far from grace
That was so excellent. That was so excellent.
I just saw Gabriel.
Admittedly it did have a few flaws and I did spend a few moments at the start thinking "ooh, a little too Night Watch" and then made myself forget that. The words were a bit pretentious at times but those were pretty few instances and nearly always rescued by immediately following colloquialisms. Nothing more stupid than angels speaking in high faluting manner. Gimme Constantine swearing angels any day.
And it did drag a little after the initial fall. I loved that pre-credits sequence, immediately set up the excruciatingly human context with those great every-pore-and-wrinkle intensely high definition textured close-ups. And ack, the eyes. LOVED the eyes! Bullet-proof kink, wot? Intensely blue eyes. Geddouddahere! And ohhhh the agony of being thrust into a human being overwhelmed with sensation. Brilliantly evoked. Well, I felt it, anyway.
Mind you, kinda woulda been nice to see wings at some point. *pout* But sokay, I sorta forgot about that. Cos it was never about the rising, it's all about the falling. Says so in the tagline after all.
Happily enough though, I was in the mood for a slow moody noirish film and this was certainly it. I could sense other people in the audience may not feel the same way and definitely have read some reviews to that effect. I didn't mind. It wasn't quite Shyamalan deliberate slowness and yeah, there was a point I wondered why the hell he was lying on a bed drawing instead of going out and hunting down more disgraced angels. Until I realised "awww, his poor human body's all tired and sleepy, gaawww poor Gabey ..." And of course it was pretty cool to see an angel dream.
The characterisation of Gabriel was actually really good in terms of how I've always thought of him. Never did like Gabriel, snooty glowing chauvinistic petulant messenger boy. And this incarnation of Gabriel in warrior form had the same square jawed sanctimonious piety about him that just made my eyelid twitch. And ohhhh I thought they used that marvellously, how he went from pretty much rehabilitating every disgraced angel Against Their Will, being ever so fucking nobler-than-thou about it. And then ahahahahahhaa brought down by the pain and raging unfairness of humanity! Talk about a GOTCHA moment.
Yes, that was me cackling mentally and going "Sucked in, you religious prick! Now you know what it's like."
Mind you, I totally got chills when his eyes changed colour in that oh so significant way. But the moment of horror gave way to sheer delight. Nothing so fabulous as when an angel crosses over to the dark side, wot? And you knew why, you felt why. I did, anyway. The rage, the sheer consuming violent rage of unfairness, of loss and injustice. Of guilt.
Thought the actual fight moves lacked a bit in imagination and that was very clear in the Asmodeus death sequence. Noticed it in the first fight with the Stranger-esque fella, thought it was rather well masked in the black-guy-with-totally-fucking-AWESOME-blond-dreads death sequence by that great flickering negative colour effect, but yeah it was only rescued by the very effective gore factor in the Asmodeus sequence. I love gore when it's used properly, when it's damned near beautiful and emotionally satisfying. Great character, Asmodeus, and rather well played in my opinion. And of course to see our unholy Gabe covered in blood at that point was all kinds of awesome. *claps happily*
The females were pretty lackadaisical. I was somewhat insulted by the depiction of Lilith as a dominatrix but then as I thought a bit more about it, that fit nicely into the whole canon concept of Lilith rejecting the missionary position. Yeah, woo! Go Lilith! I would totally write a novel all about you if that in itself didn't actually ratify the Bible as source material. Wait, would it? Part of the Apocrypha, right? Hmm. *tucks away for future contemplation*
And Amatiel-now-Jade as the oh so boring love interest ... *yawn* Precisely that type of sullen slutty chic look of long black hair all over her exquisitely pale face perfectly framing a swollen red mouth that just makes me want to slap the girl in question. Most of the time I spent being mildly freaked out by her lopsided mouth and hearing the Aunt in the back of my head going "Omigod, she's got a harelip, look at that harelip!" *snort* It was so not a surprise when they fell into bed together but hey at least we got to see sexy black tattoos slithering across his sexy bare back.
I was very confused for a while by the sudden recurring use of high gloss retouching. First I thought it was to denote the baddies from the goodies and that the baddies use such artificial glamour while the goodies let their humanity grind through every pore and line. But then the baddies showed up in texture too. Finally I figured out it must be some sort of under the influence thing. Cos Sullen Slutty Chick got all smoothened out when she shot up and the baddies smoothened out when they were in the sexy club and even our Gabriel almost smooothened out in the afterglow of the hottsecks. Who knows?
