Kauppakadun elokuvafestivaalit VIII – Elokuva ja todellisuus

My second visit to the titular film festival with the subject matter of documentary (or film and reality) this time around. What a setting of films. Quite a few short ones there and many films that stretch the concept of documentary to its limits. But the breadth of expression used in this format was not known to me prior to this.

San Francisco [1968]

This was originally made as illustration to a Pink Floyd song and that song obviously plays for the duration of the documentary. It is a documentary, as it consists of shots documenting the ordinary life of SF. It does combine those shots with some techniques more common to art film. Still captures the vibe of a city at a certain time.

• Director: Anthony Stern
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 3.5/5

Castro Street [1966]

Castro street and its surroundings are these days known as one of the more hip neighborhoods of one of the most hip cities in the world. At the time of shooting this, it was a mix of old industrial buildings and more recent cheap bars and hookers. Again the film combines the basically very documentary shots with art cinema techniques to achieve something that better captures the essence of the place at the time.

• Director: Bruce Baillie
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 3.5/5

General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait [1974]

Barbet Schroeder went to Uganda to shoot a documentary of the Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin. He managed to do that, because he sold the idea by making Idi Amin the director and sole controller of the material, in effect relegating his own position to the guy with the equipment. The idea is genius – Barbet Schroeder has very little effect on the material, but even the material he captures by shooting the scenes that Idi Amin has staged for him, he captures the mind of a deranged dictator.

The story did not end there as there were two cuts of the film. The first lasted about 60 minutes and was intended for the Ugandan market, while a 90 minute cut was released in the UK. Amin’s agents were in UK watching the film and sent a full transcript to Amin. Amin responded by demanding cuts to the international release version, which Schroeder denied. Amin reacted by rounding up a few hundred French citizens to a hotel in Uganda and holding them hostage until his demands were met. Schroeder had no choice by to concede the cuts and that is the version we saw. As far as I know, the original international release is no longer in existence.

But regardless, the access Schroeder gained with Amin and the portrait that he paints are absolutely incredible. The portrait is of a deranged psychopath that is clearly off his rails even, when he knows that the cameras are there and has control of everything they are shooting.

• Director: Barbet Schroeder
• Original title: Général Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 5/5

Isole di fuoco [1955]

Shooting the daily life of people on a volcanic island. Shows the spirit of the place much better than any collage of talking heads could. A fine piece of imagery and moods.

• Director: Vittorio De Seta
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 3.5/5

Seasons Project [2005]

Geoffrey Jones was a documentary film maker that made a career with commissioned work. That lifeline became scarce, when commissioned documentaries began to vanish during the 80ies. He then started this project. A solo project of beautiful imagery mapped to the music of Vivaldi. The project is similar in scope to the Koyaanisqatsi and its “sequels” by Godfrey Reggio, but where he had financing to spare, Jones worked alone and on his own money. It took a couple of decades for the film to be finished, but the product is a beautiful testament to the single-mindedness of its maker.

• Director: Geoffrey Jones
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 3/5

79 primaveras [1969]

As the leader of communist Vietnam, Ho Chí Minh, died, Santiago Álvarez composed this documentary eulogy of him. Obviously it is overtly communist in tones painting the western world as the devil and covering up the excesses of the communist regimes around the world, but the thing that makes this special, is that Àlvarez was not content with a straight up documentary, but combined in tone seeking artistic sequences to great effect.

• Director: Santiago Álvarez
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 3.5/5

Four Seasons [1975]

Less traditional Soviet propaganda, but Soviet propaganda nevertheless. The film is shot in a style that suggests that Peleshian just happened to be there to capture these moments of Soviet life ranging from the mundane to quite extraordinary, but always beautiful. Obviously, at least the more extraordinary sequences are set up, but the film is valuable for the non-traditional style of filming.

• Director: Artavazd Peleshian
• Original title: Vremena goda
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 3.5/5

Warrendale [1967]

Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary film making, where you take your camera to a place, set it rolling, and let things happen. The idea is that at some point your subjects forget that you are filming, and that results in material that is more real than most documentaries about human subjects can capture. Allan King is a master of the style. Despite being a master of the style, the material that will be caught, is never as sincere as it claims to be.

This time he takes his cameras to a Canadian foster home that shares its name with the resultant film. The material that he captures, is quite shocking. The personnel clearly have good intentions in mind, but their methods are severely misguided. The film eventually resulted in the foster home being closed down, due to the public awareness raised by the film. And that was based on material shot, when the personnel knew they were being filmed.

• Director: Allan King
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 4/5

Einheit SDP-KDP [1946]

When the Russian forces rolled over Germany and later occupied Eastern Germany, the propaganda machine was not far behind. The director is German, which is part of the carefully considered message – this is German propaganda, not Russian. The documentary films meetings, where the German democratic socialist party, and the German communist parties have a series of meetings and rallies, where, all too conveniently, they all their differences are solved, and they march together towards a red future. The meetings and rallies are staged and some politicians played their part practically at gun point, but it is interesting to see, how all of that is transformed into an enchanting narrative of unity on film.

• Director: Kurt Maetzig
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 4/5

The House Is Black [1963]

The film combines material shot at a leper colony, and poems read out loud. It has the basic aesthetic of the later Iranian auteur film boom nailed down, yet it precedes the main wave by years. It has the themes of unavoidable human destinies and incomparable beauty born out of said situations nailed down. It was very prescient and is a clear influence on the later films.

