S. Hamley Bildebrandt
“Morningstar is my hot stewardess.”Archive for April 15, 2008
List of Awesome: Part 1
Thomas Dubay once said, “People like awesome.” Mike Bickle echoed Dubay’s statement in Seven Longings of the Human Heart. In fact, the great minds in every epoch of human history seem to agree: People like awesome. But awesome comes in many forms, some less obvious than others. Certain incarnations of awesome or easily discernible by anyone: a beautiful sunset, a Mozart concerto, kittens, ninjas, chocolate sprinkles. Nobody needs to be told ninjas are awesome. They just know. I think Thomas Dubay said that as well. It is not, therefore, my goal to tell you what you already know. Rather, it is my hope to draw attention to the awesome you might have overlooked. And in doing so, I hope to make the world a better place. For the children.
So with no further ado, the List: Part I.
1) OVO/Peter Gabriel
“Scientists agree that in the future…” the narrator booms over the stadium in a deep British baritone, “people will be birds.” Thus begins Peter Gabriel’s masterful tribute to post-apocalyptic mutations. Part Road Warrior, part Cats, part avian flu, OVO is an epic tale of loss and redemption, love and betrayal, and people with wings.
Or so I can only assume. I haven’t actually seen one minute of Peter Gabriel’s over-the-top avian extravaganza, but how can it not be good? The British government considered it good enough to put a permanent blight on the otherwise old-world landscape of London in the form of the Millennium Dome just so they could house Gabriel’s flock of mad bird people, like an aviary from the future. And that makes it awesome.
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2) Christopher Lambert
A wise man I knew once said, “The problem with Steven Seagal movies is once you’ve seen one of them, you’ve seen them all. They’re all terrible and they’re all terrible in the same way.
“But,” he went on, “Christopher Lambert movies are all terrible in completely different ways.” Making them infinitely enjoyable.
Lambert’s movies might be terrible in different ways, but his acting is consistently awful. Whether he’s an immortal Scottish highlander, a lonely American businessman, or a futuristic Beowulf fighting off Grendel in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Christopher Lambert is always the same wooden, weird looking Frenchman with a stare that could melt iron. Or at least I think that’s what it’s supposed to be.
Such consistent awfulness in acting in the midst of such varied awfulness in film is nearly impossible to pull off. And that makes Christopher Lambert awesome.
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3) Stephen Chow
Stephen Chow is a genius. Director, actor, auteur, he stands as a beacon of pure creativity beside a darkened sea of mediocrity. I will let his filmography speak for itself.
In The God of Cookery Chow plays a disgraced Hong Kong celebrity-chef who must learn the secrets of kung fu in order to challenge the pupil who betrayed him in the ultimate kung fu cooking competition. Only then does he regain his title as The God of Cookery and discover he is in fact a fairy descended from the abode of the gods.
In Shaolin soccer Chow plays a down-and-out Shaolin monk who must reunite his fellow monks to use their gravity defying kung fu to help a cursed soccer star get revenge on his former aid, who is now the owner of the Evil Soccer Team.
In a film industry that churns out cliche after cliche in an attempt to be original, Stephen Chow is original by combining every Hong Kong cliche into a ridiculous mix of Chinese wire-fu and Looney Tunes slapstick. And that makes Stephen Chow awesome.
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Men and women of awesome everywhere, I salute you.
