Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, Rebels of the Neon God, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, & Homicide

Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten is a great documentary about him. Starting with his early life, through the 101'ers, the Clash, on to the Mescaleros. Amazing soundtrack (beyond the Clash, there's the Ramones, MC5, Bob Dylan, and more, and I will never tire of hearing Johnny Appleseed), fascinating interviews with famous people (and... Flea... who blames the Clash for creating Red Hot Chili Peppers), and bits of history I never knew (he was dating the drummer from the Slits?), making for a really interesting film, the interviews filmed in front of a campfire, leading to beautifully shot scenes of people talking about how amazing Joe Strummer is. Which, really, if you've ever heard his music, you'd already know.

Rebels of the Neon God and I Don't Want to Sleep Alone are both Ming-liang Tsai films in two different stages in his career. Rebels is his first film, rougher than his much later I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, but honestly, the roughness made me actually enjoy the film much more. Too much of his later films are static shots where nothing much happens. IDWTSA was way too slow, full of shots of people washing dudes who are unable to wash themselves. Rebels, felt fresh, the story of two men rivals for a woman, with a good song played pretty often. It may not be as accomplished a film, but I certainly enjoyed it on a non-intellectual level more than most of his other films.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is probably Cassavetes trying to be somewhat conventional. He fails miserably. It's an odd film, far more concerned with scenes of Ben Gazzara being an awesome strip club owner. Seriously, the film is worth watching if only for the ridiculousness that is the strip club. The rest of it, the gangsters, the gambling, his "black lover", all combine to be a character study of a desperate man driven to extremes, with extra violence. I didn't see the cut version, just watching the original one, but Criterion has both versions in one set.

Homicide is another Criterion DVD, recently released. It's Mamet's third directorial effort, filled with his favorite people, Joe Mantegna, William H. Macy, Ricky Jay, J.J. Johnston, Jack Wallace, and Rebecca Pidgeon (in her first appearance in a Mamet film), along with Ving Rhames in a small role. Mantegna is an assimilated Jewish cop, in the midst of trying to capture a dangerous drug dealer and murderer, stumbles into a murder of an old Jewish woman who used to run guns in Israel during the War of Independence. He gets dragged into a secret Jewish underground which distracts from his job as a cop. As it's a David Mamet film, it's twisty and awesome. Really, everything he touches is either amazing or far better than it should be. This one suffers a bit (just a tiny bit) from me not knowing what the point of the Jewish underground was with Mantegna. But why complain when you have Mamet speak and Ricky Jay speaking Hebrew? Worth waiting for the Criterion DVD. Definitely see this film.

Star Wars and Census Geekery

Assume [sic] all over this post.

Ms. Albright: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/weird/Jedi-Claims-Discrimination-at-Grocery-Store-60020902.html
Ms. Albright: I love our ridiculous world.
me: i believe jedi is an accepted religion in england (Editor's note: There are no accepted religions in England, but it does have a census code.)
Ms. Albright: apparently, the 4th largest. (Editor's note: This is worth it for this press release alone.)
me: more reasonable than catholicism
me: well... neither of them supports pre-marital sex (jedi's don't support any sex, but that isn't something that jedi's would probably acknowledge)
Ms. Albright: no sex? That's terrible.
me: you didn't see the prequels... which is a good thing, but apparently jedi shouldn't form romantic attachments, which is a serious issue since the force is supposedly passed down genetically
me: this all presupposes that the prequels are canon, which I argue is not true
Ms. Albright: Seems pretty ridiculous.
me: describes the prequels perfectly

A few more things

Glee is an odd show. I'm enjoying the trashy high school melodrama bits, but the singing is so earnest that I cringe whenever they start. There's added pain due to the songs... I never needed to hear most of them ever again.

Community is promising, and I have high hopes that it fits in well with The Office and 30 Rock on Thursday nights.

True Blood looks like it's going to a darker place next year (plus, no more Eggs!) with Jessica. Which probably means more Hoyt. Yay!

Also, this is something I should have linked to in my Breakin' review: I am not sorry if you are going to end up singing "My name is Jean-Claude Van Damme. I will dance for you" for the rest of time.

