Nobody, darnit

So I've had the theory that one of the vital motifs of the Western (and related samurai movie) mythos is the division of townspeople and gunfighters, of innocent and jaded, of being inside civilization and the law, or outside. You can't really be both at once. The townspeople need the gunfighters to do the things they can't do (kill people) without losing their innocence and protected status. Right now, I'm rewatching The Magnificent Seven. The brutality at the end, of the villagers rising up and basically massacring the bandits, is making me question my theory. These guys are doing plenty of killing themselves. (and they're going in with shovels and chairs and their bare hands. They don't have the distancing luxury of guns.) You know those videos of army ant swarms tearing apart spiders way bigger than themselves? This reminded me of that.

Many Westerns, of course, tend to gloss over the effects that killing people has on the killer. One of the reasons The Magnificent Seven is so great is that it instead highlights this and questions the glamour.

So are we supposed to assume that the villagers aren't going to be afflicted with some serious PTSD? That that girl who goes and buries an ax in some bandit's back isn't going to have nightmares about it for the rest of her life? At the end, the movie redraws the line between inside and outside. "The farmers are like the earth, and you (the gunfighters) are like the wind driving away the locusts, coming, and then going." The gunfighter who stays with the villagers, the first thing he does is take off his gun. You can't live on both sides of the line.

But is this actually an example of the two sides I spoke of merging? Now the villagers have lost just enough innocence to be able to defend themselves, but still have the benefits of community and order. Or is the point I should take home that the dividing line isn't being able to kill, but being able to live in a community?
Discuss.

I'm going to take a moment to wax pleasantly about The Ghost and Mrs Muir, which I found for cheap last night. This is one of those movies my mom and I bonded over when I was a kid. It's a film version of an old gothic romance, and hits all the right notes for me. It's got a strong woman (Mrs. Muir) and a dark and broody man (The Ghost). You can get all the creepy stalker fantasies of Twilight (He watches her do pretty much everything, since in fairness, it's not like he has anything else to do) without the wimpy women or implied violence. I suppose, in theory, The Ghost could inflict some emotional damage, but being non-corporeal, there's not much else he can do. And his rages just slide off Lucy like water on oilcloth. One of my favorite bits is when he's yelling at her for chopping down his monkey-puzzle tree. I love him for having a monkey tree, but I also love her for making the house hers. After all, he's dead, and if he doesn't like what she's doing to the house that is now hers, he can just move on. (This movie is also a good banner-carrier for the need to have a proper will. You never know when you're going to kick the gas-valve while you're sleeping.)

It's a romance, but at the same time, it's not. Their relationship is based entirely on friendship and learning to respect each other. He's too crotchety for any proper romantic scenes, and in any case, the movie actively subverts that sort of romanticism, basically saying that blunt honesty and mutual respect is better than fluffy condescension and kisses in a flower garden.

I really liked the Captain America movie, and it made me actually want to see Thor, so I could get the whole set and appreciate the experiment that Marvel is doing with their movies.

I can't say Thor did it for me like Captain America did. I can't take guys in mysteriously stiff square capes who talk with really awful English accents seriously. At the end, I saw J Michael Straczynski helped write it, and then it made so much sense, since the stuff I couldn't stand in this movie was the same sort of thing I couldn't stand in Babylon 5. I wish there'd been more of Thor on earth, and less of the Asgard stuff. (especially the battle scenes. bo-ring!) If the whole movie was just Thor getting tasered, tranquilized and hit by trucks, I'd be a happy camper.
I'm sure part of my preference for Captain America comes down to the simple fact that Thor is a jock, and Steve Rogers gets beat up by jocks. (Not that Thor necessarily used to beat up the ninety-pound Asgardians, but we don't actually see that he doesn't, do we?) So while it's nice to see the jock realize he's an idiot and change his ways, it's even nicer to see the physically weak guy valued for his inner strength. Captain America's muscles are incidental to his character; they're just a way for him to reach his fullest potential.

