Watched the one-off anime movie The Silent Service last night.  Made in 1995 and based on the manga of the same name, this movie tells the story of an advanced sub, the ‘Sea Bat’ – ultimately renamed the ‘Yamoto’ – built as a cooperative venture by the US Navy and the Japanese Self-Defense Force.  It is staffed by an all-Japanese crew, but an American captain is included as (presumably) an overseer.

{{Spoiler Alert}}

As the post-WWII treaty between the US and Japan forbids Japan to have any nuclear weapons (not sure if this is in fact really true, but it seems likely), this sub is to sail under the command of the US 7th fleet, but the story implies it is effectively a Japanese vessel, given its crew. And its captain states that belief outright during a conversation, then shortly thereafter steals the sub – the rest of the movie concerns the various diplomatic and international situations created by this action.

This is an interesting movie, for several reasons.  First, it plays like a combination of ‘Red October meets Red Storm Rising‘ given the regular interplay between the military action vs. the diplomatic wrangling.

It’s also well written (but for a couple minor gripes, see below) – I really didn’t know what the heck Captain Kaieda was going to do at any turn once he stole the Sea Bat/Yamoto.  While the characters are otherwise fairly typical anime (one or two silent know-it-all guys; many more pride-filled, over-the-top guys; a few raging crusaders; a few moderates stuck in between all the rest) and none are close to being three-dimensional, within the confines of this story their limitations don’t get in the way.

The animation is fairly standard anime – no CGI in this one, probably a bit early for that – nothing spectacular but otherwise fine.

Minor nits:

1) One of the American motives here is revealed to be the ‘recolonization of Japan’ – WTF?  Is that really a concern after all these years (or even in 1995, or ‘ever’)?  Despite the Americans in this anime obviously being the bad guys, that’s really reaching, guys.

2) The American president has a little ‘rage session’ of his own in the bathroom near the end – and he brags to himself that despite the outcome of the sub chase and confrontation(s), the USA still has enough nukes to destroy Japan many times over.  Again – even transposing the recent departed war-mongering, civil-rights-trampling, corrupt Bush Administration into his shoes – I cannot believe Bush (or the even more despicable Cheney) would ever say (or even think) such a thing to even themselves!  This is just too much…

It’s interesting that even the Japanese players here (Prime Minister, Captain of the Sea Bat/Yamoto, other rival JSDF sub captain, and at least one of the high-level administration bureaucrats – all have competing visions as to what to do with this sub – naturally the guy *driving it* prevails with what happens, but it definitely adds to the story and keeps the viewer guessing.

One reason I was interested in watching this once I came across it in a random search – was that I used to play the Amiga computer game Silent Service – based on sub wars in the South Pacific during WWII.  The feel of this movie is very similar – although the players are reversed – and cool!

The only other downside is that they never made the rest of the manga into more anime footage, so I guess I’ll have to hunt it down to find out what happens later to the characters.  Still, this story is complete and stands alone quite well.  Check it out!  I found it at Scarecrow but I’m sure it’s elsewhere….

candybowl

Watched Goodfellas again this evening (it’s now 21(!) years old, circa 1990). I’ve seen it before, but it’s been awhile. While I’m kind of hot/cold on gangster movies (seen the first two Godfather‘s and liked them, but couldn’t make it through Casino…blecch – never seen Scarface or many of the others out there) I always liked this one, despite the sporadic over-the-top violence, for several reasons.

I’m not sure if Joe Pesci here is an acting genius (or just an a**hole) but he certainly makes you increasingly loathe him, until of course karma takes care of it. DeNiro and Liotta are sympathetic main characters, until by the end Liotta sells them all out and DeNiro has gone beyond the pale with trigger-happy paranoia. Paul Sorvino’s tan seems to darken with every scene until he’s practically George Hamilton by the end (a wee bit more rotund, to be sure :).

It’s also interesting how these ‘wise guys’ profess how everything is about family, having kids, protecting their own, etc. etc. etc. and yet they all parade around all night long in the clubs or their rackets, have multiple girlfriends despite being married with kids, and generally behave like 12 year olds let loose with money, booze, cars and no consequences. One example (among many) is when they go to the zoo to threaten feeding a guy TO THE LIONS if he doesn’t talk/cough up the money he owes. Really. Assuming this would even work – isn’t it a bit silly? Why wouldn’t they just throw him off a bridge (likely over the Hudson) with the ‘cement galoshes’ or similar?

