Nicholas Cage is Dracula in ‘Renfield’

This gemstone of a movie is the Nicholas Cage performance I’ve been yearning for all my life, and Nick’s visceral knowledge of cinematic vampires and his explosive charisma shines like a dark evil ruby throbbing at the heart of it. Nike captures the creepy otherworldiness that makes the early expressionist horrors so eternally haunting. Nike taps his vampire past from ‘Vampire’s kiss,’ Nick demurs a magnetically handsome and lugubrious Bela Lagosi, a bit of Babadook, and well, I could likely go on forever, such is the depth and panache of Nicholas Cage’s Dracula. You love him and fear him and despise him all at the same time, your heart, your gut, and your brain are all flummoxed by him.

The visual motifs are gorgeous and expressionist with Kung-Fu Hustle style hyper-gore comedy. Delicious villains, villains who revel in their villainy, who enjoy it, and of course psycho gangsters are going to team up with a wealthy, enduring, and magnetically handsome Prince Of Darkness, they already are vampiric, as all the cops are corrupt but one, so like Dracula’s village where he is Count, it is a community corruption. Dracula despoils the world around him like a plague and a curse, dancing in the ruins as he feeds off the misery and asserts his control to keep it that way. It’s amazing how Nicholas cage makes you viscerally FEEL this evil, to see it in his every movement and expression, yet he’s so beautiful doing this he’s hypnotising.

Renfield is Dracula’s bug eating servant, a debased servile familiar bound with evil like Golem to his Precious. The premise is akin to ‘What We Do In The Shadows’, vampires from the familiar’s perspective, but being in the original Universal Monsters Universe, ‘Renfield’ taps the mainline vampire iconography, and delivers it with a masterful romantic, comedic, action thriller extravaganza.

Dracula’s familiar Renfield is played by the both charming and endearing Nicholas Holt, a dope who fell for Dracula’s trap, losing his family and his soul to Dracula’s evil appetite. Not all vampires are wrapped up in Christianity, but Dracula is, and modern Renfield finds church run support groups to begin staving off Dracula’s terrible grip over him. Renfield gains super power by eating bugs, which he figres makes no sense, except that it does. Dracula is the source of his power, and just like Dracula feeds off of the innocence of his victims, he also feeds off of Renfield’s humiliation and debasement, so Dracula made his power activator the debased eating of bugs. Like the lady says in the clip when Renfield grabs that ant farm from some kid and starts chugging ants an sand to power up to fight off the assault force pouring in, “You’re a bad man Mr. Renfield.”

But yes, sometimes it is useful to be bad.

Awkwafina plays a great loud mouthed cop, the only one not on the gangster payroll, whose tender side really shines through in her chemistry with Nicholas Holt. And she’s a natural with badass gun moves. She’s the paladin hero of the story, by force of integrity, and turns Renfield away from Dracula. At movie’s start, the bishop exorcizing Dracula fails to turn Renfield because he rests his authority on the church, which is corruptible, and so Renfield frees Dracula to kill the vampire hunters.

This time, it is the spark of love and the integrity of the hero that turns Renfield against Dracula, and the integrity of the authority of truth, which Awkwafina embodies through her actions, dispels Dracula and his plague of corruption destroying the police force and the town. There is also a super breezy 21t century Christian church, speaking through the language of self-help with some pertinent relationship analysis, that wins Renfield away from Dracula, so it retains the Christian elements of the source material, while engaging both Christian and non-Christian 2023 audiences. Renfield becomes then a sort of Breaking Good, rather than ‘Breaking Bad’, a redemption story, of good triumphing over evil.

Renfield is cinematically firing on all cylinders, and this story approach, and Kung Fu Hustle style hyper action comedy, could very well open up the Universal Monster (UM) franchise. The UM’s last run at activating the franchise was the Tom Cruise ‘The Mummy’ and a few other big budget star studded titles. The concept didn’t gel, the idea being to make Monster icons into super hero figures robbed the deep moral codes at the heart these stories, making the premises confusing and at odds with the source material.

If a Renfield tone were taken for the other Universal titles of Wolfman, The Mummy, the reptile guy from the deep, we could see the franchise re-emerge. Nicholas Cage’s Dracula performance can anchor a franchise run, and this gives us a go at making these iconic embodiments of evil ooze with embodied evil like Nicholas Cage as Dracula. Once I saw Nike Cage as Dracula, I knew it was going to be awesome, and it exceeded my expectations.

Buy this movie so they make more.

