American Horror Story: Roanoke--Episode 2

Chapter 2

--Dafuq are you doing, Cuba Gooding Jr.? You find a flaming effigy made of boughs and pig parts, and your response is to flail at it with a baseball bat? Do you want forest fires? Because that’s how you get forest fires. This isn’t Rat Race 2, guy.

--This season of AHS is my dream in terms of casting choices. Sarah Paulson is basically the main character, Angela Bassett’s finally playing somebody who fucking matters to the plot, and Lily Rabe is back full-time! (Though all she’s done so far is mumble in front of a gray backdrop. Lame.) As for Kathy Bates, she’s truly the queen of impossible-to-place dialects. Was that, like, Welsh or something? Kathy seems to be some type of tribal/colonial cult leader babbling about the mire and muck...or, as she put it, the MYRRRR and MOOOK. Picking up from last week, Shelby lurked in the bushes while Kathy and her torch club stuck a pig’s head on a dude and burned him alive. There’s the pigman from Murder House and the human/animal magic from Coven, so if you’re playing an AHS drinking game, knock a couple back.

--Funnily enough, our two main ladies switched roles this week. Shelby’s resolve hardened; the hauntings must be that dreadful redneck family playing pranks, and she’s not gonna turn tail. Good thing, because the Millers are stuck: they sunk everything into Terrorbithia and reselling would leave them destitute. Meanwhile, Lee has gone off the deep end. The trouble began when Lee’s daughter, Flora (Saniyya Sidney), came to visit. Kids in haunted houses, yikes. Sure enough, Flora began spending her free time in a closet under the stairs and talking to an invisible girl named Priscilla who claims that everyone in the house will soon be horribly slaughtered. Eh, I’m sure she’s just an energy-based life form struggling to understand us. Witnessing this, Lee’s ex-husband angrily dragged Flora away, and a despairing Lee hit the bottle hard. Cue the sad trombone.

--Lee also suffered some fresh scares, including bloody, squirming pig tails nailed to the wall, and a pair of unsettling nurses. Matt saw the nurses murdering an old woman. Mysteries abound! But not for long. A ghostly girl (Priscilla?) led Shelby and Matt to a root cellar in the backyard where they found a fresh VHS tape. On the tape: Denis O’Hare, bearded and babbling. He is Dr. Elias Cunningham, an author who moved into Terrorbithia to research past crimes. If you could follow his mile-a-minute exposition, you’d learn all about Miranda and Bridget Jane (Maya Rose Berko and Kristen Rakes), sisters who made Terrorbithia an assisted living home. Their true goal: to snuff residents in such an order that the first letters of their names spelled the word “murder.” That is such a bizarrely specific act of crazy that I really hope there’s an explanation for it. The Janes vanished, done in by a force even darker, and Dr. Cunningham’s video ended with him venturing back into the house and getting maybe killed by something-or-other. Matt tore down some wallpaper and found “M-U-R-D-E” inscribed on the wall. Key foreshadowing: the final R is missing. Has anyone with an R-name turned up yet? They dead.

--It would seem that every episode of Roanoke will end with a cliffhanger, which I like because it’s perfectly appropriate for the lurid TV documentary it aspires to ape. Fearful of losing custody of Flora, Lee essentially kidnapped her daughter and brought her back to Terrorbithia. Shelby and Matt did their best to clean up this hot mess, but Flora had enough time to vanish in the woods. Our three stooges went searching, and found Flora’s sweater hanging from the top of a very, very, very, very tall tree. Custody rights are now the least of Lee’s worries.

--Two eps in, and still going strong, though I’m getting a little sick of repetitive scenes in which people creep through hallways after strange noises. I’m glad they’re trying to have a logical reason for why Shelby and Matt don’t just move the fuck out (actual reason: they’re characters in a horror story). And, gosh, we still haven’t seen hide nor hair of Cheyenne Jackson or Evan Peters. It’d be funny if Jackson was the “real” Dr. Elias Cunningham in interviews. “Wait, I’m a bronze archangel of handsomeness and you have me played by Denis O’Hare the human ferret? Libel!”

--In the end credits, I noticed “special guest star” Lady Gaga. Apparently she was the crazed, antler-wearing person who scalped the guy in the first scene. Eh, she’s done weirder shit at the VMAs.

American Horror Story: Roanoke--Episode 1

Chapter 1

--Worst season of American Horror Story ever, am I right, guys?

--Hah. Not likely. But since hating on this batshit little show is probably more trendy than ever before, I figured I might as well throw a bone to the haters before making any serious effort to discuss the Season Six premiere. There is much to discuss, mainly because we had little to no idea what was coming. Like, at all. You may have heard: this year, the AHS showrunners decided to play a different gambit. Last time, it was all about the shameless stunt-casting of Lady Gaga. For Season Six, they went the other way, into the shadows. The great unknown, which is what scares us most, right?

--Yes, Season Six came shrouded in mystery, only slightly spoiled by leaked set photos and the online multitudes squalling, “It is Roanoke? IT’S ROANOKE! IT TOTALLY IS!” The posters and teasers hit us with a creative mishmash of red herrings, artsy doses of micro-horror that paid homage to the entire genre. We had spiders crawling from eyeballs, demon rednecks, amateur surgery, scarecrows, monsters, possessed dolls, Leatherface, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Children of the Corn, and Gordy, the talking pig from the ill-received 1995 family film of the same name. I may be misremembering that last one. But it was all intended to mislead and to get the hype machine a-chuggin’. What would Season Six really be about? And are we invested?

--Well. I’ve long said this show needed to really reinvent itself hard, and this may be the closest we get. The premiere felt pretty bare-bones compared to the blood- and sex-fluid-drenched spectacle of AHS: Hotel. Yeah, fine, this year it’s Roanoke. If you suck at history, Roanoke was an English colony established on a North Carolina island in the 1500s. The entire colony vanished without a trace, save for the word “CROATOAN” carved in a tree. It’s one of those mysteries that has more or less been solved (the colonists most likely moved elsewhere and intermingled with Native Americans), but enthusiasts of the paranormal love to speculate about aliens, time travel, etc. Roanoke is beloved by hack documentarians, which is quite appropriate...

