TIFF Day Five

Rampart [US, Oren Moverman, 4] During the 1991 Rampart scandal, a beating incident triggers a reckoning for a brutal, racist patrolman (Woody Harrelson.) Bad cop character drama convincingly executed by an impressive cast.

Extraterrestrial [Spain, Nacho Vigalondo, 4] Man and woman waking up after one-night stand realize they missed the evacuation of Madrid due to hovering UFOs; bedroom farce ensues. Delivers delightfully throughout on its inspired mix of seemingly unrelated genres.

The above is now my new fave so far. I've seen a good number of solid works in their respective modes; this is the first film to fully score on the "I've never seen this before" meter.

You’re Next [US, Adam Wingard, 4] Masked killers hunt down members of a well-heeled family's anniversary gathering--unaware that one of the new girlfriends wields a seriously bad-ass skill set. Musters more wit and character detail than you'd expect from a gory neo-exploitation thriller.

Invasion [Argentina, Hugo Santiago, 4] Agents of a shadowy conspiracy fight to prevent younger, more casually dressed rivals from invading the city of Aquelia. Cryptic, deadpan, action-packed exercise in narrative deconstruction is what you'd get if Jorge Luis Borges wrote a spy thriller--because he did, and this is it. This 1969 archival rarity, once thought lost, screened as part of the fest's spotlight on the cinema of Buenos Aires.

TIFF Day Four

Today the festival replaced its usual pre-movie bumpers with a featurette remembering its shellshocked reaction to 9/11.

Chicken With Plums [France, Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud, 4] In fifties Tehran, a temperamental violinist (Mathieu Almaric) takes to his bed, willing himself to die, after he gets swindled trying to buy a Stradivarius. Sad stories told in a funny way, through (mostly) live action sequences in a comics-influenced style.

Like Water For Chocolate comes to mind as a reference point. The sequence in Chicken With Plums depicting Americans as fat, vulgar grotesques might make it tough to replicate the older film's US art house success.

God Bless America [US, Bobcat Goldthwait, 3.5] Middle-aged office worker with nothing to lose bonds with disaffected teen girl as they conduct a nationwide killing spree targeting exemplars of meanness and vulgarization. Gleefully nasty satire is what you might get if Paddy Chayevsky were still around to rewrite Natural Born Killers.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a couple of longish dialogue scenes trimmed before release, which would up my rating a notch.

Bunohan [Malaysia, Dain Said, 3] Three estranged brothers--a kickboxer, a killer, and a shady businessman--return to their home village and come into conflict over the family land. Languidly paced rural noir punctuated by sudden bursts of brutal violence.

J’aime Regardez les Filles [France, Frederic Louf, 4] Callow florist's son party-crashes his way into an ultra-wealthy social circle. Engaging coming of age comedy drama to which Whit Stillman comparisons are inevitable if not 100% on point.

The Sword Identity [China, Haofeng Xu, 4] Martial artist battles an outpost full of soldiers for the right to add an innovative sword design to the list of officially approved weapons. Sly exercise in formalist minimalism that, unlike most art takes on the martial arts film, doesn't cheat the fight choreography.

TIFF Day Three

A heavy-duty day today of sex, power and money--with a little family dysfunction for a change of pace. If you're wondering why cute, unassuming indie comedies sometimes get oddly rapturous receptions at film festivals, wonder no more.

Not that I'm snarking; it was a strong day.

Beauty [South Africa, Oliver Hermanus, 4] Closeted Afrikaaner businessman's yearning for a old buddy's son sends him spinning out of control. Unflinching drama anchored by a pressure-cooker lead performance.

Trishna [UK, Michael Winterbottom, 4] Beautiful village girl (Freida Pinto) accepts a not entirely altruistic employment offer from an irresponsible Indo-British hotel heir. Modern, India- set Tess of the d'Ubervilles succeeds by fully transposing the premise to a new time and place, without seeking an analogue for every plot point of the original.

While waiting on University Ave for a screening at the Isabel Bader, a big revivalist parade blaring J-pop style hymns passes by. Behind the Noah's Ark float teens wear rented animal costumes. I never knew that Piglet and Big Bird were aboard the ark.

The washrooms at this sleekly modernist facility are so cruelly mis-designed that it might better be called the Isabel Vader Theatre.

House of Tolerance [France, Bertrand Bonello, 4] In Paris, 1900, women face the vicissitudes of sex work during a legalized, luxury brothel's final months.

