Untold Scandal & Born into Brothels

Untold Scandal is actually a pretty strong version of Dangerous Liaisons, set in 19th century Korea. It's not as good as Valmont, but it's about the same as the Stephen Frears film. Although there's quite a bit more nudity than I was expecting. Who knew that secret Catholics in Korea like the sex? The problem is that it's actually quite good, until the ending, which seems to fall apart. Having the narrator comment on the characters in the film, making their horribleness and accuracy suspect doesn't help the film. It's like he needed to underscore that these are evil people. Or maybe he's mocking the Koreans for being an uptight culture. Either way, the Catholics were deflowered and there was quite a bit of eroticism. I feel funny typing eroticism. It's such a codeword for "it makes me horny". Well, when other people use it, not me. I'm a chaste little boy. The film was gorgeous, and the use of color strong. Plus, the women were attractive. Therefore, it's full of sensuous eroticism.

Born into Brothels is an interesting look at the horrible conditions that the children of prostitutes in Calcutta deal with. That some of them do eventually find people who try to help them is about the only somewhat happy thing, even if they don't actually get as much help as they need. Seriously, Indians are strange. And there are way too many of them. The film was good, though, and a worthy Oscar nod. I'm not sure about the win, but it's definitely better than the other documentaries nominated. I wonder what else should have been nominated though. That's always the more difficult aspect of figuring out what deserves the Oscar.

Hilary and Jackie, Airborne, Gleaming the Cube, & Partisans of Vilna

Hilary and Jackie is the sad story of two musical prodigies pushed too far and how one goes insane. No, they don't take revenge, although that would fit with the next three films... It's written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, who has worked with Michael Winterbottom on a lot of movies. It also has extremely good performances from Emily Watson and Rachel Griffiths. It's full of good music and I recommend it. It's quite good.

Airborne, a movie I've seen far too many times, was something I decided to inflict upon a friend, because... I enjoy inflicting that movie on everyone? We decided to have a crappy skating/skateboarding mini-fest this past weekend. Airborne is the amazingly accurate representation of Cincinnati as a hockey town, obsessed with all things hockey, along with the humor of pulling someone's pants down and prank montages. It's awesome. Plus, the final hill is all over the city, and in Kentucky. And there's a scene where Krohn Conservatory is both empty and appropriate to rollerblade in. AWESOME! And I didn't even bring up the awesome cast, of a young Jack Black, bravely going balls first into a tree, Edie McClurg (Rooney's secretary in Ferris Bueller's Day Off) overacting and extremely oblivious, Shane McDermott who never did another movie, and now sells real estate in Texas, and last, but not least, Seth Green as the complete spazz of a cousin who gets the girl by getting thrown against the wall of a restaurant, and no other redeeming qualities. AWESOME! Plus, it's music by Stuart Copeland, written by two guys who never wrote anything else, and directed by Rob Bowman, who has done a lot of TV, and three other movies: The X-Files Movie, Reign of Fire, and Elektra. Just wow. You owe it to yourself and this great, flawed country to see this amazing piece of classic America.

Gleaming the Cube is the excellent Christian Slater solves problems the only way he knows how: skateboarding into them! Apparently, his parents adopted a Vietnamese kid back in the late 70s and he started to work for a guy who was involved with gun-running. But the evil white guy goes too far and starts killing people, so Christian Slater has to team up with his dead brother's Vietnamese girlfriend and a reluctant Steven Bauer, playing a "hip" cop to bring down the gun-runner and prove that his brother didn't kill himself. Plus, it has a lot of unnecessary skateboarding tricks, Max Perlich as his best friend, and Tony Hawk and a bunch of other skaters as other friends. It's just another wow film. Sometimes you just have to watch something you know is going to be a train wreck because you want to be able to talk about the film forever with anyone who has seen it. So see this film and talk to me. If you happen to be in the District, I have it, so talk to me.