--...because this season is a freakin’ mockumentary! Titled My Roanoke Nightmare, it provides a pitch-perfect homage to/parody of shows like Paranormal Witness, in which ostensibly real people recount their ghostly encounters and actors reenact the events they describe. I like it. It’s different. And I totally, sort of, a little bit, predicted that AHS might try this approach! So. Season Six (so far) is about the series of unfortunate events befalling Shelby and Matt Miller, played in the reenactments by Sarah Paulson and Cuba Gooding Jr. We also see interview footage with the “real” Shelby and Matt, played by Lily Rabe and André Holland. Confused yet? Shelby and Matt were happy as clams until a terrible gang attack and a miscarriage. Broken and reeling, they sought to reboot their lives.

--Thus, the Millers came to inhabit this season’s evil edifice, a very old colonial manse in the middle of a vast North Carolina forest. Nature! Peace and quiet! Shelby can do her yoga in the light of the pancreas-shaped windows and indulge her gluten-free diet in the way-too-huge kitchen! Buildings like this can’t not be haunted, and the Millers -- but mostly Shelby -- were soon experiencing spooky shit. Items moved by themselves. Something outside squealed and shrieked and flung garbage cans. In a very cool and freaky scene, human teeth rained from the sky. Unless Shelby was just off her rocker. She drinks a lot of wine, after all. And Matt was more inclined to suspect the gang of hillbilly stereotypes who’d also wanted to buy the house. Were he and Shelby being targeted because they’re an interracial couple? Maybe. Can AHS leave race issues alone for five seconds? Of course not! I did like how they nailed the subtle daggers of modern racism (that cop never would have drawled, “You her husband?” at a white man) while also making Matt a bit of a douche who was quick to take umbrage. The world of today, huh.

--Matt wanted someone to look after Shelby while he was on business, so he installed his sister, Lee, an ex-cop who got fired for her painkiller and booze addictions. How I smiled when Angela Bassett appeared. All is well in AHS land. Bassett is Lee in the reenactment and “real” Lee is Adina Porter, last seen all the way back in Murder House. Lee thought Shelby was a bit of a dumb honky. But she was more than reliable when dudes with torches started breaking into the house late at night. They, or somebody, left a video playing in the basement; it depicted a man hunting a humanoid creature with a pig’s head. Or was it just a pig mask? Ultimately, the torch club didn’t harm Shelby or Lee, but they did leave Blair Witch stick figurines hanging all over the house, as one does.

--Suitably hysterical, Shelby tore off in her car, only to run over Kathy Bates. We only caught a glimpse, but it was definitely Kathy Bates. Shelby chased Kathy into the woods and found more stick figures, then witnessed the ground itself breathing like it was blanketing some vast, slumbering giant. I dunno what to make of that, but it’s bizarre and neat, so I’ll roll with it. The torch club reappeared (one of them looked a lot like Wes Bentley), and the ep ended with Shelby screaming her butt off at a guy with his scalp missing and his brain exposed.

--So here we are with an inkling as to what Season Six is about, and a multitude of questions. My big concerns have to do with this mockumentary format and if it can last a whole season. Will they stick with it? Drop it after a bit? Weave in the stories of other rubes who tried to live in that remote colonial armpit? Shit, will we even get real opening titles? No clue. But the teasing, cryptic build-up to Season Six seems to have worked, because I had no idea what to expect and I really liked each new surprise and familiar face. Compared to the last, like, three seasons, this is bold. And scary-fun. Whether it will stay bold and scary-fun remains to be seen. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.

--I need a name for the haunted colonial house. I’m gonna call it “Terrorbithia.” Heh.

To Squee Or Not to Squee: Kung Fu Panda 3

It’s another one from the Cautious Enthusiasm backlog! And before anyone says anything...yes, I incorrectly stated that Mads Mikkelsen and Rebel Wilson were in this movie, but only because, at the time I made the initial post, they fucking were. Blame fickle acting schedules.

Now. Let me make a confession for which I’m not at all sorry. I don’t like pandas. I don’t find them appealing. Yeah, they’re cute, but they’re also stupid, belligerent creatures that natural evolution does not favor. When you only eat one plant as food, when you can barely figure out how to fuck and tend to eat your own newborn cub because you don’t know otherwise...you’re at a dead end. And now we’re pouring oodles of time and resources into trying to save the wretched species from extinction, China is cheerfully bartering panda cubs to other countries in return for uranium (seriously. Look it up), and it’s all because we’re stupidly in love with pandas even though they are NOT WORTHY OF OUR LOVE. I don’t care who hates me for this. I don’t like pandas at all.

That said, I like the Kung Fu Panda movies a whole lot. Dreamworks doesn’t always produce winners, but with this franchise, they’ve got a really good formula and the boundless opportunity to produce gorgeous, exciting animation. The setting, a highly stylized version of ancient China, allows for every cherry blossom, lily pond, phallic mountain peak, and swooshy martial arts move to be given the attention it deserves. The KFP series follows Po (Jack Black), a corpulent panda who is chosen to be the Dragon Warrior and protect his valley from the forces of evil. Though he may seem a terrible champion, Po has his own unique brand of floppy, improvisational, oddly effective kung fu; one of his greatest strengths is that he can’t believe all the awesome stuff he gets to do. Assisting him are the Furious Five: Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu), and Crane (David Cross). Their mentor is the cranky, wisdom-filled, occasionally insecure Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman).

