The Da Vinci Code, Cutthroat Island, The Long Good Friday, Executive Koala, & Purple Rain

The Da Vinci Code clearly was going to be made, based on the huge sales of the book, but is there a more useless big budget film? Ridiculous, and somehow, for some reason, they changed the ending to make it much more ambiguous that Sophie is the descendant of Jesus Christ. Too bad, because that was just about the only thing that made the story remotely interesting. Of course, it's crap, based on misrepresentations and the like. Of course, I fully subscribe to the idea that Jesus was a normal dude, and the huge gap in his life in the New Testament, along with the idea that since I believe that Jesus actually did exist, it's highly unlikely that the huge inconsistencies and mistranslations in the Bible could possibly be reconciled. It's obvious that all religions are based on earlier ones, building on myths, trying to explain things that science hadn't yet explained, so a healthy skepticism of organized religion is good, but the least you can do is at least be honest. Dan Brown may be a compulsively readable author, but he's a first class liar.
Cutthroat Island is quite simply terrible in every way. But it's a different terrible from The Singing Forest. There's some talent there, but so little of it is in evidence anywhere remotely near this film that I wonder who decided to greenlight this with such a huge budget. Really, anyone who may have, at one time or after the movie, been a good actor/director/writer/anything seriously did not know what the hell they were doing. They replaced quality movie with explosions. And extra-long boring fight scenes with pirates, a monkey, and explosions.
The Long Good Friday is a great British gangster film. Bob Hoskins gives a riveting performance as a "middle-class" gangster trying to open a casino, and deal with bombings that seem to be trying to eliminate him and his woman, Helen Mirren. It also features a young Pierce Brosnan as an assassin. Really, it's quite good.
Executive Koala is a very strange film, a Koala is a salaryman at a pickle company in Japan, and his wife disappeared three years ago and his new girlfriend just disappeared. And he works for a bunny. Telling you much more about the plot would be ruining it. There's a musical interlude, some strange cultural satire, and some breaking the fourth wall. Definitely worth watching, because I have never seen a film that so nonchalantly deals with something so utterly weird.
Purple Rain has some great Prince tracks, and some terrible acting. The bluray didn't seem like it was worth getting, as it still looked like an old DVD, so maybe they just did a crappy job with the transfer? And Morris Day is supposed to be stupid, but his pants were just too high for me to take him remotely seriously.

CSS and Ssion at 9:30 12/20

So Ms. Sally Albright got me a ticket to the CSS show. I had heard their albums, and had the song from the iPod ad stuck in my head for as long as it had been on TV. With my recent (well, within the last couple of years) much larger interest in dancey electro poppy type of music, I certainly wasn't going to miss this show. Crazy Brazilian music? Yes, please.

The opener was Ssion (pronounced Shun), which she had apparently seen when they opened for The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They're an art-punk music collective, led by Cody Critcheloe, from Kansas City. Apparently, there are insane people in every town. Insane people who put out amazingly catchy tracks. Saving you the trouble of googling for it, here's the video for Street Jizz (unfortunately with the correct number of z's). They played many tracks from Fool's Gold, along with a mediocre, at best, cover of Nightclubbing. Bits of New Kids on the Block and Michael Jackson lyrics also found their way into songs. Cody danced on a raised platform in front of a screen occasionally showing the lyrics of the songs, had two men in matching leotards dancing next to the platform, and the keyboardist in an outfit that reminds everyone that he is a Boy on both his jacket and hat, and a drummer keeping the insistent beat on orange see through drums. But the ending song, Street Jizz, is one of the catchiest songs I've ever heard. Just addictive to an extreme. Quite fun, and the members of CSS dancing on the balcony also seemed to be enjoying themselves.

CSS came out and put on a pretty fun show, playing all the tracks I knew (um, Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex, Let's Make Love and Listen to Death from Above, and... that's it), and ended with a huge group singalong to We Are the Champions. The show was enjoyable enough, even without knowing the songs, but they were kind of overshadowed by Ssion. For those of you keeping score, Lovefoxxx was attractive, but the weird outfit did nothing for me.

I Am Legend, The Polar Express, The Silent Partner, Overlord, Early Spring, & Equinox Flower

I Am Legend is pretty bad. The first parts, where Will Smith... oh, I mean, Robert Neville is wandering around a badly cgi'd New York City (and badly CGI'd deer and lions) are at least serviceable, but once the CGI'd vampires/zombies start dominating the screentime, it goes right off a cliff and never recovers. I watched it on HBO, so I didn't get to see the alternate ending in great quality, but I saw it online, and it certainly is better, although I wonder exactly why the studio had them change a happy ending to a depressing one. Aren't happy endings what Hollywood wants? Neither was particularly good, and the whole final siege scene was pretty much crap. Blargh. There's a good movie in there somewhere, but bad bad bad special effects just ruined it.

The Polar Express is a bunch of people dead behind the eyes, and the few people not played by Tom Hanks. The animation was off, because the eyes looked dead, and the faces didn't move right. Also, the movie was stretched to the point of pain. Barghle. Why did I sit through this? Stupid.

The Silent Partner has a great performance from Christopher Plummer as a crazy guy who robs a bank where Elliott Gould, Susannah York, and John Candy (!) work. But Elliott Gould took the money first. So Plummer starts about getting the money from him. It's written by Curtis Hanson, he of L.A. Confidential and Wonder Boys fame. As such, it's an interesting little film, with nudity and violence against women (the second of which I was kind of uncomfortable with). But certainly goes to show that the 1970s were a very good time for movies.

Speaking of the 70s, Overlord was originally made in 1975, but vanished for about 30 years until it was redone by the Criterion Collection a few years ago. It's the story of a mild-mannered guy who joins the British Army during WWII and is on one of the first landing crafts to hit Normandy during D-Day. He struggles through basic training, and really is not the soldiering type. And all through this he is terrified by a vision he has of being shot while running up the beach. But the real reason why this film is interesting is the large amount of archival footage provided by both the Imperial War Museum as well as German film archives. John Alcott, who worked with Stanley Kubrick many times (including the brilliantly shot Barry Lyndon), matches the film stock perfectly. Not just a touching story, it's also one of the best movies about D-Day, even as it ends before any real fighting has happened. Definitely recommended.

Early Spring makes me wish I didn't feel this compunction to watch every film by directors I enjoy. It's a more biting film than many of his others, focusing on a salaried man's affair and hiding it from his family and coworkers, but still they all feel like he's telling a similar story in a slightly different fashion. Technically proficient, and with the same strong performances, but definitely of decreasing value to me watching them. Equinox Flower at least doesn't have a title of Relative Time Season. It's really close, but not exactly. The hero of this is a hypocrite about relationships with daughters, and it's about how the women in his life gently push him into the present with their roles in society. The use of color actually fits with the idea of pushing a somewhat backwards looking guy into the present, as Ozu finally moves into color filmmaking.

The Singing Forest, My Straight Boyfriend, Popcorn & Coke, Uninhibited, & Misguided Piss

The Singing Forest is the most immature film I have ever seen. And possibly one of the worst. I also watched it before the previous posts, but I somehow didn't write it up then. The Singing Forest, which isn't really obviously referenced anywhere in the film (I think it may have been the title of the article that the lead wrote after a visit to a psychic), was the screams of victims who were impaled on spikes. I would have known this had I been willing to watch Paragraph 175, but it sits languishing on my DVR, for over two years now. There's just something about a documentary about gay people being persecuted during the Holocaust that makes me feel like I should watch it, but not actually create any desire to do so. I could go through the many, many ways that this film was terrible, but suffice it to say that when the surf drowns out dialogue, that was the best scene in the film. Better than when the barking dog drowned out dialogue, or when we get to see the fiancee's penis because the father stares at him in the shower. All would be highlights of any other film, but only Jorge Ameer is man enough to put them all in one film. That's not mentioning the wedding, the daughter (conceived during a rape where the obviously gay father meets the now-dead mother) being named Destiny, the extremely awkward and terrible dialogue, acting, directing, editing, sound design, cinematography, and so on. I bet even the best boy grips were amateurish. Really, the movie is so bad it must be seen. And then ridiculed for days to anyone who hasn't seen it. Which is what I did, and why I have no idea how I could have forgotten to write about it.

Even better than the horrible main feature though, were the bonus features. It included four short films, one of which isn't on IMDB. My Straight Boyfriend starts with a guy walking into his room, getting naked, and masturbating. Which is totally normal. But then he gets under the covers and continues to masturbate, which, to me, just means messy sheets and a stain. So he's going at it for a while, until you start to realize there's someone in the bed, possibly giving him oral pleasure. At first it's clearly a woman, and then it turns into a sex doll's head (what?), and then the arms show up and it's clearly a dude. This is not subtle. This is stupid. Even worse was Popcorn & Coke, which was about a guy getting "seduced" by an awkward guy and a woman with bad taste in clothes that showed her backfat (which isn't a major issue, but just kind of a bad costuming decision), while the older woman sitting behind him looked on jealously. The star of it, Matthew Leitch, was in both The Dark Knight and Band of Brothers. So someone clearly thought well enough of his acting abilities. It's too bad Jorge Ameer has no talent. Apparently this was the introduction to The Glitter Awards, which he started and curates. In fact, just read his bio from the IMDB, which was obviously written by him (and according to his message board, definitely wrote it, and then changed his nickname). Uninhibited is about a guy who walks into his apartment and turns on the tv, which is showing The Singing Forest, in a not-so-subtle bit of product placement. And then hears his roommate having sex (with a woman!), so he crawls under his bed and when she leaves, and then the roommate clearly knows he's under there and tells him to come out. And then gets naked and into the shower where the guy follows and they start making out. Another winner by Jorge Ameer! But the clear winner for best short included on this was Misguided Piss, about a nerd who watches a great pickup in a bathroom. One dude pisses on another one's leg. This shot is repeated many times, on an already wet pant leg, which is just crap. Also there's a point of view shot of the guy's obviously fake penis pissing. Which is also repeated. So the pissee and the pisser leave the bathroom together, and so the nerd tries it with this big guido, named Rico Riconi (the actual actor), who doesn't take to it and punches him out. All through every one of his movies, he uses bad classical music, and one had a particularly bad cover of some terrible song, possibly Mandy. Now I'm completely blanking on this, so I don't remember. But it was terrible. Ameer's just one of the worst filmmakers currently out there.

