Speaking of Jiang Hu Fantasy Films...

I will most definitely be going with my wife to see The Promise (aka Wu Ji "/Les Legende des Chevaliers du Vant.) this weekend. It looks beautiful, fanciful, and tragic. Ah, to live in the world of Jiang Hu. Do I choose duty? Do I chose love? Either way, I suffer. See, tears are coming to my eyes already.

From the website:

A new epic fantasy set in China's mythical past, "The Promise" is a visually stunning tale of passion that unfolds against a backdrop of war as a beautiful and mysterious princess becomes the object of affection for three very different men - a powerful Duke, a brave general and a lowly slave. As passions spark and egos clash, lives will be ruined and lovers spurned and no one will ever be the same.

Directed by Chen Kaige, winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film for "Farewell, My Concubine," "The Promise" was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Cinematography and production design are by Academy Award winners for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," Peter Pau and Tom Yip, respectively.

I love me my tragic love stories. It started with Medieval Romances, Lancelot and Gueneviere, Tristan and Isolde, Brynhilde and Siegfried, but too few of these stories had been turned into "great" movies (the exception being the Lancelot and Gueneviere story). Then I saw The Bride with White Hair and a whole world of tragically romantic films was opened to me, that of Wuxia stories, or Chinese chivalry tales. Ever since that day, I have seen dozens of films and even read a couple of novels. One thing is constant though, the epic scale and the beautiful tragedy of the romances.

At first I wondered why I would like tragic romance, is it some kind of schadenfruede? Do I enjoy watching the suffering of others? No, that isn't it. I love the way that unfulfilled romance makes us appreciate the true value of love. When I look at my wife, and feel the happiness, comfort, and joy associated with such glances, after having watched a tragic romance, I come to see how lucky I am and how truly special a love is when it is fulfilled. It also shows me what love really is and not what I thought it was when I was 15 and full of hormones.

Love is worth the tragedy and the tragedy teaches us about the true nature of love.

The Fantasy Lover's Plight

I have loved fantasy ever since I first read Edith Hamilton's Mythology. The tales of the Greeks inspired in me a love of magic, mystery, and metaphor. I have read many great, and many horrible, fantasy novels and short stories. I have also watched my share of movies/television show which run the gamut (it is gamut and not gambit for you vocabulary nerds) from great to horrible to entertainingly awful.

Those of you who have visited Cinerati before know that I enjoy both Hawk the Slayer and Krull (sorry David) as entertainingly bad fantasy films. Jack Palance makes the first one entertaining, and the silly magic boomerang is what gets my fantasy juices flowing in Krull. Though not even I was entertained by the Sword and the Sorcerer. What allows me to even consider watching these, let alone make arguments for their entertainment value, is the absolute dearth of fantasy entertainment in the media. I mean straight forward fantasy, not hybrid fantasy like Supernatural or American Gothic. Even our most recent retelling of the Iliad was devoid of the gods and magic took a backseat. I liked Troy, but if the gods had been active I would have loved it.

It wasn't always so. The 60s were filled with the marvelous fantasy of Harryhausen films. Who doesn't love Jason and the Argonauts or one of the many Sinbad movies. But the 70s were the era of bad fantasy and the 80s the era of cheap fantasy, so the genre has had its struggles. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Narnia are a sea change in Hollywood, prior to their release the best fantasy film in recent times was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which could lead into a whole discussion of the vibrance of fantasy in Asian cinema. For some reason they can make both slocky and/or classy fantasy without diluting the market. Sure I am overstating things about the dearth of fantasy in American visual media, but it provides a good background for me to defend my latest viewing marathon.

You see...I recently watched 3 DVDs of Darkest Knight. Like the SciFi Original Dark Kingdom, Darkest Knight is based on a literary classic. Unlike Dark Kingdom, Darkest Knight pretty much throws the source material out the window. Dark Kingdom was a clumsy, but very entertaining, adaptation of the Saga of the Volsungs and the Nibelungenlied. Diane Duane, a very proficient author of youth fiction, adapted the tale to have slightly less magic and without the involvement of the Huns. All in all, with the exception of the guy who played Siegfried, I liked the SciFi Original quite a bit.

But that brings us back to Darkest Knight, my most recent three DVD marathon. The show has the following points against it: a) the acting is awful, b) the special effects are awful, even by BBC/New Zealand standards, c) the music sounds like it is played on an old 80s Casio, d) the costuming is...well you get the points. On the other hand: a) whoever wrote the score does know what a leit motif is, even if he/she writes bad ones, b) it has one of the actors from Hawk the Slayer (the dwarf), c) New Zealand is pretty, even if it looks nothing like England (where did those glacier carved granite mountain ranges go?), d) it is an attempt to Raimi-efy Ivanhoe. It is the last point that wins me over. Sure, Darkest Knight threw most of the Ivanhoe narrative into the dustbin, but this is an attempt to create a Raimi-esque series about the ransoming of King Richard. A nice attempt at genre hybrid (thanks Bill Cunningham) if you ask me. It doesn't really work, the ITV Robin of Sherwood (a bargain at ~$150.00 US in NTSC) was much better at fuzing magic and Prince John. Still, I enjoyed the series and am adapting some of the ideas for adventure ideas for Savage Worlds.

