Ken Turan, Roger Ebert and the incredible shrinking teamster

I've come to like twitter. I have little confidence in its long-term survival, but I like it. And hence I sometimes read the stuff of the people I follow, and sometimes I go along with the links they post and happen upon finding myself in an interesting article. And so it happened with Roger Ebert's twitter feed, and so I must thank him for this link to this article.

The article is While high school literary magazines are a bit removed from national film criticism, this essay brings to mind my days as an editor for the Ivy. For the first 2-3 years I was there, we followed a rule of whiting out the name of whatever piece we were reviewing. But then one year, perhaps we were just lazy, perhaps we were too smug in assuming of course we knew what was good, despite any personal feelings, perhaps we were just too informal and inattentive, but for some reason we stopped whiting out the names. The odd thing was we didn't end up favoring our friends much (maybe a few cases), mostly though we became more dismissive of people who weren't our friends.

But actually, thinking upon it more, it wasn't really a matter of who was our friends. It was more the case that we were dismissive of people didn't have an artistic reputation. I suppose the real reason not to review friends in our case was not so much that we might champion our friends, as that we became confident that we knew the scene and knew who deserved to be featured from it.

Film reviewers don't really have the option of whiting out the name. While no reviewing friends helps, just knowing who made what, affects the criticism, but on the other hand, deep analytical criticism often focuses on the filmmaker more than the film at hand, and sometimes part of the experience of the film rests in its context, including the context of who the filmmaker is. Most importantly though, film reviewers review famous things and even if they try to avoid it, they will inevitably hear from everyone who is in anything.

But perhaps the solution is thus, and this is an approach I try to practice when looking at films. Treat the film makers as abstractions, as phenomena, not as real human beings. Of course, you can analyze them as examples of human beings making films, but treat them as if they were not real, as if they were a legend, or better yet, a story unfolding in front of you. Indeed treat the entire film scene and history like that. I could go as far to say life... but I won't. Here's the reason I won't, life is something to be engaged in, to revel in, now analysis is part of that process of revelling, but it requires a particular focus to analyze something.

By focus I mean, you cannot analyze something and include everything that ever touched it in the analysis. Because, you as the observer are also touched by it and maybe you can appreciate that on an instinctual level, and maybe you can summarize it, but can you capture the whole of your experience with the object of your analysis? Say a film for example, can you really capture every aspect of how you viewed it, especially since how you experienced the film is intertwined with who you are and what your life has been, can you capture it all?

But if you start talking about the film as something real, something visceral, there's a subtext to it all, where you say "This is how I viewed it as me". And what does that give to anyone else who reads it? Since you cannot communicate the entirety of yourself, but your writing is soaked in the particularities of your experience, you leave the reader befuddled.

That is not to say do not make the writing personal, but rather make it personal in a particular way. Confine the personalness, to this or that aspect of your life. And try to detach the rest of your life from the writing. Now that's an impossible goal, but you try, and you might find your writing becomes more than just words but actual communication.

To get back to what I was saying about film criticism. The film critic cannot explain all of who he is in a citical essay, and if he views the film a real work that has lives and history and everything attached to it, then all his feelings about lives and history and everything, and really everything, becomes the subject of the essay. Usually that ends up at best a beautiful mess, and at worse an ugly one. So a degree of focus must be made, the film becomes an abstraction, and indeed the writer becomes an abstraction to himself, so that this particular aspect of the film and the writer's experience with the film can be detached and put on paper. And that is an impossible task but it's made harder when your personal ties to the film are dear ones. And yet...

Is it possible to communicate without that filtering, by just pouring everything out there? I'd say probably not. But perhaps if you're lucky, talented, or the medium suits you perfectly, you get the miraculous situation where pouring out everything is filtered just by the where, when, and how of your art, and thus despite the uniquely personal chaos of your thoughts, something to a greater or lesser extent universal comes out, or at least something shared by a few people.

The article that prompted all of this, is about a film review by LA Times film cricket Kenneth Turan where he breaks his own rule and reviews his friend's work. And does it create the beautiful mess that I implied would come?

No, but that's because the article by Kenneth Turan is not really about the film (it does contain maybe 3 or 4 paragraphs giving a brief ho-hum recommendation which sounds generally like a famous person recommending a friend's film with a touch of earnestness), rather it's about Kenneth Turan and the writing process. And here Mr. Turan does seem to abstract himself to a degree carving out a moment in his life, his writing of his review, and in reviewing himself, if not the film in question, he makes a fine essay.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

The inherent folly of internal isolationism

Casablanca is an awesome movie (as recognition of such, here's a link to a very nice fan page of said film). (The movie, though far from a comprehensive picture of the period, and far from an accurate picture of Morocco in the early 1940's, is all the cooler to parse from a historical perspective due to its omissions and selective inclusions) If you dare to question that I will have to smack you upside the top of your head. And as such, though from some angles it can seem down right pulpy, on many, many levels it speaks to the human condition.

