a life cast in John Hughes.

There's that montage in Pretty in Pink where Andie/Duckie/Blaine are sitting by the phone soon after the physically decisive hay-rolling horse stable date, it's raining outside like the world's trying to drown itself, and New Order's Elegia creeps its way in & builds into an inexorable throb as the next day at school comes to cast its harsh light on the emotional shortfall.



That's exactly where I'm at right now.



Surprise. Joy. Frustration. Disappointment.

I can hear myself counseling a friend not so long ago that we were better men for holding onto our romantic ideals, that they imbue our souls with worth & value, that they represent an undefeatable hope that we will one fine day find that girl, that our desires will be met & exceeded with passion & comfort, and it will all be achingly transcendent.



"What about prom?"



All I want to do right now is listen to The Smiths, nurse a three finger tumbler of scotch while hucking cards into a bin, ride my BMX until I collapse in unthinking fugue, or go beat the crap out of something. And to seriously back whatever kickstarter or tech stock that's working on gynobots.



Yet I also want to believe I'm still right, to hang onto my 1980s optimism and teen drama motion picture ending.



I watched two friends of mine at work not look at each other today. They'd talked about moving away together, about taking trips to far cities & deep wildernesses, worked on merging dreams, and helped each other through some of their past damages. But they broke up last night, showing up so bitter and unhappy, just standing there 20 feet from each other, unable to escape, unable to look. It killed me to watch it, though it might've been for the best and beyond repair, the selfishness outweighing their willingness to understand & accept the other. It was so uncomfortable & ugly. But they aren't me, nor are they she.



"No! What about prom?"



A girl I'd had a crush on since my freshman year asked me to senior prom. She asked me. Because it happened once, I have to believe it could happen again.



It just feels so, so, so, very, very, very, hard right now.



Fuck.



Fucking happen already.

[Andie, I feel you. I would've called because I still believe in you. I wish upon your star.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him.

the way of Car-Fu.

In the wake of the Wachowskis' "Speed Racer", and car-centric cinematic franchises like "Fast & the Furious" and "The Transporter", classics like "Bullitt" and "Grand Prix", or cult favourites "Gone in 60 Seconds" (1974 original) or "The Road Warrior", or "Death Race", the subversive "Drive" (2011), and grindhouse horroramotive "Death Proof", the theme of cars equipped for aggressive and offensive driving pervades and fascinates as a highway accident does rubberneckers. The guilty spectacle of cars duking it out sells tickets, but as with everything the roadtrip begins with the written word, realized to the vanishing point where death imitates art. 



Taking it back to source materials, Ib Melchior's "The Racer" inspired Roger Corman's "Death Race 2000" leading to its 2008 update, while Alan Dean Foster's "Why Johnny Can't Drive" influenced Steve Jackson's enduring "Car Wars" boardgame that later seeded Sony's "Twisted Metal" titles. Both short stories passenger us into a creepy dystopian near-future where the worship of the machine outweighs the value of an annoyingly overpopulous humanity. 



That annoyance makes itself felt on the highways, as the stories both key into road rage where lies the inevitable confrontation of ineptitude & obstacle followed by the immediate emotional reaction of frustration, a roadblock to the 1950s idea of the car as ultimate freedom and vehicle for liberation, an impedence to the "grins" as many automotive journalists like to characterize the joyride of high speeds granted by performance cars. 



In Arizona last year a man who believed he'd been caught speeding, drove up and shotgunned a photo van, disabling not only the equipment but killing the non-police technician inside. The state pulled all the monitoring vans off the roads for awhile, fearing more of the same might happen. If authorities aren't able to stay on top of it, such doubly wrong minor revolutions might become more widespread. 



With ego and identity being wrapped up for so many owners in their rides, some drivers' automania manifests in a "Move Bitch", my car is better than yours, bolstered by the false sense of unstoppability. Whether that exoskelton is 2000 musclebound pounds of Detroit steel, a carbon fiber sword cutting through the windflesh, or a drifter carving a mountain, the need for proving one's superiority on the road has the aspect of an armoured arms race. Given the exponential fast-forwarding of technology, and the widespread popularity of aftermarket kits, it may not be so far off the map that customizers could install such modifications under the pretense of personal on-the-road protection to take care of business. 



Such may herald the grim way of Car-Fu.