Obsessed, Son of Rambow, Reign of Fire, & TV stuff

Obsessed is a horrendously badtacular movie. Redeeming value? Absolutely none. Cliches abound, bad acting is featured prominently in everyone (even Idris Elba isn't immune), the dialogue is predictable, the final fight scene is telegraphed (wait, what's more obvious than telegraphing... diagrammed) in the first scene. There's one interesting thing in it, Ali Larter roofies Idris, but this never comes up again, even though it would make total sense if she used this to try to prover her insane story. But that would have actually been a good plan, and clearly would have been out of place in this cinematic abortion.

Son of Rambow is about a couple of young kids who try to remake Rambo. There's a weird French exchange student. There's random Brethren action. Jessica Hynes shows up as the main character's mom. It's kinda sweet, but it's not all that good.

Reign of Fire is pretty trashy. It doesn't actually make any sense. Christian Bale is ok, but Matthew McConaughey's beard is terrifying. I like dragons. I don't like this.

The last two podcasts I listened to, This American Life and The Moth, actually have tie-ins to new pop culture events: TAL replayed their story which inspired The Informant! which I really need to see. The Moth played a story from Jonathan Ames, who created Bored To Death which just started on HBO after Curb Your Enthusiasm (which is still funny, but it always takes a bit to get into a new season), and was an odd combination of pot humor and film noir, and just odd enough to keep me interested. Plus, it ended with Halfway Home playing, so good taste.

Batman: Gotham Knight, The Machine Girl, & Rampo Noir

Batman: Gotham Knight is basically a series of short stories about Batman done in an anime style. The first one, Have I Got a Story for You, is a fine story, messing with the Batman mythos, but the animation style is just a very small step above Aeon Flux, distracting me and bugging me until it was over. Crossfire was creepy, and extremely effective. Much better visually, but still not very clear when it comes to plot. This trend is positive, and I liked the rest of them. They're not all particularly good, but they're an interesting twist. I think I'm going to stick with the Paul Dini series when it comes to my animated Batman. I like that this exists.

Rampo Noir is a series of four short films based on stories by Edogawa Rampo, who wrote the stories that Horrors of Malformed Men. These... are pretty much trash. The first one is complete trash, the second less so, the third less so, and the fourth less, but still, why the hell did I sit through the first one? The first story is all silent and has naked wrestling. Completely ridiculous. The second has naked bondage and melty wax sex. Ugh. The third one is about a woman who amputates her husbands arms and legs, puts them in jars, and then has sex with him. Ostensibly this is to keep him out of having to fight in a war. The entire thing somehow was stretched out to 134 minutes. Man, did I regret watching this.

The Machine Girl is a movie with special effects by the guy who did them on Tokyo Gore Police, Suicide Club, Noriko's Dinner Table, and Exte: Hair Extensions. That gives you an idea of how crazy this film is. It's just about halfway between the absolute insanity that is Tokyo Gore Police and Noriko's Dinner Table. Lots of spurting blood, cartoony villains (the main bad guy's wife is comically evil), a tempura arm, drill bra, decapitations, blood soup, a chainsaw foot, many gratuitous panty shots, and the titular Machine Girl who has an arm cut off and replaced with a machine gun. There's a sequel. I need to see it. Along with their new film, RoboGeisha.

Caseus Archivelox: Monster's Ball

2002-08-26 - 9:07 p.m.
I saw a movie that wasn't particularly good tonight. In fact, you might say that it sucked monster's balls. Well, I certainly would. Long, boring, with no characters I cared for. And the sex scene was typical overcutting, out-of or soft-focus crap. If you want an impressive sex scene, watch Bound, the Wachowski brothers' first directorial effort, with an incredible one-shot scene. Anyone can have too much cutting, it takes talent to do an impressive single take. But Billy Bob still sucks, Puff Daddy (oh no, he's going to come and find me and kill me because I used Puff Daddy) can act like I can hammer a six-inch spike through a board with my penis. Not right now, and it's not looking like it's going to happen anytime soon.