Sooner or Later, Zigeunerweisen, Kageroza, Yumeji, & Underworld Beauty

Sooner or Later is an 11 minute short Hungarian film written and directed by István Madarász (and is Elöbb-utóbb in Hungarian). Normally I wouldn't bother watching random short films online, but io9 and Metafilter both linked to it, so go here and watch a short about a late-war secret Nazi experiment to use a time travel serum to go back to win the war. Worth 11 minutes.

Zigeunerweisen, Kageroza, and Yumeji are an informal trilogy of Seijun Suzuki films, and are bizarre and very nonsensical with ghosts and actors playing different people. Sorry, just didn't like them at all. They're basically his only major works from Branded To Kill to Pistol Opera. He clearly was still messing with people, but instead of it being the studio heads like in Tokyo Drifter and Branded To Kill, it is the audience. Underworld Beauty, on the other hand, is a quick little dirty, early Seijun Suzuki film, not as good as his later ones, but it's effective at what it does: a bunch of criminals are chasing after some diamonds. There's a tense scene involving a coal chute, and a lot of naked mannequins, but really, it's just a fun little film. Nothing remotely that interesting except for those who will see anything by a director of which they are a fan.

The Bourne Ultimatum, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Rescue Dawn, WALL-E, BURN-E, & Presto

The Bourne Ultimatum is the last (maybe? with a successful series, who knows?) Bourne movie, and as such, it finally answers some questions that you don't get from reading the books (which I did back in 2002 after liking the first movie). Julia Stiles is no Franke Potente, and Édgar Ramírez is definitely not Clive Owen. The second two films are different from the first one, but they're all enjoyable spy films. My only problem with them is that they've apparently heavily influenced Quantum of Solace and it isn't nearly as good as Casino Royale? I sort of want my Bourne films to be about revenge, and my Bond movies to be about awesomeness. Revenge shouldn't really enter into it. Maybe I shouldn't condemn it until I've seen it. Maybe it'll be out sometime in the spring on blu-ray?

Little Dieter Needs to Fly is the documentary that Rescue Dawn was based on, so I watched them both in one day. I recommend them both, although Rescue Dawn is considerably longer, but it does have Jeremy Davies and François Chau from Lost, so that was a nice touch. Dieter is Dieter Dengler, a young survivor of WWII who moved to the US to fly planes. In an early (his first, I think) mission into Laos, his plane was shot down and was captured a day later. He survived for months in a prisoner of war camp, and then eventually escaped and survived for a long time before being rescued. Also, Dieter was involved in four more plane crashes as a test pilot after the war. How much of a badass was this guy? The documentary is pretty short, but it covers everything that the movie does in a better fashion. Although, as Werner Herzog directed it, he puts Dieter through some mean things, like forcing him to be run through the jungle with his hands tied. He's a total bastard, but he makes good films. Oh, and Rescue Dawn includes a Steve Zahn decapitation. Not bad.

WALL-E is the newest Pixar animated film. It just won the best film of the year award from the LA Film Critics Association. It's a Pixar film. Of course, I absolutely loved it. Beautiful animation, an extremely touching (no pun intended, but I like it anyway) story, and funny when it wanted to be. I am not sure if it's the best Pixar film, but it's definitely up there. Also on the DVD were BURN-E and Presto. BURN-E is sort of like a deleted subplot than another movie, but it's enjoyable enough. Presto, on the other hand, is the hilarious and extremely awesome story of a magic pair of hats that a magician uses in his act and the bunny who turns the tables violently. Definitely worth a rental if you, for some reason, have seen WALL-E and somehow missed this. Pixar just knows how to make short films that are clever and interesting, and this homage to old-school Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry cartoons is just about perfect.

Nobody Knows, Graveyard of Honor, & Graveyard of Honor

Nobody Knows is a depressing film about a group of children who are abandoned by their mom and how they have to survive with the oldest being only 12. I cannot express how sad this film is. It is based on a true story, which just hurt all the more. Hirokazu Koreeda, who also directed Maborosi and Afterlife, gets good performances from the kids, but I do sort of wish it wasn't so heartbreaking.

Graveyard of Honor is a 1975 film by Kinji Fukasaku which was remade in 2002 by Takashi Miike. I watched both. Fukasaku's version is slightly better, as it's less bloated. They're both about a yakuza who struggles to be a not huge dick and getting every yakuza family pissed at him. He fails, and eventually has to fight both his family and other families, along with the cops. Watching these back to back was a little annoying, because he was just ridiculously stupid and overreacting. The Miike film just went on a little long. Fukusaku's film is actually similar to the Yakuza Papers films, firmly placing the story in a historical context, which adds a lot of texture to the film.

The Lookout, I Think I Love My Wife, & Passport to Pimlico

The Lookout was written by Scott Frank, writer of one of my favorite big Hollywood films of the 1990s: Out of Sight, along with another excellent Elmore Leonard adaptation in Get Shorty. He also wrote Dead Again, a film for which I have a possibly irrational fondness. Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh are just always great together. Anyway, about the Lookout: Joseph Gordon-Levitt continues his very strong string of performances along with Mysterious Skin and Brick, showing that he's quite talented. Oh, and 10 Things I Hate about You, but that's in a different class. Rural Kansas seems sometimes interesting, and sometimes not very nice. It's an interesting film, and supporting actors like Jeff Bridges and Carla Gugino add some nice performances (well, Carla Gugino is a little underused). A little too influenced by Memento, but still worth watching.

I Think I Love My Wife is Chris Rock and Louis C.K. film remaking Chloe in the Afternoon, one of Erich Rohmer's Six Moral Tales. I'm not sure why it was remade, and I'm not sure why this film was made. It's not particularly funny, and it doesn't really tell a story that seems worth telling. Hey, don't cheat on your wife! Wow, thanks overlong film. And who doesn't like viagra jokes! There's talent in this film, but it is in evidence nowhere.

Passport to Pimlico is an early Ealing Studios comedy about a somewhat crappy part of London that, due to an unexploded bomb that suddenly explodes, discovers that they're not actually part of the United Kingdom but was actually given to the Duke of Burgundy and thus is the lone remaining part of Burgundy. There are some funny bits, and the small guys versus the government is a fine message. Having Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford basically be their same bumbling characters introduced in The Lady Vanishes adds a bit of interest to film buffs. Not as good as other Ealing Studios comedies, but enjoyable enough.

Standard Operating Procedure, Path to War, The War Game, Culloden, & Fast Food Nation

Standard Operating Procedure is the newest Errol Morris film, and as such is a brilliant documentary. It's about the Abu Ghraib scandal, and as such, brought out some very interesting points that I had never known before. Did you know in the famous photo of Lynndie England pointing at a prisoner's junk, he was masturbating? See, I saw the pictures when they were first released, and I never noticed that. Something about my sickening feeling when I first saw them led to me not actually going over them in detail. But man, this film does, made me extremely uncomfortable to see what was done in my name, and then I just got extremely pissed. Seriously, this was just a completely messed up way to treat a human being. I'm so anti-torture now that just the idea that this was condoned by anyone in the military makes me want to call for their imprisonment. Just a sickening display of supposed moral righteousness. This is why they hate us. And it's not really all that clear as to why they'd be wrong.

Path to War is about LBJ's presidency as it relates to Vietnam. I saw people portraying people I know in it. That was fun. It has an amazing cast, universally excellent, and is really an interesting look at just how it seemed completely impossible that we could be drawn into a war there, even as we had no idea how to win it. Statistics are useful, but they can't beat actual experience. And it's frustrating to know that a great man was taken down by stupid rabid anti-communism, when there was so much evidence that Vietnam was fighting for its independence as nationalists not as communists. Seriously, why the hell does the US do so many stupid stupid things. I blame the Republicans. Democrats just couldn't be "soft" on communism, even when it would have been so much better for everyone involved.

The War Game is a documentary about what would happen if England would be the target of a nuclear attack. As such, it's horrifying. I've been reading metafilter and ask.metafilter for years now, and they've mentioned it a few times, and I started to read about it, and apparently it terrified many English children back when it was shown on TV. I can certainly understand that, as nuclear war is a motherfucker. Seriously, the idea of just what would happen and how much of England's population would be wiped out in a first strike, but how bad it would be for those who would survive. Even though it's based on evidence, it's basically a fictional film, and yet it still won the Oscar for best documentary. It's that good.

Culloden is another film made for British TV by Peter Watkins, but this is about the battle of Culloden, the final battle in the Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland. Not the best thing the English ever did, as after they crushed the Jacobite forces, they gave the fleeing rebels no quarter and it led to horrible atrocities committed by the English forces. It's not nearly as good as The War Game, but it was interesting, as you really don't hear much about the Jacobites in any American school class on European history. It came on the same DVD as The War Game, so think of it as an added bonus for that film.

Fast Food Nation is the book by Eric Schlosser that was made into a movie that I saw back in March. I borrowed Tweaks's copy, and enjoyed the little notes she wrote in it (she read it for school). Somehow it actually made me more upset about suburban sprawl and the mistreatment of workers rather than the danger of eating tainted meat. It's a very easy read for a book about maimings and horrible diseases, exploitation of illegal immigrants and young workers not washing their hands, crazy Christians and heartless executives. I need to read Reefer Madness now. Sections on pot, illegal immigration, and porn? My three favorite things all in one place!

Zodiac, Samurai Girl, Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, & Valis

Zodiac is something I saw a while ago, and forgot to write up with either of my last two posts. But it's David Fincher's long and involving look at the Zodiac killer, a serial killer in the San Francisco area who killed at least five people in the late 60s. Of course, he wouldn't be nearly as interesting had it not been for the codes that he sent to reporters after some of the murders. Quite a fascinating case. The movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Robert Downey, Jr., Brian Cox, Elias Koteas, Dermot Mulroney, Donal Logue, Philip Baker Hall, Adam Goldberg, Clea DuVall, and Chloë Sevigny, all of whom I have a soft spot for, or love unreservedly. And David Fincher does a good job, ratcheting the tension, even though you know that no one will ever get caught or charged with the murders. It's just a strong film, all around.