And the main character, Liotta’s Henry Hill – tells the whole tale with wistful regret – not unlike Alex’s narration for much of A Clockwork Orange – that he ultimately had to join society to escape being locked up for the rest of his life (or killed by his mafia buddies) – but that he’s bored and misses the life. Talk about ungrateful!

So what’s the message? Is the movie just trying to entertain, or is it trying to demonstrate karma, or is it trying to deglamorize the mafia lifestyle – or in a twisted way, glamorize it? When I compare this to say, the first two Godfather movies – those are much more stylized and portray an older, perhaps more ‘classical’ and restrained mafia perspective? Goodfellas is more modern, possibly more brutal and certainly more over the top.

Maybe there’s no message here. And certainly no ‘christ figure’ or martyr in this movie – Henry Hill, despite what he’d have you believe – is certainly NOT one. The people in this movie either get what’s coming to them with eyes open, or are alternatively too stupid to see it coming (but get what they deserve anyway). Several of the henchmen and Morrie in particular end up this way.

In the end I guess it’s interesting to think about how far removed that lifestyle is from a normal one – or is it?

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Paul Rudd. 🙂 More amusing ‘dance GIFs’ here.

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Again with the sci-fi movie series, eh? So (now) having seen all four of them (not talking about Alien vs. Predator, which I have also unfortunately seen) I can truly say that only the first two are worth watching. Alien (from way back in 1979 – Black Hole vintage) was a great horror story in space, and has lots of (now) famous actors in it, including Tom Skerrit, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, John Hurt and of course Sigourney Weaver (ultimately the star of all the movies). The somewhat obscure (at the time) bio-mechanoid H.R. Giger art and set design really made Alien a unique movie – and with Dan O’Bannon as a key writer plus Ridley Scott as director (this was several years before Blade Runner) were a great combination.

Aliens, the next movie, was directed by James Cameron and took a different tack to turn the saga into an action movie, this time including Michael Biehn (Terminator alum and regular Cameron movie actor). Here, Ripley gets to be a badass and save the day again, despite a squadron of Marines sent to ‘protect’ her and Paul Reiser (who plays a great corporate douchebag, and thankfully ‘gets his’ from the aliens themselves – ha!). And who can forget the classic “game OVER, man!” from Bill Paxton? One of his classic goofy movie roles.

Alien3 was pretty bad. interesting premise (Ripley, Hicks and Newt’s ship is diverted somehow to a prison colony but only Ripley survives the crash – Lance Henrikson shows up again now as the scientist trying to continue the research on the aliens but Ripley ends up as the ‘Christ figure’ and kills herself to thwart him). Interestingly enough, Wired has an article on David Fincher (the director) this month, where he’s still fairly pained about the whole experience – it’s safe to say that the low quality of the movie upon release is probably not his fault based on this article.

Which brings us to Alien (4): Resurrection. Pretty simple plot – yet *again* the ‘Company’ is trying to do experimental research on the aliens (they just can’t learn that lesson, can they?) but this time they are also using clones of Ripley to incubate the alien babies as their hosts. They also seem to be trying to ‘meld’ Ripley WITH the aliens along the way, as she finds out later. A ship of baddies arrives at the military research ship where all this ‘research’ is being conducted – but then when Ron Perlman gets his face popped by Ripley after being a smartass – someone gets trigger happy and the baddies effectively kill most of the guards. However, only Winona Ryder knows about the aliens onboard and what’s really going on – and that Ripley is a clone (200 years have apparently passed since the original Ripley died on that prison planet, after all). So then we go into lengthy chase/confrontation scenes where we find out WR is a robot (remember Ash from the first movie and Bishop from the second? Same deal). We also find out that one of the objectives of the alien research was to allow the alien to have live babies(?) instead of laying all those eggs with face-huggers in them – wtf? After all this useless/?? plot tedium that kills about 45 minutes, the survivors almost get away in the smaller ship only to have an alien on board (again) but manage to kick it out the airlock (again) and then see a sunrise on earth, where the movie ends.

