neotoma

I went to see Hidden Figures on Saturday with fabrisse -- the film about the African-America women who worked as computers for NASA during the run-up to the Friendship 7 launch. As a movie, it's well paced, keeps track of the 3 main characters well, and does a good job of making math and computer programming dramatic, which isn't always the easiest thing.

It also doesn't play down the fact that while NASA was a place that employed many African-American mathematicians and engineers, it was still a segregated employer in an America where segregation was legal and government-enforced. There are a lot of white characters in the movie who enforce fairly awful cultural norms without thinking, because they've never had to think about them before.

On Tuesday I went with greenygal and L to see Project Itoh: The Empire of Corpses.

It's an alternate-history anime featuring Dr. John Waston (yes, that one) working for the British government trying to find the lost notebook of Victor Frankenstein. In a world where reanimated corpses have become cheap labor.

Yup, a steampunk zombie movie from Japan. I loved it; it was gorgeous and ridiculous and utterly fascinating.

In no particular order there was:

John Waston, who has stolen and reanimated his friend's corpse.
M/Walsingham, the head of a British intelligence agency who blackmails John into working for him
Friday/Noble Savage-007, the aforementioned friend as a reanimated corpse; Watson has programed him to act as scribe
The Nautilus, in a moment of sheer WTF?!
An automaton that just wants a soul
A cameo by Thomas Edison
Babbage analytical engines directing corpse labor
Analytical engines running on punch cards with input/output by manual typewriter
Ulysses S Grant in Japan
Alexei Karamazov as Russian corpse-engineer who has stolen the Frankenstein notebook and run off to Afghanistan
Nikolai Krasotkin as a Russian agent sent to track down Alexei Karamazov
A battle at the Khyber Pass, as enacted by armies of reanimated corpses
Frederick Burnaby, who is assigned as Watson's handler/bodyguard
The British super-computer/analytical engine is named Charles Babbage
The American one, in San Francisco, is named Paul Bunyan
Frankenstein's actual monster
Universal Horror's version of Frankenstein's monster
A Japanese military officer with truly outrageous eyebrows
A woman on top of a stagecoach, wielding a flamethrower
Zombie shinto monks as scribes for a Japanese corporation's analytical engine
Security hacking of reanimated corpses and with reanimated corpses
A villain who wants everyone in the world turned into a reanimated corpse, because that's the way to peace...uhm, no?
Corpse-bomb, because what's creepier than reanimated corpses? Reanimated corpses that explode!
A trip around the world from London, to Afghanistan, to Japan, to San Francisco, and then finally back to London (by submarine? from San Francisco?!)
Frankenstein's brain, in a jar!

It was like someone had put 19th century European literature and history in a blender, and then filtered it through Japanese anime.

I want more of it, possibly in crossover with Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, possibly just a 5000 word essay on how abundant corpse labor would have transformed Victorian culture, with special focus on the effects on the working class of being replaced by undead factory workers, on death and dying when bodies might be reanimated, and on the leisure class when half your servants are dead.

On Monday I went out with fabrisse to see the National Theater Live filmed production of Tom Stoppard's The Hard Problem, as she had a spare ticket. It was quite an excellent play, which deals scientific ambition, financial trading, unreciprocated sexual attraction, scientific integrity, and adoption from the viewpoint of the birth mother. The hard problem of the title is the question of consciousness, which is currently one of the thorniest problems in science, since we really don't know enough about the brain to know anything other than "we don't how to ask that yet".

Yesterday, I went with greenygal and pleasance to see the filmed version of Julie Taymor's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the AFI. It was amazing. Given that it was Taymor, the costume design was fantastic, including use of fiber-optic lights in Titania's costuming, body paint -- Oberon's was either blue-black or blued steel, with glitter and gold accents -- and a donkey mask with hand-operated mouth movement for Bottom. The fairies entered and left through the ceiling and floor, and the entire cast made fantastic use of all the stage space, including catwalks above the audience. Max Casella as Bottom was hilarious, Mandi Mansen as Helena made me really feel for her when she was accusing Hermia, Demetrius and Lysander of mocking her, Demetrius and Lysander were hilarious when they kept getting in slap-fights and competive stripping over Helena (because it's not Midsummer if all four of the young lovers don't end up in their underwear), Kathryn Hunter as Puck was apparently made of rubber, I would love to see David Harewood (who played the Prince of Morocco in the 2004 film of The Merchant of Venice -- Portia should have run off with him, he was so damned charming) and Tina Benko as Oberon and Titania live, and Zachary Infante was surprisingly touching as Flute playing Thisbe.

greenygal and I went to see The Wizard of Oz on Saturday, as it was playing at the local arthouse cinema. It was a lot of fun to see it on the big screen -- there's a lot of detail that only shows up well that way. I did come up with the alternate characterization that Glinda is manipulating Dorothy into knocking out rival witches -- it's the only explanation that makes sense to me for why she didn't tell Dorothy how to get home at the beginning, and why she magicked the ruby slippers onto Dorothy's feet too. I was also struck by just how many geeky references come from Oz directly.

After the movie and lunch out, we went back to my place and watched Over the Garden Wall. If you haven't seen it, it was a miniseries that the Cartoon Network ran the first week of November, and it's gorgeous. Also, cute, surreal, and deeply eerie.

