Undulating Ungulate

Have seen an unexpectedly large number of films in the past couple of weeks. Here be reviews.

Probable spoiler warning.

AMER

A festival freebie courtesy of the knifeman. Incredibly stylised giallo as abstract art movie. First third was brilliant, and creepy as all hell. Second third was like a perfume commercial. Final third was fetishised murder. Unique, sort of fascinating in a non-narrative way, but without a certain exposure to Italian horror would just be batshit weird.

UNCLE BOONME WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES

Thai movie that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year.

Slow, gentle, odd. A woman in her 60′s goes to visit her brother who is dying of kidney failure on his farm in the country. One night at dinner his dead wife appears, then his son, who has become a monster. They roll with this, sit down and chat about their lives and what happens after death.

This is interspersed with seemingly unrelated scenes, which may have been Boonme’s past lives, although there is nothing to suggest this, and includes the what will doubtless become somewhat infamous {SPOILER} catfish going down on a princess scene.

What I liked the most was the treatment of the paranormal as a part of normality. Thailand is a place with spirit-boxes on most corners of the cities, and the dead are with us always, and it was refreshing to see a film told from within that belief system. That and how it took its time.

Unique. Glad I saw it. But there is substantially more WTF than I have alluded to above. ::)

INCEPTION

Enjoyed it; multiple time lines, cleverly put together. Escapist nonsense, fairly hollow. Nothing whatsoever going on with it beyond the obvious. I sort of feel like I did about the first Bourne film (the only one of them I saw) – this is about how good a vast budget thriller should be. This should be normal, not exceptional.

Since the only thing to comment on is the ending {SPOILER} I  think he was dreaming, but that it didn’t matter since in order to have that dream, he had achieved catharsis and reached closure.

NEW MOON

Twilight was pretty much one of the worst films I have ever seen. (Thanks, Brad ) To the point where it was lucky there were only two of us in the cinema since I was laughing at it so much.

So the choice to see New Moon was a strange one. But while in many hotels I had seen a promo for it that looked, well, demented.

Now, it is pretty shit. But I enjoyed a surprising amount of it.

Basically the weakest thing is the Edward-Bella relationship. Maybe it makes sense in the books, which I strongly doubt I will ever read, but it doesn’t work on screen at all for me. Dude is seriously weird looking at least half of the time. Girl has nothing in particular going on. What prompted this Eternal Epic Love thing? Was not sold on it. This total absence of chemistry was probably what was most fatal in the first movie. But maybe the audience already is since they have probably read the books?

But luckily, Edward isn’t in most of the movie. We get this other film about Bella getting over him by hanging out with this wildly buff Indian dude.

And the film turns out to be about people basically not dealing with their emotions, and doing stupid shit. It actually captured teenage-ness kinda well – actually, it fluctuates between cringeworthy and well. Bella basically going into a quasi-suicidal depression and acting out plays pretty well, and AFAI can tell is not the usual kind of thing you get in movies. (Boyfriend dumped you but you can only hallucinate him when in danger? Jump off a cliff! Awesome role model.)

It also consistently does lots of batshit stupid things. Not just stupid things. Batshit stupid things. This made it kind of interesting.

Also interesting is that it is not a movie. It is totally an installment in a soap opera series, so it doesn’t have to be a film and hit the usual structural conventions. This makes it more interesting as a film.

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS

Massive let down. I dug Jon Ronson’s book THEM, and had heard good stuff about his book Men who stare at goats. This film “inspired by” it was kind of fun but basically lame and stupid and badly put together.

Filed by billy at 1:58 pm under culture
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Norman Spinrad survives cancer at 70 and comes out pulling no punches about the state of the publishing industry, writing, and their future. Parts One and Three are *required reading* for any writers reading this. Part Two is interesting and salutary, but not essential.

Filed by billy at 12:22 pm under culture,language,reading,research
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Over the past few months (90 days, even) I have been doing an exercise program, the p90x. Finished it yesterday.

The program is a mix of resistance/weights training, cardio, martial arts, yoga, all combined into a full body ass-kicking. The workouts pack in a lot of variety and change over time. It works out at an hour to an hour and a half each day, with a fairly rigorous and restrictive dietary guide. The combination is what sold me, I think – it seemed comprehensive, in a way that infomercial stuff doesn’t.

After looking into all things body-modification a little, I went the whole hog on what seemed to work, taking whey protein and a recovery drink after workouts, and creatine as a supplement. In particular I have noticed the effect of the creatine – a definite initial feeling of being superhuman, and being able to go harder than maybe expected, and a definite slowing down on cycling off it. And the whey and recovery stuff makes hella difference post workout. (P90 has its own brand everything but I just found locally available equivalents.)

Over the course of the program, I gained 7 kg and my overall body fat went down 2%. My body is definitely a bit of a different shape beneath my ever shapeless clothes. And yeah, I must be substantially fitter, though it is hard to tell exactly without an external benchmark. Although there is a post- test to do, maybe that will give a clear picture.

The program is probably not for everyone. You need a certain level of fitness to start – not unreasonable, but not nothing. Sticking to the diet seems crucial, and is harder than the exercise. There is a lot of gear you need to acquire (though you get to keep it after, of course). And Tony Horton may get on your nerves as he yells motivating shit at you non stop for 90 days (although: respect. Mofo is seriously fit.), though I didn’t mind it. Depending on your actual goals something else may be better suited, but on the whole it seems like a good highly compressed program for total body fitness.

So yeah. Was good to do some intensively body focused stuff  to hopefully balance out the writing etc. And hopefully I will keep active and maintain this as a new baseline of fitness.

Filed by billy at 8:20 pm under the moose
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please to be ignoringk

Filed by billy at 7:02 pm under meta
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