Unnecessary carnage and vampire dentition!
So, if you're a fan of the Night Watch tetralogy, I realize that what I'm about to say may seem sacrilegious and may get me lynched in fandom Night Court. After watching Night Watch and Day Watch again last night, I've decided that the films are about a hundred times superior to the books (at least, the available English translations thereof).
Bekmambetov by necessity left out a lot of the plot of both books; in fact, the film version of Day Watch is really just parts of the Night Watch novel expanded out into Bekmambetov's version of the Watch universe. I particularly missed the telling of the story through multiple POVs and I really missed Anton and Edgar's extended dinner in Prague, which is one of my favorite parts of the tetralogy. But the changes Bekmambetov made to the storyline actually made sense to me in the films; he pruned out a lot of detritus and implemented a more organic and cyclical feel to the plot that resulted in a stinging commentary on causality. One thing that I didn't like was the casting of the Day Watch vs. Night Watch as more absolute evil vs. absolute good rather than the necessary grey area that both inhabit in the books, but it did make for a more gripping plot for those unfamiliar with the source works. For anyone familiar with the books, Bekmambetov's committed the treason of reducing the Light Others and the Dark Others to a false binary system in terms of morality, and I understand that for some fans, that's unforgivable, because it eviscerates the ultimate point of the books. But I felt Bekmambetov's artistic license visually worked enough to keep me engaged.
Strong points of the films? There are a lot of them. I mean, the visual details. The TRUCK that Simeon, Tiger Cub, and Bear drove made me laugh to the point of exhaustion (the rosebud gear shift knob! The nitrous!) The fact that the narrative doesn't bother to simplify what Anton sees; you either shut up and keep watching or you get off the train.
The last two minutes of Night Watch could never happen in a mainstream American film. That ending was worth the price of viewing alone (as are the subtitles, but I've previously waxed on before about how exquisitely they were done). I also really liked how the Gloom was rendered - the scene in Yegor's apartment with Olga and Anton was absolutely chilling in how it effectively conveyed the utter enervation of entering the Gloom and it's deadening effect. There was also Anton's rather stunning scene where he vampire hunts with a shard of mirror, and the subsequent GLORIOUS kick to vampire face. Knocking out a vampire's teeth? Oh, burn. Why hasn't anyone else thought of that yet? Forget garlic and holy water, just commit serious fucking carnage to their dentition and be done with it. Have I mentioned that I thought Konstantin Khabensky was uniformly good-to-excellent as Anton? Have I? That's another thing you'd never see in an American blockbuster film: a totally subdued and fluidly subtle acting performance as the leading hero. In fact, every single performance in the films was deeply character-driven; the cast seemed much more interested in showcasing less-is-more rather than grating at us with unnecessarily high wattage extroversion. Viktor Verzhbitskiy as Zabulon? Not quite how I pictured Zabulon, but I was completely sold by the end of Night Watch.
Not enough of Tiger Cub and Bear, though. But there was Tamerlane. Any film that uses Tamerlane as a character is almost automatic win:
There was also this lovely bit of wildly inventive animation from Night Watch:
I loved the Expressionist simplicity.
If you've never seen the films, I highly recommend renting them. They take the starkness of the books and render it in blinding technicolor. They're not perfect, and Bekmambetov inserted a whole lot of pretty CGI-infused ass kickery that's not present in the books, but they're so unusually done compared to the American aesthetic that they're worth two or three viewings. Also, TOTALLY METAL.
(On a somewhat tertiary note, I wish that Netflix had a better Russian film section.)
You can definitely see that Day Watch was the visual predecessor for Bekmambetov's Wanted. You can also definitely see that the Wachowski Brothers shamelessly ripped off Day Watch for their version of Speed Racer. YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT, I SAID IT.
My one peeve with Russian films that are subtitled into English is the seeming insistence that Russian names be translated into their Western counterparts. Look, you really don't need to transliterate "Alissa" into "Alice," okay? Our feeble American minds can handle "Alissa," I promise you.
Turning now to matters sequential, here, have some good news.
Freshly solicited: the rather arresting cover by Gene Ha to JSA vs. KOBRA: Engines of Faith #1:
Said miniseries is to be written by our very own Eric Trautmann (aka mercuryeric, my Lord and Master). Trautmann, as you may recall, actually co-wrote Checkmate with Greg Rucka, but DC kept, er, forgetting to let us know that in the writing credits of a fair number of issues. This KOBRA vs. All Five Thousand Members of the JSA mini looks to be quality stuff. I mean, there's Trautmann scribing, so I'm already going to be forking over $$$ for it, as Trautmann, in this humble fangirl's opinion, equals intelligently executed and forcefully good writing where sequential literature is concerned. (Trautmann really excels, among other things, at crafting Moments with a capital M.) But there's also my hope that this mini untangles -- and by "untangles," I mean "FIXES" -- the, ah, interesting turn that DC took with all things Kobra after the snake babies coup in Checkmate.