They really did use the device of the eye colour very well. I saw that mentioned in a review and so knew to watch for it. At first, that pure white eye with the pinpoint black pupil of the baddie unnerved me to the point of pure distaste. But then as I grew used to it, I kinda appreciated more and more how well they used it against his tanned skin and black hair. And oh fuck ME if it didn't become brilliantly significant in the end!
I had two theories about what happened to Michael. First I thought he had been broken by Asmodeus and turned into that grotesquely transsexual blonde toy. That would have been way cool. But no, she just turned out to be some normal chickie babe. And this slow huge grin began to spread across my face when I realised my second theory was about to be played out in most excellent detail in the grand final showdown.
I'm assuming if you've got this far, you don't care about being completely and utterly spoiled because OH MY FUCKING GOD I LOVED THAT MICHAEL WAS THE BADDIE!! This is me screaming and jumping up and down in very loud happiness.
I always did like Michael best of all. For several years, my first tattoo was going to be this utterly awesome depiction of the Archangel Michael naked and tanned with hair of flames and a serpent wound up his leg across his crotch. And hell, my confirmation name is Michael. St Michael the Archangel looks after vocations. I had a vocation. Have a vocation. His colour was blue. My favourite colour was blue. As a child and a teenager quivering under the blankets in deathly fear of the ghosts of old people ringing my bed, it was the Archangel Michael I imagined at the head of my bed, drawing his sword of blue flame and searing the room, filling every corner with waves of blue flame, incinerating them all. The Archangel Michael brooked no sin, demanded dedication and would protect you with every fibre of his being. God, I loved him.
So yes, it was pretty much this former Catholic's dream come true that the Arc Michael only turned out to be the baddie in this suddenly excellent film and did it in brilliantly rebellious wounded defiant fashion. He pretty much said everything I loathe about religion. And I went from beaming to worrying about how he was going to be punished for it. Ack, I so wanted him to win. I wanted the film to be brave enough to let the bad guy win, in American Gothic fashion. Cos, man, as far as I was concerned, he was the good guy. He spaketh the truth, yea verily!
And jesus christ, not only was Michael the baddie but he was also disturbingly in love with Gabriel. I mean, the slashiness pretty much leaped off the screen. My eyes nearly fell out of my head. First they intercut the pretty tokenistic but still quite hot heterosexual and haha, very missionary love scene with images of the baddie in increasing anguish. And when Gabriel came, the camera actually cut to our baddie howling with tormented rage. I squinted and wondered if I was reading a bit too much into it.
Just as I had wickedly listened to all the reverent mentions of Michael and how Gabriel loved Michael so much, looked up to him so much, and thought "ack, wouldn't it be cool if Gabriel was totally gay for Michael? Hee. Oh shut up, you read too much slash." Mind you, there were a couple of moments where I thought Gabe and Ithuriel were totally going to lock lips. All that intense silent eye fucking, man. Pretty boys and prettyish tormented boys really should know better. Mind you, the prettyish tormented boy in question was also co-writer and co-producer of this here movie. Nice one.
But then holy fuck, in the showdown. Almost everything Michael said to Gabriel that wasn't in defiance of them above was about how Gabriel knew Michael best, about how Michael taught him everything he knew, and then omigod that he did it all for him! Waaaaahhhhhhh! Okay, that was a bit much. But still, point taken. All the carnage was to prove a point to Gabriel, to convince him of the blazing cold hard truth of Michael. *sigh* I love that shit.
And, you know, they totally had sex? I mean, penetrated each other. In embrace, too. It was so phallic and lovely. In the rain and blood, steel pipe through both their chests. Sheer poetry, darlink! *dramatic flourish*
Okay, if I wasn't all about the homo!yay, that would have been lame. But I liked it. It fit perfectly into my subtext. *beams* And then Michael saved Gabriel and I almost half expected to see his eyes go intense blue just then but I suppose he had fallen too far for that and wouldn't like it at all. Too much integrity for that. I just wanted to see the really intense blue eyes amid dripping black hair in that fabulous tanned chiseled face of Dwaine Stevenson. I wonder what colour his eyes are really. Those white contacts must have been fucking murder, poor guy. And he barely blinked.