There's also the imbalance Thor's movie had, in that the interesting storyline (the intrigue with Loki) took place with Thor mostly offscreen. Thor himself was a catalyst in that drama, but except for the very beginning, not an actor. I thought there were two interesting things going on in the movie: Loki drama in Asgard, and Thor putzing around on Earth eating pancakes. But the twain did not meet, and honestly, I would have preferred more pancakes, more of Thor appreciating his humanity and his inner ninety-pound weakling. (And getting tasered, but I'm a sadist that way.)

But hey, loads of people love this movie, and I like that. Like Captain America, it's got it's own distinct style, and Marvel is doing a good job appealing to a variety of tastes. If one movie doesn't ping my own tastes, that's fine. I think they're doing a great job setting up an interconnected world. In Captain America, the MacGuffin is this glowing blue box. When I saw that I was all, "Glowing blue box? Oooh-kay. Fine, whatever, just keep showing crazy Hugh Jackman drooling over it." Then I saw Thor, where Asgard is full of glowing blue boxes, and I'm all, "Oh, duh. They did get the damned thing from Norway and called it the Cube of Odin or something like that."

Captain America actually made me excited about the Avengers movie, but Thor has lessened that excitement. How are they going to reconcile the styles of all these characters? Iron Man has his glossy glamour, Thor has his plastic Lord of the Rings look, and Captain America's all gritty and muddy. And then they've got the men in black of SHIELD holding them all together. Either there will be awesome fun playing with the juxtapositions, or it will be a hideous crazy-quilt.

Well, I saw it last night, and it was pretty much exactly what I expected, which was a lot of fun explosions, special effects and chiseled muscles. (How is Daniel Craig's chest not made of plastic?)
The acting and dialogue was a little worse than I'd expected, but I was amused by being able to predict exactly what was going to happen to a character by the way the camera angled on them. This is not a groundbreaking movie. Every single element of it is a reliable old trope, but strung together in a way that's fun if you're willing to turn off your brain. I'm pretty sure it would be an excellent tool for teaching basic storytelling. The opening scene in particular is classically handled, the camera carefully pointing out everything we need to know, and doing it in silence, which is a good thing, because Daniel Craig cannot do an American accent worth shit.

Also, there's a dog. Dog doesn't do anything except hang around people, and I imagine he's there because some exec said, "Hey, throw a dog in there. People love dogs!" And indeed, he is a lovable dog, hooking up with whoever killed his last master.

Now, me being the sort of person I am, I'm most interested in the aftermath of the events in this movie. Slightly spoilery stuff behind the cut:
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I haven't posted in a while, partly because I didn't have internet for a while, and partly because I've been so busy, I've just had too much to talk about.

I've been settling into life in Seattle. My stuff is still a little haphazardly organized, and while my furniture arrangements are perfect for one person, they're not so good if I want to have anyone else over. I did once, though. kehrli came over one Friday night, and I lounged on my bed while he sat at my desk, and we both wrote and hung out like the old days back in the State Street loft.

This obnoxiously cold spring we've been having hasn't been too conducive to walking, but I've done a fair amount of exploring--basically picking a bus at random and riding it somewhere, then walking in the general direction of something interesting. I've got a bajillion photos of spring buds from the arboretum I could show you. Maybe I'll upload them later and attempt to describe my own flailing attempt to understand my fascination with texture and macro shots. (And the frustration of achieving the perfect macro shot with a point and shoot camera!)

Living next to the Seattle Center has been awesome. The more I go there, the more I love it, particularly the fountain, which always has children running through it. They've been having cultural fairs almost every weekend. Yesterday was West Africa. I adore many types of African music, so of course I was there, listening to Naby Camara. This older white lady who looked like she should be teaching junior high got up to dance, and encouraged others to join her. Soon, the floor was full of an interesting mix of white tourists, hippies, and actual black people. Two of the black women were dancing while bent double. There were quite a few people in front of me, and I couldn't see clearly. Part of me was thinking, "er, are they doing some variety of traditional dance?" But then the view cleared, and I saw they were both holding the hand of a teeny, tiny little girl, just barely old enough to stand on her own. :-)

After I bought a cd, I made my way (MONORAIL!) to the U District, where I bought a new outfit from a thrift shop that didn't seem to realize that sorting by size is a nice thing. Then dinner with Keffy, and then home to spend the evening with Harry Potter and his latest movie. I avoided the Deathly Hallows pt1 in the theater because I dreaded the interminable wandering through the woods wailing with angst sequence I hated so much in the books. However, even though that was in there, the pain was worth it just for the scene of everyone bouncing around half naked looking like Harry. ("Don't look at me, Bill!")

