John Bowker (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} johnbowker) wrote,@ 2007-01-02 13:48:00 |
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Reviews in which I am Unshielded
Horrorscope and AsIf review "Wildstyle" in Andromeda Spaceways InFlight Magazine #26:
http://www.asif.dreamhosters.com/doku.p
http://ozhorrorscope.blogspot.com/2
Both are fairly positive, but there's a common observation between the two which has had me thinking as I begin my annual forced-march binge of this year's science fiction and fantasy movie offerings for the "Movie Year in Review" panel I sit on every year at Arisia. 2006 served up a whole lotta crap (Bloodrayne made me wistful for last year's Aeon Flux and brothers and sisters, that's saying something) but it also had a few films that didn't appear on the moderator's list and that I suspect will be shot down as lacking fantastic elements despite the fact the worlds they offer are as surreal as any bunch of blow-dried Ren-Faire rejects with unlikely swords and equally unlikely breasts.*
The first movie that comes to mind is Brick, which I've gone on about before. The world in the film is very recognizeably our own; there are no swords or spaceships, no magic, no unlikely devices. However, the characters are very much something else, high school students ridden by the loa of 1940's detectives, gangsters, and molls, their dialogue and actions simultaneously out of and in-character with both their high school and underworld environments. It's not an escapist fantasy world (I certainly wouldn't want to live there) but a fantasy can be as much about a character's inner landscape as their outer. To my mind, Brick fits the suit.
The other movie that tops my list is John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus. This one should be easier because it actually does have a few moments of undeniable magic. However, it's also a movie almost entirely about sex and sexuality and SF&F has a weird relationship to that. With a few exceptions, sex in the genre is still mostly adolescent, there for wish-fulfullment or titilation. The sex in this film is neither. Still, with its frank look at the myriad twists and turns of the human eros and the convoluted relationships that grow up around that core, Shortbus offers a fantastic exploration of the sexual zeitgeist of a surreally sculpted gender-fluid New York City. If the Tiptree had a media category, it would win at a walk.
In both films, the world they offer is the one we know, kinked, observed by a small number of people while the rest of the world continues to flow by unaware. That's the fantasy that interests me, the stuff that might be happening out of the corner of your eye and around the corner, offering the possibility that the world we live in is already weirder than fiction. Sometimes I get closer than others.
Horrorscope and AsIf review "Wildstyle" in Andromeda Spaceways InFlight Magazine #26:
http://www.asif.dreamhosters.com/doku.p
http://ozhorrorscope.blogspot.com/2
Both are fairly positive, but there's a common observation between the two which has had me thinking as I begin my annual forced-march binge of this year's science fiction and fantasy movie offerings for the "Movie Year in Review" panel I sit on every year at Arisia. 2006 served up a whole lotta crap (Bloodrayne made me wistful for last year's Aeon Flux and brothers and sisters, that's saying something) but it also had a few films that didn't appear on the moderator's list and that I suspect will be shot down as lacking fantastic elements despite the fact the worlds they offer are as surreal as any bunch of blow-dried Ren-Faire rejects with unlikely swords and equally unlikely breasts.*
The first movie that comes to mind is Brick, which I've gone on about before. The world in the film is very recognizeably our own; there are no swords or spaceships, no magic, no unlikely devices. However, the characters are very much something else, high school students ridden by the loa of 1940's detectives, gangsters, and molls, their dialogue and actions simultaneously out of and in-character with both their high school and underworld environments. It's not an escapist fantasy world (I certainly wouldn't want to live there) but a fantasy can be as much about a character's inner landscape as their outer. To my mind, Brick fits the suit.
The other movie that tops my list is John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus. This one should be easier because it actually does have a few moments of undeniable magic. However, it's also a movie almost entirely about sex and sexuality and SF&F has a weird relationship to that. With a few exceptions, sex in the genre is still mostly adolescent, there for wish-fulfullment or titilation. The sex in this film is neither. Still, with its frank look at the myriad twists and turns of the human eros and the convoluted relationships that grow up around that core, Shortbus offers a fantastic exploration of the sexual zeitgeist of a surreally sculpted gender-fluid New York City. If the Tiptree had a media category, it would win at a walk.
In both films, the world they offer is the one we know, kinked, observed by a small number of people while the rest of the world continues to flow by unaware. That's the fantasy that interests me, the stuff that might be happening out of the corner of your eye and around the corner, offering the possibility that the world we live in is already weirder than fiction. Sometimes I get closer than others.