Juxtaposes romantic visuals with an anti-romantic text.

The Good Son [Finland, Zaida Bergroth, 4] Young man whose actress mother's boundary-less dependence and history of bad boyfriends has turned him into her rage-filled protector overreacts when she lets a new man into her life. Taut, perceptively played drama.

Whore’s Glory [Austria, Michael Glawogger, 3.5] Documentary achieves remarkable access into the workaday lives of prostitutes working in Thailand, Bangladesh, and Mexico. Presents an impressionist portrait with arresting cinematography and cool music from acts like PJ Harvey and Antony and the Johnsons; could use a less forgiving edit from its 2 hr length.

TIFF Day Two

Alois Nebel [Czech Republic, Tomas Lunak, 3] Depressed railway dispatcher stoically suffers setbacks after the fall of the Iron Curtain. B&W computer rotoscoping, in the Waking Life style, lends graphic novelty to your basic post-Communist despond movie.

Advantage of digital projection era: when the screening glitches, a freeze frame is much less distressing than melting film.

Disadvantage: projectionists can now forget to turn the subtitles on.

Sub-advantage: this beats a celluloid print arriving with the wrong subtitles.

Mr. Tree [China, Han Jie, 4] In a northern mining town, a perennial screw-up haunted by a family murder makes a footless effort to better himself. Finds unexpected depths in its central character as its naturalistic comedy shifts into the dramatic.

The program book describes the protagonist as the village idiot. On viewing it becomes clear that he is in fact the village dipshit, a quite different position.

Goodbye First Love [France, Mia Hansen-Love, 4] A 15-year-old girl's intense love for her boyfriend casts a shadow over her life that lasts for many years after their break-up.

Sons of Norway [Norway, Jens Lien, 4] When his mom is killed and his dad falls to pieces, a boy raised in a hippie household seeks angry solace in the burgeoning punk scene. Funny and moving coming-of-age story clangs to the music of the Sex Pistols.

John Lydon, who executive produced and makes a cameo appearance, was present along with the filmmakers to give it his authentic rebellion seal of approval.

TIFF Day One

Into the Abyss [US, Werner Herzog, 4] The imminent execution of a young Texan for a callous triple homicide prompts a discursive documentary portrait of his hometown, and the people touched in various ways by the crime. What seems at first like a standard inquiry into the death penalty unfolds into a surprising meditation on the richness, tragedy and strangeness of human lives.

Herzog was present at the screening, describing the gentle but sometimes oddball interviewing technique that impels his subjects to sudden emotional revelations. "They don't teach you that in film school!" His longtime editor explained that they jointly took up smoking for the first time during Grizzly Man and were driven back to it again for this one.

Play [Sweden, Ruben Östlund, 4] Pre-teen trio gets dragged across Gothenburg by bullying, older immigrant kids. Coolly upsetting crime docudrama takes a despairing look at Swedish race relations.

It’s TIFF Time!

If it’s the first Thursday after Labor Day, it must be time for this blog to veer abruptly into all Cinema Hut, all the time...or at least for the next eleven days, as my wife and I once again plunge into our endurance-challenging celluloid staycation, hitting the Toronto International Film Festival for all it’s worth. Tonight kicks off with a Werner Herzog death row documentary and Danish pre-pubescent delinquents, and ends on Sunday Sept 18^th with a day 60% devoted to Japanese madness and mayhem. In between we’ve got Cuban zombies, Norwegian punks, and Korean Kazakhs. Provided all goes according to plan, I’ll be checking out new works from Johnnie To, Ann Hui, Shinya Tsukamoto, Michael Winterbottom, and other past favorites.

This is my 25^th year doing the festival in earnest, which was back when it was called the Festival of Festivals. This seems mathematically impossible.  I guess they let two year olds attend back then. It was a different time.
Here’s the standard drill, if you’ve forgotten how it works around the Cinema Hut at TIFF time or are joining the festivities for the first time:

I’ll be writing capsule reviews of everything I see, and then gathering them up in order of preference in the festival’s aftermath. Until then, I’ll be giving provisional ratings to the films, which are bound to change as they settle into memory. Ratings range from 0 to 5, with 0 arousing my active ire and 5 ascending to rarefied heights of masterpiece-dom.

Interspersed between the capsules will be expansions on the reviews, stray observations, and whatever logistical complaining I fail to suppress.

