Ntuple Indemnity

Oscar nominations are up—and while I’m not as equipped to comment as I usually am, given that I haven’t caught up on all the films I missed on account of being out of the country, but I’ll dispense some initial impressions nonetheless. At this point I’m not going to pay too much attention to whether the ceremony will have any of its usual glitz if the presenters and nominees continue to show solidarity with the WGA; for me, it’s about recognizing the films, and the ceremony itself is mostly window dressing. So here we go.

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Just shy of three weeks ago, I stayed at the decidedly unhygienic Ambassador City Jomtien, which was by all appearances Thailand’s number one tourist destination for indulgent Russian oligarchs. It was timely, then, that when I endeavoured to head to the beach for a spot of reading under the palms, the next book in my endless queue was none other than The Brothers Karamazov.

This was my first time through Dostoevsky’s magisterial opus, and at more than one juncture I observed that with its high moral intrigue, impassioned cast of players and unreserved Biblical ambition—not to mention the best courtroom speeches in prose fiction (themselves capable satires of psychoanalytic narrative analysis decades before the study formally existed)—surely somebody has had the bravado to attempt a film.

As it turns out, Richard Brooks wrote and directed an English-language film adaptation back in 1958 (read the contemporaneous New York Times review) starring—get this—Yul Brynner and William Shatner. For those of you with access to Turner Classic Movies, it plays 7 February.

Pay attention, because I’m about to coin a new word: amberpunk. It refers specifically to the aesthetic of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, much of which carries on in the steampunk spirit, but in the absence of steam.

Thanks to the promotional stills and trailers for the film of Northern Lights/The Golden Compass, the visualization of amberpunk was the least of my concerns going into the film. The moment I saw that New Line had commissioned a cinematic adaptation, a list of Reasons to Worry flickered into being, and the visual design was the first item I crossed off the list.

Among the other, more pressing items: 1) In the novels, shapeshifting daemons like Pantalaimon retain a coherent identity before the reader because they are identified by name. How might one adapt that visually? 2) Lyra Belacqua is a role so ludicrously challenging that casting her appropriately could make or break the movie. Could Dakota Blue Richards convincingly fill her shoes? 3) Pullman’s writing consistently appeals to non-visual senses—touch, for example, as in the highly tactile experience of using the Subtle Knife. How might this work on film? 4) Will Pullman’s stridently anti-dogmatic message (which is finally poking the church in the eye with as sharp a stick as he intended, albeit twelve years late) survive commercial pressures for the filmmakers to self-censor? 5) Who is Chris Weitz, and should I be as worried as I am about his very limited directorial experience (About a Boy, Down to Earth and a co-credit on American Pie), or will he surprise me like Mike Newell did with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? 6) Are the angels in The Amber Spyglass still going to be naked?

Now, I regret to say I’ve only read Pullman’s marvelous trilogy once and therefore don’t know it backwards, forwards and upside down the way I (used to) know The Lord of the Rings, but my initial impression after seeing the film tonight is a very positive one. The adaptation adhered to its source with the utmost respect, but not slavishly or religiously (how ironic would that be?) to a fault. Devoted readers need not worry. In fact, I had myself a jolly old time right up until the credits rolled.

Unfortunately, the end credits are precisely where a very serious problem with the film appears. (Spoilers follow for both the book and the film.)

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Or, as they say in the London Underground: mind the gap.

Lust, Caution is now playing in select theatres. I had the opportunity to see it a few weeks ago at the Edmonton International Film Festival, and although my impressions of a film are never wholly reliable after only seeing it once, my initial judgment is that it is the very best film I’ve seen with Ang Lee in the director’s chair. Mind you, I’m far more familiar with his recent films than I am with his works in the early 1990s, but this is still a strong statement of praise on my part when you consider that I’m suggesting comparisons to the likes of Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon—excellent films both, but not as consistently tight in pacing. Highly recommended.

