Movie Review: Yesterday Was a Lie

This is a review of the DVD. Much of the following material was first written at OmegaCon, a one-time event I attended in Birmingham, AL.

And so, having promised myself (and the lady herself) that I would do so, I headed for the screening of Yesterday Was a Lie, starring Chase Masterson. One of the reasons I gave this movie a shot, aside from its concept (altered states of reality, SF-film noir) was that James Kerwin, the writer/director, was an astronomy minor, and so knew what he was talking about, at least in theory. Brother, did he ever!

This was a seriously amazing movie. Way too smart for Hollywood, which is probably why it's had a hard time getting into some film festivals. Try this for a multi-layered movie: you've got a black-and-white film noir with dark, brooding cinematography to match the quality of anything made "back in the day." You've got a troubled, hard-bitten, hard-drinking female detective who's having seriously bad cases of deja vu or disjointed experiences that come out of nowhere. You've got a mysterious man who appears to hold the secrets to all of this. You've got Peter Mayhew as an equally mysterious, dangerous figure. Somewhere in the mix, you've got a love story. And yes, you've got Chase Masterson starring as a lounge singer with many other roles to either help explain things or make them muddier, depending on how you interpret the dialogue.

I should stress that this story is set in the present day, but it still has a lot of '40s technological artifacts, like analog telephones, old cars, and snap-brim hats. However, items like computers bring us back to the present. Thus it is what it is: a purposeful homage to film-noir set in the present day. The tone and style might evoke Raymond Chandler or The Third Man, but the story structure is more like something by Alfred Bester. As a piece of science fiction filmmaking, Yesterday Was a Lie is superb.

However, being a relentless critic, there are a couple of things that I didn't like, but they are minor, and one of them eventually corrected themselves. It took awhile to warm up to the lead character actress, Kipleigh Brown, who plays the grumpy, and at times frumpy detective, Hoyle. The '40s fedora and baggy suits don't (shall we say) suit her, but that costume isn't seen after the early part of the film. The whiskey-drinking, cigarette-smoking tough-gal act struck me as a tad ridiculous, but this, too, seems to be shed as the story develops. I asked the director afterward which scenes were shot first, because it seemed as if Brown gradually became more comfortable with the role.

The other challenge of the film is that it is, as I told the director, simply too smart for Hollywood. As a science fiction fan and occasional fan of old movies, I got it. Hell, I loved the concept! However, I might be a very niche audience. You have to be comfortable with nonlinear SF stories. And the concept is very high, the sort of thing that SF fans read SF for: to expand our minds and horizons. As such, it is entertainment of a specific type for a very specific audience. You either dig it or you don't. (I recall Ms. Masterson saying, "I love you guys!" as the audience debriefed afterward and was getting the whole concept. Apparently a few people had told her or the director, "I don't get it.")

I was pleased that the film made it to DVD production, if not general theatrical release. The director is smart and clearly has a passion for stylistics. Kipleigh Brown got more interesting in the role as the film went on and is every bit as sexy as the luminous (yeah, I said luminous--watch the film) Ms. Masterson, who is mostly known to science fiction fans for the character Leeta in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine  as well as others. I hope all of the people involved in this project get to work on equally meaty films in the future. It'd do Hollywood and its audiences a lot of good.

Follow-up, 9/2/12
I posted this article via my Twitter feed and copied James Kerwin and Chase Masterson in the process. Mr. Kerwin was quick to respond (the magic of the internet!), thanking me for my comments and letting me know that Yesterday Was A Lie actually did enjoy limited release in theaters. I stand corrected. He also suggested I watch the movie with the audio commentary, which I will plan to do this weekend. The discussions during OmegaCon were quite illuminating. Anyhow, just thought I'd share.

DVD Review: The Lives of Others

I don't have a lot to say about The Lives of Others, though I highly recommend it. It won an Academy Award for best foreign language film in 2007. The Lives of Others follows the activities of a member of the East German State Security (Stasi) in 1984 as he begins listening in on a socialist playwright for possible thought crimes against the state. The movie serves as an insight into life under the Iron Curtain, and demonstrates that the only way to be morally good as a human being under those states was to break the law. If you speak German, you might pick up some of the subtleties; if you're a subtitle reader, it won't distract after the first five minutes. The story explains why conservatives are so concerned about socialism today, and why the lesson of the Cold War needs to be relearned every generation. Worth watching!