Wow...Step Out for a Couple of Days...

I returned to computer access this morning, my PC is very upset with me for installing a new graphics card (turns out the card was bad, not me), only to find that the most vigorous conversation in Cinerati history took place without my participation. To beat all!

To clear the air a little. I keep my political affiliations/beliefs as close to the breast as Fritz keeps his religious beliefs. That is to say that I don't tend, though I might on occassion, reveal the results of any political litmus test I might take. I might have revealed them sometime in the past on the blog, but it is doubtful. For example, when discussing Brave New World, I mentioned what some of my specific beliefs are, but not my general ideology. For me, political affiliations/beliefs have too often clouded conversations and so I avoid declaring my ideology. I don't know why Fritz keeps his religious beliefs close to his breast, but I do know that religion is a deeply personal thing and so I find it an appropriate behavior.

Having said that, David Chute asked an interesting question, "Can one be a Catholic and a Libertarian, or even a libertarian?" I imagine that the answer is yes, but would require some amount of extrapolation. The Acton Institute is a Catholic organization that presents arguments for the justice of Capitalism, which is especially tonic for those who think that Social Justice requires a rejection of Capitalism. I think it would be fair to say that the Acton Institute is also an advocate for "freedom" in the broader, more libertarian, sense.

This is not to say that the organization is libertarian in the sense that David was asking the question. Interestingly, the modern libertarian is often more libertine than liberal. One could defend freedom "rightly understood" and still consider themself a libertarian, but one must also believe in a moral absolute (specifically Catholic Doctrine) if one is an observant Catholic. That doesn't mean that one cannot question Catholic Doctrine, but it does mean that to be Catholic one must defer to the institutions answers to given questions. One may offer new arguments to further the dialogue, but one must (as one has "confirmed" they will) abide by the "results" of the discussion. The wonderful thing about the Catholic Church is that the "results" are offered with a great deal of humility and Papal Infallability is not what many consider it to be.

What the post-Reformation, and Counter-reformation, era (particularly in Modernity) has introduced to the equation is those who profess a particular belief, but say that they "disagree" or think that the "Church is wrong" about certain issues. I would argue that such individuals are not in fact Catholic, rather they are one of either an existing Protestant Church or they are merely protestant in the descriptive. I think many of these people would do well to read Erasmus,Luther, and More to get an idea of how different individuals deal with "issues" within the Church. For the Catholic, not the Christian, at some point there must be acceptance of the decisions of Rome. In America, there isn't even a stigma to not being Catholic. We have a beautiful, rich, and abundantly diverse community of religions. Find the one that suits you and hold to it. It is better to believe in something than to say you believe in something with which you disagree.

Anyway...

The modern libertarian is often the libertine that is inferred in David's comments, and most certainly is by the standards offered by the Cupid Test. But can we really only trust a test that has the libertarian extreme as the Unibomber, the republican extreme is Pinoche, on the totalitarian extreme Darth Vader/Stalin, and on the "True Socialist" (Marx would have a great time with that if you have read his "German Ideology") side is Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.?

So "extreme" socialism is no extreme according to their "famous persons" test? Puh-leese!

Heck! The test didn't ever let you say that you neither agreed or disagreed with a statement. A test without such an possible answer is no true evaluation at all. Talk about shoddy methodology, and don't get me started on the phrasing of the questions.

Bah!

New Title Card

I will, over the course of the next few weeks/months, be monkeying around with the blog Title card. The current image will be a part of whatever the end result is, but I will likely add a few more 'toons to the sides.

Just for Fritz..."Our Star...Blazers!!!!"

According to ICV2, who are reporting a Hollywood Reporter story, Josh Kline has been tapped to produce a live action version of Star Blazers. The Scotsman verifies the information, but also gives me enough information to cause me to worry. A quick search of IMDBPro (the more robust version of IMDB) revealed no results for Josh C Kline, who is, according to the Scotsman, "the the longtime rights holder of 'Star Blazers.'

Kind of reminds me of a certain film by Courtney Solomon that came out six or so years ago.

