…and I’m sorry about that.
Things have been busy in a very good way and things that have been in the works for a while are about to bear fruit and appear.
If you like the stuff I do, I suspect you’ll like what’s coming soon.
In the meantime and if you’re a U.S. citizen: Vote!
Today is it and the future truly depends on this!
I enjoy a whole host of films in almost all genres.
Not all these films, to be sure, I come away actually liking, but if I find something to grab onto and am entertained, I can tolerate an awful lot.
There are films that are presented with the bare minimum of plot. You, as a viewer, watch the proceedings and, like the classic Rorschach test, you can figure out -or not!- what the film was about and whether it worked for you or not.
Years ago when I saw the David Lynch film Mulholland Drive, I spent a good hour or so wondering just what the heck I was watching and just where the heck was this film going. Then came a certain scene (no big SPOILERS here, but it was the audition scene) and suddenly it hit me and I understood exactly what Lynch was up to and the film became one of my favorites of his, equal parts hilarious, scary, and heartbreaking.
Mad God one could say, is somewhat in this same general area. We’re given the barest elements of a plot and… is there eventually a point where it all comes together?
Stay tuned.
Directed by legendary special effects artist Phil Tippett (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Robocop, Willow, Jurassic Park, etc. etc.), this film took many, many years to complete. In fact, work started on this film all the way back in 1987 and completed in 2020…!!!!!!
That, my friends, is some dedication.
Employing stop motion, the film is a lush though often dark and grotesque (in the best way, trust me) journey though some bizarre hellscape.
The movie starts with some kind of craft being lowered into this hellscape. The odd creatures on the surface of whatever place this craft is being lowered toward try to shoot it down but fail to do so.
Once on the “ground” the thing within the capsule emerges. He (she?) looks like something from World War I, a draped soldier with a gas mask.
S/He is, for most of the film, our protagonist. S/He carries a map which leads him/her deeper and deeper into this odd world where s/he films plenty of grotesque creatures and scenery.
…but…
We never really know why s/he’s going down there. We never really know, either, where exactly this place is. I suppose one could assume its some kind of hell and, later in the film when s/he reaches a certain point in the trip and brings out an explosive device, I assumed they were there to either destroy this place (which makes sense given how s/he was being shot at when they were being lowered to it at the film’s start) or destroy whoever was in charge of it.
Then, other stuff happens and… I just don’t know, man.
The film is more of a collection of sequences, some quite brilliant, but very little coherent story. Again, it wasn’t until towards the later stages of the film that I even had a hunch as to what our protagonist was up to. But I’m not even sure that’s the case as we go through several more bits and pieces of business and effectively lose our protagonist for a while in some bizarre stuff that I can’t even pretend to understand.
This is a very tough film to grade.
On the one hand, the visuals are mostly quite stunning. This is easily the most accomplished use of stop motion animation I’ve ever seen… even if most of it is dark and grim looking. There is no bright scene(s) offered to counter the hellish landscape we’re immersed in!
On the other hand, the story is…
…I’m going to come out and say it: Non-existent. I’m sorry, but there’s almost nothing here except for a character journeying deeper and deeper into this bizarre hellworld and as a viewer I had no clue what pretty much all of it meant.
Would I recommend the film?
I think anyone who enjoys seeing well done special effects absolutely should give Mad God a whirl. Again, you don’t see such top notch effects every day and these, my friends, are TOP NOTCH effects.
But just be forewarned: There isn’t all that much that ultimately makes sense and there feels like there’s little story told.
Those who want that more than want to appreciate a master effects artist showing off his stuff may want to spend a few minutes with the film and then let it go.
I took a flight and finally had the time to sit (ha!) and watch Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga after somewhat avoiding it.
It’s an odd thing to admit that I was “somewhat avoiding” a Mad Max film because, well, I’m a HUGE fan of George Miller’s Mad Max films.
That is, until Furiosa was released and I read what it was about. Then, unexpected hesitancy on my part.
