Images, A Wedding, Exiled, Rocket Science, & Mansfield Park

Images & A Wedding are two more Altman films. And are the last two I plan on watching for quite some time. I need to rewatch The Player just to remind me that he is a great talent. Because these two were just messes, although Images had some interesting ideas, A Wedding was just a typically messy version of a film done by many others, this one a wedding that goes crazy, with some extremely flippant jokes about the death of characters. They didn't bother me much, or at least they wouldn't have if they hadn't just reminded me of all the other messy Altman films I've watched over the past couple weeks. So I just wanted to say that I added a bunch of Altman films at once, and then put a foreign film in between (they were all Japanese except for the next film). And I didn't like any of the Altman films. Such a disappointment.

Exiled is Johnny To, being extremely stylish, with Anthony Wong and Simon Yam being their normal awesome selves, about a group of friends who grew up in a triad together, two of which were sent to kill one of them, and the other two were sent to protect him. And then they go off on some adventures, being awesome and stylish all over Macao. I'm not sure about a bit in the final scene, but the rest of it was very enjoyable. To is basically the best action director working today. Can't do a lot of other things, like make a sensible plot, but the action scenes are wow.

Rocket Science is all about high school debate. It features a boy with a stutter who is picked to be a member of the debate team by a girl (who MBG was all about as "hot debate girl" (and is 22, although still a little disturbing for me)), and then does terribly, trying many different ways to overcome the stutter. And it features a hilarious Steve Park as the Korean judge who sleeps with the mother of the main character. Just quite awesome. I didn't like it nearly as much as MBG, but it was an enjoyable way to spend the time.

Mansfield Park is the next Austen adaptation from Masterpiece, being the last 90 minute one, again trashing a perfectly good novel, although it isn't as bad as Persuasion or as good as Northanger Abbey, at least some of this is a result of there being no good Northanger Abbey before, and a very good Persuasion. The BBC miniseries from the 80s is apparently good, but the earlier movie (about which I wrote when I saw it in 2004: "Mansfield Park was an interesting Jane Austen adaptation. Very clever, lots of great lines, and there were some nice touches I didn't expect from the movie. Like sex, and some very anti-slavery drawings. A surprise that I liked it? Hell no. I'm the Jane Austen fan in my generation. And Frances O'Connor wasn't too unattractive to look at.") wasn't entirely an adaptation of the book. Although this was an adaptation, I didn't care for Billie Piper as Fanny Price or basically anyone, except for Blake Ritson as Edmund Bertram. Well, I actually didn't even like him, as he was a little emo for the time period. My Austen-ite friend describes this version as a "just slap and a tickle in fancy Regency dress". Basically sums up the movie far better than I have. Anyway, there's only one more new Austen adaptation, Sense and Sensibility, but I have the Austen biography and rewatching Pride and Prejudice (because damnit, I love that so much) and Emma (with Beckinsale being far better than Gwynneth ever could) before that.

Kill!, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, & Hyperculture

Kill! is based on the same novel as Sanjuro (about which I wrote "Sanjuro was good, but not as good as Yojimbo. It was funnier, but a little too preachy. Still, a mediocre Kurosawa film is better than the best of most other directors. The ending blood was completely out of character for the movie, but it was ok." when I saw it back in 2003), and was directed by Kihachi Okamoto, who also did Sword of Doom. This was pretty funny, but not nearly as good as Sanjuro. Mainly due to the two leads not being Mifune and Nakadai, the two best actors of their generation in Japan.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (no, I didn't rewatch the movie, I read the novel) is a book by Dai Sijie, who was sent to be reeducated, and ended up going to France to write this novel in French, which was then translated into English. So this was doubly translated, although once by the author himself. The story was still heartbreaking, although the added bit about the Three Gorges Dam wasn't from the book, but it probably needed a little extra due to the lack of that much movie in the relatively short book. It certainly could have worked, but it needed an ending. It could have ended like the book, but that's not going to bring the kind of closure that most movie goers expect.

I also wrote up the Hyperculture exhibit at the Kennedy Center, so if, for some reason, you read this blog, but not that blog, this is my time to tell you to read that one. It has robots, koi, polka-dots, and me almost falling asleep in public.

And, for those who care, apparently the Edison Chen sex scandal may be over, just like the writer's strike! Boo-yay!

