Scott Pilgrim, Under the Banner of Heaven, Terry Sanford, Hear the Wind Sing, & Pinball 1973

Scott Pilgrim is finally finished. And only two weeks before the movie comes out, could you really expect me to not have preordered his Finest Hour way back when. Which just makes me wonder why I hadn't even talked about the series in any depth yet. Scott Pilgrim is quite good. Well, he's a forgetful jerk who makes me feel dirty, but he's also full of awesomeness. As are the books. Sure, the first one starts out without Bryan Lee O'Malley having found either a consistent drawing style or evenness in plotting. But once the League of Evil Ex-Boyfriends shows up and the series kicks into overdrive, he gets to the heart of what makes 20-somethings tick. There was ridiculousness, there was fighting, there was fanservice (and the immediate mocking of said fanservice), and an ending that was very far from sucking. I need to get O'Malley to sign the last two issues. Just to match the signed first four. I am looking forward to whatever he ends up doing next. And the movie wil be awesome as well.

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is Jon Krakauer looking at the history of Mormonism, with a focus on the polygamist sects, as a fight against "normal" American society. Having watched the first three and a half seasons of Big Love, I may have been more familiar with the story than I would've been without having seen it, since whole plot threads are straight out of history. Mormons are squicky. And knowing more about the history, and the stuff that they don't want you to know about the murderous tendencies of the official church, just confirms that. Mormonism may be the most American of all religions, but being an American Religion isn't really good. We tend to kind of be dicks.

Terry Sanford: Politics, Progress, and Outrageous Ambitions is as far from being about dick-y Americans as you can. Terry Sanford is a hero to any progressives with Southern ties. He was an FBI agent, a volunteer paratrooper in WWII, a liberal Democratic Governor of North Carolina during the Civil Rights era, president of Duke University for fifteen-ish years, a Senator from North Carolina. Who lost to his former driver who had switched parties due to fighting over who was going to run in 1986 for the seat Sanford won, but only because he had a heart attack a month before the election. He also helped to stop the civil war in Nicaragua that Reagan and North and Bush helped to prolong by funding the Contras. He was a great man, and although this book barely mentions my boss (who would be very important in Sanford's last two campaigns), I liked it. Sanford has a fascinating life story, and I enjoyed reading it.

Hear the Wind Sing is Haruki Murakami's first novel. Only published in Japan, and in a limited run of helping young people learn English, along with his second book, Pinball 1973. Neither are particularly good, although they definitely presage Norwegian Wood in both content and tone, being set in the late 60s and 70s in a real Japan. Hear the Wind Sing is not weird at all, while Pinball 1973 starts to bring in the strange characters that dominate his later works. Don't read them unless you're very into him, because there is a good reason for them not being published in English here. Besides the fact that they're very short.

Chocolate, Sex Machine, & World Sinks Except Japan

Chocolate puts forth the interesting idea that the first step to being a muay thai master is to be autistic. It's also offensive in that sense. Let alone all the transgendered individuals in it. However, it was directed by the guy (Prachya Pinkaew) who did Ong-Bak (mentioned in my review of Tom Yum Goong), and stars a young girl as the star, doing ridiculously awesome things in an ice factory, a butcher's shop, and on the side of a building. If you were wondering how people didn't die in the film, just wait until you see the end credits, which is pretty much showing people having serious injuries. It explains some of the quick cuts in the otherwise well-done action scenes. Definitely see this if you like ass-kicking women. Also, it could've been much cooler: IMDB says "The film originally included Zen watching scenes from Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies, but these scenes were eventually cut due to licensing problems. The ice factory scene was originally shot as a split screen of Zen imitating the exact same moves she had seen Bruce Lee do in a fight scene. It showed a clip of Bruce Lee doing his fight moves at the same time as Zen was mimicking Bruce Lee's moves. The warehouse scene was shot in a similar fashion, but this time it showed a split screen of Zen imitating Jackie Chan, wherein she would do her interpretation of a Jackie Chan fight routine." I wish there hadn't been licensing problems. I want to see that movie so much.

