Whatta Fiasco

A hacker/assassin chick (Shu Qi) and her sister (Zhao Wei) wreak havoc, pursued by a fierce female police investigator (Karen Mok), all in very high heels. The whole thing is silly, complete with a Carpenter’s song as plot device (aiyee!) and athletic looking wire work. I’m pretty sure this one got in my rental queue because of the stylish Shu Qi, but Karen Mok is the one I really like. You may have already seen Karen Mok in Shaolin Soccer, but she’s also in the harder to find Steven Chow film, God of Cookery.

I’m not a huge consumer of short story collections, but I like finding sff by women and Nisi Shawl’s name has been popping up in my various readings lately. I was also gobsmacked to realize my local library has been purchasing some volumes from Aqueduct Press. (Go go, librarians!)

[powells]

I thought this was an excellent film, but if you want to see it in the theater, I recommend you get to it quickly as it’s not a blockbuster. The problem is not the violence as there are plenty of ultra violent movies that make huge amounts of money. The problem is that it doesn’t give you violence you can unambiguously empathize with, and therein lies both the power of this film and why it isn’t wildly popular. I think of this film as an essay on the negative effects of violence (regardless of intent), with a side dish of identity and a heaping helping of nostalgia to provide a grounding context. I don’t enjoy gratuitous violence in films, but when the violence has a purpose and forces you to think, I admire it even when it’s so brutal and direct that I have to look away. (More than once.) It also captures the tone and feel and story of the comic book as well. And when we walked out of the theater, it didn’t feel as though we’d just sat through nearly three hours of film.

[imdb]

Giancarlo Giannini plays a farmer who sets out to kill Mussolini. The farmer is naive, his quest is hopeless, and the ending is predictably horrible. But it has some wonderfully quirky unconventional faces. And somewhere in the middle is a memorable piece set as the opening of the brothel.

Artsy-fartsy visuals and utterly gorgeous.

A collection of short stories about a mercenary unit called Hammer’s Slammers. Military sf with airfoil tanks. It was touch and go for me through the first fifty pages whether I’d bother finishing the book or not. The writing is good enough, but my lack of interest in battle scenes tends to work against my spending much time on military sf. Luckily, after the first few stories, the ratio of battle scenes to what the heck am I going to do now? scenes shifted in favor of the latter. So it seems to be established that I prefer fewer battle scenes in my military sf. But the closer you get to hand-to-hand combat, the more likely I am to be interested.

[powells]

I’d been meaning to read some of John M. Ford’s work but for one reason or another hadn’t ever gotten around to it. So when I walked past this volume on the library shelf, I grabbed it. Noir urban fantasy done very very well. Just gorgeous.

[powells]

It’s Verdi, so the music is lovely, and the voices were quite up to the task. But the staging? Boring. Sad to say. I spent spare moments during the production coming up with alternate settings to help make it more interesting. Yes, the music is lovely, but there was too much set as frame for someone who stands in the frame and sings. It’s probably bog standard Verdi, but I thought it was a waste of the stage. I want more eye candy with my opera.

Another book where the buzz about the writer is well deserved. Yes, I’m late to the party, but the chips aren’t stale yet and there’s plenty of cold beer left, so to speak. Which is to say, if you enjoy twists on mythology, there a copy out there somewhere just waiting for you to dive in.

[powells]

Yes, the 3D version was quite worthwhile. No headaches, although the eyes were a little tired by the end. Still worth it. And I loved how the celebrity voices never overtook their characters. (Yay, Ian McShane as cat.) Good stuff.

[imdb]