Rik-O-Sound: Tagged and Despondent, Pt. I

There were two reasons why I got onto Facebook:

1) I was frustrated with my friends and their lack of email communication. Likewise, I was frustrated with my lack of email communication in return. Knowing that some of them had hooked up on Facebook led me to believe that this would be a mutually beneficial attempt at bridge-building.
2) I fucking hate MySpace.

I have railed about MySpace in the past, and will probably do so again the future (if I get to a point where I am actually involved with MySpace again -- I still have a page, which I have stopped just short of deleting several times, but only because I have a pair of friends on there that I do not have an alternate means of reaching. But I will never do any work on that page again. It's dead to me.)

As for email communication, you get what you put into it. As it turns out, my frustration is actually the same frustration I held when I lived back home over the telephone, and my lack of incoming calls from friends was actually pretty evenly matched by my own lack of outgoing calls to people whom I should have attempted to reach in certain situations. It's all fine and well to ask "Why didn't you call me about that movie?," but then don't be surprised when multiple somebodies ask you the same question after you skipped out to the latest Eastwood with just two of your pals instead of seventeen of them.

I got on to Facebook to communicate. And then I immediately fell into the trap that everyone does on Facebook: the deluge of seemingly innocuous games and applications, all of which are mindlessly delightful for the first couple of days you have them, and none of which seems to be the actual pains in the ass that they are in retrospect. Go ahead, sign up to a new app and then tag forty-seven of your kindred telling them all about the joys that this innocent-looking new app can bring to their lives. I played around for a couple months, but then realized that all of it was worthless, the book and movie applications were not really all that useful outside of Facebook (which is something I greatly require), and that I, for some strange reason that a guy obsessed with writing cannot fathom (and neither should you), despise Scrabble and don't wish to play even a legal version of the game on the site, let alone a far superior (so my friends and thousands of others tell me), now extinct, knock-off version.

Sure, it seems to cool to want to throw a crap-filled snowball at someone, or buy them a drink, or send them a poodle toy, or just poke them in the ribs (or other filthier areas). Yes, I too wish to be a pirate, a mob boss, a zombie, a mad scientist... doesn't everyone. As Groucho said, "I'm a dreamer. Montreal?" Leaving out the fact that I too invited numerous people to these applications when I first got on the sight, once you have been on there for a while and you see all of the new people joining, if you have given up using any of these applications, they are going to bite you in the posterior on the flipside. Having removed myself from most of these apps long before, one day about a year ago, I dialed into the site and found that I have 127 notifications, most of them from a group of about twelve people of my "acquaintance" who had signed my up as their friend, and were now intent on torturing me invitations to be all of those swell professions I mentioned (and more) at the start of this paragraph. Not to mention the people that were throwing all manner of flotsam and jetsam my way, and the people who wanted me to join their group protesting the waterboarding torture of homeless, transgendered, autistic, abused whale fetuses.

Fine causes all, and you might even see me in a parade for any or all of them, depending on my mood at the time... or my state of undress. But, as it does for every person on the planet, it all boils down to one word, a word that describes the state in which every one of us believes ourselves to be at all times, even if that state is something totally self-created: BUSY. Just too damn busy to bother with the process of climbing up the buccaneer ladder of success, preferring instead to climb a ladder more reality-based. The preponderance of goofy Facebook applications is fine if you want to peck away at your keyboard on a lazy Saturday morning or for an hour after work, mindlessly playing silly games with friends to relieve the tension of the day. Fine for some, but not for me. In normal circumstances, I thrive on being busy, but my form of busy is spread out over numerous other forms of computer software -- online and home collection-cataloguing programs, learning HTML on Dreamweaver, and massive amounts of blogging -- and then the writing and drawing I do off the computer, all of which ties into watching movies and reading books through which I derive the means of doing the massive amounts of blogging when I return to the computer.

