In the last week, I've had the chance to watch three favorite movies from my youth: Wizards, from when I was 14, The Thing, which I finally watched when I was 21, and Excalibur, from when I was 17.
Wizards has not held up so well. It's not internally consistent in either its logic or its art, the dialogue week to my adult ears, and the production values seem almost a decade older even than its year of production (1976). Ironically, perhaps, I am more impressed than ever with the stills (from noted fantasy cartoonist Mike Ploog), much more so than with the animation. Still, while seeing it does not invoke the obsessive passion I had for it as a 14 year old - and for several years thereafter - it did remind me of that crazy feeling, which is in itself reason enough to watch it. It was the perfect movie for that time of my life and that time of fantasy - the genre for which I am clearly predisposed - in pop culture. I and many of my friends were just discovering Dungeons and Dragons (1974, but spread like a brushfire) and similar fantasy games, and reissued or original fantasy of all flavors were flooding retail bookshelves. I would recommend Wizards with a few caveats: don't watch it for its own quality, watch it to appreciate the changing landscape of pop culture in 1977 and to catch a glimpse of what it was like to be a fantasy obsessed 14 year old at the time.
The Thing, despite its early 80s pedigree, is still a good movie to watch. It's flawed in many ways, including the too-obvious monsters - the best suspenseful monster movies don't show the creatures very much, or very clearly - but it does generate really nice tensions and suspicions. The ending is somewhat unsatisfying, possibly representative of movie trends at the time, but there is some pretty good acting. The Ten Little Indians thing seems pretty typical of the major horror movies from the late 1970s onward, but The Thing (based on a short story from the 1950s) handles it better than most. Definitely a great example of the horror genre dressed up as science fiction. Or vice versa, your mileage may vary. Not so interestingly, The Thing did not really seem to speak to my life at the time I watched it like Wizards or the next movie. I loved it, and I had a ton of things going on in my life at the time, but I discerned no connection.
The third movie from my youth which I've watched this week is one of my all-time favorites, Excalibur. I saw this when it came out in 1981, watched it on a date with a girl who was to become my first girlfriend, and I loved it. Maybe it's just me, but I think that it's held up really well, maybe more appreciated now than it was for much of its history. It's an iconic, dreamlike fairytale, replete with intentional anachronisms and unrealistic sets and dialogue, but that seems to be part of its genius: as its themes of betrayal and redemption, passing of eras, and the power of dreams, the movie seems to transcend a specific point in time. As 17 year old, I had yet to experience the betrayal of a friend and a lover (that would come soon), but I appreciated the aspects of honor, and destiny, and of living up to ideals. As I've viewed the movie again over the years, I've grown to appreciate the many levels on which it works, and many of the themes I missed then I picked up later: the abuse of power, the imperfection of humans when compared to their ideals, the encroachment of Christianity on earlier beliefs. It was only in recent years that I learned how surprisingly faithful the movie is to Malory's version of the classic tale. So, at least in my eyes, this movie has held up for 30 years. It might not be for a modern audience, but it still moves me with more than nostalgia.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Sunday, June 3, 2012
1977
I never thought that 1977 held any special importance in my life, but 35 years later, it seems to be popping up over and over again.
Have you ever had a favorite book, or movie, or song, that you just loved as a kid? You know, the kind that moved you in ways that only a young person could be moved? Upon adult reflection, maybe you were nostalgic or, more likely, embarrassed. I just ran across such a song, but I'll be darned, I wasn't embarrassed. It still sounds great to me.
I became a teenager in 1977. I didn't discover booze, or drugs, or girls, not really, nor did I discover relevant music, although I did have a weird thing for 1950s rock and roll at the time. The things I discovered were wargames and sword and sorcery fantasy. I was swimming heavily at the time, and doing pretty well despite being at the bottom of my age group. Even then, it was daydreams of imaginary worlds and their heroes that got me through the demanding workouts. S&S and wargames consumed me for years, and even while other obsessions came and went, I kept going back to them. Gladly. Even thinking back on it, my obsession with those two nerdy magisteria makes me oddly happy. I did a lot of stupid and regrettable things in my youth- some of which still haunt me- but they weren't tied to those areas of interest.
