Red Cliff: a review.

Red Cliff, misdirected by John Woo, is a state-produced Chinese movie about men with dense, flowing black locks who enjoy wearing various armored outfits and commanding tens of thousands of expendable soldiers to their annihilation.



These men spend the majority of their screen time making awkward and sometimes creepy faces at the camera and at one another as they predict the weather ("If, during a warm winter, the clouds enshroud the sun, then a southeast wind will blow ...") and dictate nonsensical military philosophy at their numerous underlings. The remainder of the film is taken up by tedious violence of the most ludicrous order.





There is a strange echo of that scene from Shakespeare in Love in which Gweneth Paltrow gets spun out of her boob-binding wrap, but this supposed princess outdoes Viola De Lesseps by disguising herself as a soldier of the enemy and living in their midst for days as she sketches a map of their encampment on her boob-binding wrap; upon her return, greeted by her brother (a king) and all his buddies (generals and other important people), she starts undressing and insists upon getting spun out of her binding in front of everybody until it is finally revealed that J. C. Penney had some market share in women's underthings during the Three Kingdoms era.



Lest we forget that this is a John Woo extravaganza, there is this:





The U.S. release runs 150 minutes, and I felt every single one. It comes close to being so bad that it is awesome, and it partly succeeds by being so bad, but it is clearly not awesome. It made me ponder the essence of movies that are so bad that they are awesome.

Incredibly, in Asia it was released as a 2-part thinger running 280 minutes long combined. It was also a huge success, grossing $125 million worldwide. If we generously assume that each ticket pair was $20, more than six million people spent 280 minutes absorbing Woo-induced gore and facial contortions. That is 1,680,000,000 minutes that the world will never get back. Do yourself a favor.

A reading list for April.

Cormac McCarthy. In the past month I have read The Road, Blood Meridian, Outer Dark and Child of God. Never before has anyone written about murder, cannibalism, incest, filth and general human depravity with such grace and beauty. I am smitten.

Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game. Card is certainly a visionary; the kids at the academy are using iPads and Ender's sister is blogging on the internet, and Card was writing in the seventies. As a piece of literature the book falls short.

Paul Auster, Invisible. The book is great but in the end it does not deliver the toe-curling postmodern climax one expects from Auster. Lots of steamy and, ahem, unconventional sex.

[As an aside, incest has been a recurring theme in many of these books. Outer Dark is the biggest offender but Invisible comes close. Ender does not get with his sister but there is some sense that he wants to. Child of God has only a little bit. There isn't room for incest in Blood Meridian among the mass murder and rape, and no one in The Road is feeling much amorous.]

I am currently reading: Gary Jennings, Aztec; Roberto Bolano, 2666; Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men.

A few words about the iPad.

All weekend I had managed to avoid the Apple store for fear that I might succumb to the siren song of the iPad, the ridiculous name and all. I reasoned that this was a device for which I literally had no need. Guilt would follow an impulse purchase.

But this week I felt strongly the pull of Jobs, and I found myself with an iPad this evening.

The second I "unboxed" the tablet, the air around me became remarkably free of allergens, my plants spontaneously grew half an inch, and my surgically repaired left knee rid itself of that pesky grinding sensation at full extension. Later I found that my bookshelves had ordered themselves into a category-and-author arrangement, and that the ring around the toilet had disappeared.

The user experience can best be described as that of the iPhone/iPod Touch, augmented by a psychedelic state of pure bliss and fulfillment, and a palpable sense of achievement every single time you swipe your finger across the glass.

There are frankly way too many applications available in the store to distract you from the obvious pastime of staring at the home screen until it goes dark, and then turning it on again.

The battery life is such that it actually generates surplus voltage that can be used to recharge the computer that has the honor of syncing with the iPad. And if this computer is a Mac and it is connected to your wall outlet, it will roll back your power bill and possibly earn you a decent living as a net producer of electricity into the grid.

I will report any further insights as I gain knowledge of its wonders and intentions.

And no, I have no buyer's remorse. The iPad has made guilt obsolete. It is carved from a billet of hope and assembled by a team of Chinese angels. It shall lift the veil of ignorance off the huddled masses and reveal to them the wonderment and spectacle that is the world.

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Those looking for more objectivity: Ars Technica, Gizmodo, Engadget.