Hart Plaza was still pretty empty at noon on Sunday - but not as empty as my stomach, which was growling in anticipation of those dee-licious morsels… In the background, I could hear a designated speaker preaching (we missed the festival’s biggest name, Ray Parker Jr.), and I have to believe that someone up there was looking out for me - for how could I have ended up at ribfest otherwise? Oh man, did I ever eat some ribs. My plan to get samples from every stand fell through after the first half-rack, but it was worth it. Click the pic for the panoramic wondrousness of it all.

Oh, by the way - I live here now.  It rocks.  More ribs posts soon, I promise.

The first film by director Nimród Antal, Kontroll takes place entirely underground, in the tunnels and flourescent light of the Budapest Metro. Bulcsú, the film’s confused hero, works as a ticket inspector (apparently, the Metro works on an honor system - no turnstiles) with his “gang” — narcoleptic Muki, tiny Lecsó, new guy Tibi, and the ancient Professor. They have run-ins with an endless stream of hostile customers, get their asses kicked on a regular basis, feud with a rival gang of inspectors led by the über-asshole Gonzo - basically, it’s a job with few perks. For entertainment, the inspectors play an even crazier version of chicken - racing from platform to platform, down the tracks, in between speeding trains. Meanwhile, it seems like more and more people are jumping to their death in front of trains (”how inconsiderate”, sniff the inspectors), but it might actually be the work of a super-pushy and mysterious hooded killer. So what kind of misfit would do this for a living?

Well, it’s a perfect job for Bulcsú, who never leaves the tunnels, instead sleeping against a pillar after the last train passes and living on food from vending machines. His past is briefly mentioned when he runs into a well-dressed former colleague, who misses Bulcsú and refers to the important work (of some kind) he did in the past. In an American version, there would undoubtedly be long expositions and flashbacks detailing the tragedy that sent Bulcsú underground, but here – thankfully – the details are left to the imagination.

Along the way, Bulcsú tells jokes with Béla, the Metro’s wise, drunk old trainman, gets caught up in the mysterious hooded killer drama, and meets a crazy girl in a …bear costume who might be weird enough to get him back into the real world. Is the mysterious hooded killer just that - a random weirdo - or is he something else? Are the owls what they seem?

The actors actually “look like real people” (thanks, chanchan!), and extra-weird ones at that, and they do a great job at fleshing out these strange-but-loveable characters. Kontroll is well-paced, suspenseful, hilarious, and very, very well-made, and it does a damn good job at being several genres rolled into one.

As someone who is pretty intimately acquainted with the inner workings of art school, I loved the original Art School Confidential, a four page story in Daniel Clowes‘ Eightball #7. It worked because it made fun of the worst of what awaits unsuspecting students - intellectual masturbation disguised as conceptual art, flaky, bitter, and desperate teachers, students trying to “out-weird” each other - all from the point of view of somone who was there (Clowes attended Pratt in the 80s) and still resents the experience.

The team of Clowes and director Terry Zwigoff sounded like a good idea, too - I liked Crumb, Zwigoff’s documentary on the scuzzy father of underground comics; Bad Santa, a filthy christmas comedy; and his earlier Clowes adaptation, Ghost World - pretty well. The fact that he was a member of Crumb’s Cheap Suit Serenaders doesn’t hurt, either. So it was even more disappointing when this one turned out to be too long by half, too repetitive, too disjointed, and too goddamn meandering to hold my attention. When the movie sticks to the subject matter of the original comic, it does okay. Unfortunately, Clowes and Zwigoff added a murder mystery, a love story, and a confused cast of dozens in an attempt tie together all of the scenes about ridiculousness of art school, and drive their point about the pretentious, trend-seeking, bizarro art world home… But all these threads just don’t hold together. Why didn’t they just leave out the script add-ons and make a short? Why didn’t they try to make David Boring, or Like A Velvet Glove Cast in Iron, or Ice Haven, or Caricature instead - did they really think that this glued-together, overpadded plot would be a great moneymaker?

THE GOOD:

• The first half hour was pretty okay. The introduction to young Jerome, his entrance to Swarthmore, and the breakdown of the various art-school stereotypes (the Critic, the Kissass, the Mom, the Army-Jacket guy) looked promising.
• Great performances by Malkovich (as a washed-up drawing/painting professor), Jack Ong (as the ceramics professor who really, really doesn’t give a shit anymore), and Jim Broadbent as the drunk, creepy Swarthmore graduate.
• The scene with the successful asshole king-of-the-art-world guy doing a James Lipton-style interview at his alma mater, coming to terms with his inner asshole.
• The actual art used in the movie - some was by Clowes, some was by Mark Mothersbaugh, and all of it was hilarious.
• The exploration of art as a way for skinny, picked-on kids to pick up chicks and become successful assholes - just like the jocks-cum-stockbrokers who used to beat them up, but with KNEADED ERASERS!