Partisans of Vilna was made back in 1986. I really didn't realize it was so old, although watching it, it did seem like a very low budget documentary. Of course, it was just that it was old. Sometimes you can't tell. It's about the Jewish resistance in Vilna during the Holocaust. And it was pretty long. But it was of considerable interest to me, being both Jewish and both sides of my family being originally from Lithuania. Considering how long ago it was made, a lot of the people who were involved were actually still alive, which made it more interesting. It does fall into the same problem that every Holocaust documentary you see has: if you've seen one, you've seen them all. It's just the amount of depression afterwards that's different. Since a lot of them survived, and they took out quite a few Nazis, this one ends up on the low end of the spectrum.

Chain Camera & Divine Intervention

Chain Camera is an interesting look at 16 teens in a southern California high school. Doesn't go very deep, and I wish it had. Some of the kids just started to get interesting before they went off to a different kid. Plus, a couple of them were just extended dick jokes. Well, one was a dick joke, another was a fellatio joke. But the ones where we spend more time with the kids are worth the bad parts. Video quality is, of course, craptacular, but really, you have a bunch of teenagers with crappy video cameras. I did want to smack the serious "political druggie" kid an immense amount. Eating food from the street isn't a political stand, it's just stupid. But the former bulimic who wants to turn 18 and become a stripper, the big guy who just wants a girlfriend, the formerly legally blind kid, the football player who was on academic probation, the gay and lesbian kids, and the band majorette were all interest for the little time spent with them. I wanted to see it for being a Kirby Dick film, a more traditional documentary than his This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Well, not really. I mean, I guess he edited the footage, but he did nothing else.

Divine Intervention is a serious WTF? Seriously, this film doesn't make any sense, is boring, and is just stupid. Sorry. I think the balloon part is moronic. And the first half an hour is completely nonsensical. So boring. Such a simple look at the issue. Silly.

The Essex Green & Camera Obscura at the 9:30 Club 1/22/07

I didn't do the setlists, as I am... not a big enough fan to have memorized the songs. I am a failure as a Merge fanboy. I apologize. Luckily, I have one friend who was there and could do that.

THE ESSEX GREEN
Hanging On a Line (Ladybug Transistor)
The Pride
Don't Know Why (You Stay)
Snakes in the Grass
Rue De Lis
This Isn't Farm Life
Chartiers
Places You Call Home (Ladybug Transistor)
The Late Great Cassiopia
Sin City
Elsinore
Older Guys (Flying Burrito Brothers)
Cardinal Points

CAMERA OBSCURA
Eighties Fan
Come Back Margaret
I Love My Jean
The False Contender
Tears For Affairs
Lemon Juice And Paper Cuts
Let's Get Out of This Country
Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken
If Looks Could Kill
Suspended From Class
Dory Previn
I Need All the Friends I Can Get
Razzle Dazzle Rose
ENCORE
Country Mile
Teenager

So Monday at work, I was told that The Essex Green and Camera Obscura would be playing the 9:30 club tonight, and that a couple of my friends were going. I actually hadn't seen either of them before, so I was in. I was in it to win it, as a certain person who won't be president would say. It was the first time I'd been to the new smoke-free 9:30, and I liked it. You could smell the food (which I liked), although you could also smell the ass in the leather jacket who loved cologne. So, um, it was a different experience from having to wash all your clothes because it was so smoke-y there.

As for the actual bands, they both started on time(!) and there was no local opener. It was strange. I guess I just have an inflated sense of importance for bands I like. I don't feel like The Essex Green should be the first band at pretty much any show, unless it's a Merge band show. Even then, I'd stick The Broken West there, just because they're the new guys and should be hazed for a while.

The Green played pretty much everything I was hoping for (well, they played The Late Great Cassiopia, which was the only thing I knew they had to play, since if they didn't play Don't Know Why (You Stay), they would have failed in their duty as musicians), and were lots of fun. Late Great was different from the album version, but was still such a great song. They were much more up tempo than most of Camera Obscura's set.

