Come and See

Sunday afternoon, Kyle, Lisa, Pooteewheet, and I went to the Trylon to see the movie Come and See.  It's a pleasant romp through the Belarus countryside in 1943 by a playful tween boy, Florian.  At least until the stacks of dead bodies.  And burning people alive.  And gang rape.  And...and...and....holy ^^^^ did that ever live up to the Bleak Week: Series of Despair category.  Anti-war, anti-German...it didn't pull any punches.  2.5 hours that flew by as it threw atrocity after atrocity at you.  By the time you get to the end, there's a German who knows he's going to die, maybe burnt alive, still saying, "Some nations just shouldn't exist."  At which point the ending is German war footage and footage of Hitler rolling in reverse, almost Wizards-esque, until we get to Hitler as a child, highlighting both the allegation by that same German that "it starts with the children" [he told the adults they could leave the building before they burned it with them in it if they left the children behind] and that some nations shouldn't exist.  

I like the part on Wikipedia that says, "Roger Ebert posted a review of Come and See as part of his "Great Movies" series, describing it as "one of the most devastating films ever about anything, and in it, the survivors must envy the dead."  That's damn accurate.

Pooteewheet didn't get to see it because her ulcers kicked in so she went home in case they got worse, but came back to pick me up later at Arbeiter Brewing.  I took an hour to slough off the despair by picking up my four pack on my Arbeiter beer sub and a buy one get one free Stonewall beer. [wheat, fruited]. A very good beer.  They're having their release party for it tomorrow.    I gave away 3/4 of my four pack to my brother, who showed up because he was just down the street at Venn, my neighbor, and the host of the yard parties we go to, and it was still a really good subscription deal just for me.  I recommend Arbeiter highly.

Here's a nice phot of a bird that seemed to want my beer, or something I had, and a cyclist to wash away the despair.  If you ever get a chance to see Come and See, maybe don't.  Or do like we did and watch it with a large group so you have some ambient social support.

Elf

Last night Pooteewheet and I went to see Elf at the Parkway Theater.  It's been a long time since I saw the movie, partially because my wife and kid have zero interest in Will Ferrell, despite his good politics and inclusiveness.  The problem with Will Ferrell, from my perspective, is that you can't convince anyone that a movie has minimal Will Ferrell energy when he's in it.  But Elf is pretty damn mellow.  It's got a serious Big vibe to it, but less problematic about the whole grown woman hooks up with faux man who's really a kid issue.  My primary complaint is that it feels rushed, so some of the tropes are assumed to land because the audience is familiar with them [dad learns to love his estranged/stranger kid despite minimal actual time together for instance, and brothers learn to like each other with pretty minimal interaction].

But we had a good time and I love that the Parkway can actually serve you a drink while you watch a movie.  

As a bonus, Leslie Vincent was playing pre-Elf Christmas music, including Pennies from Heaven [in the movie].  If you haven't caught her locally, I recommend it.  She's somewhere in the Venn that is Jazz, Lounge, Ukulele, and whatever fits the season.  Her album is in the album frame Kyle gave me as a gift so keen-eyed coworkers can pick it out amidst all the board games and knickknacks in my office.  She's got a load of events coming up for the holidays at Crooner's, Metronome, Volstead, and even a Dolly Parton event that includes Sarah Morris.

I did get my wife to walk next door to Town Hall so I could have tots and a follow on beer.  Wasn't a smart idea going to Elf on an empty stomach.

7 Grandmasters

Friday night we went to a double feature at the Trylon.  Ming and his wife went to the first movie with us.  Her very first time at the Trylon. I was super excited to see 7 Grandmasters [all about the movie and his Pei Mei style here: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/01/27/7-grandmasters-according-to-the-wisdom-of-shang-kuan-cheng-master-of-the-pei-mei-technique/ as well as at Wikipedia].  I didn't realize it was being hosted by the same Seattle film guy who co-streamed The Mystery of Chessboxing in the earlier days of covid lockdowns.  Jen and I [and for part of it, Aeryn] watched that with live commentary by Rza of Wu Tang Clan and, along with some National Theatre production that streamed at that time, it's actually a fond memory of being somewhat trapped in a non-social / non-in-person environment.

