Texts of 2011: reconsidered champions and new landscapes

So much of my spare time in 2011 was spent on films and comic books that I don't believe I read as many books as I do in a typical year. However, a few things stand out:

I continued my fascination with author Sax Rohmer, reading his books the Sins of Sumuru, Return of Sumuru, Slaves of Sumuru, Dope, Fire-Tongue, the Orchard of Tears, Bimbashi Baruk of Egypt, the Sins of Severec Bablon (more about it here), Tales of Chinatown, the Haunting of Low Fennel and Wulfheim. I'm just about done with Rohmer - in two senses; first, I've read very nearly all of his books, which is no mean feat since when I first began hunting for him in second-hand bookstores circa 1999, his books were nowhere to be found; second, the more I read of his lesser-known works, the less respect I have for his fiction. I used to be quite the Rohmer apologist, but when I hit Fire-Tongue and found it racist even by his own culture's reckoning, it was a turning point for me in terms of how far I'm willing to defend him. Also, while working my way through the Fu Manchu books way back in 1998, I noted how by the 1940s, Fu Manchu had lost a lot of his exotic flavour, becoming what I felt was a more generic criminal mastermind. The more I read of Rohmer's 40s fiction, the more I see how generic his villains had become - his 40s Fu Manchu could've been swapped with any of them and the villains are usually the best part of his early novels. Indeed, the early novel Dope was one of the few highlights of last year's readings. Who knows, perhaps 2012 will be the year where I finish reading all of his novels and short stories?

The only other piece of fiction worth noting was John Buchan's Witch Wood, primarily because it was the last remaining work of Buchan's fiction I hadn't read. It didn't strike me as being quite as good as it was made out to be in Buchan fan circles, but it was an interesting book, very similar to the Blanket of the Dark.

The real winners for me in 2011 were two pieces of non-fiction I pulled from my uncle's home in Angola: King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild and the State of Africa by Martin Meredith. It may seem silly to you that I spent a portion of my time in Africa reading about Africa when I might've done it from home before I departed. It wasn't lost on me, to be sure, but feeling "better late than never" and being instantly fascinated with both books, I delved straight in; several of my nights in Angola were spent sitting up reading in the living room with family and guests, so why not spend the time learning a little more about the continent?

King Leopold's Ghost told the story of the Belgian Congo and the shrewd, underhanded means King Leopold used to seize a second kingdom for himself. I think like many, I was unaware of the early 1900s human rights campaign to end the sufferings of the Congo, which is exactly what drew Hochschild into unearthing the story for his book. What it really impressed upon me is that while slavery was supposedly abolished in the western world, colonial powers in Africa could run their territories as slave states, which was even worse than buying and trading human lives.

The State of Africa attempts to recount the stories of every African nation in chronological order as they obtained independence in the 20th century. Although it's a massive tome, the chronological order makes the "story" of Africa difficult to follow because so many major leaders are introduced, then disappear while others are added to the cast, sometimes leaving behind earlier characters at a "dramatic" episode (I was quite convinced Kwame Nkrumah died in Vietnam in 1966 when his story was abruptly cut short at the end of a chapter; perhaps a chapter later his story continued, much to my surprise). It's sprawling, but immensely rewarding. After reading this book, I had a much better picture in my mind of the continent, the major turning points in recent history. It also helped me to see many of the (sadly) recurring patterns in independent countries, which would seem to either descend straight into civil conflict or, if they were politically stable, drive their economy down so that civil conflict erupted about a decade later. Points of history which I knew of on a superficial level such as the Ethiopian famine were explained succinctly and memorably. Before leaving to Angola, my African geography was simply terrible - I could identify perhaps six nations without reading their names off a map. I'm much, much better now and that's partly due to this book for granting me a "big picture" view of the land.

Tomorrow: The bad side of comics books; when they hurt, I hurt.

Movies of 2011, day five: it's good to be surprised!

