Falling Stars

I watched this movie just a week ago, and I am kind of enamoured with it? I love vampire stories, but I did not expect it to take up residence in my head like this.

I'm late to the party, so we've already blown past the science fiction future of this movie. Made in 2009, and set in 2019, after a worldwide plague (!!) has transformed the majority of the population into vampires. Humans are on the brink of extinction, either farmed for blood or hunted as fugitives. And if humans die out, that's bad news for everyone. Vampirism is always symbolic of something. Here, according to one reviewer, it's a metaphor for late stage capitalism and rampant resource consumption.

Edward (played by Ethan Hawke) is a vampire haematologist, desperately researching a blood substitute, when he runs across a human resistance group with an answer that could change everything. Edward is one of my favourite character types: beautifully angsty, but with an edge. He didn't want to become a vampire! He's working to change things even while he's working for The Man! In the course of the movie, he gets whumped a lot. He suffers very prettily, but he also has a steely core of resolve.

It's also entertaining to see Sam Neill play a bad guy (the ruthless vampire CEO) and Willem Dafoe play a good guy (one of the human resistance leaders). And it's always great to see Claudia Karvan being excellent (as another human resistance leader). Turns out this was filmed in Australia, as an Australian and United States co-production, and a lot of Australian and New Zealand actors show up in it.

The running time is a sleek 94 minutes: tightly scripted, beautifully paced, not a beat wasted. More movies need to learn this. The aesthetic is gorgeous, lots of blue light for the cold vampire world and gold light for the warm human world. I love the blend of futuristic technology and classic noir.

Some of the scenes, though, are very bloody and gory. I usually have a low tolerance for this, but they're so cartoonish it wasn't that disturbing to me? And they're pretty well telegraphed, like, "Hmmmm, I'm getting a bad feeling about where this is going... Oh no. Oh dear."

The science is kind of implausible, and some of the action is kind of ridiculous. But I'm not here for your earth logic, I'm here for rule of cool and all the feelings.

If you would like to experience this movie in three minutes, I recommend checking out mithborien's excellent vid. (Note: Contains spoilers and gore.)

VID: Me & Lazarus (40 words) by mithborien
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Daybreakers (2009)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Additional Tags: Fanvids
Summary: Movie recap (most uninspired summary ever)

LATE TO THE PARTY AGAIN

WE WERE BORN TO MAKE HISTORY

YURI!!! ON ICE DESERVES ALL THE EXCLAMATION MARKS

Marathoned it over four days. My heart. I cannot imagine waiting for it an episode per week. The tension would kill me. I feel so lucky to get to watch it at once and then go backread all the forums and relive all the squee.

I love that it's about someone trying to find his confidence again and someone trying to find his inspiration again. I love the tender unfolding of their relationship. I love the gorgeous ice skating. I love the opening theme. I love that there are no bad guys, only people struggling with their own fears and doubts. I love how much it surprises us, over and over.

Now that I've finished it:

(1) I want to throw my money at DVDs and CDs but where are the English releases?!!

(2) I'm really hungry for katsudon.

I'm almost afraid to watch Season 2 when it comes out because Season 1 was just so good.

"No matter what the real world thinks of this work, in the world of this work you will not be discriminated for what you love. I will definitely protect that kind of world." - Mitsuro Kubo

Last weekend, I watched Lawrence of Arabia, for the very first time.

It is something I have been meaning to watch for years.

And now, just like after Hikaru no Go, and after Avatar: The Last Airbender, I feel like running around, waving my arms, and telling everyone who will listen how COMPLETELY AWESOME it is.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. COMPLETELY AWESOME. AND HEARTWRENCHING. AND EPIC.

Why did no one ever tell me this? (Except for all the people who awarded it seven Oscars and called it bigger than Ben-Hur and gave it 98% on the Tomatometer.)

Do I even need to talk about why it's so awesome? Or are you all eating popcorn and thinking, "Um, we know, it only came out, like, fifty years ago?"