• Director: Forugh Farrokhzad
• Original title: Khaneh siah ast
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 4.5/5

Philips-Radio [1931]

The film was created as an advertisement for Philips-Radio company. It doesn’t utilize art cinema techniques popularized decades later by names like Brakhage and Warhol, but it achieves similar imagery by simply shooting chosen bits of the factory producing the radios of the company and arranging them beautifully. Absolutely captivating work.

• Director: Joris Ivens
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 4.5/5

David Holzman’s Diary [1967]

This is one of the films that stretch the definition of documentary, but certainly has a place in the festival. It’s masked as a documentary about David Holzman, a man, who has recently lost his job and is maybe about to be drafted to fight in the Vietnam war. He starts the mockumentary by telling to the camera that he is operating by himself, that he will try to figure out his life by making a video diary of himself. I don’t exactly know, when gonzo documentaries became a thing, but this is certainly one of the early examples. Holzman proceeds to discuss various topics that are of interest to him, piss of his girlfriend and make her break up with him, futilely attempt to win her back, have a friend blast the documentary as boring, be accosted by a woman on the street, whom he was filming etc. The film ends with David’s equipment being stolen, and him recording the final episode in a recording booth that prints your voice to a vinyl record there and then, combined with photos taken with a cheap disposable camera. Cut to black. Wait for ten seconds. Get end titles revealing that there is no David Holzman, but an actor playing him, and that this is, in fact, a fiction film. Some of the material is scripted, some is not. The film contains most of the gonzo documentary tropes, so it was prescient in that way too.

• Director: Jim McBride
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 4/5

Window Water Baby Moving [1959]

Stan Brakhage is by far the most well known art cinema auteur. Warhol, his contemporary, is better known to big audiences, but when it comes to art cinema, Brakhage is the man. He has nearly 400 directing credits in IMDb alone, and I’m sure they are missing quite a few. This and the next entry are probably his best known pieces.

Brakhage’s films often consist of basically home videos that he shot on 8mm. He just wasn’t content with your regular home videos, but experimented all the time with filming and editing techniques.

This is the film that he produced out of his wife giving birth. You have to go into educational material, to find film, that has so exact shots about the process of a fetus exiting the uterus, but the film is more than that. It has tones and moods that must’ve accompanied Brakhage at the time of the actual event. It is not for the faint of heart, but certainly interesting.

• Director: Stan Brakhage
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 3.5/5

The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes [1971]

If Window Water Baby Moving is not for the faint of heart, this is not even for the rest of us. I couldn’t watch all the way through this. The funny thing is, where with Window Water Baby Moving, you’ll have to dig into educational films to find better imagery of an actual birth in progress, this was commissioned as an educational film, for depicting the work being done at morgues.

It takes a moment to realize, that these bodies opened from chest to groin and spread out on tables for the camera to film, are not fakes built for a film. Brakhage took his camera to the morgue and kept shooting material of actual cadavers and actual doctors working on them. You get to see fresh bodies being opened up, and already examined bodies being closed down. You get to see bodies already opened up waiting on a side table waiting for a doctor to have time for them.

It’s weird that the film scarcely contains an image, that I already haven’t seen in a fictional film, but this time it is so much more difficult to look at it. This is one way to stretch the concept of imagery on film and a very effective one at that.

• Director: Stan Brakhage
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 4/5

Please Vote for Me [2007]

Perhaps the most traditional documentary of the festival, this has no special techniques, no style of film making, no foresight that has to be admired, no artistry that should be noticed. Weijun Chen just manages to capture material in a Chinese primary school, that can not function as an allegory to the rest of the society.

The film follows a class, that is holding an election for the student that is going to function as the speaker for the class. That position brings certain privileges, so there are several aspirants. All of their campaigns are twisted and corrupt mockeries of democracy, that simply beautifully mirrors what is going on in the less (and these days even in the more) functional democracies of the world. Very much worth seeing.

• Director: Weijun Chen
• Watched on: 11th Aug 2018
• Watched at: private festival
• 4.5/5

Random Films at the Cinema

I wrote a post collecting a bunch of films I’ve seen on TV, and now the counterpart – films seen in a cinema. A very mixed bunch indeed.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri [2017]

The film festival darling of 2018, I had to go see it. It tells the story of Mildred (Frances McDormand), a divorced woman, who is grieving over her raped and murdered daughter. The major counterpart to her is police chief Willoughby. Mildred is angry over police inaction and rents the three titular billboards to send a message to the police chief. Willoughby is on his part trying to do the best he can, while also fighting cancer.

The film is a combination of the Coen brothers and the generic American indie film. From the Coens you get the single-mindedness and surprising moments of humor at things you shouldn’t really be laughing at. From the indies you get the human heart. The film manages to combine these sides by muting both of them down a little from their worst excesses. Copying the Coens wouldn’t be a bad thing, but toning it down allows the film to stand on its own feet. Copying the indies would obviously bad, but here the characters mostly act in a Coen film, but there are occasional moments, when the roles of the grieving mother and the police chief are dropped, and they are human.

Where this film misses is that despite the genuine tragedy, the film seems like a modern version of the pastel colored suburbs of the 50ies that are these days mostly too perfect fantasies. Here, we have a small town, where everything seems to be just so. We aren’t seeing it through nostalgia, so it’s not without problems, but there’s always checks and balances that makes everything work without too much trauma, despite some people acting quite badly under stress.

A very good film altogether.

• Director: Martin McDonagh
• Watched on: 7th Jul 2018
• Watched at: Kinopalatsi 10
• 4/5

Isle of Dogs [2018]

I’m a fan of Wes Anderson. When he keeps his trickery to sane levels, he is absolutely wonderful. This one is a stop motion animation, telling the story of dogs being exiled to an island that used to be a weird combination of industrial area and amusement park, and now is a dump. The exile is due to dogs spreading diseases among humans. Our story begins as Atari, the son of the mayor, who orders the exile, elopes to the island in search of his beloved dog, Spots. Atari and a group of dogs embark on a grand voyage across the dump to find Spots and help the dogs in general.

