"Light up the doorways / Light up the streets of this town"

[roadrunnertwice]

Got the movie bug for the first time in a while, and decided to start an account at Nicollet Village Video. (That's the grungy independent video rental joint a few blocks from my apartment. They get big points for being super-convenient and more powerful than any Blockbuster on selection; they lose big points for shelving incredibly foul anime porn mixed in with everything else. Put that shit away somewhere, man. Eew.) What spurred this? Well, I want to watch some stuff with really good fight sequences, and see if I can learn some ways that smart storytellers handle that sort of thing. It seems like a good thing to know, and besides: punches. Unfortunately, I don't know much of what to look for, other than Sonny Chiba's oeuvre. So I'm open to suggestions.

In the meantime, I had to rent something to open an account, so I just watched Aeon Flux. I liked it. More than I was expecting to. I think they made some really good choices about thematic movement, and that the atmosphere did a good job of supporting that. But then, things like secret histories and last stands and past lives have been on my mind lately.* Maybe I'll steal some of their tricks.

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* c.f. That Fucking Book (which is going quite swimmingly, thank you).