Blindspot 2012: Primer

Written and Directed by Shane Carruth (2004) Starring: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan

Primer is one of those grapevine movies, one of the few that had a lot of people talking about it after it premiered.  It is also a really smart science fiction film that approaches time travel in one of its more plausible scenarios, although I feel like most of the science went right over my head.  That creating a machine for time travel that the inventors might not even know what they’ve created seem fitting.

Abe (Sullivan) approaches his friend and business partner Aaron (Carruth) one day and explains that the machine they had been working on doesn’t error check.  This conclusion is drawn mostly by fungus, then by the fact that Abe has already built a machine for himself, and it is telling Aaron it exists from the future.

What Primer succeeds best in is building tension in a quiet, suburban manner.  The men aren’t trying to change history when they first travel with the machines, just to win money through the stock market.  Pretty soon, the notion of creating “doubles” and abusing the time streams is brought to an ethical quandary.  Notably, the fact that Abe and Aaron are consciously aware that they are destroying themselves through the machine.  Traveling back in time results in injuries that men discuss, but they slide over the fact that the man who goes into the box doesn’t exist at the end of the day.  Identities are drawn clearly as “doubles” rather than acknowledging the paradox of ending one’s own life to pursue time travel.  It poses an interesting double to a film like Moon where science effects the identity of the man experiencing it.

It’s worth another, more careful watch, if only to follow the engineer chatter that sets up the excellent third act.  I will admit that I had to look up a Wikipedia article for fully understand the time loop the characters create and to clear up some plot quibbles I had.  It doesn’t tie up perfectly, but it’s a movie that takes a popular topic for science fiction and turns it into an obscure dialogue into scientific ethics.

X-Men: First Class

Directed by Matthew Vaughn (2011) Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Bacon

Going to see a movie in Montreal for the first time was an interesting experience.  The mixture of awe at an unusual movie-theater set up and eating some delicious Kit Kat bites cast a certain glow over everything.  By the time we were leaving, I was sure that X-Men: First Class was the perfect summer blockbuster.  Only a few short hours later, I realized some of the weaker points, and noticed that everything I liked was coming from my id.

The film is the origin story for the X-Men and sufficiently introduces the two ideologies in the comics and prior films.  Professor X (James McAvoy) believes that mutants should work with normal folks for acceptance, while Magneto (Michael Fassbender) believes mutants will never have acceptance and should live outside of society.  There’s also some saving the world/threatening the world action going on there, but I’m kind of ignorant fool to the X-Men universe.  If you have questions, you should probably ask this lady.

Erik Lehnsherr was in the Concentration Camps, pulled out and tortured when his ability to move metal objects was discovered.  In sharp contrast, Charles Xavier grows up in the lap of luxury.  While Erik grows up, searching for the men responsible for his family’s death, Xavier goes to Oxford with his best gal pal Raven, aka Mystique (Lawrence).  McAvoy and Fassbender make this movie fun and interesting, although most of the emotional draw comes from Fassbender.  Where he brooded and James Bond-ed his way from Switzerland to Argentina, McAvoy was surprising in his snark, hitting on co-eds in one scene before switching around to teach mutants how to focus their powers in the next.

Unfortunately, the film has a serious problem with handling all of the characters, especially in key scenes.  Everyone else is left to stand or speak awkwardly whenever the camera is on them.  Kevin Bacon is possibly the only exception, but in the sense that he looks like he’s enjoying himself as the “Bwa Ha Ha” type of villain.  It’s genre-friendly for a throwback to old Bond villains, but it doesn’t pack much of a punch.

Time Crimes

Directed by Nacho Vigalondo (2007) Starring: Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernandez, Barbara Goenaga, Nacho Vigalondo

Time Crimes is one of a slew of smart science fiction from the past decade that is making me wonder if we’re going through a genre revolution the same way the late sixties had a stylistic change in film.  Instead of the American Independent movement, I think this one will be international in scope.  As a genre, Science Fiction will become known for its sharp plots, which for Time Crimes is its selling point.

As one sustainable time loop, set in the same location the film introduces a lot of itself within the first fifteen minutes.  Hector (Elejalde) has just moved into his new house with his wife Clara (Fernandez).  He gets a mysterious phone call that afternoon, but ignores it.  Later, he spies a woman in the woods and follows her, but is attacked by a man wearing a bandage across his face.  While trying to escape, he runs into a mad scientist and gets caught up in his time travel experiment.

While we don’t get a big glimpse into a future filled with flying cars or a mining station on the moon, Time Crimes is every bit as imaginative.  It takes the idea of time travel and controls it to a tight loop, where every event has to occur exactly as it happened to Hector originally.  He has to deal with the idea that there are multiples of himself existing in one time frame and it drives him a little nuts.  It’s a tight Spanish thriller and an excellent watch for a summer night.