As mentioned, I’m a fan of Anderson, when he keeps his trickery in check. With stop motion animation, he can throw all thoughts of that to the wind, and he does. Now, not just the delivery of the actors, but absolutely everything, is bent to his will. The result is not without charms, but the excesses eat into those quite a lot.

• Director: Wes Anderson
• Watched on: 11th Jul 2018
• Watched at: Kinopalatsi 8
• 2.5/5

The Shape of Water [2017]

Guillermo del Toro has risen from an art house darling to a Hollywood household name. At the same time he has turned his B horror sensibilities into something secretly agreeable to even conservatives. He hasn’t discarded the horror tropes or even B film settings, but somehow turned them into a secret fantasy that we can all swoon over at the cinema, and condemn as harmless fantasy, when we get out.

And harmless this is. A story of a cleaning lady, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), who is working at a secret military testing facility, where they have sort of an alien life form in captivity. Elisa falls for the life form and it falls back and they have an impropable romantic relationship. And that’s about it. I don’t really know, what this is supposed to be.

• Director: Guillermo del Toro
• Watched on: 11th Jul 2018
• Watched at: Tennispalatsi 5
• 1.5/5

What? [1972]

This was my first visit to the WHS cinema in Helsinki. It has since become my favorite cinema both in programming and in that they present all the films they show. The presentation gives much depth the experience especially, since the films are otherwise quite obscure.

Like this one – everyone’s heard about Roman Polanski and most even about one of the films stars, Marcello Mastroianni. Despite the scandals of Polanski’s life finally coming to light, even our most conservative TV channels are still playing his films regularly, but not this.

The film tells of an American girl, Nancy (Sydne Rome) coming for a vacation into a hotel in an Italian coastal town. The other residents of the hotel are all sorts of weird and especially the hotel’s proprietor. About the first thing that happens to Nancy is that someone steals her pants (and later her blouse) and she doesn’t seem to have any other clothing. She engages in a weird relationship with an old pimp, Alex (Marcello Mastroianni), who wants to dress up as a tiger, when they are having sex.

The film doesn’t make much sense, but it has a weird post modern charm to it. The camera work and everything keep things interesting as well.

• Director: Roman Polanski
• Original Title: Che?
• Watched on: 3rd Aug 2018
• Watched at: WHS
• 3/5

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again [2018]

Had a rare date night with my wife. I wanted to take her to the cinema Riviera Kallio and she wanted to see this, so we were set.

The film… Not much to say. It’s basically more of everything compared to the first one, but done slightly less well and with considerably less heart. There is not an interesting shot or piece of dialogue or setup in the film, but it’s good brainless fun for a date night.

• Director: Ol Parker
• Watched on: 13th Aug 2018
• Watched at: Riviera
• 2/5

Knife+Heart [2018]

The film is set in gay porn world of 70ies France. Anne Pareze (Vanessa Paradis) is the producer in her own company. Her ex-girlfriend edits the company’s films – Anne isn’t over it and is (rather badly) attempting win her back over all the time. Her actors are her friends, but there’s a serious issue – a serial killer is picking off Anne’s actors.

The setup is very deeply grounded in the more innocent porn of the 70ies and also in B films. The aesthetic is copied from both, but instead of going for the gags common in porn that time, the film asks us to take the B film tropes seriously. There’s a bird expert with a claw for a hand, and the serial killer has a blade snapping out of his dildo.

This sounds like a premise for failure, but it is not. The aesthetic is spot on, the dread from the killer is real, the slightly over the top gay porn actors are a nice counter-balance. It just works. There’s just a hint of extra fat that could’ve been left on the editing room floor to fix the couple of spots, where the film gives too much slack, but otherwise a great genre exercise.

• Director: Yann Gonzalez
• Original Title: Un couteau dans le coeur
• Watched on: 1st Feb 2019
• Watched at: WHS
• 4.5/5

The Favourite [2018]

Yorgos Lanthimos is another auteur in the style of Wes Anderson – someone with an immediately recognizable style, and who can be a bit too gimmicky given enough freedom. I enjoyed his two previous efforts though, so off I went.

Here the setting is the court of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman). Her favorite adviser and lover, Lady Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz), has been running the state in practice. This has pissed of the Queen, since her favorite lover is absent quite a bit and enjoying herself too much. Enter Abigail, Baroness Masham (Emma Stone), a down on her luck noble, who manages to get a job from her cousin, Lady Sarah, and quickly finds her way into the Queen’s favor and bed.

Unlike his previous films, this one doesn’t tackle any major social issues, except perhaps to show in some honesty the reality of our past. This gives him too much freedom and the film is set for failure with Lanthimos’ signature slightly too frank dialogue and macabre scenes given free reign.

But the film doesn’t fail. That is purely thanks to the formidable trio of ladies in the leading roles. They make you buy the whole thing hook, line and sinker. The combination turned out to be a magnificent film.

• Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
• Watched on: 20th Mar 2019
• Watched at: Tennispalatsi 5
• 4.5/5

David Lynch

David Lynch is one of those directors, who are slightly frightening. I’ve read a lot about him and everything I’ve read tells me that I will love his films… But what if I don’t? I’ve seen Twin Peaks and the associated film, but that’s all. The Finnish film archive had a program for Lynch films last summer, so I finally managed to catch a couple of his films. At the same we were watching the Twin Peaks series at home with my wife, so I’m going to bunch those in here as well.

