Click images for desktop size: "Surviving The Modern World" by Unknown My puppy has gotten more demanding lately. As if she's afraid I'm leaving her or that she's no longer my favorite.
Like most of us she needs to feel loved, feel important to someone else.
I've had to spend more of my time with my little blind dog. She hasn't gotten angry or really jealous about it, just sort of sad.
Yesterday I got my bike out and got a haircut. She was fretting when I left and in the same place when I returned. I'll have to make sure I play her favorite, if dumb and exhausting, games with her.
The bike held together yesterday but today its not starting up again. There's some short someplace which means I'm going to have to overhaul it. Something I wanted to avoid. I have to.
I got to the barber shop in about 10 minutes. That included a lot of time messing around in the park, shifting gears and jumping over small obstacles, just testing stuff out. Its a 30 minute walk (45 with dogs in tow - or dogs towing me.)
It also feels good being on the bike, using my leg muscles and just being free to go anywhere (anywhere being within 16 miles . . . )
My haircut is pretty terrible. It still looks better. At least neater. Neater is always a good thing.
I watched [REC] last night. I was mainly interested in it because its a Spanish film that was just released a few months ago. Some American studio has already got a remake in production, even got a trailer out advertising an October 9th release! (Quarantine)
Its a zombie flic. I like zombie flics! The sad part is it insists on using what is already a hackneyed device. The video camera one perspective shot. This was tedious since way back in the 50's when Robert Montgomery tried it in "Lady In The Lake".
Lastly it bored me to tears in that shambolic over hyped "Cloverfield". (How can you make a giant monster movie that I don't like?!?)
This one follows a local TV crew shooting a show called "While You Were Sleeping". The little girl playing the announcer is fresh faced and cute and keeps the rather boring set up interesting. They're doing the night at a fire station.
Click images for desktop size: "This Is My Secret Story" by Mota This section gets really boring and uses up about a quarter of the 80 minute run time.
Finally they get a call to an apartment house. The 2 man TV crew follows the firemen inside and the zombie attacks begin and then they stop for what feels like a really long time.
They spend an awful lot of time on explaining the zombies and reacting to an amazingly quick quarantine of the entire building. There's a sketchy and meaningless attempt at establishing character. Meaningless because all the nuances get thrown aside pretty abruptly. Even the very cool and career aggressive TV announcer in the end becomes just another screaming harridan.
The final 6 minutes are pretty effective, although they suddenly bring in Satanism, which is just goofy.
There's not very much gore and not enough cool zombie attacks.
Much more satisfying was "Chocolate", a Thai film from the director, Prachya Pinkaew, the guy who made "Ong Bak" and the near masterpiece "Tom Yum Gum" both starring Tony Ja.
For me the nicest part of the movie is that it proves that "Tom Yum Gum" was no happenstance fluke.
While it lacks the charismatic Tony Ja (amplified because he makes appearances on the TV!) this is still a credible entry that takes the martial arts genre and confidently moves it into the story telling arena without cutting any of the thrills.
The movie starts off asking us to trust the film by forcing us to watch the entire relationship that ends up in the tragic birth of Zen (Yanin Vismitananda).
Zin is a gangsters moll who falls in love with a Japanese Yakuza gangster. The Thai gangster is jealous, murderously so. He can't bring himself to shoot Zin who refuses to leave her lover. In rage the gangster intentionally shoots himself in the foot and vows to kill the pair of them if he ever sees them together again.
Zin and the Yakuza have one last night together and then they part intending the parting to be forever. Their final night results in Zin becoming pregnant.
The little girl, Zen, is born autistic.
We follow the little girl's life. When she's about 4 her mother moves next to a muy thai school. Little Zen, when she's not rocking and staring into space watches the fighters train. She's mesmerized and begins to mimic their training regime.
It also seems that Zen has remarkable reflexes and acute hearing.
Zin and Zen rescue a street orphan, a fat little kid bought to their attention when he is being bullied by the other street waifs. His character, Moom, is mainly a plot device. But its utilized well and does its job well.

Click images for desktop size: "Superman And Captain Marvel" by DC Comics We're about a third through the movie without much action to show for it. The set up is worth it though and the long set up not only plays huge dividends its interesting and at times engrossing. There's a sincere attempt to understand the plight of a mother raising and loving an autistic child. Watching the gangster's moll evolve into a loving parent struggling to raise a difficult child makes for an interesting drama on its own.
When the first action does come its cool and fascinating. Watching the 15 year old girl take out a group of bullies is more than decent. Interestingly the action has a more metered feel, gradually building to the crescendo that most action directors eschew. They do not concern themselves with pacing and setting up anything more than special game ending moves. Here we watch a brain damaged child evolve to a non-stop killing machine. Its apparent and understandable on a gut level. A gifted child closed to the world but aware of her own body confronted with things that no one could ever fully understand she reacts in the only way she can. And like any youngster as she uses her skills she begins to rely on them to help her cope with the incomprehensible things surrounding her. Until she has no choice. Of course with practice the skills become more and more honed.
Though not as dynamic as Tony Ja Zen earns the moniker they've stuck on her as "The Female Tony Ja". They don't put her through the incredibly dangerous paces that Ja does so effortlessly (Yes, no jumping from a thirty story building to clamp a leg lock on the bad guy as he dangles from a helicopter wench!) What she brings is a vulnerability to the violence. She moves well and more than a few of her moves are incredible and breathtaking.
What happens in the story is that Zin (mom) gets cancer. To pay for her chemo the Moom, who has found an old book that lists debts owed to mom, he decides to go and collect these old debts.
Needless to say Thai gangsters are not too intimidated by a fat teenager and a crazy girl who stares at the floor. They refuse to pay.
A bad idea not paying her. It unleashes the tiger in her and in more and more ballet like sequences Zen collects. Her mantra is not as chilling as Ja's "Where's my elephant!" but "Give me my mom's money . . ." develops its own power.
The final battle is jaw dropping. Its incredible and insanely believable, and thanks to the lengthy set up and the touching scenes between autistic child and chemo wracked mother fraught with an emotional power that nears Ja's frenetic love for his baby elephant.

Click images for desktop size: "The Farmhouse" by nuaHs The end of the film is a tiny coda that knowingly gives a false image of supposed peace. A little knock kneed Zen walking hand in hand with her Yakuza father along a beach.
Then there's the credit section . . . I'm unsure about this. I can understand that in a time when anything dangerous seems to be done by CGI you not wanting your actors efforts minimized or brushed off. Seeing a character fall three stories, bouncing off of electric signs and abutments to crash down on hard concrete is cool in a story but then to see stuntmen carried off in traction after actually doing it is unsettling. As is one guy having the blood wiped off his face and make up applied to the wound for the retakes . . . RAH!
There's plenty of glass being washed out of eyes. The diminutive deadly fighting chick gets her own fair share of medical treatment. It does make her acting in the film seem a tiny bit more incredible and its cool seeing how expert the Thai make up artists are at covering up black eyes, welts and cuts but I'm a bit unsure about this sequence.
Otherwise this was an excellent move that I felt proud to be able to see. How many movies, books or records can you feel proud about when you're just a passive part of the audience?
I'm doing yard work today.
I plan not to continue blinding myself.
I'm not taking bets on whether I'll succeed. My right eye seems to have calmed down, my left is going nutso. The tri vision prismatic kaleidoscope I get sometimes is interesting for a while but . . .