Today I'm ending my five day look back at the movies I watched in 2011 to consider a few movies from off the beaten path. As I recounted in the second installment, I was working through a list of films which interested me, but in the course of checking libraries, Youtube, Netflix and their ilk, from time-to-time I dug up something I hadn't heard of, but found fascinating; in other cases, I dug up a movie with a certain reputation and found it stronger than I'd been lead to believe. Here's the best surprises of 2011:

In 2011 I went through the few remaining Alfred Hitchcock movies I hadn't seen, including Torn Curtain. Every Hitchcock book I've read came down hard on this movie, describing how wrong Paul Newman and Julie Andrews were for a Hitchcock movie and so forth. Finally watching it for myself, I have to say: it's not bad. I wouldn't call it great Hitchcock, but it isn't the trainwreck the critics led me to believe it to be. Newman is scientist who defects to the Soviets, but only so he can uncover one of their secrets. The espionage elements fit pretty well with other Hitchcock films in the genre and the scene where Newman has to kill an enemy agent - yet finds it takes a lot of work to kill a man is a nice reversal of the usually simplistic Hollywood death scenes; the dying agent fights back to the very end and Newman needs a woman to rescue him! Near the end, the scenes of Newman and Andrews trying to get out from behind the Iron Curtain with the aid of resistance agents are pretty good too, reminding me of the circus people who sheltered Hitchcock's heroes in Saboteur. I tell you, never dismiss a Hitchcock film out of hand!

Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde should be utter trash. It's a Hammer film where Jekyll transforms into an evil woman, primarily so the filmmakers could flash some skin on the screen. It's also not content to be simply be a gender-swapped Jekyll-Hyde story - no, it becomes a Jack the Ripper and Burke & Hare picture, too! Hey, why not throw in Spring-Heeled Jack while we're at it? Jekyll isn't particularly likable either as he performs a few evil acts; usually it's Hyde who embodies the character's evil side. Splitting the role between two actors seems like a bad idea too, since presumably one of the reasons actors like the part is so they can play two versions of the same person. And yet... Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick do share an uncanny resemblance (not much of a compliment to Beswick, I suppose). For all the problems that being a 1970s Hammer picture entail, this a pretty good horror movie, even if the similarities to Robert Louis Stevenson's story end with (during?) the title.

After returning from Angola, I went through Netflix to find films about Africa and happened across the Devil Came on Horseback, a documentary which relates Brian Steidle's tale of witnessing genocide in Darfur and attempting to rally the world to the cause of ending the conflict, yet finding while people were vocally opposed to the genocide, they weren't particularly in favour of action. It's a pretty sad tale and all too familiar - Romeo Dallaire expressed many of the same frustrations about the Rwandan genocide in Shake Hands With the Devil.

I assumed Danny Kaye's Wonder Man was one of his lesser films, having only heard of it via various jokes Jack Benny made about it on his radio program during an episode where Kaye visited. My family watched quite a few Kaye movies as I was growing up, so I (wrongly) believed I had a pretty good grasp of his career. Wrong! It turns out Wonder Man was a smash hit in its day, won an Academy Award and still holds up even now, with Kaye playing twin brothers, one a meek bookworm, the other a show-stealing entertainer. I would have enjoyed this movie even more if I had seen it as a kid.

I sought out Ken Burns' Empire of the Air because it was a documentary about radio, so I assumed it would feed my hobby pretty well. However, it isn't about aspect of radio I'm interested in - the networks, the cultural impact, the rise and fall of comedy and drama - it's the story of the men who made the radio device viable, particularly Lee DeForest and Edwin Armstrong. It's a fascinating recount of two intelligent men with strong personalities and the surprising amount of politics which came to figure in the development of radio.

I don't see much love for the 1935 version of Crime and Punishment, evidently because it took some liberties with the source material. However, I found this to be an astounding movie; I haven't read the novel myself, but it seems to me even watered-down Dostoevsky is fantastic. Peter Lorre has the lead role in this picture (I'd heard him in a radio adaptation of the story too) and he's magnificent; this has to be Lorre's best English film of the 30s. This film dearly needs reevaluation by scholars - scholars other than Dostoevsky fanatics.