If you’ve heard of a release that’s playing TIFF, chances are that it’s because the film will be coming out shortly and is getting a big PR push. I tend to skip films that have distribution in place in favor of those I might never get another shot at. So I’m not the one to ask about the Oscar-bait movies with the big stars in attendance.

Do you want to see these movies right away? Well, these titles are beginning their long journey through the distribution chain. Many will continue to appear on the film festival circuit over the next year or so. The high profile releases I tend not to schedule at the fest may appear in theaters as early as next week. Indies and foreign titles will score theatrical releases over the next year or so, and DVD releases after that. Some may appear only on DVD, or vanish completely.

While a few of last year’s films still await theatrical release, most have made it through the chain. So if you want to enjoy some fine cinema right away, you could do worse than to check out my recommendations from last year.

King of Dragon Pass Now on iOS

It’s time to party like it’s 1999, because the once and future tribe-building game King of Dragon Pass has returned like settlers to the kingdom of Sartar. What was once a beautiful computer game without a category has joined the handheld era as a game for iPhone and iTouch, also playable on iPad. Get ready for hours of addictive play as you advance the unique history of your Orlanthi clan, straight from Greg Stafford’s classic world of Glorantha, as also seen in RuneQuest and HeroQuest. Decide whether to build your cattle herds, or raid the cows of clans weaker than yours. Learn the secrets of the Orlanthi gods, entering a sacred realm to recapitulate their myths and gain their power. Puzzle out the agendas of helpful but disparate-minded advisers. Deal with crises ranging from concupiscent poets to angry beast men. A single game will more than justify the price—though you will likely fall prey to its compulsive replayability.

I was fortunate enough to work on this project as a scene writer; when my scenes started showing up with numbers in them, my credit was upgraded to designer. I’m told I wrote 450,000 words, which for comparison’s sake comes out to about three Ashen Stars or four and a half novels.

For this new iteration, A-Sharp supremo David Dunham has leavened the formerly cruel economic model, in which one could undergo the notorious herd size death spiral, with a dramatic rhythm. This furthers easier, more entertaining game play. My role in the port has been of a eagerly anticipating spectator. I’m happy (and addicted all over again) to revisit those scenes. Hint: be harsh with the ducks, but not too harsh.

The game’s core format, alternating resource shepherding with scenes of crisis management, is one I’d love to see explored with other settings. You could do a great Hollywood studio game with much the same framework. The one I’d really love to see would follow the history of the mob in America from before Prohibition to the present day. Here’s hoping that the game will finally get its commercial due in the new format, possibly allowing such blue-sky thoughts to inch closer to reality.

The original game became a phenomenon in Finland, for cultural reasons that seem both obvious and elusive. Now that a new era of gaming has dawned on portable devices, it’s time for the rest of the world to catch up and get building their shrines to Lhankor Mhy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a feud to prosecute against the accursed, dog-loving Herani…

Link Round-Up: Bad Job, Caveman Crossbreeding

Here’s a fresh new occupation for the story beat where your hero hits absolute rock bottom.

Neanderthals weren't the only ones our ancient ancestors were getting it on with.

The Birds: Idiot

Click here for the complete strip archive.

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Link Round-Up: North Sea Stars, Discoverability

Thoughts inspired by Process vs. Outcome post earlier today, as extrapolated to computer games.

An actual play report takes Ashen Stars to the North Sea.

Process vs. Outcome

When developing a sub-system for an RPG rules engine, two qualities of a successful mechanic can fall out of sync. Let’s call these qualities process and outcome.

A sub-system with a strong process is:

• easily learned
• easily remembered once learned
• fast
• engaging

In other words, when you set out to use the rule in play, it goes quickly and smoothly, with a minimum of head-scratching.

A successful rules sub-system must also fulfill its purpose in the game, whatever that might be. In addition to the general goals of the process category, does it achieve the specific goal or goals of this particular project? If it’s a space combat system that’s supposed to feel a little bit tactical and give everyone on the ship something to do, does it achieve that? If it’s supposed to streamline investigative play, does it do that?

When it does, you’ve got a sub-system that contributes a desired outcome to the overall design.

Although DramaSystem focuses on dramatic and not procedural moments, it does need some way to work out whether characters succeed at external, pragmatic tasks, when they arise. Until recently I had a system for this that had good process but an unsatisfactory outcome. Procedural scenes “worked”: they were fun and simple in play. Yet they tended to come out the same way every time: the characters won, after accepting terrible consequences. This represented a failure of emulation; characters in dramatic shows don’t have to pay an awful price for every success. That sent me back to the drawing board. I think the new system has both process and outcome, but then I always think that. More testing will tell the tale.