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1/21/2014 Addenda: Yes! Pima County has eliminated the totalitarian speed enforcement cameras in Tucson! Hopefully this will be followed by the City of Tucson removing their financially onerous & legally entrapping intersection cameras, too!

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

reverse engineering Speed Racer.

Speed Racer's my current monomania. Why? It's compelling with a cross-Pacific imprint that's endured for four decades. Many have tried to pigeonhole it as a kids' property, but if you actually sit down and watch the 52 episode 1967 series it's got high adventure, infused with noir in medias res elements, James Bond SPECTRE-style villains, mid-1960s design sensibilities (especially The Racers' house and the cars), cigar smoking, femme fatales, a flirtatiousness with airline stewardesses motif, the idea of foreign exotica, and some serious body count with submachine guns &, of course, aggressive racing accidents.



Proper respect to creator Tatsuo Yoshida (b.1932-d.1977), whose Tatsunoko Productions seahorse logo of was inserted into dinnerware patterns and racing flags throughout the cartoon, and Peter Fernandez, quite possibly the man responsible for the initial importation and translation of now-ubiquitous anime. This alone makes "SR" a watershed.



We can also posit that "SR"'s re-broadcast on MTV in the 1990s may have helped popularize the local Southern California import street racing scene to national prominence. In May 1998, hip-hop journal Vibe Magazine publishes Ken Li's article "Racer X", directly inspiring 2001's "The Fast and the Furious". "F&F" features an undercover cop who infiltrates L.A.'s car culture to bust some thieves, which is essentially what Racer X was up to.



Contrary to the shallow critics who kneecapped the live-action film's theatrical release, the 2008 meisterwerk requires no apologies. "The Matrix" might be considered the Wachowskis' "The One"-hit wonder, yet the story of the young race car driver who must use his burgeoning talents to change the fundamentally corrupted reality he operates in is instead painted in a stunning palate of neons accompanied by just enough metaphysical implications but without the same level of obvious didacticism.



Placed in a far more tech-oriented world where racing at the 1900s became a global touchstone, and tracks evolved into free-form roller-coaster spirals, turnpike butterflies, jumps and vertiginous drops, the directors designed a glorious context for such hyper-action. While all four racing sequences are CGI (production designers only built three of the 80 cars and the scale models don't actually run) it's far above Tron-esque as the actors' cockpit expressions all mesh with the external mayhem, and their performances reinforce the believability of the incredible action.



There's a problem with all stories that feature competition: The hero's slated to win, which is the payoff, but anyone can call that from the preview. The writer's trick is to play the adversity so high that as a viewer you doubt it on an emotional level, or at least can't logically see exactly how that victory's to be obtained without a surprise or spectacle that appears to supercede the narrative's foregone track. The Wachowskis did this in the Matrix Trilogy to an extent, while in the animated SR Speed had to do it nearly every episode with its freeze frame cliffhangers and nearly omnipotent supervillians. The movie only amplifies the soul of the show to dizzying proportions.



In terms of metaphysics, one has to more than suspect Yoshida integrated occult ideas given the use of an influential character named Prince Kabala. Tatsunoko Productions, the studio that did "SR", will later do animation on the kabalah-laden "Neon Genesis Evangelion". There's a partial Tree of Life and all the chakra points subscripted beneath the seven members of the Racer Family itself:

• Pops is intellect, mind, and the Willful (Keter)/wrathful god-designer at the Crown.


• Speed is the indefatigably Victorious (Netzach) spirit and newly opened 3rd Eye.


• Spritle is energetic Intuitive (Chokmah) innocence, ever over-expressive Throat.


• Sparky constructs mechanical Splendours (Hod), a forger from the fires in the Solar Plexus.


• Trixie, the Adornment (Tiferet) of the divine feminine, the gendered Sacral with the strengths of both.


• Rex/Racer X, the hidden baser element and Foundation (Yesod), the Root.


• The Mach 5's the physical vehicle or whole body itself, the result of creation and Kingdom (Malkuth).

Also, in "The Most Dangerous Race" (episodes 9, 10, & 11), Spritle and Chim-Chim disguise themselves as distinguished gents (top hats and monocles, near to Victorian masons) and drive their go-kart jalopy far off into a spooky hinterland, encountering totem animals bear and owl, to find the deathly Captain Terror and his Car Acrobatic Team holding a mystical ceremony to bind the elements to themselves for victory. The otherworldly and dreamlike sequence mirrors the hero's journey into the underworld, and was the first in a few pointedly nightmarish passages in the course of the show.