Night of the Living Dead

Directed by George A. Romero (1968)

Starring: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, Kyra Schon

Ah,  horror movie love.  It’s not something I’m terribly familiar with, to be honest.  I don’t really get the fans of Red Box Horror or the ladies who line up for midnight screenings of the Saw franchise.  But what I do get is a love of the Zombie Movie Genre, and the modern incarnation all begins with the grainy 35mm Pittsburgh epic.  My immediate reaction to Night of the Living Dead was movie-love, pure and simple.

Barbara (O’Dea) and her brother Johnny visit their father’s grave on the night when radiation from a satellite effects the recent dead, causing them to reanimate and crave human flesh.  When Johnny is killed, Barbara is able to escape to a farmhouse nearby, where she is joined by other survivors, including Ben (Jones).  Ben takes care of Barbara as he fends off the approaching corpses.  She has gone catatonic, only speaking occasionally as she follows Ben’s orders.

Ben is by far my favorite character.  Not only does he have a take-charge attitude, but he recognizes how the situation has messed up Barbara and approaches everything with a clear head.  In contrast, the five others in the house with them, especially Harry (Hardman) who is too stubborn and prejudiced to agree to Ben’s plans.

Meanwhile, our heroine is the opposite of these focused zombies and Ben.  She’s helpless, which riled up my feminist side, but as I understand it, they had altered the script to O’Dea’s performance.  In fact, it seems like Night of the Living Dead never had a set script, but instead moving along with a general plot and changing elements when necessary.  When put in that context, it seems like a different creative work.  Rather than some magnum opus, it can breathe and adjust itself as necessary, without losing much in terms of terror, and probably gaining more in subtext.  Honestly, it just seems so appropriate for the American Independent Horror to have such a thrown-together production.

As much as the characters are trapped in the farm house while the dead stumble outside, they’re not cut off from the world.  There’s a radio that Ben sets up, and eventually they get the television working.  The news gives some explanation towards why the dead are reanimated, related to radiation from a satellite, but the explanation is largely unnecessary.  It just gets thrown in as an easy explanation.  The news broadcast then shifts to the local situation, showing that it’s quite easy to kill the risen dead. Just aim for the head.

Not like that advice helps, when there are so many outside the farmhouse.  The attempt to escape ends horrifically, though it was caused by human error rather than the undead.  It was surprising to see how crafty the undead act and how determined they are to get to the humans.  For zombies, they’re pretty damn intelligent.

And it is damn scary, forty-three years later, in a gritty way that many have tried to replicate, but never quite match.

 

 

Fido

Directed by: Andrew Currie (2006) Starring: Kesun Loder, Billy Connelly, Carrie-Anne Moss, Dylan Baker

As a spin off of the zombie tradition, Fido depicts a world post-zombie apocalypse.  Here, everyone becomes a zombie when they die, unless they were given an expensive burial (including a coffin for the head).  Zombies are used for help around the house, controlled with collars designed by ZomCon, a company that seemingly controls everything.  Timmy (Loder) has started questioning whether zombies are dead or alive when his mother purchases one.  She wants to maintain a good image for the new neighbors across the street, but her husband’s been afraid of zombies, as a veteran of the war.

Bill (Baker) does not get close to his son.  He had to kill his father and seems to avoid developing attachments to anyone, instead going golfing with someone he hates.  When Timmy tries to reach out to him, he bonds with the family’s zombie instead, naming him Fido and treating him like the new puppy.  They play in the park one afternoon, but an unfortunate encounter with one of Timmy’s neighbors damages Fido’s collar, causing him to kill her and spread the zombie virus in the safe community.

The crux of the film centers on Bill’s resistance to human relationships, even though the key relationship is around Timmy and Fido.  Bill is obsessed with the expensive funerals ZomCon produces and has taken out Funeral Insurance polices for everyone in the family.  He is oblivious to the fact that his wife, Helen (Moss), is pregnant claiming economics as the problem, where it’s obvious that he’s afraid of forming a bond with his children.  That frightened disinclination leads Fido to become Timmy’s main friend and defender against bullies as well as the sympathetic man in Helen’s life.

Fido doesn’t play around with crossing boundaries in its plot. Mr. Theopolis, Timmy’s neighbor and former employee of ZomCon, is obviously romantically involved with his zombie Tammy.  The zombies are clearly brought into households as a kind of easy slavery, but it becomes clear that the zombies can think and express emotions.  Just not in a verbose or clear way, and not even for all of them.  Fido doesn’t attack Timmy, even when his collar isn’t working, but it’s only after becoming Timmy’s friend.