What it does is leave little time for me on Facebook, as much as I actually, despite the protestations above and to come, adore the program. It's a far more supple and user-friendly program than Facebook, and if the look is a little too uniform for my tastes, at least it doesn't have the gnarly look of most MySpace pages. Professionally designed or amateur, every page on that site looks a mess, and I will go to almost any other place to look up information on someone or an organization rather than visit their MySpace page. Sure, it works for Dane Cook. But he's an overrated, unfunny asshole (with zero acting talent, I must add vociferously) who just happened to be the first to learn how to make the internet work for him, and better than anyone else has. Kudos to him for figuring things out, but you won't find me visiting his MySpace page, or anyone else's for that matter. Not even mine, which is why I no longer provide a link to it.

And so, eventually, I stripped nearly everything off of Facebook that wasn't immediately necessary to my basic enjoyment of the site. No games, no awkward movie collection applications, no zombies, snowballs, pirates. I don't even poke back much anymore. Because what all of these distractions proved to me was that they were not true communication. Just because you poke somebody on the site doesn't mean you have anything worthwhile to say to them. Sure, it's nice to know that someone is thinking about you, but the truth of the matter is that they probably just noticed your name on a list, and while they were jabbing three other people, they thought, "Oh, I should hit his name too." Don't need it. Don't bother. If you want to talk to me, write on my wall, send me a personal message, look me up on the chat log on those rare occasions I do log into Facebook, send an actual email to my real account, or go the extra mile to show your affection by sending a box of candy or flowers -- the real variety, not the pixel-encrusted ones on some program on Facebook.

And most of all, do not tag me for anything...

(To be continued...)

Slipped Discs: The X from Outer Space (1968)

Director: Kazui Nihonmatsu
Japanese, 1:19, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 4

Don't blame Guilala if you don't enjoy The X From Outer Space. After all, he's doing the best he can given how preposterously he has been designed. A Godzilla-style body (down to the skin texture) attached to a head that looks like two cymbals crashing, with a chicken beak and goofy glowing eyes added for good measure. To prove he is here, Guilala also sports a trumpet-like device on his forehead that could have dropped off a tower in Whoville. And, yes, the antennae... in what might be a crude attempt to prove that Guilala really did come from outer space, and possibly to differentiate him from all those other kaiju waddling about unhindered about Japan in the 1960s, Guilala comes replete with a pair of unbelievably springy antennae. He is possibly from Mars, after all. Martians have antennae... at least, the ones I drew in school did.

At first glance, you want to laugh at Guilala, but then another feeling rises up: sympathy. Sympathy for the poor guy in the Guilala suit, who seems to be having such a rough time seeing in the outlandish gear, that he has to take two wild swipes at a radio tower with his paw before he roars what has to be a monster version of "Ah, screw this!" and moves on to the next tower, which comes down in a proper rumble as was probably planned for the first one. (Is it amazing they left this bit in the film? I am not so sure...) It must be hard enough to maneuver acrobatically in a hot, sweaty, heavy costume; it has to be even harder to do it practically blind.

But first, in order to laugh at and then cry with Guilala, you have to get to him. In The X From Outer Space, the way you do this is to hop on a nonstop party ride with an international quartet of groovy astronauts, including a female, on their way to Mars, with a slight detour on the moon to down some cocktails. Sure, there's dramatic tension here and there, but it's undermined by a swingin' trip to the Moon Lounge, and the feeling that scientific research is the second or possibly third thing on everybody's mind, especially given the multi-racial love triangle that develops in these scenes. The lounge mood is set from the get-go by the theme music, once you get past the studio logo, that is; the first few notes strike an ominous tone, but then it gets pushed aside as a hip-swingin' space tune kicks in, aided considerably by a telling us how "the universe is our world/the future is our tomorrow/it all belongs to us!" while the credits roll past in a stroll through the constellations. The organ that accompanies this music plays the second largest role next to Guilala in setting the mood of the film, and even in the more dramatic scenes without its intrusion, one can still feel the groove pulsating in one's head. Above all, and whatever the faults of the film, The X from Outer Space is ultimately groovy, baby.

