Star Wars, No. 6

That's how I count the films. It's not the episode III, it's the goddam sixth Star Wars movie.

I saw "Revenge of the Sith" (I just wonder how stupid George Lucas can really be to have named his movie that, or "tath") on Monday night. I was of course disappointed, but at the same time I wasn't, because the fourth and fifth films were so bad. Let me rephrase this: I was entertained, but bored at the same time.

You know, the acting and writing are appallingly bad. If it hadn't been George Lucas, no one would have given the writer any money to make his script into a movie. I just can't believe how naïve Lucas can be in his depiction of love. The romantic scenes are like from a 12-year old's diary (and they are probably better written at that!). The stupidest stuff in the Star Wars films has certainly come out of Lucas's pen, not any other writer's (ewoks, Jar Jar Binks etc.).

At the same time, there is still the same magic that draws me to the original film and "Empire Strikes Back" (and if I could watch it without the ewoks, "Return of the Jedi"). I can't point out exactly what it is. Maybe it's just the little kid in me who first got to know the story through the graphic novel version (can I call it a graphic novel?). I saw "Empire Strikes Back" first and only then I saw the original film. (I've seen it six or seven times since. I don't count myself a fan in the real sense of the word.)

But I don't like to think that there's this nostalgic kid in me who just wants to get out and like all the bad films. Maybe there really is some force in Lucas's universe and the stuff he's created that attracts me. At the same time, I'm the first to announce, for example, that the Jedi religion is dangerous in its naïve beliefs in the ultimate power of the individual, even though it presents itself like some Eastern religion.

What the heck? Why can't I just admit that I liked the action and special effects? There are just so many incredibly bad elements in the film I want to shout at Lucas: Get off behind the camera! Get someone else to direct! (There would've been lots of better directors to do this. Just think of what Irvin Kershner did with "Empire Strikes Back". And Lawrence Kasdan. Why didn't Lucas hire him to do at least a draft for a screenplay? You damn cheapskate!)

I mean, how can someone make actors like Ewan McGregor and Samuel Jackson to act so badly?! McGregor also looks like some Finnish wino in his stupid beard (and totally unlike Obi-wan Kenobi!). How can someone with that story fail to deliver a film that doesn't resemble Shakespeare in the least?

The biggest problem was that you knew all the time what was going to happen. You knew that Obi-wan won't die, you knew that Luke and Leia will be taken to foster homes, etc. And you knew that Anakin will be Darth Vader. There's never real suspense in any of the events. The ending with all the storylines taken together is no real cinema, it's just someone pointing out what happened next.

What bugs me is that Lucas hasn't realized that if the events in the three latest films really take place, everyone would still be talking about Palpatine or the chancellor, not just the Emperor. Just think if Hitler had changed his name to Kaiser I, don't you think they would still be talking about Hitler?

And what happens to the technology and architecture? The first three films look rather grim and gritty compared to the art deco fantasies of the new film, and the technology seems to have dragged backwards. Yet you should think that they still exist and that the technology would've advanced during the peace. Well, maybe that's what Lucas is trying to tell us: don't trust war mongers. (Which is a good political message, I admit.)

Yet with all this under me (and probably many more complaints) I kind of liked the film. I would've continued watching other Star Wars films if they had started showing one right after I went to pee and came back. Maybe I'll have to read some of those spin-off books and play the videogame and read the comics version once again. Hey, I realize now that they published all of the Al Williamson scripted comics in Finnish a year ago and I haven't read them!

***

Wow! That was quite a complaint. I hope it's not too confusing.

I'll be away for three days. We are off at Vammala's old book days with my father selling books. It's my dad's business that he has taken up full time now that he's retired. Wish us luck and many happy buyers!

The mystery item I was talking about will be revealed next Sunday when I get back and start blogging again.

This is not from Berlin. It's Kauto sitting in his wagon (what's the actual word?) and waving his favourite plastic hammer. He looks a bit like Elina in this. (That's Elina, by the way, on the right.)

Still a few pictures from Berlin. Some narcissistic pictures of ourselves... here's an architectural photo: the parking house in the middle of Berlin's largest shopping centers (forgot the name of the street). They know how to do this kind of houses even in Berlin.

Elina at another cafe and a typical Berlin phone booth. Nice color.

Me at the same cafe (I'm having green tea). I look like a movie star in that!

Elina having a morning cup of coffee at Knesebeckstrasse.

Kauto and I at the flea market near the Zoo.

Couple more geeks from our collection of goofy plush toys. The left one is Velvet Zebra (actually it looks more like a deer) from the sixties and the right one is Vekku, the ultimate plush dog. From the seventies, I presume.

The plush rhino we bought from Germany. It's from the fifties and I suppose it presents the one-horn rhinos that the Berlin Zoo has. Cute, huh?

I promised this earlier: "The Loving Daugher of the South" by Alex d'Ornot (= Kaarlo Nuorvala), from West-kirjat in 1966 (a reprint from the 1940s). There's a signature showing - it's something like S. Kaukonen. Never heard.

British crime paperback from 1953 (Pete Garroway (= John Usher Gray): High Stepping Jezebel) in a Finnish translation. Not bad P.I. pastiche, a bit like Richard S. Prather's Shell Scotts, but nowhere as funny.

Thrilling Porn Tales of Lust

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Bad copy editing

Bill Crider posted two excerpts of a new Western novel by Robert B. Parker in his blog:

From Appaloosa, p. 266: "The room was quiet and noisy."

p. 238: "Bragg took a tan leather case out of his inside coat pocket. He offered a cigar to Bragg and me."

