Movie reviews: Barbarella and 300
The last couple of months have been busy with work and play. Here are a pair of movie reviews for you:
It came as a fitting surprise, the kind that resolves a question you weren't consciously aware your subconscious had asked, to find after seeing the movie that Barbarella was based on a French comic book. At times, one can sense the title character reflects the beautiful-naif archetype of Gaullist-era pop culture I first encountered in the Clementine books my father had stashed away in a bottom shelf of the bookcase. Sadly, the film suffers from Roger Vadim's ham-handed direction. Few things are as tedious as the adolescent taboo-nudging of a previous generation, which was especially regrettable given the truly interesting potential of the conflict between the sexually-innocent Barbarella and the mad scientist Durand Durand. Alas, Vadim gives us his then-wife Jane Fonda's nude silhouette and some ludicrous dialogue (e.g., Barbarella tells the blind angel to "look out!"). The film had a few good moments, such as Barbarella shorting out the Orgasmotron, and Barbarella and Dildano using the intimacy pill to make love a la Terre, plus I could see themes, blurry through Zeitgeist transmission, from the atrocity exhibition that was '60s New Wave British sf, but those moments were few and far between.
300 is of course the highly-fictionalized epic story of a group of white men with ripped abs slaughtering thousands of veiled Asiatics and servile Negroes in the name of truth, justice, and the Spartan way. To be fair, effeminate Xerxes with his overdubbed breathy-bass voice has some Caucasians in his employ, but they are twisted and monstrous (and they aren't spearcarriers, either). Think of it as a sword-and-sandal version of The Iron Dream; it is the best piece of gay fascist post-September 11 propaganda I have yet seen. To be fair, the earliest fight scenes were well-done, before the viewer was numbed with their repetitiveness, and the symbolism of Ephialtes--whom Leonidas wants to stand and Xerxes wants to kneel--was more evocative than I expected.
It came as a fitting surprise, the kind that resolves a question you weren't consciously aware your subconscious had asked, to find after seeing the movie that Barbarella was based on a French comic book. At times, one can sense the title character reflects the beautiful-naif archetype of Gaullist-era pop culture I first encountered in the Clementine books my father had stashed away in a bottom shelf of the bookcase. Sadly, the film suffers from Roger Vadim's ham-handed direction. Few things are as tedious as the adolescent taboo-nudging of a previous generation, which was especially regrettable given the truly interesting potential of the conflict between the sexually-innocent Barbarella and the mad scientist Durand Durand. Alas, Vadim gives us his then-wife Jane Fonda's nude silhouette and some ludicrous dialogue (e.g., Barbarella tells the blind angel to "look out!"). The film had a few good moments, such as Barbarella shorting out the Orgasmotron, and Barbarella and Dildano using the intimacy pill to make love a la Terre, plus I could see themes, blurry through Zeitgeist transmission, from the atrocity exhibition that was '60s New Wave British sf, but those moments were few and far between.
300 is of course the highly-fictionalized epic story of a group of white men with ripped abs slaughtering thousands of veiled Asiatics and servile Negroes in the name of truth, justice, and the Spartan way. To be fair, effeminate Xerxes with his overdubbed breathy-bass voice has some Caucasians in his employ, but they are twisted and monstrous (and they aren't spearcarriers, either). Think of it as a sword-and-sandal version of The Iron Dream; it is the best piece of gay fascist post-September 11 propaganda I have yet seen. To be fair, the earliest fight scenes were well-done, before the viewer was numbed with their repetitiveness, and the symbolism of Ephialtes--whom Leonidas wants to stand and Xerxes wants to kneel--was more evocative than I expected.
posted by Raymund at
3:10 PM
1 Comments:
Dear Raymund,
I'm Luca Oleastri, I live in Italy and I'm the author of "Tunnels" image, cover #537 of SciFi Weekly.
I've find your blog browsing my name on Google and, with surprise, I read your short story inspired by my illustration.
For some serendipity reason, on this days I'm working as illustrator and also as editor - in ccoperation with othe peoples - of an Italian Science Fiction prozine named SHORT STORIES MAGAZINE... (!) :)
The magazine will collect SCI-FI short stories from italian, european and overseas authors; some are famous authors in the field and some are not.
All the writers will collaborate with Short Stories for free.
The magazine - in italian - will be printed and distributed worldwide via Lulu (see www.lulu.com) and also through many international on-line book shop as Amazon, B&N and so on.
The peculiarity of the magazine is that all the novels will be illustrated by me. I'm a professional sci-fi artist (see my website at www.innovari.it).
I ask you if I can put your short story based on my illustration - translated in Italian - on the first number of Short Stories, with my "Tunnels" image as illustration.
I think that the title of your story will be Tunnels... ;) (it work in italian too).
If you agree please send me a mail as soon as you can, adding your name, surname and a little bio of you (remarking your activity for Escape Pod) and your email.
My email address is: shortstoriesmag@gmail.com
If all goes well Short Stories will be out around Christmas 2007/January 2008.
BTW: we are searching a good english motherlanguage translator who can translate our magazine form italian to english, because we have in mind to do an english version of Short Stories. We will pay the translation.
Have you some suggestions for us?
All the bests,
Luca Oleastri
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