August 2009 – Nicolas Demers

Ciao

Oh my God, was that painful. Awkward dialog, clunky directing, plodding pacing, and acting that could only be more wooden if Ents played the parts. I could see where the writers were going with the story—a weird kinda-romance between one guy and his dead best friend’s long-distance boyfriend had a lot of dramatic potential—but the execution was totally off. A friend of mine very accurately described it as “the most boring date ever.” And yes, this setup does justify the awkward “how-was-your-flight” and “so-tell-me-about-yourself-what-do-you-do-for-a-living” small talk, but the audience shouldn’t be bored to tears!

Things livened up a little when the two finally bonded over their memories of Mark, as well as Mark’s hilariously cheesy song, but I could never manage to suspend my disbelief and accept that these were real people doing real, natural things. And the story didn’t get any resolution. Sure, I could accept that Jeff and Andrea just shared one kiss and would never see each other again, but what about Jeff’s sleeping problems, mentioned several times near the beginning? Were they due to unresolved grief over Mark? Did that one crying jag (followed by that brief makeout) fix everything?

Ready? OK!

Sweet, fluffy, totally hilarious. An 11-year-old boy who dreams of becoming a cheerleader in his conservative Catholic school must deal with his hardass nun teacher, and his overworked single mother who’s afraid that her doll-playing, Maria-von-Trapp-dressing son might be… you know… that way. But nobody’s really bad in this movie, just misguided, and even the serious moments are eventually resolved through the power of love and pom-poms. Gimme a W! Gimme an I! Gimme an N! Gimme an N! Gimme an E! Gimme an R!

The Coast is Queer

I always look forward to this annual showcase of local queer filmmakers. There was some very good stuff this year—Coffee being my favourite, along with Asylum (hey, I drove by that mental hospital every day for a couple of years!), the catchily tragic Caught, the hilariously naughty Galactic Docking—but nothing as memorable as last year’s offerings, I’m sorry to say. And mixed in with that were some bizarre numbers that just left me scratching my head (Cindy Doll and Swans, I’m looking at you). So, a bit of a disappointment, but hey. They can’t all be winners.

I have to give props to the folks at the anti-homophobia youth filmmaking bootcamp. See, I don’t mind shelling out for a pass I won’t fully use, if it goes to fund things like this. And those anti-homophobia shorts showing before every film, made by fifth-graders! Fifth. Graders. The mind is blown.

Otto; or, Up With Dead People

Is it a spoof of pretentious indie films? Is it an homage to gory zombie flicks? Is it gay porn? The answer, of course, is “all of the above.” Otto, a young man who may or may not be a zombie, must deal with an egotistical movie director and her silent-film girlfriend, bashers, an ex-boyfriend from when he was alive, and the sad knowledge that he does not fit in the world of the living. But is he in fact alive, though insane? Was it all just part of Medea’s pompous gay zombie blockbuster? No. Or was it? Maybe.

Boycrazy

These four shorts are full of delicious eye candy, from the adorable Zak in Dinks, to hot FBI agents and hotter alien ass probers in Q-Case, to Corey and his parade of musical friends in Boycrazy. Okay, King County didn’t have so much eye candy, what with the dancing bears and the Top Gun stage musical with all-butch-lesbian cast, but I was too busy laughing my ass off to care.

Half-Life

I love a good mind-fuck on a Saturday night! This movie has gorgeous cinematography, bizarre dream sequences, a little boy with magical powers and a seriously messed-up family living in an increasingly messed-up world. There was no real plot, just a tapestry of interweaving stories that the characters and their issues brought to disturbing life: the overworked mother is dating a controlling asshole, the older sister bonds with her gay friend who just lost his virginity and dreams of flying planes, the boy yearns to reconnect with his long-lost father (who’s not dead, maybe, just… gone), and much more.

Global warming, geeky fundamentalists, teleportation, and everything ends (or begins?) with Timothy making the sun rise in the West. A perfectly weird end to a weird movie.

Hey, didn’t I resolve in January to read fiction and then to blog about it? Why yes I did.

Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City

I’d started Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City in April, shortly after finishing The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky, and eventually finished it on my vacation in June. And just like Five Books, as with the previous book, I had a hard time getting into it. The problem, I think, was that there wasn’t any plot, just a bunch of characters living their lives and interacting.

But it grew on me. The lack of an overall plot stopped bothering me, and I just let Maupin lead me by the hand into the lives of these oddballs—not as sideshow freaks, but as interesting people who made San Francisco the city he loved. And hey, I can definitely relate to Mary Ann, the innocent newcomer.

Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time.

She came to the city alone for an eight-day vacation. On the fifth night she drank three Irish coffees at the Buena Vista, realized that her Mood Ring was blue, and decided to phone her mother in Cleveland.

Hee. “Mood Ring.”

And another sign of the times: all the scenes of cruising (both hetero and otherwise) at Safeways and laundromats. I mean, granted, they didn’t have the internet back then, but did people really do that? Oh my god, maybe they still do that! Have I been blind to all the hooking up going on at the Safeway on Davie? Damn, I’ll have to pay more attention in the future.

William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land

I totally forgot about this book, until I dug it up again in Ottawa, and decided to bring it back with me.

A bit of history: way back when, I borrowed from a friend a complete compilation of HP Lovecraft’s stories, in three large volumes. The second (IIRC) contained a review by Lovecraft of about a dozen horror/fantasy novels of the era. One of them, The Night Land, sounded intriguing—a story of the far future, where the last remnants of humankind are huddled in a massive fortress and the rest of the Earth is filled with horrible monsters. Lovecraft appreciated the weird and creepy settings, but objected to the silly pseudo-Olde-Fashioned Writing style, and the schmaltzy love story that drove the plot.

Don’t ask me how I got my hands on an obscure horror novel published in 1912, but I did. And say what you will about Lovecraft (like, that he was a creepy misogynistic bigot), but when it came to fiction the guy knew his shit. Everything he said in his review was absolutely on the nose. In fact, rereading The Night Land the second time around was even more painful than I remembered:

And I stood me up, and did peer about for any dread matter; but all seemed proper, and I began to stamp my feet against the earth, as that I would drive it from me, and this I do say as a whimsy, and I swung mine arms, as often you shall do in the cold days; and so I was presently something warmed. And I dismantled my cloak, and wrapped it around me, and did feel that the Diskos [his weapon, like a circular vibro-blade] was safe to my hip.

Then did I sit me down, and did glow a little with relish, in that I should now eat four of the tablets; for, indeed, these were my proper due, by reason of my shiftless fasting ere I came so wotless to my slumbering.

Now imagine 500+ pages of that. And I’ve spared you the really nauseating parts after he rescues his lady-love and takes her back to the Pyramid. They alternate between being all lovey-dovey, and her being an arbitrarily silly bitch so the big strong protector male has to hit her a few times so she’ll behave. Yeah, I’d forgotten how stunningly sexist the book was, and “Well, it was written in 1912” isn’t much of an excuse. Hodgson deliberately went for old-fashioned, not just in the language but the story dynamics, creating something I’d describe as “medieval”. As much as I hate doing it on principle, I had to skim a lot of passages until I got to the next plot point or action scene.

Some bits were interesting, though. The description of the Evil Forces was indeed pretty cool, as was the narrator’s musing that most of this future Earth wasn’t so much evil as just alien; dangerous to humans, sure, but not actively hostile to them, and still not without beauty.

At one point the protagonist was wondering if Naani (the love interest) had had other lovers between the present day and this future (because they’ve both been reincarnated many times) and actually got jealous over the possibility. That was just so silly to me that I felt sure the whole novel was a subtle deconstruction of the reincarnation romance trope. However, everything else seemed to be played completely straight, so I don’t know.

Bottom line: meh. It was kind of interesting as a specimen of old-time literature, but it fails as a love story, and only somewhat succeeds as horror and adventure. Only hardcore fans would enjoy this.

Month: August 2009

Queer Film Festival 2009: a few reviews