Let me just pick one as if for random (or perhaps my mention of Casablanca was really a lead in to this topic, you'll never know! Actually the later case is the truth).

One theme in Casablanca I've always been fascinated by is the connect between emotional internationalism and political internationalism, or rather pragmatic apathy in personal relationships, like cheating a woman into sleeping with you, feeds into and onto political isolationism and apathy, like kow-towing to a viciously evil regime like the Nazis. In the same, "rank sentimentalism" feeds into and onto political idealism which allows one to give up a chance for love because of the larger causes of the world.

Thus Rick, who once ran guns for Ethiopia (wooo Ethiopia!), when a bitter romantic disappointment makes him turn callous in his personal relationships, becomes politically callous, at first dismissing the very idea that he help a man on the run from the Nazi's escape certain torture and death. And thus when he re-accepts the idea of personal love, he re-discovers his idealism, and is willing to let go because his love belongs somewhere else.

What a world... that Rick's love be so doomed by those circumstances... but the non-fictional world can be far more brutal... but then again it can offer even great beauties such as the film itself Casablanca.

I'm just saying...

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

And God Bless.

Working like a turkey

Because if you ever saw a wild turkey run across the road, you'd know they work pretty darn hard.

Anywho, I'm building up a new site for The Rand Show + doing lots of job-like work. So I've been busy. But also, I've been looking over old posts, and am starting to compile some best of stuff. Here's a run down of a bit of a random sampling of the best of the Rand Show. Be forwarned, it is pretty awesome and it's incomplete.

Rand Reviews

At home in the lonely hearts club, or my review of Cupid
It's Mightly Cold in Juno, or my review of Juno
28 days later, 28 weeks later, 28 years later and forever, or my review of 28 Days Later
But for a nail... 28 weeks after the fact, or my review of 28 Weeks Later
Sometimes you need to go where everyone has a gun, or my review of Arsenal
We love big dreams, right? or my review of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzyimiya
The Inevitable Gravity of Destiny, or my review of Escaflowne
The temptation of wheat, or my review of Azumanga Diaoh
My American Dream: notes on Rushmore and The Great Gatsby

Rand vs. the Music

I wanted to be all you need: Notes on Here is Gone by the Goo Goo Dolls
Creep: Notes on Creep by Radiohead
Karaoke equals Awesome: Notes on Perfect Situation by Weezer
Space Oddity: Notes On Space Oddity by David Bowie
Here's to You Michael Jackson, Salute: Notes on the King of Pop
Putting the f-ing fun back into Rand F-ing Awesome McRanderson

Rand Writes

The Insidious Logic of Transfat
And the sole survivor watches us all, he's got the eye of the tiger
Me, Eddy, and that Oriental-Loooking Fellow
And What of the Oriental in America?
Just to start some contraversy
For some reason I can't explain, once you were gone it was never the same
Christ has Risen!
I follow he who has conquered death
Rand's Advanetures in Job Land
Happy St. Thomas' Day
For James

It's mighty cold in Juno

Juno, a review:

(note: the title of this session comes from a song I stumbled upon in the internet whose chorus was It's mighty cold in Alaska, but the location and author of that song are lost in the sands of my brain)

Juno, the main character of the film Juno, is not named after the city Juno, Alaska. She is as she points out in the film, named after Juno, queen of the Roman gods. It's a fitting name, because this film revolves around her in more ways than one.

Firstly, she is the star. It is Juno's unexpected pregnancy which the movie centers upon and while it takes two to have sex, Bleeker, her male partner stupendously played by Michael Cera, veteran of Superbad and Arrested Development, didn't really have a choice, as Juno makes clear to her friend later. Juno was just bored. Except even the passive partner in a relationship often has the oddest of effects on its course, and while this is Juno's story, at times it is also Bleeker's story.

Bleeker doesn't necessarily get too much screen time, but he has likely the 2nd most scenes, which show him as a devoted runner, a tic-tac addict, and a boy who's confused utterly by the world and most of all by the girl he likes. His reactions to Juno's pregnancy and Juno herself and his reactions to her reactions to him are subtle and wonderfully awkward, but they paint a deeply interesting and complex character, almost as well developed as Juno herself.