But you knew all that already. Recapping the premise is tedious, I know. The first two movies weren’t just beautiful and reasonably funny, they achieved a surprising amount of emotional resonance here and there. Po is the only panda in the world, as far as he knows -- raised from infancy by a loving duck named Ping (James Hong), who runs a noodle shop. Eventually, he learns the truth, and Kung Fu Panda 2 has one scene, in which Po remembers what happened to his mother, that actually makes me cry a little. Which is not what I expected from a movie full of fat jokes. The question is, could KFP3 possibly be as good or profound, given the tendency of animated sequels to get progressively lazier? Well...no. It’s not as good as the first two movies. But I figured. This time around, the valley's period of peacetime is broken by the arrival of undead bad guy General Kai (J.K. Simmons), who looks like a horned and hoofed Genghis Khan, who dual-wields swords on chains like he’s freakin’ Kratos, and who has a habit of vacuuming up the chi of other kung fu masters and turning them into skittering jade golems.

That’s all sorta cool, but Kai is not as compelling a foe as Tai Lung or Lord Shen from the previous films. He has a very perfunctory vendetta indeed, and Simmons voices him like a douchey college football jock. (The running gag is that Kai expects everyone to know who he is, and no one does.) Po and co. are all that can stand between Kai and blah blah blah. But, in the meantime, who should turn up but Po’s biological dad, Li Shan (Bryan Cranston), who reveals the existence of a secret panda village. Why, pandas are known for their ability to manipulate chi! Po can learn how to defeat Kai and reconnect with his species! Thus, a huge chunk of the film takes place in the hidden village, and...ugh. After three films, I have come to like Po. And Cranston is very good as Li. But we didn’t need an entire mob of goddamn pandas. They’re presented as genial, roly-poly nincompoops who live in their own private eden of gluttony, and they are not as funny or lovable as the filmmakers seem to think they are. At times, the endless fat/dumb/lazy jokes border on grotesque. Kate Hudson pops up as a she-panda who wants into Po’s pants; luckily, the KFP team seem to have realized what a terrible subplot that was and written most of it out.

A big issue with this series is that each movie’s plot is more or less the same. Po doubts himself, everyone else doubts Po, and then Po unlocks some new level of kung fu coolness to defeat the latest baddie. I was okay with KFP2 rehashing Po’s journey because of the time and respect given to the darker elements of his past. But...now what? Isn’t Po already the Dragon Warrior? What the hell else does he need to learn about himself? How to be a panda? Pandas suck, and this film doesn’t make me like them any more. The character I really relate to is Po’s adoptive father, Ping, who plays a prominent role here but doesn’t get enough real emotion. In the earlier films, we saw how devastated Ping was at the thought of losing Po. Here, he’s too often reduced to a comical worrywart. Still, they avoided making Ping and Li into rivals, which was nice, and by the time the film got to the line, “Po needs his two dads!” I realized how subversive things had become. Yeah, they went there. Sort of. Good for them!

Anyway, I should make it clear that this is still a really fun movie. It’s no less beautifully-animated than the first two, and by throwing in supernatural elements, they’ve taken their visuals to new, eye-popping heights. And the cast do a great job, when they can. The Furious Five are still given very little to do, sadly. But Hoffman’s Master Shifu has a meatier role here than in KFP2, and Jolie’s Tigress is still in a league of her own. Seriously, I fucking love Tigress. I love how subtle the animators make her, how she leaves things unsaid, how she shows her fondness for Po in tiny ways and knows exactly when he needs a pep talk or a kick in the ass. I bet these actors really enjoy returning to voice their characters.

I just hope their interest doesn’t wane. Because I’ve heard Dreamworks wants to make three more KFP movies. Why? Didn’t I just say that KFP3 doesn’t really add much to Po’s personal journey? Okay, yeah...it does bring his Dragon Warrior arc to a sweeping pinnacle. There is grandeur and emotional power to be found here...but practically every serious moment is interrupted by a lame joke or pratfall in short order. It’s an insult to our intelligence. We do get a pretty awesome climax (well, two climaxes -- the real one and the dumb, slapsticky one), and an ending that seems extremely definitive in terms of where Po stands and how happy everyone is. Three more films? How could they not seem forced? Just as the Shrek series should have ended after the second one, Kung Fu Panda really ought to be a trilogy and not a damn sextology. But it’s not up to me, it’s up to box office receipts, as usual.

But Kung Fu Panda 3 is good. It’s not quite on par with its predecessors, but it’s perfectly entertaining, visually outstanding, well-voiced, and not too lazy. And if, like me, you find its overuse of chubby, mentally deficient pandas to be obnoxious, keep in mind that I’m a bitter party pooper who wishes he wasn’t about to turn thirty. Ugh. At least kids these days have quality stuff like Kung Fu Panda as well as pandering, lowbrow shit like Angry Birds. It could always be worse.

VERDICT: The third squee in a series isn’t the loudest, but it’ll do.

Top 10 Obscure Films (pt. 2)

Loads of films are obscure for a very good reason. Browse through Netflix and you’ll find an endless supply, most of which have names like Alien Terror Train and star some poor motherfucker like James Van Der Beek. Death metal screeches on the soundtrack as James battles CGI aliens that look like they were created on a Lite Brite, and...is it any wonder my boyfriend and I just watch Top Gear over and over?

Anyway. Some films don’t deserve to be obscure. I once made a list in order to draw attention to lesser-known cinema of real quality. Time to add to the museum! Try out the following films; each one’s a modest little gem.

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP 10 AWESOME MOVIES YOU MAY NOT KNOW EXIST (pt. 2)

  
Delicatessen (1991)
The whole world fell in love with Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie in 2001, but a full decade earlier, he was fine-turning his unique brand of clockwork whimsy, and wasn’t afraid to weird people out. Delicatessen is a film in which every aspect -- characters, setting, plot -- seems to function as a piece in a twisted game of Mousetrap. Set in some vague, post-apocalyptic hinterland, the film concerns the inhabitants of a ramshackle boarding house, most of whom have resorted to murdering and eating new tenants. But they’re French, so they’re at least somewhat polite about it. Jeunet’s invaluable collaborator, Dominique Pinon, plays the latest victim-to-be, who turns the tables on les cannibales in a mix of pitch-black comedy and Terry Gilliam-style surrealism. It’s a hoot. It’s far from Jeunet’s best work (that’d be A Very Long Engagement, with Amélie as a close second), but as a debut, it could hardly be juicier.