It starts off with two brothers, one a teenager, one a younger boy, lost in the woods and trying to get home, and unfolds from there. It takes about 40 minutes for the plot to get rolling beyond 'surreal and cute', but then it's amazing!greenygal as a little upset that I'd only told her it was cute, but I didn't want to spoil the story. Among other things, the original music is fantastic, and they got opera singer Samuel Ramey do to the voice of the villain. Elijah Wood plays the older brother, with Christopher Lloyd, John Cleese, Tim Curry, Shirley Jones, Chris Isaak, among other voices you might recognize. It's available on Amazon and iTunes for about $10, at least in the USA.

I did have one theory about the show which I haven't seen anyone else come up with I think that ( spoiler ) Of course, that's just speculation.

Paths of Glory is showing at the AFI 12:30 tomorrow, as part of the Kubrik retrospective.

Anyone interested?

I think I'm going to get myself a copy of Sita Sings the Blues, having seen it through Netflix. It's an amazing story, and the art shifts are not only gorgeous, but well support the interweaving tales of Nina Paley (who made this movie on her computer) and Sita and Rama. The use of Annette Hanshaw's songs from the 1920s makes for a wonderful conceit for the film, which you should all watch.

Fortunately, it's on a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License, so if you want to download it an watch it, you can.

But I think I'll buy a copy when I can afford it -- because art like this needs to be supported. And maybe I need to finally read the Ramayana...

ellen_fremedon and I went to see Red Tails today. It was about what you'd expect -- gorgeous men in gorgeous planes and full of explosions.

Now I want to see what else the main cast have done. Because Red Tails is a WW2 movie -- you can see the tropes coming a mile away and nothing is a surprise (well, okay the ( Spoiler ), I'd like to see each of these actors in roles that let them extend their ranges a bit more.

For a war movie about pilots, the air combat was wonderfully easy to follow. I never felt like I didn't know which planes were American and which were German (and considering both sides start the movie sort of greyish and zip across the screen, that's a feat) or what action I was supposed to be seeing. I'm sure a lot of it is due to the fact that George Lucas put a lot of his own money into this film -- there was no way the special effects would be bad.

( Spoilers )

But coming out of it, what I really want is for there to be a 10-episode miniseries like Band of Brothers or The Pacific about the Tuskegee Airmen. Using composite characters to get the story down to movie-length doesn't do justice to the real history, and it's not like there isn't a compelling narrative for a miniseries to follow.

I do hope there will be crossover fic -- the military fandom writers should be all over this! Recs if you've got them?

Cave of Forgotten Dreams is playing at the AFI Silver Spring all this week -- I'm planning on going to the 2:35 pm showing on Saturday. Would anyone like to join me and perhaps have a light meal afterwards?

This film is a documentary about the cave paintings at Chauvet -- at 30,000 years old, they are the oldest known cave paintings -- which are not open to the public in order to protect them from damage. It looks fascinating, and I'd love see and discuss the film with other people.

I want to see The Prestige in the next few weeks. So far, it sounds like a good, rather dark movie that the critics just did not get. Any movie that features Nikolai Tesla is worth seeing, in my opinion.

I'm cautiously interested in seeing Flags of Our Fathers, now that I've learned that it's a duology with Letters from Iwo Jima being the second film. Letters is from the Japanese perspective and staring Ken Watanabe.

Pan's Labrynith looks amazingly pretty and magical, and will hopefully have as wonderful a story. The difficulty will be finding a theater playing it when it finally comes out.

300 looks stunning, but it's based on a Frank Miller graphic novel from after he jumped the shark; I don't know if I could stand to go to anything that will give him money. Also, any movie whose preview has me thinking that the costuming in Troy were more accurate has a long row to hoe. Mr. Miller should note that the Spartans did wear armor, and if he wanted them to fight naked for artistic reasons, 'naked except for a metal brief' just doesn't cut it. If you want naked, suck it up and take your NC-17 rating like a man.

So, I'm watching Sharpe's Regiment (thank you, Netflix), mainly because I moved to New Mexico when the series was airing on PBS and I didn't get to see them the first time all the first time round.

And really, all I can think is that Richard Sharpe falls predictably for two types of women: the first category, who last an episode or so, are damsels in distress that he can and does rescue; the second category, rarer but longer lasting, are women who can totally kick his ass. His sergeant actually twits him about his predictablity about women.

It's also fun to watch for the manners displayed -- I'm not an expert on Regency manners by any means -- but it is amsuing how Sharpe tends to be very correct about how to address people (even strange women who drag him home, shag him, and then kick him out the door without ever telling him their name) but the people above him the social ranks just aren't.

His brief foray into shameless street theater in an effort to keep his battalion from being broken up is an effort shameless enough for Miles Vorkosigan. Actually, if Miles ran into a man like Richard Sharpe, the Hegen Hub would be doomed -- Miles would do all the political manuveuring and just point Sharpe in the right direction, end of story. Sharpe's plan to figure out where his missing recruits are by joining the army as a private is rather Milesian, come to think of it...

It was also figuring out that one of the villians is played by the actor who played one of the more memorable roles in the 7th Doctor episode "Ghost Light".

Basically, I'm having fun watching, and will for days, given that there were so many episodes made.

PS I have seen the first disc of House, M. D., and it was wonderful. I have a lot of catching up to do...

PSS I'm still planning on having a marathon of the first Sharpe's episodes sometime in the next month or two. I should have copies of the first five by then...