"The Fastest Car on Earth" (episodes 20 & 21) opens in a graveyard. A sinister hearse parked by some headstones robs a grave, not of a body, but of a long-buried engine wrapped in its own death shroud. At the track, when Pops recognizes the GRX from the distinct beat of its muscley sub-bass throb, he warns Team Go to stay away: "There's something supernatural about that car. It might even be a ghost! I've heard of people ghosts, so it's perfectly sensible that there might be ghosts of certain cars." Against his father's odd warning Speed steals his way into the house of witch-like Oriana, to drive off in the golden car. The ultimate joyride nearly proves his last as Speed enters "Another dimension! A dimension born of Speed!", and passes out as the world bends and breaks around him. Pops' assessment and Speed's transcendent GTA testifies to the idea of the GRX's resurrection & undeath, that it's "cursed" condition ultimately claims its would-be driver with its inhuman speed.



Numerologically the East Asian traditions ascribe Speed's number 5 to be the sum of all the elements (water, fire, earth, wood & metal) which correspond to the five visible planets. On the other hand, the Japanese consider Racer X's number 9 unlucky as it's a homonym to the word for pain or distress. The Japanese Yakuza have imbued the number 9 as a losing number, particularly in gaming and in their penitential ritual of removing one finger to leave nine. However, these negative associations for Racer X's number could be an inversion as he both brings bad luck and pain to the criminal element.



As the family's hidden foundation, Racer X serves as a protective buffer for Speed. It's X's amoral necessity that affords Speed his boy scout purity. At times X even admonishes Speed for having too much empathy for other racers, but still admires Speed for it at the same time. X is the pragmatic and mercenary version of what Speed's in danger of becoming should Speed continue to aid Inspector Detector. Take off the mask and Speed would find a near-possible older & darker self. 



Mom Racer, who in the above familial equation is the Heart and Compassion (Chesed), sums up what the act of living gracefully is: "When I watch you do some of the things you do, I feel like I'm watching someone paint or make music. I go to the races to watch you make art. And it's beautiful, and inspiring, and everything that art should be."



Reaching from the initial 10-story manga, to the series, to the 1985 Now Comics' "Speed Racer" & "Racer X" titles, to Wildstorm's "The Origins Collection" & IDW's "Chronicles of the Racer", here follows a rough fanon (not canon) sequence (spoilers included) of creative influences and insightful story points to construct a multisourced continuity:





- 3100 B.C.E. In the kingdom of Nubia, a runner with an M-like design painted on his chest is chased by a masked slightly-older figure with an X-ish design on his chest.



- 49 B.C.E. Swiftus Romulus races his Marcus V chariot at Circus Maximus. 



- Medieval Prince Sprint Rackham and his horse MacFife receives jousting aid in the form of Mage V armor from his friend Sparkinton's father, the inventor Myrddin. Enemy to King Pellinore's reign is merry archer outlaw Robin Ecks.  



- 1680 C.E. Jamaica's Port Royal is ruled by Governor Cruncherbloque. Captain Reed Saber's pirate crew races across the Atlantic in the SS Marque, improved by the mechanically apt Swabby. Rival Wretched Rex crosses swords with Saber. 



- In the Old West, Indian outlaw Sleek Raven and his younger brother Little Spirit live outside the Arizona town of Mahfoon, which hosts sharpshooter Lil' Trixie Sureshot, horseless carriage Model 5 creator Reginald Krenz, and the masked Sherriff Tex. 



- Scientist Bent Cranium develops the superpowerful RX tank engine under duress for the Nazis. 



- Speed's great-grandfather Spitfire flies for the allies in WW2. 



- Post-WW2, Cranium will become disabled and wheelchair-bound while testing later versions of his RX engine. (The 1998 movie "RPM" features a wheelchair-bound car engineer. The injured Cranium appears in DC/Wildstorm's 1999 "SR" comics.) 



- Rapid Ronnie Racer, Pops' grandfather, does midnight moonshine runs, taking part in the nascent days of racing and starts up the modern Racers' family passion. 



