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Tonight I watched Knives Out. It was a very me movie viewing. First: watching a movie five years after everyone else. Second: appreciating most of the cinematography, scoring, and actor cameos, but probably missing several important cameos. Third: moderately hung up on ( a major spoiler's real life plausibility. )

To my mild irritation, I've been over the wings for several long flights this summer. (I don't care where on the airplane I sit, so long as I get a window seat and an unblocked view out, up, and down.) So, instead of enjoying my usual cloud-watching, I did some catch-up on movies and documentaries. 

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019): a tidy condemnation of Elizabeth Holmes. Focuses more on the scamming than the science she scammed around. I'd like to see more context on the black box of lab medicine, which isn't so much unknowable as neglected by the public, until something like Theranos happens.

Free Solo: In case there were any chance I thought free climbing was a thing I might be interested in, believe me, I have been warned off for life. Fascinating and nail-biting.

Avengers: Endgame: those were some, uh, interesting storytelling and editing choices! Particularly the choice to make a 182 minute movie with no intermission, by the last hour I was checking my watching and wondering how they'd fill the time.
 
Tolkien: "Based on a true story" style biopic of Tolkein up to WWI-ish. Young men on Wagner: "it shouldn't take six hours to tell a story of a magic ring." Well, someone's making a meta commentary!

As a form of bonding with a non-geek coworker, I watched "The Notebook". In the spirit of enjoying things for what they are, not what you want them to be, I will note there were several moments where I was moved: the young lovers' screaming fight that acknowledges the character flaws that will be part of their relationship if they're going to continue as a couple; the meditation on love and choice when Allie's mother reveals her own youthful fling to her daughter; and the very end, where the lovers romantically pass away on the same night, the night Noah sneaks into Allie's room at the nursing home. But by all that's holy give me friends to lovers with ridiculous snark and banter, or true love in the context of a bigger world, or a character study with science, for my go-to entertainment.

The new Avengers movie is on this week's to-do list.

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The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison / truepenny aka Sarah Monette) (2014):. Fantasy novel about the ascension of Maia, the Elvish emperor's disregarded fourth son, to the throne of the Elflands. The novel opens with Maia shaken awake to learn his father and three brothers have been killed in an airship explosion, right before he is whisked from an impoverished country estate to the imperial palace, so this is not a big spoiler.

This novel is a warm fuzzy blanket of feelings. It's like Monette took what she learned from writing the Mirador quartet (which I loathed), combined it with wolftimes feedback, and produced this tempered work borrowing from the hurt-comfort tradition with beautiful attention to structure and sequencing of information. The interwebs tagged it "fantasy of manners", which does not seem inappropriate. People keep spontaneously offering to teach Maia. Maia keeps figuring out how to deal with people! Maia charts path toward being a good person and a good Emperor! Maia connects to his remaining family! This could have been a byzantine political novel; instead, it's a complex humanist novel. In a stronger Hugo year, I probably wouldn't expect The Goblin Emperor to make the ballot, but I'd pick it up for comforting rereads for years.

Katherine Addison is Monette rebranded, as mentioned multiple times on her livejournal. If you haven't read Monette's work, and liked this novel, you might or might not like her previous work. Look it up, but if you don't like the first chapter of The Mirador, set it aside before you're tempted to hurl it into a wall later on. (Wow. As I write this, I find I am still disgusted with the obligation d'ame in The Virtu.)

The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi) (2009): 23rd century Bangkok, generations after peak oil, faces a number of environmental, technological, and biological challenges to its existence. I liked the structure, and like that it tries to break out of the northern hemisphere, but it feels, how to put this, exactly like it was written by a Western man. There is a habit of attention, a certain angle on the world, that is rooted in that heritage and experience.

But within that frame of reference, there's a lot going on. The post-oil economy, a sincere effort to write a future Krung Thep that is energy-poor; at constant risk of being drowned by the rising ocean; poor, and fiercely defiant of the "calorie men" of the West.

The structure is amazing, a loose ricchochet collection of multiple PoV characters whose actions influence each other in direct, indirect, and generally unexpected ways. The yellow card refugee Hock Seng schemes to rebuild the wealth and stability of his old life in Malaysia, destroyed along with his family during ethnic purges, by stealing a Maltese Falcon plot device from the factory where he is employeed. The factory is a front for Ken Anderson, one of the calorie men of the West, in Thailand to find and exploit a rumored seedbank, a priceless treasure in a future ravaged by genetically engineered plagues. He is thwarted by the Environmental Department's Captain Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, and his lieutenant, Kanya, sworn to protect Thailand against the aggressive bioengineered life forms: beetles that have claimed entire forests; crop diseases that blight harvests, threatening famine; viruses and bacteria that rip through human populations like a scythe. They're professionally and personally disgusted by the New People like Emiko, the "windup girl" of the title. Emiko is a genetic construct, originally from Japan, abandoned by her owner and left to survive in Krup Theng, where she is considered so much biological trash to be recycled, and maybe beaten to death first. Emiko survives under the questionable patronage of a foreign pimp, one of Anderson's acquaintances. Her experiences are related in detail bordering on torture porn, so this is probably a skip for people who nope out of sexual assault descriptions.