Samurai Girl is an ABC Family miniseries event thingy, six hours about a young girl named Heaven who it turns out is a sort of Japanese Jedi master whose destiny it is to save the world, or destroy it or something. Honestly, I didn't entirely understand what the hell would happen. She is about to get married when the wedding is hijacked by ninjas who kill her brother and send her running off to her brother's friend (who happens to be a ninja master), but not before meeting a goofball (played by Kyle Labine, brother of Tyler from Reaper, which doesn't start up again until January?) and his roommate. The cast is uniformly mediocre (besides Kyle, who's not as charming as Tyler), and Jamie Chung (who is Korean-American and plays Japanese, which I would have been bothered by had this tried to be remotely realistic) formerly starred on The Real World San Diego. So yeah, it's cheezy as hell, but it's surprisingly watchable. As long as you're sitting on your bed, bundled up, under the influence of drugs. And willing to deal with a much worse Buffy ripoff.

Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story was shown on Frontline, and is an interesting look at the history of one of my lifetimes greatest racebaiters: Lee "Willie Horton" Atwater. For those who don't spend too much time reading about the history of Karl Rove and the like, it's probably informative, but other than actually seeing pictures of him palling around with terrorists (black people!) and drunks (George W. Bush) and his face post-steroids, there's surprisingly little there there. Still, I enjoyed it, and enjoyed thinking that Lee Atwater and Karl Rove were so dirty that Ed Rollins thought they went too far.

Valis is a Philip K. Dick novel (I think the first work of his I've actually read, which is surprising based on my enjoyment of movies based on his books), that has been cited in Lost, which is why I have wanted to read it since I saw that Tweaks had a copy. I'm not sure how much I can really explain about it, but the wiki page might help a little in explaining why I feel like it's an interesting and possibly illuminating look at what goes on on the island in Lost. Of course, as for anything attempting to explain what's going on in Lost, a visit to Lostpedia's page on Valis is informative.

Running out of Time, Last Hurrah for Chivalry, Charlotte Sometimes, & The Mission

Running out of Time is a pretty good movie, with Andy Lau as a dying master criminal who is playing a game with an expert hostage negotiator. It's a stylish little thriller from Johnnie To, made during the same year as The Mission, and considerably better than that one. The Mission is about a group of bodyguards hired to protect a triad boss, and then have to struggle with the repercussions of an affair. They're both stylish thrillers, but Running out of Time is just a more effective film, and held my interest much better.

Last Hurrah for Chivalry is an early John Woo film, before he decided that honor was about two .45s being fired at the same time at waves of dudes in suits. At this point it's about guys with swords fighting unnamed guys and guys with names like Green and Pray and Sleeping Wizard (who fights while sleeping). It's eminently silly, a twisted plot about a son revenging the death of his father and an attempt on his life by his newlywed wife (who was a whore he bought and his enemy paid twice as much to kill him), and the two swordsmen who help him. There are many, many swordfights, some interesting, most not, and it seems like the good guys get stabbed many, many times and don't really suffer much. Weird how that works in movies.

Charlotte Sometimes is a little indie film about a quiet Asian guy (the actor's Japanese-American, but the movie doesn't specify his ethnicity) who rents out part of his parents' house to a couple (she's Asian and he's half-Asian) and works as a mechanic. When he meets a girl in the bar at which he hangs out, tensions arise. It's a small film, mainly just the two couples, but it's shot impressively for DV six years ago and looks good and uses light and shadows very well. And it's surprisingly deep. Definitely one to check out if you want to see a great film that doesn't treat the audience like an idiot.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters & Ace in the Hole

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters might be funnier if I had enjoyed the show, but I've been told by some others that the movie isn't particularly funny for those who have enjoyed the show. I mean, just not particularly funny, and, like most of the Adult Swim shows, it's weird for its own sake. Occasionally that can be extremely funny (Harvey Birdman and the like), and other times it's like this. And the title? If you find that funny, maybe you'd like it. But it just goes to show that the entire movie is full of over-the-top things that someone high might find funny. But I was definitely not high.

Ace in the Hole is a dark, dark satire from Billy Wilder. Man, I really didn't expect it to be that evil. It's great though. I liked the reference to Floyd Collins, who I used to hear about all the time when I worked at the Natural History Museum, so that was an added nice touch for me. But Kirk Douglas makes the film as a drunk former big city journalist stuck in Albuquerque who milks a trapped caver as an attempt to get back to working in New York. And of course, everything goes wrong and it becomes a media circus.

Bishop Allen at the Black Cat 11/1

I'm a little behind. Anyway, a large group ended up at the Black Cat to see Bishop Allen. As with the last time they were here in May, they didn't play long enough. But they did play for an hour including the encore break, so that was 10 minutes more. Hey, Bishop Allen: you have two (soon to be three) albums, and around 10 other EPs of original material (one was live and at least a couple of them were rerecorded for the most recent album): you can play longer. I think most would agree. Set was pretty good, and the new songs only stuck out in that I couldn't sing along to them until the chorus had repeated. Definitely looking forward to Grrr..., the new album which should be out in February.

Songs played included: The Monitor, Middle Management, Like Castanets, Click Click Click Click, The Same Fire, and the encore finished with Butterfly Nets. Which made Ms. Albright happy, with her ukulele. Even though the ukulele broke halfway through and the song had to be finished on guitar.

Drink Up Buttercup sucked ass though. They were like a drunken carnival that sunk to the bottom of the sea and started to sing sea shanties. Just crap. According to this guy who agreed with me on Drink Up Buttercup (and this guy who liked that dreck), Electric Owl was actually pretty good. I kind of enjoyed my pre-show event (sushi and then candy), so I guess I'll have to deal with it. And here's a video of Middle Management (AKA the Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist trailer song).

The Magnetic Fields at Lisner Auditorium 10/26

I'm not actually sure what my first experience was with The MF, but it was definitely in college, during which time I picked up a couple of their albums on CD (but not 69 Love Songs, which I had most of on mp3, but didn't own because I hadn't yet just started buying CDs from the labels themselves, and I never could find the box at record stores when I had the cash). I got 69 Love Songs the summer after graduating when I had a job and too much money to spend, and a deep and abiding love for MF was only strengthened. Due to Merritt's rumored (to me at the time, I wasn't as news hungry about things other than my hatred for Bush) reclusiveness, I just put them in a list of bands I would never see live and just went on with my life. When I was surprised by the release of i, I happily picked it up and was extremely happy with most of the album, with it very reminiscent of the more acoustic tracks from 69 Love Songs, rather than what I had originally fallen in love with, the tracks like Take Ecstasy with Me and The Flowers She Sent and the Flowers She Said She Sent and All the Umbrellas in London. But I liked it, and again lamented the lack of touring. Fast forward a few years, past the weird Chinese operas (most of which is a footnote at best in Merritt's career), and I start hearing about his new album, a tribute to Jesus and Mary Chain. Being a huge fan of theirs (and recognizing that Merritt clearly was from the drum beat of When You Were My Baby among others), I was kind of excited about it, but the actual release was kind of disappointing. The noise had gotten in the way of my enjoyment of the lyrics.

But then I heard that they were actually going to be touring this album. Outside of New York City. And I got more excited. Even if I didn't like the most recent album, he was guaranteed to play stuff from earlier albums, along with the 6ths and Gothic Archies songs that would work. So I then promptly forgot about it until a friend reminded me. And then promptly forgot about until said friend reminded me again in front of a group of people who all also wanted to go. So we went. I think there ended up being at least thirteen people I have talked to there, along with an insane amount of people that I've seen at shows and around the city, at the show.

The opening act was one Shugo Tokumaru, who was actually really impressive. Acoustic, singing so quietly it took me a couple of songs before I realized he was singing in Japanese (although introducing himself in a very thick accent and saying he was from Tokyo should have tipped me off), and definitely a nice surprise. I do sort of wish that Portastatic had opened for him, but eh, I can't have everything. For those of you who would like to see what would happen if Portastatic opened for The Magnetic Fields, go here for some videos.

The show itself was a nice, low-key affair. I like sitting shows. Also, being able to hear a pin drop (aka, some random guy coughing (not, me, I could hear myself coughing each and every time I did so)) was nice. Sure, Stephin and Claudia were snippy with each other, but after almost losing their instruments in Philadelphia and it being the last day of the tour, of course they were going to be snippy. Most of it was funny, especially their argument about the Olsen twins. Stephin was sick, and clearly irritated with the audience, especially one dude with a camera, who wins douchebag of the show for that (although the people who left after the first set, what the hell people?). The set list was extremely varied, and while it didn't include all my favorites from the early synthpop days, it had my three favorite MF tracks (Yeah! Oh Yeah!, Take Ecstasy with Me, and one that I won't name due to it making abundantly clear that I'm a sap), so I enjoyed it.

Setlist, based on here with corrections along with band.

When I'm out of Town (The 6ths)
No One Will Ever Love You (Magnetic Fields)
California Girls (Magnetic Fields)
Walking My Gargoyle (The Gothic Archies)
The Nun's Litany (Magnetic Fields)
All My Little Words (Magnetic Fields)
Old Fools (Magnetic Fields)
I Don't Believe You (Magnetic Fields)
Dreams Anymore (Magnetic Fields)
This Little Ukulele (Stephin Merritt)
I Don't Love You Anymore (Magnetic Fields)
Xavier Says (Magnetic Fields)
Zombie Boy (Magnetic Fields)
Papa Was a Rodeo (Magnetic Fields)

Intermission

Lonely Highway (Magnetic Fields)
Take Ecstasy with Me (Magnetic Fields)
Courtesans (Magnetic Fields)
Crows (Gothic Archies)
The Tiny Goat (Gothic Archies)
Too Drunk To Dream (Magnetic Fields)
The Book of Love (Magnetic Fields)
Give Me Back My Dreams (The 6ths)
Drive On, Driver (Magnetic Fields)
What A Fucking Lovely Day (Stephin Merritt)
Yeah! Oh Yeah! (Magnetic Fields)
It's Only Time (Magnetic Fields)

Encore

Washington, DC (Magnetic Fields) (well, at least part of it)
Grand Canyon (Magnetic Fields)

Sex & Fury, Female Yakuza Tale, & PTU: Into the Perilous Night

Sex & Fury and Female Yakuza Tale are the last two pinky violence movies I plan on seeing for a while. There's just so much naked Japanese women I can take. I never, ever, though I would say that, but, yep, there is a limit. Sex & Fury actually has non-Asian characters in it, speaking their native languages, which is a nice bonus. And one of them is Christina Lindberg, of Thriller (or They Call Her One Eye), providing some naked non-Asian for those of you so inclined. Apparently, she's an English spy and they were trying to start a new Opium war in Japan (this was set in the early 1900s), and our hero Ochô gets involved. She's a pickpocket and a gambler (in one of the worst gambling scenes of all time, making five card draw look boring as hell) and needs to revenge her father's death. Basically, the most impressive thing in it was the naked fight scene after Ochô gets surprised in the bath. Impressive camera work not to show her pubic hair. Female Yakuza Tale picks up the story of Ochô a little later, when she gets involved with some yakuza gamblers and a plot to steal from some yakuza by replacing real drugs with fake drugs. Oh, did I mention that the opening credits to it were another naked fight scene with Ochô, although less skillfully edited to not show her pubes? And that the drugs were smuggled by a group of women in their vaginas, which had to be measured to see how much each could carry? And that most of the film had naked women in it? Including a huge naked fight scene at the end where all the women got naked for no apparent reason? Sex & Fury was actually sort of good, but Female Yakuza Tale just had a couple neat scenes (I mocked the naked credit sequence, but it was probably the best scene in the film) and many, many too many naked women.