Rob Zombie’s ‘The Munsters’

The new 2022 movie The Munsters, who knew, this bolt out of nowhere totally hits the nail on the head and is Rob Zombie’s best film yet, reinventing the American TV comedy classic while maintaining his continuity as an auteur with the alchemy flowering in all sorts of entertaining ways. For a director who built his name on hard-violence horror, this totally non-violent, family friendly, broadly comedic delight of a film may be showing how much that old motif was holding him back.

Rob Zombie’s always powerful aesthetic prowess glories in ornate set pieces, lush ever changing wardrobes, technicolour glamour lighting just poured on every scene, and his trade mark grottiness becomes a flourished counterpoint to the TV original’s cartoony goofiness, to which the film stays incredibly true.

The mad laboratory with the stained-glass domed roof, the exquisite halloweentownland of Transylvania, the neon-goth-punk rock concert, trippy witch dance clubs, and then Rob Zombie drops us into another delightful musical interlude, with probably some dancing, before comedy pratfalls and son-in-law jokes and then well crafted character development and a plot coherent even at its zaniest.

Rob Zombie is determined to entertain you from every angle, and it’s deeply exhilarating because your witnessing Rob Zombie use the lode stone of ‘The Munsters’ to finally crack his own code and summon up this beauty of a film as if to finally say: ‘This Is What I’ve Been Trying To Say!’. So this is the opposite of an IP churning rehash content fodder, this is an earnest heartfelt personal journey.

Rob Zombie’s true glory here, though, is his full bore post-modern pop-culture pastiche/mosaic which is incredibly dense and robust with a deft light touch that channels Rob Zombie’s twitchy-hyper quick-edit mania into edging up these hoaky old familiars. The Munsters premise already lends itself, being a parody of iconic classics like Universal Monsters Frankenstein Monster, whose iconic green flat head is the bases for Herman Munster the everyman husband and flubbering failed stand-up comedian.

Rob Zombie just packs in the culture-content, layers it, any given moment and there are like 16 different cultural flourishes, even French New Wave Cinema, and I swear to god one of them is even Grizelda from the ancient Canadian TV show ‘The Hilarious House Of Frankenstein’, which happened to be Vincent Price’s last gig, an easy gig as he just had to sit and read poetry, but man did he deliver, some of his best spooky talk since Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’, and of course Rob Zombie knows all this already because he is a pop-culture maniac.  

The comedy keeps up a pretty fast jokes-per-second rate, not quite belting out the gags as fast as Kentucky Fried Comedy, or Mel Brooks, but faster than a standard sit-com rate of Big Bang Theory. Comedy wise I’m good with the broad physical and gopping buffoonery imported from the original, but a good deal of the comedy is a self-depreciating Chris Isaac sort of humour I don’t really get; I understand a joke is happening but… okay sure.

That’s a quibble, though, because incredibly refreshing is the total lack of irony, every joke, every emo, totally earnest and straight forward. This goes along with the total absence of political subtext, and avoiding that contemporary metastasizing morass is no mean feat, making it defiantly a-political because yes, a Frankenstein monster in sunglasses and a purple suit driving a sports car through Hollywood is more important than whatever –isms are being spouted by people who pretend they know what’s really going on.

I respect a show that has its main plot dilemma resolved by having the wayward werewolf cousin who disappeared with the family fortune to go gamble in Las Vegas return from the whole venture with things having gone better than he expected; cash money, dance the Munster victory dance, roll credits.

Rob Zombie now makes great family friendly comedies, the times they are a changin’! More please.

Morally Fargo

Moral culpability is the foremost theme in the Fargo television series. In the first season, the characters embody extreme and complex moral attitudes brought out through stark oppositions.

Malvo is the dragon, taken from his first encounter with Gus Grimly warning that ‘there be dragons here.” Malvo personally relates to the wolf, and thinks of himself as a predator, but the joy and artistry to which he takes to violence bely a greater sort of monster. Take the diabolical end of Don Chumph, a minor villain who got worse then he perhaps deserved, or the glee with killing Burt Canton in Las Vegas, undoing six months of undercover work and costing him the $100,000 bounty.

At the same time, it is in the first encounter with Grimly that we see the moral complexity within Malvo, who repeatedly warns off the innocent and the weak that he is a danger to them. He also warns Lester when they meet again in Las Vegas. In this, one can form a respect for Malvo. He is an honest killer, with no bones about what he is and what he will do to people.

A contrasting villainy is found in Lester, one who puts up a front of innocence and victimhood, but who turns to betrayal and violence against even those who love and protect him. Lester’s framing his brother’s family is bad enough, but he reaches his greatest moral depravity in sending his second wife Linda to her death, even insisting she wear his jacket like a loving husband, but all to make her a better mark for Malvo. In this Lester is despicably Evil while Malvo is dangerously Evil, but has some moral boundaries while Lester has none.