I should’ve reviewed the films right after seeing them, since by now, I’ve forgotten a lot and with Lynch’s films that’s fatal. The films are all mixed up in my head, so I’m going to just jot down a few notes about each and try to figure out, which one was which by reading plot synopsis, and giving a grade.

First a couple of notes on Lynch’s style though. I honestly believe, that Lynch makes his films for himself. I would assume that his mind is filled with artistic ideas and this is just a way of getting them out. Some critics point to the films being nonsensical, that you can’t figure out, what is actually happening there, and tell us that they are tricks designed to shock and confound. I would assume that they just are Lynch’s mental world mapped onto film.

It’s true that the films don’t make sense in the end. Usually, with similarly complicated films, you are able to connect the dots somehow – there is a sense to be found and hints that pop out on second viewing. I’m still lacking that second viewing on all of these films, but I would expect nothing to pop out in the way that would make the narrative a coherent whole. With Lynch’s films, I haven’t been able to connect the dots. I remember, that when these were fresher in my mind, I would attempt to figure them out and start to grasp at possibilities, before the construct in my mind falling to pieces. I’m a person driven to find logic in everything, but I’m also a person, who realizes that and is capable of letting go. That’s essential with the films. There are tons of things that could be interpreted as hints to a solution of the film and trying to grasp that solution occasionally gives you hints at interpretations of the film as a whole, so it’s not a wasted effort, but in the end, you just have to let go and enjoy the ride.

Lost Highway [1997]

This is the darkest of the trio in tone. I immensely enjoy the loneliness of the Los Angeles and the empty roads in the film. The film sets up mystery after mystery and gets to points, where those should be resolved, but the lines point to wrong dots and more mystery is brought instead.

• Director: David Lynch
• Watched on: 16th Jun 2018
• Watched at: Orion
• 4.5/5

Mulholland Drive [2001]

This film is perhaps the most comprehensible of the trio. It follows the lives of Rita and Betty for a good while, before things start to fracture and reassemble into different shapes. To me, it loses a tiny bit of Lynch magic, to many others, it’s his best film.

• Director: David Lynch
• Watched on: 4th Jul 2018
• Watched at: Orion
• 4/5

Inland Empire [2006]

This film starts again, by making sense for a long time, but the fractures and shifting realities are worse here than in Mulholland Drive. The setting of the film is slightly less interesting than the lonely Los Angeles / Hollywood of the previous two (this is also set in Hollywood).

• Director: David Lynch
• Watched on: 17th Jul 2018
• Watched at: Orion
• 4/5

Twin Peaks s01

If I would have to point out one season of TV that was the best ever, this is it. If you take this as a full series (I still haven’t seen the third season, but considering just the two old seasons), there would be competition, as during the second season the production company pushed Lynch to the side (he was present pretty much only in title sequence texts) and pushed for more excitement and mystery.

Twin Peaks was intended as a parody of small town America soap operas. Those usually have wholesome people doing wholesome things and any problems usually come from outside or are trivial. Here everyone is wholesome only on the surface. Outsiders are rarely seen (with the exception of special agent Dale Cooper, Kyle MacLachlan, who is an FBI agent and something that could be called the lead character in the series), and all tension is built between inhabitants of the town. The parody shines a light to the reality of small town America – the wholesome people really are wholesome only on the surface. Scratch it a little and all sorts of problems are revealed. Here they are brought front and center. That’s not all of it though, as Lynch is one of the show runners – his signature weirdness and mysteries abound as well.

As a parody of small town America series, it was the intention of the production duo (David Lynch and Mark Frost), to not have much anything happening in the series. It starts with a mystery, who killed Laura Palmer, that brings agent Cooper to town, but that’s quickly pushed to the sides and occasionally nearly forgotten as the series is more interested in just watching its twisted characters live their quiet lives.

The descriptions above don’t really justify the grade below. I can’t really explain it. This just is the best 8 episodes of TV ever produced.

• Finished on: 12th Jun 2018
• 6/5

Twin Peaks s02

As already mentioned above, the production company behind the series, didn’t like Lynch and Frost’s vision anymore. They ended up pushing Lynch completely out of the production and made Frost concentrate on the mysteries and the crimes.

While that did not ruin the second season completely, it takes a lot out of the atmosphere, when the hidden feeling of doom is now front and center. Instead of quiet moments of pie and coffee, the series has more gunshots, more chases, more crime, more everything… that makes it less of everything.

This is still a very good piece of TV and definitely worth the watch.

• Finished on: 14th Aug 2018
• 4/5

A Couple of Nolans

In the early summer of 2018, I managed to watch a couple of Christopher Nolan films. Christopher Nolan entered my knowledge as the director of Memento, which was a quirky dexterity exercise of a story about a man suffering from short term memory loss. That was followed by Insomnia, which was another highly atmospheric piece of work with a complex plot. The complexity has become his signature and his capability of navigating through the complexity in such a manner that the viewer never gets lost, or at least gets the full reveal at the end of the film. He has ascended to become one of the most valued directors in Hollywood, but at the same time, I feel that he has lost a lot of his personality as a director.

Dunkirk [2017]

War films are difficult. They often end up being war porn and national pride in events that are major disasters regardless of loss or victory can be dangerous. This one seemed different though – I skipped the initial release, but kept hearing good things about it, so when Bio Rex was reopening after renovations and they announced a sneak peek weekend with a 70mm copy of Dunkirk playing, I went.