Let me give a brief backstory about my love of Mad Max films. I first saw The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2) way, waaaayyyy back in the Stone Age when it was originally released and it rocked my entire world. To this day I feel it is one of the very best action films EVER made. I eventually saw the original Mad Max and loved it as well… though it wasn’t quite up there IMHO with The Road Warrior. I also caught Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome in theaters and felt it was one-half of a terrific film but its climax/conclusion didn’t quite click for me.
And then, in 2015 and after many years, Mad Max: Fury Road came out and, unlike many, I felt it was a little less than The Road Warrior (still IMHO the pinnacle of Mad Max films) even though the spectacle was arguably greater (some thanks to CGI) and the character of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa fantastic. Thomas Hardy was good in the Max role but felt it was obvious they wanted the character to be older… ie, they wanted Mel Gibson for the role again in his then current age. But it wasn’t a “deal breaker”.
When Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga came out, though, I was torn.
A part of me very much wanted to see what Miller was up to again.
But another part of me wondered: Did this film really need to be made?
You see, prequels are a tricky thing. We already know where many of the characters must wind up. For example, going into Furiosa we knew that the charcter of Furiosa would obviously survive whatever she goes through -minus her arm!- to fight again in Fury Road.
Because of this, any sense of tension around the question of whether she will survive is effectively thrown out the window.
Of course we know she’ll survive.
Thing is, the same goes with many other characters within the movie. Obviously, every character that would reappear in Furiosa and reappear in Fury Road had to survive as well. Using that same logic, any major characters introduced in Furiosa and which didn’t show up again in Fury Road most likely would not make it.
The problem? There goes a lot of the movie’s suspense.
Next up: One of the bigger complaints against Fury Road was that the film had a minimal plot. The characters go out into the desert, are pursued by the forces trying to stop them, make a U-turn, then come back. Fin.
The same cannot be said about Furiosa. This film has plenty of plot and while its all good for the most part, I worried before seeing the film and felt after seeing it that maybe those elements simply didn’t need to be explored.
Fury Road’s “minimal” plot worked so excellently because we had to use our imagination to fill in many of the blanks regarding Furiosa. We had to imagine the extreme traumas the character went through in the past and the moment she first appeared in that film.
Imagination is a powerful thing. I hesitated seeing Furiosa because I felt whatever traumas the character went through leading up to her first appearance in Fury Road were likely much stronger in my mind than anything I would eventually see in Furiosa.
…and this turned out to be exactly the case.
What I imagined was darker than what was presented in that movie and, if I’m being honest, I felt the first acts were especially dull. I enjoyed seeing Furiosa’s mother and the actress playing the very young Furiosa was good but… I dunno.
Things got better when Anya Taylor-Joy appears as a younger Furiosa but even then… again… my imagination simply trumped whatever was on the screen.
Worse, Furiosa has so much plot that you wind up feeling that if they were intent on making this movie, it should have been much, much longer. Events happen too fast -again IMHO- and were presented so much information so quickly that it feels almost like we’re seeing an outline of a story rather than a story in full. Characters thus come and go almost too quickly. A perfect example of this is the segment with Preatorain Jack. It was easily the most intriguing segment of the film but it felt like it came and went a little too fast for my taste and the relationship between Furiosa and him could have used a little more fleshing out.
Now, what is possibly an even more controversial opinion: I didn’t like the way the character of Dementus was presented in this film.
To my mind, he was a little too goofy and never quite as scary as some of the villains presented in the other Mad Max films.
When I saw the original Mad Max, the character of Toe Cutter was terrifying. In The Road Warrior, Humongous and Wez were also quite terrifying. But Dementus, as played by Chris Hemsworth (who I usually enjoy in just about any role) was a little too “goofy”. I blame this, frankly, on George Miller himself. Even when the character went “dark” at a certain point in the film it was as if Miller couldn’t quite show the scary results in full (Note: I’m avoiding getting into too many SPOILERS here).
The effects, sadly, were also something of a let down.
Again, my favorite film of the series is The Road Warrior and seeing those practical effects was incredible back then. I realize over time they may have lost their sting but there’s something about practical effects versus CGI that makes you think about how some of the later is just not quite as “real” and that winds up taking away much of the excitement you may feel with practical effects.