Malvo himself is fascinated by moral disintegration. He has a knack for sensing moral frailty in people and enjoys setting them on the path to depravity and self-destruction. Malvo senses this in Lester at the hospital and unleashes the latent villain within Lester. Malvo’s recording of these moral disintegrations seems to be both a hobby and a compulsion, a reaffirming that the world is inherently amoral, but also his only form of kinship. After the killings in Los Vegas, Malvo calls out to a fleeing Lester like a long lost friend “See you real soon” both childlike and menacing.

Molly embodies moral fortitude, doggedly seeking the truth in a case all others have forsaken. She is in opposition to Lester, sniffing out his evil while he manipulates the small town relationships to cover his crimes.

Gus Grimly embodies conscience in that he makes mistakes but seeks to rectify them, such as when he heeds Malvo’s warning at their first encounter and lets him go. Gus is in opposition to Malvo, who glories in the hopelessness of moral collapse, as with his recorded victims. In the end, Gus overcomes his fear and takes down Malvo, both rectifying his earlier mistake and actually protecting his family when before his cowardice in the face of Malvo was excused as being protective of his family.

Molly is also in opposition with Bill Oswalt, who becomes sheriff and tries to scuttle her attempt to crack the case. Bill Oswald is willfully morally blind, he does not want to believe the people in his community, like Lester, are capable of horrible crimes. He becomes distraught at even the suggestion that such things are possible, preferring to blame roaming drifters for all the violence in his town. Bill’s revelation at the end destroys an innocence he clung desperately too, forced to see the factual actualities of human nature. He saw himself as good, preserving the peace and protecting his community, ie Lester, but it allowed, and even encouraged, so much more evil and violence to be perpetrated.

Fargo represents a strong turn in the zeitgeist, along with shows like Better Call Saul, where moral culpability and accountability are explored with sophistication and nuance. This is after a long run of shows in the vein of nihilism and normalized amorality. Breaking Bad, Dexter, Hannibal, Walking Dead, Game Of Thrones etc, all glorified amoral behaviour. Our cultural collective has mirrored for us a dark turn in society where a moral topsy turvy became the norm. Shows such as Fargo give light that we are exiting that mentality and entering into a new social maturity where an awareness of morality in a complex world takes hold, and it is the heroes we root for, not the dragons.

(By: Michael Zepf)

Die Hard: Villain and Hero

Bruce Fuckin’ Willis

John Mcclane and Hans Gruber are opposites, and in far more ways then just that Mcclane is a cop and Gruber is a thief.

Mcclane is rooted in his American, New York born, identity, so much so that he cannot move when his wife gets a promotion. Gruber is German, but his only connection to homelands and nationalities is as a convenient tool in his ploy to delay the authorities with his pose as a terrorist.

Mcclane is a genial, working class kinda guy. He means well but often puts his foot in his mouth. Gruber is aristocratic and pretentious, “the benefit of a classical education.”

Alan Rickman owns villainy

Mcclane is optimistic and usually finds a way to like people. Like with Argyle, Mcclane is often annoyed with people first, but then realizes he’s being a schmuck and comes back with some common man charm. His optimism is shown in his firm belief that he can win his wife back. Also revealing his romantic side. Gruber is cynical and nihilistic. Gruber’s mock belief system as a “terrorist” and his misanthropy show through in his glee as he kills. His deadly game with Ellis especially.

Gruber is a manipulative liar, he lies constantly. Mcclane is honest and forthright. He carries his heart on his sleeve and cares deeply for even those he detests, like Ellis.

Gruber also boasts constantly. He is not just a thief, he is an exceptional thief. He loves perfection and planning and being ten steps ahead of the game. He understands systems and how to manipulate established response procedures. It would all have gone perfectly if not for the imperfect Mcclane, the fly in the ointment, the unpredictable, the adaptable.

Mcclane improvises, makes due, and thinks on the fly, as with the fire hose leap of the roof. He’s an exceptional killer but he kills defensively, to serve and protect. Gruber and his men kill for money, Takagi, for revenge, killed brother, and for fun, Ellis.

Mcclane is “alone, tired and hunted.” He is barefoot and broken hearted. Gruber is well equipped and slick.

These two would not get along in even normal circumstances. They did find a certain glee in disliking each other. Their one common trait being their wicked sense of humour with witty rejoinders and cowboy references, both “Yippie ki ay, motherfucker” and “Ho Ho Ho, now I have a machine gun” becoming pop culture memes that still run strong.

Bye!

(By: Michael Zepf)

Pulp Fiction, redemption with a side of fries.

Two bad dudes.

The theme of Pulp Fiction is redemption. In Pulp Fiction’s amoral world of depravity the core of the story concerns itself with those few who learn to turn their backs on these deplorable, if not colourfully presented, forces of darkness.