Sometimes you'll have the opposite problem: a sub-system that gets you where you want to be, but in a manner that is unacceptably complicated, slow, or counter-intuitive. Your audience’s tolerance for difficult rules may change the definition of “unacceptably.”

Link Round-Up: Dragons Love Ashen, MJ’s a Mutant

After the hosts wrestle with combat, the house dragon of the 2gms 1mic podcast gives Ashen Stars two wings up.

Impossible Mary Jane pose, mocked by wags.

Korad: Ideology Vote Redux

Okay, the process by which we vote by liking comments clearly isn’t panning out. It requires people to remember to give a blog post a second look. When I put it that way, the flaw inherent in the system becomes obvious. So, one last time, let’s review the choices and vote with a poll over on the old mothership.

One of these ideologies will grow from obscurity to change Korad. Two others will do likewise to test the mettle of the eventual victor. I have taken the liberty of renaming some of the choices into handy -ism forn. They are:

Candlism. “The Candle in the Darkness” is a stoic path that blurs the line between religion and philosophy. The Candle in the Darkness is a school of thought that focuses on sharp rationality and observed phenomena. Gods are discussed in the same tone as ghosts and chivari apes - to be studied and respected exactly as much as direct observation suggests is necessary. While not, strictly speaking, an atheist movement, The Candle in the Darkness has the scorn and hatred of the religious organizations for the way it denounces faith and prayer.

Gentility. The Gentle Prince, a warrior demiurge, turned his back on the strife and violence associated with the Black Goat of the Fens and built a land of peace and ease. All who accept his path have a place prepared for them there. The Gentle Prince teaches loving submission to those greater than yourself and forgiveness for all who ask it. Surrendering to the will of the Gentle Prince (and his clergy) guarantee a place in paradise after death, and protection from the violent and hateful ways of the Black Goat and her angry children.

Nonism: Based on the teachings of nine masters who have since elevated to divinity through perfection of their philosophical purity. Themes include grace, beauty, and aesthetic excellence in one's duties. The Glorious Nine teach that a useful thing is wonderful, but a thing that is useful and beautiful brings us closer to unity with the godhead, and that a joyful heart is as important as a clever mind.

Satirism: Koradian freedman culture is often overlooked, largely because of the permanent second-class, yet not actually oppressive, citizenship that it imposes. Still, it was probably inevitable that certain of its members would turn to magic (the traditional pastime of slightly disreputable social classes everywhere); and it was probably also likely that said magic would break a mainstream Koradian taboo (in this case, the one against frivolity). Needing to keep said frivolity hidden from obvious discovery meant that its practitioners needed to grow adept at hidden meanings of texts and subtle shadings of speech: a Satirist spell is typically a well-disguised mockery of an existing artistic form, with a direct ratio between the power of the spell and the subtlety of the mockery. It is said that a true adept can transmit a blessing or a curse in a simple "Good morning." And then it was discovered that the spell for ensuring the sex of a child was easily within the powers of the adepts... provided that the woman who was the target of the spell accepted the central teaching of the Satirists: "Life is absurdly good." Which sounds a lot more transgressive in the original.

Symbotomism combines anti-Aesigil views with extreme devolutionism. They believe that the Aesigils have had undue influence on the development of human civilization and culture, and it is now necessary to expunge all symbols used to adorn bodies, clothing, architecture... even going so far as to advocate the destruction of all written records and language itself. Humans will become perfect when they develop their own thoughts and language without Aesigil influence.

Head over to LJ to vote for your favorites.

Link Round-Up: Repairer Reviewed, Santeria Smear, Detective Dee

The Repairer of Reputations scores a gratifying review at RPGnet.

Mirror appliques on mayoral campaign signs prompt Santeria smear.

Tsui Hark's delirious return to wuxia form, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, starts its limited US theatrical run tomorrow. One of my faves from last year's TIFF. Reindeer fu!

Illustrations and Expectations, or the Four-Gun Kch-Thk

In what might be our first Ashen Stars FAQ, I've been asked if Jerome Huguenin's cool image of a kch-thk warrior means that player characters of his locust-like species get four Shooting attacks per round. As the questioner pointed out, the illo will have his players making an impassioned case for it.