Caseus Archivelox: The Road Home

2002-08-11 - 12:00 a.m.
This evening I watched The Road Home directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Zhang Ziyi. Absolutely stunning. And the movie wasn't half bad either. Not a 10 because of having a very thinly stretched plot. At under 90 minutes it shouldn't feel like over two hours, but it did. There was very little action, and there are only so many times I can see Zhang Ziyi run through fields in pig tails. I can't believe I just typed that sentence. I mean, Zhang Ziyi. Pigtails. What the hell was I thinking? Oh well... Maybe it's just bitterness that I've never been the reason for anyone to almost kill themselves trying to see me because I've been taken away for some "political" reason. Maybe.

Caseus Archivelox: The Business of Strangers

2002-08-08 - 10:15 p.m.
I watched The Business of Strangers. Sort of like In the Company of Men after estrogen therapy. I figured out the "plot twists" right after they were set up. Not that they were that hard to figure out. Maybe if I hadn't seen In the Company of Men. One thing that I don't like is showing "porn" in movies that are not porn. It means that it just looks funny (because no porn movie just shows thrusting with no nudity) and is more aural than visual (which is funnier without the visual at all). I fully support the right of people to show more, but I think half-assed porn is silly. Unless it's like Log Jammin' in The Big Lebowski, where they just showed the pre-nudity part of the scene. And then had one of the funniest lines of the movie. "You can imagine where it goes from here." "He fixes the cable?" I need to see that movie again. Damn, that is probably the funniest Coen Brothers movie. I almost ordered a White Russian at the last bar I went to, but I realized I probably wouldn't like it much.

Caseus Archivelox: Signs

2002-08-04 - 11:14 p.m.
I saw (the) Signs. I can't say that I liked The Sixth Sense much, but that may be overhyping. Signs was interesting though. I love alien films, and this was an intelligent alien film. Not perfect, as part of the point of the movie was faith vs. coincidence, and I don't like movies like that much, but I liked the aliens. A little reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead, but with a little more cinematic flair, while NOTLD gets by purely on being perfect in every way. Anyone who has seen both will understand why I link the two, although people who hadn't seen NOTLD would probably need to just realize that people sitting around in a farmhouse waiting for things outside to get them while they watch things on TV happens in both movies.

Another thing is that watching it, I keep wishing that River Phoenix didn't die. He left us with the non-talented, hair-lipped Phoenix. Who I don't like. And he didn't look comfortable swinging that bat. Nor did he look like he could hit a ball 507 feet. And there were other problems with the movie (most of which were with the ending, which I don't want to spoil for anyone), but it was well done, and built tension well, which is why I liked it.

Editor's note: I have since seen Signs again, and it's really not very good.

Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong, John & Yoko's Year of Peace, & The Beatles: Rock Band

Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong is funny. Of course it is. It's Patton Oswalt. The censorship from Comedy Central was distracting, and the commercial breaks disrupted the rhythm. Still full of hilarious things.

John & Yoko's Year of Peace is a fairly brief look at John Lennon and Yoko Ono doing crazy things trying to bring peace to the world. Good for them. The movie itself never really gets too in depth, and thus is only of interest for those who need to know lots but little important about John Lennon trying to get some peace.

The Beatles: Rock Band is fun. As an enormous Beatles fan for many years. Most of my earliest memories of sitting and listening to music (LPs!) include things like my dad's folk music, various kids albums (including a certain Sesame Street album with Let It Be on it), and Rubber Soul and Revolver (the American versions because that's what my dad had). My first... well, I probably bought all the Beatles albums before I bought any other CDs, but certainly my first two were Beatles albums. I enjoy playing Rock Band. Therefore, this game was designed for me. Especially because most of the songs are easier than Rock Band itself, so I don't feel as incompetent playing it. It has 45 songs, and only one sucks (I Don't Want You, stupid 7 minute long boring-ass song). So it's 44 songs of awesome. I am looking forward to rebuying even more Beatles music. Because I didn't already do this once. Damnit. At least I could rip my CDs to mp3s so I wouldn't have to rebuy the music then (even if that were possible, which it still isn't). The unheard studio chatter is interesting, the dreamscapes are trippy, and I have more appreciation for some of the less famous Beatles tracks. Not I Want You, because that one still sucks.