Which wasn't bad at all, but just that I think that only with their most recent album have they actually started to put out music that seems like it would get people excited at a show. And If Looks Could Kill isn't a song that could get you excited, you should get your pacemaker checked, grandpa! Do I get my rock critic cliche card now? I was disappointed also that the two song encore was both so quiet and so short. Seriously, WTF? You need to rock the audience. Rock them. It should be like in Guitar Hero II when people are chanting for Freebird and you play it for them. Even though seriously, they're still mocking you. Admittedly, Camera Obscura isn't quite the band to Freebird-heckle, but the encore was just eh, when it should have been more exciting. Also, it would have helped had I worn more comfortable shoes, since my feet were starting to hurt towards the end of the set. That's my fault, though, and shouldn't really detract from what was an ultimately fun evening of Mergerockpower.

Pan's Labyrinth, Full Frontal, Death of a Salesman, & The Pawnbroker

Pan's Labyrinth was amazing and one of the best films I've seen this year. Admittedly, I'm a tremendous Guillermo Del Toro fanboy (I even don't hate Mimic), so take it with a grain of salt. However, having seen all of his films, this is his best. A political fable of trying to deal with Franco's Spain and a dissolving family, an obsession with fascism and order versus a world ruled by fairy tales, and some seriously strange creatures. I wish I had seen Spirit of the Beehive first, but I will just have to check that out at some point soon. Del Toro has said that it was an influence, and if he says it's good, I'll have to check it out. Problem is is that I own it, so there's so much less impetus to actually watch it, opposed to something on my DVR or computer or TV. Damn the world, I have too much media to consume! Anyway, Ofelia is a sort of Alice in Wonderland, made fairly explicit with the fancy dress she is given, a dark green version of the famous light blue one from the Disney version, dealing with her sort of fantasy world at the same time as her new horrible existence at the mercy of her stepfather. Who is truly the embodiment of evil, as all stepfathers in films are, or at least appear to be. Can anyone think of a film that has a stepfather that isn't evil or at least isn't portrayed as evil at some point?

Full Frontal doesn't work. Well, the Nicky Katt as Hitler sections work, but I didn't like any of the other characters, and the digital camera work was distracting for most of the film. Actually, I did like Brad Pitt's performance. But not much else. I guess that an experimental Soderbergh is completely hit and miss. Who knew? Besides everyone who has ever seen more than one of his experimental films. I did like the little Limey shout-out, since I love that film. Too bad the rest of it was so up-and-down. And I never need to see David Duchovny's fake erection ever again.

Death of a Salesman is a movie I'd already seen, apparently. Strange. How did I forget John Malkovich as a youngster playing football? I have no idea. It's good, as you'd expect from Malkovich and Hoffman. I watched it back in high school. So it's been around 10 years. There are lots of movies I don't recall from 10 years ago, even if I remember watching them. Most of those are war films though.

The Pawnbroker was really depressing. I have to salute the film for being made, as it's all about the horrible effect of the Holocaust on the survivors. That it is also the first film to get a production code seal while showing naked boobies just adds a bit of historical interest to the film. Historical boobies! I don't know, I just felt goofy. Something, anything, to make the film less depressing. Seriously, a very good, very sad film. There are just some things I don't want to know how to deal with. And the horror of living through something like the Holocaust is one of them.

Vampire's Kiss, Louis C.K.: Shameless, Demetri Martin: Person, & Thieves Like Us

Vampire's Kiss is Nic Cage overacting, occasionally doing a really bad Ed Sullivan impression (I think unintentionally), and also doing an English accent (also really bad). According to the IMDB, it was intentional. But man, it just got on my nerves so much. If I hadn't been playing Final Fantasy XII at the same time, I would have turned it off. Plus, with the ending, I'm not sure exactly what the point of it was, except possibly that assholes who are ridiculously attracted to women (the particularly predatory ones frequently are referred to as vampires) might just do anything to impress them. That he clearly was insane really didn't change much. Apparently, the vampire aspect is just a figment of his insane mind. Thanks 1980s. You really know how to make a bad movie. Also, Joseph Minion, who also wrote the great After Hours, clearly had no real talent. Because apparently he took ideas from someone else to write After Hours, and he did nothing else remotely good since then.