Jules is the primary redemption character and undergoes the most dramatic reversal. Jules starts out as one badass motherfucker. His biblical speech of execution and his hard eyed, cold blooded style set him as a notch above. Yet it is Jules that feels the hand of god when his life is spared by fluke chance. He decides to turn away from “the life” and walk the Earth, living simply and helping his fellow man. Vincent stands in contrast to this. He refuses to see meaning or value in anything other then base pleasure and self preservation. In the end this costs him his life, for if he had left with Jules, Vincent would still be alive.

I’m not going to kill your ass.

Jules’s act of redemption is to extend his experience of mercy. Jules defuses the volatile restaurant robbery and turns his bible speech from one announcing cold blooded murder into a sermon, one he hopes will reach the hearts of Yolanda and Pumpkin. Jules has put his theory in to practice. He has gone from being the tyranny of evil men into the shepherd who is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children.

The other redemptive figure is Butch. Butch breaks his deal with Marsellus, he shrugs off killing a man in the ring and he murders Vincent. At first it seems that it is chance that will allow him to pull all this off but his random encounter with Marsellus hurls him to an even more desperate situation. Butch falls into the hands of Zed’s gang of rapists. Butch’s redemptive act is to go back for Marsellus, a man who wants him dead and has the means to do it. Butch saves him from a fate of rape, torture and death. In doing so he has squared himself with Marsellus.

Gotcha!

Both redemptive characters are given second chances, but they only achieve redemption by utilizing this second chance to make the moral choice and to help others. Vincent saw no meaning in his second chance, or in the help granted to him by The Wolf, by Jimmie, by Lance or by Mia. Vincent would have fallen each time without the goodwill of others. Vincent’s fatal flaw was that he could not extend this to others, that he could not see circumstances telling him to change. Fate kept closing in until all it took was a toasted pop tart to bring him down.

(By: Michael Zepf)

That’s Chinatown

Smile!

Jake Gittes in many ways is the typical noir private eye. He is an investigator who’s bread and butter is investigating infidelity and Gittes keeps a professional detachment that is at first seen as cynicism, but at his core Gittes is a decent person. Gittes’s decent nature is shown in the scene with Curly. Gittes talks the man out of murdering his wife and gives him time to pay off his debt.

Gittes remains detached to a point but if he feels some ones going to far he care enough to try and help, which is his fatal flaw and why Chinatown is bad luck for him. Gittes learns in Chinatown that caring and interfering only makes things worse. His mantra is to do “as little as possible.” This is not a cynical detachment but a defence mechanism. He learns you don’t always know what’s going on in a complex situation and good intentioned meddling can make things worse. His mantra is a protection against causing harm through ignorant action. Just investigate and observe. Gittes breaks this rule once again to help Evelyn but his mantra proves true once more and Evelyn is killed.

The detective archetype is often penniless, on the outs, disreputable, addiction prone and looking out for number one.  Gittes is unusual in noir in that he is a successful detective. He has cash and reputation and connections. Gittes is skilled, he is subtle, he charms his way into things and uses violence only as a last resort. He also caries no gun, which actually seems to improve his ability to deal with people like the angry farmer. Being armed signals a certain hostility and danger. Being an unarmed citizen makes people more prone to open up. Besides, Gittes proves fast thinking and tactical fighting are just as effective, as when he escaped from Mulvihill.

Chinatown comes to mean several things in this story. It is the physical place where the story inevitably concludes. It is the dark past the Gittes is hiding from. It is the consequence of sticking your nose into other peoples business, of well intentioned action leading to dire consequences. It is the idea that life is complex and messy and never what it appears to be, secrets hiding within secrets. When one dam bursts, they all give way like dominoes and the consequences destroy everything in it’s path. Then all you can do is leave it behind. That’s Chinatown.

(By: Michael Zepf)

The Godfather and Power

You, you I like.

In physics Power = Work over Time. The more work, the less time, the more power. Don Corleone stands as the seat of power in the underworld. If the Don says something will happen, it will happen. If the Don wants something done, it gets done. Why? Because people are afraid of him, and they are afraid of him because he is powerful.

This is the tenuous hold Corleone has on power, even at his apex. The Don, like all the powerful, is slave to the conditions needed to keep that power and the illusion of its totality in the eyes of everyone else.

The Don begins as both the most powerful and least powerful. It is the day of his daughter’s wedding and, by the traditions on which his power is anchored, he cannot turn down a request. Supplicants come seeking the Don’s intervention in their problem. The Don uses this as an opportunity to grow his power, asking for favours in return and haggles not on price or difficulty, but on ones commitment to respect and honour the friendship upon which the deal is made.

