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comic links and "Kill Bill" commentary.
Very cool, bittersweet comic, a real-life story, highly recommended: http://www.momscancer.com/
The following isn't actually a full-hearted recommendation by me -- actually it annoyed me in several places; the creator seemed to be labouring under the delusion that several pages of wordless swordfight would translate as well in the comic medium as in the screen but I found them dead-boring instead; not to mention the cultural references I didn't get (who's Campbell? Who's Rick James? And what's with the monkeys?) -- still, if you will, check out the Kill Bill/Harry Potter parody: Kill Harry.
There was something magnicificently *creepy* about the concept itself: Hermione hunting down to kill Harry/Ron/Ginny/Luna/etc, the way that Beatrix Kiddo hunted down her former associates in Kill Bill. And I'm not really spoiling anything about the story here that's not obvious from the first page. If the swordfight bores you to tears just jump ahead to page 8 instead.
Loved Hermione's line in the final panel of page 10. :-)
Which reminds me. "Kill Bill" commentary:
Talking to a friend, I had described this movie as "bendy", but didn't get the chance to explain what I meant. I didn't mean "bendy" as mind-bending -- it's not really. I meant it's very... flexible. It jumps and it twists and it transforms itself, and in the end it's still the same movie.
It goes black-and-white. It extensively uses flashbacks and flashforwards. It directly addresses the audience at times. At a point it becomes a *cartoon* for god's sake. It travels from rural Texas to American suburbia to gangster Tokyo to mythical Orient and back again. It's a mythic flick, and it's a superhero flick, and it's a revenge flick.
Above all it's a fun movie -- pair of movies. Body parts fly everywhere.
It's like Xena, except Xena was so extremely pretentious and faux-moralizing, and this one isn't.
"Glorification of revenge and violence"? Not exactly. Atleast not the way that I've felt other movies (like a couple with Charles Bronson) have done. In those movies quite innocent and ordinary people revenge evildoers using disproportionate amounts of violence without ill-effects on innocent bystanders. Ow, how *nice* and *useful* violence and revenge is, those movies seemed to be saying. The fact that those movies tried to masquarade their bloodthirstiness inside a pretend-moral context only made them even more obnoxious. In this situation it's actually much simpler: Beatrix *wants* the revenge. We understand her, but moral judgment is besides the question: They deserve to die, but so does she. She leaves orphans behind that may very well end up hunting her in turn, and she hunts down people that quit the business even as she once did.
In short: this is more like a sacrifice to the gods of mayhem, not a praise thereof, if the distinction I'm making is understandable. "The Bride" as the chief priestess of assassination and murder, her crime (resulting to a 4-year coma as her punishment) not that she left Bill, but that she wanted to leave these gods' service without paying her dues. Now she has to pay the tribute of blood and murder, the biggest such tribute she's yet paid.
In this movie, the only way for Beatrix Kiddo to leave the hole she's dug herself into is to keep on digging until she reaches Australia.
Not a deep movie, exactly. But one of the most fun and memorable movies of the decade. The bloodiness of it all leaves the few moments of mercy or innocence shining all the brighter. The desire for *normality* shines all the brighter, because of how abnormal the universe Beatrix Kiddo inhabits is -- the universe she desired her daughter not to experience.
And the final meeting between Bill and Beatrix is just a masterpiece throughout.
The only improvement I'd make to the movie, is that, having the space of two full-length movies to extend itself in, I would prefer it if it had travelled even further around the world and cultures -- its two main locales were Texas and what we would roughly call "Orient", but why not travel all over the continents, Europe and Africa and South America, etc, making this a truly global flick? Both Texas and "Orient" bored me after a while.
Ah well. That's just a mild regret. See both movies, if you can stomach the gore. :-)
And lest I forget, the 5th Lyttle Lytton contest is under way, ending on April 15th.
The following isn't actually a full-hearted recommendation by me -- actually it annoyed me in several places; the creator seemed to be labouring under the delusion that several pages of wordless swordfight would translate as well in the comic medium as in the screen but I found them dead-boring instead; not to mention the cultural references I didn't get (who's Campbell? Who's Rick James? And what's with the monkeys?) -- still, if you will, check out the Kill Bill/Harry Potter parody: Kill Harry.
There was something magnicificently *creepy* about the concept itself: Hermione hunting down to kill Harry/Ron/Ginny/Luna/etc, the way that Beatrix Kiddo hunted down her former associates in Kill Bill. And I'm not really spoiling anything about the story here that's not obvious from the first page. If the swordfight bores you to tears just jump ahead to page 8 instead.
Loved Hermione's line in the final panel of page 10. :-)
Which reminds me. "Kill Bill" commentary:
Talking to a friend, I had described this movie as "bendy", but didn't get the chance to explain what I meant. I didn't mean "bendy" as mind-bending -- it's not really. I meant it's very... flexible. It jumps and it twists and it transforms itself, and in the end it's still the same movie.
It goes black-and-white. It extensively uses flashbacks and flashforwards. It directly addresses the audience at times. At a point it becomes a *cartoon* for god's sake. It travels from rural Texas to American suburbia to gangster Tokyo to mythical Orient and back again. It's a mythic flick, and it's a superhero flick, and it's a revenge flick.
Above all it's a fun movie -- pair of movies. Body parts fly everywhere.
It's like Xena, except Xena was so extremely pretentious and faux-moralizing, and this one isn't.
"Glorification of revenge and violence"? Not exactly. Atleast not the way that I've felt other movies (like a couple with Charles Bronson) have done. In those movies quite innocent and ordinary people revenge evildoers using disproportionate amounts of violence without ill-effects on innocent bystanders. Ow, how *nice* and *useful* violence and revenge is, those movies seemed to be saying. The fact that those movies tried to masquarade their bloodthirstiness inside a pretend-moral context only made them even more obnoxious. In this situation it's actually much simpler: Beatrix *wants* the revenge. We understand her, but moral judgment is besides the question: They deserve to die, but so does she. She leaves orphans behind that may very well end up hunting her in turn, and she hunts down people that quit the business even as she once did.
In short: this is more like a sacrifice to the gods of mayhem, not a praise thereof, if the distinction I'm making is understandable. "The Bride" as the chief priestess of assassination and murder, her crime (resulting to a 4-year coma as her punishment) not that she left Bill, but that she wanted to leave these gods' service without paying her dues. Now she has to pay the tribute of blood and murder, the biggest such tribute she's yet paid.
In this movie, the only way for Beatrix Kiddo to leave the hole she's dug herself into is to keep on digging until she reaches Australia.
Not a deep movie, exactly. But one of the most fun and memorable movies of the decade. The bloodiness of it all leaves the few moments of mercy or innocence shining all the brighter. The desire for *normality* shines all the brighter, because of how abnormal the universe Beatrix Kiddo inhabits is -- the universe she desired her daughter not to experience.
And the final meeting between Bill and Beatrix is just a masterpiece throughout.
The only improvement I'd make to the movie, is that, having the space of two full-length movies to extend itself in, I would prefer it if it had travelled even further around the world and cultures -- its two main locales were Texas and what we would roughly call "Orient", but why not travel all over the continents, Europe and Africa and South America, etc, making this a truly global flick? Both Texas and "Orient" bored me after a while.
Ah well. That's just a mild regret. See both movies, if you can stomach the gore. :-)
And lest I forget, the 5th Lyttle Lytton contest is under way, ending on April 15th.
no subject
But then again, I adore Donnie Darko, which is a movie no person I know found interesting.
What's the Lytton contest?
no subject
There's more details in the link I gave, and ofcourse you can see at the past examples of 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004.