News You Can Bruise for 2014 December

(2) Tue Dec 02 2014 22:53 November Film Roundup: 2014's penultimate roundup! Here it is.

• Nine to Five (19820): Perhaps the final thrust of American social democracy against the Reagan eighties. I saw this movie when I was young, it came up in conversation with Sumana (probably because of Lily Tomlin's great Snow White parody), so we watched it. It definitely holds up. I couldn't remember what happened after the initial setup, and maybe that's because it goes all over the place, with car chases and dead bodies and whatnot. Or maybe it's because when I was young I only watched the first act of this movie.

  Anyway, it's a fun comedy with a good amount of action. Lily Tomlin is hilarious, Dolly Parton is pretty funny, Jane Fonda is... the Zeppo of the group, I guess. She's fine for the part but it's not very comedic, although her "I'm into everything!" speech is great. Dabney Coleman is as slimy as when he was pursuing Miss Piggy in The Great Muppet Caper. (Correction: that wasn't him, he was the villain in The Muppets Take Manhattan.) Bonus (IMDB-confirmed) connection to Unfaithfully Yours in that Lily Tomlin's character freaks out when her fantasy happens in real life.

• Queen Christina (1933): Saw this with Sumana and Elisa and we really enjoyed it! Wikipedia claims the movie "depict[s] a heroine whose life diverged considerably from that of the real Christina", and that's true, but the aspects I thought were most likely to be Hollywood interpolations (Christina being super butch all the time, dressing in men's clothing, more interested in literature than warfare) are based in reality.

  The best scene IMO was one where Christina lays down the feudalism to disperse an angry mob of peasants, saying basically, "I don't tell you how to carry out your inherited trade, don't tell me how to rule Sweden." From a character whose other attitudes are so modern as to seem anachronistic, that was really satisfying. Also the scene where Christina's in disguise and is given a tip: a coin with her face on it. A classic royalty gag!

• Blind Chance (1987): Actually made in 1981 but not released until 1987 what with the censorship and all. I like to imagine this as a cross-Iron-Curtain double feature along with Nine to Five. It's sort of the opposite of J.S.A. in that I was pretty happy with Blind Chance until the very last shot, when my opinion soured. I'd compare it to the polarizing ending of Lem's The Chain of Chance.

  Sumana is a big fan of Kieslowski, and we bought the Three Colors trilogy during one of those Criterion flash sales, so more is in my future. I will say I like his general style where characters who are very important in one storyline will show up tangentially in another.

• Escape from the Liberty Cinema (1990): a.k.a Ucieczka z kina 'Wolnosc': Andrzej Krakowski, a colleague of director Wojciech Marczewski, introduced the film. He told a story of when they were in film school together: their instructor told them that in every film they should have a long shot of a street with a round trash can in the foreground. You should paint "DOWN WITH" on the trash can and position it so that it looks like there's more painted on the other side. The censorship board will tell you to cut this scene, and then you raise a big stink about your artistic integrity, and they'll be so busy fighting you on this dumb trash can that they'll miss the point of your movie.

  There's no missing the point of this movie: censorship is a farce and creative freedom rulez. It's not up there with University of Laughs or Goodbye, Lenin! because its message is way too simplistic, but those movies were made long after the fact, where this movie wrapped the same day Poland's censorship regime shut down.

  Nota bene: this film includes a clip and a crossover from Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo, which might conflict with whatever Woody Allen boycott you've got going on. I'm just letting you know, the way I'd let you know that a salad contains peanuts.

• Interstellar (2014): See Public Service Film Roundup passim. ("I wish I'd listened to you."—Josh Hadro)
• Birdman (2014): I was in a bad mood when I saw this and I'm sure that colored my view of the film. I understand what it's doing—the endless take gives the feel of live theater, a claustrophobic feel that becomes more oppressive over time as the film jumps forward and forward in time, never relieving the tension by showing a cut. My problem is that the film posits only two stories you can tell with the Birdman character: the cheesy CGI-fest mocked by Birdman and the meta-fictional midlife crisis that is Birdman itself. But there's a way out of this dilemma: a midlife crisis movie about a superhero whose powers are useless for what he really wants to do. I didn't come up with this third story! This is the actual story at the beginning of the movie Birdman! This is what I thought I was getting! And IMO it's a better story. But no, just kidding, it's the second one.
• The Awful Truth (1938): I think I saw this movie in 2005 but I forgot all the jokes, so it was fresh and hilarious. The prototype for many lesser sparring-couple movies, but you can't blame quality for its imitators. Ends with some "DOWN WITH"-type trolling of the Hays Office which I didn't think was funny, not that the Hays Office didn't deserve to be trolled.
• Playtime (1967): This is the rare film on which I'm not comfortable passing judgement. It's a comedy that's really long and not all that funny, a satire with the searing force of a soap bubble. But it's so damn beautiful, and it's not not funny. It's like Brazil with all the nastiness taken out. (I think an orchestra plays "Brazil" at one point.) It's a world where nothing works right and everything is falling apart but we all muddle through and have a good time. Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing?