Dirty Pretty Things (2002)
Let’s do a test. I’m going to give you a list of names: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Audrey Tautou, Sophie Okonedo, Benedict Wong, Zlatko Buric, Sergi López. If you recognize at least two of these people, there’s hope for you yet. If you just went, “All those guys are in a film together? Hot damn!” then you’re one of the tribe. This global cast of awesome character actors join forces to play London immigrants who discover a sinister, gruesome conspiracy within the hotel where some of them work. (Hint: Human organs come into play.) Stick “traditional” actors in this scenario and it might be a good thriller...but when it stars refugees, vagabonds, the forgotten and ignored, it gains a fascinating resonance. I love when a film’s genre is merely an excuse to dive into a deeper issue. This grim little caper has a lot to say. Tautou leaves behind her adorable pixie schtick (see Amélie, above), and as for Ejiofor, well...long before 12 Years a Slave, some of us knew how great a career he had coming. Just saying.

Dog Soldiers (2002)
Dog Soldiers is the sickest, dirtiest, grungiest, and meanest werewolf movie I’ve ever seen. All of which is intended as high praise. Right now we’re enjoying a high-minded horror trend with films like The Babadook and It Follows, but let us not forget that good horror doesn’t need underlying themes and symbolism. It doesn’t need to be discussed in film studies classes. Dog Soldiers is about a squad of British troops training in Scotland, who find themselves utterly besieged by vicious lycanthropes. That is all the plot we need or expect. Director Neil Marshall would later make The Descent, a truly great horror movie, and Dog Soldiers was his gore-drenched warmup routine. The werewolves -- bodybuilders with fake wolf heads -- look and feel so much realer than any CGI could accomplish; I stuck them on my Top 10 Movie Monsters list so long ago, and they haven’t gotten any less awesome. Wanna see Liam “Davos Seaworth” Cunningham turn into a hairy, fangy murder machine? Of course you do. All horror buffs should have this in their archive.

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997)
The best documentaries conduct their images like an orchestra, each new movement composed of an intricate array of different elements. Director Errol Morris is a helluva conductor. He’s made plenty of films, but I’m always mesmerized by this one, which stars four men: a lion tamer, a topiary gardener, a robot scientist, and a mole-rat expert. What’s a mole-rat expert? Only he can say for sure. Morris doesn’t just intercut these eccentric dudes’ testimonials, he interweaves and overlaps them until they become a single story: the endless struggle of humankind to tame chaos. These four guys are compelled to take something that doesn’t make sense -- a shrub shaped like a giraffe, a rodent that lives like an insect -- and construct their own little microcosm, their garden or circus ring or museum exhibit, where they may impose order. That sort of insecure god-play is what drives our species, for better or for worse, and Morris’s collage of stock footage, Super 8 mm, old Clyde Beatty serials, and tipsy circus music demonstrates his own controlled chaos. Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is a universal, provocative theme disguised as a documentary.

Help! (1965)
I fucking adore this movie. It is so stupid, so ridiculous, so lacking in brain cells, and I’ve loved it since childhood. Yes, it stars the Beatles at the height of their fame. Someone decided it’d be cute to stick the Fab Four in a James Bond spoof, and cobbled together a plot in which Ringo gets a sacred Hindu ring stuck on his finger, and is chased across the globe by a sacrificial cult and a mad scientist. John, Paul, and George just kinda tag along, pausing now and then for musical numbers (they do “Ticket to Ride” on skis!), and once I reached adulthood, I came to appreciate how utterly, cripplingly stoned all four Beatles were during the entire shoot. You can smell the roiling waves of Mary Jane seeping from every cranny of the film. And that makes it even more endearing. Rife with kooky humor and unfocused one-liners (“Hey, it’s a thingy! A fiendish thingy!”), not to mention timeless pop music, Help! is all I really need to appreciate the glorious stupidity of the 1960s. Pure fun.

Ma Vie en Rose (1997)
Next up, two films that examine the innocence of children in a hard world -- and do so with great poise. Ma Vie en Rose translates to “My Life in Pink,” and it’s a sorta sweet, sorta cynical tale about a young French boy named Ludovic who believes he’s a girl. That’s it. Too young to be gay or trans, to wear any sort of political or social label, he simply knows, with cute tenacity, that he’s a girl trapped in a boy’s body, and that one day the universe will correct this oversight. We watch, wincing somewhat, as the adults in little Ludovic’s world react with all the offended bluster and close-minded bafflement you’d expect. If that sounds too depressing, don’t worry. The film uses the visual language of a sitcom -- cozy suburbs, 50s colors -- to paint its hero(ine)’s dilemma with comedic love. When Ludovic schemes to marry the boy next door (his father’s boss’s son...cue laugh track), we chuckle and then feel melancholy. But it’s not a hurtful film. It inspires thought.

Mysterious Skin (2004)
This one is hard to watch. Very hard. But its sheer power deserves notice. Based on the equally unflinching novel by Scott Heim, it stares straight into the abyss of pedophilia -- not by draping it in horror-movie slime, but by unpacking the psychology of its victims. Thus, when two young Kansas boys are sexually preyed upon by their Little League coach, one of them thinks he likes it and grows up to be a gay hooker, while the other is so traumatized that his brain flips an emergency kill switch and he becomes convinced he was abducted by aliens. The boys turn into damaged young men, as the film moves from the dreamy expanse of the Midwest to New York City during the AIDS crisis. Yeah, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who plays the gay one) is quite fine, but the story’s “sexy” elements are like a wound. You may not find a better argument against sexual abuse; it doesn’t rant and rave, but merely follows the abused down their quiet, broken path. We all know someone on that road.

