Magician Things

“The Magicians” was a book I read and discussed here recently. You remember. Or you don’t. But it’s there. Within the last five or six posts. Not hard to find. Don’t be lazy.

When I read it, I was vaguely aware of the fact that its second sequel was on the horizon. I thought that I might like to start reading it upon the day of its release. For my amusement. It’s almost like a bit of a nod to its tenuous ties to the whole “Harry Potter” thing? That’s what everyone did with those. Midnight releases and stuff. I might have only done it for the fourth one, though. I got into it somewhat late, and I dropped off before the fifth one was released. Then I got back into it shortly before the sixth one came out, which meant that I only had to wait for a day or two for that one’s release after I finished the fifth. I think that I was dealing with some stuff when the seventh came out, but I know that I started it without much delay at any rate. I purchased T. Rex’s “Electric Warrior” right before I started it on that night, and I read till the record ended.

Then I was surprised by a six-week stay in hospital, which cruelly truncated the end of my summer. Having “The Deathly Hallows” by my side surely wasn’t unhelpful in dealing with that.

It was weird, though. For some reason, the buzzers on our floor weren’t working while I was there, and we had to ring actual bells whenever we needed to get the nurses’ attention. We called our section the Anita Ward.

Depending on your charity, that last paragraph was a joke or a lie. I enjoyed it, though.

I also had a visit from my aunt, who’d come over from her home in England to spend a while with the family after some rather trying experiences at her erstwhile place of employment. She’d enjoyed a long tenure at one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious acting schools, which had come to an end when Alan Rickman took over the place and shook everything up in a manner that sounded suspiciously similar to what Snape did to Hogwarts at the end of the series. In the book, Snape was secretly working on the side of good, though. I suppose that we can just assume that Sir Alan’s private motivations were noble too.

Back to “The Magicians”. I knew that I was going to have to read the second book at some point before the release of the third in early August, but I didn’t want my experience with it to abut on either of the other books in the trilogy. In the last week, I decided that it’d probably have to be one of my next two books to give it adequate space from its successor, but there was a part of me that thought that it could get too heavy for some of my current moods. The first book had parts like that, and sequels can sometimes escalate those sorts of things. If that had been the case, it might have interacted poorly with the particular kind of foggy confusion that’s been in my midst lately.

But I took that minor risk. I jumped in to find that that was not the case. Instead, it emphasised the best qualities of the original and left every trace of doldrum behind. You know. Like a good sequel. It even delivered on the ecstatic promise of its predecessors final pages. A lot of things don’t.

Did you ever wonder why I specifically include “Rush Hour 2” on my lists of favourite movies? Well, there are reasons. This is one of them. There’s no need for patience while Jackie Chan works up the willingness to talk. The dynamic between the two buddy cops is firmly set, and it’s played well. The tonal continuity between the closing scene of the original and the opening scene of the second is flawless. Also, Jeremy Piven has a tiny scene that’s just fantastic. That’s probably irrelevant here, but it’s true.

My first conscious exposure to that man came long after my adoration for "Rush Hour 2". It was when I saw advertisements for some movie in which he played a car salesman. It looked awful, and I couldn’t understand why my brother went to see it. This was during a period in which we grew closer through the overlap in our cinematic tastes. Jeremy Piven was his justification, and I didn’t understand it at all. Later, I’d come to understand, and when I did, my brother was there to warn me away from that car salesman movie. But did you seem him in “Serendipity”? Glorious.

Update on Monday, June 30, 2014 at 12:04AM by Jaymes Buckman

Bonus Question!

Worst Alan Rickman role? "Love Actually". Because of the hair.

I might have mentioned that to my aunt at the time in a token effort to mitigate my obvious enjoyment of the man's work during her complicated situation. Incidentally, I first watched "Love Actually" during that hospital stay, and repeated viewings definitely helped with that whole experience.

It's right above "Serendipity" on my romantic comedy list. That puts it at the top of the list.

Monster Mildness

Apparently, I’m not going to see “Godzilla”.

This comes as a bit of a surprise to me. It is ostensibly the type of big, crazy movie that generally requires my attention, but I haven’t really found the desire to make time in my ridiculously lax schedule for it. I suppose that my apathy basically congealed when the IMAX showings stopped.

Honestly, I think that this might have a lot to do with my fond memories of the version from the Nineties that faithful adherents of the legendary monster king decry. I don’t get that. I had a great time with that film when I saw it in childhood, and it holds up. I last watched it a few years ago, and it was still entertaining. You’ve got your Jean Reno. The Hank Azaria. It has that classic type of action movie opening I cherish.

You know the one. With the scientist? Approching some random dude in a remote part in the world? With all the urgency?

“You! You’re the world’s leading expert on this one particular thing that could, in this highly specific scenario, save the human race.”

“What? I’m, like, a worm doctor.”

“Right. You’re the world’s leading expert on worms. Your country needs you.”

“I’m not disputing that. I'm pretty well awesome. I just don’t really want to go. I’m . . . I’m all comfy here.”