On their flight to Mars, the groove-sters meet up with a flying saucer; apparently their rocket, the AAB-Gamma (also called the "Astro-Boat") has been roofied, because the next thing they know, it's pregnant! And maybe the rocket fuel was used in the martinis, too. OK, actually, some strange object has been left on its tail... Lisa, the blonde hottie scientist -- who always seems to be the only one really concerned with her job, even while locked in alternate stages of girlish giggling and seething jealousy with her Japanese rival for Captain Sato's affections, Michiko -- collects the "egg" and places it in a vacuum container. The problem? Once they return to Earth, the crew steps out for more cocktails, and the thing eats through the container and then the floor. They discover a three-toed indentation, which Sato declares looks "just like a chicken's claw print." With an alien potentially ransacking the countryside, what do the astronauts do? Sato asks if anyone wants to get a nightcap. That's right. a nightcap. The party bus apparently never stops for these guys!

Soon, the alien has eaten vast amounts of energy and grown to the normal size of a kaiju interloper, which, as even the most nominal fan of these types of films can tell you, is freakin' goddamned huge. I am not going to launch into the sordid details involving his klutzily cute stomp-a-thon through the streets of the city, the destruction that ensues, nor of how the scientists stop groovin' just long enough to figure out how to stop Guilala (though it might involve a substance called Guilalalium). I will leave these joys up to you.

But I will ask why this film is not properly on DVD? All but a handful of the Toho kaiju films (Gojira and his lot) have been released, some in their most respectful, excellent forms yet. But no love for Guilala? Where is the Tarantino-like champion of this film? He gets Mighty Peking Man back into the public eye... why not Guilala, perhaps one of the most lovable giant monster films to ever be released, if not the grooviest. An old friend from my high school days recently became reacquainted with me through my Facebook page, where Guilala resides as my profile picture (for those who would correct me without checking, it is Minira on this site, Guilala there). She asked me if I still had a Godzilla complex, and while the answer is most definitely "yes," -- and the Big G is definitely my favorite creature of all time, giant or otherwise -- I didn't have the heart to correct her regarding the pic.

But Guilala has, in the past few weeks, gotten even a bigger profile, via a television commercial. A company called The Ladders (stupid name, yes, I agree) is taking aim at Monster.com's market, and produced an ad with a tiny, rampaging creature which can't get a break in his unfulfilling, monstery job. As you will see in the video below, he discovers what it takes to get ahead in the city-smashing game. And damned if the creature isn't my beloved little Guilala...



Best of all, a sequel-slash-remake of The X from Outer Space was produced in Japan last year, and thankfully, all signs point to it -- called The Monster X Strikes Back/Attack the G8 Summit -- being a largely parodic version of the story. Hopefully, the grooviness of the original will be intact. My own version of a remake would involve Bruce Campbell, Tracy Morgan (as Astronaut Jones) and three dozen Japanese girls in space bikinis, while the 5.6.7.8s play their raucous, '50s-style Woo-Hoo music in zero gravity around a space station/martini bar. My guess is that this version will always exist in my brain, and that there is little hope that the new version is this groovy. But any sign of Guilala's continued cultural existence brings hope that a decent, annotated DVD version is in the works. Go Guilala!

Recently Rated Movies 2009 #1

The Killer That Stalked New York (1950)
Director: Earl McEvoy
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

I tuned into this one partly because it starred Evelyn Keyes, who died midway though 2008, but also because it was the one film in TCM's scheduled night of movie epidemics that I had not seen. While I do not normally indulge in, or really care for, the medical thriller genre, this one seemed like it might pose to be interesting, and I was certainly not disappointed. Killer has a noirish feel from the beginning, without actually following through fully on its dark promise, but it is an extremely engaging chase through the streets of New York, as a doctor, the police and even a T-Man pursue a woman who may be unknowingly carrying smallpox through the city. Keyes is the blonde target, a nightclub singer, who picked up the disease in Cuba while attempting to smuggle a pair of diamonds into the U.S. This one moves pretty quick, darting from location to location, so look quick for a bit part played by Jim Backus, who only recently had begun winning the world over with his voicework as Mr. Magoo (and would eventually bring us another famous multimillionaire, Thurston Howell III, on a certain TV island).