So, while the movie wasn’t near as cheesy as ST:Insurrection – it lacked nearly any original plot and many moments of WTF all over the place – I like many of Joss Whedon‘s writing creations, most notably Firefly/Serenity, but he’s really grasping at straws here (and drowns in the process). He doesn’t include enough plot to make it more a straight horror movie like the first one (and really, now having had 3 previous movies, how could you build onscreen terror in that sense anyway?) nor any real interesting action sequences that even come close to matching the second one. We’ll just politely ignore the third movie altogether. 🙂 And most of the dialog is pretty throwaway too – save the new ‘malevolent’ Ripley, who as a clone with alien blood had a much darker tone and personality than her original – but they never really explore it to any degree, the most she ever says at once is maybe a sentence?

Oh well….

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So as everyone (who’s seen them) knows, Star Trek movies can be a mixed bag. To date, there now have been 11(!) of them, from Star Trek: The Motion Picture way back in 1979, to the ‘reboot’ of Star Trek in 2009 with an all new cast playing Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc.

Of these movies, the rule of thumb has usually been even-numbered movies good, odd-numbered bad-to-at-best-mediocre. So by that rule, you have the second (Wrath of Kahn), fourth (The Voyage Home) and sixth (The Undiscovered Country) being the good movies with the original cast, and the first, third and fifth (*especially* the fifth) being very lame and/or plodding/boring.

Moving to the TNG cast, we have Generations (great villains but not enough to save the lame plot and they should have killed Kirk at the start of the movie, not wait until the bitter end), First Contact (easily among the best Star Trek movies), Insurrection (more below but plodding and obvious, basically an extended TV episode) and Nemesis (a decent return to form, even if it meant Data pays for bailing out the Enterprise crew this time with his life).

Finally, 2009’s Star Trek – which actually follows a not-dissimilar plot to Nemesis (crazy bad guy with huge-ass ship and a chip on his shoulder bigger than the Gamma Quadrant, bent on making Earth PAY) but with an all new cast excepting Nimoy (much to Shatner’s likely chagrin). While I felt that many of the actors chosen here look a bit too young to be playing those roles, I guess they are in fact largely the same age(s) as the original cast was back in the original series – they just don’t have those bryl-cream 60s ‘dos (sorry Kirk) so don’t look as ‘old’? Dunno. Plus i’m older than all of them (sad) anyway. But a very entertaining movie nonetheless and definitely looking forward to the sequel.

But I digress – this post is about Star Trek:Insurrection (the 9th movie, second-to-last with TNG cast) – and since this is an odd-numbered movie, set phasers to Expecting Disappointment.

Where to begin? So we join our heroes assisting in some sort of surveillance on a remote planet of what appears to be a quiet small town of regular looking, yet alien people with gardens, playing kids, etc. Kind of looks like a Seattle suburb (with the faux-Roman pueblo-like structures and ‘marble columns’ everywhere) without the cars or electricity. There are Federation people plus some stretchy-faced aliens manning the cloaked spy post. Then Data literally goes nuts and blows the ‘cover’, by which the locals find out about the operation and the spy installation on the overlooking hill, etc. It’s at this point the rest (Picard, etc.) all get involved – the Enterprise gets called in, somehow running into Worf along the way (they never explain why he showed up, save to complete the TNG cast for the movie, apparently) and they slowly (not kidding) begin to move the plot along.

So they disable Data’s craziness by singing show tunes from HMS Pinafore to trick him (wtf? Is this the Simpsons?). They have several obligatory ‘deep thought’ scenes where Geordi sees a sunrise with ‘real eyes’ for the first time (oooooo) and Data gets lectured by an otherwise token alien kid about how to have ‘fun’ (somewhere else in the galaxy, Wesley Crusher is laughing maniacally). Picard starts getting getting out the space Cialis for one of the native chicks (far too many of these ‘discussions’ at various points in the movie – should have listened to Elvis instead). And Riker/Troi literally take a bath together as they try to rekindle their romance from TNG? Nothing near as interesting for Dr. Crusher (who just gets to watch Picard try to score with the local more than once and briefly talks about boobs with Troi – I am not making that up). Worf at least gets to beat up some bad guys later and zap things occasionally, and Geordi gets to have some ‘Scotty moments’ later in the Enterprise engine room while people are flying around the room and the computers spray sparks and steam(?) – are the computers on the Enterprise powered by dry ice now? 🙂

