters aren't very imaginative, but are very epic and legendary.  I love the whole world concept, the types of characters, the monsters, the battles, the series of great deeds they must accomplish to achieve their objectives, etc.  It's all extremely promising, and that's why I bought it, since all I knew about it worked for me on various primal levels.

Unfortunately the actual execution of things, especially the writing, is by far the weakest link.

Record of Lodoss War was a TV show, and I think it's written on a juvenile or even childish level.  There is a lot more violence and T&A than you'll see on US cartoons for kids, and lots of the monsters would be quite scary to someone under 10, I think.  But the dialogue and the character's actions are always so predictable and telegraphed.  In addition the whole world and plot unfold in such an amateurish fashion.  Everything comes down to the main characters, ever time.  There are always huge long battles with thousands dying, but none of the main characters ever get hurt or caught up in that.  They always end up facing off with the main bad guy.  There's no sense of a world; the enemy forces invade and destroy much of Lodoss, and we see mighty castles being laid siege to and destroyed, and a few wrecked villages, but there aren't any people.  No floods of refugees, no huddle masses, no famine from destroyed crops.  There's never any reality in the time of travel, none of the heroes need to carry any food or supplies on their treks, armies seem to appear wherever and whenever they are needed, etc.  The battles are just random fights; there's no generalship in terms of troops movements, no siege engines, no artillery support, no tactics whatsoever.

The less you know about how war actually works and the less you think about logical issues, the more you'll enjoy the series.

The actual battles are pretty anticlimactic also, mostly due to the animation.  By which I mean their lack of money/time to draw combat scenes.  You get one big picture of a battle, and it pans across the screen for 10 seconds while you hear swords clanging and death screams.  Then another shot of two guys crossing swords, with monsters behind them, for 5 seconds.  It's all typical Anime style, and the artwork is great, but it would be nice to see some actual combat technique, rather than just two guys up close with crossed swords grunting.  All the dragon stuff is much the same.  One or two or three lovely images, but no animation.

On the whole it's worth watching, but it would be great if you could get a friend to buy it and then borrow it from them.  I spent most of the time thinking how much better everything could have been, with such a great world and mythology to set it all in.

 

I will likely expand a few of these and turn them into full reviews on a separate review page, at some point.  Hold your breath.

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