PTU: Into the Perilous Night is Johnny To's story of what happens when a Hong Kong policeman's gun goes missing, and the PTU has to go find it in one night. It's not nearly as good as either Election or Exiled, let alone Breaking News, but it's not terrible. Apparently, after my pinky violence kick, I went on a Johnny To kick, so look for reviews of more of those coming up whenever I get time to watch them.

What's taking time is Rock Band 2 (OMG, you guys, totes awesome!), Little Big Planet (Sackboy is adorable!), and, um, Ms. Albright. I don't regret any of those.

Love on the Run, Reno 911!: Miami, For Y'ur Height Only, Challenge of the Tiger, Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless to Confess, & Factory Girl

Love on the Run is the last of the Antoine Doinel films, and as such it spends most of its time looking back at earlier ones through flashbacks. Not too many to Bed and Board, and there are a couple references to Day for Night (still my favorite Truffaut film), but I thought overall it was only of use to people who really liked the earlier Doinel films. It was a nice little bit of a nostalgia trip for me, but nowhere near as good as others. Oh, and the Netflix description is not really right, as it's about his divorce from Christine, they're not really struggling with his infidelity, they've come to grips with it and decided to divorce.

Reno 911!: Miami has convinced me that I just don't like Reno 911!. I have tried many times, but I just don't like it very much. Fitfully funny (as is the show), but overall not enough to keep my interest riveted. I'm not going to object if it's on TV and I'm there (unless I've already seen the episode), but it's not nearly as good as other State alumni work.

For Y'ur Height Only is the Filipino film that starts a little person named Weng Weng as the suavest spy since James Bond. And he beds normal sized women throughout the film, sometimes bizarrely. I mean, the entire movie is one long bizarre spy riff. And stupid. Basically, it's a terrible terrible film that is only of interest now because the star is a little person. As such, it's watchable. Especially if you like watching people get hit and kicked in the nards. Because this film is full of it.

Challenge of the Tiger is the second movie on the same DVD, so I watched it. I'm glad I did. It stars one of the many Bruce Lee knockoffs (named Bruce Le) and he's a member of the CIA (maybe, it wasn't really clear, but I think he was) along with Richard Harrison (who starred in a bunch of movies with Ninja in the title, along with one of Joe D'Amato's porn-ish movies I haven't seen, Orgasmo Nero). Oh, and Richard Harrison's name is Richard Cannon (see, it can be shortened as Dick Cannon! FUNNY!). Anyway, the movie starts out by introducing Richard by having him drive into a palatial estate and be greeted by two topless women who proceed to play topless tennis with the woman in the car with him. And then there's a scene where one of the girls drinks water from one of those pissing boy statues and is then called a dirty girl. Yeah. The plot is about a formula that can sterilize all men. This is clearly a problem for Richard who seems to have sex with all women in the film, while Bruce is a typical eunuch that most Asian men are in Western films. Unless they're there to threaten the white women.

Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless to Confess interestingly also has a scene where someone drinks out of a pissing boy statue. In this case it's supposed to be funny, though. Anyway, this is another pinky violence film, and it's actually not full of gratuitous nudity (apparently, the director tried to limit that, and I salute him), and is the last in a series of four films, none of which are supposed to be worth watching besides this one. Five delinquent girls eventually band together to fight the yakuza who are trying to kill the father of one of them. Typical revenge film, but the final scene is of them in red trenchcoats with black armbands. Visually striking and awesome. They strip down to black hotpants and white bandages over their breasts to slaughter the yakuza. There's also a scene where a guy is stabbed in the stomach over a glass floor and bleeds out over it. Very nice. Definitely the strongest of the pinky violence films I've seen recently.

Factory Girl is crap. Many better films about Andy Warhol, and the factual inaccuracies (according to wikipedia and the people involved who are still alive) just grated on me. Along with the very shallowness of it all. If you're going to be making a film about someone who's potentially as interesting as Edie Sedgwick (I assume she is, since you really don't get it from this film), make the film interesting. Woo, Siena Miller's naked. That's the only thing this has going for it. I mean, you can't even use Bob Dylan as a character because he'd sue due to it being made up? What a surprise the film sort of sucked. Just avoid.

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists at Black Cat 10/8 and Of Montreal at 9:30 10/9

Man, am I ever happy that these two shows were back to back. Otherwise, I'd be extremely pissed at Ted Leo. And I love Ted Leo. It's gonna take multiple listens to get into the new album, as it's just more punky than I like. And the crowd... Man, I hate people under the age of 21 at punk shows. And they stink. The fat dude in front of me was not only taking up the space of about four people (literally, he actually was taking up the space for four people by the end of Ted Leo's set), he also smelled worse than almost anyone I've ever smelled. When the ass stood in front of me with a couple songs left in Ted's set, I wasn't actually that upset, because it gave me a buffer between his sweat glands and my nose.

On to the actual music: Future of the Left sucked. I really didn't like it at all, it was mainly noise. I spent most of the set looking at the Against Me! merchandise and wondering what was the true opposite of Against Me!: was it For Me! or For You!? The former is the opposite of the meaning, but the latter is the opposite of the actual words. This is deep, man. We didn't stick around for Against Me! due to us wanting to get the hell out of there. I imagine it would have answered some questions. Ted himself started the set by saying that he'd be playing a bunch of new songs, and he ended up playing about half completely awesome songs (Army Bound, Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?, Me & Mia, and the like) and half new songs, none of which really stuck out in my mind. I've seen him now four times, and this is the second time it wasn't a full set (after the Operation Ceasefire show), but this is the first time I've not actively enjoyed the show. Basically little went well. The food beforehand at Rice (which we had before the Destroyer show in April) was kinda disappointing, as the ginger tempura wasn't as good, although the Tom Yum Goong was quite good.

The next night, however, we had a better plan. Starting with Peruvian chicken, some other mental refreshments, and off to the show to make sure to see the opener. Love Is All is Swedish pop. Which I had heard of, but I was going to see Of Montreal, so I didn't know that they were opening on this tour. But I'm always up for Scandinavian pop, and this brand of dance pop was a lot of fun. When they introduced a song as by one of the saxophonists' favorite bands, and they started into the drums of I Ran, I got a little bit of a charge. Just a fun opener, and a great way to get everyone excited for the headliners. Getting there early had allowed us to get my favorite area, on the edge of the balcony, so you can see basically the entire stage, important for this show. And the show was insane and awesome. I really can't recommend seeing them enough. And since so many other people have written about the show (let alone the ability to listen to the show), I feel like writing more is a little bit of overkill. If you follow one link, follow the "about the show" one, as it has many pictures. I will say that Kevin Barnes was not naked during the show (unlike the show in Vegas in 2007), but the show was probably the gayest thing I've ever seen, and I've seen gay porn. Apparently, it's not supposed to be straight-up queer, but it's kind of hard to miss that when he's singing about sucking dick. And yep, that interview does prove I was right, MBG.

Setlist from NPR:
Id Engager
So Begins Our Alabee
Triphallus, To Punctuate!
She's a Rejecter
For Our Elegant Caste
Touched Something's Hollow
An Eluardian Instance
Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse
Gallery Piece
Wraith Pinned to the Mist (And Other Games)
Women's Studies Victims
St. Exquisite's Confessions
Eros' Entropic Tundra
Nonpareil of Favor
October is Eternal
Wicked Wisdom
Disconnect the Dots
Knight Rider
And I've Seen a Bloody Shadow
Plastis Wafers
Beware Our Nubile Miscreants
Mingusings
A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger
----------------------------------
Gronlandic Edit
Requiem For O.M.M.2

All throughout the next day I had Of Montreal songs stuck in my head, but none more than "A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger". I would have been miserable at attempting to write up a setlist, as I could have sworn they played songs multiple times. Which of course, they didn't, but I still loved it. Also, Chris Cooley was sitting not ten feet from where I was standing. He hasn't written it up on his blog yet, though.

EDIT: I came out of the show and found MBG and said, "I think I'm gay for Kevin Barnes." I doubt I'm the only one.

The Bridge, Iron Man, Funeral in Berlin, & Billion Dollar Brain

The Bridge is a documentary about a year in the life of the Golden Gate Bridge. Focusing mainly on the 24 suicides that occurred during that year. The director actually filmed 23 of them. It's insane to watch people jump to their deaths. There were also stories of two attempted suicides, one woman was stopped by a photographer who started to take pictures of her as she climbed over and eventually dragged her back over the railing, and one guy who jumped and broke a lot of bones in the fall but survived. There are interviews with many family members, and it's kinda rough to watch all the people try to make sense of people killing themselves. It's painful.