Sex Machine is a wacky Japanese pinku film about a woman whose son has fighting cockroaches and so do most of her suitors. I honestly cannot recall why I added this to my Netflix queue. It's very short and softcore porn. Only one of those two are things I tend to like in movies. Maybe if it had been more like the original title: "The Strange Saga of Hiroshi the Freeloading Sex Machine". That would've been better.

World Sinks Except Japan is a satire of Japan's relationship with the rest of the world. As a satire it falls flat. As a movie it falls flat. I basically kept watching because I wondered if it actually had anywhere to go. But nope, it just ended with a stupid Dr. Strangelove "homage" and me wasting my time. Boo.

Flesh + Blood, Running out of Time 2, & Le Doulos

Flesh + Blood is Paul Verhoeven doing an utterly ridiculous middle ages movie. Rutger Hauer is the lead mercenary, who kidnaps a virgin from the son of the man who refused to pay him for helping to take back his town. It's violent, full of sex (although a fairly explicit rape scene is disturbing), and kind of funny, exactly what you'd expect from Verhoeven's films. It isn't as good as his last Dutch films, or his later English films, but it's enjoyable enough.

Running out of Time 2 is the sequel to the non-2 movie, but this one isn't nearly as good. It's still kinda stylish, but the plot is just extremely silly. A magician basically shuts down all of Hong Kong by being utterly ridiculous and doing very elaborate tricks. Including a lot of coin flips that all end up the same way. Every times I saw him flip coins, all I could think was that they never actually showed the coins. They didn't have to actually flip the coins and have them end up all the same side. This bothered me. Gives you an idea about how much I cared about the plot when this was all I could focus on.

Le Doulos is a Jean-Pierre Melville noir film, and the Netflix summary says "Fedoras, trench coats, dark alleys and jazz pervade this intricate crime drama", which basically should just be "Noir, noir, noir, noir, noir." It's stylish almost to a fault, with a great interrogation scene, but also lots of characters doing stupid things because they look cool. Can you really blame someone for doing something that looks cool rather than being the most sensible thing at the time? It's not as great as Melville's best, but I greatly enjoyed it anyway.

A Serious Man, Frozen River, The Thief of Bagdad, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, & My Name Is Bruce

A Serious Man is the Coen Brothers doing the story of Job, with an ending straight out of John Sayles's excellent Limbo. Michael Stuhlbarg is outstanding as the put-upon professor, husband, and father in 1960s Minnesota, whose wife wants to leave him for a neighbor, whose son is a pothead who owes the neighborhood bully $20 and has to prepare for his bar mitzvah, whose job is in jeopardy, and whose brother's neck cyst is both hilarious and disgusting. The Coen Brothers really can do no wrong when working from their own scripts, and this one is defintely going to be a much tougher road for non-Jews (or non-Biblical scholars) to follow. But for me, even without any real knowledge of the story of Job, I loved the little Jewish touches (and I am very happy I didn't have to use a record player to learn my maftir and haftorah, as I am terrible at playing records). This is also a great excuse to remind everyone of the greatest trailer ever made. Although if someone wants to challenge me and and try to convince me otherise, you can try.

Frozen River stars Melissa Leo (who's excellent in everything she's ever done, including 21 Grams, Homicide, and Treme) as a newly single mother who lives near the Canadian border and starts to smuggle immigrants over the border to raise money to save her house. It's a little depressing, but it's interesting and well-acted.

The Thief of Bagdad is a sort of amalgamation of a lot of different Arabian Nights myths, and there's some significant links to things like Aladdin, and a mess due to being filmed in both England and the US, and having six different directors. It's interesting to see not just brownface, but also actual non-white actors in an early Hollywood film. If only it was a better film.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona makes me feel like it's Woody Allen trying to do something different, but no matter how hard he tried, with this one, he just failed at making anything much different from normal. The two American girls are typical Woody Allen's impression of how people talk rather than anyone who remotely exists. But hey, it's filmed in Barcelona rather than New York and they speak Spanish a lot! Congratulations, you've found the two things different from every other Allen film. Even the much hyped "Penelope Cruz kisses Scarlett Johansson" scene couldn't move this past any of Allen's mediocre films from the past twenty or so years. Boo.