Somehow amid all these distractions, the crew find a ‘holodeck ship’ on the planet with a fake version of the Seattle suburb in it – immediately Picard guesses the (other, stretchy-faced) aliens’ plot – they were going to kidnap the suburbanites onto this ship and take them off the planet for some weird reason – which ultimately turns out to be that the planet itself makes you stay young/immortal (another tired Star Trek plot device used since the beginning of time). Picard sticks this factoid back in the Admiral’s face and gets his shiny bald ass handed back to him (well, metaphorically), so he slowly, cut-it-with-a-knife symbolically takes off his command uniform for a Wilson’s Leather jacket, packs up some phaser rifles and tries to sneak down to the planet without apparently telling anyone. The rest of the cast ‘bust’ him as he’s trying to leave, and of course most go with him (that’s where most of the future dialog lines will be spoken, after all) except Riker and Geordi who stay behind on the likely doomed Enterprise.

But of course you know, THIS means war – so the bad aliens start chasing Picard and the suburbanites around on the planet while the aliens in orbit go after the Enterprise. Our proud flagship proceeds to get its ass kicked pretty well (at one point it is headed for some sort of nebula cloud with SMOKE pouring out of the engines) before pulling some nerdy stunt at the last minute to save the day (of course). It’s funny how AFTER they throw away the ship’s warp core (propulsion) and sustain damage from the attacks and are flying through some volatile dangerous space cloud that THEN Riker decides to go on the offensive? Kind of like waiting until all your tires are flat and your car is almost out of gas to drive your pregnant wife to the delivery room? What makes it even worse is that at one point Riker calls up the ‘manual control’ option – and an XBox Joystick rises up dramatically from the console (#$#@%*&!>??) and he proceeds to pilot the entire ship like an arcade game? Again, not making this up.

Meanwhile, back on the planet, Picard still hasn’t gotten laid, and those pesky stretchy aliens figured out a way to beam him and his alien missus up to their ship after some slow-hiking ‘chase’ scenes (unlike the heroes of Lord of the Rings, *these* suburbanites apparently aren’t familiar with the concept of ‘running’ when confronted by alien spaceships flying overhead shooting lasers at them). Now captive himself, Picard then proceeds in the time-honored Star Trek strategy when captured: GUILT the aliens into submission, using shame-filled pontification and lecturing. And (not) surprisingly, it works on the ‘regretful’ key alien baddie. Unfortunately however, the ‘non-regretful’ key alien bad guy only becomes MORE intent on blowing everyone up, of course – like Ricardo Montalban, he is a man of action.

But because apparently the budget wasn’t expensive enough for Paramount’s taste yet, we are treated to some scenes of spaceships flying around getting set up for the big bad-guy system blow-up – which it turns out is a false start, because Picard, Worf and the regretful alien baddie somehow TRANSPORTED the ‘really’ bad alien and his crew to the HOLODECK to trick them. Far be it from me to question, but everytime I’ve seen ANYONE ‘beam’ anywhere on any Star Trek in history – they always somehow knew (or I guess, suspected) they were being ‘beamed’ – except until now. Naturally this drives the key baddie into a REAL killing frenzy, which is resolved by (only) himself getting sent over to the main ship charged with blowing up the system, where Picard follows shortly and they have a crappy shootout/clamber-around chase until Picard saves the day (this mano-a-mano ‘climbing battle’ was done far better, more brutally and believably in Serenity three years later – sorry guys).

So then the day is saved, the suburbanites go back to their car, bar and electricity-free Tuscan Village, and Data plays in the hay with the token kid. Picard (of course) ditches his local honey without actually consumating anything (gag), promising to come back and use up his 300+ days of accrued vacation time when he gets the chance, but of course the Federation needs him the most right now. The rest of the crew smiles on as they beam up and fly away in the Enterprise, which seems all repaired already? Little does the ship know its impending doom in the next movie…muhahahha! It’s almost like they wait to make the next movie by the same amount of years it would take in ‘Star Trek time’ to build a new Enterprise? So that’s good, Picard CAN use that accrued vacation after all – everybody wins!