DVD Review: Star Trek Fan Collective: Captain's Log

My DVD player broke a couple weeks ago, so I finally decided to buy a new one and, since I was in the neighborhood, some new DVDs; in this case, a Star Trek episode collection. A few years ago, Paramount got the bright idea to let the fans of Star Trek pick their favorite episodes of this or that sort ("pick your favorite time travel episodes...your favorite Klingon episodes...your favorite Borg episodes...etc.). The latest one out of the gate, so far as I can tell, is called Captain's Log, and it provided a new twist, by allowing "the captains" to pick their favorite episodes and the fans to do the same.

So what we're treated to here is a set of episodes from each of the franchises--the Original Series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise--as picked by the lead actors and their fans, as well as some bonus material in the form of interviews with the actors. So are they any good?

Well, you either like Trek or you don't. And even once you accept that you do, some episodes are better than others. Shatner's favorite--The City on the Edge of Forever--is one of the few Trek episodes to win the Hugo. It is a classic of the genre, and deserves to be on anybody's "best of" list. The other two episodes from the Original Series, "Balance of Terror" and "The Enterprise Incident," might best be described as "Romulan episodes," as they deal with that alien race. I have the feeling that the fans' choices were limited to prevent too much overlaps with the other "Fan Collectives." The episodes are good enough, though, to warrant attention. "Enterprise Incident" features a classic bit of overacting, while "Balance of Terror" is a fine example of submarine warfare in space.

The bonus material for the Original Series disk--and I confess, as of now I've only watched the material for TOS and Enterprise--is about as expected. Shat spends some time answering questions like "What makes a good captain?" and "What is the function of the captain's log?" Complete drivel, of course, though Shat plays along as well as he can. At one point, the producers brought on Joan Collins to chat with Shat about "City on the Edge of Forever," and I had to fast forward to the show.

You don't realize how dim actors can be until you hear them talk about something intellectual like science fiction. I've met actors and actresses of various sorts and levels of fame, and on the whole they're nice, sensitive people. They are able to conjure up whole personalities based on mimicry, study, and "method," those mysterious activities that make up the actor's craft. But in the end, most of them are performing something that someone else--a writer--created. I won't begrudge actors their creative facility. It's a different kind of creativity from what writers do, but in the end, if they're not inventing the whole script, they are operating at second-hand.

Having said my piece, I'll move on briefly to the other shows' captains. Of all the series, Deep Space Nine has the best episodes picked, including the final episode, "What You Leave Behind," "In the Pale Moonlight," and "Far Beyond the Stars," which might be the only episode where Avery Brooks doesn't play a stoic hardass.

Next Generation's Patrick Stewart picked the first episode he directed, "In Theory," which has a middlin' science story and a clunker of a human interest story, as Data takes a shot at dating. "Darmok" and "Chain of Command" feature better stories and better acting all around. "Darmok" won a Newberry Award for its portrayal of alien communication while "Chain of Command" was a two-parter that featured Picard getting captured and tortured while a micromanaging hardass takes over the Enterprise.

The episodes picked for Voyager and Enterprise are lackluster--"The Omega Directive" and "First Flight" are the better ones--but you get the feeling that most of the best episodes have already been taken up by other Fan Collectives. For instance, I found it surprising that the last episode of Enterprise, "These Are The Voyages...", made the list, given all the griping I heard and read from fans. That episode had several things working against it: it was the last episode of a show that was cut off three seasons early due to lack of interest; it was a "dream" or "holodeck" episode, spun into the middle of an old Next Generation episode, "The Pegasus" rather than standing on the show's own merits; and finally, the two TNG guest stars, Jonathan Frakes (Riker) and Marina Sirtis (Troi) looked just awful and too old to be reprising their roles from 20 years earlier.

The bonus interviews with Scott Bakula didn't offer much illumination, though I found the man pleasant enough. I just got the feeling, as I have with several SF actors, that despite being immersed in technobabble for a few years, he just didn't get it and would prefer to talk about the characters than any philosophical implications of his work. And that's why, after viewing this DVD collection, I highly recommend the move Galaxy Quest, which, as a fellow space geek reminded me, might be the best Star Trek movie to come along in years.

Galaxy Quest features a troupe of aging sci-fi actors who are getting burned out by the whole fan convention thing when they suddenly find themselves dragged into a real space adventure. The movie points out one of the fundamental truths of SF movie/show fandom: in the end, they're just a job for the actors and just stories for the rest of the world. The importance of the actors or the stories they're helping to tell depends on how much energy you invest in them.