The film opens with a soldier trying to escape towards the beach. We barely see the enemy, our soldier even drops his rifle – he’s just trying to escape. The beach is a nightmare scene of no cover against shelling and enemy bombers, and an endless excruciating wait for the boats coming to evacuate the soldiers.

Another bit of story we are given to follow is Farrier, a fighter pilot, who desperately attempts to buy time for the boats to arrive, risking his life and plane and staying a bit more to drive away one more enemy plane. The final one is that of Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance), who takes his boat to join the people’s flotilla in the evacuation effort.

The film is not a usual war film. It avoids war porn almost completely, but it does deliver a dose of national pride – it’s directed at soldiers being saved from the infamous beach, so that, for once, is something to be proud about.

The film quality is impeccable. From film stock to framing, shots, pacing, acting – it’s all well beyond the already high Hollywood standards. Nothing surprising there – Nolan has recently been known for exactly this.

The quality is without question, but is there anything new here? There are two things, that make the film rise above your usual Hollywood fare. The aforementioned coup of war film tropes is one. The film is more a disaster film than a war film. The second is the sound track. It’s more a low droning soundscape than a usual soundtrack. It never let’s you forget the impending doom. A wonderful piece of work by Hans Zimmer.

• Director: Christopher Nolan
• Watched on: 20th May 2018
• Watched at: Bio Rex
• 5/5

Interstellar [2014]

I watched this in two parts. First part on TV one night, but I was too tired to finish it, so I continued the next evening with a Youtube film rental.

If Dunkirk is Nolan at his most Hollywood, Interstellar has some of the old Nolan quirks shining through brightly. The film could be considered a twin of Inception, but where that faltered on excessive mistrust of the viewer, this falters on entirely different things.

The film tells the story of Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former NASA astronaut, who has ended up as a farmer. Crops are failing all over the world, so most of the populace has been put to tending crops in order to avoid famines. The dream of space remains though. There’s a couple of inexplicable events that lead Cooper towards a secret facility that hosts a project to save humanity by sending it to new planets discovered on the other side of a stable worm hole. Cooper ends up being one of the 3 people sent on a second mission mission through the worm hole. The first mission charted out 12 potential planets and now the purpose is to check out the 3 best candidates and take 5000 humans there frozen in cryo sleep. Obviously, charting out the 3 candidates doesn’t go as planned, but see the rest for yourself.

The now trademark Nolan quality is evident everywhere. Shots are heavy and they have a powerful effect. Soundtrack supports everything and pacing is nice.

The problems stand with the plot – the other Nolan trademark. This one is contrived. The plot is maybe even more complex than that of Inception, but this manages to tell it without spending endless time on exposition and making sure that the viewer is apace of everything happening on screen (seriously, Inception dialogue feels like a thinly masked manual to the film). The plot is even more complex than that of Inception, and this time, instead of holding the hand of the viewer through all of it, there are more events that gain a meaning only later. The problem is, you end up spending most of your time with the film thinking that there’s a few too many convenient coincidences going around, before the twist at the end explains them away. The explanation just isn’t satisfactory and it doesn’t really compensate for the feeling of contrivances. The premise of the humanity standing at the brink of extinction does not help.

Despite it’s problems, I’m a sucker for sci-fi, especially sci-fi, that even tries to be smart.

• Director: Christopher Nolan
• Watched on: 2nd Jun 2018
• Watched at: Youtube
• 4/5

The Guide to Glorantha

I think it was around 1992 or 1993 that I was first introduced to the world of role-playing games. The first thing I remember was having a slip of paper with some numbers on it and my friend telling me: “You proceed deeper into the cave and encounter a bear. Roll the die! You hit, the bear dies. You keep going deeper.” I don’t remember the order of things that followed. There was a Marvel superhero game that we played for a couple of sessions. There was a long D&D campaign that consisted of going further and further down an underground complex. That ended, when the GM told us that he is throwing the toughest things from the monster manual at us and we are beating them, so this is getting boring.

At some point my parents bought me the Finnish edition of RuneQuest. We started playing with just that, but soon I got the Glorantha pack and I was completely hooked. Glorantha was my world. The non-human sentient races were truly alien and imaginative. The mythology entranced me although a lot of the nuance was lost to me back then. The varied human civilizations and cultures seemed lifelike and imaginative, and they had real reasons for conflict instead of just “these guys are evil, so they fight everyone and everyone fights them” that seemed to be the norm for many D&D settings back then. The rules were combat heavy, but not as combat heavy as D&D.

There were obviously problems in the system. Reading the rules as written, if you are a professional brewer, your skill at brewing might be 70%, which would mean that 3 barrels out of every ten you make fail – that obviously isn’t very professional, but for some reason we managed to think of some of the skills as qualitative and some as quantitative – a brewer at 70% skill would probably make good beer every time, but a brewer at 90% skill would make even better beer. The sorcery rules seemed completely broken and we couldn’t figure out, why – we couldn’t connect the description of the world and the rules that well.

Years of fun were had on our early teens campaign… And then my friends got into their late teens and quit playing. It took me nearly 10 years to find gaming friends again, but I kept buying all things Glorantha regardless. I read and re-read everything I had and I scoured the early Internet for more things to read and I the world kept me in thrall.

The first publication that introduced the world of Glorantha, was a board game called White Bear and Red Moon from the year 1975. The Guide to Glorantha, published 40 years later, is the most important publication about the world of Glorantha, and represents the collected wisdom of dozens and dozens of people, who have contributed to what was originally Greg Stafford’s world. The book is a gazetteer or an encyclopedia about the world of Glorantha. It’s not the first publication of that type about Glorantha, but this is the biggest, most detailed, and most complete collection of Gloranthan minutiae ever published.