So when I hear what most music afficianodos would consider a sappy, crappy, forgettable piece of what would later be known as Prog Rock, instead of cringing (for crying out loud, Never Mind the Bollocks came out that year!), I am transported to a more passionate time, a time of Star Wars, Wizards, of Howard novels reissued with iconic Kelley and Frazetta covers, of Elric and Corum and Hawkmoon, of Burroughs' worlds of heroism and honor, and of course Tolkien and Dungeons and Dragons.
I wasn't fully immersed in 1977, but I definitely took the bait and smiled when I felt the hook. It was, quite literally, like a religious awakening.
When I hear Kansas' Dust in the Wind today, I feel the same way I did 35 years ago. I first heard it while I was reading a collection of Howard's short stories, predicated on a Jungian "racial memory," in which the characters all felt their imminent mortality, but also felt that they were part of a greater ongoing narrative. Even though they were obliged to act with heroic grandeur, they also sensed that they were, indeed, dust in the wind.
I hadn't thought about that song in years. Later this year, I am getting a couple of copies of the ultimate Designer's Edition of the seminal wargame OGRE, which first came out as a $2.95 Microgame in 1977. I spent a small fortune to get each copy, including a premium to get my initials on a few of the playing pieces (EVERYONE'S playing pieces!). I will be happy to play some OGRE with friends who were mere babes when I got my first copy, and I won't be too embarrassed if we play the game to ELP, Boomtown Rats, or even Kansas.
Have you ever had a favorite book, or movie, or song, that you just loved as a kid? You know, the kind that moved you in ways that only a young person could be moved? Upon adult reflection, maybe you were nostalgic or, more likely, embarrassed. I just ran across such a song, but I'll be darned, I wasn't embarrassed. It still sounds great to me.
I became a teenager in 1977. I didn't discover booze, or drugs, or girls, not really, nor did I discover relevant music, although I did have a weird thing for 1950s rock and roll at the time. The things I discovered were wargames and sword and sorcery fantasy. I was swimming heavily at the time, and doing pretty well despite being at the bottom of my age group. Even then, it was daydreams of imaginary worlds and their heroes that got me through the demanding workouts. S&S and wargames consumed me for years, and even while other obsessions came and went, I kept going back to them. Gladly. Even thinking back on it, my obsession with those two nerdy magisteria makes me oddly happy. I did a lot of stupid and regrettable things in my youth- some of which still haunt me- but they weren't tied to those areas of interest.
So when I hear what most music afficianodos would consider a sappy, crappy, forgettable piece of what would later be known as Prog Rock, instead of cringing (for crying out loud, Never Mind the Bollocks came out that year!), I am transported to a more passionate time, a time of Star Wars, Wizards, of Howard novels reissued with iconic Kelley and Frazetta covers, of Elric and Corum and Hawkmoon, of Burroughs' worlds of heroism and honor, and of course Tolkien and Dungeons and Dragons.
I wasn't fully immersed in 1977, but I definitely took the bait and smiled when I felt the hook. It was, quite literally, like a religious awakening.
When I hear Kansas' Dust in the Wind today, I feel the same way I did 35 years ago. I first heard it while I was reading a collection of Howard's short stories, predicated on a Jungian "racial memory," in which the characters all felt their imminent mortality, but also felt that they were part of a greater ongoing narrative. Even though they were obliged to act with heroic grandeur, they also sensed that they were, indeed, dust in the wind.
I hadn't thought about that song in years. Later this year, I am getting a couple of copies of the ultimate Designer's Edition of the seminal wargame OGRE, which first came out as a $2.95 Microgame in 1977. I spent a small fortune to get each copy, including a premium to get my initials on a few of the playing pieces (EVERYONE'S playing pieces!). I will be happy to play some OGRE with friends who were mere babes when I got my first copy, and I won't be too embarrassed if we play the game to ELP, Boomtown Rats, or even Kansas.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
The Two Towers
Is it sacrilege to say that the movie version of The Two Towers is better than the book? Since JRRT wrote LOTR as one big book, each section of the trilogy lacks the captivating structure to which we western readers have become accustomed. The movie actually has a more interesting structure, and the ways in which Peter Jackson deviated from the canon allowed the story to have more well-defined themes.