Shut your mouth!

Later the Don negotiates with the Turk and turns him down. Sonny speaks out of turn counter to the decision of the Don. One small ill timed phrase and the illusion of the Don’s omnipotence is shattered. The enemy has seen the chink in his armour and strikes full force to take advantage of it.

The Don is shot while Sonny is pressured to take the deal his father turned down. The Don lives and Sonny resists. The plan to take down the Corleones fails but they are vulnerable and all the families move in to secure their advantage.

Tit for tat war ensues and escalates with no end in sight. It is only concluded by a show of seemingly mystical power, as all the Corleone enemies are killed simultaneously as Michael christens his nephew and accepts his role as the Godfather.

Like father , like son.

Science Fictional: A Changing Genre, Part 1

 

Sci-fi is a genre that uses futuristic, technological and conceptual worlds for storytelling. Sci-fi allows for the breaking of normal world rules through the prism of scientific explanation and technology, even if it is pseudo science techno babble.

World building is of supreme importance to Sci-Fi stories. Futuristic or technological worlds often require large series bibles to keep track of the details. Conceptual sci-fi must be careful of its logic to create what is astounding and unbelievable but that a popular audience can follow.

Sci-fi can be serious and dry like early Doctor Who. Sci-fi can also be a goofy romp full of bright color and zany plots, as with Lost in Space. It can be full of violence and intrigue as with Battlestar Galactica, or it can be gentle human comedies as in Quantum Leap.

The Doctor, but Who does he think he is?

There are many character traits common in sci-fi. Highly intelligent and scientific minds are extremely prevalent and usually show up as scientists and doctors: Mr. Spock (Star Trek), The Doctor (Doctor Who), Dr. Sam Beckett (Quantum Leap), Mr. Data (Star Trek: TNG), Dana Scully (X-Files), Dr. Gaius Baltar (Battlestar), John Crichton (Farscape), Dr. Daniel Jackson (Stargate SG-1), Dr. Walter Bishop (Fringe), Cosima Niehausen (Orphan Black) or a whole town of mad geniuses in Eureka. These characters are also great at delivering exposition and techno-babble.

Adventurous Spacefarers are found driving many series: The Star Treks, Battlestar Galactica, Lost in space, Red Dwarf, Andromeda, Farscape. Starships are usually at the heart of these stories, sometimes taking on a character of their own either literally as with Moya (Farscape), the Tartis (Doctor Who) or emotionally like Kirk’s Enterprise (Star Trek).

Geordi La Forge, always out for that extra .035% efficiency.

Engineering and technical genius are also prevalent in sci-fi stories. Starships usually require engineering specialists and the future requires gadgetry to accomplish the undoable. Brilliant people are able to use technology to solve problems, build new things or cause problems bigger than people thought possible. The most famous engineer is the Enterprise’s chief engineer Scotty (Star Trek). Geordie La Forge took over on the next Enterprise in Star Trek: TNG.

Danger! Will Robinson! Danger!

Robots, cyborgs and computers are frequently characters in sci-fi. Sometimes they are helpers like Robby the Robot (Lost In Space), the Enterprise Computer (the Star Treks), Mr. Data (Star Trek: TNG), Andromeda AI (Andromeda) and Kryten (Red Dwarf). Other times they are monsters like Cylons (Battlestar), Cybermen (Doctor Who), Borg (Star Trek: TNG), Replicators (Stargate).

Interstellar response squad.

Warriors and soldiers also have an important place in sci-fi. Battlestar Galactica is entirely militaristic. Doctor Who has the Brigadier and U.N.I.T. to take on the chap with the wings there, five rounds rapid. Stargate has a freedom loving human military battling tyrannical powers across the galaxy. In Farscape, Aeryn Sun is an officer of the authoritarian Peace Keeper military.

Not all Aliens are out to eat you, some just want to eat your cat.

Alien species are found both in outer space and in terrestrial worlds like X-Files, V: The Series, Alf and Alien Nation. Aliens are represented through makeup/prosthetics, visual effects, special effects, puppetry, props, robotics and costumes in all shapes, sizes and configurations.

Sapphire and Steel have been assigned!

Sci-Fi lends itself to high flying imagination which makes one of its major challenges the budget. Special and visual effects, alien effects makeup, outer space, planets, starships and gadgetry can quickly escalate costs. At the same time clever writing and production ingenuity have created some of the best sci-fi with minimal budgets. Sapphire and Steel creates phenomenal sci-fi with absolutely minimal budgets, relying on conceptual stories and solid acting to create the unworldly.

Controversial, but Sci-Fi was the first to make it happen.