Rivers and Tides (2001)
Now for a gentler film...one which relaxes the viewer with zen. Art is subjective, and the worst kind (in my opinion) feels it has to make some sort of wannabe-profound statement, some political or social claptrap that only makes sense in the artist’s ego. However, Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy merely...creates. This dreamy documentary shows off the man and his work. He wanders the wilderness -- forests and beaches, placid rivers and snowy mountaintops -- and crafts amazing sculptures with the materials he finds at hand. Stones become a mystical dolmen; ice turns serpentine; trees are woven and leaves are blended like paint, all from Goldsworthy’s patient and skillful fingers. The “message” of his art is that beauty is all around us and nothing feels more beautiful than to create, even if your creation vanishes within the hour. The movie drifts along, showing us all manner of visual poetry, and as I watched it, I felt the pleasant urge to make something myself. So I wove a potholder. My fingers pulled and teased the loops of fabric, and I felt a little of the pleasure Andy Goldsworthy must feel. Try it sometime.

Sita Sings the Blues (2008)
For the best animated film you’ve never seen, we can thank Nina Paley, who made Sita Sings the Blues after her husband moved to India and dumped her. Heartbroken, Paley found a spiritual sister in Sita, heroine of the Hindu epic, The Ramayana, who was similarly done wrong by her man. From this ancient tale, Paley creates a kaleidoscopic visual marvel, utilizing five or six different animation styles, each of which has more character than ten thousand Minion sequels. Sita’s ordeals take the form of Bollywood musical numbers, paired with old recordings by Jazz Age crooner Annette Hanshaw, intercut with droll nitpicking from a trio of shadow puppets and snippets of Paley’s personal ordeal. It’s all a big revenge fantasy, but it’s beyond entertaining. Paley seems to have been inspired by everything from Monty Python to “End of Ze World,” and the result is that the animation itself becomes an endless source of deadpan comedy. Sita Sings the Blues laughs at genre. It’s gorgeous to look at, it’s educational, it’s feminist. It’s on YouTube. Watch it. That’s all!

So Dear to My Heart (1949)
Let’s end on the warmest, coziest note. Disney’s Song of the South, with its archaic racial attitudes, is considered an embarrassment. However, at around the same time, they made So Dear to My Heart, a guileless buried gem. It’s about a young Indiana boy (Bobby Driscoll) who adopts a black lamb and raises it with aspirations of winning blue ribbons. G-rated tribulations and life lessons follow, as our hero receives guidance from a conspiratorial uncle (Burl Ives) and a pragmatic granny (Beulah Bondi) whose role is to say no, then immediately relent. The plot is punctuated by delightful, impressionistic animated sequences -- an example of Walt Disney’s boundless need to experiment with the medium. Is it sentimental? Pious? Simplistic? Yes to all three, and don’t you feel like we need that more and more these days? So Dear to My Heart gives me the warm fuzzies, and not just because of Burl Ives, whose singing voice could have ended wars. It represents an innocence that no longer exists (more so if you consider what happened to Driscoll), and that kind of nostalgia should never become obscure. I’ll keep fighting the good fight. Help me out and spread these films around.

Swallows and Amazons

I don’t tend to wax political on this blog. It’s for movies and video games and being nerdy. However, I can be a bit topical now and then. For instance, while recapping American Horror Story: Hotel, I had the opportunity to make some bitter comments about the state of America’s youth. To whit: I believe we coddle and shelter our children far too much, leaving them A) hideously ill-prepared for the real world, and B) toxified with entitlement, with the belief that life will be a series of blue ribbons just for existing. It makes me very angry. But y’know what’s better than anger? Antidotes. Today, I’m not here to rant and rave. I’m here to examine children’s entertainment...not as it is today, but as it once was. Let’s visit a place where kids are allowed to fly free, yet still held accountable. A place where adventure means ADVENTURE and not a heavily chaperoned Easter egg hunt where Daddy finds all the eggs for you. Let’s talk about Swallows and Amazons.

I feel like a ton of people have at least heard of this book series. Swallows and Amazons was written by Arthur Ransome in the 1930s and ’40s, and read to me by my parents when I was a tyke. Lately, I’ve been revisiting the series and have just finished the fourth book. Imagine my amazement when I abruptly discovered that they just made a freakin’ Swallows and Amazons movie and it’ll be released this very month. What a coincidence, because rereading them, I feel like they represent a very good, very important mindset in regards to children. They were written for kids and represent a world of adventures and discoveries that lacks any Harry Potter-style trappings. Most of the books contain nothing that couldn’t plausibly happen in real life. There’s no fantasy or magic. An antagonist here and there, but no real villains. The young heroes have some scrapes but are never in actual danger. And they succeed, not because they’re the Chosen One or the son of Zeus or whatever, but because they are smart, resourceful, learned, brave, and commonsensical. And, most of all, because they are allowed to be kids.

The first book, Swallows and Amazons, takes place during the summer holidays in Britain’s lake district. The Walker siblings are chilling by a gorgeous lake, praising heaven that jet skis haven’t been invented yet, when they find a little sailboat, the Swallow, and make it their own. John Walker is the stalwart (if insecure) eldest. Susan is the mother figure, cook, and voice of reason. Titty (yes, Titty; stop snickering, assholes) is the dreamer and schemer whose imagination fuels the others. And Roger is the hyperactive little brother who can’t wait to show you his airplane impression, his loose tooth, and the fact that he’s maybe possibly almost able to swim. Aboard the Swallow, the four kids quickly brand themselves explorers. Their mother (a badass Australian) and father (an absent military man) give their blessings, and the “Swallows” are soon camping on their very own island. Turns out they’re sharing space with Nancy and Peggy Blackett, aka the Amazons, a pair of local sisters who cheerfully despise all things feminine and would rather be pirates. Then there’s the Amazons’ uncle, known as Captain Flint (and based on Ransome himself), who owns a houseboat, a parrot, and a lifetime of cool stories. There’s buried treasure too. There’s everything a child could dream of.