Fido takes the end of Shaun of the Dead, spins it in a 50s American suburb and expands it into the scenario for what happens to life with zombies.  So many other zombie movies present them as an apocalypse story that it’s really fun to see a functioning society develop around the horror-plague.

 

Doctor Who Season One

Maybe it’s because I watched the most recent Christmas Special.  Or maybe I’ve been inspired by Mark.   In any case, here’s my part one of a new project.

I’m a relatively new convert to Doctor Who. Super Friend Rachel had shown me “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances” early last year, but it took me awhile to start watching  in earnest.  But boy howdy (did I just write “boy howdy”?), did Doctor Who hit my little fangirl heart hard.

So let’s jump in and do this retrospective!  Here are some thoughts on Season 1, with head writer Russell T. Davies, starring Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper.

Rose:

Introduction!  “Rose” sets the tone for the new series of Doctor Who, with quick, witty lines combined with action sequences.  The living mannequins aspect shoe-horns the weirdness of aliens into Rose’s average life, but her ability to leave it behind for adventuring with the Doctor is damn impressive.  Admittedly, she is won over after being informed its also a Time-Machine.

The End of the World:

If I could pinpoint the one episode that really won me over, it would be this one.  The Doctor transports Rose to the end of Earth, and while shenanigans ensue, what was amazing was the concept of Earth ending.  I’m not sure why, but it hit me in the gut to see that, but understand that humans can go on.

The Unquiet Dead:

The first historical episode!  It takes place in nineteenth century Cardiff and centers around the “ghosts” of a funeral home, later drawing in Charles Dickens.  It got my hopes up for dressing up in costumes when they travel (which almost never happens again until Season Four) and I didn’t really like the result of the aliens in this episode until it’s brought back at the end of Season One.

Aliens of London & World War III:

The first two-parter and a brief return to Rose’s life in London.  It started out pretty cool, in the sense that the Doctor is really excited that they get to see humans make contact with aliens, but the villains were a little lack-luster.  They’re really creepy in the human forms though, and it’s kind of amazing how they can take over the government so easily.  There’s also more of Jackie (yay!) and Mickey (Ricky), which does force Rose into realizing that she has sacrifices to make while out traveling.

Dalek:

I thought this was a great introduction to the Daleks, considering how freaked out I got over watching that thing kill the extras.  It also explains the Time War and Eccleston gets to be INTENSE, which is always awesome.

The Long Game:

Oh, you know what? Simon Pegg’s in this episode.  Yup!  And it’s about news media in the future and features an altered time-line.  The Doctor is really cool in it (naturally), while the new companion is the opposite of that.  I think it gets sold short, when it deserves a lot of credit– it is a genuinely creepy view of control on the media and its effects on culture.

Father’s Day:

There’s such complete Doctor-Rose chemistry in this episode, at least with the premise.  He agrees to letting her see her father’s death twice, where Rose runs out the second time to save her father and causes chaos.  It’s a really interesting take on when historical events change, especially with the mysterious monsters. 

The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances:

Not only is this the Moffat-written two parter, but it introduces Capt. Jack Harkness to the Who-verse.  Moffat uses the creepy-child trope of horror movies to the best effect ever, combining the time period (the Battle of Britain) with the alien-threat, and lighter scenes of the Doctor and Rose’s relationship.  “The Empty Child” on its own is really creepy, but when it raps up with the finale of “The Doctor Dances,” it becomes a fun, exciting end to the story.

Boom Town:

Back to the early 21st century, a return to the crack in the universe in Cardiff, the surviving Slitheen from “World War III,” and Mickey.  Rose has to face some more consequences of leaving her life in London behind as Mickey yells at her for leaving him.  The Doctor has to go on the most awkward-funny date ever with the Slitheen.  Actually, rewatching that scene in the restaurant–where the Slitheen keeps trying to kill him– is one of the best Eccleston scenes as the Doctor.  He is just so clever, over and over again.

Bad Wolf & The Parting of the Ways:

The two-parter finale is a bit hard to explain, though it is a return to Satellite 5 where the news-centric industry has become  reality-TV-centric.  Also: Daleks.  And man, also Captain Jack Harkness involved always means good times.  Rose has a large role in “The Parting of the Ways,” as she takes it into her own hands to help save the Doctor at the end of the series, although her absorbing the time vortex didn’t really sell for me.  However, it was goodbye to Christopher Eccleston, and he was fantastic.  But it was also a Hello to David Tennant, who manages to really define the role for the new series.