Next week: moving on to literature!

Movies of 2011, day four: poor choices

Thus far in my look back at films I watched in 2011, I reflected on movies I watched at the cinema, older films I rather enjoyed and films which didn't quite click. Today, I'm looking at those films which I actively disliked. One of them may earn a reprieve (see below), but I feel I'm well rid of the rest; agree or disagree if you will, just meet me below...

It's strange to me how for more than a decade I've been close friends to a dinosaur fan, yet I hadn't watched Jurassic Park. My friend Craig likes dinosaurs; really, really, really likes dinosaurs. He also knows his dinosaur movies incredibly well, from the b-pictures of the past to the CGI fests of the present. It was only when he moved to Hong Kong in 2011 that I inherited his copies of the first two Jurassic Park pictures and decided I might as well give them a whirl. I did find a lot to like about the first film, but as to the Lost World: Jurassic Park? This movie has serious flaws. You may already be familiar with some of them: Vince Vaughn, Goldblum as a leading man, Vince Vaughn, the girl using gymnastics to defeat dinosaurs, Vince Vaughn, the cliched evil businessman plot, Vince Vaughn... It looks nice, but it's big, dumb and too predictable.

On the first night of my vacation trip to Angola, I noticed Sucker Punch in the video-on-demand list. I was only barely aware of the film's existence and knew nothing about the plot or even premise of the picture. However, having enjoyed other Zack Snyder films, I thought it would be a good choice, even though it was getting late for me and I really should have been settling down to try and sleep on the plane. The movie concerns a young woman in a mental institution who concocts a false reality where she's in a brothel who concocts a false reality where she's a video game-style action hero. I gradually realized the fight scenes in the latter reality existed just to indulge Snyder and had nothing to do with the plot - I might as well skip those scenes so I can sleep sooner! But then, the second reality had nothing to do with the plot either - I might as well skip those, too! And the first reality is so by-the-numbers... hey, look, I've skipped ahead to the end! Now I can sleep.

On the way back from Angola, one of the in-flight movies was Water for Elephants. I should have slept through it, but I didn't feel tired. It wasn't objectionable the way Sucker Punch was, but the protagonist in this film is such a lunkhead. Things happen to him, never because of his own actions. After he drops out of med school because his parents are dead, that's pretty well the last time he makes a choice. After that, he chances upon a circus and they chance to welcome him with a job, and they chance to need a veternarian, but the evil ringmaster's not-evil wife chances to have feelings for the med student and the other employees chance to have a growing ill will towards their boss... so the "protagonist" wanders around vacantly while everyone else drives the action. You want your high concept? This film is Toby Tyler meets the Brother From Another Planet.

I shouldn't have watched the Cat People. I rather like the 1940s Val Lewton Cat People, the film praised by many for daring to keep its monster mostly off-screen. I knew from reviews that the 1980s remake had none of the original's sense of subtlety when it came to the monster, violence or eroticism, yet I gave it a try when I found it on Netflix. This movie is just unpleasant, delving into incest and beastiality. What a bad idea.

During a family get-together, we turned up the Black Swan on Netflix and started watching it. However, we knew nothing about how explicitly sexual the movie was and we gave up about halfway through; I might go back to it later, but boy, it ain't one I want to watch with other people in the room.

I knew Jet Li's the One would be a stupid movie; that's why I chose it out of Netflix, I felt like watching something dumb (and none of the Jackie Chan films were loading). Oh my, this movie is dumb. The most interesting thing about it is seeing Jason Statham before he was famous and Space: Above & Beyond's James Morrison (who's never been that famous). What killed the film for me was seeing Li's CGI stunts; a martial artist as great as Jet Li doesn't need CGI to impress audiences. Argh.

when I found the Vanishing on Netflix I really should have opened my Leonard Maltin guide before proceeding any further. I recalled there were two versions of the movie, but I couldn't recall whether the Kiefer Sutherland/Jeff Bridges version was the original or the remake, nor did I recall if the remake was supposed to be any good. Well, this is the remake and no, it's not very good. Bridges' lispy Capote-like delivery made him a pretty poor villain in my estimation. This movie is also very confused about how the characters relate to one another, with one supposedly-pivotal moment between Sutherland and his girlfriend being instantly contradicted by the following scene. The original may be a great picture; this wasn't worth the $0 I paid for it.