My Name Is Bruce is Bruce Campbell's self-deprecating film. It's him being a huge ass, in a sort of Three Amigos but instead of a gang of bandits, it's a tofu demon. Yes, the Guan-Di, Taoist God of War and defender of bean-curd sellers, is the big bad, disturbed by a huge Bruce Campbell fan who goes to a graveyard to make out with a goth chick. He then goes on to start killing people in the town, magically appearing just at the best time to kill people. Problems with the film include Ted Raimi being racist stereotypes (yeah, two different ones), terrible acting from everyone, unfunny humor, crappy gore effects (lots of decapitations), and a winking tone that makes itself want to think that it's a much cleverer sendup of low budget horror films than it is. Sorry, Bruce, you're much funnier doing stuff like this in your books.

Life, Foyle's War, Blind Mountain, & Woman on the Beach

Life is the follow-up to Planet Earth, although it doesn't quite have the mind-bending awesomeness that was seeing that on a huge HDTV, back when that was fancy and unexpected. Having seen many things (including politician pores and McCain old man creepiness) in HD, it's not quite the novelty. Also, Oprah is no Sigourney Weaver. In fact, before I even started to watch it, I pre-ordered the Blu-ray version with David Attenborough's narration from the BBC version. Because Sigourney Weaver isn't even Sir David. Definitely check out both of these if you ever want to show off your HD TV. Seeing all the adorable creatures trying to deal with life, like the macaques in Japan and the seals and meerkats really are impressive.

Foyle's War is apparently over, unfortunately skipping most of 1944 to the very end of the war in Europe. The last three episodes, one about Russian POWs, racism, and traitors covers some pretty awesome ideas, and it's just a shame that we never get to see Foyle getting back at the American war profiteer. Because I want more Michael Kitchen being a complete badass. He's really just an extremely enjoyable actor.

And from a couple months ago, I watched Blind Mountain, which was a depressing story of a woman who gets kidnapped by a shady dude, and sold into slavery to be a man's wife in a small town in rural China, and how that's how things go there, and the horrible degradations she has to go through to try to let her parents know about what's going on and try to get rescued. If you want a depressing movie filled with rape and beatings, go for it.

I also watched Woman on the Beach, which was a depressing story about a director with writer's block and his relationship with his assistant's girlfriend. Not a particularly good or interesting movie.

Babylon A.D., Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Eye in the Sky, Throwdown, Real Fiction, & Otto; or, Up with Dead People

Babylon A.D. is a really interesting idea, although a little Children of Men, but with Vin Diesel instead of Clive Owen. Oh, and a talented director and good script is also lacking. This does have Michelle Yeoh in it. Unfortunately that is about the only thing this has going for it.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno proves that a film marketed as a comedy can be known for two things: comedy that isn't funny at all and impressive lightsaber dildos. Sadly, other things I can remember: Katie Morgan's horrible fake tits, gay people being "funny" due to talking about sucking cock, and... um, the hockey team is named the Zombies? I've now seen Jason Mewes's dick? Ugh. Just a worthless film.

Eye in the Sky was produced by Johnny To, but it is less like his straight up action films than more about the mentorship between a sargeant and his newest student in a police surveillance unit. It's actually pretty enjoyable, even if it does have the not as good Tony Leung. It was fun to see Simon Yam be the good guy, though. Not an amazing film, but not bad.

Throwdown was actually directed by Johnny To, but it wasn't actually any good. Overacting and a nonsensical plot.

Real Fiction is Kim Ki-duk just messing with you. Shot in basically real-time (there are a few cuts that I think slightly elide time), it's about a guy who basically goes around and kills everyone who upset him. Kim really is just a jerk, and he uses the girl who follows the lead around to implicate the audience in the crimes themselves, at least, until he literally beats you over the head with a rock near the end. I'm not sure exactly what the ending scene really meant, if it was just to try to release some of the immense amounts of tension created in the film, or if it's some weird alternate version of the main character.

Ping Pong Playa seems to think it's funny to replace various cursing with the sound of a ping pong ball or a basketball. It's also a typical sports comedy with an added bit of cultural comedy. Actually, replace comedy with "comedy". It's not particularly funny. Sigh. It's really hard to trust reviews I half remember from two or three years ago. Sigh.

