Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, what have you.

Movie Review: A Chinese Ghost Story (1987)

Usually, when someone tells you a movie “has everything”, they are either lying or the movie tries to “have everything”, but it fails utterly at putting them together in a rational and balanced manner. A Chinese Ghost Story (literally: “The Ethereal Spirit of a Beauty”) has romance, action, horror, and comedy – and actually does integrate all of them successfully.

Ning Tsai-Shen (Leslie Cheung), a novice tax collector, arrives in a small town to carry out his work. Unsurprisingly, no-one is willing to give him a place to stay, so he ends up spending the night in a nearby ruined temple. There, he meets Taoist swordsman Yen Che-Hsia (Ma Wu), who tries to warn him away. But with nowhere else to go, he holes up in the ruins. There he meets the beautiful Nieh Hsiao-Tsing (Joey Wang), with whom he falls in love. Unfortunately, Hsiao-Tsing is a ghost, enslaved to a demon who uses a group of young women ghosts to sustain her by sucking the life out of men….

The gods must watch over novice tax collectors, since Tsai-Shen manages to somehow escape one peril after another. For example, on his arrival in the town, he is shoved up against a rack of scroll charms. They stick to his wet robe, causing him to be accused of theft. But that night in the temple, when he meets Hsiao-Tsing, it turns out that the fresh ink on the scrolls stained the back of his robe…and the charms were for Protection Against Ghosts….

Can this odd couple overcome the gulf between them and find happiness? Will Tsai-Shen’s luck run out, and have him become another victim of the spirits and undead inhabiting the temple? Will the demon find out that Hsiao-Tsing is betraying her by helping Tsai-Shen? Is Che-Hsia’s “Taoist Rap” one of the most awesome things ever committed to film? And just what the heck is the deal with that tongue?

The action sequences are amazingly well executed, the romance between Cheung and Wang is believable (and the pair are both easy on the eyes), the comic moments are deftly handled, and the scary parts are done very well. The artifice does show through a bit in some of the demonic scenes, but to Western viewers, the unfamiliarity with Chinese supernatural concepts is enough to compensate.

About the only thing wrong with this movie that I can see is that it is widely regarded as the epitome of Hong Kong cinema. So if this is your first exposure to that genre, you will have to live with the disappointment that no matter how much you look, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything better.

NOTE: There is an animated version of the same tale from 1997 (by the same producer), two sequels, and another movie (presumably a remake) of the same name from 2011. I haven’t seen any of them.

ANOTHER NOTE: Chinese names can be troublesome for a Westerner to get right. Forgive this humble “round-eye” if I have miswritten any of them.

Book Reveiw: Operation Nemesis

Operation Nemesis:
The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide
Eric Bogosian
Little, Brown and Company, 2015

This year marks another centennial; one that is going with very little memorial or commemoration, or even much more than a passing nod in the general press. In 1915, using World War I military operations against the Russian Empire as a cover, the Ottoman Empire began a program to systematically wipe out Armenians in their territory.

For various reasons, many countries still haven’t gotten around to calling it what it was: genocide. It’s not like Armenia is really going around demanding reparations or punishment for those responsible. After all, it was a century ago and everyone responsible is dead. In fact, some of those deaths were the direct result of the Armenians themselves.

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On The Reputation Economy

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Cory Doctorow
2003

Thanks to many, many, unspecified technological advances, the world has become a Utopia. In “Bitchun Society”, death has been defeated – you upload your mind every night while you are asleep, and if you happen to die, your last upload is downloaded into a cloned body. You just lose a day. Scarcity and the problems of resource allocation have all been conquered. People join together in voluntary associations as needed to do what needs to be done.

Jules “works” at Disney World, where he and his friends and colleagues have taken it upon themselves to keep the theme park running. But his vision of what the Haunted Mansion should be clashes with his rival Debra, who has completely different ideas.

One day, Jules is “killed”. Restored from his backup, he finds that Debra has used his “downtime” to move in on his “territory”. Now Jules must fight to reclaim control of the Haunted Mansion, while figuring out who killed him – and why.

I suppose we should give authors a bit of a break on their first novels. Very few artists create masterpieces on their first time. So when the plot-motivating murder mystery gets pushed to the background, and a lot of the characters are rather flat, it’s understandable and forgiveable. This is primarily a story of social ideas, anyway.

But I find fatal flaws in one of his ideas….

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Movie Review: Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985, Japan)

We’ve been conditioned by Disney and Pixar to think that animated movies are for children. Light in tone, with a standard comic relief sidekick for the protagonist. Simple messages about love and family and all that, plus an obligatory happy ending. But animation is just another means for telling a story, and that story need not be one suitable for children. Take a look at Fantastic Planet or Cool World or Fritz the Cat, for example. Most definitely NOT appropriate for children!