- Pa Racer, Pops' father, drives in the demo derby circuit. 



- Pops wrestles and becomes champion of the West Side Grunters and Groaners. He later meets Mom during his stint as vicious champion exhibition wrestler Dragon Racer. 



- The 1964 film adaptation of Ian Fleming's "Goldfinger" includes a tricked-out Aston Martin DB5 (note the "5") armed with interhub extending tire slashers & oil slicker, which later is improved on by Delila's deadly and fully articulated wheel cones and Snake Oiler's rear-mounted road slickerator in the live-action SR. Also, villainous Goldfinger's Rolls Royce is made of smuggled gold hidden by a paint job, which will later inspire the plot for the anime's Mammoth Car.



- Elvis Presley's "Spinout" features a young race car driver with a dollop of frontal hair curl who wears an ascot, knows martial arts and follows his own star in a streamlined Shelby Cobra. A rich and jealous doe-eyed love interest tries to crash her convertible coupe into his heart. Sound like a couple we know? The King continues his racing theme in a few other films, but the seed for Speed's planted in 1966.



- Older brother Rex Racer coaches tween Greg (ergo the G on his polo) "Speed" in the Mach 3. 



- Rex Racer crashes in a dazzling near-victory. Rex blames his father's car, Pops blames Rex, and all communication between Rex and his family is severed by the fallout. 



- While racing for another motor company Rex meets his apparent demise on the track during a crash and burn. Still alive, Rex hides out from saboteurs in the racing industry that have ties to the international underworld. The Racer family thinks Rex dead. 



- Hank Racer, Pops Racer's nephew, drives for Racer Motors. 



- Aircraft company heiress Millicent (ergo the "M" on her top) Patricia "Trixie" Shimura and Speed attend school together, beginning a lifelong friendship. 



- Rex spends time in the island nation Kapecapek under the tutalage of Prince Kabala, royal heir and crazy-mad driver. An also thought-dead Bent Cranium appears in Kabala's employ and develops the ARX, the second generation of RX engines. (In 2007, Honda names an Acura racing engine the ARX-01.) Rex's training car bears the number 9 as he's Kabala's 9th opponent in the intra-volcano Fire Race. 



- Kabala dies, but his demise is disguised by his younger sister Princess Sylvana and Rex, who dons Kabala's hood to stop a coup. 



- Rex leaves Kapecapek to later join espionage outfit GAS (Global Arms Security) as Agent X. He soon re-enters the world of racing as the mysterious Racer X. (If Marvel Comics' "X-Men" [which premiered in 1963] did cross the Pacific, it may be that Cyclops' costume with its "X", fitted mask, and wraparound eyevisor influenced Racer X's disguise.) 



- Racer X runs a mission with a genetically intelligence-enhanced talking chimp named Randy, who gets damaged by electrocution while saving the world. Instead of destroying the now non-speaking animal as per GAS orders, X ensures it ends up in the care of an unsuspecting Sparky. 



- Hank Racer crashes in the Mach 4. The accident costs him his ability to race. 



- Unshaven bohemian Sparky comes back to support the Racers in the wake of Hank's accident, introducing an all-too familiar chimp into the Racer household. Mom cleans Sparky up as best she can. 



- Hank later recovers enough to continue young Speed's training behind the wheel of the new Mach 5. 



- Pops Racer quits his factory carcitect job at Mishida Motorworks, taking the design for his revolutionary new engine with him. 



- Here's where all the events of the classic 1966 to 1968 TV series go. Note the freeze and turn in the intro which the young Wachoskis will later emulate in the now common Matrix shot. Recurring and recycled adversaries include Alpha Team, gold thief Cruncher Block and his Mammoth Car, skullishly faced Captain Terror with his star driver Snake Oiler and their Car Acrobatic Team. The world's fastest car, the gold pointed GRX, would appear, now a seventh generation of the uberfast RX motor.



- Near the end of the series, Speed will call Racer X on his masquerade. Racer X sucker punches Speed in the gut to knock Speed out and avoid answering the question. X quits racing to go even further undercover as Special Agent 10 (note: Roman numeral X = 10). 



- The show ends with Speed winning the Race Around the World, proving that he is indeed the best racer on earth. 



