Political theory and practice

Dans une galaxie près chez vous 2 (2008)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1 hour and 40 minutes, rated 6.5 by 619 hopheads.  

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: Québécois.

Verdict: La même équipe, les mêmes blagues.  

Tagline: The second time is not even farce. 

It is 2040 and a desperate Earth, dying of its sins, turns to most puissant nation, le Canada, for salvation. Yes, things are so bad that Canada looks good.

The mission is to find an uninhabited but habitable planet for Earth’s ever decreasing population. With Les Canadiens uniforms, in ice hockey formation this is the crew for the job. Again.  

There are disquieting rumours that a ‘3’ will be made, if viewers show any interest. ‘Hands down, everyone!’

The Big Meat Eater (1982)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime is 1 hour 22 minutes, rated 5.2 by 398 friends and family.  

DNA: Canada

Genre: Sy Fy.

Tagline: The best of the lot.

Verdict: Your tax dollars at work.  

A small town butcher in the Ottawa River valley has a shop built on a fuel source for an alien space ship.  To get at the fuel the aliens slowly (very) and subtlety (not) take over the town to get at the fuel.  

Sounds better than it is.  It is a bit of this, some of that, and less and less.  

The butcher’s slogan is ‘Pleased to meet you. Meat to please you.’  That is the only smile I got in the runtime.

Funded by Telefilm Canada, like Music of the Spheres reviewed elsewhere on this blog. Certainly no private investor would have bought this pitch. But a public service committee under pressure to spend the money or lose it did. Just think:  the proposal for this film must have been the  better than others on the table.  Think about that. Wisely, on its website Telefilm Canada does not list the projects it has funded.  

The Vast of the Night (2019).

IMDb meta-data is a run time of 1 hour and 31 minutes, rated 6.7 by 43,000 cinematizens. 

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: Roswell.

Verdict: A fresh twist on an old story. 

Tagline: Watch the sky!

At a small crossroads town in New Mexico strange things are happening but most people don’t notice because they’re in the high school gym to watch the opening game of the basketball season against ArchRivals.  Everyone, that is, except the all-night DJ on the local radio station and the high school girl who runs the town telephone switchboard until midnight.

This is the mid-1950s when only radio and telephone connected this remote town to the wider world.  

This radio guy and this high school girl are both nerds and well aware of the fact that their jobs set them apart from others.  Each sees the current alienation as an investment in bigger things to come. He aspires to a career in radio, elsewhere.  She saves money to go away to college.  

Establishing these backstories is done effortlessly but slowly, taking too much time on the clock. This Act I must take about 30 minutes.   

Then, while alone at the little switchboard, she finds calls dropping out. Repeatedly. (I blamed Telecom!) Being of curious mind she starts monitoring calls and hears a strange sort of static before the drop. Being a nerd she happens to have a tape recorder (the size of a suitcase) at hand and records the static.

Since anyone she might ask about the static, like the day shift telephone operator, is at the game, she calls the radio station to consult the DJ and plays the static on the phone for him. ’Well, that is odd,’ is radio guy’s reaction. It is call-in radio and he gets a long meandering call about strange things from Bill. Then another from Mabel. (These two must be weirdos if they are not at the game, along with those callers whose connections were dropped.) Both Bill and Mabel, unbeknownst to each other, have each been long ostracised for their separate and independent reports of strange things, and welcome the chance to talk about their experiences. Radio guy and phone girl are good listeners.  Much is hinted at but little is spoken. The hint is ‘Watch the Sky.’ This is Act II. 

Pedants corner.  Why he is not broadcasting the big game is anyone’s guess.  

In Act III they rush around a lot, though I could not quite fathom why and she fetches a baby to carry around. Then they have their close encounter. 

A great effort has gone into capturing the 1950’s with two-toned chromed, tail finned, and whitewall-tired cars, saddle shoes, cat’s-eye spectacles, poodle skirts, pocket protectors, yet the radio station has a ‘W’ call sign. ‘Impossible in New Mexico,’ cried the Fraternity Brothers. ‘West of the Mississippi was always “K.”’ But wait, WOTW might stand for the World of the Worlds radio broadcast.  Belay that quibble.    

Absent is the Red paranoia so palpable in those years.  Bill and Mabel would have been suspected by some convoluted reasoning of being reds under their own beds.    

Many of the lauding reviews focus on the technical aspects of camera work, length of takes, and other film school criteria that mean nothing to a viewer: me.  What I want is a story and some characters to get to know. These characters remain distant from the viewer, I found, despite the close-ups. Oh hum.   

Pick, pick, pick…even so, as it is, it is a far better thing than Asteroid City (2023) for all its millions.  

For those who must know, the division between “W” and “K” for radio call signs was made as that medium expanded greatly in the 1930s. Prior to that “W” was the norm. When this regulation was introduced, stations west of the Mississippi that had used “W” were given the option to retain that heritage. Some did, others switched to “K.” Satisfied?

It has spawned a Podcast Series for the stans.  

The Dial of Destiny (2023)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 2 hours and 34 minutes (Whew!), rated by 6.6 by 137,000 cinematizens. 

Genre: Indy.

DNA: adventure with a body count.

Verdict: Nostalgia.

Tagline: You never know when Doric Greek will come in handy.

It starts with a bang and then ramps up!  Among the exotic locales like the Bronx, Mid-Town, the Alps, Tangiers, Casablanca, insular Syracuse, and more. There is some superb acting from the three leads (and briefly from the hotel bellman and the Greek sponge fisherman) nearly lost in the rush. 

Most of the action is comic book, but fun anyway.  