Despite much of the content of the book being familiar to me from previous publications, I couldn’t start skipping through sections at any point. The world still brings a smile to my face. Be it the truly epic myths and heroes, the pervasively magical nature of the world, the varied cultures, the alien non-humans, and the weird humor sprinkled here and there, everything about it is completely enchanting to me.

The Kickstarter campaign used to fund this book (actually two books, but the page numbering doesn’t reset between them, so they are literally inseparable), was the first KS campaign that I pledged into. I don’t think I had an option about this. I didn’t have too much money back then, but this simply was not optional. The KS campaign ended in Dec 2012 and promised delivery in Feb 2013. Not surprisingly, the book was finally delivered two years late in 2015. It was worth the wait.

The grand shaman of gaming, Greg Stafford, is no longer with us, but his world is alive again. I think this book really literally kick-started a resurgence in Glorantha – we now have Gods War, an immense board game about the pre historic wars of Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha and a new edition of RuneQuest, there’s Six Ages, a long-awaited video game successor to the great King of Dragon Pass. There were years and years, when the world was kept alive only through dedicated fans through fanzines and forums.

I don’t think I would be the person I am, without the influence that Glorantha has had on me. It taught me that things change. It taught me about shades of grey and points of view. It taught me that there is always another way. It taught me that there is magic in the world, if you want to see it. Glorantha is a beautiful world and this is a book worthy of that world.

• Title: The Guide to Glorantha
• Author: Greg Stafford, Jeff Richard, Sandy Petersen
• Year: 2015
• Finished in: 12th Jul 2019
• 6/5

Game of Thrones season 8

The long awaited final season of the supposedly most epic TV series of all times is finally here. I subscribed to HBO Nordic in order to be able to follow the season as it unfolded. Getting HBO Nordic was a good decision, despite the awful quality of the application, but this series certainly was not the reason.

Where do I begin? Season 7 was already completely based on some guidelines provided by George R.R. Martin and original writing, since the novels that describe the same events have not been released yet. Before they started to make season 7, they were well aware, that they had 2 seasons, under 20 episodes, to finish the series. So what do they do with season 7? They kill of a bunch of interesting characters just so they won’t have to give closure to any plots they were involved in or to the arcs of the characters themselves.

Now we come to season 8, 6 episodes and we still have the white walkers to beat and then there’s the problem of Cersei, who, to no one’s surprise, does not provide troops to fight the white walkers.

They spend 3 episodes out of the 6 available on setting up and going through the white walkers fight. I guess it could’ve gone into more interesting paths, but it didn’t. We get one episode of setting up the final chess pieces in their places. I mean seriously, most of the dialogue in the episode seems like the characters are describing chess piece movement. We get one episode that is supposed to set the mood before this end of the world fight. Except that everyone knows that the white walkers are going to be beat, because the show runners have shown exactly zero courage in anything they’ve done once they ran out of George R.R. Martin material. This kind of an episode still has some potential. Yes, the walkers are going to be beat, but so much of the secondary and tertiary cast of the series is present, that even without courage, we are going to get scores of important bodies, right? So night before the battle episode, there’s potential. But the dialogue is putrid, there’s very little tension in any of the scenes. Have a drink, knight a woman, sex for the first time, all by the book and seems like the actors were phoning it in. And obviously then the third episode, the fight. Yeah, there’s probably not been another mass combat depicted in a TV series with so much flair, but nothing happens. First it looks like they are doomed. Then some things go right and maybe there’s hope. Then those things are countered and they are doomed again. A few efforts that are supposed to be heroic fail, and the doom deepens until every hero has been cornered and it seems all is lost. Enter deus ex machina, combat resolved, count the bodies, one. How many? One. What? Yes, one. We get exactly one important body. They had the courage to kill one fucking character out of the dozens of expendable people there. One! If they had that much courage and that much originality, they should’ve covered the whole white walkers fight in a montage in 20 minutes during the first episode, so at least we could get more space for finishing character arcs and the multitude of open plots with some time and satisfaction – but they chose to spend half the season on a fucking useless subplot in a manner that does not take one character forward and does not provide a single surprising moment.

The rest of the season does not get any better. It’s true that they’ve been broadcasting Daenerys’ turn to evil for at least a season and a half, but they still manage to handle that so hamfistedly, that it feels like there’s no character arc behind it and no justified psychology. Cersei just dies. So does Jaime. The “awaited” Clegane encounter is a fucking joke. Euron’s arc is just ended. Tyrion and Varys continue being blabbering idiots instead of brilliant strategists. All the feminist tones are stomped on and ground to dust. All the other ideas about breaking the mold are diluted to the point of irrelevance. Jon, the fucking puppy eyed miserable cry baby, is the one, who finally finds his balls, and ends it all… And manages to do it in the most unsatisfactory way. All of it, everything, just wasted potential in the end. There is not a single juicy scene during the last two seasons of the series. And the 8th is by far worse than the 7th. And that isn’t even going into all of the lack of charisma and tension present in everything.

In all fairness, it is difficult to end a series, that has gathered so many expectations around it. I would assume the reason for Martin not having released further novels to the series, is that he is having the same problems. Martin and the series are both in unnecessarily deep waters with finding a good ending due to Martin’s tendency to take every namesake of a side character and give them a full story arc. But this is just a no show by the show runners. They phoned it in. They couldn’t care less. Their checks had already been signed. This is seriously a good contender for the prize of worst series ending ever, and there is no shortage of good contestants.

In a couple of years, the best bad moments will be watched during private bad film festivals and laughed at heartily.