Fun movie, although the translations were a bit unusual.  Ming - who could read both sets of subtitles and understand the speaking, noted that the subtitles were a bit "Shakespearian" in nature which made for exchanges were they argued about who was a 'rascal' and to never trust 'rascals'.  There were probably better word choices.  But if you got in the flow, you knew what they were saying.  It's fun to see the Chinese characters.  There's a TED video where a woman tries to teach some basics of Chinese pictographs in a few minutes.  I remember vaguely that person looks like a little stickman.  So when they said brother and nobody and me [but not you] you could see the little man in conjunction with other characters.

The second show was a series of grindhouse trailers/previews the same collector had pulled together in all his time working with old 35mm movies.  The Grindhouse Trailer Spectacular.  That was fun.  Some truly awful trailers and a lot of breasts.  I think this one in particular - Black Cobra Woman - was the one that seemed to be implying people were sticking snakes in places they didn't belong.  And Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals sort of speaks for itself. Good write up here. Was a great time, although by the end I felt a little exhausted at the grindhouse onslaught.

Skinamarink

Skinamarink.  I fell asleep.  Jen had to wake me up.  I'm pretty sure it is a horror movie aimed at ASMR folks and Five Nights at Freddies [FNAF] fans, of which I'm neither.  There's even a whole scene with the flashlight on / flashlight off moving from door to door, and Aeryn assures me the Fisher Price telephone makes an appearance in FNAF as well.  Although perhaps that's the clock.  Close enough and I'd trust Aeryn on FNAF over my internet research any day of the week.

Good on the guy for producing a legitimately different movie for only 15k, but it simply didn't do it for me.  Felt a bit disjointed.  The scariest part - how long Kevin had been in the house - had to be spelled out rather than revealed.  And the entity just didn't strike me as having a rationale, although I suspect that was part of the whole point.  I'd trust the audience score on this one, not the critics.

The Incident

My wife and I watched The Incident the other night.  I really enjoyed it.  My take is that it's about tragedy and how someone reacts to (maybe dwells upon, or dwells within is a better turn of phrase) tragedy whether they're old or young and whether they persevere in the face of that tragedy or succumb to it emotionally.  In the case of The Incident whether one thrives or shrivels seems to be based on age.  

For a while I really hoped it was a dystopia in the vein of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.  e.g. the noise was a machine of some sort splitting off a very bad dimension/possibility and screwing over some version of yourself, so that an individual could enjoy a probable good turn in the timeline that had the technology.  Personally, I think that's a creepier take on the whole thing.  Confining some version of yourself to hell so that you can enjoy a less painful reality.  How many alternate yous would you be willing to banish to hell to be happy?  Would you justify it with "it's me, so they'd be happy for the happy me?"

Inventive and well worth watching and I agree with Variety, that it's got a smattering of Borges, enough so that when it tries to explain things at the end, it almost screws up the movie.

The World, The Flesh, and the Devil (1959)

Last night Kyle and I went to Lawless Distilling for some drinks (I had the Sargasso Sea, the pink gin shot, and the Cuban gin and tonic highball.  I tried to get Pooteewheet a 375 ml of pink gin, but they were out.  He offered me a cinnamon gin as an alternative. If you know Pooteewheet, that means what was intended as a present becomes a punishment.  So not a viable alternative).  It was really busy.  A very different experience than when I was there almost all by myself while E was doing Cardboard Camp planning and fun days over at the Ivy building.

This is Kyle with his super fancy coconut drink.  He said it was pretty good despite having to drink out of what looked like a penis coming out of a boob.  My Sargasso was delicious.  I'd definitely drink that again.  And the leftover crushed ice on top of square cubes made a perfect glass for a chaser of cold water.