“Come on. It’ll be a good time.”

“A good time? Why didn’t you say so? Let’s do this.”

And that worm doctor was John Cusack.

Actually, I just checked after I wrote that. I was wrong. Matthew Broderick was the worm doctor. Still. He saved the world. You can see why everyone thinks that he’s a righteous dude.

Anyway, I don’t have anything against any other incarnation of the Godzilla franchise, but I don’t think that I’m in the right mood to give this new one a chance without comparing it to the Broderick vehicle. Furthermore, “Pacific Rim” just came out a year ago, and that was basically “Godzilla” with giant robots, which means that this is essentially “Pacific Rim” without giant robots.

Actually, I don’t think that the giant robots were even my favourite part about that film. The monsters weren’t either. Those dimensional rifts were pretty great, but I think that my interest goes to Charlie Day, Ron Perlman, and that hunched British guy.

But a Godzilla movie without those three characters, giant robots, and dimensional rifts is just “Godzilla”. Who wants that?

Well, people who really love Godzilla.

Update on Sunday, June 22, 2014 at 08:32PM by Jaymes Buckman

Bonus Question!

Best intersection of reptilian monsters and giant robots? 

Dinobots?

Prove me right, Michael Bay! I believe!

Not to Be Confused with "Iron Chef", Which Is an Entirely Different Thing

I recently saw “Chef”, which is almost like “Iron Man 2” with gastronomy instead of mechanical wizardry. Basically, it’s a pretty good time. I suppose that it could also serve as a decent primer on social media.

I thought that the kid was good.

I’ve occasionally heard people bemoan perceived faults in a lot of child actors for the apparent air of distraction that can creep into a performance in the absence of discipline. I should mention that it definitely wasn't on display here, but I'm on the tangent now anyway.

Anyway, I don’t really care to determine the validity of such complaints, but I will say that such roles generally don’t stand to lose much even if that supposed problem is present. It just makes the character seem vacant and somewhat vague, and that’s how a lot of children can appear to some adults anyway, for the younglings haven’t had time to congeal into solid identities with an understanding of social interaction’s nuances. It’s not entirely dissimilar to the effects one might notice from attempts to communicate with neophyte Anglophones or some of the less versatile varieties of fictitious androids. Mismatched cadences. That’s a part of it.

Update on Monday, June 16, 2014 at 12:43AM by Jaymes Buckman

Bonus Question!

Best chef? Swedish.

Coincidences of the Week

The ones on the left come in fruit flavours. The ones on the right come in a rainbow of flavours. This rainbow happens to be made up of fruit, and the particular fruits in question seem to match the ones from the left.

I just finished reading Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians”. It’s an entertaining deconstruction of fantasy literature, but I think that my favourite conceit is the way in which it plays with the idea of the hidden world that pops up across the genre. You know the one. Harry Potter discovers that magic is real. The Pevensies wander into Narnia. Richard Mayhew gets thrown into a subterranean wonderland beneath London. These new realms remain unknown to the masses as they reveal themselves to the main characters and the audience. But the thing I liked about Grossman’s book was the fact that it happened twice. The protagonist, some dissatisfied kid in Brooklyn with a particular fondness for a fantasy series that’s essentially the equivalent of “The Chronicles of Narnia”, unexpectedly gets invited to a secret magical college in the country. He accepts this with the hope that it’ll pull him away from all of life’s problems that had dragged him down in the ordinary world, but it still doesn’t live up to that kind of Narnia world that he liked to read about. It’s almost more of a consolation prize. But then he finds that ersatz Narnia too.

Hilarity ensues. And further disillusionment. His. Not mine.

Anyway. Lovely tale.

But I mention it for another reason.

When I finished it, I decided that I was in the mood for a different kind of book, and my mind went back to some novel I’d seen during a recent jaunt through a favoured bookstore. It was called “Soon I Will Be Invincible”, and it’s a kind of satire on the superhero genre. When I went to look for it on Amazon, I noticed for the first time that the author shared a surname with Lev, and I came to learn that they were in fact twins. I also saw that the European version of the cover looked like a Bryan Hitch comic, which happened to be because Bryan Hitch actually drew it. It felt appropriate.

The other thing.

On Sunday, my perambulations took me through Kensington Market, and I happened to hear a gypsy jazz band play some riff on the James Bond theme at a restaurant by the name of Amadeu’s. I stayed in the vicinity till the end, for my enjoyment of their musical chimera was great. I only mourned for my inability to learn anything about the band that would enable me to hear them again with any degree of certainty.

On the following day, I was walking along Bloor to the house of one of the musicians from the last Hot Apollo show for the purpose of discussing summer recording plans. First, I ran into an acquaintance from high school who spent some time at the university of my brother and a close friend. I’d just been speaking to that friend on Friday about my tendency to run into that high school acquaintance once or twice a year, and I realised that it had been a bit of a while since our last encounter.