The Deal, Persepolis, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, & Redbelt

The Deal is a fascinating look at the rise of New Labor through the pre-Prime Ministerial careers of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Michael Sheen and David Morrissey are outstanding and well worth watching the movie. Maybe not as good of a movie as The Queen, but it was pretty darn good anyway. And for someone who prefers movies about politicians rather than royalty, I gotta say, I know The Queen is a better film, but I would vastly rather rewatch this.

Persepolis is basically the comic in moving picture form. And not like Watchmen, which didn't get the heart of the book, this is true to the comic and is thus as worthwhile. I didn't mention this last year, for some reason, but I did read the comic. It's quite good, an interesting look at the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war from the point of view of a young-ish girl.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a depressing movie about an abortion, but, in this case at least, the abortion itself isn't dangerous. It's the conditions around it, put in place by Nicolae Ceausescu's banning of abortion. All this does is cause pain for the women involved and lead to more crime. Making abortion illegal in order to combat falling birth rates is ridiculous.

Redbelt is a little twisty thriller from David Mamet, but even with an amazing cast (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alice Braga, Emily Mortimer, Ricky Jay, Tim Allen, David Paymer, Joe Mantegna, Rebecca Pidgeon, Jennifer Grey, and basically a cameo from Ed O'Neill), it isn't nearly as good as most Mamet. Well, I'm a huge fan, but I don't think the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is all that good of a basis, compared to his normal crime milieu. Just a little disappointing. I think my problem may have been that it was not nearly as twisty as I like my Mamet (although The Winslow Boy wasn't particularly twisty, and I enjoyed that). And that it ended in a huge fight scene... ugh.

Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee, Noriko's Dinner Table, Heroes of the East

Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee is a nowhere near a good movie. Fitfully funny, more of a commentary on racism in Hollywood than Bruce Lee's death and the finishing of Game of Death. And brief and not really worth watching.

Noriko's Dinner Table is a semi-sequel, prequel, and concurrent to Suicide Club. Like that, it was not really that good. Unlike Sion Sono's later Exte, it wasn't ridiculous enough to enjoy. Their were clearly satirical aspects of the film that went over my head, but the movie just went on too long and I really didn't get the whole brainwashing parts of it. If anything, the film makes me like Suicide Club less. Grafting some sort of explanation on the film doesn't help it. Removing the mystery just makes it a mess of a film. Just like this.

Heroes of the East is a cross-cultural meeting of martial arts, but as it's made in Hong Kong, of course the Chinese beat the Japanese. And the man teaches the woman a lesson about listening to the husband and being meek. There's also the normal awkward and sophomoric humor and ridiculous fights, typical of Shaw Brothers films.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 1/2, & The Taming of the Shrew

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 1/2 are basically William Greaves messing with everyone involved in the film. The first one is filmed entirely in 1968, and features a couple breaking up, and the film crew filming them being filmed and everyone getting testy and confused with everything that's going on. Take 2.5 is about half put together from footage left over from 1968, and the other half in 2004ish. Basically, it's a big mindfreak of a film. It's honestly hard to figure out what the hell is remotely real and what is just Greaves messing with you. It reminds me a lot of F for Fake, although neither is as good, mainly because Welles is one of the masters of cinema. There's a lot of split-screening, watching things from multiple cameras, and multiple people play the same characters. The second one is even more about the artifice of filmmaking than the first, but the first works better. Steve Buscemi usually makes everything better, but in this case, the actual film parts (the scenes that are ostensibly being filmed) are much weaker.