But as I said Juno is the star, and this film makes itself or breaks itself on her likability and depth. She is in 90% of the scenes (although not all of them), she gives narration, and she drives the action. But she is likable and her character is deep. She is utterly at ease with herself, and when she is not she vigorously denies that she is ill-at-ease. She is youthful looking (she doesn't wear a bra until her pregnancy) for 16, but maturely independent. Her interests in camp seem child-like but actually hold a very-teenagerish contempt for the world redeemed by a celebration of its ridiculous coolness. And she has the counterculture chique right down to the weirdo-hip language and the aloof disregard of popularity. If that all sounds pretentious, it is but the character is saved from pretentiousness by her sincerity and her flaws. She gets angry, she has burst of immaturity, she makes rash decisions, she refuses to deal with certain emotional issues honestly, and she is far out of her depth in dealing with an unexpected pregnancy.

She has help of course. This film boasts a wonderful ensemble of supporting characters, many highly established, including Jason Bateman who here plays the would-be dad of Juno and Bleeker's child, even though he played the father of the character played by Michael Cera in Arrested Development (that has to be some kind of weird). The main seconds here are Juno's parents and a couple who wants to adopt her child. Also in the mix, is Juno's best friend, Leah, and a bunch of more minor elements. Yet all these secondary characters have a little oddity to them, I noticed as I watched the film. Here's where I started to notice how much the film really centers around Juno.

Let me break for a second and admit to something. I read a review of Juno before I saw the movie and read some partial reviews in addition. Ideally I think you should watch a movie cold first, read about it, then watch it again, but that's very hard to actually arrange. But what you read changes how you view the movie and two items I read altered, perhaps a little, perhaps a lot, how I viewed Juno. Firstly, I read a NY Times opinions piece about Juno, I will discuss it later, but I also read a small item on Roger Ebert's website (I'm not sure if the item is still there, but basically it says that the dialog is too witty and Roger Ebert says the tone sells it convincingly).

The smaller piece I read, the one on Roger Ebert's website, had a greater impact I think. Because when I heard Juno's dad say Damn Skippy instead of a curse, I knew this dialog was far too witty to be realistic. Maybe some people do curse with Damn Skippy, but those people who do are rare, and by all other measures Juno's dad is a good-hearted, pretty hip, but essentially average blue-collar father, so for him to realistically say Damn Skippy... But why should this be realistic? Looking at the other characters I realized there's something surreal about them too. Juno's friend Leah is supposed to be popular and a teacher-phile (it's not terribly strange that she's friends with Juno, cliques these days aren't what they used to be), but she talks in the same way Juno does, or rather in a cool kid dialect of how Juno talks, and since Juno talks in a way cool kids generally only talk with sarcasm, such a dialect should not exist.

Moreover, the store clerk insults her when she goes for pregnancy tests. Why would he do that? Moreover, her parents let her drive her car at all odd hours of the night after she was pregnant (well, the step-mother does scold her briefly, but as scolds go it was fairly light). Moreover... moreover Fall and Winter are pencil sketched in the sky to signal their presence. That isn't something odd for modern movies, but what it represents has been forgotten by many modern filmwatchers and filmmakers. It represents surreality, where reality adjusts to the contours of the mind. And here, Juno's entire world, and her supporting characters fit perfectly the contours of the emotional and mental reality of Juno, who may be a fictional character, but who's complexities suggest a degree of emotional and mental reality. So the excessive wittiness, the oddness of the characters, the strangeness of some of the things Juno gets away with (like sitting in a trophy case at school during lunchtime (and not an isolated trophy case)), all just serve to help deepen her character.

Like I said, the film revolves around her. All this surrealism means that Juno is the center of this universe, she is its queen, and because she's such an engaging character, this film remains engaging, heart-tugging, and enchanting.

It even allows me to excuse some miscues that I would be far more critical of otherwise. One miscue I found glaring, was in the suburban couple who wants to adopt Juno's child. Let me point out here, as some people might have guessed, that this film in many ways parallels Knocked Up, as a woman gets pregnant and then falls in love with the guy who knocked her up, except here the girl is firmly the center of the film and the girl is 16 (the guy is around 16 too). Yet one way the film also seemed to be paralleling Knocked Up is in Michael Bateman's character, who was the suburban father-to-be who was an ex-rock star turned jingle writer, who is now worried about what he'll have to give up to become a father.

Eventually, this character sort of falls in love with Juno (and she, it is implied, kind of falls in love with him, although when confronted with his feelings she rejects him), decides he'd rather be a rockstar than be a father, and leaves his wife. On the surface very different from Knocked Up's dad-to-be character, who was an uber-slacker. But if you look at the ambition Michael Bateman's dream (it's not enough for him to have toured with the Melvins, there's still something more he has to do), his fancying an underage girl, and the relatively weak pressure from his wife's side (it is fairly obvious she disapproves of some ways he behaves, but on the other hand, she doesn't seem to harsh on him for it, although she usually gets her way), it seems like he's just having trouble growing up.