Tomorrow, it ends on a positive note: pleasant surprises.

Movies of 2011, day three: disappointments

As I worked through my aforementioned list of films I'd been curious about watching, there were a few films which didn't live up to my expectations. For a film to be disappointing, I have to have held some belief at the outset that the personal recommendations, glowing reviews and/or familiar stars & directors were going to turn out something I'd find interesting, perhaps even outstanding. So, here's the films I watched in 2011 which I didn't really take to; I wouldn't call them bad, but I don't imagine I'll grant them a second chance.

I only recently began watching films by Martin Scorcese and I'm finding his filmography to be hit-or-miss, though I've never out-and-out disliked his movies. Gangs of New York is a good example of what I mean by "miss." I never connected to the historical setting, the characters or the conflict, so the lengthy running time surely didn't endear me either.

I passed up a chance to see Hero in the theatres during its original release so that a friend could use the free tickets I'd been given. I felt a minor regret at giving away the tickets, but now having seen the film for myself... no more regrets. I have a lot of time for good martial arts movies, but I just can't stand wire stunts, which is where this film goes to at every fight scene. The film was otherwise inoffensive.

I've mentioned before how westerns are one of the film genres I'm trying to make myself appreciate, so I tracked down one of the supposed greats: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. However, I never took to this film, in spite of a few scenes I did enjoy. It's very long and languid and I found it a struggle to stay invested in the slow-moving story.

Mission to Moscow is an odd footnote in film history, being a pro-USSR film made at the behest of FDR to help US citizens accept the Russians as their allies in World War II. In terms of fostering good relations between two peoples, it's a laudable goal. However, the execution in this film is simply terrible. By creating such a Hollywood-ized depiction of the USSR (and not Hollywood in the same way the earlier film Ninotchka played the USSR for laughs), it does a real disservice to history and to the then-current suffering in the Soviet Union when it was released. It essentially reduces purges into "people getting what they deserve" and repeatedly bending over backwards to claim the USSR isn't as bad as people claim, while the bad reports must all be propaganda. Don't believe their propaganda, believe ours! It's a pity to see Walter Huston - such a great actor - in this movie.

I saw the Towering Inferno despite having heard it was a big, dumb, loud disaster movie because I was curious to see what Paul Newman and Steve McQueen achieved in the picture. Answer: not enough to make up for Irwin Allen's excesses.

On the flight back from Angola last summer, I gave Megamind a chance; it's a story about a super villain who suffers an identity crisis when his nemesis is seemingly killed. As a time-killer, this was a great picture - there was no point at which I was bored of this movie. On the other hand, it was supposed to be a comedy... and there was no point at which I was amused by this movie.

Knight and Day comes so close to working. In retrospect, the trailer was the best part, but it used up all the really great moments. The concept of a violent anti-hero appearing in the midst of a romantic comedy is a terrific one - but the movie doesn't take any chances with the idea; all the creativity was used up in the film's pitch.

I blogged before about Star Trek. As I said then: it's a decent time-killer, if you don't think of it as Star Trek.

I had seen part of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on television before and didn't think much of it, but after noticing it on Netflix I decided to give it a chance. I was curious about the immense cast, containing dozens of great comedians (not counting Milton Berle). The end result is that my first impression hadn't changed - this movie is too much of a broad, slapstick farce for my tastes.

I had barely heard of Extract, but it turned up on Netflix too; given how much I enjoyed Mike Judge's films Office Space and Idiocracy, I hoped I'd found another brilliant film which snuck beneath the radar. well, not so much. The characters and premise are fine, but there's something really lacking in the execution of this film.