I am unfailingly moved by this movie. I'm not exactly sure what either Tolkien or Jackson intended to say with TTT, but the themes I always pick up on are those of loyalty, and honor, and living up to one's promises and duty even if they are centuries or even millenia old, living up to one's promises and obligations even if they could have reasonably been overlooked and forgiven even by the beneficiaries thereof. How could one not love the arrival of the elves to Helm's Deep, in all of their smirking condescension, knowing that they were squandering idyllic immortality in a lost cause because once, countless human lifetimes before, they promised they would come to the defense of Man when needed. I don't care if it's fiction, that's some powerful stuff.
That's the kind of sentiment that led United State to send her soldiers to spill blood on the fields of Flanders and the shores of Normandy. Modern Americans love to decry France for its largely undeserved reputation of 20th century capitulation- it was less a case of willing collaboration than it was like an instance of a beautiful woman, her fears having been laughed off by her friends and neighbors, waking up one day with her sociopathic stalker neighbor in her bedroom with a bayonet at her carotid. Twice. Some Americans, at least, recall that France once came to the aid of this distant English colony with delusions of nationhood, providing arms, troops, and materiel that tipped the Revolutionary War from a colonial inconvenience to one of the few and most successful revolutions the world has ever seen. If it weren't for the French, we'd still probably be speaking English to this very day.
Anyhow, I like TTT and its theme of remembering and keeping promises, doing one's duty, living with honor, and sticking by one's friends. I also find Theodin, the broken subsequently redeemed king of Rohan, to be the most captivating character of the entire saga.
(Yes, I know that Flanders is in Belgium. We still entered the war to help the French, among other nations.)
I am unfailingly moved by this movie. I'm not exactly sure what either Tolkien or Jackson intended to say with TTT, but the themes I always pick up on are those of loyalty, and honor, and living up to one's promises and duty even if they are centuries or even millenia old, living up to one's promises and obligations even if they could have reasonably been overlooked and forgiven even by the beneficiaries thereof. How could one not love the arrival of the elves to Helm's Deep, in all of their smirking condescension, knowing that they were squandering idyllic immortality in a lost cause because once, countless human lifetimes before, they promised they would come to the defense of Man when needed. I don't care if it's fiction, that's some powerful stuff.
That's the kind of sentiment that led United State to send her soldiers to spill blood on the fields of Flanders and the shores of Normandy. Modern Americans love to decry France for its largely undeserved reputation of 20th century capitulation- it was less a case of willing collaboration than it was like an instance of a beautiful woman, her fears having been laughed off by her friends and neighbors, waking up one day with her sociopathic stalker neighbor in her bedroom with a bayonet at her carotid. Twice. Some Americans, at least, recall that France once came to the aid of this distant English colony with delusions of nationhood, providing arms, troops, and materiel that tipped the Revolutionary War from a colonial inconvenience to one of the few and most successful revolutions the world has ever seen. If it weren't for the French, we'd still probably be speaking English to this very day.
Anyhow, I like TTT and its theme of remembering and keeping promises, doing one's duty, living with honor, and sticking by one's friends. I also find Theodin, the broken subsequently redeemed king of Rohan, to be the most captivating character of the entire saga.
(Yes, I know that Flanders is in Belgium. We still entered the war to help the French, among other nations.)
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
This place? I don't live here, it's just where I spend my time...
I sometimes complain about my tiny apartment and the crappy state in which I keep it, but I only do that when I bother to notice it. That's not where I live, not really. I vow to clean it and organize it and upgrade it, but then I slide into one of my more important worlds and the disordered state of my humble earthly apartment no longer holds a position of any significant priority.
Don't get me wrong. It's not disgusting. There's nothing rotting or smelling too bad, and the garbage gets taken out weekly. Well, pretty close to weekly. I feel bad about neglecting my place, mostly when there's a chance of having another human being over, but the feeling slips away as soon as I have somewhere else, somewhere better, to be.
Where do I live? I live in a fantasy world. Actually, I live in several fantasy worlds, and I always have.