Louis C.K.: Shameless was pretty funny, but not that much was particularly new, especially if you have seen his appearances promoting the special, or his sitcom. It even uses the same theme as the show. That's not to say it wasn't funny, but standup works better when you don't already know how the jokes are going to end.

Demetri Martin: Person was hilarious. I enjoyed it immensely. I would have enjoyed it even more had I not had so many problems with the amount of commercials. Sometimes it would be a commercial, and sometimes it would be a little short film he did for Windows Vista, and sometimes it would be a full commercial break. What's the deal with commercials, Comedy Central? And what's up IMDB? Not important enough for you? Just the beginning skit is worth watching for, and then it keeps going, and keeps being funny. Watch it. Ladies.

Thieves Like Us is a film I'd have seen much sooner had it, you know, been available on DVD in the US. Is Altman just not popular enough? Damn the man. It's a slightly off-kilter story about three Mississippian bank robbers who escape from prison and go back to robbing banks. But the youngest one falls for a girl who is addicted to coke. Note that this is 1930s Deep South, so it's the Coke that comes in a bottle. Full of typical Altmanisms, although the overlapping dialogue was actually pretty limited, and it was replaced with an almost constant radio narration, occasionally commenting upon the action, and sometimes just enhancing the scene. It's clearly an Altman 70s film, in the best ways. Plus, without it, Nurse Ratched would have been someone else, as Louise Fletcher was seen by Milos Forman because of the film. Which basically means that even if you hate the film, it's a very important film anyway. I did notice similarities with They Live by Night, which, after checking the IMDB makes sense since they're both based on the same book. At least the assumed (by me, making an ass out of you and me...d...) moral ambiguities in the original novel are allowed to exist in this film, unlike the Hays Code neutered earlier film.

Idiocracy, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, & Blade: Trinity

Idiocracy is pretty funny, but it's completely understandable why the film wasn't released. Not only is it an anti-corporate film, but it's also a mess. The special effects, while mainly practical, are not seamless, and almost all the characters are all extremely dumb. At least that's the point. The satire works, because it's really easy, but it's done pretty well. Plus, there are more handjob jokes per square inch in this film than in pretty much any other film. Plus, the whole smart people are faggy actually fits fairly well with the current administration's feelings on intelligence. And really, the morals of the film: read books, smart people have kids, and make sure you care whose ass is on the screen and who farted. All very important.

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry felt pretty similar to a lot of other crazy criminal racer movies of the 1970s, like Vanishing Point and Two-Lane Blacktop. None of them are particularly good films, but they're at least interesting from a counter-cultural aspect, along with some occasional good car chases. This one isn't as good as the other two. Those felt much less annoying, although it could have just been the fact that it's about two guys robbing banks to become NASCAR racers. Plus, the ending just felt tacked on.

Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary tries to make me feel sorry for a Nazi. Sorry, just not going to happen. Especially not one who just talks for an hour and a half. Seriously, what a boring documentary. Even at the important parts, the limiting nature of basically one camera angle just can't build any tension. It also probably would have been better had I not seen Downfall before this. I knew basically everything that was going to happen.

Blade: Trinity is crap. Man, I guess you really can't make a good movie after making two mediocre ones, even if they had some very good ideas in them. Maybe it has to do with the use of Ryan Reynolds (who's really terrible) and Jessical Biel. It really just doesn't work at all, even if Parker Posey is lots of fun. Because she always is. Usually one of the, if not the, best parts of anything she's in. Plus, I guess I am just a vampire snob, but I really didn't like the messing with the Dracula mythos. Damnit. At least this has a vampire Pomeranian.