Just watched Inglourious Basterds, which I liked a lot, but holy smokes was that movie padded out. I read the Tarantino slaved and agonized over this script for years, and that it just grew and grew. Yeah, it shows. I know he's capable of good pacing. I mean, it's been a while since I've seen Reservoir Dogs, but I don't ever remember thinking, "yes, there's a guy bleeding on the floor. Moving on now!" But this movie had an awful lot of "yes, there's Nazis and they know what the good guys* are up to. Moving on now!"

*Using the term, "good guy" very loosely.

Anyway, I watched it at this particular moment to get general inspiration to work on the Mistworld stories (my own alternate WWII world). I've got a long printout of WWII dates to go over and determine how my timeline differs. Somewhere in my room is a book about female war correspondents back then. I even set it out so I could read it. It's an omen, but does it say to put off this novel, or to get off my ass and clean my room?

Having heard that awriter has never seen The Goonies, I remedied this tonight. Probably...you have to have grown up with it.

However.

One thing I'd never seen, which was included with the special features, was the Cyndi Lauper music video, which I will here embed for your pleasure. Probably you'll need to be on as many drugs as Cyndi and company were when they made it. It's Loooonnnggg... originally a two-parter, I think. However, at least try to watch the end, which has the weirdest and best deus ex machina ever. EVER.
About 10:30 minutes in.

I want Summon Andre the Giant as my superpower!

okay, okay, okay.
Keffy's going to write a magnificent post of joyous doom, ( he took notes. lots of notes) but I'm going to get mine up first, so it'll be quick.
First, you might want to wait until 2012 hits the small screen so you can MST the crap out of it. I almost hyperventilated not trying to laugh out loud. Second, there's a seizure-inducing lighting setup at the climax. WTF HOLLYWOOD?
anyway...
If you're a science fiction writer, you need to see 2012, because it is the greatest lesson on WHAT NOT TO DO. EVER. in science fiction.
This is high quality bad science. The highest I've ever seen. How high? As high as a boat getting smashed into the top of Mount Everest!
The blah blah emotional family plot is fine and standard and hits all the cliche notes except one which I was actually disappointed by, especially since that particular heroic sacrifice had a perfectly clear spot later in the movie.

It was good with the having lots of not white people, bad, bad bad with the not having a lack of sexism. Why the hell did they even have women in this movie? They only did any good when they were using their Magical Mother Rays to communicate. Oh yeah, the German Chancellor. She was worthwhile.

I'm sure someone somewhere will have fun breaking down the exact nature of the bad science somewhere. It would fill a couple volumes, though. I'll just hit my personal favorites behind the spoiler cut.

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I just watched Izo. It's about the ghost of a killer hacking and slashing his way through the afterlife. Super surreal, super symbolic, but not in an obvious, Hero's Journey way.
In the special features, the creator (I missed if it was the writer or the director.) said that he was trying to show "the spirit of the Japanese man." I could definitely see that, though to look at some of the reviews out there, I'm one of the few who can. The movie's like a visual poem, especially at the beginning, where it's interspersed with flashes of stock footage which adds to the emotional content, sometimes in clashing ways. A one-eyed cat, a flower, a naked woman.
Time overlaps, and we get samurai fighting on a bridge while trucks swerve around them. Vacation home salesmen turn into demons. Flashbacks to his life. He's got a tyrannical boss. Throughout the film, Izo is called the very spirit of irrationality, and you really have to keep that in mind if you want to experience this film. It's not a rational, linear plot. It's a peeling back of the facade of the modern world to expose the neurotic blood and guts beneath. (lots and lots of blood!) As with poetry, you have to let each image spark an emotion, and just marvel at the tapestry of sparks that's created.
Crazy, awesome movie. Definitely not for everyone.

Yeah, Keffy sums it up well
I thought it was okay, but disappointingly so. I'm not sure how they managed to make it so boring, but they did. But hey, hot people were hot, and Christian Bale's character was totally badass for like five seconds.