Sci-fi can be just spectacle and action but the best of it balances audience grabbing excitement with thought provoking depth. Lost In Space and Star Trek both struggled with this balance as they battled each other for ratings. Lost In Space spiraled off into absurdity while Star Trek accomplished TV’s first inter-racial kiss and garnered the praise of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., a stalwart fan.

TV sci-fi is a genre that allows people to travel the vast stretches of the imagination through a screen in their living room. Sci-fi’s capacity for complex world building and insightful social commentary find strength in a TV format. TV gives room for longer story lines and a chance for ideas and consequences to play themselves out. TV’s episodic nature allows sci-fi stories to explore the different aspects of their premise and their world.

Sci-fi series garner some of the most devoted and demanding audiences. Fans go over sci-fi worlds with a fine toothed comb and technology and terminology are ruthlessly scrutinized. Yet the actors and creators of past and present sci-fi series still populate the Comicons. Judging by the growth of these events, sci-fi is set to continue growing in popularity.

I’m a space man, not a merry man, dammit!

Cross genre in storytelling allows for refreshing takes and new ideas. Sci-fi is very adept at engaging cross genre stories. In fact, the breadths of its worlds often demand it.

Star Trek, Firefly, Farscape and Battlestar Galactica all find themselves heavily influenced by Westerns and in many ways have replaced this genre on TV. Wagon train to the stars described Star Trek. Battlestar could be described as embattled circled wagons amongst the stars. Farscape and Firefly have outlaw gunslingers on the run.

Space suspenders, who knew?

Series sometimes have explicitly Western episodes. Doctor Who has done them in The Gunfighters and A Town Called Mercy. Star Trek: TNG used its holodeck to give Worf a gunslinger story in A Fist Full of Data’s.

Conspiracy, My personal favorite episode of Star Trek: TNG, ventured into horror territory with a gory invasion from within story about brain worms taking over Star Fleet. Unfortunately this thread was never followed up as it was too intense for many viewers.

The thematically driven series concept is extremely important to sci-fi. The limitless possibilities of sci-fi means it can easily mutate out of control. A strong theme keeps a series coherent and a good theme makes it relevant to people’s lives.

Star Trek’s theme is the idealistic future, where humans have surpassed their differences and built a principled, cooperative civilization. Star Trek is based on external conflict, presenting the audience with a diverse crew that is united and functional in the face of adversity. This crew of the future is free of the 20^th century tensions that exist between nationalities, races, genders, classes and beliefs.

Clone Club!

Orphan Black explores the theme of identity. A woman finds herself to be one of many genetically identical clones, yet all the clones are very different people from very different back grounds. Orphan Black must discover who is killing her clone sisters. Each new step in the story challenges her sense of who she is and what identity means.

Stargate SG-1 exemplifies the genre of Sci-fi. The SG-1 team uses the Stargate portal network to explore the galaxy. Starships are sometimes used but our heroes get around largely through the Stargates, a story device which lends itself to episodic storytelling. The Stargates also lend themselves to boots on the ground stories, with our heroes face to face with people and toe to toe with enemies. This also allows for low tech stories with outdoor landscape locations that are cheaper then elaborate sets and effects.

Highly advanced alien species are also using the Stargate network. Tyrannical parasitic aliens called the Goa’uld are a powerful enemy of Earth and seek to enslave all the peoples of the galaxy. Other advanced species are allies and help to battle these aggressive, expansionist powers. Most encounter’s are with species that need help and SG-1 plies effective problem solving skills with combat effectiveness to defend the weak and the vulnerable.

The themes and values of Stargate SG-1 have led it to a long run of international success, transcending language and cultural barriers. Stargate SG-1 puts human differences in the context of conflicting galactic powers. It gives us a world that asks the best of us and this is where sci-fi is at its most powerful, when it gives us ambitious visions of what humans can accomplish, producing the kinds of stories that humans continue to love.

(By: Michael Zepf)

We Don’t Talk About Fight Club!

I know its the first and second rule but I want to talk about Fight Club. The Rio Theatre played a Late Night screening of this Gen X classic and it not only holds up, it may be getting better with age. It’s enduring coolness was recently verified while me and some friends were on the bar patio and my bud chastized me with “What’s the first rule of Fight Club?” and without missing a beat a hot, nicely dressed woman walking by chastizes him with “You Do Not Talk About Fight Club!” Fight Club lives on, as long as we go on not talking about it. (also SPOILERS WARNING!)

Fight Club is also one of those phenoms where initially a large segment of its fan base utterly missed the point. These were the angsty aggro dudes who bought into the mythos of the testosterone fueled vigilante, toughen up, pseudo-rebellion that is actually being parodied in the film. Its the danger of the charismatic sociopath as a protagonist, A Clockwork Orange  being another example. This contingent of Fight Clubers who are immune to irony seem to have dwindled with time. The Rio Theater was packed with people, more then half women, who were eager to revisit the joke of guys getting together to punch each other in the face as a last desperate grasp at manhood.