The reality is that Jerome came up with a great idea for an illustration independent of a specific crunchy bit in the rules text. Getting a roleplaying game out the door and into your hands is a long enough process without a stage where we look at the art and see if we want to rebalance character abilities based on what it seems to promise players. The ever-hungry kch-thk already come with a nifty array of unique schticks, not the least of which is being able to migrate their discarnate identities into new, fast-growing larval forms when they get killed. The idea of immediately adding yet another bit of defining crunch without testing for balance fails the caution test.

For the moment, let's say that some kch-thk fire four-handed, but that this is a style move. Holding four weapons is easier than coordinating them, even if the shooter sports a set of compound eyes. In the end the four-handers are no more effective than any highly-trained marksman carefully firing a single gun.

The four-handed stance might also show us what it looks like when kch-thk crew members make Intimidation spends. Sure, maybe their accuracy leaves something to be desired. It's still a hell of a way to bust into a room.
(Or he might just be holding four special scanning devices. But that would be too much of a buzzkill, wouldn’t it?)

Link Round-Up: New Policy, Three-Act Cat

In a world of ever-declining standards, sometimes it becomes necessary to draw a line.

And, look, I don’t normally do this. But what can I say? I’m a sucker for a perfect three-act structure:

Korad: Call For Votes

Suggestions are in for the three ideologies that will rise to challenge the old order in Korad. If you haven’t done so already, pop over to the original thread now, and vote by liking your favorite of the comments.

The Birds: Ask

Click here for the complete strip archive.

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Dead Enders

While this exploration of an abandoned Libyan state security station is overall as chilling as you'd expect, a surprising poignancy attaches to certain passages. In the maw of the beast, Walter Mitty daydreams:

Hidden away inside the door of a filing cabinet, in a spot where few eyes would see them, were pictures and postcards from places a Libyan security staffer might only dream about: England, Lebanon, the pastoral countryside of rural America.

Having boldly declared that I would be on the record as having supported the Western support campaign for the Libyan rebels if it turned out to have worked, I can now courageously declare myself to have been right all along.

The fighting's not over yet, unfortunately. Where in Iraq regime supporters melted away in the face of Western ground troops, Libya's civil war remains hot. At first the ferocity of the dead-enders seems inexplicable. Why not attempt an opportunistic last-minute pivot to the winning side? Presumably the guys who are still shooting know (or at least believe) that they were in so deep with the old regime that they're irreparably screwed in the new one. Resistance, no matter how desperate, seems the only good option. Or perhaps the dead-enders are simply as psychopathic as the man and regime they loyally followed until now. Certain last minute massacres may be exercises in killing the witnesses.

Iraqi resisters vanished to fight another day, knowing they'd have a foreign occupier to mount an insurgency against—and thus at least a plausible path back to power. This strategy ultimately failed, but wasn't crazy. Their Libyan counterparts know they'll only face the people they oppressed, and who despise them. As Irony and War are long-standing drinking buddies, it maybe shouldn't come as a surprise that an environment that starves a long term insurgency comes at the cost of near term savagery.

The Hearing Trumpet

As devoted as they were to the triumph of the irrational over the conventional, of the anarchic and revolutionary over conventional authority, the fractious assemblage of artists who called themselves surrealists were notoriously a boy’s club. The artist Leonora Carrington, who died this year at the age of 93, elbowed her way into their movement, deflated their chauvinism, and outlived them all.

Her 1976 novel The Hearing Trumpet (which appeared first in French, in 1974, and was subsequently self-translated) has yet to find the full readership it warrants. No doubt this is because Carrington was reaching out of her visual arts box.

The book opens as a kooky first-person account of the admittedly ancient and eccentric Marian Leatherby. When a friend gifts her with a prodigiously effective hearing trumpet, she learns that her family intends to send her to a home. The institution, run by a pair of parsimonious, judgmental Christian mystics, houses its inmates in bizarre structures in such shapes as a lighthouse, an igloo, and a circus tent. Marian’s fascination with the dining hall’s portrait of a leering, winking nun leads her to a mysterious medieval text of sorcery, corruption, Templars and a Holy Grail that serves as a font of suppressed women’s magic. And that's where it gets crazy.

Experimental in content but clear in its narrative presentation, The Hearing Trumpet is not just daffy but genuinely playful and funny. At the risk of spoilerage, its final cataclysm earns its expatriate author a uniquely feminist (not to mention lycanthropic) spot in the literature of cozy British apocalypse. A neglected classic that deserves sit on any shelf where the literary and the fantastical collide, alongside Borges, Calvino, and Pavic’s Dictionary of the Khazars.