Alas, I felt too much of that when watching Furiosa. There’s one big chase set piece and, frankly, I thought it wasn’t as exciting as most of the others Miller presented in previous films, including the more CGI heavy Fury Road. Yes, he tried to push the limits and give us something new (paragliders!) but… it looked like what it was, a CGI enhanced set piece.
I’ve said a lot of negatives but, ultimately, I have to acknowledge my feelings are likely shaped by those expectations and the fear that I would be let down by the prequel nature of the film.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, had it been completed and released before Fury Road, I suspect would rate much higher in my mind.
As it is, I feel its ultimately a “good” film that truly didn’t need to be made, given we already could perfectly well picture all the tragedy Furiosa likely went through before Fury Road.
Still, I would recommend the film to Mad Max fans but with those reservations.
3 stars out 5.
It’s been… something.
A long time working on two projects at the same time -full disclosure, one of them I’ve done most of my work but do slip in here and there to do some other stuff- and dealing with all kinds of other issues.
It’s been, frankly, exhausting.
I don’t expect nor want sympathy, but it’s tough to work as much as I do and without much of a break between projects/jobs and keep the proverbial flame going bright.
Two days ago I finished putting in the 6th draft revisions of my latest novel. I find the first half of the book quite good and maybe not needing much more work. The second half of the book, however, did need more attention. The elements, mind you, are all there but it felt like I needed to smooth over things and explain other things a little better. There were the usual bugs I have to clean up, from redundant sequences (a favorite of mine, it seems… writing a sequence only to then write it again in another section of the story!) to sequences that could use a little -or a lot!- of tightening.
Either way, I just finished printing out the second half of the novel and intend to give it a good hard look, fix up what I can, put it into the computer, then print the whole thing out and go into the full draft.
It feels like I’m nearing the end here and I’m generally very happy with what I’ve written.
Now, if the world can stop collapsing around me for a bit so I can focus on that…!
BEWARE: Politics…!
My last post, on July 23rd (where the heck does the time go?!) is a fascinating photograph of the time immediately after Trump is nearly assassinated, the RNC convention is about to begin and Trump chooses J.D. Vance to be his V.P., and then Biden decides he won’t run again and Kamala Harris, his V.P., becomes the Democratic presidential candidate…
…how the tables have turned.
For the time going into the RNC convention, pundits and Republicans felt the momentum was with Trump. It wasn’t looking like he’d be elected, it was to many of them looking like he’d be a shoo-in to win the election and reclaim the presidency.
But a lot changed and rather quickly.
As I mentioned in my previous post, the pick of J.D. Vance as his running mate was met with confusion and, after much of the dust settled, scorn. He’s polling very low and when people find out about his very right wing positions, they seem to like him less and less.
Worse, Trump ended the convention with a speech that was long and dull and what should have been the kicking off of the final leg of his campaign wound up curiously muted.
Then Biden decided to not run again.
This may wind up being the one thing that ensures Trump never sees office again.
In one very daring move, Biden removed himself and his weaknesses -and in retrospect they were most certainly there regarding his advanced age- and by having Kamala Harris become the Democratic presidential candidate, all the criticism heaped on Biden suddenly boomeranged back onto Trump.
The pundits and media that were scrutinizing Biden’s age and gaffs resulting from them could no longer do so and that glaring eye fell fully on… Trump himself.
Suddenly he is the one that looks old and worn down. Suddenly he is the one that has the gaffs and frozen moments. Suddenly he is the old guy we’ve been warned about not allowing back into the white house.
Worse for Trump, he seems to either be in some kind of physical decline -if not facing some kind of financial issues- as well. He barely goes out to campaign and there have been whispers that he’s been told in various states that if he wants to use their venues, he first has to pay them on venue uses from the past which he hadn’t paid for.