• Finished in: 20th May 2019
• 0.5/5

Anansi Boys

I’m an unabashed fan of Neil Gaiman. Very few people are able to beat him in hooking the reader into his own fantastical imagination. His stories read like the best memories of the magical moments of childhood, when you heard a story told or read by your parents and it immediately clicked. Something in the story seemed familiar, but it was completely entrenched in a magical quality that sucked you in. If you go back to the stories as an adult, they usually disappoint you – it’s understandable obviously, as a child needs very little, in the end, to be enchanted. But Gaiman’s novels at best do that to you as an adult.

I had the misconception that Anansi Boys was a sequel to American Gods. Turns out they just share a character, Mr. Nancy. The novel follows Mr. Nancy, whose father has just died. It turns out, that the father happened to be an old African trickster god of spiders, and he left behind two sons, not one as Mr. Nancy had thought his whole life. The children meet and their lives are entangled to the woe of Mr. Nancy, as it seems that his brother is ruining all the tiniest bits of good in Nancy’s life and making it even more miserable than it was before. They end up being the targets of revenge by proxy, when some other old and angry gods take it upon themselves to get revenge on old Anansi through his boys. After a bit of mythological battling on several planes of existence, Mr. Nancy and his brother make up and Mr. Nancy seems to find his self-confidence.

Neil Gaiman is wearing his best writing pants in this novel. This is good and even excellent at times, but the story seems to be lacking a bit in the power of its hooks. That being said, that’s only in comparison to the better works by Gaiman. Don’t read this as your first Gaiman, but when you do get hooked, you’ll end up reading this as well.

• Title: Anansi Boys
• Author: Neil Gaiman
• Year: 2005
• Finished in: 19th May 2019
• 4/5

What Is Cinema?

I have never spent as much effort on getting my hands on a book. This is a collection of essays from the French film theory and criticism prodigy André Bazin. The essays were originally published here and there, and they were collected into several volumes named Qu’est-ce que le cinéma? It would be wrong to say, that this is a translation of those volumes, as this contains a tiny subset of the essays published in the original French collections.

This is a new translation of some of those essays, and the reason this is important, is that much of Bazin has been very badly translated into English prior to this edition. Some of the most central concepts of the theoretical and critical framework he built, have been translated to even the completely opposite meaning of that Bazin had in mind, so it was essential to get my hands on this edition. The reason it was so hard to get my hands on this, was that the copyright of the older translations is still in force in most of the western world and apparently that kind of things are tracked these days. Most Canadian and international web stores that carry this book, refused to ship it to Finland. Finally, I managed to find one, but I had already I Canadian friend lined up to go buy the book himself and mail it to me.

The new translator, Timothy Barnard, has added extensive footnotes to discuss the earlier errors in translations and the reasons behind his choice of the more important words in his translation. He spends pages in explaining the more difficult concepts in Bazin’s framework. All of this is in itself very interesting and enlightening to read, but for some reason, Barnard builds contradictions into Bazin’s framework, where there seems to be none. His arguments in describing said contradictions seem vague and off target. Regardless, to my understanding, his actual translations here are impeccable.

And, boy, was it worth the effort. As mentioned, Bazin was a prodigy of film theory and criticism. He died at the age of 40, but already he left behind a corpus of writings of film probably still unsurpassed in importance at least by any single person. This edition contains 13 essays, ranging from absolutely essential pieces to understanding his critical and theoretical frameworks, to in depth critiques of single films. Some essays are obviously more essential and others seem even a bit marginal 60 years after Bazin’s death, but altogether, the essay collection stands as the single most important bit of reading on film that I have done.

Reading through the collection of essays was just pure learning happiness for me. I immediately ordered the second volume of Bazin essays translated by Timothy Barnard and published by Caboose. Unfortunately the web store seems to be out-of-stock and they still have not managed to send me the volume three months later. I’m just hoping beyond hope, that I’ll get my hands on that one as well.

• Title: What Is Cinema?
• Author: André Bazin
• Translated by: Timothy Barnard
• Year of this edition: 2009
• Finished in: 14th Apr 2019
• 6/5

Pelit elämän peilinä

A second book writer has emerged from among the staff of the Finnish Pelit video gaming magazine. Aleksandr Manzos is known as the reviewer of the weird games, the aimless walking simulators and the acid heavy lucid dreams, and he seems to like most of them.

This is his second foray into book writing. This one picks elements in games, that reflect life, that is, it picks an element of art, and points out, that games are there. Aleksandr is convincing and his writing is entertaining. Occasionally his rationalizations veer into far fetched territory, but in general his arguments are plausible. His writing keeps you reading even through the weaker bits. He is smart to pick just a single aspect of art and reflect on that in a quite free flowing manner – this is not an academic piece trying to convince you that games are art. Not being academic, he can stay away from the more awkward areas of the question. When just ruminating about these things, he hits gold occasionally and you almost start to believe.

As an added bonus, the book goes through its themes through games that are sometimes not well known but highly interesting. I didn’t know about several of the games or had ignored them after reading a less thorough review, but the book goes out of its way to find games, that go into territory that is not often explored with games, and that interested me in quite a few of them.

• Title: Pelit elämän peilinä
• Author: Aleksandr Manzos
• Year: 2018
• Finished in: 18th Jan 2019
• 3.5/5

As a quick side note, I need to mention, that I attempted to read through the other Pelit alumni book writer’s, Juho Kuorikoski’s, Pelitaiteen manifesti.

It was inspired by Seitsemäs taide by Henry Bacon, which is book that takes film, which is said to be the seventh art, and very thoroughly compares that to all the previous six art forms (in reality, there are more). Henry is clearly an educated researcher of film and the arts in general. He is able to distill the essences of the various forms of art and finds the similarities and differences to film.