- Starting in 1981, artist Jaime Hernandez in "Love & Rockets" features pomp-haired world-class celebrity mechanic Rand Race and his ballcap wearing assistant Yax.



- Only based in name on the classic arcade game, CBS cartoon "Pole Position" (1984) has teen brother & sister stunt drivers, a little sister character who owns a troublesome raccoon/monkey for a pet, and a wheelchair bound doctor of engineering.



- The indie publisher Hurricane Comics produces the short-lived "Chassis", a comic based in an alternate history art-deco world where WW2 never occurs, Rocket Car racing is the most prominent international sport, and the eponymous naturally talented woman racer rules the track despite saboteurs and espionage. The homages to SR are prevalent (and the retro-futuristic setting must be considered as possible influence on The Wachowskis live action adaptation).



- Young Magazine will launch the "Wangan Midnight" serial in 1992 and the "Initial D" serial in 1995, both featuring young men out to be the best street racer. "Initial D" becomes an anime in 1998, and "Wangan Midnight" animes in 2007. The latter features the midnight blue Fairlady Z (S30), an allegedly cursed race car, which semi-parallels the Now Comics' GRX storyline. 



- 1993's "(The New Adventures of) Speed Racer" wasn't a continuation but a remake produced by the same folks who animated "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". Enough said. 



- An article entitled "Racer X" by Ken Li from Vibe Magazine's May 1998 issue helps popularize the Southern Californian import racing scene. Its coverage directly inspires the 2001 film "The Fast and the Furious". 



- A Subaru racing enthusiast comes up with the concept of the "Trunk Monkey" in 2000, a monkey used to help distribute weight during high-speed handling. In 2003, a series of hilarious commercials for a car sales group feature a live-action "Trunk Monkey" chimp who emerges at the press of a button to fix drivers' automotive dilemmas. The obvious parallel is the original simian ex machina Chim Chim. 



- "Speed Racer X", an updated US-style animated version with a flying ("aero-jack"ed) Mach 5 appears in 2002. The Racers live in an hi-tech island compound, and have a mutant looking scientist enemy who is after their automotive designs so he can supply them to terrorists. Speed sports a ball cap and light brown hair, while Trixie's a blonde reporter. 



- An obscure tabletop RPG called "Wushu" will include an add-on called "Car-Fu: The Ancient Art of the Car Chase" in 2003, an idea later used in the feature film, though it's possible the term came about independently. Before its car fighting supplement "Wushu" did make an adaptation of "The Matrix"'s setting. 



- Tatsunoko Productions posts a short flash movie called "Mach Girl" featuring a very cutesyed-out character with the Mach logo on her pink cowboy hat and three-wheeler. 



- In the recent Nicktoons series "Speed Racer: The Next Generation", Speed's namesake son, an orphan who doesn't know his origins, goes to an exclusive racing academy run by a now wizened Master Spritle! A later iteration of Chim-Chim appears as an equally-mischievious and precocious robot chimp. The elite drivers are headed up by cool bad boy student "X". 



- The Wachowskis unveil the 2008 major motion picture, with a cameo by the original cartoon's U.S. scripter & animated Speed's voice Peter Fernandez to play the local announcer at Thunderhead Raceway, and Gennie wears a seahorse pendant as a refer to Yoshida's Tatsunoko Productions logo. Formula racer Milka Duno cameos as Gearbox, and soon after "Go, Milka, Go!" her biography written for children is released.





Given all the mythos above, the legacy entertains with a feeling we all know: Damn near everybody's hands touch a wheel, our right foot pushes down on the gas, and we accelerate toward a destiny. That's the track Speed Racer takes us down, pursuing our internal horizon of potential. We are touched by the excitement of the race as we live through Speed vicariously, who shows us that it's more than just mere race -- that it's both greater than the metaphor and ourselves, the white checkers of enlightenment and the dark squares of destruction waving for us when we make it happen.



See you at the finish line, you demons on wheels.

[Mach 4 vs. Prince Kabala!]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Into the Velvet Darkness: Vincent Price & The Masque of the Red Death.

During the mid-1960s aspiring director Roger Corman was wrangled by producers into making a series of films loosely based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, most starring Vincent Price. Unforeseen by anyone, it would be this unlikely congruence of resourceful auteur, gothic progenitor, and incomparable leading man which resulted in the dark miracle that is "The Masque of the Red Death".