Otto; or, Up with Dead People allows me to say something I never thought I'd ever say: "I have now seen a zombie gay traumatically inseminating another gay zombie." If that's the sort of thing you want to say, have I got a movie for you! Bruce LaBruce made a zombie film. He's apparently a controversial gay Canadian artiste who makes films in Germany. Maybe he's found that Germany is more accepting of this? I'm not sure how anyone can really be accepting of a film that says that gays are zombies and that they are mostly interested in turning people into zombie gays. The only, and I literally mean only, thing that was remotely interesting in the film was that one character was basically a silent film star within the overall film, and so she spoke with intertitles, and when on screen with other people was in black and white with film grain. I guess if I wanted to see naked gay dudes having sex, that would have been interesting as well, but I was well on my way to falling asleep by the time the orgy started.

An American Carol, W., Swing Vote, & Bangkok Dangerous

Liveblogging An American Carol, which is just as bad as everyone out there says it is, and can't be defended no matter how hard anyone tries:
Starts with the strains of Sweet Home Alabama, clearly trying to evoke a sense of national pride by playing a song about a state that most of America doesn't really care about. And then Leslie Nielson shows up, as a granpa who apparently can't grill (is that supposed to be funny?), but not before he hits the first black person on screen in the face with a frisbee. Because that's the kind of movie this is going to be. He starts telling a story about a Scrooge who hates the 4th of July, and it starts on a hilltop in Afghanistan where Robert Davi tries to get a guy to help, but it's confusing because everyone is named Mohammed Hussein. Which is funny. And then he sends a kid to be killed, but blows up his own car. Which is funny. And then there're funny jokes about gay marriage and illegal immigration. There's a funny Goofus-Gallant Taliban recruitment video. Then it's mock Michael Moore time. Which is as tone deaf as everything else so far. It's just like, "It's been a while since we insulted gays, so here's two mannish lesbians who refuse to shave until the end of war." See, that's funny. And Michael Moore eats everything. Oh, I'm sorry, Michael Malone. And all of these lefties don't know who people like Nixon are. Funny! Porn jokes! Jokes about stupid documentaries! Jokes about Michael Malone stinking! Mocking Moveon.org! Mocking Nazi documentarian Leni Riefenstahl! I wonder if they intentionally picked Paris Hilton and Simon Rex for their previous work in porn to be announcers at this awards show? And attacking Edward R. Murrow is really classy. And joking about Islamic fundamentalists killing people is classy as well! Fake beard! Opium crop jokes! Seinfeld jokes! JFK is Marley's Ghost! And ignoring the part about fighting for liberty, not for America. Or something like that. And now it's back to "liberals are idiots and just like chanting slogans" jokes! Also funny are shots of Malone getting his faced stepped on. George C. Scott has got to be rolling in his grave at Kelsey Grammer as Patton. This slave-owning in the south thing is remarkably offensive to everyone. The Columbia Peace Studies scene continues the theme of an extremely simplistic view of everything. In fact, I honestly can't keep writing about everything in this. "Death to the uncircumcised"? ACLU Zombies? Attacking documentaries for not making money just never gets boring, does it? Jon Voight as George Washington! Hey, 9/11! More slapping of Michael Malone! And more fat jokes! Oh, my god... Seriously? Military college recruits are the good guys? Trace Adkins is definitely the Angel of Death. Country Music is not redemptive at all, idiots. A gay sailor joke? Followed by a gay marines joke? How exactly did a bunch of sick kids being dragged into the ocean become funny? About the only funny thing was how often kids resorted to the jerk off motion. Which is about the most American thing in the entire film.

W. is Oliver Stone's cliffnotes version of a drunk teens half-rememberance of what they once learned by reading a blog about George W. Bush's life. If you think I'm being too harsh, just think of anything that's been said about W.'s life or said by him and reported in the press that could potentially be either embarrassing for funny, and it's in the movie. I'm a little surprised they didn't keep the middle finger during the preparation for the TV interview. Otherwise, all the Bushisms you could shoehorn into an overlong and boring film are there. The cast is certainly an impressive collection of talent, it's just a shame that they were given absolutely nothing that's worth watching. Maybe Jeffrey Wright as the only reasonable person in Colin Powell, but really, it's just a waste of time for everyone involved and I highly recommend not watching this movie.