Iron Man is crazy fun. Considerably better than say, almost every other superhero film. It's much lighter than The Dark Knight, and Robert Downey, Jr. basically pulled a Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Carribbean. He's been awesome for a long time, but it finally gets him huge, huge, huge movie star buzz. I feel like I am a poser, because I geeked out when Agent Coulson showed up and introduced himself as an agent of "Strategic Homeland Intervention, Engagement and Logistics Division", due to its obvious abbreviation as SHIELD. And of course, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Definitely enjoyable, and recommended to anyone who has no problem believing a man could fly. Especially one that isn't as stupid as Superman.

Funeral in Berlin is the second in the Harry Palmer series of British spy films based on Len Deighton's novels after The Ipcress File, which I saw some years ago. For a long time, Funeral in Berlin wasn't available on Netflix, which contributed to my inability to watch it. This is actually slightly better, a real spy story, and Michael Caine is very comfortable in the role. It's basically a more realistic James Bond, about trying to secure a defection of a Soviet colonel. I really wasn't expecting it to also include bits including the Mossad and Nazi war criminals. The bureaucratic references were expected.

Billion Dollar Brain is the last Harry Palmer movie with Michael Caine made in the 60s, and therefore the last one I plan on watching. He made one in the mid-90s but it wasn't based on a Len Deighton novel. This one is about a clearly fascist (his logo is extremely similar to a swastika) Texas oilman who has a messiah complex and a huge computer that is going to tell him how to foment revolt in Latvia and take down the Soviet Union. It's not nearly as strong, as it is kinda ridiculous. Too James Bond-y, but not Connery, it's more Moore. Definitely a disappointment after the first two strong ones in the series.

If...., Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom, Criminal Woman: Killing Melody, & The Yakuza

If.... is Malcolm McDowell's first film, as an angry student who joins a couple others who revolt against their oppressive teachers, parents, and the prefects. Or whatever they're called. A lot of the early scenes reminded me of Harry Potter. Mainly because they're both very British versions of a boarding school. Of course, this one includes full-frontal female nudity (apparently the full-frontal male nudity was cut to allow for the extended female nudity), so it doesn't quite fit with Harry Potter's intended audience. I mean, massacres, beatings, nudity, drinking, and the like are only hinted at in most of Harry Potter.

Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom is an interesting counterpoint to If.... as it's also about a group of kids rebelling against an oppressive school regime, although this is only about the rebelling, there's little about any deeper meanings. As a Pinky Violence film, there is a crazy amount of S&M and nudity. In fact, it's a little much. I think I can't watch too many more S&M films. I find them extremely discomforting. And the obvious relish with which the scenes are filmed doesn't help. And is there something about the Japanese and peeing? There's another scene of a woman wetting herself (at least it's not a woman peeing on the head of another one). Seriously, it's not the first, and I doubt it'll be the last. It's never really funny.

Criminal Woman: Killing Melody is another Pinky Violence film, this one about a group of Yakuza who kill the father of a woman. She, of course, needs to revenge herself on the yakuza. Here's a conversation with the newly christened Sally Albright, a reference to a certain character from one of my favorite romantic comedies of all time.
me: I'm watching a crazy japanese film
Sally Albright: another Japanese school girl sexploitation murder mayhem movie?
me: not school girl this time, they've all spent time in prison
me: they are however righting wrongs that yakuza perpetrated upon one of their fathers
me: with lots of sex and violence
Sally Albright: It's good to know that they're using their deadly sexy powers for good.
Sally Albright: .. sorry for using good twice in one sentence
Sally Albright: that was terrible
me: well, they're women, and that's what you use your bodies for, right?
me: having sex for money to buy guns to start a gang war to kill the people who killed your father?
Sally Albright: It varies a bit based on each individual's situation, but that's the gist of it
me: well, it explains why misogyny is so popular
Sally Albright: Well, if misogyny were so wrong, God would have put a stop to it by now.
me: I thought you were going to say if misogyny is so wrong, I don't want to be right
Sally Albright: I should have.
Sally Albright: I'm just a little off tonight. What with the good-good and missing such a great opportunity
me: this one is actually more trashy than I expected
me: insane amounts of nudity
me: still it's japanese nudity though, so just t&a, even though it's basically naked woman-gunfight-naked woman-knee to the groin-naked woman-killing all movie
me: oh, that was a gun barrel to a breast
me: chainsaw to a mannequin's breasts...
me: well, this is decidedly more lurid than I was expecting
Sally Albright: sounds delightful
Sally Albright: a nice, light Tuesday night flick
me: well, I like to relax
me: cigarette to the breast
me: and now to the other one..
me: this is actually making me feel uncomfortable
Sally Albright: really? that's impressive considering how much of that type of movie you seem to be watching these days
me: she better cut off a dick with that razor
Unfortunately, she didn't cut off a dick with the razor. Just ended up using the men and shooting people, and then fighting another woman at the end and wasting lots of drugs.

The Yakuza is Orientalism for dummies. Or maybe I'm just too familiar with Yakuza and Japanese tropes. It's directed by Sydney Pollack from a script by Paul Schrader and Robert Towne, and it stars Robert Mitchum, so there's a lot of talent involved, but I just thought it was a mediocre Yakuza film. I guess I'm just too familiar with how it was going to end. There were some issues, like why the hell would the police not come when Mitchum stabbed a dude in a public bath? No one cares about that? I'm probably grading it too harshly, but while I liked bits and pieces of it, it's just bits and pieces.

Onibaba, Tom Yum Goong, Postal, & Girl Boss Guerilla

Onibaba is a pretty good Japanese ghost story, with a pretty freaky bit of makeup near the end. I was also surprised by just how much nudity was in the film. As it's a Japanese film, no full-frontal, but the two female characters spend a good portion of the film with one or both breasts exposed. Surprising for a film made in 1964. Beyond that, though, it's a moral tale of a mother and daughter whose husband doesn't return from a war and so they start killing lost samurai and selling their armor to survive. Then a man comes into their lives, and they start to fight over him. It all ends tragically, with the help of a demon mask that's pretty freaky.

Tom Yum Goong is a Tony Jaa movie. To know what that means picture this: a young Jackie Chan with less charisma but with more elbows to the head and knees to the stomach. He does all of his own stunts, and the film is all the more impressive for that. Especially the four-minute or so long tracking shot of him going up the stairs at a secret restaurant in Sydney that cooks up endangered species is one of the most impressive fight scenes filmed. It's just one take of him throwing people through walls, off balconies, down stairs, and dodging flying vases. Of course, the plot is basically: tranny stole Tony's elephants and killed his dad and so Tony has to fight through hundreds of people to get them back. Yes, I did say tranny. I'd object, except for the fact that basically every white person is evil, as in most Asian films. I'd object about that, except that we are kinda evil. The ending fight scene where Tony discovers the fate of his elephants and then breaks the bones of about fifty dudes in black just went on too long, as did the Tony loves his elephants section near the beginning. I did see the original international cut rather than the bastardized version (as the Protector) unleashed upon these shores by the Weinsteins, and I dislike them for that, but they did put it out on DVD, so I got to see it at least. Not as good as Ong Bak, but it has much less unnecessary repeating of awesome stunts (in that it had none). Here's my comments on Ong-Bak when I saw it in April of 2004 from the last blog: "Ong-Bak. I don't know what else to say except that if they just played every stunt once, then the movie would have been at least five minutes shorter. I get it that the stunts are amazing, but still, just play them once. Is the movie amazing otherwise? Hell yes. The movie's plot was eh, but the stunts. One "holy s---" moment after another. I'm amazed that the star didn't die. Just an incredible movie. I am just utterly amazed by those fight scenes. We're talking about the stunts and fights from two mid-level Jackie Chan films. In one film. Probably better stunts than any Jackie Chan film, although those are occasionally more death-defying, this one just had more. This movie needs to be seen to be believed. Wow! There was a little CGI, but strangely most that I noticed was just a smoke. And the three-wheeled vehicle chase? I think it was just an excuse to throw them off of highway bridges. Still, so much neat stuff." Yes, I censored myself with dashes back then. Rather than avoiding it unless I'm pissed or the film forces it. And Tom Yum Goong includes a nod to Jackie Chan with a cameo from a Chan double when Tony Jaa first arrives in Australia.

Postal is stupid. It just goes down a list of groups to offend and proceeds to offend them in the most immature way possible. Things I never wanted to see in a film but now have: THIS ENTIRE FUCKING FILM. Uwe Boll is a cinematic cancer and deserves to have his fate in this film in real life. Yes, he wrote himself into the film as the owner of theme park Little Germany (that took over Little Holland, ooh clever), and spouts stupid commentary about how important this film is and then tells bad Holocaust jokes. And then gets shot in the crotch. That's the level of this film. It has Dave Foley fully nude and then taking a very smelly dump while smoking a joint. Argh... I want to catalogue just how terrible this film is, but the more time I spend thinking about it the more I want to punch Uwe Boll in the balls. Repeatedly.

Girl Boss Guerilla is the first film in a Pinky Violence collection I received. Pinky films are basically Japanese sexploitation films, and this one was actually directed by the guy who directed School of the Holy Beast. As in that film, there's pissing jokes (one after four yakuza get the clap from one of the girl gang who has sex with a priest who has the clap, and the other when one of the gang gets pissed on trying to grab a filled condom after a nun had sex with a monk to blackmail him), gratuitous nudity, bondage, girl fighting, terrible slapstick, and just enough actual goodness to make the bad parts almost watchable. Occasional scenes are filled with tension and awesomeness (the finale on the road, and occasional shots like the introduction of Nami). But the violence against women is almost constant and the humor is crappy. Ultimately, the bad outweighs the good. The film follows two other films in the series, but I don't think it mattered much. I'm also not sure what the Guerilla really means in the context of the film.

Gone in 60 Seconds, The Lives of Others, Prince of the City, & The Lost Boys: The Tribe

Gone in 60 Seconds is not the Angelina Jolie-Nicholas Cage film. This is the original, the one referenced in Deathproof. The acting is amateurish at best, as most of the cast had little to no experience, it's all about the ridiculousness of the plot: stealing 48 cars in two days. It's stupid, it's kinda crap, and it's far too long. But it does have a 40 minute car chase scene at the end. Of an hour and forty minute long film. Basically, you can skip the first hour and still know everything that has happened beforehand by reading this sentence: Insurance worker has to steal 48 cars in two days and steals 47 with little hassle but the last one is a problem and so he has to escape from the vast majority of the Carson City police department. The car chase was clearly a labor of love, as the writer/director/star/every car in the film owner/producer also stunt drove many of the cars in the film, and it's occasionally impressive, but ultimately, it's just an excuse for the car chase. If you like them, then the movie is worth watching, if not, avoid like the plague on bad dialogue and performances the film is.

