That… Was EVIL…

Holy. Fuck.

In my bid to finally catch up on movies that were borrowed which have thus far remained unwatched, I did the ol’ Canadian thing and fired up some Orville Redenbacher popcorn, plonked myself down in front of the TV with that, a pack of cigarettes and a cup of coffee, and proceeded to watch what I thought was going to be an interesting and beautiful diversion in the form of David Fincher’s Se7en.

Nope, I had never watched it before.

I’d somehow managed to steer clear of any knowledge of this film except for the fact that it had Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Gwyneth Paltrow in it, and that it was based on a serial killer premise centered on the Seven Deadly Sins. Also that David Fincher directed it, which was my primary reason for watching it, ’cause I knew if nothing else, it was going to be a gorgeous looking movie.

Everything else was a complete, unpleasant, nauseating surprise that left me rather emotionally drained as the final credits rolled.

On the technical side, this film was everything I hoped it would be and more. Out of all the Fincher films I’ve seen (Haven’t yet watched The Game…) this is probably the one I will remember as his most beautiful film. I don’t know whether or not it was because he was still relatively early in his career and thus at the mercy of the producers and studio, or whether it was simply his aesthetic sensibility at the time, but there is a restraint to his visuals here that worked to create a breathtakingly effective atmosphere. Fincher’s later films like Fight Club and Panic Room show a self-indulgence with the crazy physically impossible long take camera moves and obession with grit and dirt that was refreshingly absent from Se7en. This was a much cleaner, much more subtle and more atmospheric Fincher, relying on graceful pans rather than shock MTV zooms, and letting the camera linger on nicely composed shots and more natural lighting rather than the harsh color treatments starker lighting of later efforts. It was dark and shadowy and nearly every shot in the film was one that could have been framed and hung in a living room. Marvelous work. Nothing to complain or criticize as far as I’m concerned.

The performances were solid. Brad Pitt’s bravado as Miller was suitably annoying and the nasty twist at the end actually made you regret his bravado rather than feel vindicated about it afterwards. Freeman had his usual dignity, poise and intelligence and every slow, measured bit of dialogue was a pleasure to hear, something I always like about his performances.

But it’s really that fucked up plot that stole the show. Yes, Fincher did the murders justice. Yes, Pitt and Freeman augmented this further with their appealing performances and fairly low key delivery. But all of that hinged on the fact that Andrew Walker (The writer) is a deranged lunatic who wrote a horribly effective story that still makes me slightly queasy just thinking about it. There’s a lot to think about, muse about and ultimately be disgusted about in this movie, but it sets out to provoke its audience on multiple levels and, to my chagrin, succeeds. Questions are posed. None are really answered, and in the end, what on level is a showcase for then emerging Fincher’s amazing visuals in 1995, is on another level a quality “serial killer” genre film worthy of Silence of the Lambs and again on another level is a commentary about the state of society in social sense of “Where the fuck have our ethics gone” to the more psychological sense of “What have we become that we can create people like John Doe?”

It was a really beautiful and yet at the same time unbelievably disgusting film. I can see why audiences of the time were buzzing about it, since it can be discussed on almost any level from visceral thrill to the more scholarly discussions in the Ivory Tower. Is it a Deep n’ Profound film? Beats me. It doesn’t quite feel that way. I don’t think it’s really a measured study or commentary so much as it is a response. There’s no agenda being consciously pushed, no message whacking people over the heads, but the implications of the film, whether intentional or just a side effect of the creative process at work, are there.

I’ll probably have to watch it again in a few years when I can stomach it again…

Where Do You Go When You’ve Wiped Out Heaven & Hell?

You wait for them to rebuild themselves thanks to another software company and do it all over again, I guess.

The pointless stat-maxing of Final Fantasy X is now DONE. As an experiment I went off to take on the final bosses at the end of the game and was both amazed and disappointed to see the same behemoths that I had to fight for a half hour, EACH, go down in less than 20 seconds, with no hits to my party. I now officially have bragging rights. So now that the majesty that is Final Fantasy has been annihilated under my God-like onslaught and Babylon 5 season One has been viewed to death (With season 2 just around the corner, and, unfortunately, unaffordable at the moment. Argh…) the only things left to do are get back to writing, and watching a fairly respectable pile of DVDs which have been borrowed from various sources and remain unviewed, a problem which will be shortly rectified.

Hookers Have Angels Too

And they play basketball when they’re not pill popping or glue-sniffing.