Over Thanksgiving I also saw a bunch of Phineas and Ferb with kids, and it's a fun kids' show, but not gonna review it. Okay, fine: it's a fun kids' show. The characterization is pretty bad and based on stereotypes but the multi-layered plots are very clever. There's your review.

(1) Mon Dec 29 2014 22:01 2014 Scrapbook, Part 1: As I'm sure you've noticed, the direction of NYCB has trended away in recent years from me journaling and putting up photos of everything I do shortly after I do it. With so many large companies encouraging millions of people to do this and mining the data to create more annoying ads, it doesn't seem as fun. Call me contrarian!

But before the end of the year I wanted to sort of catch you up with a little scrapbook of some of the good times from 2014. This is mostly tourist and family stuff; I've kept all the cool museum finds for a separate post.

West Coast

I took a brief trip to the Bay Area, where I sorted out a ton of stuff in Kevin Maples's garage that we left with him when we moved from San Francisco in 2005.

Sumana and I met up in Seattle for the Foolscap conference, where I was a guest of honor along with Brooks Peck. It was my first con and I had a great time! Thanks to Ron Hale-Evans for inviting me.

Airplane!

In a pretty amazing development I got an email from Doug, a fan of Constellation Games who keeps a private plane at a New Jersey airport. We hung out one Saturday and he and his wife took me and Sumana on a flight up the Hudson River.

Really fun random experience. Thanks, Doug.

England

In the summer I brought my acquired-on-the-cheap tuxedo to London for Rachel's wedding.

We went with the kids to Warwick Castle in... Warwickshire.

The Holidays

The Year In Stone Lions

The Year In Reusable Orbiters

The Year In Signage

All of these are from the UK, because foreign signs are just funnier.

(2) Tue Dec 30 2014 20:44 2014 Scrapbook, Part 2: That Belongs In A Museum: Welcome back, let's check out some cool stuff I can't afford.

Providence

In March, before starting my job at NYPL, I took a trip to Providence to hang out with Jake (still an awesome guy after nearly twenty years of friendship). Jake introduced me to the Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island, who have an amazing museum. I say "museum", it's just one big room, and it looks like this:

I believe that all museums have a room that looks like this; it's just that at RCSRI that room is coextant with the display portion of the museum.

RCSRI has an open house once a month, but we got a private tour because Jake is a close personal friend of the proprietor.

I took several detailed photos of the famous "space cadet" keyboard for the Symbolics LISP machine, because although this computer is famous in hacker lore, at the time there were no good close-ups online. (I dunno about now. Well, there are now, because I'm putting these up, but as I'm writing this draft, I don't know.)

Los Angeles

London

Along with my uncle Leonard I visited the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, who have a museum of clockmaking in the back of the London Guild Hall. The Guild Hall is still an active government building, so make sure you go all the way round the back for the museum, though I'm not sure why I'm even giving this advice because apparently the Clockmakers' Museum has all been packed up to be moved to the Science Museum. Anyway, I'm really glad I got to see this little museum because it was full of tons of amazing old clocks (many of which still run), and equipment for building and repairing them.

Another new favorite: the Tring tiles from the British Museum. Two-panel comic strips show Jesus as a little kid getting into trouble. "Left: A boy playfully leaps onto Jesus's back and then falls dead. Right: Two women complain to Joseph... while Jesus restores the boy to life."

And the parents don't take this lying down! On another tile, "Parents shut their children in an oven, to prevent them playing with Jesus." A well-thought-out plan.

New York

From the Sidewalk Museum of Discarded Art, a picture of the New York skyline made of Cheetos.

The Met had a fabulous exhibit with a lot of Xu Bing. I got my chance to get some good photos of An Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy, a set of rules for writing English words like they're Chinese characters.

And of course there was his masterpiece of eaten meaning, Book From The Sky.

I also saw these assembly instructions for an Alexander Calder mobile.

And Paul Klee's Carcasonne set.

Portland

Finally, on a trip to Portland I indulged in some Mondrian candy.