Random Quick Thoughts: Reading, Listening, Viewing
(1) Speaking of Arnel Pineda, we just heard a Journey song from the new Revelation album on KFOG, for New Release Thursday yesterday evening. After the song, Big Rick Stuart made it a point to talk about Neil Schon finding their new lead singer Pineda on YouTube, and Stuart also made it a point to mention Pineda is from the Philippines, underscoring the otherwise remote possibility of this meeting between Schon and Pineda. Which brings me to the Internet being as viable a meeting ground as any other place. I actually didn’t know for sure this was Journey I was hearing until Stuart said so; it was definitely characteristically Schon guitar work, and high caliber Steve Perry-like, not exactly Steve Perry vocals. I actually was listening for those bits of familiar accent: “Dohn’t geeve up,” you know. Anyway, I think Pineda is the ultimate OFW, and a “pure product of America.”
(2) From the Netflix queue: I finally saw The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the premise itself of these Victorian literary characters fighting modernity but also moving into modernity, sufficed to keep me interested in the characters’ fates. I like their casting of Captain Nemo as a Southasian man whose anachronistic/futuristic modes of transportation enable the whole mission/quest. I wanted Dorian Gray not to end up being the bad guy; I guess there was always that romanticism of this beautiful and terrible man, from when I read the book back in like sophomore year in high school. The scene where he is riddled with bullets in his library, when his assailant asks him, “What are you?” Gray responds with that lovely flair and vanity, “I’m complicated,” and I want him to continue being complicated, though in the end he’s kind of just not. In the meantime, DVD extras tell us that Sean Connery took this role (his last film before retiring), because he rejected offers for The Matrix and Lord of the Rings. And this perplexes me greatly.
(3) From the Netflix queue: The Fountain (2006). What a fucking hot mess this film is. Its premise could have been very interesting, though I still don’t understand how Queen Isabella’s sending Tomás the conquistador to find the Edenic Tree of Life in savage Mesoamerica was supposed to be efficacious against the Grand Inquisitor. As well, regarding the sexy disjunctiveness of the narrative’s three time periods unraveling simultaneously, I think was disjunctive for sake of its own sexiness. The final revelation with Hugh Jackman in his PJ’s and in lotus position: whatever. And at any rate, his character was all about himself and not really about Queen Isabella/Izzy (his wife) and her cancer, and so all his violent emoting I just didn’t give a shit about.
(4) “Cheap Date” at the Parkway Theater: Forbidden Kingdom, starring Jet Li and Jackie Chan, oh, and some American kid. Trope-filled but this is exactly what was expected. That the clueless, martial arts movie obsessed white teenager is the central character in this narrative ended up not being as offensive as I thought it would be. This quick bit of Mandarin dialogue between Li and Chan regarding the white kid fulfilling the prophecy: “Him? But he’s not even Chinese.” “Yeah, I know.” Then they move on. I really wished that Sparrow did not talk about herself in third person. Then again she was telling her own narrative of herself. Oscar points out that the most racially stereotyped character in the film was the Boston Southie, and I think he’s got a point there.
(5) In preparation for Forbidden Kingdom, I pulled out the Fist of Legend DVD and thought for some reason that Jet Li’s Fearless started the same way, with the ass whupping in the Japanese school. Not true; I am just getting my Jet Li films all confused.
(6) Currently reading Eduardo Galeano’s Faces and Masks (Memory of Fire Trilogy Part 2). Love this! I remember now I was reading part 1 of the trilogy when I started writing Diwata, way back when, and so I am really liking being back in these manageable prose vignettes which comprise this massive epic work.
OK, maybe more to come, on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Akira Kurosawa’s I Live in Fear.