The biting cynical humour hasn’t lost its edge. In many ways it harkens us back to a pre 9/11 world where being a smart ass cynic wasn’t tantamount to treason. Rewatching Fight Club in the post-post 9/11 world is to show how cowed we’ve become to the culture of control. Try making a film where the climax is the bombing of all the credit company skyscrapers around the country, or where a woman whispers romanticallyin her lovers ear that she wants to have his abortion, or the viscious subverting of the think positive, support group self-help mentality which now seems to reign supreme. Not bloody likely.

They All Fall Down

When I last watched this film in 2010, in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse, the films climax seemed both precient and  liberating. We would all have been better off had Tyler Durden carried out his plan, cleared the debt record and wiped out Lehman Brothers and the like. It had always puzzled me why Edward Norton’s character was so resistent to Project Mayhem, I mean, the buildings were emptied and nobody was hurt and it was more a representation of liberation from the unfair debt load increasingly hoisted upon the lower classes rather then actual physical distruction.  I guess it was that Norton played Tyler’s reasonable civilized side, that as much as he enjoyed the rebellion, he was at core the domesticated human, whereas Brad Pitt embodied his feral side. Norton couldn’t sleep because this human animal side was denied him by modern, middle class existence, thus Pitt manifested those drives supressed by domestication.

This time it all rang a little different. It’s 2013 and our Great Depression has been dragging on for five years now. So rather then the triumphant stick-it-to-em-ness while watching in 2010, this time it was another moment that shone through. It was Pitt’s speech about his generation not having their war, or their Great Depression, that in place of this was his rebellion against the numbing power of secured complacency. Watching this speech now is to view the passing of the Gen X ethos. Gen Y has its wars, Gen Y has its Great Depression, so as much as the themes of Fight Club are still relevent, this moment exposes a certain preveledged perpective where their acts of vandalism seem petty. Gen Y will not be the screw the system generation, Gen Y will be the take over the system generation. Sorry Gen X, at least we can all agree on disliking the Boomers.

“History calling, Marla speaking, how may I help you?”

Regardless of reading things into it, Fight Club is still awesomely entertaining. The film is flawlessly crafted, the humour sharp, the imagery powerful, the writing is tight.

I also had a genuine Fight Club moment at the screening. About half way through the movie I got really light headed and had to head to the washroom. I splashed my face with cold water to cool down and took a piss. I’m teetering on the edge of passing out so I sit down on the floor by the stalls. Not sure what the deal was, maybe dehydrated, so I sat dranking cold water from my beer glass (I only had 2 I swear!) Now, my hair is frazzled, I’m wearing some old plaid shirt, my fly is down, and I’m struggling to remain concious on the floor by some unflushed toilets with toilet paper strewn about. However, I’m not in an unpleasant way at all so I chat cheerfully with a dude when he comes in to take a piss. Anouther dude comes in, he’s dressed as the office version of Edward Norton with a large hand scrawled note pinned to his chest which I can’t quite read. The first dude leaves and office dude says “How are things sir?” I say I’m fine. “Can I brew you up some coffee sir?” I say no, I have some nice cold water and I should be good to go shortly. “Can I get you some more water sir?” I’m getting low so I accept. He takes my glass, empties it, waits for the tap to run cold fills it and hands it over. “Have a good night sir,” he says and takes off back to the movie. I feel better shortly after and head back myself. Watching the rest of the movie is when I realized why he kept calling me “sir,” its because I was Tyler Durden.

Fight Club will likely be a regular on the Rio Theatre roster, so next time it plays, be sure to check it out.

Oz The Great And Powerful ! (not the prison drama Oz but the one for kids)

 At face value this film has a lot to recommend it and as a night’s entertainment for the family, this movie should do just fine. The director, cast, source material and special effects all should add up to a wonderful and long overdue return to the land of Oz. Unfortunatly, beyond Box Office chattel,  not so much.

Hats!

There are things that work like the wonderful costumery, especially the hats. The shear number and variety of hats is impressive enough, but the care and design that went into them, and the entire waredrobe, are a pleasure to see.  The lavish production design and elaborate 3D special effects are admittedly dazzling but here also begins its problems.

The introduction, like the Wonderful Wizard oF Oz, is in black and white. It is the strongest segment of the story, introducing us to the irascible con man Oz scrapping by in a Kansas traveling carnival. Transitioning to the hypercoloured world of Oz the film goes flat and  the dynamism apparent in the B&W introduction vanishes never to be seen again. The story turns into a flimsy thing stringing together fantastical settings. The shooting style and performances suffer from Greenicitus, when characters just statically stand around in front of a green screen, a symptom of being too effects focused. You can tell how restricted the film becomes as it slaves to the requirements of the effects.