Yakuza Graveyard, Samurai Rebellion, A Perfect Couple, O.C & Stiggs, Northanger Abbey, & No Country for Old Men

Yakuza Graveyard is actually not the film I thought it was. I got it confused with Graveyard of Honor, a different Yakuza film directed by Kinji Fukasaku, and remade relatively recently by Takashi Miike. This one actually felt like a slightly restrained Miike film, full of yakuza and half-breeds who don't fit in, although this one only had female characters who are basically gangsters, druggies or whores. Or all three! Miike tends to have slightly more developed female characters. Only slightly, and they really depend on the film. Meiko Kaji, she of The Yakuza Papers (an earlier Fukasaku series of films about the problems with both the yakuza and related police corruption), the Lady Snowblood films, and the Female Prisoner Scorpion films, is the main female, but she really doesn't get that much to do. I vastly preferred The Yakuza Papers, which had a far greater sense of history and scale, although this one dealt interestingly with the economic reality of mid-70s Japan and police involvement in the Yakuza. So, while it was interesting, it didn't grab me as much as I would have wanted.

Samurai Rebellion was directed by Masaki Kobayashi, director of Kwaidan and Harakiri, and all around anti-Samurai man. This one is again about the corruption of the Samurai culture, like Harakiri, except that this is more about moral corruption, as the mistress of a Lord who has had his son is forced to marry the son of a great swordsman. When the lord needs to marry her to make the son the official heir due to the death of his other son, she's kidnapped and the son and the father must decide whether to fight or allow the woman the son loves to be taken from him. Of course, the main point is that Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Nakadai have a swordfight. Which makes the film, no matter what else is in it, it's worth it for that scene. That the rest of the movie is quite excellent is just a bonus.

A Perfect Couple is another late 70s Altman film after Quintet, although it's considerably better. Altman really doesn't do romantic comedy well, and this one is quite fluffy, with long musical interludes of a terrible (and I mean terrible) soft rock band breaking up a weird story of an older antique dealer who falls for a backup singer for the aforementioned band through a computer dating service. It's also very strange to see Dennis Franz in a very early role as Paul Dooley's brother and Henry Gibson (so much a one of those guys guys that I actually had to look him up because I couldn't remember what his name was). Ebert's review is actually fairly accurate (except for his saying the music wasn't terrible), as it was just all over the place, which works in some Altman films, but not this one, as pretty much any scene with the band was painfully bad.

O.C. & Stiggs has an interview with Altman saying that of all his movies, this one was watched most often (or nearly the most, I can't quite remember) at his place when he had friends over. He said that he wasn't sure whether people were more likely to laugh at or with the film. Considering the film isn't very funny, it's far more likely to be that they were laughing at it. It's a horrible mess, an unfunny "teen comedy" with bizarre Vietnam analogies and a ridiculous plot that doesn't make sense even after it's explained.

Northanger Abbey is, in my opinion, the new best version of Northanger Abbey, altough, based on the previous version I saw, that wouldn't be very hard. This one, though, was quite good and captured the ridiculous humor of the novel, even if it suffers from the same trimming of the other new Austen adaptations. Northanger Abbey is, by far, the funniest Austen work, mocking the horrible clichés of gothic novels with the humor that only shows flashes in most of her works, but here is almost constant. Felicity James is an outstanding Catherine Morland, and JJ Fields as Henry Tilney is the most perfect Austen hero. Well, Darcy is still the best, but Tilney is quite good, because of lines like "Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again." I like Andrew Davies's decision to use Jane Austen's voice to help fill in the vast parts of the novel that needed to be cut for the 90 minute running time. As much as I love Pride and Prejudice, I have to say that Northanger Abbey was the most enjoyable Austen to read.

No Country for Old Men is the best film I've seen so far that came out last year. It also moves into number 3 on my list of best Coen brothers films, behind Miller's Crossing and The Big Lebowski, and just ahead of Barton Fink. Javier Bardem, as Anton Chigurh, is the most evil person in a Coen brothers film, and possibly the most evil person in a film. Just irredeemably evil, and watching the slightly normal people react to him is a lot of the humor, although Woody Harrelson, Kelly MacDonald (who knew she could play a Texan?), Tommy Lee Jones, and Garret Dillahunt were all outstanding. Josh Brolin was ok, but his character just doesn't have the same punch that just about every other character in the film has. It really is just a darkly hilarious film, gorgeous in a dirty sort of way, and a depressing view of society. And, of course, they shot the dogs.

Quintet, Persuasion, & Never Let Me Go

Quintet is a 1979 Altman film, after his early 70s successes and before his late career resurgence. And thus, the fact that it's about a dystopian future where the human race is suffering through a new ice age and play a game of divided loyalties called Quintet, and you have a recipe for failure. And that's just what I got. Confusing as hell, I basically gave up midway through and stopped paying nearly as much attention to it as I could have. Not should have, because the movie didn't deserve it.