He was just on Twitter (ie, X) interviewed by Elon Musk, a man who seems to each day make himself look more and more foolish, and that whole interview was also a fiasco. Technical glitches at the start ensured it began some forty minutes late (shades of the interview Musk had with DeSantis a lifetime ago) and when Trump talked, he was his typical rambling/nonsensical self… but people also noted a heavy lisp. Loose dentures? Possibly. But worse for him, the possibility of further cognitive decline and yet another reminder of something he hopes to bury: His advancing years.
For her part, Kamala Harris and her V.P. pick, Tim Walz, have hit the ground running. Unlike Trump, they are moving around venue to venue and attracting large, very enthusiastic crowds.
Years and years ago, back in the Stone Age of 1984, Ronald Reagan ran against Walter Mondale. Like him or not (and I feel history has offered a harsher look at him) it felt through the whole campaign Ronald Reagan was the clearer choice. Mondale was dour, unexciting while Reagan was bright and optimistic.
It wasn’t shocking at all that Reagan won in a landslide.
Though I say this with considerable caution because there is still quite a bit of time before the election itself, it is certainly possible history may be repeating itself.
We’ll see.
So the last week we had Donald Trump almost being assassinated at a rally and I wrote about how the news seems to be on steroids of late, that it seems almost every day we’re hit with one “unprecedented” event after another to the point of being numb about the whole thing.
Case in point: The assassination attempt against Trump seems like distant, distant old news now and hasn’t seemed to alter the fabric of our body politic much at all.
To be clear, there are those Trump fans who did make something of what should have been a ground shattering event. They talked about how Trump was “invincible” or somehow “anointed”… in a religious sense. There were T-shirts showing the bloodied Trump being held by the Secret Service and… welp, I cannot deny his fans their moment of hero worship even if to me the whole thing was incredibly frightening.
Then the Republican Convention came. In short order Trump chooses author and very far right (and favorite of billionaires like Peter Thiel) J. D. Vance as his Vice President pick… and it doesn’t really do all that much to anyone outside the right wing sphere. In fact, many pundits wound up scratching their heads at the choice. Most of the time a VP pick is meant to shore up a Presidential Candidate’s weakness. Like getting a popular figure from a State that’s in play or choosing someone who will help you with some large segment of the population which may not view you in as positive a light. Vance didn’t seem to “help” Trump with broadening his base and came from a state that likely will go Republican already. An odd choice, for sure.
But even worse for Trump, the convention’s finale featured his acceptance speech and… it didn’t go all that well. To begin, it was the longest acceptance speech ever at 92 minutes and that wouldn’t have been an issue except that most viewed the speech as a too long and boring rambling affair. Even the audience seemed to want it to end and that’s hardly a ringing endorsement to the guy you want to lead not only your party but the nation itself.
And there’s more: Trump claimed he would offer a “unifying” speech and truthfully if there was a time to do something like that, after surviving an assassination attempt as he did, this would have been the time for a more humble Trump to come on stage and accept the nomination and ask those who are disinclined to voting for him to give him a chance. That he’s a changed man and would fight for all Americans rather than the hard right few.
Didn’t happen.
So Trump exits the Convention not looking particularly stronger than before he entered and that, in itself, should be looked upon as at best a missed opportunity and at worse a failure.
A few days later comes the (here’s that word again) unprecedented news that President Joe Biden has decided not to run for re-election. He formally endorses his V.P., Kamala Harris, to succeed him.
It’s a crisis point. Will the Democratic Party descend into chaos? Would several others try to claim the nomination from Biden/Harris?
Nope.
What happened was quite the opposite: It energized the Democratic Party. It led to an incredible monetary haul of donations, perhaps the biggest ever in a single day. And it excited many who may have been holding their breaths with a Biden candidacy.
I was one of those holding my breath, I have to admit.
Look, I don’t dislike Biden at all and I’d vote for him over Trump or pretty much any of the current batch of right wing Republicans out there.
But, let’s face it, at 81 years of age, he’s very old and as a potential voter, I couldn’t help but wonder day after day if we’d get the “good” Biden or the tired older Biden we saw in that first debate with Trump.
The idea of another Trump presidency was unimaginable to me but the reality was that I didn’t know if Biden, a mere three years older than Trump, could show more energy despite his age.