The ending did confuse me a bit. Cos on one hand, Gabriel commits the ultimate sin and kills himself. Frees himself. But on the other hand, the damned city does come into light and was it a direct result of his sacrifice? Cos, as they do say earlier, sacrifice is a necessary part of victory. And it's ever so fucking martyrlike, isn't it? Faugh! I hate that shit. But what he said at the end was sufficiently ambiguous and depressive for me to blink and go "Whut? Did he just, did I just hear him, did he just renounce the powers that be?" So you could look at him falling to his death as him buying out of the game and you could look at it as the bad guy winning in the very end.
Hmm. I may have tortured this to entirely fit my own purpose but what the hey, it's my prerogative. *shrugs happily*
Really liked the music, how it was nicely ominous and grinding goth rockish in aesthetic, quite The Crow like that but never succumbed to the cliche of some nauseating song at a highly significant emotional point. Not that I mind that about The Crow. In fact, the only touch of vocal in this whole score was suitably angelic 'aaah's at the end. I was so damned relieved not to be subjected to a song that I kinda fell in love with the music dude at that point. Brian someone, I think. Cachia. Brian Cachia.
I wondered how much of it was shot on location and where exactly that location was, whether Sydney or Melbourne or some other capital city. Now I discover it was apparently Sydney and now I'm even more curious as to where exactly. Cos they degraded and masked it quite well digitally, I thought, enough so it looked not quite real and yet grotty enough to make your skin crawl.
Omg this is it, the tattoo I was gonna get! Ack, how I loved it. See the phoenix behind him!
Ah, good times. Innocent times. I was gonna get it just by the point of my hip, that smooth stretch of skin between abdomen and ... erm, nether regions. And then I thought "well, that's gonna look horrible in the unlikely event I ever get pregnant."
And then I got atheism. *sigh*
Oh well.
So yeah, not without its flaws but for an independent genre Australian flick, man it was fucking excellent! And ack, I just discovered there was a bit after the closing credits, a highly significant bit. Well, I'm going to have to get it on DVD now, aren't I? I was going to, anyway, but now it's definite. Ooh!
And I actually popped into the video store on the way back to ask the dudes if they had seen it and when they said they hadn't, I flailed and exclaimed some and then ran back out. Cute Boy has now taken to looking scared and crying "I'm sorry!" when he sees me. Clearly some sort of pre-emptive measure. So I look distinctly unimpressed and tell him by name to shut up. It's a thing, you prolly have to be there.
I just saw Gabriel.
Admittedly it did have a few flaws and I did spend a few moments at the start thinking "ooh, a little too Night Watch" and then made myself forget that. The words were a bit pretentious at times but those were pretty few instances and nearly always rescued by immediately following colloquialisms. Nothing more stupid than angels speaking in high faluting manner. Gimme Constantine swearing angels any day.
And it did drag a little after the initial fall. I loved that pre-credits sequence, immediately set up the excruciatingly human context with those great every-pore-and-wrinkle intensely high definition textured close-ups. And ack, the eyes. LOVED the eyes! Bullet-proof kink, wot? Intensely blue eyes. Geddouddahere! And ohhhh the agony of being thrust into a human being overwhelmed with sensation. Brilliantly evoked. Well, I felt it, anyway.
Mind you, kinda woulda been nice to see wings at some point. *pout* But sokay, I sorta forgot about that. Cos it was never about the rising, it's all about the falling. Says so in the tagline after all.
Happily enough though, I was in the mood for a slow moody noirish film and this was certainly it. I could sense other people in the audience may not feel the same way and definitely have read some reviews to that effect. I didn't mind. It wasn't quite Shyamalan deliberate slowness and yeah, there was a point I wondered why the hell he was lying on a bed drawing instead of going out and hunting down more disgraced angels. Until I realised "awww, his poor human body's all tired and sleepy, gaawww poor Gabey ..." And of course it was pretty cool to see an angel dream.
The characterisation of Gabriel was actually really good in terms of how I've always thought of him. Never did like Gabriel, snooty glowing chauvinistic petulant messenger boy. And this incarnation of Gabriel in warrior form had the same square jawed sanctimonious piety about him that just made my eyelid twitch. And ohhhh I thought they used that marvellously, how he went from pretty much rehabilitating every disgraced angel Against Their Will, being ever so fucking nobler-than-thou about it. And then ahahahahahhaa brought down by the pain and raging unfairness of humanity! Talk about a GOTCHA moment.
Yes, that was me cackling mentally and going "Sucked in, you religious prick! Now you know what it's like."