Afterwards we went to The World, The Flesh, and the Devil (1959) at the Trylon.  It starred Mel Ferrer, Harry Belefonte, and Inger Stevens.  And them alone.  That was the total cast.  The plot...some sort of radioactive incident/cloud disintegrates everyone on the planet.  Except: Harry Belefonte who was trapped in a mine in PA.  Inger, who was in an immersion tank and came out a day later than her friends.  And Ferrer, who was alone at sea in just the right location.  The thought experiment, it's more an idea than a plot, is that in a world devoid of people, do racial politics reassert themselves?  Spoiler: they do.  And...can they be overcome?  Spoiler: they can.  Everyone can live together in a happy Morman-polygamist dream at the end. 

Here's the original New York Times review.  Pretty cool you can find this on line: https://www.nytimes.com/1959/05/21/archives/screen-radioactive-city-the-world-the-flesh-and-the-devil-opens.html?fbclid=IwAR1PatrMM012IR01BYR6UC6RS2fbw_Ft5KI4AtUBqPoS8hoIC0xgijRTKVk

The film's title is based on Ephesians 2:2: (NIV): "You once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh”.  I'm still trying to sync that to the movie.  The flesh....yes.  The world...sure.  The devil?  I think they're referring to racial politics and prejudices as the devil in this case. 

I looked up some of the details about the movie. Per Wikipedia, Inger Stevens, the lead actress: "After her death, Ike Jones, the first African-American to graduate from UCLA's School of Theater, Film, and Television, claimed[16] that he had been secretly married to Stevens since 1961. Some doubted this due to the lack of a marriage license, the maintaining of separate homes and the filing of tax documents as single people.[17] However, at the time Stevens' estate was being settled, the actress's brother, Carl O. Stensland, confirmed in court that his sister had hidden her marriage to Jones "out of fear for her career".[18] Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner A. Edward Nichols ruled in Ike Jones's favor[19] and made him administrator of her estate.[20][21] A photo exists of the two attending a banquet together in 1968.[5] Her website also states that the marriage to Jones took place in Tijuana, Mexico."

She had an interesting life from a narrowly-missed-that perspective (NYT obit): "Bad luck always plagued her, Miss Stevens said. She col lapsed, along with 11 others filming “Cry Terror” in the Hudson Tubes, suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. Her jaw was dislocated while film ing a “Zane Grey Theater” TV show. In 1959, after a depress ing New Year's Eve party, she attempted suicide. And in 1961, she was the last passenger to leave a jet that crashed on landing at Libson and exploded half‐minute after her exit."  In the end, it wasn't that narrowly missed as she died of what seemed to be a barbiturate suicide.  She seems like she had such a wild life (burlesque, married to Ike), but couldn't synthesize something positive out of her accomplishments.

I wanted to capture what my friend's mother, Pat, said about the movie so I don't lose it: "One of the first "adult themed" movies I was allowed to see( at age 17).  I was amazed and awed. I couldn't believe it, having lived in small towns my whole life, and loving science fiction, that the books I had read were all so bland- I guess the library was good at censoring for teens. It is hard for people today to understand how protected and watched some of us were, especially girls. When raised by parents like mine , I remember getted grounded for two weeks for saying the word "pregnant" instead of "expecting" or "in a family way".  I thought the movie was amazing in its feeling of desolation and I was actually stunned at the interaction of the 3 people, and at the positive ending. Two years later I was having screaming fightswith my parents about not being able to go south with the freedom riders,and about sex before marriage (college will do that to a kid!)"

Rosebud

My neighbors are making some sort of holiday movie in the back yard, complete with a very professional looking portable camera boom and a wood sled.  I can't determine the plot by just watching them at work.  Not a zombie movie like last time when Eryn was involved.  I'm hoping it's a Finnish war epic.

The German

A coworker sent me this short, The German, to watch.  It's impressive what special effects look like now, thinking back to what war movies looked like when I was a kid.


The German from Nick Ryan on Vimeo.