I wish Gene Ha got to do the interiors, though. I've been very fond of Gene Ha since The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix days, and I think he's criminally underused. (Look at Karen's expression on that cover! AHAHAHAHA.) Although will someone please explain to me why Michael Holt has purple on his face instead of black? And why Rick isn't groping Jesse or vice versa? Actually, WAIT. Look at Rick's slyly suffused smile and Jesse's surprised expression. He IS groping her! Thanks, Gene Ha!
You know, at the going rate of output of both, it seems like Rucka and Trautmann are going to be in charge of thirty percent of the DCU at this point, and to be bluntly honest, I'm glad.
But then there's the cover to Amazing Spider-Man #598:
...
...
I'll let Marvel editor Steve Wacker speak for me: "For what it's worth, Phil's pregnant Menace cover made me sick too."
I'm sure there's a niche market for pregnant Menaces -- I mean, there's gotta be a demographic of men that will get off on this -- but man, Marvel, that's some rarefied marketing.
So I occasionally have this hobby for searching for good kaiju fanvids on YouTube. I'm particularly enamored of the often adorable Mothra tributes you see on YouTube -- about half of them made by teenage Japanese girls, which means the music is often hilariously upbeat -- and dammit, there are some good ones.
So here's a timely reminder that Mothra is still the undisputed Queen of the Kaiju:
RAINBOW LASER!!1!! (Also, that music. Oh, GOD.)
More Interesting Facts About Mothra That You May Not Know But Should:
1. Mothra, to my knowledge, is the only kaiju to ever time travel. She (or he, depending on how you interpret the gender of Mothra Leo) can fly so fast that she can travel back in time. (To save Earth, of course. What else does Mothra do?)
2. She once beat both Godzilla AND King Ghidorah by going all Phoenix over Tokyo and then letting her spirit take control of Ghidorah to mete out an incredible asskicking.
3. RAINBOW LASER!!1!
4. The later Mothra films were the only kaiju films to extensively incorporate CGI. (Rather good CGI for the genre, to be honest - you can see a bit of it in the above vid.)
5. She's beat Godzilla in her larval form.
6. She's perfect tattoo fodder due to her insanely colorful form.
File that away somewhere the next time someone asks you to iterate your knowledge about Mothra. You can thank me later.
Last word: Romania decriminalizes incest between "consenting" adults. Romania? On the cutting edge with its criminal code? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Actually, wait, I'm not done. I've got a new infusion of ambition that my physical therapy for my ankle will result in me being able to run again, so I went out and bought new shoes. Why in seven hells are high stability running shoes SO EXPENSIVE? I just shelled out one hundred and twenty dollars for a good pair of Mizuno's. My other pet peeve? Why in seven hells are high stability shoes so butt fugly? This pair of Mizuno's is the only pair of high stability running shoes that I've ever owned that I'm not actively ashamed to wear outside the house or gym.
Bekmambetov by necessity left out a lot of the plot of both books; in fact, the film version of Day Watch is really just parts of the Night Watch novel expanded out into Bekmambetov's version of the Watch universe. I particularly missed the telling of the story through multiple POVs and I really missed Anton and Edgar's extended dinner in Prague, which is one of my favorite parts of the tetralogy. But the changes Bekmambetov made to the storyline actually made sense to me in the films; he pruned out a lot of detritus and implemented a more organic and cyclical feel to the plot that resulted in a stinging commentary on causality. One thing that I didn't like was the casting of the Day Watch vs. Night Watch as more absolute evil vs. absolute good rather than the necessary grey area that both inhabit in the books, but it did make for a more gripping plot for those unfamiliar with the source works. For anyone familiar with the books, Bekmambetov's committed the treason of reducing the Light Others and the Dark Others to a false binary system in terms of morality, and I understand that for some fans, that's unforgivable, because it eviscerates the ultimate point of the books. But I felt Bekmambetov's artistic license visually worked enough to keep me engaged.
Strong points of the films? There are a lot of them. I mean, the visual details. The TRUCK that Simeon, Tiger Cub, and Bear drove made me laugh to the point of exhaustion (the rosebud gear shift knob! The nitrous!) The fact that the narrative doesn't bother to simplify what Anton sees; you either shut up and keep watching or you get off the train.
The last two minutes of Night Watch could never happen in a mainstream American film. That ending was worth the price of viewing alone (as are the subtitles, but I've previously waxed on before about how exquisitely they were done). I also really liked how the Gloom was rendered - the scene in Yegor's apartment with Olga and Anton was absolutely chilling in how it effectively conveyed the utter enervation of entering the Gloom and it's deadening effect. There was also Anton's rather stunning scene where he vampire hunts with a shard of mirror, and the subsequent GLORIOUS kick to vampire face. Knocking out a vampire's teeth? Oh, burn. Why hasn't anyone else thought of that yet? Forget garlic and holy water, just commit serious fucking carnage to their dentition and be done with it. Have I mentioned that I thought Konstantin Khabensky was uniformly good-to-excellent as Anton? Have I? That's another thing you'd never see in an American blockbuster film: a totally subdued and fluidly subtle acting performance as the leading hero. In fact, every single performance in the films was deeply character-driven; the cast seemed much more interested in showcasing less-is-more rather than grating at us with unnecessarily high wattage extroversion. Viktor Verzhbitskiy as Zabulon? Not quite how I pictured Zabulon, but I was completely sold by the end of Night Watch.