There’s got to be a story around here somewhere

Now Raimi has done several major effects productions, including the three Spiderman films. While some of these problems arose in the first Spiderman, the second and third had vanquished these problems so its somewhat tragic to see a Raimi film suffering so. My guess is so much money went to the computer side of things that the production shoots were done on the cheap. The mountain backdrop to one of Oz’s speeches was so false looking it brought to mind Tommy Wiseau’s roof top scenes from The Room! 

The cast should be wonderful, talented, charming, beautiful; yet there is little for them to do even as they represent iconic characters deep set in our collective culture. Aside from the problem of being left to emote standing in a green screened studio the script is so weak I can hardly blame them for struggling through the material. Which brings us to the real problem with Oz The Great And Powerful: the story.

Behind me, all green screen baby!

There are so many problems with the story its hard to know where to begin. It’s a stretch to call them characters as the mechanics of it are so sparse and blatent its hard to take any joy in their stories. The writing is so lazy that what should be have the epic sweep of one of the greatest fantasias ever imagined feels claustrophopic and pitiful. This is not a glimpse into an expansive magical world, its a narrow corrador with 3D wallpaper.

True Oz stories are also rooted in central female characters. This production subverts that whole tradition, relagating the women folk to secondary roles as silly creatures waiting for and endlessly servicing the vainglory of an unscrupulous man who through no effort or merit, is given imminent power over all their lives. Even the powerful witches of Oz become nothing more then weak female cliches defined only through their relationship to this guy who just happen to show up. The doting girlfriend Glenda, the bitter ex of the west given to tantrums, the scheaming female pretending to power and, well, that’s it really. Pretty lame considering the impressive history of women in Oz which was intrinsic to its lasting power as a story. In this Oz The Great And Powerful could be looked at as an indicative reflection of how our culture views the roles of women with Disney producing the reinforcing propaganda. That this prequel records the great steps backwards we’ve been taking in our portrayals of women.

This is also an oddity for Raimi, his film Drag Me To Hell had a strong woman driving the story and tackling adversity head on. None of that here, just wait for some man to come and he’ll take care of everything as long as you put up with whatever he does and baselessly believe in him with all your heart. The original point of the Wizard had been to help Dorothy realize that the power is within her and that he is nothing but smoke and mirrors, the exact opposite of what this film presents to us.

The China Girl as the cute little side kicked was the only character that felt at all right. Her animating effects and voice work were also superb.

Mila Kunis is sadly gets the worst of it, the origins of the Wicked Witch of the West reduced to screaming tandrums because some boy didn’t like her as much as she thought he did. Her perfomance seemed lost and inconsistent but I can hardly blame her, there didn’t really seem to be much for her to go on.

The witch battle at the end between Glenda and Evanora was not bad but too short and simple. Its not often we get to see an all out witch battle so it seems like a wasted opportunity. In fact most of this movie is composed of wasted opportunity, all posturing with little to no payoff.

Oz The Great And Powerful isn’t as bad as the atrocious Alice that Disney put out a few years ago, though suffering from remarkably similar problems. Alice  being subplanted by the MadHatter, greenicitus, lazy writing, a director and a cast that promise quality but fail, lots of effects and little satisfaction. At least Oz  didn’t have a silly MadHatter dance. I never thought I would feel embarrassed for Johnny Depp but then there it was.

So come on Disney, if you’re going to hijack our culture at least put out some half decent children’s lit adaptations. You butchered Wonderland, you’ve sullied Oz, what’s next on your list of appropriation and degradation? Using these classic tales for little more then name recognition is an utter waste of production and an insult to the young audiences you are so rapaciously coralling into a twisted vision of the world. Make all the crap you want, but if you’re going to seal up the great fables of history in your copyright portfolios, put a little effort into following the spirit behind them. The canon’s of these great masterpieces will surely reject these tepid entries. History will tell.

Addendum (March 18, 2013): …then my blood sugar crashes and I’m ranting about Disney. The language may be a bit tart but it does stick in ones craw to watch these timeless tales reduced to such uninspired depths, so no recant!

I also recalled Sam Raimi’s other, more famous, female protagonist, Xena: Warrior Princess! That alone should put to rest any doubt about Raimi’s ability to handle female characters. 

The producer of this film is Joe Roth who also produced Disney’s 2010 Alice so their similar faults make sense. He was also an uncredited executive producer for Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers so I guess he’s not ALL bad.