The Swallows and Amazons books are clearly set during a particular period, yet have a timelessness; the kids don’t really seem to age, and Ransome is always vague on what year it is. What’s important is that the books fall between the World Wars, a period when England had realized just how bad things could get, and responded with appropriate brio. Kids didn’t need to be pampered; they could be handed adult responsibilities early. They could be trusted and encouraged. Throughout the twelve books in the series, the Swallows and the Amazons experience one awesome holiday after another. They shipwreck and climb mountains, dig mines and build igloos and accidentally sail across the North Sea. In the fourth book, Winter Holiday, they’re joined by two new friends, Dick and Dorothea Callum, who represent the nerd demographic; they’re bookish and ditzy and their extensive knowledge of astrology proves mighty useful. Ransome clearly wanted his young heroes to be every child, every boy and girl with a spirit. He wanted all kids to read his books and go, Wow, I could do that! I should do that!

This, I think, is what we need more of. I’m not saying kids shouldn’t happily hope for a letter from Hogwarts. But if they go out and explore, build, create, and imagine, they’ll have their very own Hogwarts, Narnia, Terabithia, you name it. The kids in the Swallows and Amazons books make their own world and inhabit it with only minimal chaperoning. Oh, they’re always under the benevolent eye of adults, but never in a stifling way. The character of Captain Flint is crucial; he pops up to mentor the kids and occasionally save their bacon, but he’s still an honorary kid himself. Two of the books, Peter Duck and Missee Lee, feature less plausible stories, with actual danger and high-seas swashbuckling and evil characters (some racism, too...but we must forgive this as a product of its time). We’re meant to believe the Swallows and Amazons themselves “wrote” these two books, an act of metafiction that allows them even more imaginative freedom as characters. Their world is just as cool as Harry Potter’s, but nobody dies and everything is always perfectly fine in the end. That’s what’s great: Ransome isn’t arguing that we should just let kids do whatever they want...but he does insist that they be handed the keys to their own kingdom.

I was thinking the books would make a great movie, but I wondered if it’d ever come to pass in this day and age. Some modern kids would, alas, certainly find Swallows and Amazons boring compared with the usual stuff they read. And Hollywood producers would likely feel the same way. “How can this be a movie? Nothing happens in it!” Stories aren’t allowed to take their time any more. The new movie’s made by the Brits, which is good, but still feels it has to shoehorn in some “cinematic” elements. We have the Swallows, the Amazons, the sailboats, the island. But now Captain Flint is an ex-spy being chased by bad guys, or something, and certain parts of the trailer look like a throwback to the 1990s when most kids’ movies were riffing on Home Alone and/or Free Willy. Also, Captain Flint has gone from a big fat guy in his late middle age to the modestly hunky Rafe Spall. And Titty is now named “Tatty,” for obvious reasons. I guess I’ll reserve judgement, because this is better than nothing, and it does capture the right sort of time and place. I wish they could have preserved the innocence of the book and avoided having adult villains, but concessions must be made.

After all, the movie might lead more kids to the books. And if they can get past the books’ lack of “modern” story elements, they may find themselves inspired. Every one of the young heroes is a fine role model for some age demographic or other. And let’s talk about gender! Not only are there more girl characters than boys (a major rarity in kids’ books with coed casts!), but none of the girls are any weaker or less capable than the boys; they may have flaws (Peggy’s afraid of thunder), but nothing ever stems from gender stereotypes. Susan is the most “girly” girl character, but she’s not portrayed as a wet blanket, a nag, or a scaredy-cat. She can tie nautical knots with the best of them, and then make wholesome rice pudding and afternoon tea. The highly tomboyish Nancy and Peggy, the quixotic Titty, and the scholarly Dorothea likewise avoid typecasting. When combined with the boy characters, this group of pals form a perfect cross-section of childhood, leaving no one out, sharing that unique sense of daring and discovery.

I’ve seen what kids are like when they explore. I’ve watched kids build shelters from tree branches, or take apart computers, or turn over rocks to reveal gross, slimy glory. I’ve been a kid like that. And, yeah, I also see kids lost in iPhones and banality, their parents too listless to nurture their minds, or too paranoid to allow their progeny off a short leash. A lot of what you see in the Swallows and Amazons series has gone dormant. But not extinct. You can’t kill a particular mindset. It’s still there, waiting to emerge from its cocoon. The notion that kids’ lives need a little more wonder, a lot more hands-on discovery and practical application of skills. Teach a kid to cook. Or to identify constellations. Hell, teach a kid to program their own computer game. It’s one step away from the death of the imagination, and one step closer to a group of young friends sailing their own little boats, camping on an island, never out of sight of their parents, but free just the same. If you like, take out the boats and the lake and substitute your own preferred adventure.

The Swallows and Amazons series won’t solve any societal problems on its own. But it might help. It could ignite a spark in the right child’s mind, or (just as crucial) the right parent’s mind. So when I say “A great series of books for all ages,” that is what I mean. When my parents read it to me, we all gained something from it. Now, lacking kids of my own, I pass on the spark to you, reader. Begin Swallows and Amazons and note what happens. How you surprise yourself. Then read it to a child, or give it to a child to read, and watch their face.

There. See it?

Independence Day: Resurgence

I wasn’t going to review this, but then my dad said he was looking forward to it. Looking forward, presumably, to me waxing poetic about a film in which evil aliens give Planet Earth a good spanking for a couple hours before we spank back at the last minute. A film not unlike 1996’s original Independence Day, which crystallized the “disaster porn” genre and established director Roland Emmerich as its playful hack emperor. It wasn’t the first time the world got destroyed on film, but it was probably the first time modern special effects created a sense of real shock and awe as cities crumbled and Nothing Would Ever Be the Same. Twenty years later, we’ve seen plenty of ID4’s spiritual children, several helmed by Emmerich. And now a sequel. Independence Day: Resurgence would be the worst title in years if Terminator: Genisys didn’t have the category locked forever. Since I have such a nostalgic fondness for ID4, am I gonna be down on its successor?