Swing Vote actually fits with the two previous films in an extremely cynical view of America and its politics. In this case, unlike An American Carol which is cynical in everything it does and W's cynicalness in its delving makeup deep into Bush's life, the cynicalness is that an unemployed drunk can decide an election and that both political parties will sell out their core beliefs to get that vote. Ignoring the basic fact that there's no way this wouldn't go to a recount and one vote not actually mattering across the state of New Mexico, along with how blatantly illegal the one on one campaigning and horse trading was, it was just kinda boring. About the only thing I was wondering was if they were going to chicken out or not at the end. They came really, really close, but the end made me like it a little more. Not this person on the IMDB message boards. Other things I kinda liked: Art Crumb clearly based on Bob Shrum and yet somehow not being incompetant enough, although Nathan Lane does get the desperate to be considered intelligent and successful right. There are some interesting bits, but overall, it's just a pox on both houses film.

Bangkok Dangerous is... wait, you were wondering what a movie about Nic Cage being a hitman in Bangkok has to do with three films about American politics? Well, this one was written by Jason Richman who also wrote Swing Vote. And somehow, this may be the best of the four films. It's certainly the one that I feel like I could recommend to someone with an appreciation for... I'm kidding. This is also terrible, has little to do with the original Bangkok Dangerous (aside from being set in Bangkok, having a hitman character, a deaf character, and a love story), and Nic Cage isn't even deliciously crazy in it. Come on. I wanted some Wicker Man crazy, or at least some hyperactive National Treasure wildness. Instead I got boring Nic Cage acting worldweary and doing lots of stupid non-hitman-y things. Yeah, still directed by the Pang Brothers, and Charlie Yeung is attractive, but a couple of stylish scenes can't make up for the rest of this tedious mess.

White Dog, The Baron of Arizona, Forty Guns, The Steel Helmet, Fixed Bayonets!, Hell and High Water, & Merrill's Marauders

Apparently, about two years ago, when Eclipse released a collection of Samuel Fuller films, I decided to add a bunch to my queue, and thus, you're going to be reading brief (or not so brief) reviews of a bunch of Samuel Fuller films. Starting with White Dog, a movie about a racist dog. Which, considering the recent episode of 30 Rock with the Black Dog was kinda useful. It's a pretty 80s film, with some completely unnecessary slow-motion, and the confrontation with the original owner was kinda hilarious in an unintentional way, but I liked the film more than the message. Which I get is a little bit of that people can be horrible to animals and it's better to kill those animals rather than try to fix them. Because that's about the only thing I got of it.

The Baron of Arizona is his second film as director, after I Shot Jesse James, and it's the weird, but true, story of a con man who tried to steal Arizona. Yeah, you read that right: back in the mid-late 1800s, a con man started to forge a huge amount of documents (and rock carvings) in order to convince people the King of Spain had given this family almost all of Arizona, and then he married "the last remaining" one, and tried to pull one over. It failed, and the movie simplifies his redemption (in reality, it's not clear if he ever was redeemed, and it's more of a depressing penniless begger ending than in the movie where he still has the love of a good woman and he confesses. Interesting movie from a historical standpoint, but it's pretty darn on the nose for most of it. The lynching scene was really well done, and Vincent Price (yes, Vincent Price!) as the con artist makes the film much more worthwhile than it should be. Also, screw Arizona.

Forty Guns is a mediocre western, with Barbara Stanwyck. With musical interludes. It's very odd to think of Samuel Fuller directing this. And yet, not only did he direct it, he wrote it. Sure there's violence and the movie is pretty messed up, but that musical interlude at the open-air bathhouse is painful. And a lot of the dialogue is horribly cheesy. And extremely Freudian.