Yet the film doesn't let this fully play out. Instead Michael Bateman's character just leaves his wife after the first fight and it is implied that she then raises Juno's child as a single mother. The emotionally deep ground of the disintegration of a marriage and its complexity with this adoption is only superficially treated. But I understand that a film which encompasses most of a pregnancy must make some narrative choices, and I understand that this film is in the end Juno's story.

And yet, I also thought it was Bleeker's story, which makes another miscue by the film a little more annoying. Bleeker's emotional journey in this film is shown in odd scenes here and there, which is understandable, and it is most spelled out in his interactions with Juno, fine, the film is called Juno. Yet, his emotional journey in this film is all about him telling Juno how he feels and forcing her to confront those feelings and her feelings. It isn't at all dealing with the fact that the baby is his. Maybe Juno was the initiator of sex, maybe she was the driving force of their relationship, maybe she is the star of the film, still... I really would have liked to see Bleeker's reaction to the fact he has a child being born and eventually given away. While other characters were oddly shallow at times, I thought Bleeker was for the most part a fully developed character, and I was disappointed that I didn't see him act like a father. Perhaps Bleeker's story would have taken up too much time, perhaps Bleeker the boyfriend fit in better with the surreal world centered around Juno, but a little something about Bleeker the father would have been appreciated in the movie about Juno the mother.

But then again, in the end Juno isn't the mother. The suburban mom, now alone, takes Juno's child and Juno doesn't go see the baby off and the movie implies that Juno now has no role in the child's life. That isn't actually a bad move for the movie to make, because many teen pregncies end with similar situations. But not all end with the teen smiling in the sunshine and playing a love song with her boyfriend.

Juno is a fairy tale. So said that New York Time op-ed piece I read before (I told you I would get back to that), and that's because it neglects any real emotional aftermath after the baby is given away. I have to say that while I'm not as harsh on the film as the op-ed piece, the character of Juno is far too deep to fit in a fairy tale, I must say the ending is a bit off-putting. Not that Juno should have ended up sad and alone, scarred forever by her teen pregnancy. It makes perfect sense to end the film with Juno and Bleeker side by side happy. But the film should have shown some sign that the pregnancy left an impact on Juno. There should be some measure of emotional weight on her, even if she's capable, as her character should be by all we've seen before, of handling that weight. There should be some significance of the pregnancy to Juno's life. As it is, the pregnancy seems to have just been another one of those obstacles Juno had to overcome in her teenage years to grow up emotionally and become a good girlfriend.

Yet, let me not end on complaints. Because this movie is marvelous. It is immensely funny, it is full of a consistent liveliness, it is beautifully crafted in terms of filmcraft, and it paints a masterpiece of a portrait of the emotional life of a fully individualized, yet highly realistic (I knew kids sort of like this in high school, let me just call them the counterculture geeks, combine the aspects of both the counterculture groups and the geek groups, and you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about), 16-year old girl. It is simply an amazing film, and a wonderfully well-spend 2 hours.

So despite flaws that dig at me even now, the wonder that is Juno demands nothing less than 8 out of 10. I have to give it to her, it wasn't really my idea.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

But for a nail... 28 weeks after the fact

28 Weeks Later (The REVIEW!!!):

Yesterday I wrote a session on 28 Days Later and talked lightly about its sequel: 28 Weeks Later. I promised a second session later, and planned it to be lengthy an in-depth. This is not quite as big or in-depth as I planned, but that might be for the best for reasons of time and perhaps even quality. Either way, this is all you're getting so enjoy the quick (relatively) review.

28 Weeks Later, takes place 28 Weeks after an infection wiped out the population of Great Britan. A US-led NATO security force has killed the last surviving infected and are beginning a program to repopulate Great Britan. An ambitious dream, but there are many who still dream of Britan, especially the survivors of the infection and those who were overseas at the time. The military is confident that the infection is over but they haven't secured everywhere, and so only a small island is being repopulated.

It seems that while humanity is just as ambitious as in 28 Days Later (where the virus started as an attempt to cure rage, and an attempt by a military base to repopulate humanity led to its annihilation). But it soon becomes clear that just as in 28 Days Later, people are careless. The American soldiers guarding the island are joking around, and the military doesn't even bother to tell the medical officer that children are being reintroduced. And then when the children wander off, the military is agonizingly slow in picking them up. When a survivor with a mutated version of the infection returns, they maintain weak security and... of course the infection re-emerges. And of course they try to annihilate the population to stop the spread, becoming monsters in the process. And of course, they fail, and the infection spreads to mainland Europe...