SciFi Original Movies and Haters

Last Saturday, the Kung Fu Monkey John Rogers of The Core and Blue Beetle fame wrote a brief review of the SciFi original movie MAMMOTH. His thoughts were that, basically, MAMMOTH was the type of film that SciFi original films ought to be, namely fun homages to the films of William Castle etc. His commenters, and there have only been a few, have been from essentially two camps. There were those who think that SciFi Network should never make the low budget SciFi Original movies, but should stick to series like Battlestar Galactica and Stargate. Then there were those, like Bill Cunningham of DISContent who pointed out that the SciFi originals get higher ratings than the regular series. Bill has a funny, but smart alecky, sense of humor and likes to refer to shows that have multiple "branches" by ironic titles. My favorites are CSI: Silverlake and Stargate: Cleveland. Bill, by the way, writes direct to DVD movies.

Which brings me to my thoughts on the SciFi original films versus their television series.

As an aside, prior to reading the Uberhaters website, I had mistakenly assumed that these features were primarily for television consumption. I have since discovered that most of these films are released simultaneously (or within close proximity) on DVD and that the DVD versions usually have decent added features and aren't edited for content.

When I started watching the SciFi channel, in the early 90s, it was because they were running reruns of The Six Million Dollar Man and Buck Rogers. A part of me still wishes they would run these series, but in the years since I have come to enjoy many of their television shows as well (Stargate chief among those enjoyments). There shows have been hit or miss for me though and it would be dishonest for me to say that I think all their series programming has been good. I have pretty much hated all of their "reality" based programs, Ghost Hunters schmost hunters, Scare Tactics schmare tactics. Yawn.

My wife and I are also among the small minority of SciFi fans who don't like the new Battlestar Galactica. My reasons are different from my wife's, I still can't narratively understand why the humans ever went back to an integrated defense system when their chief, and narratively only, enemy can easily take such things over. There is more to my complaint, but it stems from the fact that I think the show is all surface and no depth. It is too post-modern. I know people enjoy it, and I am always happy that there is a growth in the number of SciFi fans (yes that's a big Wanker sign to Harlan Ellison) in the marketplace. But like with Star Trek it's "only the original for me."

Back to the movies though. The SciFi original movies have created a wonderful thing, a marketplace for creative genre fiction on a modest budget. Sometimes that means films that are along the lines of drive-in films of the 50s and 60s, like the film MAMMOTH that John Rogers enjoyed (or Alien Apocalypse with Bruce Campbell or as I like to call it "Battlefield Earth, but fun"). Sometimes it means a Terminator redux with a post-apocalyptic future, or a low budget version of the Forever War. Sometimes it means fantasy, like the recent SciFi original Dungeons and Dragons 2: Wrath of the Dragon God Movie, which I thought was a significant improvement over the theatrical released, or the recent made for SciFi adaptation of the Nibelungenlied, Dark Kingdom. Like Roger Corman, SciFi is becoming a work-mill where genre fiction has a place to meet its audience. No one will argue that Death Race 2000 is an artistic masterpiece, but I love it and I think it is well written. Which brings me to a point. When the budget is low, as it is in all the SciFi originals (at least compared to "Hollywood" movies), it is solely the writing that makes or breaks the film. (Hmm..kind of like original Star Trek.)

I like that SciFi does its original films. I was delighted to read that they are profitable. I find some of them unbearably bad, but I find many of them entertaining and fun. Why pay $20.00 (I have a wife) to see Final Destination 4: Because Death Always Forgets to Kill Someone in the Prior Film when I can buy (or watch then buy) Dark Kingdom for the same price and see how Diane Duane and others have adapted one of the great legends of Europe?

I guess you can tell that I like the SciFi original movies, but that comes from me being a pretentiously non-pretentious genre fan. I would write more, but I have to go watch "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra." I know it isn't a SciFi original, but it is genius.

"I'm a scientist...I don't believe in anything! Ha, ha, ha!"

"I sleep now."

Today is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day

This last weekend I noticed a lot of cars in my neighborhood displaying the Armenian flag. Living in Glendale, I didn't have to think long to determine why so many of my fellow citizens were proudly displaying their patriotic loyalty to Armenia. Today is the 90th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

There is a lot I could write, but I will instead quote Teddy Roosevelt:

The Armenian horror is an accomplished fact. Its occurrence was largely due to the policy of pacifism this nation has followed for the last four years. The presence of our missionaries, and our failure to go to war, did not prevent the Turks from massacring between half a million and a million Armenians, Syrians, Greeks and Jews — the overwhelmingly majority being Armenians. Our declaration of war now will certainly not do one one-hundredth part of the damage already done by our failure to go to war in the past; and it will enable us to render service of permanent value for the future, and incidentally to take another step in regaining our self-respect.

This is not meant to be some hidden message about my opinions regarding current events, rather it is an affirmation of my strong opposition to genocide and my belief that military intervention in such cases is justified.