THE AWFUL:

• Anjelica Huston’s art history professor, who shows up for about 45 seconds, and then appears to tell Jerome that his quest for love is cute before the film’s end. Why? I guess she was the only character who wasn’t onscreen long enough to be a total asshole.
• Similarly, Steve Buscemi’s small role is completely wasted - if you’re gonna invite Buscemi, give the man something - ANYTHING - to do.
• The multitude of scenes following the cops around - we get that they’re shithead stereotypes, and seeing them (and their families) over and over is the worst kind of unnecessary.
• Jerome’s roommates - an in-the-closet fashion designer (snigger) and a fat, Tarantino/Kevin Smith/Whoever-wannabe film student. Oooh - one of them’s gay (har har) and the other one has no talent - just like EVERY OTHER STUDENT CHARACTER IN THE MOVIE. Maybe the film student was Zwigoff’s inclusion, so he could expel some of his own film-school demons… if that means he won’t do a sequel, awesome - but again, it just makes the movie much, much longer.
• The constant repetition of the one point of the whole damn movie - the art world will crush your spirit. We see Jerome constantly try, get rejected, and accept defeat dozens of times, and it doesn’t make us like the douchebag anymore. We got it, okay?

I guess my feelings about the movie kind of tie into my feelings about Clowes. He’s not really one of my favorites - for each thing he’s done that I like (Ghost World, Like A Velvet Glove…, Caricature), there’s one that I really dislike (David Boring, Ice Haven, Dan Pussey). I think there’s just way too much autobiographical Crumb-ness in the cynical, bitter record snobs, art collectors, and pop-culture hating characters in his work for me. But even at his worst, he’s way better than this movie ended up (and he’s way better than Adrian Tomine, but that’s a topic for another day).

I’d like to end with a quote from twinlesbianlighter (on the IMDB messageboards) that sums this movie up:

I went in expecting greatness and was extremely disappointed. It started out great and got progressively worse and worse and worse and then horrible. It’s like ordering food that you think is going to be great. The first bite is good, so it should get better, right? Then the second bite is ok. By the end of the meal, you feel like puking and you’ve got this disgusting after taste left in your mouth.

Oh, the things that terrified me in my impressionable youth… such as these bastards, the YEP YEP aliens of Sesame Street. They were visitors from another world who had come to earth to sound out words like “tel-e-phone” and “com-pu-ter” as part of their plan to take over the world by SCARING THE SHIT OUT OF SMALL CHILDREN. I’m not sure why they scared me so much, but it probably has something to do with the fact that they always invaded showed up when nobody was home, coming through the window while mindlessly droning, “Yep! Yep!”. Thanks a lot for the nightmares, Jim Henson!

For more Sesame Street fun and TERROR on YouTube, check out this enormous list of links from foldedspace.org.

BILLY DRAGO. After I saw his weaselly, creepy portrayal of hitman Frank Nitti in The Untouchables, I was freaked out for days weeks months …well, forever, I guess. Even the unforgettable revenge scene where Costner’s Eliot Ness tosses Nitti off of the roof in a blurry, blue-screen effects shot (see also: Alan Rickman’s similar ending in Die Hard, and many other classic bluescreen badguy falls) couldn’t wipe the specter of that Connery-killing crazyman from my mind.

Drago proved he’s still got his terrifying chops in the recent remake of The Hills Have Eyes - although his appearance was brief, his needle-nosed, cavernous, hollow-cheeked, spooky mug is un-missable as the bearded hill person who loves both the taste of human flesh and sprinting after his victims while shrieking (in a trenchcoat, in the desert).

CALIBOS! This demonic (semi-fictional) sonovagoddess (Thetis, patron goddess of the sea, and mother of Achilles, to be precise) was played by Neil McCarthy, with more than a little Harryhausen stop-motion magic, in the 1981 film Clash of the Titans. I loved that movie the most, but Calibos’ twitching clay tail and sourpuss face scared the bejeezus out of me. Worse than Medusa’s stony visage, f’reals. More recently, he’s shown up in a few episodes of Wonder Showzen as Rad Mark, for no apparent reason. He will take your soul.

SHARKS. Even though I lived minutes away from the shores of Lake Huron, which is way more likely to contain toxic chemicals, human feces and Zebra mussels than any sort of man-eating black-eyed fish, every time I went in that water I felt like a goner. I don’t even remember watching Jaws, but I didn’t need to see it to know the truth: Sharks are just plain scary, man.