Persuasion is the first movie of the new Jane Austen adaptations shown on Masterpiece (apparently, the Theatre part of the title was just too much?). And while I liked Anthony Stewart Head as Sir Walter Elliot, most of the rest of the cast was not good. And cutting down a novel to a sub-90 minute movie just meant that actual characterization was sacrificed. And, as is usual for Austen, there was an extremely good version done in the mid-90s by the BBC. Probably my favorite two-hour version of an Austen novel. This one has a very weak Captain Wentworth, and some very un-Austen-y things, like running through Bath without a hat on. No one does that. Well, no one did that back in the early 1800s.

Never Let Me Go is Kazuo Ishiguro's most recent book, after the supremely excellent Remains of the Day, and the less good When We Were Orphans. I remember reading about it when it came out and thinking that it was sort of an Alice in Wonderland in a weird dystopian future with organ harvesting or something. I think that's slightly misleading, as it seems to be a weird science fiction-y present where cloning started soon after World War II, and there's a whole generation of children who were cloned entirely to provide organs for others. It's a pretty sad book, like Ishiguro's others. So much of what I watch, read, and come into contact with just leads to sadness. I really blame my intelligence for this. If I were stupider, things like Dan Brown novels and Jerry Bruckheimer movies wouldn't make me sick, they'd make me wonder just how they were able to put that much into a novel or movie. Instead, I'm stuck knowing they're crap and then looking for deeper things, and that way leads to depression. Which I've been getting significantly better at avoiding in the past couple years, but there are still things that just are extremely upsetting to me.

Children of Men, Casanova, & Infernal Affairs II & III

Children of Men is a little religious-y for my tastes, but it's also an outstanding film. Clive Owen is very strong in the lead, but the real star is Alfonso Cuarón's direction. The three long takes, during the first car chase/battle, the birth, and the final assault on the apartment complex are quite amazing. So much so that I was a little disappointed to read that the two battle scenes were not done without cuts.

Casanova begins my little very recent scandal minifest. Completely unintentional. I had no idea that Heath Ledger was going to die when Casanova hit the top of my queue. It's fluff. Utter, utter fluff, but it's got a cast of great actors. Well, Jeremy Irons, Oliver Platt, and Lena Olin. And man is Lena Olin gorgeous. She's 50 in this film, and holy crap, she is hot. Sienna Miller is attractive, and Heath Ledger is very passable, but the move depends on Irons, Platt, and Olin. I watched it on Blu-Ray on my new 42" 1080p LCD. It looked very pretty.

Infernal Affairs II & III are the second and third films in my recent scandal minifest. For those of you who haven't heard, apparently, Edison Chen is a little bit of a dick. And now, I've seen his. And more of Cecilia Cheung than I ever would have expected. I mean, except in my wildest dreams. Ever since I first saw her in King of Comedy, the quite excellent One Nite in Mongkok, and the only watchable for her Lost in Time, I have wondered what she looked like naked... well, I wonder no longer, as a few days ago, photos leaked to the net that Edison Chen took of him having sex or just naked pictures with Cecilia Cheung (who is clearly at least a little drunk), Bobo Chan, and Gillian Chung. Apparently, he sent his computer and phone in to get serviced and the pics were taken and then uploaded. There is also a video and photos of Maggie Q and maybe some other actresses, but those haven't leaked, as far as I know. Yep, you can go find the pics online if you want to see it. Of course, this is enormous in Hong Kong, as they're fairly famous, but of course, this isn't big news in the US yet. I, unlike a lot of people out there, do not blame the women at all. It's clearly Edison's fault, for being an idiot. You should know that you never, ever, ever send a computer with naked pictures off to get serviced. Seriously, just a dick move there. And ruining these women's career's is enough for me to hate you forever. So you better hope that it doesn't happen, Edison, because I will make sure you never work again. Anyway, Infernal Affairs II & III have Edison Chen as the young Andy Lau. So that's my rough link to that scandal. Infernal Affairs II is the prequel, and III is the sequel, both of which have parts that were included in The Departed. II is far weaker, and III is actually pretty good. I just really didn't like what they did in II, as I knew what was going to happen and Chen and Shawn Yue were not nearly as good as Andy Lau and Tony Leung. If you are interested, watch Infernal Affairs I & III. Skip two.

Actually, the entire post was more about making a post that will get hits forever, because I've mentioned hot Asians, naked, and Heath Ledger. Google hits, here this post comes!