Is it just me, or are we in the middle of a spy cinema renaissance? In the last two years alone, we’ve seen Munich, Casino Royale and The Bourne Ultimatum—and I don’t hesitate to append Lust, Caution to the list. Be it the franchise blockbuster or the historical assassination thriller, the standard of achievement in the espionage genre, with respect to both brains and execution, is now at least comparable to the Hitchcock oeuvre without being completely outclassed.

And Lust, Caution begs to reach for the Hitchcock benchmark anyway, regardless of whether or not it succeeds. Even beyond the explicit allusions to films like Suspicion, it’s a film about the manufacture of a woman into a femme fatale, a theme that occurs time and again in Hitchcock’s best work— Vertigo, North by Northwest, and perhaps my personal favourite, Notorious (to name a few). Like Ingrid Bergman in Notorious, the femme fatale put in the position of using her sexuality as a tool of entrapment (Wong Chia Chi, played by Tang Wei) is the heroine who guides us through the plot, and not someone whose side of the story is concealed, as is often the case in classic noir driven by male protagonists of variable moral righteousness.

Naturally, how much of that “sexuality as a tool of entrapment” you can actually show has changed dramatically since 1946, which is why Lust, Caution is rated NC-17 in the United States, and where my discussion of the film becomes a tad more involved.

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It’s Canada Day. But before I go on: only $47M? Where were you all this weekend when you were supposed to be seeing Ratatouille?

This is the first time in several years that I’ve not posted here for the entire span of a month, but I assure you that I had an unfinished post from two weeks ago about Pixar’s latest sitting around, which I abandoned in part because it was hopelessly redundant. It went like this:

To absolutely nobody’s surprise, I cancelled all of my plans and zipped off to see Ratatouille as soon as I found out it was playing last night, two weeks ahead of its general release. By now everybody is familiar with the way I gush over every new Pixar film, so I’ll confirm that it’s just about perfect, declare my intention to revisit it several times when it opens, and marvel at how Pixar is a perfect eight for eight and is now indisputably the greatest feature film studio of all time. You know the routine.

… followed by a potpourri of trivial observations that I’ve decided to save until I’ve seen the film a few more times. (For example: was that Chinese take-out box in Linguini’s refrigerator the same model as the magician’s cabinet in A Bug’s Life? And where, if anywhere, is the elusive A113?) More on all this later – and if time permits, a few words about Brad Bird and the American Dream: a post-scriptum to what I wrote about The Incredibles, after a fashion.

Time will probably not permit. I have a lot of Harry Potter to get through. Again.

And now, back to the British Empire (as most things should be).

It’s my country’s special day, of course (musical recommendations: Kenny Barron’s rendition of “Canadian Sunset” on the album Live at Bradley’s, and as always, the entirety of Oscar Peterson’s Canadiana Suite), but that’s not the only special occasion involving the progeny of the Union Jack.

I don’t look favourably upon celebrity culture, so even as a loyalist I’ve never understood the extent of all the fuss over Princess Diana, but I do have to make a special mention of a moment buried in the sea of washed-up pop icons at her Wembley Stadium memorial. It involved Andrew Lloyd Webber, and you can see a segment of it here starring Sarah “I was singing this role before Emmy Rossum was toilet-trained” Brightman and Josh “I’m way too talented for the music I’m given, but Nick’s mother stalks me anyway” Groban.

The other event associated with this particular 1 July was the tenth anniversary of Britain’s loss of the colony of Hong Kong. On the upside, the Hong Kong SAR has managed to retain its autonomy in relative peace for a whole decade. At the same time, that only leaves forty years for the PRC to fall (the sooner, the better) lest the whole operation go to pot. It remains my learned opinion that the PRC basically extorted the place from the British crown by taking advantage of a post-Falklands moment of weakness. And before any of the vehemently anti-colonial types interject, let me point out that there’s a world of difference between a) decolonization in the name of self-determination and b) a transfer of sovereignty to a communist regime that we already knew couldn’t be trusted.

As I was pointing out not long ago to my comrade-in-arms Kyle Kawanami, the British government should have given Deng Xiaoping the finger and fulfilled its contractual obligation to the letter by handing the New Territories over to Taiwan.