The Steel Helmet is the first film made about the Korean War and it's also a lot about race relations in the first integrated war. It's not a particularly subtle movie, with the North Korean they capture explicitly talking about how we mistreated both blacks and Japanese, especially during their service in WWII. I'm impressed that it was made at all, what with some soldiers being cowards, the racist actions of America being such an important plot point, and the fact that the black guy doesn't die, but the temple scenes would never have been made today, what with all the shooting at Buddhas.

Fixed Bayonets! is about a rear guard action during the initial retreat in Korea. A platoon is left behind to stop the North Korean advance, and the troops are slowly freezing to death and dying one at a time. The main star of The Steel Helmet is one of the gruff sargeants here. I really didn't care for most of it, and the fact that the North Koreans didn't attack in force, or even try very hard before they did surprised me. But the scene in the minefield and the final North Korean push weren't too bad.

Hell and High Water has Richard Widmark as a submarine captain who is enlisted by a civilian group of scientists who are interested in stopping the Communists from starting WWIII. And there's a woman aboard a submarine, which, thanks to a friend of where I work, there will be many more of next year. Which is completely ridiculous that it hasn't happened before now. Submarine films are always exciting, and this one is about average for a submarine film. The use of Cinemascope in a submarine film was an interesting choice, but it definitely contributes to the claustrophobia that is very important to cover in a film.

Merrill's Marauders is based on an Army unit of about 3,000 volunteers in Burma who went behind enemy lines and beat the crap out of the Japanese under the ultimate command of General Joe Stilwell. He rode them as hard as he could before they succumbed to the jungle and the superior number of Japanese forces, soon after the movie ended. I am pretty sure I watched this back in the days when I'd watch anything that was about a war, but I didn't remember anything in particular about it. I did enjoy seeing Stilwell be a hardass.

My Neighbors the Yamadas, Broken English, Appaloosa, & Europa

My Neighbors the Yamadas is an animated film from Studio Ghibli's Isao Takahata, who did Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, and Pom Poko. This is an extremely episodic film, with no overarching narrative at all, just bits and pieces in the life of a family in Japan, based on a comic strip. Which makes sense, since the usually no more than a minute or two segments feel like setting, setup, punchline. That said, most are very true to life, and enjoyable, although the ending sing along to Que Sera Sera is not really needed. I understand that you kind of have to have an ending to let people know that the movie is over, but I felt it should be more like life, and just kind of end, rather than some big production number.

Broken English is a film that really didn't make much of a mark on me. I guess I kinda liked it, but the story of a hotel fixer who is unlucky in love until she meets a Frenchman and then goes to Paris to meet him just felt ok. It wasn't bad, and Parker Posey was good in the role, but it felt like someone wandering through life not knowing what to do until a random coincidence gives everything a happy ending.

Appaloosa is a pretty good western, anchored by strong performances from Ed Harris and, especially, Viggo Mortensen as lawmen who come into town to take down Jeremy Irons. He's protected because he was friends with Chester A. Arthur, so it's much harder than they'd expect. Definitely an enjoyable film, and felt like a great twist on the western genre.

Europa is Lars von Trier messing with you. But instead of following Dogme 95 rules (in spirit if not exactly), he messes with switching between black and white and color film, characters moving from foreground to being in scenes in rear projection, and it's all set in a story of post-war Germany and the Werewolves. You know, if I had seen this film before I started to hate von Trier so much, I probably wouldn't hate him. It's a balls-out film announcing himself as bored with film and saying that you have to pick a side, either with the status quo or trying to make the world a better place. And the lead in the film makes the wrong choice, and ends up in a pretty amazing drowning scene in a river. But von Trier really is just messing with you.

Jet Li's Fearless, Women of the Night, Street of Shame, & The Panic in Needle Park

Jet Li's Fearless has a couple good fight scenes, but overall, it's a terribly nationalistic film. Which is to be expected from an accepted Chinese government funded film.