Set in early renaissance Europe, a plague known as The Red Death makes everyone it touches bleed from every pore of their body -- an excruciating end to the lives of millions. Yet safely within the sealed keep of tyrannical nobleman Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) an endless party of sinful delight and decadence goes on. Three peasants are also trapped with them whom Prospero plans to use as both fodder for his court's entertainment and object lessons to spread his satanic gospel.



As inhuman as Price's Prospero seems, he's also potently charismatic, and slowly convinces and compromises peasant girl Francesca (Jane Asher), whose life and faith (and the lives of her fiancee and father in the dungeon below) hangs in the balance, towards her first tentative steps to a darker illumination. At the same time his courtship of the naive Francesca destabilizes his relationship with fetching princess and disciple Juliana (Hazel Court), making for poisonously royal intrigue.

[It almost looks like they've been caught doing something ... .]

While much of this plot is not in the original 30-page short story, Corman integrates Poe's "Hop-Toad" too, and adds fitting elements to flesh out a top-notch hour and a half. And a viewer would never know Corman worked on a less than shoestring budget, with only five weeks to deliver it. Early Universal monster films aside, there are few other horror offerings more classic than this parade of costumed revelers, garishly gorgeous path color splash, and soul-stirring dialogue.



So put on your best Venetian mask and listen as Prince Prospero mellifluously intones, "The way is not easy, I know, but I will take you by the hand and lead you through the cruel light into the velvet darkness." Thank you for the soirée, sweet prince.

[Francesca listens to Prospero!]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Your Future Looks Like a Danish Luxury Hotel: Aeon Flux's Sexy Dystopia.

The future will look like a very large Danish luxury hotel. At least if "Aeon Flux" has anything to say about it.



Set 400 years from now, a disease has decimated the world's population to a mere five million, all enclosed in the walled city-state of Bregna run by an iron-handed committee, opposed by righteous alt-looking Monican rebels who feel not all is right with the way things are. Disappearances and strange dreams for starters.



The attraction of the 1995 cartoon, aside from the obvious machine pistol toting lanky domina in catsuits with ram's horn tendrils, is the dichotomy of order versus change set within a mysterious Moebius-esque world. Totalitarian Chairman Trevor Goodchild and anarchist-assassin Aeon Flux are more than just characters -- they're concepts that give the other context. They need each other. And in that need there's a palpable lust that electrifies the story of their working at crosspurposes. They recognize they require each other to mean something, and that internal conflict of individual desire against a greater duty (whether it's to the state or the revolution) always made the outcome uncertain. Translating all these qualities to live-action movie, however, only works in some ways and not others, but the basic spirit is captured.



The severe design of the sets, some shot in Berlin with its Bauhaus concreteness, is gorgeous. By contrast, bad props, such as very plastic explosive charges, stick out like sore thumbs, along with fake computer generated elements. Costumes are all wonderful. Charlize Theron's black numbers are all winning. It's a shame that her performance doesn't hold up under equal scrutiny. Oh, it's mostly good like Marton Csokas' Goodchild, or Jonny Lee Miller ("Plunkett & Macleane"), but for all the principals there's moments where the emotional integrity just isn't being delivered, and those moments fail to skate by on looks alone.

Direction's from an MTV school -- understandable since it's an MTV property. But like many action films using tight shots and quick cuts, we lose a sense of space and fight choreography, and the far too trebley foleys do not help matters. Only when director Karyn Kusama selects long shots in some sequences, which is about half the time, a graceful ballet of violence is revealed.



And the movie explains much about the enigmatic cartoon -- why Aeon actually wears such a high-maintenance hairstyle, the rebels' rational for trying to destroy their perfect society, some practical uses behind Aeon's BSDM couture, and why the law of eternal return occurs. This last one was the most confusing for fans, but as the cartoon progressed it became accepted. The film underestimates general audiences by not using that device. If it had, it could have made one of its big revelations with so much more impact. (Yes, I'm being oblique here, but I'm trying very hard not to spoil things for you.)



Cinema can add "Aeon Flux"'s Bregna to its depiction of far future dystopias, like those of "Metropolis", "Dark City", "Logan's Run", and in extremis "1984" & "THX-1138". It's not the best of these predecessors, but it places as the sexiest.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.