Chaos

Chaos is the film that Hideo Nakata made right after Ringu. Or maybe after Ringu 2, it isn't entirely clear. I'm also not sure why I decided it was a good idea to add it to my queue. Maybe I hadn't seen Ringu first. It's a twisty confusing film that doesn't entirely make sense, but there are flashbacks and twists galore! And it rips off Vertigo and Stage Fright! Far too much for my liking! I don't know. I really don't. Sometimes, I feel like I am hurting myself by watching films, but I get antsy when I haven't seen a new one for a while. And I hate not watching a Netflix dvd as soon as I can. It's a compulsion. I need to fix this somehow, but since I currently am not trying very hard, it's just not going to work. Either way, I wish I knew when a film was going to be completely middling before I even bothered to add it to my queue. If only I trusted one person's movie tastes.

Lost in Time

Lost in Time was an earlier film by the director of One Night in Mongkok. So with that and Cecilia Cheung in it, I was interested. It's about a woman whose fiancee dies in a car accident and she decides to start running his minibus service. Which leads to quite a few jokes about bad female drivers. Which is funny. Because women can't drive well. Is it a sappy weeper? It's a Hong Kong drama, of course it is. Does Cecilia Cheung look like she could drive a minibus? Of course not. But at least they deal with that. I don't know, if the film were in English, with Julia Roberts and Dennis Quaid, I would probably hate it with a passion brighter than the screen when Cecilia smiles, but since it was in Cantonese and I don't expect any better of Hong Kong dramas, I have to say it was acceptable. And I haven't even touched upon the craptacularly bad Engrish subtitles. I will work for any DVD company and edit the subtitles to make sense and be good English. Seriously, just have someone native and fluent in English read them. It will be vastly better. Please.

Twentieth Century & Uzumaki

Twentieth Century was an early Howard Hawks/Ben Hecht film, one I'd been wanting to see for a while. It hadn't been out on DVD for too long, so it took longer than I wanted. It felt very stage-y, and Barrymore was overacting the entire time, which felt like a weird combination of stage acting and silent movie acting. Sometimes early sound films just have that serious issue. Sometimes they don't. Also it suffered from my comparisons with His Girl Friday, which are both about men trying to convince women to stay in the (man's) profession of choice. And His Girl Friday is one of the greatest films of all time, so naturally a merely good film can't handle comparison with it. Damn shame too.

Uzumaki is a great premise, a small Japanese town where people start to become obsessed with spirals and then turn into snails, and excellent film until the ending. Which just becomes completely bizarre. When I discussed the film with a friend, and she brought up that no J-Horror films end particularly well (not for the characters, but as a film), I had to agree and really, only Pulse ends strongly. Very strongly in that case, although it's still a little shocking. I find that most J-Horror is good about the premise and building tension (except Ju-On, which didn't make any sense at any point), but trying to actually make sense wasn't a high priority. Uzumaki had some great effects and built tension very well, but there really is no explanation for almost anything in it. WTF, Japan? I clearly need to learn Japanese and the read the mangas. I hear they're insane. Might make more sense, too.

The Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, & The Testament of Orpheus

The Blood of a Poet felt just like early Buñuel, but not as crazy. Slightly more structured. Not as good either. I was somewhat disappointed.

Orpheus, on the other hand, was a great retelling of the mythology, with a modern setting, and a similar feel to Cocteau's brilliant Beauty and the Beast. Not as dreamlike, but outstanding nonetheless, with the trial and mirror sequences well worth watching. At least one of the trilogy works well for someone without a desire to see navel gazing or be confused.

The Testament of Orpheus is all about the power of movies and is basically Cocteau messing with the audience for a while. It works vastly better than Blood of a Poet though, mainly because Cocteau at the end of his career was better than Cocteau at the beginning. I love that Criterion packaged the three films together though. The two Orpheus films clearly match well, given similar characters and even sharing a scene, but the first one actually is like a prototype of Testament. Cocteau was a genius, but it's always interesting to watch that talent develop. Even if it ends up with a bunch of wankery.