The themes of ambition and carelessness so prominent in 28 Days Later are here large looming still. Another theme is the memory, as the choices of the father who survived the infection's first wave are driven by his guilt and doom the island, and the actions of his children are driven by their need for their memories and the hidden secrets of that father. All good, meaty themes, and with mixed success the film bears them out. I personally would have liked some revisiting of the idea of memories, with the aftermath of the children's memories, but since director decides to jump from saving the children to doomsday that I guess must be left out. There's another complaint, the film does show the virus traveling from Britan over the channel through the children, but there's no reason given why that must lead to a new outbreak.

I suppose something strange must of happened that doomed mainland Europe. Strange things happened throughout the film, incidental coincidences and odd mistakes, and tricks of chance, none impossible or violations of logic but all... well let's just say this movie features some very, very unlucky people. That's the thing that bugs me the most about this movie, it attempts a sense of realism, it attempts a sense of grandeur, it seems to preach lessons about humanity, but everything here seems to driven by bad luck. Furthermore, unlike 28 Days Later where most of the bad luck was stuff that probably was going to happen, the bad luck here is all so unnecessary. It gives the film a contrived feel overall.

But I can't dislike this film. It is too well crafted, it makes for some beautiful scenes and some beautifully terrifying scenes. It draws you into the horror, and draws you into the tragedy of the picture as well. In the best moments of the film, it speaks of the deep themes, even though what it says isn't necessarily apparent. And unlike 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later's characters earn a happy ending, and it gives the world a sad ending which 28 Weeks Later almost shows the world deserves.

But in the worse moments, the film seems pointless, excessive, and tiring. Still the better outweighs the worse although not by an immense amount.

Overall, I give it a 6 out of 10.

Anywho, take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

28 Days later, 28 weeks later, 28 years later and forever

And then the world was empty.

That was 28 days after.

And when we tried to fix it, the world emptied again.

That was 28 weeks after.

And it began with monkeys.

Caution: Lot's of spoilers, very long, while this post will talk about 28 Weeks Later and 28 Days Later it will deal primarily with 28 Days Later and a second post will deal with 28 Weeks Later

(note: I kind of liked 28 Days Later better (although that might be because I watched 28 Weeks Later in 2 shifts, but I think it's because 28 Days Later is a better film, but also since I'm doing the 28 Days Later post first, it will probably be longer and more in-depth)

There's actually a good tradition of monkey-based sci-fi horror (see 12 Monkeys), but 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later strike things a little different than most. Let me start with 28 Days Later.

The film starts insanely. It starts with a monkey watching flashes of violence. Other cages of monkeys surround the scene. And then enter the animal activists. The scientist warns them, but they are some specially intense kind of stupid (well, perhaps a kind of stupid animal activists often have). And the scientist tells them. They're infected with rage: We have to understand it before we can stop it. You don't know what you're doing. Don't do it.

And then the monkeys are released, a monkey tears into an activist and vomits blood into her. And her eyes go red, and now she too is infected with rage.

28 Days Later.

Now the movie really starts. And this start is beautiful, elegant and supremely creepy. A patient in an isolation ward wakes up. The world is empty. There is soda and candy from the vending machines, he can live. But there is just pure emptiness, with only minute clues. Infection. Exodus. Quarantine.

These two scenes give the fullness of the film's atmosphere. It is a cross between creepy insanity and chilling beauty. The hospital patient Jim finally stumbles upon a hidden cache of the infected and the creepiness returns. A couple of survivors save Jim and tell Jim the truth. Jim can't take it, needs to see his parents. the empty house, the emancipated corpses, the chilling beauty returns. But Jim lights a candle near a window watching memories play in his head. This is when it becomes clear that this movie isn't just the an intense realistic zombie movie. The color saturated memory scene intensifies the chilling beauty. But then... you don't light a candle near the window when zombies are most active at night.

Careless. This is a repeated theme of 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. People are careless, they release infected monkey, they give away their location to monkeys, they don't monitor the infected, they give complete access to one man without being careful about him, they kiss the infected despite blood-borne transmission. Just carelessness. It kills. It kills us all.

The light in the window signals the zombies and they crash through the window in a rampage. The super-fighter chick of the two survivors who saved Jim leads the defense and together they kill the infected, except the male survivor was bitten. And so, Seline, the ruthless, the beautiful, the survivor, chilling and insane and beautiful, kills the man she's spent so many days surviving with, the only friend she's had in the dead world. You have to, she tells Jim. Even if it means killing you. But I wouldn't says Jim. Seline's the survivor, Jim's the sentimentalist. Still they only have each other.

But there's a light in the window so far away. It's blinking. Night has fallen, the infected are loose, but the infected are mindless killers, and they can't work lights. So Jim and Seline venture to the skyscraper where the light was. There's a barrier of shopping carts, but these can be climbed. There are stairs to walk. But the infected can climb stairs. And so they're running. And Seline is leaving Jim behind and the infected are coming, but they're running and running.