In one swoop, though, the tables turned completely. Suddenly the Democratic Party has a young, energetic, and smart woman looking like she will be the candidate and just as suddenly all the stuff that was being leveled against Biden -that he was too old and too tired looking- was wiped out and re-focused on… Trump.
It’s been a few days now since these events and it feels like the Democratic Party remains on a high while the Republican Party is struggling to find a new message. Worse, their biggest televised event, the Convention, came and went and did nothing to broaden Trump’s appeal while they spent all that time slamming Biden… who is no longer even the candidate they’re running against!
It’s a truly fascinating bit of political ju-jitsu by Biden.
He may be old and I feel he was smart to give up a re-election run. Yet he managed to do so in perhaps the best possible way to re-energize his party and focus a harsh light on the fact that all his problems… are present in spades in Trump.
But again… that’s today.
Let’s see what happens tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow…
I don’t know about you guys, but it seems like we have “unprecedented” things happening daily…
…and it’s freaking exhausting.
It seems each day’s news comes and attempts its best to outdo what happened the previous day to the point where it’s becoming mind-numbing.
I’m not saying the things that happened aren’t newsworthy… but the frequency they come, are digested, only to be supplanted by something even more disturbing or shocking the next day is (here’s that word again) exhausting.
To be very clear, the assassination attempt against Donald Trump yesterday is very much a news event… this is an obvious, shocking, and disgusting no-brainer.
While I have no love for Trump or his policies and absolutely will not vote for him nor do I want him anywhere near any real government power again, I want to be absolutely clear that I do not take any glee at all at the fact that someone -and likely we’ll come to find a very disturbed individual- took a shot at him.
Just as I wished those on the other side -including Trump himself- didn’t make stupid jokes and/or offer such “clever” sly innuendoes about the clearly deranged intruder who broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home and attacked her husband Paul with a hammer.
But the worst of it is that I’m left wondering what shocking news we’re going to get tomorrow.
Or the next day. Or the day after that.
I worry we’ll quickly forget about this shocking episode and move on to the next “unprecedented” event.
And so on…
…and so on…
So I’m flying back home and, having seen Till Death (you can read my review of it here) on my way to my destination, I’m looking through what I’ve downloaded and decide to watch the 2020 Leigh Whannell written/directed film The Invisible Man on the way back. I enjoyed Mr. Whannell’s 2018 film Upgrade quite a bit and wanted to check out The Invisible Man for a while now and decided it was time.
What I didn’t realize is that Till Death and The Invisible Man are, thematically anyway, films that can be described as “the husband from hell and the harried wife who has to somehow survive them.“
Here’s the movie’s trailer and, like Till Death, it gives a taste of what you’re in for without giving away everything:
In The Invisible Man, we start off introduced to Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss, quite good). She in bed next to her husband Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen, also quite good) but, we find, is in the process of escaping his high tech -and clearly very expensive- home.
She’s terrified of Adrian and the audience soon finds out why: In the process of escape, Adrian reveals himself to be prone to violence (I won’t get much more SPOILERY than this) and, even when she’s finally freed of him, Cecilia fears he will find her and enact his vengence on her.
I’m loathe to give too much more away. Going by the trailer, I will say this much: Adrian appears to have committed suicide and then things get stranger as Cecilia fears her ex has somehow figured out a way to make himself invisible and is now after her… and her friends.
As I said above, both Till Death and The Invisible Man are films that focus on a violent, devious, and dangerous husband who wants to “get” his wife and I was genuinely struck by how both films follow through on this premise quite well.
The Invisible Man, after a somewhat slow burn introduction (the only very big negative I would give to the film… maybe I’m getting impatient in my advanced years), takes off in delirious and interesting directions. Like Till Death, the film does feature several surprises and also some necessary suspension of disbelief (I’ll give one here as I did with Till Death: Didn’t Cecilia wonder why the dog was healthy when she saw him the second time?!).
Still the suspense is quite good and the story is meaty and treats the audience with respect without dipping into silliness.