I live in a world where, when I go to work, I am surrounding by people who are laughing, and dancing, and singing, and joking. They are spirited, emotional, smart, funny, and compassionate, with positive views of the world and optimistic visions for the future. They like working hard, even requesting of me the privilege of doing so, even if their focus is occasionally brief and personal goals are mobile targets. I've read Lord Dunsany, Hope Mirlees, Spenser, and Shakespeare. I know the land wherein I work, and the nature of the folk with whom I work. I get to work under the crepuscular canvases of distantly glittering diamonds on backgrounds of Indian ink, and also under Monet dawns and Bierstadt sunsets. These are not, I suspect, the skies that most of us see in our everyday lives.
And that's just when the weather is nice.
At other times, I work under fay skies of gray under which distance and dimension are lost along with perspective, and when I'm really lucky, there rolls in a fog worthy of Doyle or Hammett. When the day lacks the interesting character of notable weather, it reverts to the default mode of beautiful and mild-to-warm, the take-it-for-granted weather of dreams and childhood memories of transplanted Midwesterners like myself.
Truly, when I walk out my front door, I get confirmation that I live and work in a place not quite of the quotidian.
Should I then talk of my social life? I dine like a fantasy of a hungry youth: pizza for the asking any and sometimes every night of the week, with an auburn-haired princess by my side, consumed with world-class beer or exquisite wine, any of which- food, companionship, comestibles- would be the envy of kings and caliphs, khans and czars. Every dinner is the stuff of fairytales. And when my princess cooks...well, there are even limits to hyperbole. How much can one use the terms "best ever," "unbelievable," and "fantastic?" I cannot imagine better food. It is said that an employee at the best pizza restaurant in town tells his customers how much better was the pizza that he had from her hands.
That's just what, for sake of a simplistic reference point, I refer to as my "real life." The worlds where I spend most of my time? Well, that will just have to wait until the next installment.
Don't get me wrong. It's not disgusting. There's nothing rotting or smelling too bad, and the garbage gets taken out weekly. Well, pretty close to weekly. I feel bad about neglecting my place, mostly when there's a chance of having another human being over, but the feeling slips away as soon as I have somewhere else, somewhere better, to be.
Where do I live? I live in a fantasy world. Actually, I live in several fantasy worlds, and I always have.
I live in a world where, when I go to work, I am surrounding by people who are laughing, and dancing, and singing, and joking. They are spirited, emotional, smart, funny, and compassionate, with positive views of the world and optimistic visions for the future. They like working hard, even requesting of me the privilege of doing so, even if their focus is occasionally brief and personal goals are mobile targets. I've read Lord Dunsany, Hope Mirlees, Spenser, and Shakespeare. I know the land wherein I work, and the nature of the folk with whom I work. I get to work under the crepuscular canvases of distantly glittering diamonds on backgrounds of Indian ink, and also under Monet dawns and Bierstadt sunsets. These are not, I suspect, the skies that most of us see in our everyday lives.
And that's just when the weather is nice.
At other times, I work under fay skies of gray under which distance and dimension are lost along with perspective, and when I'm really lucky, there rolls in a fog worthy of Doyle or Hammett. When the day lacks the interesting character of notable weather, it reverts to the default mode of beautiful and mild-to-warm, the take-it-for-granted weather of dreams and childhood memories of transplanted Midwesterners like myself.
Truly, when I walk out my front door, I get confirmation that I live and work in a place not quite of the quotidian.
Should I then talk of my social life? I dine like a fantasy of a hungry youth: pizza for the asking any and sometimes every night of the week, with an auburn-haired princess by my side, consumed with world-class beer or exquisite wine, any of which- food, companionship, comestibles- would be the envy of kings and caliphs, khans and czars. Every dinner is the stuff of fairytales. And when my princess cooks...well, there are even limits to hyperbole. How much can one use the terms "best ever," "unbelievable," and "fantastic?" I cannot imagine better food. It is said that an employee at the best pizza restaurant in town tells his customers how much better was the pizza that he had from her hands.
That's just what, for sake of a simplistic reference point, I refer to as my "real life." The worlds where I spend most of my time? Well, that will just have to wait until the next installment.
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