Why American Horror Story: Coven is THE AWESOME

American Horror Story: Coven is what would happen if Charmed and Sabrina the Teenage Witch dropped acid, took a road trip to hell, and came tearing back in a stolen hot rod fueled by burning angels. The angels may beg you to stop burning them alive, but hey, alternative fuels are too damn costly.

We've seen Tony Soprano and Walter White fight for every scrap of privilege they feel entitled to. The latest incarnation of the white-privileged antihero is an antiheroine.

Fiona Goode becomes more of a new archetype every second she spends onscreen: once you spend some time with her, you'll feel like you've known her forever. To get a picture of Fiona, start with Spike's iconoclasm: "From now on, we're going to have a little less ritual, and a little more FUN around here!" Then add Brigitte Lin at her most regal, in those achingly pure moments just before she dismembers everyone in the room. Finish it all off with the gleeful panache of Bugs Bunny when his foe plummets over the cliff's edge, and you'll have a sense of Fiona Goode's character.

Playing Fiona Goode, Jessica Lange is the sexiest, most dynamic older female character I have ever seen on the screen. And Fiona Goode isn't the only blazingly awesome female character on the show. It includes more than one three-dimensional woman of color, and a fully fleshed-out role for a woman with Down's syndrome.

This third season, Coven? It is THE AWESOME.

Chinese Ghost Stories

Just in time for Halloween, I've published a spooky, fun, and informative article about Chinese ghost stories.

You HAVEN'T seen this before.

http://www.squidoo.com/chinese-ghost-stories

SPL 2 -- with Tony Jaa???

A lot of Asian cinema fans consider the 2006 movie SPL one of the greatest kung fu films of all time -- I know I do.  Now the news is leaking that a sequel is in the works, with at least two of the stars from the original movie, and joining them is Thai action legend TONY JAA.




SPL was a great action film, but it wasn't only an action film.  It had intricate crime drama, powerful tension between cop and crimelord, and yes, it had action.  THEAWESOME action.

I trust Sammo Hung and Co. to pull off the action, but I'm concerned about the rest.  See, those two stars from the original movie?  Their characters DIED.  Both of them. 

So, will this movie be a prequel?  I hope not.  Because SPL came out in 2006, and martial arts actors age like the rest of us.  Frankly I'd find it awkward to watch Sammo pretend to be a much younger man.

I'm hoping it's not a sequel at all, except in spirit.  Because these three actors are stars, and the original name of the movie, Sha Po Long, refers to three stars, and these three carry both talent and gravitas. 

KAIJU! KAIJU KAIJU KAIJU!

In the near future, my friends and I are planning to watch WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS, and I'm looking forward to it.  I remember watching Godzilla movies on television when I was a child.  I was so caught up in that terrible destruction, the battles between godlike powers, the roaring, flying, enormous creatures that spat lightning or puked fire.  Immense, unearthly gladiators making our cities the arena for their titanic clashes, while we flee and scream, for beside them we all are no more than flotsam.


Yet the human drama sustained  the story.  Staying alive, protecting one's family, at a time of terrible devastation, how far are you willing to go?  Will you run up to the very claw of the monster looming over your city in order to protect your child?  Perhaps you're the child's stepfather, and the child has not trusted you or accepted you.  Now buildings are collapsing, and you are the only one who can keep that child safe.  This is the point where we learn what kind of person you are, and what kind of story this is.  Will your wife watch your cowardice and realize you're no true partner to her?  Or will you risk your life and save the child, thereby proving your worth as a parent?

The big monsters are often expressions of fears of natural catastrophe, of science pushing past ethical boundaries.  Coming as these movies usually do from the only nation that has experienced a nuclear dawn, it's a profound metaphor for a world in which a broken atom can tear a city apart.

There's only been one attempt that I know of to write kaiju fiction in English -- Raiju, Kaiju Hunter, by K.H. Koehler, which handles the human drama exceptionally well.  I don't think Koehler's approach managed to translate the terrifying magnitude of the warring beasts into prose, and I'd love to see more authors give it a try.

On Genre

In 1974, a film critic named Paul Schrader wrote an essay about the yakuza film genre.  His conclusion is a superb statement about genre in general.

The important thing to remember about strict genre forms like yakuza-eiga is that these films are not necessarily individual works of art but instead variations on a complex tacit social metaphor, a secret agreement between the artists and the audiences of a certain period.

When massive social forces are in flux, rigid genre forms often arise to help individuals make the transition. Americans created the Western to help codify a morality of the frontier; they created a gangster film to cope with the new social forces of the city.

If the original social metaphor is valid, the resulting genre will long outlive the individual artists who created it -- it may even outlive the times which evolved it. In the present personality-oriented culture, rigid genre forms are the closest thing we have to a popular "art without names."

When a new genre comes into being, one immediately suspects that its causes run far deeper than the imagination of a few astute artists and businessmen. The whole social fabric of a culture has been torn, and a new metaphor has arisen to help mend it. 

...

The yakuza-eiga is a popular social contract between the artists and the audiences of Japan to reevaluate and restructure these traditional virtues. The Samurai Film was no longer serving its intermediary function; new characters, themes and conventions had to be created. Just as early twentieth century Americans needed the Western, contemporary Japanese need a genre which can serve as a moral battleground -- a genre on which the traditional virtues can fight to the death.

Genre and art are not mutually exclusive.  The western was a genre, a knight-errant tale of the frontier, and Sergio Leone raised it to art, as did TheAwesome movie Unforgiven and the tv series Deadwood.