The Book of Eli

Directed by Albert and Allen Hughes (2010) Starring: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Jennifer Beals, Frances de la Tour, Michael Gambon, Tom Waits

I don’t have too many thoughts on The Book of Eli, but I do have some:

a) As much as it makes sense to have done it this way, the washed out color scheme got on my nerves.  I am lack-luster about it, stylistically.

b) The Bible as the titular book is not surprising, nor a spoiler.  I’m glad that the script explained that “the war” was the reason why there aren’t any more copies.  However, I was impressed by the spoiler, since it does relate to Eli’s personal copy of the book, and that was a decent twist.  Movie, you have my applause.

c) Solara (Kunis) … eh, I guess she was necessary.  Just, slightly less annoying than the Kid in Six String Samurai.

d) Gary Oldman is playing a villain again, and his performance was pretty cool, but not his best.  Carnegie comes off as a mix between O.W. Grant (Interstate 60) and Mason Verger (Hannibal), so not terribly original either.  I also can’t imagine anyone else in this role, but that is pretty typical with my opinion of Oldman.

e) Tom Waits is in this!  I actually knew that before I popped this into the DVD player, but I had forgotten.  Pleasantly surprised, got to say. And also Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour, although I didn’t recognize them immediately.

f) I feel like I should have seen the shaking hands plot point coming, but it was a nice detail in the script.

g) Oh! While I’m on the script: damn, not that interesting.  Some lines just fell flat, and it was uneven enough that it’s obviously a script problem, not a performance problem.

h) I like knowing Denzel Washington did the action sequences himself.

i) These character posters are really classy.

My thoughts: There they are.

Revengers Tragedy

Directed by Alex Cox (2002) Starring: Christopher Eccleston, Eddie Izzard, Andrew Schofield, Derek Jacobi, Carla Henry

Alex Cox took a Jacobean play called “Revenger’s Tragedy” and it became a movie about a near-future, post-disaster United Kingdom ruled by the Duke.  Vindici (Eccleston) has sworn revenge after the Duke killed his wife  for spurning his advances.  He poses as a pimp in order to get close to Lussorioso (Izzard), the eldest son of the Duke who shares his father’s lecherous tendencies.

The Duke’s family is already in disarray, with the Duchess having an affair with one of their sons, another in jail for raping Lord Antonio’s wife, it seems like it should be quite simple for Lussorioso to take control.  But this is a world with incest and foosball is the most popular sporting event, and Vindici likes to play with his victims before enacting justice.

Joining him in the downfall of the Duke are his brother Carlo (Schofield) and his sister Castiza (Henry), both of whom give decent supporting performances.  Eccleston plays Vindici as an insane man consumed with revenge, to the point where he would be wholly unlikable if there wasn’t a strong supporting cast towards that goal as well.

The locations are all in and around Liverpool.  According to the IMDb page, Alex Cox insisted on having a local crew and the chapter on Revengers Tragedy in his book X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker reasserts this point.  He makes good commentary about the British film industry during this production, which was more concerned with American projects and the workers who went with them.  The chapter as a whole gave me a better understanding of the movie, including Cox’s commentary on a world post-9/11.

The last act is very stupendous as all of the various plots and schemes come together.  I didn’t love all of the film’s designs, especially in terms of costumes and certain digital-effects.  It’s a very entertaining film, with the right mixture of intellectualism and soap opera, and the right amount of localism in its content.

Some Cast it Hot Episode Two: Space Oddity

You can listen to Some Cast it Hot Episode Two here.  We have switched to Podomatic!  Be kind to us, O Podomatic!

Our structure for the foreseeable future is:

Recent Films Watched

Discussion Film

Recommendations

News and Email

This week we discuss Duncan Jones’s wonderful film Moon and give our recommendations for science fiction.

If you want to leave us feedback, you can send an email to somecastithot@gmail.com or leave a comment either here or at the Podomatic website.

Thanks for listening!

Visual Films: 28 Days Later

28 Days Later

(2002) Directed by Danny Boyle

I’m a bit surprised at how much I loved the visuals for 28 Days Later, but in retrospect that makes perfect sense.  The atmosphere of an empty, post-apocalyptic world is really created through images to show that emptiness.  It’s hard to convey it otherwise.  So a shot like the one with the windmills has the big open sky with one lone car.  The sequence at the beginning is Jim (Cillian Murphy) looking around a nearly empty London for people.

Absolutely love how text got used in these visual shots, beginning with the graffiti from the church scene, the heartbreaking letter from Jim’s parents, to the STOP outside the Big Set Piece.  That said, the last third or so of the movie is over-represented in this post, since it is the Big Set Piece.