Speaking of a fine premise, Capricorn One has a great one: during the faked first manned mission to Mars, the flight crew are declared dead and must run for their lives. That sounds like a great picture, but the movie is actually about a reporter trying to uncover the secret of the faked mission, not the desperate struggle of the astronauts to stay alive and tell the world the truth. Pity.

Having seen most of John Carpenter's films recently, I decided to try Prince of Darkness, even though it's reputation isn't stellar. Seeing so many familiar Carpenter actors (quite a few from Big Trouble in Little China) and opening with what seemed to be a science fiction-style take on horror movie tropes, this movie never came together for me; the nature of the threat seems so unclear and contradictory... like, Satan was an alien? But the supernatural exists anyway? And if the antichrist is creating a body for itself out of a vat of goo, why does it wind up possessing someone else's body instead?

I'm somewhat intrigued by the years when the Walt Disney company was in decline, the era when Don Bluth created a rival studio, the movies had inferior animation and struggled at the box office until Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg turned the company around... so, Waking Sleeping Beauty seemed like it would be an interesting documentary of that era, even though it was produced by Disney themselves. However, by the end of the film I realized what I'd seen was simply a celebration of Katzenberg and nothing more. It opens by describing the state of Disney in the early 80s, it ends with the release of the Lion King and Katzenberg quitting. No mention is made of how Disney fared without Katzenberg (answer: just fine) or how Katzenberg fared without Disney (answer: just fine), nor whatever happened to Eisner (answer: outlasted Katzenberg by a decade), not even the fates of the other Disney films Katzenberg had put into production when he left. The filmmaker/narrator also has a sense of protectiveness about Disney (hurtfully describing Bluth as "kicking us when we were down") which interferes with objectivity. This film is just a love letter to Katzenberg's years at Disney; it assumes you're already one of the fawning faithful.

I keep saying I like Christopher Nolan films, but I guess what I mean to say is "I like his Batman pictures." Memento was worth watching once; the Prestige is the only movie I've ever taken out of my personal movie library (Reefer Madness and Star Trek 5 remain in). Inception developed a strong reputation in 2010 so I felt open to it, but ultimately, the fact that it's about characters in a dream world did a lot to diffuse the supposed tension of the story; it's all dreams within dreams and if reality is a dream... why am I bothering?

A clip of All That Jazz in Martin Scorcese's Journey Through... special really caught my attention; a musical director at death's door whose personal issues are brought to life as a muscical? That sounds like a great picture! Sadly, that's actually the plot of about 15 minutes near the end of the movie; leading up to that, there's a repellant, unlikeable protagonist who made me seriously grapple with the delayed pleasure of reaching the musical portion versus the immediate pleasure of not watching him on film any longer.

I'd also long known how Scorcese loved Duel in the Sun, David O. Selznick's attempt to out-Gone With the Wind Gone With the Wind via an epic western of two brothers whose different values turn them into enemies, especially as they both love the same woman. I do like a lot of the film's visuals, but Gregory Peck's villainous brother is so instantly unlikable (the most likeable thing about him is that he's played by Gregory Peck) that it's hard to get through 2.5 hours of him being villainous before his comeuppance. I wish it had been a little more subtle, but there I go, looking for subtlety in a Selznick picture...

Scorcese also presented a clip of Some Came Running, showing a gunman chasing two people through a carnival. It was a tense scene with unusual filming angles and instantly caught my attention. However, I never actually looked to see what Some Came Running was, assuming from the clip that it was a thriller. It's actually about 2 hours of Frank Sinatra being a self-loathing writer with the carnival scene arriving at the climax. I guess I should have done a little research here.

Finally, Pan's Labyrinth which is a lot like director Guillermo del Toro's Devil's Backbone, only with a big CGI budget, wider public acceptance and a downbeat ending. Personally, I'll stick to the Devil's Backbone; the child protagonist is so incapable of achieving any goals or of making anything better for herself or others that the entire experience rubbed me the wrong way. The children in the Devil's Backbone were similarly ill-equipped for the dangers they found themselves placed in, but at least they didn't exacerbate the situation.

Tomorrow: the movies I really didn't like.

