Wyatt Rising
So. I’m straying from the formula. Usually, I do the two most recent movies I’ve seen (and they can't have been movies I’ve seen previously). But I was thinking about Valhalla Rising, which I’d seen last year. I remembered enjoying it, and I remembered it being seriously Danish (slow, trippy, sloooooooowww, trippy....). But details were hazy. So I watched it again. And now I tell you about it...BUT, I will do so by invoking the unholy power of Jeff Foxworthy.
[takes a figurative swig of beer]
If you are a one-eyed fighter tied to a stake in medieval Scotland, you might be an Odinic warrior.
If your wardrobe consists of mud, blood, and runic scars, you might be an Odinic warrior.
If you routinely slaughter your opponents out a sense of sheer hatred and battle-lust, you might be an Odinic warrior.
If you receive flashes of prophecy in scenes the color of blood, you might be an Odinic warrior.
If you rip the head off of your former owner and jam it on a pike as a dis, you might be an Odinic warrior.
If you spare the life of a young boy because he fed you while you were chained, you might be an Odinic warrior.
If you go the length of a film without speaking a single word, you might be an Odinic warrior.
If you stare down Crusaders with your single, cold eye, you might be an Odinic warrior.
If you then get recruited by those Crusaders, religious differences be damned, you might be an Odinic warrior.
If you find yourself adrift on the sea, led by fate alone, you might be an Odinic warrior.
If you build rock cairns while under the influence of hallucinogens in an inhospitable, virgin land, you might be an Odinic warrior.
If you follow the voices of prophecy even to your own death, you might be an Odinic warrior.
If you are content to serve as a sacrifice after a life of hard-fought survival, you might be an Odinic warrior.
If you exist in a long, slow, cinematically dazzling but narrative-free Danish movie from the guy who also did Pusher and Bronson, you might be an Odinic warrior.
Thanks, and good night, folks! Don’t forget to tip your waitresses!
Wellllllll, okay....
Since you asked, I will do a little mashing...but not with a movie. Where Valhalla Rising is just a long string of stunning frames with hardly any narrative, I give you now an audio soliloquy sans any visual aid. Wyatt Cenac just released an album of stand-up material with the clever title Comedy Person. Since I love stand-up and nearly everyone involved with The Daily Show, I picked it up.
And it’s pretty good. Not the best ever, but not bad. I feel like Cenac is still carving out his niche in the comedy world, still figuring out what his comedy superpower is.1 On one hand, his bits are standard fare (TV vs. real life, gentle NPR mocking, the black experience as comedy fodder, etc.). Granted, many of his actual jokes are great -- for example, his prognostications for what Medieval Times’ employees will sound like in 3012 are fucking brilliant. He’s at his best when he takes seemingly straightforward premises and then spins them out into long-form narratives, stacking ridiculous suppositions on top on another until he’s constructed a funhouse out of verbal jenga blocks, forcing you to pay attention until he pulls that one block at the bottom out, and then you get why the original line is so goddamned funny. Those parts are great.
But in general, his delivery is not as confident or forceful as it could be, and that combined with the relatively safe ground he covers makes the album only perfectly good, rather than gutbustingly awesome. I attribute this to the fact that Cenac is still getting started, and has yet to spread his wings2 and divebomb out of the nest. The dude’s obviously super smart, insightful, and talented, so it’s only a matter of time. His Daily Show persona is pretty restrained: diffident and dead-pan. If he unhooks the crazy within, his stand up could really be something.
1Fact: every comic gets a power. Patton Oswalt gets English major jokes and "18 Charisma" asides. Eddie Izzard gets “Brit out of water” and (increasingly) witty but bitter despondency. Lewis Black is Mr. Furious, and Sarah Silverman gets “dirty jokes made new by breathy sweet delivery.” Andy Kaufman is either Professor X or Lex Luthor -- he was that good. Until Ragnarok hits and we find out whose side he’s on, we just won’t know.
2When he does, I expect those wings will be cunningly crafted, leathery, and oddly jointed -- also featuring razor sharp talons that extend when you’re least prepared for it. But I’ve been reading some steampunk and horror lately, so...grain of salt.
Addendum: Hey, this is future me talking. A months have passed, and I have to say that every time I've listened to this, the more I've liked it. Can't wait for another album to come out.