If I have any real big negative, its only the fact that I somehow stumbled onto seeing these two films and wound up comparing them to each other because their initital premises are so very similar.
The Invisible Man is clearly the more fantastic of the two films and was also the one that featured a larger budget but Till Death gets points for knowing what it’s going for and getting there quick.
Still, you can’t miss with either film.
That is, if you want to see husbands from hell going after their wives… who turn out to be far more resourseful than the asshole husband thought they were!
Recommended.
A year or two ago, maybe a little more, I was looking through the VUDU (now Fandango) digital movie sales and found the 2021 Megan Fox movie Till Death listed among those available fairly cheap.
I must confess: I wasn’t necessarily interested in buying the film but, as I do, I checked out the reviews and… they were for the most part quite positive. Anyway, bottom line is the price was right and I figured “why not?” The film sounded interesting enough so I figured I’d give it a whirl…
…welp…
As with all entertainment things I buy, they get into a very long line before I finally have a chance (if ever!) to get to them. Long story short: I was taking a flight somewhere this past week, looked over the movies I had, downloaded several, and when the plane was taking off to my destination, I decided to give Till Death a whirl.
And I was glad I did.
First, though, here’s the movie’s trailer which, thankfully, doesn’t give everything away…
Megan Fox is Emma, a woman who when we first meet in the opening minutes of the film is ending an affair she’s having. See, it is her anniversary and while she is clearly very unhappy in her marriage, she is also honorable enough to realize having an affair is no solution either and realizes it’s time to end things. Now, just to add a little more context and without getting too SPOILERY, it is revealed later in the film that Emma knows her husband Mark has been having affairs as well. Their marriage is truly on very shaky grounds.
Anyway, after this, the audience meets Mark (Eoin Macken, wonderfully creepy from his first scene on) who seems contrite and claims he wants this anniversary to be one where they finally put all the negatives from their marriage behind them and become a true couple.
And if you think these two one-time lovebirds do just that in the course of this film, then you haven’t been paying attention and you certainly haven’t seen the above trailer!
I’m loathe to give away too many of the movie’s story details, but suffice it to say that rather than taking Emma to an isolated romantic retreat where they can finally start the process of healing their relationship, Mark brought her to an isolated, diabolical death trap he has devised. And once the proverbial shit-hits-the-fan and the movie gets going, Emma quite literally is in a fight for her survival against seemingly impossible odds.
I’m certain there are many people who saw this film featured Megan Fox and were instantly turned off by the idea of watching her star in any film and therefore are unwilling to give Till Death a shot but… you’re missing out.
While the film isn’t “perfect” and there are a couple of moments where one has to use the proverbial suspension of disbelief (such as how Ms. Fox’s wonderful makeup stayed on so well through the whole ordeal…!), Till Death is a more than competently crafted thriller that delivers several surprises along with the life and death struggles of Emma.
As for Ms. Fox, she’s quite good as the harried leading lady who is quite literally fighting for her life from the fifteen-minute mark (or thereabouts) of the film until its end.
A stylish, suspenseful work that, at least for me, is an easy recommendation.
Sometimes one can despair from the ramping up of political news which seems all encompassing and, frankly, alternately depressing and annoying.
Then comes news like this, which I find so incredibly fascinating.
The article is by the Associated Press and I found it on CNN.com:
Greek archeologists discover mysterious, 4000 year old building on hill earmarked for new airport
The most fascinating thing to me are the photographs from the site, which indicate some kind of circular structure on top of a hill…
Now that’s an incredibly interesting structure!
At the risk of further hijacking the story itself, they also posted this image, taken from directly above the structure:
Wow!
Again, I highly recommend you read the article from the link I provided above but I will summarize a bit: The architects aren’t entirely sure what the structure was used for. They did find some animal bones within so the thought is that maybe the structure was used for some kind of ritual and/or feeding. It is likely Crete Minoan in origin but it doesn’t fit in with any other known structure from that civilization. Because of its size and structure -which is quite elaborate!- it likely was a structure which required considerable resources and personel as well as technological know how therefore was likely an important structure in its time.
Fascinating, fascinating stuff!