A man in riot gear stands at the top of the stairs. He pushes Jim and Seline through to the upper hallway while he faces the infected. Jim and Seline bang on the door beyond but the man's daughter won't open it, she wants to see her father, and then...

The man beats the infected zombies, he tells his daughter to open the door and she does. Everyone shares a meal and even some liquor. It's a celebration, people are united, the two pairs of two become four. But Seline doesn't trust them, there's some reason hidden here. Seline's the survivor, but Jim's the sentimentalist, he trusts them, but he also thanks Seline, and she gives him a Sure, which she assures him is sincere.

I thought for a moment here this was going to be the standard hidden bad guy horror story where the people they join are actually evil. Well, that actually will come. But these two are good. And they know something Jim and Seline don't. There's a radio signal broadcasting a recording from a military group, promising a cure for the infection. And so they set off.

There are run-ins with infected but for the most part the trip has an odd feel to it. It is beautiful and romantic, the four become a family, and Jim and Seline start to fall in love. Very beautiful, but slightly creepy in this dead world where the infected could lurk anywhere. And where the urge to revenge might even urge one to seek the infected out and kill them, even a small child.

There's the undertheme, one repeated in 28 Weeks later, man becoming as vicious as monsterous as the infected. Even though as the film makes clear, their eyes are not the red that belong to the infected.

The four make it to the army base, but it is abandoned. It is empty, just like the rest of the world. Machines are there, buildings, but no people. The father is devestated, this was the future he had depended on, the future he needed for his daughter. Sadness, frustration, and he wanders around the deserted base, uncaring, careless:

And then a drop of blood falls on his eye. From an infected corpse. And the infection is bloodborne. The dad staggers. His daughter runs to him with concern but he calls her to stay back, and Seline grabs her. And Jim, the dad knows what Jim must do. But shots ring out. Snipers. The army birgade is still alive, even if they're late.

The army birgade has it all. A fortress with every defense against the infected. Lots of guns. Food. Water. Plans and hopes for the future with 9 young soldiers with a charismatic and fatherly commander. They do not have the cure, despite what they promised, but they do have an infected chained up, one they hoped might yield a cure through experiments (shades of Day of the Dead), but all they find, is the infected take time to starve. But enough time the commander knows they will starve, and then the world will belong to humans again.

The soldiers are a rowdy bunch, some desperate, some joking, some depressed, but they believe in their commander. And when the infected attack, they run to the guns and can fend off the attack. Here I notice something, Seline doesn't run to the battlements, but Jim does. It may be because Seline's now in love or because she needs to stay with the daughter, but still... that's a little lame. The next moment makes up for things.

The battle is over. The boys are cocky and triumphant. They see Seline, one soldier, the cockiest, takes here machete blade and boasts he will protect her now. She doesn't take well to this. He doesn't take well to rejection. He grabs for her, Jim defends her, he takes on Jim, the most depressed soldier takes on the cockiest, chaos is breaking loose and... the commander arrives. The matter is settled. And he takes Jim aside apologizing...

And then telling the truth. The boys need hope. They need a future. The world needs a future. But a future requires women. The commander had promised them women.

Jim rushes to the Seline and the daughter, he tries to get them in time. But the soldiers take the women, and beat down Jim. The depressed soldier tries to stop things but he can't. The commander offers Jim to join them. But he refuses, and so he and the depressed soldier will be executed.

The cocky soldier and one of the nicer soldiers take them to the woods. The cocky soldier isn't satisfied however with just killing them. He wants to use the bayonet. But the nicer soldier, he can't stand it, he just can't, and so... he shoots the depressed soldier. Deprived of his revenge for interference, the cocky soldier tackles the nicer soldier and in the struggle, Jim escapes. They chase after him, they shoot, they miss. He goes out of the wall. That's good enough for them.

There's a strangeness to the killing power of the infected. Sometimes it seems invincible, sometimes it seems fairly easy. Perhaps it's just a matter of whether they're in hordes, but these don't quite seem like creatures that could destroy civilization and the merry little island of England. Still, it is a disease, not understood at first, and supposedly highly contagious. Just a tear, or even a bit of saliva in a kiss as 28 Weeks Later would show. But the army men are convinced of their killing power (I'm a bit surprised there isn't infected hunts, well, so many have died in this movie, but still, it seems with enough guns and enough care... but as these two movies show again and again, people are careless.).

Presumed dead, desperate, alone, what is Jim to do... but there's a plane overhead, there's hope, there's a future, there's something to save Seline and the daughter for.