I mean, I know it got awful reviews. And I pity anyone going into this expecting a “good” movie. Can it overcome sheer, waste-of-time wretchedness and at least be entertainingly goofy and fun? Well, I think I did, more or less. It takes itself far, far less seriously than the first one. It kinda has to, because modern blockbusters are different. ID4 was most effective when it was building dread: portents, everyday life about to be upended, the feeling that something unspeakable was creeping up on our planet. In the 2010s, ain’t nobody got time for that. Resurgence briskly uncorks an alt-history where we recovered from the first alien attack, assimilated their advanced technology, and became a better species as a result. We have solar system outposts, a planetary defense system, tons of neat gadgets. This leads to the same dilemma I had with Pacific Rim: I’m more interested in the backstory than the current situation. I want to know more about the nuts and bolts. Hell, one of the film’s throwaway ideas -- Congolese guerillas fought a bitter ground war with alien troops in ’96 -- would make a damn compelling film all on its own. But Resurgence whips through its establishing scenes with hardly a glance. The new Star Wars had the same problem: too much momentum, not enough worldbuilding.

At least Resurgence loves to show off. The film contains wall-to-wall special effects and they all look absolutely groovy. There’s a decent variation from all the dark brown, tractor-tire surfaces we got last time. For instance, a misty wormhole opens near the moon and snorts up a large, cryptic alien sphere. The Clinton-esque President Lanford (Sela Ward) errs on the side of caution and has us blast the sphere with moon lasers, despite speculation from Prof. David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum, yay!) that these ain’t the same aliens as before. Very soon, who should show up but the same aliens as before, in a far huger ship. It’s big enough to straddle the Atlantic Ocean, and does, and let me just say that what befalls the White House this time around made me giggle unreasonably. The new ship has its own gravity field, which vacuums up Singapore and Dubai, then drops them on London. I love how Emmerich constantly strives to outdo himself in city-destruction mayhem -- though here, it’s kind of token. A ship that big should damage Earth irreparably, yet once it arrives, it just kinda sits there, preparing to extract the planet’s molten core and thereby providing the obligatory Ticking Doomsday Clock.

The relative passivity of the aliens allows for another battle, that of the old salts from the first film vs. the sexy young commandos who are onboard to appeal to kids. The old salts win. Goldblum is easily the best player here, delivering every moment with a sly wink. Bill Pullman, Vivica H. Fox, Brent Spiner, and others slip right back into their old roles. The new kids suffer, I’m afraid, because of how thinly they’re all defined. Jake is a cocky pilot. Patricia is engaged to Jake. Patricia is buddies with Dylan. Jake and Dylan are on the outs due to past baggage. That’s about all we get. Oh, and Patricia (Maika Monroe) is the daughter of traumatized ex-president Whitmore (Pullman), and Dylan (Jessie Usher) is the son of the late Steven Hiller (Will Smith, killed off between films due to his high price tag). As for Jake (Liam Hemsworth), he’s supposed to be the main hero and is reasonably bland, but I found him a lot more bearable than in the Hunger Games movies, so that’s something. All these dudes and dudettes form humanity’s last hope -- so we’re fine, because Jeff Goldblum can do anything.

I needn’t bother describing much more of the plot. You probably remember the first film well enough. Having had twenty years to prepare for the second wave of aliens, we are, of course, utterly unprepared, and soon enough, it all comes down to frantic, makeshift plans concocted in dim strategy rooms. There’s time for the usual random subplots, the shittiest of which involves Judd Hirsch and a carload of whiny teens. There are slots for offbeat supporting characters, like DeObia Oparei as a badass African warlord and Charlotte Gainsbourg (no, seriously) as an eccentric linguist who apparently exists because someone asked, “What if there was a second Jeff Goldblum but he was a French lady?” There’s way more room for Dr. Okun (Spiner), who didn’t die in the first film after all and has been retconned into a gay superhero. Some characters perish, but none of the deaths are especially surprising and only one took me by surprise with its sadness (and it’s not at all who you’d expect). The final act seems to be taking a familiar route: pilots infiltrate the alien ship and somebody has to sacrifice themselves à la Randy Quaid. But then the climax goes in an unexpected direction. And it was pretty cool! If only for injecting some novelty.

After helping define the modern blockbuster, Independence Day now looks derivative of all the movies it spawned. I could have used a real dose of character development (poor Vivica H. Fox is onscreen for about two minutes, and her fictional son, Jessie Usher, is almost insultingly boring) -- and, yeah, I wanted more disaster porn. I’m way too into that stuff. Resurgence wasn’t really a disaster movie like ID4. It was a science fiction action something-or-other with a lot of discordant ideas and performances. Only Jeff Goldblum and Brent Spiner hit the perfect balance of doom-laden gravitas and tongue-in-cheek jollity. The question is, did this film even need to exist? I mean, everything has to be a franchise now. Resurgence introduces those two words that make movie scholars scream in anguish -- Expanded Universe -- and teases at least one more sequel. Does the studio care about this property beyond forcibly squeezing forth more revenue? I have no idea, but at least some of the actors care. And I think Roland Emmerich cares; I think he had a whole lot of fun returning to that which gained him his unique reputation. Me, I got what I wanted: a stupid summer movie that was a blast to watch.

Also, I’m relieved that Colorado hasn’t been attacked by those aliens yet. We don’t really have any famous, signature buildings or bridges, you see. To quote Dr. Levinson, “They like to get the landmarks.” Yes, they do. I like to watch.

To Squee Or Not to Squee: Sandman Overture

I slept and dreamt of Cautious Enthusiasm....