Michael Jackson’s THRILLER. My older sister was a huge MJ fan (she had the puffy stickers and everything), and she had a bunch of his albums. I can’t even remember if I had ever seen the video or not - and I’m not sure how I would have, in our cable-less house - but just listening to that damn song would send me hiding under the nearest bed. The worst is when my sister and our MJ-loving babysitter would torture me by playing it over and over… there was no escape from the sonorous tones of Vincent Price, the pulsating Quincy Jones beat (that beat could make the DEAD RISE), the howling wolf/shrieking wind sound effects - it was all much, much too much for young Sluggo.

Chan-wook Park’s first film in his Vengeance Trilogy (which includes Oldboy and the recent Sympathy for Lady Vengeance) is intense, beautiful, and incredibly disturbing. Ryu, a deaf and mute former art-school student, works long hours at a factory to support his sister. She needs a kidney, and Ryu is the wrong blood type, so he gives all of his money - and one of his kidneys - to a shady trio of organ smugglers. When he wakes up without his money, his kidney, and his clothes (not to mention no kidney for his sister), his anarchist girlfriend convinces him to kidnap the young daughter of his former boss (President Park) to raise the money for the legal transplant that’s become available. From here on out, the plot descends further and further into a spiral of the deepest shit, as Ryu and Park both lose their reason to live and decide to seek vengeance.

As Park and Ryu each lose their reason for living, they become obsessed with getting revenge in increasingly brutal ways. The violence in this movie is hard to take, but is never used lightly - when the camera lingers on the gushing blood generated by Ryu’s attack, it stays long enough to show the pain and to illustrate the effect that this act has on the victim, the attacker, and those around them. When police find the bodies, they are shocked by the brutality of the acts. It’s obvious that Chan-wook Park understands the power of cinematic violence in a different way than Quentin Tarantino, and he has made a revenge movie that is very different from Kill Bill.

In Kill Bill, Tarantino presents a similar bloody tale of vengeance, but with characters that are much more clearly “good vs. bad” and cartoonlike violence. Arms are chopped off in giant gouts of blood - but hey, look at the dozens of acrobatic, masked bodyguards still on the attack! Beatrix Kiddo might have to pay for her righteous quest for vengeance someday, but we’re behind her 100%, and for now she can enjoy her life with her daughter. Although there are a few brief moments of sympathy for the others she kills along the way, hey - they were professional assassins anyway, and they had wronged her in a direct, purposeful way. Bill is a stone-cold killer who deserves everything that he has coming to him (and then some).

The characters in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance aren’t as easy to pigeonhole - we definitely sympathize with Ryu, but at the same time, we know that he has fucked up nearly every decision he’s made along the way. He might have started with the best of intentions, but he made the choices that set all of the movie’s events in motion. My feelings for Ryu got even more vague when he went after the organ-stealers - sure, they were awful people and they did an awful thing to him, but Chan-wook Park makes sure that we’re not only watching ‘just desserts’ - we’re also seeing a mother witness the horrible death of her sons.
Similarly, although President Park is initially shown as a rich asshole who fires his devoted employees with no regard for their lives, he later sees the real effect his callous firings have had - his daughter is kidnapped by one former employee, and another poisons his own entire family in despair. President Park is still presented as a cold, brutal and calculating bastard, but what did we expect? Just like Ryu, he lost the only person he cared about. Both characters feel the effect of their actions, and both characters make a conscious decision to go for vengeance, which means that they can’t be redeemed.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance isn’t all bleak - there are plenty of funny parts, even with (and sometimes during) the many intensely painful moments. The ending combined both - and for as far out of left field as it was, I actually liked it a lot. The cinematography is amazing, all of the actors were great, and Chan-wook’s attention to detail is crazy. I don’t know if I liked it more than Oldboy or not, and it’s kind of a tricky movie to recommend to others, but it’s still a great one.

Oh yeah, I did… 9mm all the way around, baby! I’m liking it so far - it does make me feel quite a bit more like Sluggo, which is always a good thing. My new haircut is great for many reasons:

1. It’s really bracing in the morning.
2. I’m saving a bunch of ca$h on shampoo and pomade.
3. It’s good to be ready for when they reinstate the draft - because nothing, but nothing, beats being prepared.
4. One word: AERODYNAMIC!

In Volvo news: the beast is back! New engine mounts, and it’s purring like a tiny swedish kitten. All that’s left on my list is changing the various & sundry fluids, and replacing some damn belts. Then, sit tight until spring… man, I need a damn garage.

It looks like I may get to have dinner with Jeffrey Brown, comic maker extraordinnaire, sometime in December.

We’re seeing Spoon this weekend at St. Andrews - should be a rollicking good time for certain. No halloween plans as of yet, mostly because we’re really lame. Now I have to go get me some beers, so PEACE OUT, my internets friends!1!!!!!

future mugshot for you haters