2/18/13 A Tale of Two Sisters
I have a couple of beefs with the ithlete. One, the chest strap is a battery hog, blowing through 2032’s at an alarming pace. This morning it killed another one, and I had to scavenge my stash to find a working battery.

Two, the readings can vary a bit. I typically take two or three readings every morning and average them, but the spread is usually small and a trend is easy to spot. Look, it’s an iPhone app, I can accept some inaccuracies, but this morning I got 4 readings with a 10 point spread that told me that I was either doing better than yesterday or much better.

Today was a holiday, and with the family at home I was once again relegated to the TT bike and the LeMond trainer. Except today the same perceived exertion yielded 40-50 less watts and I felt like crap. I pulled the rip cord at 65 minutes and finished the movie later.

I’m a lifelong insomniac, and my memory bank is filled with late night movies half seen and half forgotten. I was pretty sure I’d seen A Tale of Two Sisters before, and I was quite sure it was amazing. I didn’t remember much more than that.

ATOTS is a Korean movie that seems to follow along the lines of typical horror flicks. Scary shit happens and either the protagonist or the audience is tasked with discovering the past trauma that’s bringing on the hauntings. If it’s an Asian flick then shit gets worse after the big reveal and everyone’s fucked for all time. If it’s an American remake of the Asian flick then everything makes sense at the end and the ghost is mollified, leaves the good people alone, and departs to enjoy the afterlife.

ATOTS begins with an unresponsive girl at an asylum, then flashes back or forward to two sisters returning to their home. Their father is emotionally detached like a good Asian father, only he’s also a doctor so he copes by medicating the crazy women in his life.

There’s also a stepmother who either tries too hard to replace mom or is psychologically sadistic. The two girls cope with evil stepmom while dad is hopelessly oblivious. Then people start to see ghosts.

At this point I want to point out a piece of dialogue that will never be spoken in my house, at least not if I want to survive the night. After the girls’ awkward welcome home dinner dad says to the stepmom, “That was delicious. You must be very tired, you can clean this up tomorrow.”

Rollerflix Rating
This movie is beyond awesome. Right when you think you’ve got it figured out things go absolutely batshit. Ultimately it has nothing to do with hauntings and ghosts, and everything to do with the psychological pain of having an unhinged mother and a father who’s moved on. The movie leaves the horror genre behind in the last 40 minutes and doubles back on itself so many times it gets difficult to make out what’s real, and the final payoff is so incredibly sad and sick it’s impossible to anticipate and emotionally devastating when it lands. This movie’s a must see on or off the rollers, but on the rollers you get to find out what happens to your heartrate when they try to scare you with a ghost (bone chilling but no change in HR).

Had to include this cool screenshot with all the primary colors. Even the way hair falls is a clue in this movie.

2/19/13 Primer
Today’s readings were less than half a point apart, right about where’s yesterday’s numbers averaged. 80 minutes, 2 5 minute intervals on the rollers.

Primer has the greatest closing credits ever – they last all of a minute or two. That’s ‘cause Shane Carruth produced, directed, acted, designed, edited, and casted the movie. Oh, he also wrote the script and the music. His parents were extras and they doubled as the caterers. There are no grips listed and the movie does look like it was shot with available light, taking advantage of the unnatural color palettes of artificial lights. You get the feeling that the actors are lugging equipment around when they’re not in front of the camera. It’s a real testament to how far one man’s vision can go and how good movies can be when they’re not created by committee.

The story begins with a group of engineers who gather in a garage to tinker, hoping to launch a startup that will deliver them from their hated day jobs. Two of them make a strange box that makes its contents lighter by a few grams. When fungus starts to grow at an unnaturally high rate inside they realize that time bounces back and forth between two poles inside the box, and they promptly build bigger boxes so they can get inside and travel back in time.

At first they’re very careful, isolating themselves during the 8 hours they’ve doubled back so they don’t run into their original selves. They execute just one trade, hoping they don’t influence history and create time travel paradoxes.

Almost immediately paranoia sets in and they start doubling back on their own to get the drop on the other guy, and even previous versions of themselves. Each iteration requires them to double back a little further so each version can be that much more prescient. Soon you realize that you have no idea which version of events you’ve been watching all along, or how many versions of each guy exist at any given time.

Rollerflix Rating
Another winner! Primer is incredibly interesting and engrossing, a total mindfuck. As far as I know there’s no ‘official’ solution to the puzzle of the plot, so even if you’re oxygen deprived on the rollers you’re just as clueless as someone paying full attention. Sure, it’s no Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters in 3D, but it’ll do in a pinch.

2/20/13 Catching Hell
Good consistent readings today, and I dropped 8 points which means I can finally do a recovery ride. 110 minutes easy on the rollers.

I chose an Alex Gibney documentary today for a change of pace. I’d seen and admired his Enron and Spitzer films, and he’s working on an Armstrong documentary, AND he came and filmed at our roller party. You want more connections? He studied under Donald Richie, who was the premiere scholar of my favorite director Akira Kurosawa. Richie was a customer of the photo lab I worked at over 20 years ago, and he died today. Weird, eh?

Catching Hell is ostensibly about Steve Bartman, the fan who may or may not have interfered with a foul ball late in Game 6 of the ’03 NLCS. Gibney ties his experience in with Bill Buckner, whose error in Game 6 of the ’86 World Series cost Boston the game and ultimately the title. It’s a study of why people need scapegoats, along the way revealing the frightening mob mentality behind sports fandom.

Rollerflix Rating
Gibney isn’t an Oscar winner for nothing. His films are always riveting, and though I was tired and miserable after 75 minutes I hung on for all 110 minutes in the hope that he was able to get the reclusive Bartman on camera.