Immediately after that meeting, I was stopped by a man who offered me a tarot reading. I declined, but I offered him my rock-and-roll in turn. This set us to talking, and he told me that his brother was in a band too. He said that they were a fixture at Amadeu’s, and they turned out to be the band that I’d caught on the previous day. I found their album, “Between Worlds”, on iTunes later, and it’s got some good stuff. Fortuitous meeting.

Update on Sunday, June 8, 2014 at 09:59PM by Jaymes Buckman

Bonus Question!

Best rainbow? Bifrost.

Questionable Predacity

It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to be suspicious of any restaurant that feels the need to use the phrase "restaurant quality" in description of its food.

My favourite cinema was showing “Predator” on Wednesday. I might not have even found out, but I happened to see a poster about it in the bathroom of a different theatre in the previous week. I’d never actually seen the original before this. In anticipation of the arrival of “AVP” in 2004, I went to my local video store in search of the Schwarzenegger classic, but I only managed to find the sequel. I settled for that and had a fairly bad time with it. Instead of a golden god in a scenic jungle, it had some random cop in a poorly lit city. The whole thing just felt rather dour in comparison to my expectations of what a “Predator” film should be. Fortunately, most of these expectations were met on Wednesday.

After the show, I ran into a friend who’d happened to wander into the screening after work, and he had effusive praise for the pure, classical machismo of the film. I did notice how it seemed to be made in a slightly different mould from the action movies to which I have accustomed myself. You know. The kind I watch for the dialogue. Like “Rush Hour”. And “Rush Hour 2”. Have I mentioned my love for “Rush Hour 2” recently? I love “Rush Hour 2”.

“Rush Hour 2”.

Anyway, I was somewhat surprised by the complete absence of dialogue in the third act. There wasn’t even anything to wrap things up after Arnold’s final victory. It just ended in a scene of silent triumph. It’s not the lack of digital graphics that sets this movie apart from its modern successors. It’s that. Even when there was conversation, I don’t think that the number of lines per scene ever broke into the double digits.

I have this theory that his chest was intentionally drawn to hide his crotch on this stamp in an effort to retain some ambiguity about the status of his briefs, thus avoiding the incitement of confusion in current fans for whom Superman's thighs are draped in solid blue and all the other people who are familiar with the red trunks he wore for most of the last century. I could easily be overthinking this.

Now, I can’t be alone in my refusal to believe that the titular character is a representative of a race that uses its superior physiology and weaponry to come to planets like Earth in order to hunt beings that provide no obvious challenge. No way. I’m pretty sure that the rest of this guy’s species are spread across countless brutal worlds in fierce combat against giant reptilian lions and things like that. I believe that the concept of “AVP” corroborates this theory. The individual that final initial represents seems to be a respectable member of his race, and he spends the film in fights with monsters that actually present a bit of a threat to him. Lots of them. In fact, I seem to recall that those aliens were specifically bred by his people for ritual combat or something. That’s the kind of Predator I’d support.

Alright. Alright. What? Alright. What's going on, Twizzler? You make your name by dint of a uniquely textured type of liquorice. Then you release Nibs, a side project of candies that are ostensibly too small to retain that texture efficiently. For the moment, I'll ignore those sour things you made that seemed to keep those trademark ridges even at their reduced size. But now you scale up your Nibs into these nominal Super Nibs, which are quite indistinguishable from any other brand of ordinary liquorice. You move mysteriously, Twizzler.

The creature in the first movie is just some aberrant weakling who goes up against the easiest prey he can find in a futile effort to deal with his own insecurities. When Arnold addresses him with the phrase “ugly motherfucker”, I don’t think that he was implying anything about the whole species. Surely, Mr Schwarzenegger’s conception of beauty must be far more cosmopolitan. After all, he's Mr. Universe. If he had met the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Predators, he probably would have had kinder things to say about his extraterrestrial counterpart’s physical appearance. In this case, I think that he probably just instinctively identified an inherent wretchedness in his adversary that transcended petty genotypic differences. He knew that his opponent was basically the Bernard Marx of his people. Like that malformed misfit in “Brave New World”, this film’s villain seeks to ameliorate the symptoms of his crippling inferiority complex by entering a primitive land and picking out an exquisite physical specimen. Now, as the Predator’s society is apparently based around carnage instead of commodity, he does not take Dutch the Savage out to parties on his home planet to show him off in front of the popular crowd. He takes the culturally equivalent path of attempted slaughter.

Even his attempts at honourable combat seem fatuous. He’s unwilling to kill an unarmed soldier? That’s like refraining from throwing a grenade at a puppy because the poor thing is missing one of its teeth.

Ultimately, like Kramer against a karate class of children, the Predator still loses. He’s just bad.

It’s a great movie, though.

Update on Sunday, June 1, 2014 at 02:36PM by Jaymes Buckman

Bonus Question!

Does this mean that it's time to watch "Predators"? I'm starting to hope so. I'm always up for some middling science fiction with Adrian Brody. Remember "Splice"? Fun times.