Women of the Night and Street of Shame are the last two films in Kenzo Mizoguchi's fallen women series of DVDs from Eclipse. It's interesting looking at these two films after the other ones, the slight difference in approach to prostitution both before and after the war. Not to mention the fact that Street of Shame is widely cited for having caused if not significantly influenced the criminalization of prostitution in Japan. I don't entirely see how this film, amidst what has to be many stories of the problems with prostitution, could have done that. It's more about the problems that occur due to the changing post-war society. I do not object to prostitution (depending on the reasons for entering into it, see below), although the completely unequal approach to gender in post-war Japan is far more disturbing to me. The films themselves are blatant, telling what could be shown. None of his films are as good as Kurosawa or Ozu, and they're a little frustrating.

The Panic in Needle Park is Al Pacino as a heroin addict. And the thing about the film is that it's clearly set up to make it seem like Pacino's character is in the worst shape of anyone in the film. But all I could think about was my 6th grade social studies teacher who had me read The Jungle for extra credit and then give an oral report. During it, she asked who I thought had it worst in the book, and I picked the main character, but she pointed out that his cousin went through some similar degradations and then went farther down, due to going into prostitution. It was one of the first times I can remember having my male privilege questioned, and one of the many things that have made me a proud feminist. And this movie is set up the same way. I felt bad for Pacino, but Kitty Winn's Helen goes through much worse, including prostitution and being beaten by her abusive boyfriend. Seriously, Helen's time is much worse than Bobby's. Also, Pacino's decline as an actor is obvious even from this early film. He's clearly going to overact in the future.

Return to the Scene of the Crime, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45, Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, & Snow Crash

Return to the Scene of the Crime is the DVD version of the filmed version of the This American Life radio show done last year. As I didn't see either time it was shown in theaters, but I did listen to it when broadcast in abbreviated form, I appreciated the chance to see it. And see Joss Whedon performing in public. As a big fan of This American Life, I enjoyed it. Even if knowing how most of it ended already slightly detracted from my watching it, watching the commentary and hearing Ira and the rest of them nitpicking was pretty interesting. Plus, supporting the show is always good.

Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 is a Barbara Tuchman book. And it won a Pulitzer prize. As such, it's a great book. Well worth reading if you have any interest at all in Chinese history. And if you wanted to know why the hell the Nationalists were so corrupt, this is a pretty good way to find it out. Clearly, Chiang Kai-shek deserved to lose China, but the most frustrating aspect of it (and, of course, we had the exact same problem in Vietnam) is that our desire to prop up anti-Communist but horrible despots led to much suffering. For some reason, we haven't learned our lesson. The enemy of my enemy may be our friend, but if we just give blind allegiance and support to everyone, we tend to screw up things. Should we look at our support for Iraq and Afghanistan and dictatorships throughout Latin America, we see this trend continues to cause problems.

Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records is great if you have any interest in learning about indie rock in the 1990s. Just like Our Band Could Be Your Life is the definitive look at indie rock in the 1980s, it's hard to imagine anyone covering just what it's like to be in an indie rock band and run an indie rock label over the last 20 years and doing it as well as this book did. Having all of the interviews with the people themselves makes it great. Ryan Adams is still a dick though. I learned a lot, even with my longtime Merge Records fandom (and enormous Merge Records music collection, owning somewhere around half the entire Merge discography), so definitely pick it up if you want to learn. Check out the website, full of fun Web 2.0ness.

Snow Crash, speaking of the web, is a great book, cyberpunky, and mixing my love of computers with mythology. If there were another author more designed for more of my interests, please point them out. A love of Japanese culture, post-apocalyptic America, the mafia, crazy Christians, and, of course, dentata just added to my enjoyment. I absolutely loved the book. Definitely one of my favorite books I've read. I'm not sure if I like it more than Cryptonomicon, but I think I like the approach of religious history more interesting than the history of cryptology. Either way, I need to read more of his work.

Sisters of the Gion, Up the Yangtze, Paris, je t'aime, & Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Sisters of the Gion is another Mizoguchi movie from the Fallen Women Eclipse series. The opening shot, of an auction of all of a husband's business, is impressive in setting up a broken man, but the rest of the film focuses more on the relationship between two sister geishas, the older "wise" one and the younger "vain" one. When the older one tries to help the husband, the younger one tries to get men to embezzle for a new kimono and expel him from the house. It's a big critique of geishadom, and it's very well-deserved. Geishas are creepy. I support things that point out just how creepy geishas and other paying for companionship things are.