Movies of 2011, day two: the best of what's been

Back in 2010, I sat down and composed a very lengthy list of movies I wanted to see. It was no hasty effort - I wrote down films which had intrigued me for years and films by directors (Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Carol Reed, Orson Welles) or stars (Humphrey Bogart, Jack Benny, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff) who were my personal favourites. I drew some items from critic's lists, but others were recommendations from trusted friends. I took note of genres which I didn't usually watch (ie, musical, western, documentary) and decided I would seek out the films considered to be the best of their ilk. Watching Hollywood granted me a list of silent films I was eager to see while a Personal Journey With Martin Scorcese Through American Movies drew me to a number of lesser-known titles.

Although I began going through the list in 2010, it was during 2011 that I watched most of the 200-some titles (about 30 remain; I've already watched one in 2012 as I write this). At the same time, I remained open to all sorts of films which weren't on my list as I watched movies with friends or family and from what I unearthed on Netflix.

Below are my favourite films of the many I watched during 2011. Films are described in the order of which I viewed them.

In terms of documentaries, Errol Morris' the Thin Blue Line was the best-regarded film I had heard of. Having seen it, it's become my go-to recommendation to friends. I felt I had seen enough of Michael Moore-style documentaries, but Morris' style was instantly arresting - the way in which he holds back from commenting, instead letting the camera run and allow his subjects to say what's on their mind has changed how I feel about documentaries. I followed this film up with as many other Morris pictures as I could, including Standard Operating Procedure, his picture about the Abu Ghraib scandal. I watched all but one of his films within the last year and they all come highly recommended!

My friends are sometimes amazed by what I haven't seen, namely the many well-known commercial films I haven't watched. For instance, I hadn't seen Chicken Run until it came up for viewing at my friend Tom's movie night; similarly, I borrowed his copy of Field of Dreams. You probably don't need my recommendation for these films, but I will say they're great for viewing in friendly company.

L.A. Confidential came recommended by my cousin; despite the accolades it received from critics and the Academy Awards (which I knew well, being from the era when I read the entertainment section of two newspapers and watched Siskel & Ebert every day), it was my cousin's championing this film which convinced me to watch it - otherwise, I think I would have dismissed it as "film noir pastiche." It was strangely less dark than I expected to be, even becoming rather life-affirming by the climax.. not genuine noir, then!

The Petrified Forest was of interest to me because it was Humphrey Bogart's big breakout role; I had heard a few radio adaptations of the story, so the plot held no surprises, but Bogart's performance was indeed the tentpole of this picture; I was also fascinated by the racial attitudes, as I blogged about here.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips (this being the 1939 version with Robert Donat) is another picture whose story I had heard dramatized via old-time radio programs, but the picture was quite moving; I also happened to realize how despite Donat being a favourite Hitchcock hero (the 39 Steps), I hadn't really considered the rest of his film career.

The French film Les Diaboliques had a very simple plot, but oh so oh so much style; the story of a wife who murders her husband with the help and guidance of her husband's mistress just ticks along, making the viewer wonder where the complications will arise and how frayed the killers' alliance will become.

Getting back to documentaries, I watched Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man, not entirely certain what I was in for. Herzog is certainly more of an editorialist than Morris, but when the film steps back and allows its subject - passionate yet foolish bear-lover Timothy Treadwell - express his thoughts, it's quite a show; to some extent, perhaps Herzog's heavy-handed narration and summation was needed to comment on Treadwell's behaviour, yet I wish Treadwell's footage could have stood on its own.

Beau Geste is from that interesting span of years in the late 30s when Hollywood would create big, rousing, exotic adventure pictures. Beau Geste still holds up, especially when it moves to the big set piece - the Foreign Legion outpost in the desert, divided by revolt within, beset by adversaries without. Everything after the battle for the outpost feels anti-climatic.