Not enough of Tiger Cub and Bear, though. But there was Tamerlane. Any film that uses Tamerlane as a character is almost automatic win:
Click to viewThere was also this lovely bit of wildly inventive animation from Night Watch:
I loved the Expressionist simplicity.
If you've never seen the films, I highly recommend renting them. They take the starkness of the books and render it in blinding technicolor. They're not perfect, and Bekmambetov inserted a whole lot of pretty CGI-infused ass kickery that's not present in the books, but they're so unusually done compared to the American aesthetic that they're worth two or three viewings. Also, TOTALLY METAL.
(On a somewhat tertiary note, I wish that Netflix had a better Russian film section.)
You can definitely see that Day Watch was the visual predecessor for Bekmambetov's Wanted. You can also definitely see that the Wachowski Brothers shamelessly ripped off Day Watch for their version of Speed Racer. YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT, I SAID IT.
My one peeve with Russian films that are subtitled into English is the seeming insistence that Russian names be translated into their Western counterparts. Look, you really don't need to transliterate "Alissa" into "Alice," okay? Our feeble American minds can handle "Alissa," I promise you.
Turning now to matters sequential, here, have some good news.
Freshly solicited: the rather arresting cover by Gene Ha to JSA vs. KOBRA: Engines of Faith #1:
Said miniseries is to be written by our very own Eric Trautmann (aka mercuryeric, my Lord and Master). Trautmann, as you may recall, actually co-wrote Checkmate with Greg Rucka, but DC kept, er, forgetting to let us know that in the writing credits of a fair number of issues. This KOBRA vs. All Five Thousand Members of the JSA mini looks to be quality stuff. I mean, there's Trautmann scribing, so I'm already going to be forking over $$$ for it, as Trautmann, in this humble fangirl's opinion, equals intelligently executed and forcefully good writing where sequential literature is concerned. (Trautmann really excels, among other things, at crafting Moments with a capital M.) But there's also my hope that this mini untangles -- and by "untangles," I mean "FIXES" -- the, ah, interesting turn that DC took with all things Kobra after the snake babies coup in Checkmate.
I wish Gene Ha got to do the interiors, though. I've been very fond of Gene Ha since The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix days, and I think he's criminally underused. (Look at Karen's expression on that cover! AHAHAHAHA.) Although will someone please explain to me why Michael Holt has purple on his face instead of black? And why Rick isn't groping Jesse or vice versa? Actually, WAIT. Look at Rick's slyly suffused smile and Jesse's surprised expression. He IS groping her! Thanks, Gene Ha!
You know, at the going rate of output of both, it seems like Rucka and Trautmann are going to be in charge of thirty percent of the DCU at this point, and to be bluntly honest, I'm glad.
But then there's the cover to Amazing Spider-Man #598:
...
...
I'll let Marvel editor Steve Wacker speak for me: "For what it's worth, Phil's pregnant Menace cover made me sick too."
I'm sure there's a niche market for pregnant Menaces -- I mean, there's gotta be a demographic of men that will get off on this -- but man, Marvel, that's some rarefied marketing.
So I occasionally have this hobby for searching for good kaiju fanvids on YouTube. I'm particularly enamored of the often adorable Mothra tributes you see on YouTube -- about half of them made by teenage Japanese girls, which means the music is often hilariously upbeat -- and dammit, there are some good ones.
So here's a timely reminder that Mothra is still the undisputed Queen of the Kaiju:
RAINBOW LASER!!1!! (Also, that music. Oh, GOD.)
More Interesting Facts About Mothra That You May Not Know But Should:
1. Mothra, to my knowledge, is the only kaiju to ever time travel. She (or he, depending on how you interpret the gender of Mothra Leo) can fly so fast that she can travel back in time. (To save Earth, of course. What else does Mothra do?)
2. She once beat both Godzilla AND King Ghidorah by going all Phoenix over Tokyo and then letting her spirit take control of Ghidorah to mete out an incredible asskicking.
3. RAINBOW LASER!!1!
4. The later Mothra films were the only kaiju films to extensively incorporate CGI. (Rather good CGI for the genre, to be honest - you can see a bit of it in the above vid.)
5. She's beat Godzilla in her larval form.
6. She's perfect tattoo fodder due to her insanely colorful form.
File that away somewhere the next time someone asks you to iterate your knowledge about Mothra. You can thank me later.
Last word: Romania decriminalizes incest between "consenting" adults. Romania? On the cutting edge with its criminal code? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Actually, wait, I'm not done. I've got a new infusion of ambition that my physical therapy for my ankle will result in me being able to run again, so I went out and bought new shoes. Why in seven hells are high stability running shoes SO EXPENSIVE? I just shelled out one hundred and twenty dollars for a good pair of Mizuno's. My other pet peeve? Why in seven hells are high stability shoes so butt fugly? This pair of Mizuno's is the only pair of high stability running shoes that I've ever owned that I'm not actively ashamed to wear outside the house or gym.