The first show of the Singapore film fest for us was a Russian flick called Lilya 4Ever. Technically, I didn’t have too much to complain about, considering how obvious it was they were working with a guerilla budget. I just found that there was too clear a division between moments in the film which were likely culled from interviews with underage girls who were exploited for prostitution, and the obviously written in segments to flesh out characterization n’ such. On the one hand, the actual events themselves were pretty hard to watch, especially when you consider this probably happens hundreds of times at any given minute somewhere on the globe. On ther other hand, the extremely two dimensional treatment of characters (I get bored when everyone is relentlessly good or relentless evil, with no complexity at all) and the fairly arbitrary Hand of Fate to force dramatic conflict felt entirely too artificial, and really didn’t sit well with the otherwise worthy subject matter. Still, they tried. And there were some genuinely effective moments cinematically speaking. It was just let down by the writing. Oh, and the occasionally bizarre choice of Eurotrash Techno music. Those crazy Ruskies, I tell ya’…

Practice Makes… No Difference Whatsoever…

I am about to be uncharitable and cruel.

In the seven plus years that I have lived here, I have noticed, during my wanderings through the underpass tunnel from the Orchard MRT station to the various shopping centers, a blind man sitting at his out of date syntheziser (It looks like a Yamaha, possibly from the DX-7 family) punching out the tunes with dedication, aplomb, and an occasionally quavery vocal accompaniment. I have seen this man there for years. I have heard him play for years. I know he makes a modest income from this sincere effort at working for cash, and I respect that.

What baffles me is that in the seven years that I have walked past him, to and fro, willy and nilly, hither and thither, I have yet to discern any actual improvement in his technique.

Which leads to my question:

HOW IN GOD’S NAME CAN YOU PRACTICE THE SAME SONGS ON A DAILY BASIS FOR SEVEN FUCKING YEARS AND NOT GET BETTER?!? HOW?!?

I was almost willing to let it slide if he pulled out the Blind Card, but witness! Stevie Wonder too is blinder than a Republican at a Gulf War Rally, and that cat can whip out the tunes like no one’s business. If a man who is blind, black and quite probably the victim of both racial and social awkwardness prejudice can hone his skill to wondrous levels, why the hell can’t a Chinese guy who probably doesn’t have half the social challenges a visible minority handicapped guy would?

Every time I pass by that guy I feel an urge. This urge is getting increasingly more difficult to quell, and one of these days, I’ll probably lose control completely and just throw myself at him, screaming into his tone deaf ears, “WHY DO YOU SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK????????????????”

Novels: Out. Geek Source Material: INNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!

After a brief visit to Apple Movie Trailers, I was rather stunned when I realized that 2003 seems to be the Year Of The Geek. We’ve already had one comic movie in the form of Daredevil, with The Hulk and X-Men 2 on the way, TWO Matrix movies and of course, the conclusion of the Elven Love Fest, Lord Of The Rings. Did I blink or something? When did all this geekiness become so… profitable?

My Life Is More Boring Than Your Grandma’s Power Knitting Sessions

This is inevitable. Once you actually settle down and start doing actual work, interesting, witty, insightful things/events/people rarely enter into your sphere of influence. And this is one of those points. Mostly I’m just writing. A couple of freelance jobs have cropped up which will help with some bills, but still probably won’t adequately pay the rent, which means that karmically, the rock on the ring for the girlfriend just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I am painfully aware of this, but it’s a small price to pay in the long run, I think.

End, Damn You!

The unicorn story (Which, as usual, has a sucky title, God, I’m hopeless…) is at long last nearing completion, and is about 30 pages bigger than I had initially estimated, which always seems to be the way it goes with me. It’s being one of those difficult children. You know the kind; on the one hand, it constantly misbehaves, doesn’t necessarily do what you ask it to, and you suspect that it might have a case of attention deficit, or slight mental retardation. But in the end, it just might surprise you as it proves to be autistic and excelling at music or math or something.

This story is one of those ones which is taking much longer to write than what I’m used to, and when I go back and read previous passages, depending on my mood on any given day, sometimes I don’t like them, and sometimes I think they’re pretty cool, which is why I’m scared to touch them as usually I only operate on my editorial instincts when they’re sound. On these rare occasions where even my own brain can’t make up its mind about whether it likes the writing or not, I just wait and see. The usual response is that people like or dislike things that I didn’t even see, so this is probably shaping up to be another one those stories that might not be a particular favorite for me, but that seems to strike a chord with other people. I don’t get it, but then why should I? I just wrote the damn thing, I don’t have to read it…

She Ain’t Lesbian But She Likes Little Girls

Since the Open Space anthology people are asking me to submit another story, I’m giving myself a deadline of about a month to see if I can crank out my next short story, one based around Jen and her attempt to track down a serial killer who goes after children. I won’t go into too much detail, because I’m sure at some point I’m going to be ramming this down people’s throats, but I’m torn right now between having this story take place when Jen was still hanging around with Frank & Michael in university, or during her “lone ranger” years when Frank & Michael had already gone to Singapore. Part of my head keeps telling me I might be trying to cram in too much “cool continuity” with the other stories by linking it in with Frank & Michael. The other part of my head, irrational writer part that does things ’cause The Muse Says So, keeps insisting that whether I intend it or not, Michael is going to be going along for a ride, because every Buffy needs a Xander, and Michael is it for Jen. And besides, Michael just wants to go along anyway, so if I throw the party without him, he’ll just gate crash.