Even when the source material is ostensibly a children’s story, or the main characters are anthropomorphic animals, the resulting movie might not necessarily be something you’d want to watch with your kids.

Night on the Galactic Railroad is based on a classic of children’s literature (at least in Japan) by Kenji Miyazawa. If the movie is a reasonably faithful adaptation, it’s hard to imagine why. Not that it’s a classic, but that it was thought appropriate for children. Young adults, maybe… It’s positively loaded with theology, philosophy, and surrealistic imagery which I think would go way over their heads.

Anyway, on to the story.

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Book Review: A Spy Among Friends

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
Ben Macintrye
Crown Publishers (US)
(c) 2014 by the author

It’s kind of easy for most people today to forget that there was a Cold War before the Reagan Era. Or even that it began well before World War II. In the 1930s, young intellectuals dabbled with Communism as a political philosophy, figuring it would be the only way to stop fascism from taking over. Most people in charge didn’t think much of these interests. But the Soviet Union was playing a much longer game than anyone else. Someone like Kim Philby, a well-networked scion on Britain’s upper crust, was an easy target for recruitment. Even before any open hostilities. You’d never know how your investment would pay off.

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Movie Review: Birth of a Nation (1915)

A centennial went by earlier this month with essentially no fanfare. On February 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith’s masterpiece, Birth of a Nation, premiered. Almost immediately there were protests about its racism. Protests and complaints have continued to this day, to the point where if you happen to include it in a list of Greatest Films Ever (for its many technical innovations), you are almost obligated to apologize for it.

I’ve wondered… The movie is a century old. Shouldn’t the passage of time have dulled its effect? Given that almost every time it’s mentioned, someone cries out “It’s EEEvil!” and tries to ban it from being shown, you have to wonder just how many of those complaining about it have actually seen it. If you’re going to try to keep people from seeing it, how are they ever going to know just how evil it is?

Well, the thing’s in the public domain. You can watch it in many places online, without fear of violating piracy laws (like that’s ever stopped you). I decided to see for myself just what all the fuss is about. So I loaded up my computational engine with coal, got myself a delicious beverage, and sat my butt down to watch it (and take notes).

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Book Review: Mars Girl by Jeff Garrity

The United States’ first attempt at colonizing Mars is in big trouble. The lander has been damaged – somehow – and is drifting off course. Worse, sixteen of the seventeen people aboard are dead, leaving only a teenaged girl alive.

Will she land safely? Will she be able to make it to the prefab, pre-landed restaurant/shelter? Will a rescue mission be able to reach her in time? How will the corporate sponsors of the mission be able to profit from this? How will the news network with exclusive coverage of the landing keep people glued to their screens, and keep the merchandise moving? How will the government spin this disaster to their advantage?

Can our intrepid…er, hero, the ace reporter Ray Barker, while stuck in a small lakeside town in Michigan, find a story that’s big enough to keep his name and face on the news?

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Review: Project: Potemkin

These are the voyages of the starship Potemkin. Her five year mission: Explore strange new worlds. Seek out new life, and new civilizations. To boldly go where….

Oh, let’s cut the nonsense….

Project: Potemkin is a series of Star Trek fan films made by a group based in southwestern Georgia. What sets them apart from almost every other fan film is that there is some real talent involved. No one you are likely to have heard of (of course), but people with some real acting and production experience. For example, Jeffrey Green (Captain Alec Grigory and Director of Photography) is the Chair of the Dramatic Arts Department and Artistic Director of Rylander Theater Partnership Productions (among many other things) and has been acting since the 1980s.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Panic in Year Zero! (1962)

Ah, the Good Old Days of the late 50s and early 60s…. The days of Civil Defense drills, fallout shelters, and missile gaps… When people lived in fear of nuclear war… With some justification, since the United States’ war strategy was essentially “Launch everything!” We wouldn’t see such paranoia again until the days of Ronald Reagan and his “Evil Empire” rhetoric. During the 80s, there were a number of films that tried to address what might actually happen to ordinary people in a nuclear war. Panic in Year Zero! was there first.

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Book Review: Hammer and Tickle

Hammer and Tickle: A History of Communism Told Through Communist Jokes
Ben Lewis
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009

First off, this is the book version of a 2006 documentary about political humor in the Soviet Union. The nominal idea is to show the tightrope dance of those who dared criticize the regime through jokes. Just how much would you be allowed to get away with? Lewis interviews historians, archivists, and even some of those who actually made laughter at Communism’s expense. He even considers the possibility that some of it was allowed in order to defuse tensions amongst the people. If they are chuckling, they aren’t massing in the streets in protest. It’s a nice idea, but Lewis can’t seem to decide whether he’s writing a history or a joke book.

Lewis rather clumsily includes stories about his girlfriend, which detract from his narrative and weaken the overall work.

Oh well. At least there are the jokes:

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