The Lives of Others beat out Pan's Labyrinth for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. I kinda preferred Pan's Labyrinth. This is a great film, touching, with a realistic ending that makes sense within the film. But I also had a problem with a couple of the slightly-anti-woman aspects of it, and the fact that it felt like it could have been set in any particular totalitarian state near the end of its run. Those are just minor problems in an excellent with an otherwise extremely strong pair of performances by the policeman and the playwright. It just felt kinda dreary and like it'd been done before, while Pan's Labyrinth was full of inventive scenes and didn't immediately feel like anything I'd seen before (even as it brought to mind Alice in Wonderland and Labyrinth).

Deliver Us from Evil is another depressing film, this one about a Catholic priest who goes through a few parishes in California in the 70s and 80s sexually abusing girls and how the Church covered it up by sending him to another parish rather than, you know, actually doing anything about the fact that this priest was raping kids. This is a main reason why I don't trust organized religion: it puts humans into positions where they "talk to God" and therefore have people trust them far more than if they were just a normal person. Plus, the whole "Priests have to remain celibate" just leads to them repressing a normal sex drive and becoming sick and twisted. Sure, some, maybe even most, priests are not pedophiles, but some of them are complicit in the coverups, including the current Pope. It's disgusting what religions are able to get away with in the name of "God". The world would be better off without organized religion. Watching these families still struggle with the abuse thirty years later was heartbreaking.

Prince of the City is a long film dependent upon a performance from Treat Williams. As such, he's actually the weakest thing in this otherwise sprawling epic of cleaning up police corruption in New York City. Especially towards the end of the film, it starts to drag and it's mainly due to Treat being not nearly as good then as earlier. I won't complain about the strong supporting turns by Jerry Orbach and Bob Balaban among many others, but at least some of the blame for Williams's dragging performance is at the feat of Sidney Lumet. The film is too long at almost 3 hours long, and all the supporting characters are hustled in and out fairly quickly, many making their mark, but also requiring a huge amount of knowledge of which characters are which and their relationships, some of which gets confused. It may not have a powerhouse performance from Al Pacino like Serpico, but this feels much more realistic. It's a shame that it gets away from Lumet towards the end.

The Lost Boys: The Tribe is terrible. And cheesy. And Corey Feldman and Corey Haim aren't enough. Eesh. Oh, and if you are watching it for Two Corey action, don't bother, he's only in a scene at the very end, and in some alternate endings included on the DVD. He's not a starring role Netflix suggests. The main characters barely register, and the stunt casting of Angus Sutherland to replace Kiefer was offensive. Angus is terrible. It's just not worth the attempted nostalgia trip. Watch The Lost Boys again, or Near Dark (a better 80s vampire film, even if it doesn't scream 80s as much).

Live Free or Die Hard, The Red Shoes, Dumplings, The Good German, The Middleman (again), & Scott Pilgrim

Live Free or Die Hard is the fourth (and I hope last) Die Hard film. The first one is one of the best action films of all time, and I like the second one. The third one, however, was utter crap. The first two were at least somewhat based in a slightly heightened reality, and the third one just tossed that out of the window. And this one was even worse. Maybe it has to do with living in DC and having been to Baltimore quite a few times, but every building I recognized (besides the obvious ones like Capitol building and other monuments) was in Baltimore during the big chase scene in DC. And that's also ignoring the final chase scene that's supposed to be set just north of Baltimore on 695, and the highways are clearly Southern California, with palm trees and overlapping highway overpasses that basically are a California thing and are nothing like highways in Maryland. Also, the movie is also ridiculous when it comes to plot. And wastes Maggie Q, who is only there to look attractive. I also had a serious problem with "Can I get another dead Asian hooker bitch over here right away?" which I know was just trying to get on Timothy Olyphant's bad side. But that racial stereotype grated on me. Actually, just about everyone in the film besides Bruce Willis and Justin Long were wasted. Those two clearly have no more talent than what was shown in the film. Basically, the film was terrible and stupid.

The Red Shoes is not the Powell-Pressburger film, it's a recent K-Horror film, clearly still based on the Hans Christian Andersen story, but with a Korean twist. I objected to the shoes clearly being pink. And to the complete ripoff of Fight Club. Kinda creepy, but the stereotypical Asian horror touches (ghosts with long hair and walking strangely) just aren't nearly as interesting the hundredth time.

Dumplings is the extended version of the Fruit Chan part of Three... Extremes. The plot is slightly different, missing the freakiest scene from the short, but adding more character parts and being slightly more interesting. Still quite good looking and freaky, and I should try to see some Fruit Chan films to see if it's a one-off, but the ones I've read are good aren't really available on Netflix. I don't understand why it makes me want dumplings. But I want dumplings.

The Good German is Soderbergh being ridiculous. He basically just said: Casablanca and The Third Man are awesome films, and what made them amazing was the studio system that made the films. Not the talent or the writing. So he apes those two films constantly, never coming close to that quality.

Venus has a good performance from Peter O'Toole and Jodie Whittaker, but ultimately feels like a small character piece rather than saying anything important about anything.

The Middleman: The Collected Series Indispensability is the complete Middleman comic. The first TPB is basically the first episode of the show, the second TPB is the third episode, and bits and pieces of the third TPB were used throughout the rest of the show, from Manservant Neville to the Honey Ryder bikini joke. I actually don't like the ending of the comic at all, and prefer the tv show's version of the Middleman, although that may be due to that being my introduction to the universe. But I certainly recommend it to everyone. Also, I got the Scott Pilgrim odds and ends collection, with all the main comics being familiar to me due to most of them being online, but I cannot recommend Scott Pilgrim enough (and I apparently haven't raved about it yet on the blog?).

Hands on a Hard Body & The Middleman

Hands on a Hard Body is a documentary about a contest in Texas (although it seems like it's not just a contest in Longview, but in other areas around the country, but that wasn't entirely made clear) where 24 people stand with at least one hand on a Nissan pickup for as long as possible until the last one standing wins the truck. As you'd expect, it's full of stereotypes, but since they're actually people, and the entire 97 minute running time is spent either during the actual contest or interviews with the contestants, you get behind the stereotypes. Unless they are just stereotypes, like the husband and wife who are missing wide swathes of teeth, but the husband is proud of his 20 ton air conditioner that can cool his living room to -12 degrees. Because who doesn't need that? I have to say that I had a tiny bit of schadenfreude with the overly religious woman who had a big prayer chain for her. Eventually, the person I hated the least won, so that made the movie better, but it's 97 minutes of a fascinating look at desperate people in Texas who want to spend three days standing next to a truck. It was directed by S.R. Bindler, who is apparently good friends with Matthew McConaughey, who is thanked in the credits along with Benicio Del Toro (and, ummm, Arnold Vosloo, who was in The Mummy). Unfortunately, due to it not being available on DVD or VHS, it's basically only available online, and it was posted to Google Video last week. I watched it on Sunday, and it's apparently been taken down since then. So, I'm not sure how best to watch this awesome film.

Also, this week was (I hope not) the last episode of The Middleman. If you have not watched this show, I hate you a little. If you like comic books and/or snarky pop-culture referencing attractive 20-somethings, I may hate you a little bit more. And if this is the last episode ever, I might even revise that hatred upwards. I should be getting "The Collected Series Indispensability" tomorrow.

Catching up more with books and comics and museum exhibits

The Killing Joke is Alan Moore's The Joker origin story, along with an excuse to see Commissioner Gordon and his (newly paralyzed) daughter naked. As such, it fits in just perfectly with Moore's other work. I have to say that I thought it was interesting, although I can't say that I like the shortness. I feel like it could have been longer. I do wonder what the midgets were named though.

In an attempt to catch up on things, here's some brief reviews of random books I've read over last nine or so months: The Right Stuff (noted here, and a reminder that Tom Wolfe is a good writer, once you get past the "New Journalism"-y writing style), Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (first noted by me here, and quite an interesting collection of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's stories, most of which I enjoyed, although the auto-biographical ones were depressing), Memoirs of a Geisha (told you I was going to read it, and it was considerably better than the movie), Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo (noted twice in last week's vampire-puppet filled Middleman, but purchased by me earlier in the year based on a recommendation from some website I can't remember (io9? Bryan Lee O'Malley?) and is basically a rabbit ronin wandering feudal Japan, so of course I was going to love it, but I have 20 something volumes to purchase in order to read it all), Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (read almost immediately after watching The Dark Knight, but I forgot to mention it in that review, but it's actually kind of good), The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (quite a gay little book, but it's going to be a movie, and I was interested, although it's not nearly as good as Michael Chabon's later works), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (probably the last Joyce I'll read as I doubt I could make it through Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake, but it and The Dubliners are excellent) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (a pornographic Alan Moore comic, with a 3-d section that gave me a slight headache, but I loved the extension of the mythology and the pitch-perfect satires of literary genres). Also, I watched the new DVDs of Spaced, one of the best things that's ever come out of England. It's pretty much: Monty Python, Alec Guinness, and Spaced. And I guess HP Sauce and the idea that vinegar is good on chips.

I went back to the Freer & Sackler galleries August 24th, which was quite fun, as it's one of my favorite museums, if only for the Peacock Room, which is the kind of room I want to have in my mansion. But the Sackler galleries had an exhibit on landscapes of the Yellow Mountains, which was gorgeous. A little small of an exhibit, but the artwork was uniformly nice. I have to say that I love landscapes, which is kind of middlebrow, but eh, de gustibus non est disputandum. Unfortunately for all of you, it closed on that day. After that exhibit, I saw muppets. Yes, there's an exhibit about Jim Henson at the Smithsonian. You have until October 5. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's under the garden between the Sackler and the African Art Museum (which I've now been in, but still haven't seen any exhibits, not because I don't like black people, but because I haven't yet found anyone who wants to go with me). Time Piece, his Oscar-nominated short film, is included in its entirety (and it was a bizarre and funny movie), along with many of his 8 second adverts for things that are awesome in their bizarreness. And, of course, there's a Bert and Ernie, a Rowlf, a Kermit, assorted other characters, a couple fraggles (which made me extremely happy and I came very close to singing the theme song when it was shown during a documentary on Henson), and some very, very cool Dark Crystal artwork and props. Basically, if you are my age, you will love the exhibit. If you are younger, you will love it.