If you think the film is merely more Hollywood fear-mongering over a potential epidemic, keep in mind this story was actually based upon a real event in 1947, where smallpox was carried into New York City by a man so unknowing of his fate, he was dead long before they discovered the virus with which he was stricken. Only two people died in total, but over 6 million were vaccinated in the wake of his death, which was a record at the time (could be now too, but finding out this tidbit is really not important to me right now...) But the movie is really only inspired by the outbreak... there was no chase, no diamonds, no smugglers, no nightclub singers, no shadowy angles incurred and a dramatic conclusion at gunpoint over the streets of New York. That's the movie world, and really, the ultimate reason I tuned in to the movie. I was there for the noir feel and a lot of tough-talking dialogue. If I wanted real world diseases, I'd go hug one of my neighbors.

Hot Rod (2007)
Director: Akiva Schaffer
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

I keep reading reviews of Saturday Night Live where people are praising the hell out of Kristen Wiig (whom I do enjoy) and pretty much leaving the rest of the cast on the trash heap, including Andy Samberg, one third of the team that is really keeping SNL going with the Digital Shorts run, and has the Emmy to prove it. I am going to hold back on my evolving opinion of the problems with the show, most of which have nothing to do with the actual cast, of whom I enjoy the talents of several of its members, but mainly in the movies. Bill Hader, for example, has been everywhere lately, and while I like a couple of his characters on the show, I like him far more on the big screen, such as in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, where he collects at least a half dozen decent laughs, if not huge ones. But I am discovering that Samberg has become my favorite on the show, if only for the Digital Shorts, since he is not used often in the main portion of the show. So, if you are enjoying the shorts, know that his efforts are usually conceived and completed via the efforts of his two partners in crime, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer, collectively known as The Lonely Island. The question, though, since they are usually relegated to just a handful of minutes on each telecast of their regular job, what can they do in with a full-length feature film?

And thus, we arrive at Hot Rod, which I knew I would end up seeing on my own, since my significant other no longer has any form of tolerance for SNL at all. (I usually watch it early on Sunday morning before she gets up.) For a kid who grew up in a neighborhood where we indeed had our own Evel Knievel fanatic, and for whom we would construct rickety ramps and grab garbage cans for him to jump his crappy bike over, the world of Hot Rod is amazingly familiar to me. Perhaps this adds a little more innocence to the film than it deserves, especially given that most of the people in the film, even the ones we are supposed to like, pretty much behave like cads. But there is a genuinely infectious performance by Samberg, who portrays a sad sack of a neighborhood hero who is a good deal more of a laughing stock than he and his friends are aware. I was struck by how much Samberg's character reminds me of the way that I think Adam Sandler's characters are supposed to appear, if only Sandler weren't more of the sort of thug that I despise. This has always been my problem with Sandler: while many of my friends have pretty much rolled over and spread them for him, I have always identified him as less of an adorable man-child and more of a immature hood with barely repressed violent tendencies who was desperately in need of hospitalization at a very young age and onward into adulthood.

Not so with Samberg's character, who is harmless except to himself, obsessed as he is with self-immolation and scores of broken bones, thanks to his tireless pursuit of fame as the world's greatest stuntman. Thankfully, he has a great supporting cast behind him, with Taccone, Hader, Ian McShane (who seems to be having a ball being engaged in a constant, exceedingly violent father-son struggle with the would-be daredevil), Sissy Spacek, and, unbeknownest to me before watching it, Will Arnett as the sleaziest, smarmiest boyfriend of a would-be love interest ever. (And please don't ask me to get started on the effect that Isla Fisher has on me in even the smallest roles...) Not great, even for stupid-smart comedy (not to be confused, either, with smart-stupid comedies like the Apatow lot), but there are a couple dozen, pretty good absurdist laughs here, if not more. Thank a script knocked out by Pam Brady, who recently did Hamlet 2, which also came very close to being terrific (if not for one very specific problem), and merely ended up slyly satisfying. And Hot Rod has one thing that most comedies these days are definitely lacking: an ultimately innocent (though knowing) charm. For this feeling alone, exceedingly rare these days, I will watch Rod Kimble jump his silly moped again and again...

Auld Lang Cine-ma - Part II

On New Year's Day, 1987, I dragged a handful of friends to a theatre, and the bulk of them sat through at least three of the five films I saw that day.