Mind you, I totally got chills when his eyes changed colour in that oh so significant way. But the moment of horror gave way to sheer delight. Nothing so fabulous as when an angel crosses over to the dark side, wot? And you knew why, you felt why. I did, anyway. The rage, the sheer consuming violent rage of unfairness, of loss and injustice. Of guilt.
Thought the actual fight moves lacked a bit in imagination and that was very clear in the Asmodeus death sequence. Noticed it in the first fight with the Stranger-esque fella, thought it was rather well masked in the black-guy-with-totally-fucking-AWESOME-blond-dreads death sequence by that great flickering negative colour effect, but yeah it was only rescued by the very effective gore factor in the Asmodeus sequence. I love gore when it's used properly, when it's damned near beautiful and emotionally satisfying. Great character, Asmodeus, and rather well played in my opinion. And of course to see our unholy Gabe covered in blood at that point was all kinds of awesome. *claps happily*
The females were pretty lackadaisical. I was somewhat insulted by the depiction of Lilith as a dominatrix but then as I thought a bit more about it, that fit nicely into the whole canon concept of Lilith rejecting the missionary position. Yeah, woo! Go Lilith! I would totally write a novel all about you if that in itself didn't actually ratify the Bible as source material. Wait, would it? Part of the Apocrypha, right? Hmm. *tucks away for future contemplation*
And Amatiel-now-Jade as the oh so boring love interest ... *yawn* Precisely that type of sullen slutty chic look of long black hair all over her exquisitely pale face perfectly framing a swollen red mouth that just makes me want to slap the girl in question. Most of the time I spent being mildly freaked out by her lopsided mouth and hearing the Aunt in the back of my head going "Omigod, she's got a harelip, look at that harelip!" *snort* It was so not a surprise when they fell into bed together but hey at least we got to see sexy black tattoos slithering across his sexy bare back.
I was very confused for a while by the sudden recurring use of high gloss retouching. First I thought it was to denote the baddies from the goodies and that the baddies use such artificial glamour while the goodies let their humanity grind through every pore and line. But then the baddies showed up in texture too. Finally I figured out it must be some sort of under the influence thing. Cos Sullen Slutty Chick got all smoothened out when she shot up and the baddies smoothened out when they were in the sexy club and even our Gabriel almost smooothened out in the afterglow of the hottsecks. Who knows?
They really did use the device of the eye colour very well. I saw that mentioned in a review and so knew to watch for it. At first, that pure white eye with the pinpoint black pupil of the baddie unnerved me to the point of pure distaste. But then as I grew used to it, I kinda appreciated more and more how well they used it against his tanned skin and black hair. And oh fuck ME if it didn't become brilliantly significant in the end!
I had two theories about what happened to Michael. First I thought he had been broken by Asmodeus and turned into that grotesquely transsexual blonde toy. That would have been way cool. But no, she just turned out to be some normal chickie babe. And this slow huge grin began to spread across my face when I realised my second theory was about to be played out in most excellent detail in the grand final showdown.
I'm assuming if you've got this far, you don't care about being completely and utterly spoiled because OH MY FUCKING GOD I LOVED THAT MICHAEL WAS THE BADDIE!! This is me screaming and jumping up and down in very loud happiness.
I always did like Michael best of all. For several years, my first tattoo was going to be this utterly awesome depiction of the Archangel Michael naked and tanned with hair of flames and a serpent wound up his leg across his crotch. And hell, my confirmation name is Michael. St Michael the Archangel looks after vocations. I had a vocation. Have a vocation. His colour was blue. My favourite colour was blue. As a child and a teenager quivering under the blankets in deathly fear of the ghosts of old people ringing my bed, it was the Archangel Michael I imagined at the head of my bed, drawing his sword of blue flame and searing the room, filling every corner with waves of blue flame, incinerating them all. The Archangel Michael brooked no sin, demanded dedication and would protect you with every fibre of his being. God, I loved him.
So yes, it was pretty much this former Catholic's dream come true that the Arc Michael only turned out to be the baddie in this suddenly excellent film and did it in brilliantly rebellious wounded defiant fashion. He pretty much said everything I loathe about religion. And I went from beaming to worrying about how he was going to be punished for it. Ack, I so wanted him to win. I wanted the film to be brave enough to let the bad guy win, in American Gothic fashion. Cos, man, as far as I was concerned, he was the good guy. He spaketh the truth, yea verily!