Häxan, Babel, & Shortbus

Häxan is a semi-documentary about the history of witchcraft. It's also a silent film. I also fell asleep at a couple points. I blame the Five Guys burger and fries eaten just before beginning it. Also the comfortable couch and the slightly warm room. I do, however, recommend it if you're up for it, as it's interesting, although it can definitely be watched at fast speed to get the same amount out of it faster. Not that I watched it at fast speed, which may also have contributed to my falling asleep. It's also a bit preachy, but the opening bits about the history of witchcraft and the misconceptions of early societies were quite nice, if the recreations of the witch trial wasn't nearly as interesting.

Babel is 143 minutes. And I didn't care about any of the people in it. I liked most of the actors I knew, and it was good to see Kôji Yakusho get some work noticed by the American public. He's been in some great films. And I imagine that Rinko Kikuchi goes on the list with the other GAWLIS's. Yes, new tag! Fun! Babel: Not Fun! I guess I could write more if I thought that Rinko's nudity was remotely needed. Well, maybe the ending stuff, but why, exactly, did we need to see her labia? Completely gratuitous. Amores Perros was amazing, and 21 Grams was pretty good as well, but this was just bloated.

Shortbus. I'm not sure how to discuss the film and, honestly, am not sure what to think about it. I mean, there's the porn aspect of it (and I use porn as in it has stuff that's normally only in porn, not that it is a porn film), but it's got an interesting plot, and I liked it, but I felt kind of dirty for doing so. I don't want to condemn it for not being better, but it's eminently watchable. I think that I'm one of the people who is supposed to be shocked by the film, but they forget my long history of nunsploitation and that I've seen Ken Park. Admittedly, this is the first time I've seen autofellatio. Didn't look too comfortable. I never even thought about the possibility of it being done like that. See, I just can't get away from the explicit sex and discuss the film as a story. A story about finding your place in life, basically, similar to Hedwig, but without the kick-ass soundtrack. Just an ass-soundtrack. Woo! Man, if you haven't seen the film, you wouldn't understand the pun. I want John Cameron Mitchell to continue to make movies. He's an interesting voice. Does Sook-Yin Lee get added to the GAWLIS list? Yeah, I'd say probably. It's not Great, it's just Good.

The Painted Veil, House of Fury, Vampire Effect, & Gen-X Cops

The Painted Veil is racist. Yeah, I'll come right out and say it. The white man has to come out into the boonies to save the savages (in this case the yellow people) from themselves. But that's not all: the only people noted in the opening credits are white. Even Diana Rigg (who is, admittedly, somewhat famous in the west), who has a tiny role, is mentioned in the opening credits, while Anthony Wong (the first in my little Anthony Wong mini-fest) isn't mentioned, even though he has many scenes, and is actually the third best thing in the film behind the scenery (stunningly gorgeous) and that Toby Jones is having sex with some hot Asian. Which is just funny, since he's basically known for playing Truman Capote. Actually Toby Jones in general is quite good, and I liked him in this. But the love triangle in the center of the film is just overwrought to an extreme, and once you have characters going into an epidemic of some kind, at least one of them has to die. It's just a rule of epidemic films.

House of Fury is stupid. But fun. It stars Gillian Chung (she of the Edison Chen Sex Scandal, and apparently a small role in W. as an escort dancer???) as the daughter of a government agent who has to protect former spies who then has to save her father's life from the American assassin who was crippled by a former spy. Sure, there's other parts to it, like some ridiculous martial arts sequences including a dining room table (of which there were at least three different ones throughout the movie), a remote control, and, for some damn reason, absolutely no dolphins. Why the hell was the brother a dolphin trainer? That doesn't come into use at any point later in the film. Have these people never heard of Chekhov's Gun? The movie did have Charlene Choi in a glorified cameo with some of the only humor in the film, if you consider "Do you want to French kiss?" and then saying, "Time's up" before the guy has a chance to reply. So there was your bit of Twins for the film. Pretty much the only things worth watching were the martial arts sequences. Because the movie was a mess. But on blu-ray. So go Hong Kong, I guess. Maybe put out some better films on it.

Vampire Effect is a Hong Kong vampire film, but not with hopping vampires, but more traditional ones. The version released in the US cut out 19 minutes. Apparently, those scenes make the film make more sense. I would hope so, because it would be hard to make a film that made less sense. This had a good cast, and Donnie Yen is a talented guy, but Edison Chen is kind of a dick, and The Twins were mediocre in this, with about the only bright spots being Anthony Wong (who still is the best thing in any film he's in), and the Special Guest Appearance by Jackie Chan and the Special Friendly Appearance by Karen Mok. But the fight scenes were too wire-based and frequently nonsensical, especially the final one, and the internal consistency was lacking immensely.

Gen-X Cops is another Jackie Chan produced film, this time with him as a fisherman. I have a serious problem with the anti-gay humor in a lot of Hong Kong films. It's like gay people are completely acceptable to make fun of. Well, it bothers me immensely. Also, the HIV joke clearly played into that. The frequent switching from English to Cantonese was distracting as well. But the excuse to have Jaymee Ong speak in her Australian accent... I've long said that Asians with Commonwealth accents are hot. And although the Australian accent was a little off for a Canadian, I didn't care. Basically, the non-gay stereotypical of the three undercover cops were attractive as were their girlfriends, and some of the fight scenes were good. But it was ridiculous and the special effects were pretty bad. I think it's come down to me watching recent Hong Kong action films almost entirely due to the cheese (and cake) factor rather than an expectation of them being watchable.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End & Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has Geoffrey Rush back, which is a definite step up over Dead Man's Chest. But it's also racist, with pretty much all the Asian characters complete stereotypes. At least the main pirates have some type of obvious thinking going on in their heads, every single other character is wafer thin. And do I have to mention, again, that the only female characters in the film are a god in human form and Keira Knightley? As if it needed to be more of a sausage fest. Basically, far, far, far too long, stupid, and just an insult. And still not as bad as the second one. Geoffrey Rush is just that good.

In order to get the bad pirateness out of my mouth, I went ahead and purchased Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty. Unfortunately, it was not really a search for booty (of either the pirate or rapper kind), but a search for things to make searching for Clank easier. But it was about as fun as Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, which this follows in time. I hate jumping puzzles, and feel that they're there only to piss me off, due to my lack of spatial awareness, but even though I struggled with one stupid part of jumping on some moving platforms and walking along a thin beam, I still got over four hours of enjoyment from the game. And for only $15, not a particularly bad purchase. Because, as a Ratchet & Clank game, it was funny, and you can never have too many drunken robotic pirates.

TMNT

TMNT is an insult to movies. First off, the CGI is cartoony, and insulting to women who are not stick figures. When April O'Neill is going through the jungles near the beginning, her waist looks like it's as big as my wrist. Which, for those of you who know me (I assume that's all of you), my wrists are not particularly thick. Also, it was weird to hear Sarah Michelle Gellar's voice coming out of her. I do sort of wonder if actors like Mako think "I'm about to die and TMNT is the last movie I am ever going to do?" Because that's gotta be depressing. It was short, and more in tune with the original comics (admittedly, I read one issue back in 6th grade, and it was taken from me for reading it in class, so I can't be positive, but I think it was) than the live-action movies or the video games. Actually, TMNT 1 was so frickin' hard that I'm amazed anyone was ever able to finish it. TMNT 2 on the other hand was great, but cartoony like the cartoon. The slightly darker tone matched the bland colors, but it was basically a movie for very small children who like movement on screen. And terrible music. And no Shredder.

One little bit of trivia: all I have to do is make a billion dollars and I too can marry someone like Zhang Ziyi. First step: making that first million.

ST 3: Marauder, POTC: Dead Man's Chest, Larry Flynt: The Right to Be Left Alone, & Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder was terrible. There was gratuitous nudity. But as per usual, no frontals, so sorry. That some nudity thing made me think it would just be a fleeting thing, but nope. Anyway, the film was horrible. Vagina dentata up the wazoo though, along with ridiculously stupid religious symbolism. Actually the nudity and the fact that the black guy doesn't die are about the only things to recommend it. Well, it depends on whether you actually liked the book. The return (I haven't seen the second, and both Tweaks and Meat have warned me of just how terrible it is) of the Nazi propaganda films made it somewhat enjoyable. Jolene Blalock's horribly puffed up lips detracted from that. Oh, and the main protester being named Gonif was a little bit of Yiddish humor. Gonif's hard to describe, but sort of a good-for-nothing who does things that are sort of illegal, but not really a crook.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is 2.5 hours long. For those of you keeping track, that's at least an hour too long. It just kept going and going and going. And Depp wasn't nearly as fun, and basically everything wasn't nearly as fun. The first one didn't feel like it had to live up to anything, and my expectations were pretty low. I did see it in a packed theater with a very enthusiastic audience, and this one I saw on blu-ray on my HDTV, but alone on a Sunday morning. I sort of regretted it, although now I can complain about the most important thing that the Pirates of the Caribbean films brought to light: a zombie pirate monkey. This was such a great thing in the first movie with lots of zombie pirates and then a reveal of a zombie pirate monkey at the end, and then this just shunts him off to a couple of jokes, and focuses on sea creature pirates. Which fail miserably. I like cute furry creatures, not starfish. So few films really need sequels, and most that get them screw up the expectations created by earlier films that it's just painful to see them even try.

Larry Flynt: The Right to Be Left Alone was a short documentary about Larry Flynt. And while I've never actually read/held a Hustler in my hands (as far as I can remember, it has been pretty hard to find a Hustler in Cincinnati for most of my life), I like Larry Flynt's continual fight for its right to exist. And this was a much more accurate version of the movie than The People Vs. Larry Flynt. About my only complaint (besides brief length) was that intercut with the archival footage and talking heads was a scene from a photoshoot for Hustler. This was unnecessary. I don't care what the photoshoot looks like, except in the context of what is acceptable and not within a variety of censorship laws throughout the country. I mean, is it acceptable to show nipple? Because I have this feeling that it isn't in Malaysia. Silly Muslims, nips are for kids. And yes, I just hurt everyone's brain with that. Yay!

Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House is a big love letter to the White House press corps. And it's too short. I wanted more of a press corps that cared and asked tough questions like that. Maybe less singing from Helen Thomas though. It's a good use of 40 minutes.

Also, this was the colon update. It's complicated.

Wag of my finger for Netflix, Tip of my hat to the National Geographic Society Museum

Due to Netflix being a bunch of annoying people, I didn't get movies I should have, so I caught up on TV (Generation Kill is not as good as The Wire, but still a very watchable and good show, along with some great lines), watched an old movie I hadn't seen in a while (The 39 Steps, while excellent from a cinematic standpoint, still has a practically neanderthalithic sense of gender roles in that every woman with more than a line or two is either stabbed, beaten, or portrayed to be an idiot in the movie, sometimes all of them, and really, it's not like Hitchcock was always the most progressive when it comes to female characters, with Mrs. Smith enjoying the rape at the end of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (not the one with Brangelina)), and went to a museum. That last one was the National Geographic Society Museum, which I thought was a little small, but was pretty neat. One exhibit was on Zheng He, the most famous Chinese explorer. Basically, he sailed all over the Indian Ocean, being kind of awesome, even while being a Muslim Eunuch. The exhibit had a bunch of maps (one of which was nigh impenetrable, even for someone who knew exactly what it was supposed to be of), models of the ships they think he sailed on, some china from the time, and modern day photos of places he visited. The other main exhibit there was on Shaolin monks, with photographs of them practicing. And most of the monks were 33rd generation or the like. That's pretty amazing. I wanted this photo, but look at that price: $600! I do not have that kind of money to spend on a photo. 50 DVDs, on the other hand... The exhbits are only there for a few more weeks, so you don't have much time.

The Secret Life of Words, They Live, The Burmese Harp, Pineapple Express, & Once

The Secret Life of Words stars Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins as people scarred by life. Polley is a former Yugoslav who is partially deaf and works in a factory in Northern Ireland. When she finds out about an oil rig that needs a nurse, she volunteers and starts to care for Robbins's scarred and temporarily blinded worker. And they tell each other secrets and learn how to live again. It's a kind of cheesy movie, but the acting makes up for it. Weirdly, I saw this the same weekend Elegy came out, which was also directed by Isabel Coixet.

They Live is a film that I've been meaning to see for far too long. But it was a Metafilter thread about Hollywood fight scenes a couple weeks ago that made me move it to the top of my queue. And I sort of don't regret it. Sure, John Carpenter has been mostly miss over the last twenty years, but this is twenty years old, after a string of enjoyable films like Big Trouble in Little China, Starman, The Thing, and Halloween, so I was hoping for something cheesy and fun. And this film is cheesy and fun. Rowdy Roddy Piper plays a drifter who ends up in a homeless camp, and finds some sunglasses which show that every rich person is an alien who have taken over society through subliminal messages. So he has to stop them. And toss out lines like, "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum." One of the best one liners in all of movie history. The long fight scene with Frank is ok, nothing nearly as amazing as I was led to believe, but the film itself was ridiculous enough in everything that I had to enjoy it. Also, for the record, about thirty seconds before the credits, there's a completely gratuitous topless scene. So add They Live to the list. Nothing is added, except a reason to make sure you keep paying attention during the denouement.

The Burmese Harp is an anti-war film by the Japanese. I think I need to watch a Mishima film just to see what a pro-war film from the Japanese would be like, since almost everyone of any talent in Japan basically makes anti-war films. This is about a platoon of Japanese soldiers retreating in Burma during the last days of WWII, and one of the soldiers has made the titular harp, and plays it when scouting ahead. After the war ends, they surrender to the British, but the harpist is sent to try to convince a group of soldiers who are still holding out to surrender. As anyone would expect, he fails and becomes a monk. It's a beautiful film, but it's depressing. Of course, now I have to see Fire on the Plain, which has been sitting in my Janus box for a couple of years now. And I'd like to point out that I saw the original, not the remake from the 80s.

Pineapple Express is a weed action movie. Emphasis on both descriptives. It's obviously a movie, and it's obviously about pot, but it seems like some weren't expecting the action. I wasn't expecting some of the gore. But it was enjoyable, and funny, even though I wasn't partaking of weed. It actually reminded me of a far more competent Dude, Where's My Car?, and now moves into first place on the weakly competed for "Best Pot Movie Ever Seen By Me" category. James Franco is just so dreamy. It's a damn shame that he had to go and do that James Dean movie after Freaks and Geeks, because otherwise he would have kept making comedies, and he's just very good in this. And David Gordon Green makes the film look pretty darn good. Some of the scenes in the forest were just beautiful. Also, since I haven't written up the last two concerts I've been to (since I wasn't particularly familiar with either band beforehand, but Regina Spektor and Statehood are quite good, and well-worth the no monies I paid to see them), a return of my favorite bit of concert going: douchebag of the movie going experience! No, not me for mixing popcorn and blue raspberry icee and feeling sick for the rest of the day. It was the two girls who walked up to the help desk at the Georgetown theater and asked "Is that new Ben Stiller film out yet?" And when they were told no, both sighed and walked straight back out the front doors. One: are there people that excited about the Ben Stiller film after seeing advertisements about it that they neglected to notice that the advertisements all say that it opens next week? Two: are these same people really able to go all the way to the theater and ask someone who works there before they realize that the movie isn't opening? Are these people Unaware of All Internet Traditions (like, say, google or yahoo or fandango)? I didn't realize there were people in this city that did stuff like wander in to a movie theater thinking that a movie was coming out one weekend rather than the next. Movies with enormous advertising budgets.

Once made me tear up. Falling Slowly deserved the Oscar. And I had to rewatch the best thing about this past Oscar ceremony. For the transcript, go here, but since the media companies don't understand the web, they don't actually have the video on youtube, but that first link has it. Basically, besides the touching speech, Jon Stewart is awesome. Anyway, besides Falling Slowly, there are a number of other great songs, and the acting is quite good, especially from two people who've never really acted before. Although Glen Hansard was also in the Commitments, a great movie about a blue-eyed soul group in Dublin, which I saw in the year without a blog. I actually think that the 85 minute run time was quite perfect for the film, even if I wish there had been more time to spend in their lives. But that ambiguity that exists, about a lot of the history of the characters, along with all that was said in Czech, works here, and I was touched. Sure, the budget is clearly tiny, there are a few times that the crowd looks at the camera, and you frequently see crew members and microphones on screen or in reflections, but the scenes of them making music together and separately are what makes the film magical. See this film.

Radio On, The One-Armed Swordsman, The Americanization of Emily, Rambo, & Yo-Yo Girl Cop

Radio On has a great soundtrack: it kicks off with Heroes (the mixed English/German version) and continues on with a jukebox playing Whole Wide World, which was also used well in Stranger than Fiction, which I didn't mention before, but had a great soundtrack. And the rest of it wasn't as well-loved by me, but there was still Kraftwerk and Devo. The plot itself was secondary, a road trip by a disaffected youth in England trying to find out information about his brother's apparent suicide. So basically, just listen to Heroes and then Whole Wide World while watching black and white scenery, and you'll get about the same out of it.

The One-Armed Swordsman was apparently one of the first big kung fu films of the Shaw Brother Age. It was also ridiculously obsessed with stabbing people in the stomach. Except for the arm cutting which gives the film the title, pretty much everyone who died was stabbed in the stomach. The fight scenes were pretty silly, as the good guys kept doing the same stupid things and then dying, and they were much slower than they should have been. When you have a guy with one arm, he may not be able to attack that quickly, but I'd be damned stupid not to try to take advantage of that fact when attacking him. It was quite an impressive set, though, with the early scenes in the snow being pretty. And one last thing: if some woman ever want to show that they care, do it by telling me, or kissing me, or something like that, not cutting my arm off. That is not cool.

The Americanization of Emily is a cynical as all hell film written by Paddy Chayefsky, and proves that he wasn't a one hit wonder like I postulated based on the Hospital. I don't blame him for Altered States, I blame Ken Russell. But anyway, this one was James Garner as a dog-robber in World War II, working for an Admiral who wants to play up the role of the Navy in D-Day, so he wants Garner to make a movie about the Navy's important role clearing the mines. And somehow that leads to Garner being the first man on Omaha. He falls in love with Julie Andrew's war widow along the way, who prizes him for his cowardice due to the fact that it would be unlikely he'd die like her former husband. And James Coburn plays Garner's friend who wants to fight, but has bad eyesight and was given a desk job. And this is all a ridiculous satire of bravery and the military, along with great performances from all involved. I recommend this film to all who like good films.

Rambo is a film I recommend to all who like terrible films. My comments on the series can be summed up as "Although the first one is actually not a bad movie, the next two (in II he single-handedly refights and wins Vietnam, and III where he single-handedly defeats the Soviet Army in Afganistan and paves the way for the rise of the Taliban and 9/11) are terrible." This one is also terrible. I'd also like to point out that there were 262 deaths in the film (in just 91ish minutes), and only two of them are white people, missionaries who basically have no personalities or names before their death. The Arab or Hispanic mercenary lives, I think, but the asian one dies, because no Asian must come out alive. Seriously, 260 deaths are Asian? There was a decapitation as well a throat being ripped out. Also, surprisingly anti-religion, as the missionaries had to overcome their reluctance to kill in order to save themselves. One final note: "sometimes a guy getting turned into hamburger by a jeep-mounted machine gun is just a guy getting turned into hamburger by a jeep-mounted machine gun".

Yo-Yo Girl Cop is no The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers. It's quite terrible, with precious little Yo-Yo fighting, although there are girls and cops. It's ridiculously bad. Also, it's an adaptation of a series of mangas, and the return of a tv and movie series of the mid-80s. At least they brought back the character from the original series for the movie. The titular cop somehow gets a bulletproof uniform at the end, but is still extremely stupid, like running towards explosions and ignoring the guy with the big sword who keeps cutting her. It was directed by the son of the guy who directed Battle Royale and The Yakuza Papers. Based on this movie, directing talent is not genetic.