I love this sort of plot. I love the ping-ponging cause and effect which become the causes of more effects. I love that Emiko struggles with her biological constraints and deep-seated psychological programming to find agency. I do not love that The Windup Girl will probably date very quickly, because of its topics and its approach to subjects that we're struggling with in the here and now, like climate change and genetic engineering. But it was enjoyable in the moment, and probably has a few more year before it's too dated to recommend without caveats. That's the problem with science fiction: the more detailed and interesting the extrapolation from the current body of knowledge, the less well it ages. Read it if you like kinetic plots with thoughtful future science.

Rainpocalypse: lots of flooding in the streets, some power loss, thanks to surprisingly warm rain. A notably undercrowded commute, both ways; the Wednesday evening commute was more crowded and delayed than either Thursday trip.

It was bad sequel season last week and this weekend: the two Star Trek reboots, and the middle Hobbit movie. It's no accident I opted out of watching the one with the spiders in the movie theater. I'm not terrifically impressed with the "fast forward through the spiders" version either; I miss Bilbo's lighthearted story. AS a fan of the novel, I find the movies don't capture the tone of the book, nor do they reflect many of the themes in Tolkein's mythology. As a movie viewer, I'm disappointed that the script doesn't remember that special effects age much faster than a good story. Somewhere in those nearly three hours of wandering though Mirkwood and Erebor there's a good story. I just don't care enough to try to find it.

By the way, a year of cool-off has not reduced my disgust with the Khan reveal, or Kirk's ridiculous death and resurrection, or Zoe Saldana's absolutely thankless role. In what alternate timeline is Uhura reduced to "the girlfriend"?! Ugh! The 2009 reboot is still watchable, but even with adjusted expectations I'm not feeling Into Darkness.

Through the power of Netflix I also finally watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which was charming, if very dated. Apparently I'm in a singing-dancing-hustling sort of mood.

The Great Gatsby (2013): When the trailer crossed my path, I thought this would be fantastic! Moulin Rouge-style hectic, saturated cinemetography to capture the dissipated party scene and the Buchanans' self-absorbed ennui - what a great combination!

Well, half right. The party scenes worked, but Baz Luhrmann wants me to have empathy with Daisy, Nick and Gatsby? Not happening. I think the novel's artifice is its power; one might as well weep for the interior life of a bishop or rook cruelly sacrificed to a literary checkmate. Doubtless a generation of high school english students will suffer through this on slow afternoons and write essays on 21st C interpretation of a 20th C literary classic.

Or maybe the artifice was in the cinematography? The movie felt flat, aided by some choices on depth of focus, especially in the Jay-and-Daisy scenes (notably when they sneak out of the party and make out under the trees). It seemed just weird at first, but now I am conidering whether that was an attempt to distance the viewer.

With that said, I was underwhelmed by the execution of Myrtle's death. One can imagine the power of setting the accident against "Love is Blindess", but the movie didn't earn my investment in the moment. It also didn't earn the pool scene, see again artifice vs empathy.

Blue Jasmine (2013): Picked up largely to play a game of Spot the Onsite Shooting. The cinemetography was pretty. The acting was good. The script was not really my thing, which got in the way of a truly satisfying Geography Bingo.

Gravity is everything I ever asked for from the movies:

1) Entertaining pseudo-science in something resembling science fiction
2) Female protagonist
3) Protagonist vs Environment storytelling
4) Characters informed by (a) good acting and (b) a creative team too busy making an amazing cinematic experience to get bogged down in the mistake that mean = intrinsically interesting character = good writing / plot / editing idea
5) Special effects employed to enhance storytelling / cinematic experience, rather than stopping the flow of events for 30 minutes of "wow, a lot of computing cycles went into the making of this movie".

Alfonso Cuaron has finally eclipsed my habitual mental tag, "that guy on the creative team that did justice to my favorite Harry Potter novel." From now on he will be "that guy who wrote and directed SANDRA BULLOCK IN SPACE OMG THAT WAS AWESOME."