Peter O'Toole is brilliant. If he never did anything else in his life, he would be remembered for this. His Lawrence is riveting to watch, by turns awkward and passionate and charismatic and arrogant and anguished. A man who fits in his homeland as poorly as in his army uniform, who acknowledges, "I'm different", who has "a great hunger for desolate places". The movie is a psychological portrait of a complicated man in an impossible situation, and I cannot imagine anyone else doing the job he did.

The script is brilliant. Some of the lines are electrifying:

"I think it is far from Damascus."
"Nothing is written!"
"They're going to get it, Mr Bentley. I'm going to give it to them."
"Do you think I'm just anybody, Ali? Do you?"
"The best of them won't come for money. They'll come for me."

The direction is brilliant. People talk about the match blowing out into the sunrise, but what I will never forget is his shadow running ahead of the cheering army, his feet striding across the roof of the train, his silhouette against the sun.

Why isn't there a comm for this? There ought to be a comm.

I have read my way through Yuletide and am working my way through A03.

I am hunting down A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia next. Though I don't know if I can bear to watch someone else play Lawrence now.

I've started reading Seven Pillars of Heaven:

I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To earn you Freedom, the seven pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When we came.

New fandom. Fallen hard.

*sigh*

On Saturday, I went over to leenabeans's place for her birthday, and caught up with houkoholic, sentxd and ruri_strife. We climbed Mount Annan (192 metres above sea level!), checked out the sundial (right before the sun set), and had dinner in The Outback (well, the restaurant).

Also, leenabeans lent me the first game of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

And, er, that was kind of the rest of my weekend. >_<

Okay, I finally get what everyone is on about.

I've been trying for days to work out how to post about this without sounding completely insane. But maybe that's impossible. So I'll just have to tell it straight. If you're wondering where I've been for the past month and a half, I've been immersed in another world. The world of Hikaru no Go.

What is Hikaru no Go? It is 23 volumes of manga. It is also 75 episodes of anime. But most of all, it is one brilliant, absorbing, wonderful story.

Half of you are probably thinking, "Um, yeah, where were you three years ago? Under a rock?" And the other half of you are probably thinking, "What's so fascinating about Go? Isn't it, like, a board game?"

For those who aren't already familiar with the story, this review at the Anime News Network provides an excellent summary. I'm going to quote from it:

I will not try to hide my unabashed love for Hikaru no Go, the story of a young boy, Hikaru Shindo, whose mind becomes the home for a Go-playing ghost named Sai. Set free when Hikaru stumbles upon the Go board in which he had been inhabiting, Sai is a master Go player whose love for the game, and desire to play the "divine move" has kept him in the world for over 1000 years. Sai’s enthusiasm for the game slowly draws the hitherto uninterested Hikaru into the exciting world of Go.

Volume One quickly establishes what will become the central conflict of the series, the rivalry between Hikaru and the young prodigy Akira Toya. Akira is the son of the best Go player in the world, and even though he is only a sixth grader, he can compete with many professionals. Hikaru stumbles into a Go salon in order to indulge Sai, and picks out Akira for a match since he is the only kid around. Although Hikaru says he never has played before, aided by Sai he defeats Akira. Akira is shocked, not believing he could be beat by the likes of Hikaru who cannot even hold the pieces correctly. Akira demands a rematch which Sai wins, but seeing Akira's passion for the game sparks a similar feeling in Hikaru's heart...

To quote supacat, apparently also one of Those Who Came In Late, "I really feel like the last one to arrive at the party with this fandom, sort of like if I just read Harry Potter for the first time yesterday and wanted to run around telling everyone how great it was, and everyone was like, look we told you to read it like two years ago, come on."

***

Touya, how can you be so intense...?

Is Go more than just a game...?

Are you trying to play 'the Divine Move' just like Sai...?

- Hikaru, Chapter 6