Sandman Overture begins with a carnivorous plant having a bad dream. It ends with two siblings abruptly forgetting what they were talking about. Believe me, I am understating the fuck out of this...but, then, understatement is one of the things Neil Gaiman does best. He’s a titan of fantasy literature, and there are many reasons why he’s so good at it, including his knack for dry British restraint. He can describe a cosmic battle between godlike beings with the same inflection you’d use to speak to the vicar at Mrs. Cumberfarthing’s tea social. All the while, his imagination is running at the speed of light. Look at American Gods, or Coraline. Better yet, look at The Sandman.

For it was Sandman that put Neil Gaiman on the map, and helped usher in a wave of adult-oriented comics under DC’s Vertigo imprint. Sandman is 75 issues of storytelling magic. And now, years and years later, Gaiman has returned to give us Sandman Overture, a prequel miniseries that’s now available as a single graphic novel. And that’s so, so awesome, and a little nerve-wracking, because in order to write about it, I somehow have to summarize Sandman. Can’t be done. I lose. So let’s be as brief as possible. Sandman is a comic about many, many things, but at its center are the Endless: seven siblings who aren’t mortals or gods, but personifications of certain aspects of our psyche. The Endless have been around since everything began. If one dies, a replacement is found to assume not only their duties, but their very persona. The names of the Endless are Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium. Dream is the important one. He’s the tall, gaunt, raven-haired guy in the ragged cloak, also known as Morpheus...or The Sandman. At the very beginning of the original comic, Dream was returning to his realm after fighting a battle, the details of which we were never told. Weakened and distracted, he was captured by a bunch of dopey occultists. What manner of sturm und drang could leave such a powerful being so vulnerable?

Sandman Overture has the answers, although I was concerned that Gaiman couldn’t easily slip back into his old storytelling voice. He was a relatively young man when he began Sandman, and the early issues of the comic read more like pulp horror than epic fantasy; even the art style was reminiscent of Tales from the Crypt. Gaiman has come so far, and as an author, I know how shitty one’s older work can seem. I really shouldn’t have worried. Gaiman isn’t going for pulp horror. Why was Dream so bruised and battered when first we met him? Short answer: he was saving the universe. Long answer: don’t even ask me to summarize everything Gaiman crams into six issues. Basically, Dream learns that one aspect of himself -- an alternate Dream from a far-distant world -- has suffered permadeath, which is supposed to be impossible. He sets out to investigate, and discovers...badness. Cosmic unrest, which leads to cosmic war. Much of Sandman Overture is sort of science fiction, which is like saying that Mozart sort of wrote melodies. Sandman Overture is epic, operatic, mind-bending, and utterly glorious. It’s one of Gaiman’s greatest Sandman tales. Better late than never!

There are a couple of ways to make a lousy prequel. There’s the Star Wars thing where you fuck up your own continuity. Then there’s the “Who cares?” route where the prequel does not contain a single piece of new information. Sandman Overture avoids these traps admirably. Nothing in it contradicts Sandman, and more so, it sheds a new light on, well, everything. I plan to revisit Sandman with the knowledge that Dream is, from start to finish, numbingly tired. All too aware of his own mortality. His flaws. At one point, faced with a crowd of alternate-world Dreams, he asks, “Am I always like this?...Self-satisfied. Irritating.” Indeed, Dream always was unapproachable. We didn’t get inside his head enough. This new tale humanizes Dream to a surprising extent and, again, implies that his ordeal renders him a tired, jaded shell of his former self. Yeah, it’s a top-notch prequel. Its one (minor) sin is that Gaiman can’t resist bringing back a lot of the Sandman supporting cast for cameos, some of which contribute nothing to the story. (Hey, it’s the Corinthian! So what!) But he’s able to flesh out a few folks (Dream’s feline version, who only appeared once in Sandman, plays a huge role here) and introduce some intriguing newcomers. We meet the Endless’ parents, and I won’t spoil who or what they are, but they slot perfectly into the mythos.

Okay, let’s talk about the artwork, because holy shit. The comic is drawn by J.H. Williams III and colored by Dave Stewart, and they are an absolute dream team, no pun intended. Once it got past the pulp horror phase, Sandman featured a constantly shifting series of artists and a wide variety of styles, depending on the story arc of the moment. Sandman Overture sticks to one art style, but it’s...well, to call it “psychedelic” is a start, but not enough. It blazes across each page in great, grandiose whorls. Its eye-popping colors are a proud Fuck You to any grim, gritty aesthetic. At times it utilizes clear lines, and at other times the edges soften like watercolor. The layout of the panels and even the speech bubbles become part of the madness. I could compare it to Dr. Strange, or perhaps to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen once Alan Moore went completely insane. But it’s in a league of its own, perfect for visualizing such an epic tale. Anchored, of course, by that dry Neil Gaiman understatement. Certain double-page spreads contain so much goddamn detail that you could pore over them for an hour or more. This massive a story, coupled with such boundless artwork, would form the climax of many comics.

Here, though, it’s an overture. What’s an overture? An introduction that foreshadows what is to come. Yes, Sandman Overture answers some leftover questions from the original Sandman comic. The motives of certain characters. The placement of a key object or two. Old fans can appreciate each easter egg, while newcomers shouldn’t be scared off. But everyone will be a little lost, because Sandman never was straightforward. Reading it, you must understand that the Endless exist outside of regular time and space. They aren’t entirely linear, and although they appear tangible, they’ll always be misty around the edges. You can’t take them at face value. Who or what is Dream? Why, he’s dreams. All of them. And he’s a person, yes, and a figment of our imagination. He’s real, but he’s not. There’s only one of him, and there are a trillion trillion of him. He’s beyond human thought, but he’s also deeply human at heart. Sandman Overture hints that maybe, after many years, Neil Gaiman has come to understand Dream a little better. Enough to rewind the clock and tell a story that remixes the entire Sandman universe. That’s pretty damn impressive. And I hope Gaiman never leaves this Dream behind.

VERDICT: Endless squee!