What more is there to say? Well, there were some elements in this plot that weren’t horrible, but too much cornball or tedious stuff overwhelmed them in the end. It was cool to see Anthony Zerbe (both an Omega Man and Matrix veteran, if you can believe that) again as the naive Starfleet Admiral who ultimately gets his from the key alien baddie (big surprise). The (new) Enterprise looked pretty cool and had a new Captain’s Gig small ship that drops out of the saucer section – although its inability to kick ass was pathetic – isn’t this the *flagship* of the fleet? Finally, I like Patrick Stewart, but does he have to be in almost every scene? It reminded me of the TNG finale (where he *is* in every scene) – why make a big deal about having a bigger cast than the originals (TNG vs. Kirk/Spock/etc.) when you end up largely ignoring them for most of the movie? Data of course (assuming the Spock role) gets a lot of screen time although some of it is fairly lame or tedious – but he gets payback (kills himself) later in Nemesis anyway, so no biggie there. I realize that it’s tough to handle a big cast *and* give them all something to do *and* make it interesting *and* live up to fan expectations *and* do it in only one movie without the extra time and character development that a series can provide, but….

Ultimately, I think where Star Trek succeeds or fails is when the balance of action and plot move along nicely without getting overwhelmed by too much lecturing, Shakespeare quoting (you laugh, but it’s true) and/or techie tangents (the holodeck, time travel, aliens that can completely take over the ship in less than 5 min. of arrival, etc.) that can derail the viewer in short order. Here, the Shakespeare quoting and time travel are nowhere to be found (good), but the pacing and believability of the plot vanished into deep space with them (bad).

I originally set the DVR to record Insurrection this time because I was thinking it was actually Nemesis (brain fart, big time). So i’ll have to roust that one up and report back soon – it’s probably the only one left I haven’t seen more than once or possibly twice?

candybowl

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Altogether too rare, but definitely fascinating. As linked by Boing Boing….I will have to read this through a couple more times to truly get the gist but again, fascinating…..

The Paris Review – William Gibson, The Art of Fiction No. 211

I especially like the Blade Runner comment….

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So after many months of waiting for the DVD from the library, finally got to watch Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story from 1993. This is a somewhat fictionalized account of Bruce Lee’s life and career – BL is played by Jason Scott Lee (no relation) and there are other cameos from actual Bruce Lee students and friends throughout the film.

Having now seen all the BL movies (there are only 4, after all) and several other documentaries/etc. I can truly say this is an entertaining, well done film, for the most part faithful to the subject matter and BL’s life and career. Jason Scott Lee is convincing as Bruce Lee generally and in the multiple fight scenes. I also liked that they really tried to show BL as a family man, and while definitely someone obsessed with personal growth, martial arts and ultimately success in film, that he’s not as easy to figure out on the surface as you might think. And they included nods to Lee’s humor as well – there are a number of sequences that reference humorous bits from the movies or earlier documentaries, which was nice.

Certainly with a career as varied and intense as Lee’s was (despite being tragically cut way short), the film still manages to touch on many points of his life and career, even though they overdo the ‘grudge match’ he had with a chinese ‘master fighter’ (in that case won easily, probably easier than even in the movie) because at the time his teaching of Americans the ways of Kung Fu were considered forbidden. And it shows the struggles he had financially in addition to dealing with the 60’s fairly racist America (from an Asian perspective) we tend to overlook these days. The Wikipedia article otherwise details differences between reality and this film, but there aren’t really that many.

I think this movie is a great intro to BL if you haven’t watched his movies or know anything about him other than seeing posters (and hearing people screech and scream when playacting at kung fu). At minimum it should inspire interest to watch and enjoy more…..? 🙂

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The man! Acquired taste for many, but still the man! 🙂

The fascinating contradictions of Bill Plympton

In an interview, the Oscar-nominated animator encourages artists to work the fringes and stay true to themselves

interview link (from Salon)

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it’s that time of year again – The 4th NW Pinball and Gameroom Show is upon us, bigger and badder than ever!

link here. Hope to see you there!

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