Pelitaiteen manifesti posits video games as the eight art form. The biggest difference between these two books, is that the gaming book is a manifesto that posits something, that is currently highly contested – it faces an uphill battle in trying convince everyone that games are art, where there was no question about the position of films as art, when Bacon wrote his book. The second major difference is that while Kuorikoski’s knowledge about games is extensive, he is at best a dabbler at making an academic manifesto like this. His arguments are badly rationalized, he seems weak even, when he is building the essences of games, let alone the other arts, his comparisons are amateurish. The question of games as art is of some import to me, so I was unable to finish to book, when it started to look like the book is actually making games seem less like art than they probably are.

Finally, in my opinion, games in general are far from art. There are distinctive parts about game design and production, that definitely fill various definitions of art, and occasionally a game emerges, that could be argued to be an artistically valuable piece. The general artistic quality of games is very much lacking though – the average blockbuster game is at best on the level of a bad summer blockbuster film – built to entertain and any serious look at the games’ handling of various themes breaks the film apart in a heartbeat.

A Few Dances

Modern dance is a passion of mine. I don’t understand much of the theory behind modern dance, but I immensely enjoy myself every time I see dance pieces. One of things I enjoy about modern dance is the range of expressive possibilities. Here’s three completely different pieces. Even though the last two pieces share considerable thematic and even methodical territory, they arrive at pieces that have very little to do with each other and that offer completely different experiences to the viewer.

Urbotek

The piece starts with a Mexican day-of-the-dead macabre pantomime-like episode, which put my hopes up, but is soon replaced by circus acts with a modern twist, which, although entertaining to watch, loses most artistic value. The piece is closer to modern circus than to modern dance, but I’m going to review this here in any case, since I saw it as a double bill that also featured Nasty by Susanna Leinonen company, which most certainly is dance.

The opening act evokes raw and primitive imagery that is sprinkled by brutality that seems almost accidental. It is so short, that I couldn’t really catch on to any ideas behind the segment, but I was very intrigued.

Sadly, the promising opening is followed by circus without much artistic value. There are elements meant to be artistic, but they are at best thinly connected to the opening scene and in any case sprinkled so sparsely that following the ideas is near impossible.

The circus acts are impressive. Not Cirque du Soleil impressive, but impressive nevertheless. The costumes and behavior of the performers suggests that these were the guys, who always had juggling balls with them at the park, who were always at the park, and who drank a bit too much and a bit too often and started to slip to drugs. Everything about them seems like they are self taught. Maybe they cut back on the drink and took the juggling seriously and actually put in the (meager) money and (self-guided) effort to get good. They are good. There were some slips, but not too many. They obviously don’t have a big budget, but they are imaginative with the gear they do have.

Not quite what I was expecting to see, but I was entertained and the opening act was even more than that.

• Title: Urbotek
• Producer: Race Horse Company
• 10th Jan 2019

Nasty

Susanna Leinonen Company is known for beautiful, almost ethereal pieces, where even if themes are light or exclusively related to the movement of the dancers, you are always left with a feeling of having seen something extraordinarily aesthetically moving.

Nasty is not like that. It’s abrasive, brutal, in your face. The movements are jagged, the themes are very readable and socially aware, they are explored through repetition to the point of exhaustion, the dancers are openly out of breath, openly hurt, openly touched by their piece.

The theme, of course, is feminism. Or rather the oppression and objectification experienced by women every day, and rising against that. Giving a big finger to everyone, who came to see beautiful dancers as objects of their desire. The dancers are beautiful and the piece is important, but the FU is so major, that it should go through the thickest skull and make it known, that these are people – extremely talented and professional people, who are not to be oppressed and who are not to be objectified, and that extends to all women.

An important piece and I’m extremely happy about the attention that the piece has gained. An important part of the #metoo movement and it most certainly is doing its part in raising women to be the equals of anyone else.

• Title: Nasty
• Producer: Susanna Leinonen Company
• 10th Jan 2019

Vieras – Främling – Stranger

I wasn’t aware of Sanna Kekäläinen and her dancing company before this piece. I mostly went to see it, because the performance was at an opportune time and the warm up act was stand up comedy by Jamie MacDonald, whom I’ve been meaning to see for a while. Jamie wove his comedy through his experiences in transforming him from female to male, and it was excellent. It was thoughtful and socially aware and heartwarming.

The dance was completely different from anything I’ve seen before. Sanna Kekäläinen herself, is a veteran. She studied dance in the early 80ies, which puts her at late 50something or maybe even 60something of age. The piece was heavily feminist and humanist. The reason I mention the age, is that the dance included themes of feeling estranged from your body due to the body failing you. This is explored through involuntary stuttering, involuntary shakiness of the body, feelings of loneliness due to being discarded as a useful human being due to age.

The piece is aggressive and vulnerable, it takes highly delicate subjects and smashes them into the viewer’s being with power that does not subtract from the subjects. Sanna Kekäläinen is the star of the show. She let’s her age show, she let’s it be known, that this is also about her, that this is personal.

The piece left me thinking for a long while afterwards. The closest relative to the piece thematically, is the film Under the Skin. Both take this feeling of being estranged in your own body. Vieras handles the theme more through your own body failing you. Under the Skin handles it through a setup, where your body is completely alien to you regardless of any external conditions. Both include heavy tones of objectification. Both left me sleepless.

• Title: Vieras – Främling – Stranger
• Producer: Kekäläinen & Company
• 15th Mar 2019