I can no longer name all five of the films I saw on that turning of the year, though with research I could probably piece together the last one. We definitely saw the musical remake version of Little Shop of Horrors, No Mercy (which truly sucked, mostly due to Kim Basinger not having learned how to act yet and because Richard Gere is a general dickhead), Witchboard (once again, truly sucked), a forgotten fourth film, and somewhere in there, in the last example of my sneaking into a movie unpaid, we took advantage of the low security in the Fireweed Theatre and crept into King Kong Lives, the abhorrent though somehow endearing (I blame Linda Hamilton's breasts) sequel to a generally stinky remake of my favorite film of all time. (See, I was right to have ended my criminal career sneaking into it, but we also snuck into Witchboard as well.)

Over the next two-plus decades, there have been only five occasions where I have not seen at least three films during the course of each day. One two of those outstanding occasions, time and/or money allowed me the opportunity to only see a pair of films each, and on the remaining pair of occasions, I missed out altogether on seeing any films, either due to illness of a death-dealing variety (a particularly nasty flu one year) and two due to spousal unrest in the dark days of the early '90s.

Otherwise, once the hour turns to midnight the night before, just as everyone is buzzing buzzers, hooting hooters, throwing confetti and kissing anyone within reasonable distance of their lips, my thoughts immediately turn to determining just how early I can get my friends or significant other at any given time up in the morning to hit the movie theatre. Most often, this involved me going to a late morning matinee on my own, and then having everyone else meet up with me at various points throughout the holiday to take part in my own personal form of righting the madness. Lest you think I take the attendance of these things lightly, it was on one particular occasion that Jen, in the days when we were barely friends and more in the way of glorified acquaintances, stuck about to fight our way through Costner's The Postman (I stress to this day, please read David Brin's book instead). While I had yet to form any feelings toward her at that point beyond general attraction, the fact that she remained about while others ditched on me (a couple other pals stayed as well), and even sat by me, certainly made me give more notice to her.

And now, with 2008 turning into 2009, I dragged Jen out of our extremely comfortable bed to hit an early afternoon showing of Slumdog Millionaire, followed that up immediately with Frost/Nixon, and then take a short break to grab In-N-Out across the street from Cinema City, before we closed out the day (a bit earlier than we planned) with The Spirit. (We had also dialed in time to hit Four Christmases late in the evening, but the need to feed the kids and the fact that I needed to work on Friday rather killed a four-film plan).

The day became one in which we managed to take in one film which had been nagging me for a few weeks (Slumdog, which was exquisite, though taxing at times) due to my overall theatrical malaise, one (Frost/Nixon) which, like the previous film, will surely garner a passel of Oscar nominations, and then one which there was no doubt I would go see (The Spirit) due both to its source material, of which I possess a decent pile of reprint material in magazines and comics, and also due to its director/writer, Frank Miller. That it turned out to be a most souring experience probably spoke more to my overfamiliarity with that material and general high hopes for the project; there were others around us clearly enjoying it, while others were openly hostile as they left the showing before us, so it seems the movie very much inspires a mixed bag of emotions. (Of course, don't all movies do that? Or shouldn't all movies do that? After all, I know assorted people who despise Citizen Kane, Casablanca and The Wizard of Oz for disparate reasons, most of them out of sheer idiocy. To each their own, I guess...)

I didn't want to go home, but we had to. I could have easily stayed up all night watching movies, if only they would have let us, or had the facilities to do so. The New Year's rush always gets me back in the game, and assuredly, we have since hit The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and we/I have plans to hit at least three films Thursday through Sunday coming up. I say "we/I" because Jen does not wish to go to the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still with me. The original is on my list of all-time favorites, and is extremely precious to me, but I am going to hit a Saturday matinee of it, because I just have to know what the hell they might have done to it. If indeed it is a true trainwreck of a story sacred to me, I will rail against it. Contrariwise, should it prove to be astonishingly decent, I will say so. But I cannot just sit idly by while they possibly ravage Day... I just have to know.

Which begs the question: Is there a switch inside me that turns to "idle" at the close of each year, that indeed makes me sit idly by while the remake of Day is out for weeks? Hard to figure, but something is going on that doesn't jibe with my usual zest for seeing any film at any time in any situation (the rule by which I live my cinematic life). But, thanks to my annual New Year's antics, the point is I am now fully engaged, for whatever mysterious reason, into seeing films again. The cure is the disease is the cure.