Perhaps it's this to convince Jim that even if the army men are survivors, their plans of rape deserve capital punishment.

I understand capital punishment for rapists, even though I don't agree with it. I can agree with killing a rapist to prevent a rape if there's no other choice, but what Jim does...

There's a breach at the wall and it starts to rain. The commander takes one soldier and goes himself, allowing the other soldiers to dress up the girls. It seems odd for the commander to do that, he's a rather utilitarian man, but then again he might want to preserve the boys ideas of society. But still dressing the girls up... it was shown that he feels bad about what is going to happen, but he believes that it is necessary. Do the other soldiers also feel like that? Some of them do, but some are just happy to get sex. And some are just far too excited. Why does the commander leave them to investigate the breach? Is he too disgusted with what's happening? Is he just scared of Jim's abilities? Is he just careless though?

The movie is a bit inconsistent about this. Why is Jim such a damn good fighter? He was a bicycle courier before the infection. Did he just learn along the way? But shouldn't the soldiers be even better? Maybe Jim's just more ruthless, but aren't the soldiers, well soldiers, who also have lived through all this? This actually bugs me.

But Jim fights. He kills the soldier accompanying the commander and strands the commander far from the fortress. And Jim also leaves a small squad of infected for the commander to deal with.

This hints at what Jim will do in the fortress. Jim makes it to the fortress, past the defenses and climbs on the outside, to a little internal courtyard. There they have a chained infected. Apparently, I guess because of the women, the infected isn't guarded, but maybe that's because it's chained so well. But not well enough for the gun Jim lifted from the soldier he killed. An infected is loose. Some of the soldiers go to investigate. They leave Seline and the daughter under low guard, and allow Seline to give the daughter some Valium so she just won't care about what she still thinks is going to happen (I wonder couldn't the commander have done something like this?).

But the infected are loose, and the soldiers are caught off guarded, and slowly the soldiers are either infected or dead. A few hide, one tries to flee, but Jim's there, with the bayonette. It doesn't matter that the soldier was fleeing, or even that this was the nicer soldier who had spared the depressed soldier the bayonette. And Jim doesn't give him a finishing shot. For though his eyes are not red, his face is blood covered and his mind filled with rage...

Seline and the daughter run, they hide, and all the soldiers die. 9 boys. Some too young to be anything but cadets. 9 of the few left in Britian. Even with the plane in the sky are there than many humans to spare? Yes, rape is horrible, but this? Perhaps that's why the filmmakers highlighted the bayonette. Perhaps Jim's not supposed to be the hero. Perhaps...

But at last there's just the cocky soldier, Seline, and Jim. There was another soldier, but Jim led the infected to him, and that was injured and Jim abandoned him. The commander's still out there, but he stopped to hold the hand of the dying bayonetted soldier. The commander cries, while Jim hunts. The daughter is then cornered by an infected but she hides behind a mirror. The infected stares at it, does the infected recognize himself, recognize what he's become? Maybe he just doens't understand a mirror. In the end, he leaves the daughter. If he hadn't... Jim saved one woman from rape while leaving one woman dead. But the daughter survives and then it's just the cocky soldier, Seline and Jim.

Jim surprises the cocky soldier and though the cocky soldier took Jim before, this time Jim isn't fighting like a man. He tears into the cocky soldier, ruthless, unstoppable. And then to finish it, hands in the eyeballs (to cement this as infected behavior, it is echoed by an infected in 28 Weeks Later). Seline can not believe this is Jim. She prepares to kill him as an infected, but... he then jokes with her, and she kisses him. I'm not sure even the killing that just happened was as creepy as that carefree kiss.

The daughter and Jim and Seline rush to the car, they need to escape, infected still are loose. But the commander is waiting there. You killed my boys. He shoots Jim, but the daughter manages to take the car and crash it just enough to kill the commander. Jim blacks out.

We next find them in a shed in the country side. The daughter is preparing something outside. Seline is converting the dresses into fabric for other purposes, and Jim greets her with a smile on his face. The day is bright outside, and the camera wanders. The infected now are truly starving, they lie with their stomaches distended, dying, finally. And a plane flies above it all. The daughter hears it far away and tells Jim and Seline to rush out, they rush to straighten out long sheets of fabric, and the camera pans back.

They spelled out a word in giant sheets of fabric. It's hello. Not help, but hello. Just a greeting that belongs to a world that as it turns out isn't actually dead.

The plane flies overhead, and Jim remarks: I think this time they saw us.

What does that mean exactly, really... the obvious and probably intended answer is that the plane probably did see them and they'll be rescued soon and the "again" might be referring to the last plane Jim saw or previous planes they saw before but couldn't signal to it.