After all the serious documentaries I watched the Dark Side of the Moon was a hilarious change of pace; purporting to relate the story of how Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing, replete with testimony from major NASA and US government officials, this is a brilliant joke; it does a fantastic job of encouraging viewers to be inquisitive and questioning of the "facts" people tell them, especially those told by filmmakers (who can edit "testimony" out of its context), but it doesn't stoop to lecturing; it isn't until the closing credits that the film exposes itself as a hoax, but hopefully anyone who watches the film would catch on much sooner; many of the early scenes are off-putting, making you doubt what you're being told; by the end, the story of the faked moon landing has become so absurd (yet delivered straight-faced) that it becomes very funny.

A couple of years ago, I read the book version of the One That Got Away, yet the film adaptation was a little elusive. I was amazed at how faithful the film was to its source material, relating the tale of how German pilot Franz von Werra repeatedly attempted escape from the British, until finally winning his freedom by leaping from a prison train in Canada. The book is the superior way of experiencing this story, but I have no complaints about the movie!

I've never really warmed up Billy Wilder's pictures, yet because of the aforementioned Martin Scorcese... special, I felt One, Two, Three with Jimmy Cagney would be worth seeing. And how! I'm surprised I hadn't heard of this film until seeing Scorcese's special, it's a very well-played Cold War farce which is still funny in a post-Cold War world.

Of the many movies I watched aboard various planes during my trip to/from Angola, POM Wonderful Presents the Greatest Movie Ever Sold was easily my favourite experience. I had previously enjoyed Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me, so I was willing to indulge in this gentle mockery of movie product placement. I wish a little more time in the picture had been spent discussing product placement with the briefly-interviewed Hollywood directors, but many of the gags - especially the Mane & Tail shampoo - are quite funny.

Thanks to Netflix, I was finally able to see two top-rated pictures: Gandhi and Kagemusha. I was recently rewatching Richard Attenborough's picture Chaplin and wishing he'd filmed it in a style nearer to that of Gandhi.

Netflix also had Charade, a pretty good thriller in the Hitchcock vein; I think it's often been mistaken for a Hitchcock film because Cary Grant was the leading man (at least, my father seems to think it was a Hitchcock picture).

I wish Black Hawk Down had been a little more ambitious. It's a very well-done depiction of modern warfare and the comradery of soldiers which you'd expect, but it stops short of being about something other than an andrenaline-fueled reenactment of a historical event and that held me back just a titch.

I often watch comic book-related pictures even when I haven't experienced the comics themselves, simply to be supportive. If Netflix hadn't had Persepolis available for streaming, I don't know when I would have made time for the film or comics; it does such a fine job of what Mark Gruenwald claimed comics were meant for: "to help people connect with life experiences of people other than themselves, thereby expanding upon their concept of humanness." That's Persepolis and now I know I need to make time for the original comic.

Netflix also lead me to films of various reputations: Seven Years in Tibet, Blues Brothers, 1984, Marty... funny thing about 1984: the novel was a huge influence on me in high school, but I always balked at seeing R-rated films in my teen years. Now having seen the 80s adaptation, I realize it had always been a mature, adult piece of fiction - the R rating is all I should have expected.

I don't know why I should be surprised I enjoyed Pixar's Up; I haven't seen a Pixar film I didn't like (ie, I haven't seen a Bug's Life or Cars) but this film's concept wasn't easy to get a handle on from the trailer (as opposed to "toys," "monsters," "super heroes," or "robots"). I'm glad it allowed the creators to be a little more offbeat and imaginative than usual. This is a letter-perfect all-ages film.

Having seen Throne of Blood I'm down to just a few remaining Kurosawa pictures; this was his adaptation of Macbeth into a samurai film and it fits together perfectly, from the supernatural elements, to the "Lady Macbeth" treachery and especially in the climax as the forest moves and "Macbeth"'s soldiers revolt.

I think I heard mixed reviews of District 9, but one friend I confronted about this claims he never talked down about the movie; well, there was no need to put this off, was there? The most common criticism of the picture seems to be the lack of a happy ending, but I have to appreciate how the film on a hopeful note; at various times, it seemed to be heading to a tragic ending where nothing was learned and nothing was changed, so I'm simply pleased at how some things change and some hope exists.