To Auld Lang Cine-ma!

Auld Lang Cine-ma - Part I

On September 12th, on our first night of our second annual Walt Disney World vacation, Jen and I attended a late evening showing of the latest Coen Bros. effort, Burn After Reading.

It would be just over two months before we attended another film inside a theatre, when we hit an opening night showing of Quantum of Solace.

Two months without a movie. I do not do this very often.

For me, it almost becomes painful to not go and see a movie at least once a week, if not more. I am at my most relaxed inside a theatre; my most at peace. Even if the movie is unceasingly violent or unfathomably decadent, I am still deeply in peace in the surroundings of the theatre, the smell of the greasy popcorn (which I only buy perhaps one time out of every ten trips or so), the stickiness of the floors (not much of a problem these days) and even in the varied reactions of the audience, either in concert with the events in the film or merely immersed in their own rudeness and ignorance. Whether a positive or negative atmosphere, I am at most complete when I sit inside a theatre. I can breathe, I can think... I feel truly alive. It has little to do with the actual content of the films, since films vary so much from screen to screen. It has everything to do with finding my laughing place, where I am most content and free to be myself.

Even weirder than not seeing a movie for two months was my emergence back into the movie world. Once we started going again, we only saw about four movies together in the next seven weeks. I was feeling ever more disconnected from myself, and while I did fill much of the time with travel and the visiting of relations, odd trips to Disneyland and hanging with friends, I was increasingly ill at ease with myself. The fact that most of my writing was about notes from my travels and non-movie items proves this. I wasn't even watching videos. But I caught Bolt (in 3-D, no less) in Seattle with Tim and Kathryn's boys, and that allowed me to approach what is primarily a kid's flick on the level of a kid (though more like an avuncular babysitter). Even watching merely decent Disney affected far more than it would at any other time, so removed was I from my habit. This provided a needed jumpstart and reminder to me that I was too far gone from my happy place. And while I was able to hit The Tale of Desperaux in Santa Rosa with the M'otises over Xmas, all it chiefly served to do was remind me that I need to get back into the regular swing of things.

Except, looking back, it often seems that I do this near the end of every year, this seeming habit of going to the theatres less than I normally do. Since I tend to get most of my shopping done rather quickly over one weekend or a few days, and since I spend little or no time actually preparing for the holidays, I can't use them as an excuse. It's not like there are any more visitors in-town than there would be at other times of the year eating up my time and attention, so it can't be this. As for travel eating my precious time up, I have already mentioned that my last three trips or vacations in this period, I still managed to find myself inside a theatre at least once at each destination. The problem would seem to be more localized, but it has nothing to do with finding time for both Jen and I to hit films together. While I do tend to wait to see major films (or at least those she in which she is partially interested) with her, I also crawl into a seat on my own with regularity, which is how I manage to visit such dross as Twilight (surprising I have seen it, yes... but also a current and major cultural trend which also spills over, in a very juvenile way, into a genre over which I hold great concern. I had to see it. Plus, there are hot girls in it, so it wasn't a total loss...)

So what is it? I really am at a loss to explain, though perhaps now that I've made myself truly aware of the condition, I can study it closer next year. Something is keeping me from hitting the flicks like my normal self at the close of every year, and it has nothing to do with interesting new films, since I am able to find something of even the most minor interest through the sparsest of release weeks, even in the supposed doldrums of each movie year, post-Oscars to pre-summer and post-summer to pre-holiday rush. And I now get plenty of sunlight, so there is no cabin fever effect here as there was when I still dwelt in Alaska.

Luckily, I always have a way out of this situation, and while it ties in partly with all of the Oscar buzz-worthy films crashing at us like a tidal wave at this time of year (though that is certainly not all I will see), mainly I approach it the same way that I now approach writer's block: I attack it. Just as I will write non-stop about practically anything (such as this topic) just to get myself back on track, I also use a certain holiday to push myself back into the theatre seats.