There's another answer I'd like, maybe they've done this before, and before, and before. But the plane never lands. The infected are too mindless to spell out words so the plane would know that they aren't infected. But maybe, the plane knows that those who survived have been reduced to the level of the infected.

Jim with his hands in those eyeballs.

But the cheery sunlight, the cheery music. It's so bright. I have to wonder if the movie is suggesting not only that the three not only were saved, but deserved to be saved.

It's just something...

I dunno. There are the words of the depressed soldier, wondering if the normal was a world free of humanity, and that if humanity did die that would be a return to normal, defying the weeping of the other soldiers for the previous world they call normal.

There are scenes of nature, one is actually a painting which they drive through, there is a family of horses galloping. It is beautiful. And it is empty of humanity. The world dead of humans is still alive with nature.

Perhaps that's something.

Zombie movies always have a scare factor and a degree to which they are made just as a matter of emotional artistry (or attempted so). Of course some are just made as violence porn (sometimes perhaps this veers into that, was it really necessary to show the eyeballs being pierced, couldn't that just be implied?). But usually zombie movies are a critique of the world, where the zombies are in the end humans stripped of illusions (see especially Dawn of the Dead series or I am Legend). Is that the case here. The commander at one point says: Today I see humans killing humans and that's what I saw before the infection and before that. Rage was a condition of humanity. They were trying to cure it. They were so ambitious. But they were careless.

That ambition. Perhaps that's the flaw. The tragic flaw of humanity that dooms them. They were trying to cure rage, they infected the world, just like the dreaming conquerors of history. The soldiers were trying to recreate the world, but that what they believed was necessary, it killed them all. In 28 Weeks Later they tried to rebuild a nation, they end up infecting the world. How many nationalists have done the same?

Is it all about rage? Jim wakes up free of rage, free of any objects of rage, he apologizes for awakening the infected at first. Jim becomes an avatar of rage more than humanity. But he ends just smiling waiting for rescue. Perhaps then, the illusion is simply restored, and that it fell off was forgotten, especially since now the infected were starving, there were no more reminders it was easy to forget.

Forgetting... that would lead to what would happen The 28 Weeks Later...

I'm not sure in the end what everything meant from the piece. It still was crafted with utter care. It still brushed at things much deeper than violence porn which justified most of the violence and horror. It still showed a world reduced to another corner of hell. This earns the film a 7 out of 10 (which is very good in my book, I know that even with the same 10 point scale, the actual calibration of those points vary between critics immensely).

And hell doesn't simply go away. Even as illusions return. This 28 Weeks Later would show...

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

Aelita, Queen of Mars

A Soviet Sci-Fi Epic. A man goes to Mars, befriends its queen and helps its workers. Its plot has definite propaganda elements, but it still sounds pretty cool. Besides it was made in 1924 and for that early a sci-fi plot like that is pretty damn cool. Aelita's Wikipedia article claims that it inspired a lot of future sci-fi movies, and while I'm skeptical of some of its claims (the article claims it inspired Metropolis, and that's a pretty big claim), it's age probably means it inspired some stuff. If I have enough time I'll watch it, and I might watch it as part of my Russian film project, but I thought I'd like up some places to get the film for all you good people out there in internet land.

(Also of note for any Code Lyoko friends, notice that the name is the same as Code Lyoko's female lead. She too is queen of a foreign world. Coincidence? Probably not, but maybe it is a coincidence, either way=cool)

Aelita, Part 1
Aelita, Part 2
Aelita, Part 3
Aelita, Part 4
Aelita, Part 5
Aelita, Part 6
Aelita, Part 7
Aelita, Part 8
Aelita, Part 9

First 8 parts are about 9 minutes, last part is about 4 minutes, so altogether a 76-84 minute viewing experience. Not that long. But it between being great, being crazy, and doing work, ah, it's hard to find time for the movies.

Just like the movies

I have trouble watching movies at home alone nowadays. I have such a sense of urgency about my life that when I spend too much time doing one thing my mind becomes filled with a debate about what to do, and that debate interferes with my watching movies. With tv it's somewhat different, since I watch different things in 1/2 hour segments, but it has been a long time since I saw a movie that I liked was on and just sat down and watched it end to end (well, no it hasn't been a long time, I watched Spirited Away a week or two ago but that was the exception that proved the rule since I had my family as company when I was watching, when I'm with people the movie watching feels like a social experience and so I'm less reluctant about it). I think this is the same reason why I've been reading less lately. At some point I have to calm myself down and relax and teach myself that it's ok to spend a couple hours in a row unwinding every now and then, or that treating yourself to a good movie or book is a good deed as well, since you are a good person, but for right now I am more focused on getting things in my life done and so teaching myself to relax is in second gear right now, but it's still something I'm keeping in the back of my mind.