Quite nice! (I'm no big fan of Parker and this is pretty satisfying to me!)

Bad films

Ed Gorman wrote in his blog:

The local community college here runs movies every night on the tube. They concentrate on action flicks--westerns, Flash Gordon type sci-fi, jungle pictures--with the rare exception of a B melodrama or noir.
When they first began telecasting, I thought this would be a lot of fun. All those crummy movies from my earliest days in the second run theaters of that era during and after the war.
I lasted a week. I think maybe it was the Mexican horror movie that did me in. The only film I've ever seen that made The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant look like serious art.

I know what he feels like. Now, I'm a basically a friend of good films, even though I've been known to dig into some really bad stuff. I like sleaze, but I like it well-handled, not just some sloppy splattering. I don't like gratuitous violence, even though it's only the mondo documentaries that make me sick (such as Faces of Death). My three all-time favourite movies are (have been for a while if anybody asks) Orson Welles's Touch of Evil, Andrey Tarkovsky's The Mirror and Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai. Not very trashy, huh? (Even though there are certain elements of trash and camp in Welles's pre-postmodern masterpiece.)

But while I know what Ed's feeling, I am fascinated by films as bad as the Mexican horror flick he mentions having seen. But I like more to read about Z grade films rather than see them. They bore me out, but reading about them is a great joy. Take for instance Devil Monster (I have the ugly Finnish poster, can't scan it, but if we get to buy the digital camera we've been talking about for a year, I'll put it here). It must be one hell of a bore, but reading that it's almost 50% of archive footage and that the final battle with the manta ray is filmed through the glass of the sea aquarium makes me chuckle. And what entertains me even more is that this is the only film its director-producer-writer ever made - with the exception of the earlier version of the same story! (Made cheaply in Mexico some ten years earlier... How pathetic can you go?)

The same applies to the classics like Plan 9 from Outer Space. I had read about its sloppiness through the years so much that I couldn't get anything out of it when I finally saw the film. Same happened with The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, which we looked through with fast forward.

The funniest description of a bad movie, though, must be about Grizzly. An Imdb user writes:

The forest ranger tracks down Yogi to an open field and is going to have a man to bear fight to settle it all. Bear charges the ranger and what does the ranger have up his sleeve? A rocket launcher! He fires it at the bear and this bear must have been drinking gasoline for breakfast because it is the biggest explosion you have ever seen. You can even see pieces of wood fly out during the explosion. This bear was full of all kinds of foreign objects. I'm amazed the explosion didn't level the ranger and a two mile radius around Yogi and his diesel engine stomach. I rewound this scene about five times cheering all the way.

I get a kick out of this everytime I even think about it.

Now, I saw "Revenge of the Shit.. sorry, Sith" yesterday, but more about it later.

The American cover of Gatti's Saranga. If I ever find a Finnish copy (cheap), I'll put it here.

An Italian Tarzan

From the Moomins' book shelves I also found out that there was an Italian copy of Tarzan. Moomintroll had a book called Saranga, viidakon poika/Saranga, Son of the Jungle, by one Attilio Gatti, who was an Italian author. It's been translated into English as Saranga, the Pygmy which is actual translation of the original title (Saranga, il pigmeo). From Gatti there are also other books translated, such as Kamanda: An African Boy. A quick search reveals that Gatti was an expeditioner and traveller. He made also a film called Siliva the Zulu, of which the website says this:

“In the annals of African cinema, SILIVA THE ZULU is a landmark. In 1927, Italian director and explorer Attilio Gatti traveled to Zululand, where he devised a script filled with ‘love, hate, intrigue and adventure.’ Gatti took the standard Western romantic theme of ‘boy meets girl, boy loses girl,’ etc. and stirred it together with ideas of ‘the tribal.’ He added a generous dose of witchcraft, and the result is a heady melodramatic stew. But he chose to shoot in a rural community, and, as a result, SILIVA stands virtually alone as an authentic record of Zulu life and culture at that time. Melodramatic as the film is — and melodrama was, after all, the soul of silent cinema — Gatti is never condescending or demeaning towards his actors. They are fully the equals of their counterparts in white cinema.” (Peter Davis)

I found only cover of Saranga and it's not very good. Try to bear with it. (Bare with it? How does one say?)

Moominpappa's favourite pastime.

After the holiday

Started work today. Wrote a page of the short story for Tapani's anthology, translated three pages of Starr's "Nothing Personal" and then dabbled with the YA novel. Same old same old. I also wrote some descriptions for "Pulpografia Britannica". Sent the surprise item I mentioned to the printers.

Ottilia is here, so can't really concentrate on stuff. She's here for an extra day, since her mother is away on a trip. I actually miss her already - will be taking her home tonight. They have so much to do with Kauto and they are already quarreling about each others' things.

We went to Moominworld yesterday. Same old same old there, too. There were some books on the shelves in Moomins' house and I of course checked them out. I was pretty exhilarated to find out that Moomintroll's dad (is it Moominpappa in English?) was reading William Garner's "Overkill" (1966) that has been translated as "Mass Destruction". Slight contrasting note in the midst of the peace of Moominvalley, eh?

Jim Barker's blog

Hilarious covers, pulp, comic and paperbacks. Love especially the Mexican (?) Yorga cover.

http://bloggercrab.com/blogs/?u=jimthing

Here's a picture of me in 1973 or 1974. I'm on the stairs somewhere, that's my mother standing behind me. The photo is presumably taken by my father. I can't as yet reveal what this photo is for (actually it couldnt' get in), since it's a surprise.