The previews for Gravity were 47 Ronin (skip), Hobbit 2 (postpone to DVD viewing, for maximum avoidance of freaking giant spiders, ick), "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a Ben Stiller Man-Child, bless" (skip), "Grudge Match" (boxing comedy, skip), "The Monuments Men" (WW2 misfits, skip), a touching family comedy about those loveable Southern misfits (skip), and Chris Pine Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit - no no no, the reason The Hunt for Red October is a great movie is (1) script-writing, (2) a workmanlike approach by the creative team, and (3) Sean "a great actor and smoking hot, at any age" Connery. Skip. Alas, the touching holiday movies do not seem to be touching me yet.

Anonymous comments on LJ have become almost entirely spam, so anon commenting's been blocked. If this is a problem, DW allows open ID comments, and dreamwidth invite codes frequently posted to dreamwidth and/or dw_codesharing. Finally, LJ is free all the time.

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Last weekend I watched Cowboys and Aliens and Captain America at the theater, and tried to distract myself from self-indulgent manga with a Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life. The distraction ploy backfired; the paragraph of strong feelings has been deleted. Cowboys and Aliens lived up to one review that it's the sum of its parts and no more. Captain America tried to be a faithfully gung-ho WW2 movie and succeeded admirably. To my shock, the black guy and the Asian-American guy lived. I'm assuming Red Skull will be back too.

I also watched Bride and Prejudice before a last-minute library return. I thought I hadn't seen it before, but I recognized most of the movie. So apparently it made very little impression last time I watched it, unfortunately.

( Still reading Fullmetal Alchemist on the commute. )

Friday movie night with HP7.1 and Roommate Number Three, Inception Saturday night, HP7.2 Sunday morning matinee. (All the movie, half the cost, most of the early adopter thrill.) I guessed the twist in Inception, which disappointed me, but improved the really boring A-plot. Also suffered because I didn't care about the DiCaprio character's manpain.

HP 7.1 and 7.2 were okay, but choppy. I would have enjoyed less "wands as guns" and smoother transitions between scenes. I really loved McGonagall and Neville Longbottom getting to step up and shine. I'm torn between enjoying the big Snape/Lily flashback, and wondering why this huge glut of characterization was infodumped so much. But that is a source material problem, not a movie problem. The epilogue suffers from the same problem. The series could have ended with Harry saying, "I've had enough trouble for a lifetime" and left me satisfied. The hundreds of fat children (thank you, Joss Whedon) are implicit in the story and world Rowling's constructed.

Anyway. I have a very few movies I like uncritically and an awful lot I enjoy by destructive analysis. This weekend featured a lot of critique plus a few moments of pure glee.

Through the graces of Glenlivet and other people's questionable late-night impulses, I have seen Scott Pilgrim vs the World. I went in with low expectations, and was pleasantly surprised when the movie slightly exceeded them.

I have mixed feelings about the comics the movie is based on: I can see how Brian Lee O'Malley's storytelling is technically good, but SP's slacker ways fail to engage my sentiments. The movie really homes in on the "story in conversation with a culture / other stories" thing, making use of video gaming styles, musical themes, and characters as That [Stereotype], particularly Ramona's seven evil exes as examples of subcultures familiar to the average Toronto hipster. I think making characters That [Stereotype] is lazy storytelling at best and probably angry-making to the racefail crowd; if I'm picking up on things like "hey where are the minorities" and "giving the Indian guy mystical superpowers? Seriously?" it's likely there's pretty egregious stereotyping going on. Also, the movie fails the Bechdel test. it's possible to be a good movie without including two women who talk to each other about something besides a man (hello, every war movie ever), but I think what is and isn't included in a work says something about the culture it rose from (Hollywood, O'Malley's Toronto). In a movie with Knives Chau, Kim Pine, Roxie Richter, Julie Powers, Envy Adams, Ramona Flowers, and Stacey Pilgrim - seven women! Seven! - it's disappointing that people lacking a Y chromosome never interact with each other except to talk about Scott.

With that said, the focus of the movie is Scott Pilgrim, not ase's feminist agenda, and it compressed a six-volume comic into less than two hours onscreen while embodying the spirit of the comics. Scott Pilgrim vs the World is not about smart, it's about flashy. In its own arena of video game / music scene references, it succeeds admirably, and it holds your attention for most of the two hours.

At some point, I'd like to do a compare / contrast with SP and Y: the Last Man to talk about how it's possible to have a male protagonist in a story without shutting women out of the picture. It's a bit of a straw man, since Y kills all the men in the first issue, but it's still tempting.

The library notified me of two novels on hold for me: Geoff Ryman's Air and A Wizard of Mars, the latest in Diane Duane's Wizards series. I am pretty sure cracking a beer and opening a YA book like Mars is some flavor of wrong.

It's been brought to my attention that the library has books and DVDs. What should I watch? So far I'm thinking The Godfather, Oceans 11 (and 12, & etc), Across the Universe, The Last King of Scotland, and Up, if I can get them. I know I'm missing movies, because the last time I tried to do this I wound up with a handwritten three page list.