Mads is a mutant Werner von Braun with a couple of Bama good ole boys licensed for mayhem. I found the plot hard to follow with the man on crutches who seemed to have wandered in from another film. I cringed at the early classroom scene which was all too realistic.  (Though wheeling in a television screen was not.  It could not be on, but had to be unplugged and plugged in, turned off and turned on, and the tuned in without a rooftop antenna.)  

The meeting of the time travellers is superbly played. 

It is way too long, but well, it’s Indy and he has earned some tolerance, true, but no, not this much.  

Pedant’s corner. There are many liberties with history, despite the considerable effort at verisimilitude. The German 2-cm anti-aircraft cannon was not a Bohors pom-pom gun. In August of 1939 there was no V-rocket program.  Then there is all the falderal about the tomb of Archimedes, which does not exist, and probably never did.   

Warning from Space (1954) Uchûjin Tôkyô ni arawaru

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1 hour and 27 minutes, rated 4.7 by 1,200 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: Japan.

Verdict: Faster then.  

Tagline: The End is Nigh. (See above.)

Instead of using WhatsAPP the aliens arrive in person to deliver the bad news — The end of the world is coming. Arriving straight from a costume party, each alien is dressed in kites that give them the shape of starfish. This look puts the Japanese they meet off sushi. A national crisis follows.  

These aliens have a Plan Nine and keep trying to warn humanity that a catastrophe looms. However, most of humanity is busy killing each over which end of an egg to break first, the big or little end.  Both sides claim a divine commandment. This religious conflict over eggs is more important than planetary destruction. This latter part certainly seems realistic, an endless, bloody war over nothing.  

The aliens come from a planet in the Solar System we never see because it always behind the Sun in a mirror orbit. That trope has been used in several other films. like Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1959) and Another Earth (2011). (Ahem, anyone who did high school science knows that a concealed counter-orbit makes no sense. ‘Gravity, Baby.’ Gravity would reveal another planet’s existence. Got that?)  

Japan is once again victimised by both the aliens and the rest of the world, but it perseveres, and finally there is global unity long enough to set all clocks to Tokyo standard time, and fire a barrage of missiles at the threat. Others have also dealt with this threat: When Worlds Collide (1951), The Day the Sky Exploded (1958), Meteor (1979), and Armageddon (1988). So far their combined efforts have been enough.  

Whew.  There follows another lecture on world peace, a mere nine years after the blood soaked epoch 1937-1945 led by Japan, then as now a victim.  As if.  

The Mysterians (1957) Chikyû Bôeigun

IMDb meta-data is run time of 1 hour and 25 minutes, rated 6.1 by 1,800 cinematizens.  

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: Japan.

Verdict: Respect their cultural ways. 

Tagline:  Asylum seekers unite. 

Relaxing after the rigours of World War II, a lot of Japanese actors are disporting when…!  Yep, the aliens strike first, kind of like the Japanese in World War II, not to mention Port Arthur earlier. No sooner do they set an alien foot on Japan than their mechanical mole burrows through the earth to cause earthquakes. (Yes, I know scientists will object to this but let ‘em!)  Above ground this mole follows the maxim of Japanese General Yasuji Okamura in China: ‘Kill all! Burn all! Destroy all!’

Turns out that was just an opening gambit like the Bird Opening in Chess. Bam, game on!  After showing what they can do the Mysterians politely introduce themselves. They are asylum seekers avant le mot.  

Yes, you guessed it the Mysterians under those biker helmets and inside those colour-coded capes are from Mysterious, a planet that was between Jupiter and Mars. (There go those scientists again!)  They trashed the place and had to leave, so they need a place to stay, one square kilometre will do, says the dubber.  Ah, and one other thing, in the haste of departure it seems they left the women behind to clean the place up, and they now they need more so they ask for access to Japanese women. Once again the aliens are after our women!  (Cf. Blood Beast from Outer Space [1965], Mars Needs Women [1968], and Lobster Man from Mars [1989].)

They ask but even as they ask some Mysterians have already lined up dates.  Sort of, but it is more like abductions, but maybe that is their cultural ways which we must respect. Several women are clonked, gassed, and otherwise rendered insensible and whisked away to hovering light blobs in the sky.

Well, the aliens did ask, but then they didn’t wait for the answer just did it.  Speaking of cultural ways, at no time do either the Mysterians or the Japanese negotiators ask women about their reaction to this request. 

Game on! None of the war surplus gear the Japanese have does any damage to the dome under which the Mysterians watch the fireworks.  The United Nations supplies some heavy duty mumbo-jumbo that makes the Mysterians stop laughing; even so, it is not enough. Uncle Sam comes to the party by lending the Japanese, as if in 1957, some r-e-a-l-l-y big rockets which the Japanese pilot. Meanwhile, a scientist, son of Tokyo Rose, who earlier went over the Mysterians has a change of heart and sabotages the dome from within while the really big rockets hammer it from without. This double bammy does the trick. Cracks appear in the indestructible dome.    

Ka-boom!  Colour-code capes and all, the Mysterians scoot. 

End, followed by heartfelt high school valedictorian speeches about cooperation and world peace.  

There are things to like about it.  The models are well done and the action sequences are good, for the time. The plot has enough twists and turns to keep attention, but way too much of the run time is ka-boom, and more ka-boom.  Moreover, you’d need a short memory in 1957 to be lectured on world peace by these people after the decade 1937-1945.

Oh, I did see a resemblance between the mechanical mole and the aliens at the start of the Fifth Element (1997), but this 1957 film takes itself far more seriously than that more recent one. 

I watched a poor quality specimen which had been cut down for television, so maybe in its cinema version there is more dramatic sense than I got. I’ll never know, but you might. Decide for yourself. No need to inform me.