Tomorrow: the letdowns.

Movies of 2011, day one: cinematic films

I'm not sure why so many best/worst lists appear on the internet during December; aren't the authors afraid they might miss something of real significance during the last few weeks?

Now that it's 2012, I feel confident sharing my thoughts on the various media I encountered in 2011, whether they were originally released in 2011 or earlier. I'm going to delve into films, books and comics and my goal is to maintain a fairly positive attitude, even when I'm discussing the items I didn't care for.

All this week I'll be looking back at films I watched in 2011. It was a fairly significant year in terms of what, why and how I was watching older movies, but I'll get into that tomorrow. Today's topic: theatrical films.

I made only five trips to the cinema in 2011, albeit I might taken in even fewer films if circumstances had been different.

First, there was the Eagle, a film about a Roman soldier who wanders around early England searching for an eagle figure his father left behind. My brother Matthew could probably speak to whether this film was historically reliable at all. I wouldn't have imagined going to see the Eagle myself, but a friend wanted to see a movie with me and the other option handed to me was Battle: Los Angeles; I'd like to think I made the right choice. The Eagle was an okay adventure flick.

I was concerned that Thor would be somewhat disconnected from the other Marvel super hero movies which have been produced in the lead-up to 2012's Avengers, what with the vast cosmic/godly locales and characters required by Thor's mythos and their being rather removed from the relatively down-to-Earth Iron Man (and so forth). I felt my concerns were pretty well borne out - the movie worked well when it struck a little closer to the familiar (Earth scenes) and was just a bit off when it ventured into Asgard. Still, the movie works just fine, it's only serious misstep is the disjointed "romance" between Thor and Jane Foster, which feels as though at least one scene were omitted.

X-Men: First Class, on the other hand, was better than I thought it would be...probably because I've come to expect so little from the X-Men's movie franchise. It was a little too cute and self-knowing (Xavier's jokes about being a professor and going bald were at least one too many; gratuitous Wolverine cameo, so forth), but I felt its version of Magneto was actually the most formidable film version thus far. I'm not clamouring for more (nor does anyone else, it seems), but this was a great diversion.

Captain America: the First Avenger is the super hero movie I was most looking forward to; Avengers is a postscript in comparison. Cap has long been my favourite super hero and I felt the film did a great job at giving the character the attributes which make him likeable, particularly by emphasizing how his sense of courage and morality existed before he became a hero. I feel the film loses its way a little once he dons the final version of his costume (the pace of the story suddenly jerks forward) and the final ending doesn't quite fit (I'm assuming it was originally meant to appear post-credits), but overall I am very pleased with this movie

My family often takes in a movie over the Christmas holidays and 2011's feature was the Adventures of Tintin, which we of the younger generation paid for on our parents' behalf. I wasn't sure about the film in advance since the CGI style seemed so unlike the visuals of the original comics, but Tintin turned out out to be a great bit of fun, the right sort of movie to see with your family at Christmas. It did a lot to remind me about the Tintin comics, which I hadn't really thought of for some 20 years.

Tomorrow: great film discoveries of 2011!

Joe Simon, RIP

This is shaping up to be a bad week for comic book professionals. Not only did we lose Jerry Robinson earlier this week, today we lost Joe Simon.

Joe Simon was a writer/artist/editor whose early efforts at Marvel included the Fiery Mask...but we're bound to remember him for ages to come because, with Jack Kirby, he created Captain America! The Simon-Kirby partnership went on for more than a decade, through just about every genre of comics (even creating a new genre - romance comics - together). When they parted ways in the 50s, Kirby went on to bigger and brighter things. Simon? Well, he was still out there, but never really an equal to Kirby again.

Personally, I'm very fond of Simon's 1970s DC comic Prez, which told the story of the USA's first teenaged president and his trials against chess-playing robots and vampires. Even by 70s standards, it was too bizarre to last.

We were fortunate to have Simon around as late as we did (he was 98). The giants of the Golden Age of comic books are slowly passing on...show your appreciation while you still can!