Though I did not have a name for it then, nor did I know it would become a tradition with me (and, somewhat reluctantly, many of my sleep-deprived friends in the passing parade), twenty-two years ago, I turned New Year's Day into a living resolution: Auld Lang Cine-ma.

(To be continued tomorrow...)

Buzzing Thru the Pylon: Kurosawa May Be Cake, But Extra Geniuses Are the Icing

Well, I wasn't expecting this at all.

I knew that Jen's mom, Sande, was clued in on my deep admiration for the films of Akira Kurosawa when she gave me a copy of the Criterion Collection set for Drunken Angel last year for Xmas. But I really did not expect her to toss this set my way for the current holiday season:

The Great Directors, Volume 1

Five discs, five films from some of the greatest directors in film history: Chabrol, Tarkovsky, Antonioni and Schlöndorff! Oh yes... there's also that Kurosawa guy -- you may have heard of him -- represented here by Dersu Uzala, a film which not only fascinates for its incredible cinematography, but is also remarkable for letting Kurosawa film outside of Japan. Also, no samurai (or the Japanese, for that matter) to be seen at all. What you get is a vigorous though touching story set in the early 20th century of a Nanai hunter and guide who heroically leads a Soviet surveying team through the harsh Siberian wilderness, and how he comes to win the respect and admiration of his charges through his bravery and ingenuity, despite the fact that the Soviets seem him at first as a doddering old man. The film then continues years later through glimpses of the ongoing friendship between the Soviet captain and Dersu the hunter, even as Dersu's senses begin to fail him in his advancing age.

I have had a copy of Dersu Uzala for numerous years on VHS, but naturally, I was anticipating its release on DVD, as I do anytime I hear there is a video being released from one of those whom I, and many, many others, consider the Old Masters of Cinema. Recently, I did notice that Kino Video was finally doing just that -- releasing Dersu Uzala -- and I added the film to the (ahem...) short list of films I wanted to purchase in the near future. But then I noticed it was also coming out in The Great Directors, Volume 1 box set, and I suddenly became torn. Yes, it's true that I had only seen one of the other films in the set, Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes Femmes, an odd, kind of dirty little thriller from the early days of the French New Wave, but I saw it quite a long time ago, so I didn't have much in the way of memories of it. I had enjoyed it though, but the fact that I had not seen the remaining three films in the set made it somewhat of a longshot that I would actually go out and spend the $70-90 or so that it would cost me to get the set, especially given that there were other box sets out there for which I would instantly dish out such money, such as either of the Douglas Fairbanks sets still lagging around on my To Buy list. (Sorry, but the silents usually win out for me.)

But then wonderful Sande, of whom it must be said, were I actually legally married to her daughter, would make the greatest mother-in-law in history, made the decision for me. While I did miss Christmas with Jen's family this year due to my trip up to see my brother M'otis, waiting for me when I returned were a handful of presents, and amongst the lot was The Great Directors, Volume 1. I found out later from Jen that Sande had guessed that the recent vintage of the set's release made her pretty certain that I did not have it yet. And she was right. So far, DVD-wise, she has always been right, even with my slightly deserved reputation of being one for whom it is difficult to shop.

So, since I have now bypassed my own purchase of the single Kurosawa, what else do I get besides that and the Chabrol film? A 1974 film by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, who most would know from the original version of Solaris (which is pretty much what I know him from, that and Stalker) called The Mirror, supposedly (from reading the description) a quite personal WWII drama based on his own experiences in his homeland at that time. From the acclaimed director of The Tin Drum, Volker Schlöndorff, comes a later film called Circle of Deceit (1981), starring Bruno Ganz (a personal favorite) in a story set in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War.

And finally, in perfect timing with my own current run of Michelangelo Antonioni viewings over the past few months, there is his 1957 effort Il Grido. The description claims the film as the "missing link" in his career between his earlier "neorealist style" films and what they term his later "more subjectively stylized" films like L'Avventura and Red Desert, certainly two of his most famous films. Me, I'm a Blow-Up guy, and I guess I won't really know how it plays as a "missing link" until I have actually seen his films previous to this one, but I am definitely pleased to have it in the collection, if only because it affords me the chance to get acquainted with it at my leisure.