The Taming of the Shrew is/was (depending on when you read this) being performed for free at the Sidney Harman hall in Chinatown. It's a modern-set version, but the problem is that it's an inherently retrograde version of women's role in marriage. I enjoyed the play anyway. Back when I lived in Cincinnati and was watching around six plays a year or more, my favorite game before the performance was to read the cast biographies and see how long it took to get to someone who had been in Law and Order. This time it took four actors. Three if you include the SVU or CI spinoffs. Being so close to Baltimore, though, we got three actors from the Wire (one even gets a bio page on the official Wire website!). Even with that talent, the play belonged to Ian Merrill Peakes (Petruchio) and Louis Butelli (Grumio). Butelli channeled the wacky Brad Pitt perfectly, and really knows how to wield a flower bouquet. Peakes was hilarious, able to make his lying ass abusive husband charming, but even more impressively look good in a wedding dress. Ms. Albright and I had arrived way early, since we had no idea how the whole get a free ticket worked if you had a voucher for a ticket. It turns out we were the first there and so they were kind enough to ask us where we wanted to sit. After first being offered the front row (something I'm loathe to take after my unfortunate closeup at Metamorphoses, let alone having to look up for the entire show), I said I'd prefer something like the fifth or sixth row. We were given the end of the fifth row, and I was actually kinda annoyed because we could have gotten a seat in the middle. The end seats were perfectly fine, though, and I got a little bit of audience participation there. During the first wedding (Act 3, scene 2), Petruchio and Grumio show up late, and in this version, in a wedding gown, matching Katharina's (less train, though). They dance down the aisles towards the front, and, since aisle five has lots of leg room, Petruchio moved right in front of me and continued to dance and flashed me. I was shocked and scandalized and I couldn't stop laughing. The first three acts are really not all that bad from a misogyny standpoint, but man, the taming itself and the final speech are pretty offensive. Even with that, Shakespeare, especially free, is extremely enjoyable.

Boarding Gate, I Live in Fear: Record of a Living Being, & The Ballad of Narayama

Boarding Gate is dreck. Asia Argento cannot act at all. Michael Madsen isn't all that good either. Kelly Lin is fine, but Kim Gordon is not at all an actor either. Just a miserable film. Olivier Assayas has done some good stuff (Clean, Demonlover (the greatest corporate espionage and hentai porn movie ever), Irma Vep, and convincing Maggie Cheung to marry him), but this one wasn't worth watching at all.

I Live in Fear: Record of a Living Being is a mid-50s Kurosawa movie about an old man who is trying to move his entirely family to Brazil to escape nuclear fallout. It's occasionally played for laughs, but it's also a depressing movie about how much some in Japan were affected by the bomb. Considering Kurosawa's later Rhapsody in August, he is one of those affected and horrified.

The Ballad of Narayama is Shohei Imamura's epic film of sex and a horrible way to treat old people. Let's just say that if there were actual Obama Death Panels proposed to replace what they do to old people here, it would get a lot of support. At least they'd have a chance. One thing I want to say: I never need to see another person slamming their own head into rocks in order to break teeth. Eesh. And the extremely weird sex stuff really freaked me out. As such, the movie is well-made, but I just couldn't get past how rough a time everyone had. Again, eesh.

The Nine Lives of Marion Barry, Control, & The Brave One

The Nine Lives of Marion Barry just makes me miss when our politicians weren't all crooks or sleazebags. Wait, that time didn't exist. Barry used to be a force to improve the lives of blacks in DC. Then he got power and ended up corrupt. This is the normal trend for politicians. He's an embarrassment to all those who don't think that working to break the white power structure in DC makes up for years of corruption, drug use, and various other lying things. The documentary is a little shallow, but it humanizes Barry. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing, though.

Control is about Joy Division. And Joy Division is awesome (I really need them to put some songs in Rock Band, specifically Transmission). Arty, fascinating, and well worth the time you put in. Better than the Joy Division segment of 24 Hour Party People. Great non-Joy Division soundtrack as well, and the Joy Division songs were actually performed by the cast. The Killers doing Shadowplay, though, was entirely unnecessary.

The Brave One is Hollywood slick. Sure, it accurately presents that rape and assault are extremely hard to return to normal afterwards. The movie, however, succumbs to Hollywood at the end. It's just too slick to be recommended. It's not all that bad, just eh, and from Neil Jordan, that's a disappointment.