And jesus christ, not only was Michael the baddie but he was also disturbingly in love with Gabriel. I mean, the slashiness pretty much leaped off the screen. My eyes nearly fell out of my head. First they intercut the pretty tokenistic but still quite hot heterosexual and haha, very missionary love scene with images of the baddie in increasing anguish. And when Gabriel came, the camera actually cut to our baddie howling with tormented rage. I squinted and wondered if I was reading a bit too much into it.
Just as I had wickedly listened to all the reverent mentions of Michael and how Gabriel loved Michael so much, looked up to him so much, and thought "ack, wouldn't it be cool if Gabriel was totally gay for Michael? Hee. Oh shut up, you read too much slash." Mind you, there were a couple of moments where I thought Gabe and Ithuriel were totally going to lock lips. All that intense silent eye fucking, man. Pretty boys and prettyish tormented boys really should know better. Mind you, the prettyish tormented boy in question was also co-writer and co-producer of this here movie. Nice one.
But then holy fuck, in the showdown. Almost everything Michael said to Gabriel that wasn't in defiance of them above was about how Gabriel knew Michael best, about how Michael taught him everything he knew, and then omigod that he did it all for him! Waaaaahhhhhhh! Okay, that was a bit much. But still, point taken. All the carnage was to prove a point to Gabriel, to convince him of the blazing cold hard truth of Michael. *sigh* I love that shit.
And, you know, they totally had sex? I mean, penetrated each other. In embrace, too. It was so phallic and lovely. In the rain and blood, steel pipe through both their chests. Sheer poetry, darlink! *dramatic flourish*
Okay, if I wasn't all about the homo!yay, that would have been lame. But I liked it. It fit perfectly into my subtext. *beams* And then Michael saved Gabriel and I almost half expected to see his eyes go intense blue just then but I suppose he had fallen too far for that and wouldn't like it at all. Too much integrity for that. I just wanted to see the really intense blue eyes amid dripping black hair in that fabulous tanned chiseled face of Dwaine Stevenson. I wonder what colour his eyes are really. Those white contacts must have been fucking murder, poor guy. And he barely blinked.
The ending did confuse me a bit. Cos on one hand, Gabriel commits the ultimate sin and kills himself. Frees himself. But on the other hand, the damned city does come into light and was it a direct result of his sacrifice? Cos, as they do say earlier, sacrifice is a necessary part of victory. And it's ever so fucking martyrlike, isn't it? Faugh! I hate that shit. But what he said at the end was sufficiently ambiguous and depressive for me to blink and go "Whut? Did he just, did I just hear him, did he just renounce the powers that be?" So you could look at him falling to his death as him buying out of the game and you could look at it as the bad guy winning in the very end.
Hmm. I may have tortured this to entirely fit my own purpose but what the hey, it's my prerogative. *shrugs happily*
Really liked the music, how it was nicely ominous and grinding goth rockish in aesthetic, quite The Crow like that but never succumbed to the cliche of some nauseating song at a highly significant emotional point. Not that I mind that about The Crow. In fact, the only touch of vocal in this whole score was suitably angelic 'aaah's at the end. I was so damned relieved not to be subjected to a song that I kinda fell in love with the music dude at that point. Brian someone, I think. Cachia. Brian Cachia.
I wondered how much of it was shot on location and where exactly that location was, whether Sydney or Melbourne or some other capital city. Now I discover it was apparently Sydney and now I'm even more curious as to where exactly. Cos they degraded and masked it quite well digitally, I thought, enough so it looked not quite real and yet grotty enough to make your skin crawl.
Omg this is it, the tattoo I was gonna get! Ack, how I loved it. See the phoenix behind him!
Ah, good times. Innocent times. I was gonna get it just by the point of my hip, that smooth stretch of skin between abdomen and ... erm, nether regions. And then I thought "well, that's gonna look horrible in the unlikely event I ever get pregnant."
And then I got atheism. *sigh*
Oh well.
So yeah, not without its flaws but for an independent genre Australian flick, man it was fucking excellent! And ack, I just discovered there was a bit after the closing credits, a highly significant bit. Well, I'm going to have to get it on DVD now, aren't I? I was going to, anyway, but now it's definite. Ooh!
And I actually popped into the video store on the way back to ask the dudes if they had seen it and when they said they hadn't, I flailed and exclaimed some and then ran back out. Cute Boy has now taken to looking scared and crying "I'm sorry!" when he sees me. Clearly some sort of pre-emptive measure. So I look distinctly unimpressed and tell him by name to shut up. It's a thing, you prolly have to be there.