All told, a decent haul for a set: a couple with which I have history, and a trio waiting for me to discover their hidden secrets. It's nice for once to get a set where I haven't seen everything in it already. And that is how I am going to view it, watching the familiar first, and then taking advantage of what is basically a prepaid excuse to be cinematically adventurous. You should all be so lucky...

[Insert "Logo"-related pun title here...]

So, what's the hold up with Cinema for Space Lovers - the Website?

Frankly, nothing anymore.

Not that anyone was exactly clamoring for it, but it has been something important to me for quite some time. Not just a blog, but a legitimate website that I have been long building on which I can, yes, place all of the writing that has thus far been featured here on the Pylon, the Cel Bloc and on Spout (but not any longer). Such writing will still be featured here and on the related blogs, as there are many things that I rattle on about which have no place on Cinema for Space Lovers. But many of my ramblings do belong there, and in months to come there will be more of an overall push towards that site, as that will increasingly become my chief base of both operations and focus.

And all that was holding me up was a logo.

Right now, and the absolutely main reason that I haven't pushed the Space Lovers site very much (or concentrated on it, really), was that there has existed only a generic banner atop its main page (a banner which resides there even now as you read this... if you are reading this near the date of publication) representing the system upon which the site is being built: Joomla. Hard to want people to visit something that hasn't exactly been graphically branded as yours yet -- hence, the hesitation. And despite the fact that I have gained great experience in HTML and various website design programs over the past couple of years, as far as graphic design goes, I am a nebbish. I only got around out to figuring out how to resize photos for the web on Photoshop properly in the past few months; how am I supposed to design and create my own logo with the sum total of my Adobe program experience basically consisting of the ability to locate the various programs on my computer. It didn't bode well.

But I did have a concept. One which I came up with a while ago, but various delays kept interfering with forward progression. Additionally, I was not yet totally copacetic with my concept, barely conceived and yet to be fleshed out as it was. 

And then, while visiting the Eel for Thanksgiving -- and actually on the plane up to see him -- I came up with the missing piece in my puzzle of contentment. (The biggest missing piece, at least, since I am rarely fully contented with anything I do.) The next morning, while he and Chelz lounged in bed, post-Thanksgiving feasting, I finally decided to crack open Illustrator and see what I could knock out. I was mainly attempting to get a basic design together that would lead to the next step of finding some way to complete the project, either by gaining some experience in the program incredibly fast or by finding outside means. 

To my surprise, even though nothing was connected properly in the way that graphic designers or even laypeople with a modicum of design experience prefer, I did manage to come up with a reasonable enough approximation of my concept that did not leave me upset with my meanderings in the program. In fact, for the experience that I had going in -- which was nada -- I considered my efforts a personal success.

But where to take it? Luckily, not only does my brother M'Otis do things like this for a living, but I was going to be visiting him for the Xmas holiday weekend, mainly because it was to be the celebration of his 40th birthday. What better way to spend that time than knocking out a logo banner or three for his older brother? What better present to give? Apparently, there is nothing better, and he dove into taking my rough attempt and transformed it into an actual design, the likes of which you probably noticed when you looked up this page just now. Or hopefully you noticed it. 

The same design appears on the Cel Bloc and should be up on my Joomla site in a matter of days, with the wording changed appropriately for each varied title. I chose to go with a common look to brand all of them together, rather than give them totally separate looks. I also now have an actual logo -- the C4 projector design - which I can drop into any convenient box onto any other project with which I am affiliated, to brand everything there with the Cinema 4 stamp more easily.

And that's the next step. It seems small upon its completion, like it was nothing at all, but it actually took months of fretting and discomfort. I suppose that if I were a more assertive person design-wise, and more prone to launching into unknown programs with an eye towards mastery over them, I might have gotten this done a long time ago on my own. But I have so much else I have been working on, it just didn't happen.

But that was a possible past, and now I am only about possible futures, such as we all confront on a day such as today, which we hope represents new beginnings and a happy new year to come. For me, now comes the time to dive whole-heartedly into getting Cinema for Space Lovers up and running properly and smoothly. Wish me luck, if you are so inclined. Luck or not, I have no choice but to move ahead...