quiet trickster

Rather good low-budget SF film from Mexico, the debut feature of Alex Rivera. It does show it’s budget in the CG effects (think mid-90s TV level), but for the most part makes the best of it.

No stunningly original ideas (1 part Matrix, one part Minority Report, and so on…), and the themes/subtext are pretty obvious - Mexico/US relations, migrant workers and the exploitation thereof, water rights - but the story itself carries along quite well. It doesn’t attempt to create a ‘futuristic’ future, instead focussing on the depressed rural areas and Tijuana slums of a near-future Mexico cut off from the US. Instead of migrants, the country supplies the US with workers through the ’sleep dealers’ of the title: factories where workers are plugged in and remotely connected to robots in the States. Of course, spend too much time plugged in (as workers desperate for extra cash often are), and bad things happen.

This particular theme is eventually downplayed - possibly the movie couldn’t address the larger issue on this scale of film. Instead, it focusses on the connections between three characters - the young man who has to come to the city to work when his father is killed by the company who owns the water, the city girl who meets him and sells her memories of him even as she falls for him, and the remote fighter pilot responsible for his father’s death. It’s this third character that leads to the rather weak ending, as he tracks down the young man in order to apologise and try to make amends. This leads to rather forced (and rushed) attempt at a Hollywood ending, and although the film is explicit in saying not everything is resolved, it remains unconvincing.

It’s a shame, because the set-up is convincing and atmospheric, and the leads are sympathetic if a little two-dimensional. It’s always good to see SF films from outside Hollywood - there’s plenty of horror and fantasy (to whatever degree), but far less straight up SF.

Encounters with two very different geek icons today:

First was the live event with Ray Harryhausen, the master of stop-motion animation, or ‘Dynamation’ as he called it in his heyday. It was pretty much a whistle-stop tour of his life and work, a little over-zealously directed by his biographer(?)/co-author, Tony Dalton.

There were a few nice moments, and of course lots of great clips, if no particularly great revelations. But remarkable to hear that Harryhausen did the bulk of his work alone, given the painstaking, time-consuming nature of stop-frame animation. We’re so used to watching DVD extras full of CG effects animators, each working on tiny aspects of massive effects sequences, that it doesn’t seem possible that one man could produce such an elaborate sequence as the skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts:

It might be tempting to say that these old special effects, all Harryhausen’s old ‘creatures’, show their age, or that it’s easy to see the join between live action and miniature animation, but so often with modern CG effects, a similar complaint can be made. What CG very often lacks is the ability to make us overlook the technical shortcomings for the sake of the story, while Harryhausen’s creatures are good little actors (admittedly, they’re often up against very bad actors…) that let you stay involved.

I have to admit I was surprised, when they announced the Festival programme, to find that Harryhausen was still alive - he’s 88 this Saturday. So, good to see the man still going, of no longer working, with a spark in his eye. There were also a few special guests, including one of the skeletons (still posable) from Jason and the Argonauts.

I had to duck out of the final Q&A session to dash over to the Filmhouse for Dreams with Sharp Teeth. Just made it time, and I’m glad I did, because this was probably one of the highlights of the festival so far.

A portrait of the controversial, opinionated SF author Harlan Ellison - a very different presence from the genial Harryhausen. Ellison, who has been writing since the fifties, and baiting controversy for most of the time since, is clearly still very much a firebrand.

But a heartfelt firebrand - Incensed at the idiots he encounters, whether publishers, producers, fanboys, Republicans, fundamentalist or aspiring writers, he’s at least partly frustrated at people’s failure to be as good - as intelligent - as they are capable of.

It’s a highly entertaining film, if always on Ellison’s side, regardless of how explosive he becomes, and it does cover, without sentimentality, some of the childhood trauma that may drive him even now. There are talking heads, ranging from Neil Gaiman to Robin Williams, but Ellison is the true focus throughout. As one of the talking heads (Josh Olsen, sriter of) says: ‘Harlan doesn’t have an off switch; he doesn’t have a censor button. He is simply incapable of sugar-coating it for you.’

The film is interspersed with excerpts from some of his work, of which, I should also probably admit, I have read very little. So, note to self: I must look up some of his work once I’ve escaped Edinburgh (and pay for it - the guy is notoriously litigious).