Anyone who says the neat thing about writing is the total control you have over your characters’ lives has never tried writing with pig headed characters who do what they please.

There Is No Spoon. There Is No Plot Either…

I was initially really, REALLY looking forward to the Animatrix series as an ubercool presentation of the ubercool backstory behind the Matrix, but after watching the first episode, Second Renaissance, Part 1, I’m beginning to scale back my hopes and settling for ubercool anime.

The biggest problem I have with this story is the presentation of the story itself. I’m not sure how much of that is the fault of the Brothers Wachowski (Who wrote it) or the director (The guy that did Blue Submarine 6) but I’m taking serious issue with the way this story is being told.

On the surface the premise of this first animatrix episode is pretty cool; a historical document, ostensibly pulled from the Zion archives detailing the genesis of the Machine War that brought humanity to the battery-supply state it is in The Matrix. But the anime itself is trying too hard to push a message or be “political” with its liberal use of iconic images from religion and historical moments of oppression. The plot is that humans have no respect for the machine workers, and that gradually, as AI grows more sophisticated, the machines begin to resent the lack of respect and one day, a machine, BR-166-ER rose up against its human owners and killed them when they wanted to shut it down, citing its actions as self-defense and having the same basic survival prerogative that any sentient creature has. From there, riots begin, humans join the cause for protection of sentients, and the machines are forced to retreat to Africa, where they form a nation known as “01″, and begin to slowly take over the market with their incredible advances, eventually ruling the stock market and devaluing the currencies of the human nations. The story ends with the application of 01′s entry in the United Nations being rejected, and I think we can all guess where it goes from there in Ep.2.

But it’s those entirely too self-consciousness images that bug me. For instance, all the machine laborers are built as humanoid. You have these Fritz Lang Metropolis-esque moments with legions of robots marching off to work. You have INCREDIBLY archaic looking images of scores of robots using cables to pull up bricks to construct a pyramid, and don’t tell me that there’s no similarity there to the Egyptians and Hebrews. Then when the robot rebellion begins, there is a Tianemen Square style shot of a robot protesting in front of a huge tank that gets run over. There’s even the aping of the famous Vietnam photo where a robot with its hands tied up has a gun put to its head and gets shot. Shots of piles of robot bodies being dumped into a ditch, a la the Nazi holocaust. Even a “gang rape” sequence where a robot in human skin, like a terminator, has her skin ripped off by a bunch of guys and is tossed to the ground before she’s decimated. And towards the end, when the pair of 01 ambassadors is pleading their case with the U.N., they are a male and female robot, holding hands, with the female robot holding an apple in her hand, some kind of pseudo-Adam & Eve reference.

First, it bugs me that if we were to make machines, we’d make them human shaped and have them build pyramids the way we had to 6,000 years ago, instead of building them like sentient power lifters and cranes, which would make more sense, one incredibly powerful machine that could independently life huge blocks of steel and masonry, as opposed to thousands of small ones that have to tow a block up a slope with glorified ropes just seems more logical to me.

Second, I guess I think that the Brothers Wachowski may be taking themselves too seriously. What I liked about The Matrix was that it was essentially a comic book ride, fun and adrenaline pumping that had some “serious” elements in it, usually just quick references to actual philosophical texts (Like Neo storing his pirate software in a copy of Baudrillard’s Simulacra & Simulation) or just broaching on the topics of what is real and all that stuff. I liked that approach in that they seemed to realize they were doing glossy SF/Chop-socky/wire-fu that was supposed to be fun, BUT, they laced it in with some actual thinking here and there that would compel the curious to go off and do more homework. It was kind of like lacing popcorn with a little bit of smart drug.

With this first episode though, they seem to be really pushing the whole “Folly Of Man” thing by making humans out to be these totally paranoid, fearful types with no tolerance whatsoever. It
‘s very skewed so that the machines are always reasonable people that try to present rational, peaceful solutions that man irrationally rejects and responds to with violence, so that we’ll feel the machines are completely justified in retaliating, just that they took it too far. Suddenly the fun stuff is taking a back seat and some kind of pseudo-political agenda is being pushed, and that bugs me, because it’s overt and not subtle at all. The Matrix asked questions, and then left it up to you to find answers if you wanted. Here, we’ve got a definite message being shoved down our throats, and it’s done pretty bluntly, with little room for debate.

*Sigh*…

I guess they can’t all be winners… Still I was hoping that since this was coming from the brothers themselves, they’d stick to the winning formula as opposed to getting all preachy and ethical…