Up the Yangtze is a documentary about a family that's being displaced by the Three Gorges Dam, and so they basically sell their daughter into a job on a cruise ship catering to Americans. Of course, it's horribly depressing, with the traditional China being destroyed by modernization. The movie feels more like a fiction film, even though it's clearly a documentary. Very well done, but I kinda wish they had subtitles on the DVD, because, especially when they're trying to learn English, they're very hard to understand. And I felt really bad for these people who have to deal with these terrible patronizing tourists. The lessons not to discuss politics are hilarious, especially the warnings to avoid Quebec's independence movement or Northern Ireland are great. I wonder if tour guides for Chinese groups here are advised not to mention Tibet. Watching the clearly false representation of China that tourists are being fed is frustrating. But the scenery shots were really great. And of the people in it was still on the boat when my parents went on it, which they watched after they came back.

Paris, je t'aime is a collection of short films about Paris, each set in a different arrondissement. As with all short film collections, some are better than others. Things to take away from it: mimes are terrible, Oscar Wilde's ghost gives good advice to bad people, the Coen Brothers are great with their short films (their short in To Each His Own Cinema, which I have seen online, is hilarious), and the one about hair cuts was terrible. If you want to see it, just know that you will be bored by many of them, in search of a few that are fairly good.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is an interesting documentary about... well, it's in the title. Alex Gibney, director of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi to the Dark Side, does a great job trying to cover the crazy life of Hunter S., which, even with my knowledge of him, mainly from movies and some of his writings, was a lot of new stuff. Definitely a good watch if you're at all interested in him.

Le Deuxième Souffle, Werckmeister Harmonies, & Osaka Elegy

Le Deuxième Souffle is another gangster film from Jean Pierre Melville, but unfortunately it's his worst gangster film. That's still quite a good film, but it just isn't as strong as his other films, as I think that it is missing a strong central performance, or particularly a good plot. I was kinda disappointed, but I figured that he couldn't keep up that 1.000 batting average on gangster films.

Werckmeister Harmonies starts out with a great scene (done in one shot) with the main character explaining the universe using others in the pub. Unfortunately, the film never quite reached that again, and instead goes into some mumbo jumbo about revolution and a huge taxidermied whale. And two hours after that first scene, the movie ends, and I'm not sure what the hell just happened.

Osaka Elegy is a look at the unfair double standard towards women and men in affairs. The boss goofs around, gets embarrassed, and mocked lightly by his coworkers, while the woman gets slowly destroyed, forced to have an affair and prostitute herself for the extra money to protect her father who is in trouble due to embezzlement. Of course, this is clearly extremely frakked up, and this is unfortunately something that we still deal with today, the stud/slut dichotomy that tortures young women. Screw you, patriarchy. The film itself isn't all that good, an early sound film with some overacting typical of the time. Just save yourself the time and go punch someone who congratulates some dude for having lots of sex and then attacks some woman for having lots of sex.

Diary of the Dead, The Hand, La terza madre, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Mongol, & Stuck

Diary of the Dead is the first in a slightly unintentional horror film fest. George Romero may, possibly need to stop making movies in the Dead world. I know he made another one, which probably won't be released for a while in the US, but he should stop. Because this was just a crappy retelling of the origin of the zombies, from the perspective of a bunch of film students. Movies where characters go through lots of horrible experiences and yet somehow still have a camera available to catch the important plot points are just completely ridiculous. This, Cloverfield, and The Blair Witch Project just strain credulity to such an extent I can't enjoy them at all.

The Hand is an early Oliver Stone film, and is worthless. Somehow, Michael Caine is the best person ever for reasons why he takes horrible movies. He's said, "You get paid the same for a bad film as you do for a good one", "I've made an awful lot of films. In fact, I've made a lot of awful films", and "I have never seen [Jaws: the Revenge], but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific." This one he apparently did because he needed a new garage. This movie has hand cam. And somehow, Michael Caine can make things reanimate. Except for this script. Oh, just ridiculousness straight through.

The Third Mother is the third movie in Dario Argento's Three Mothers Trilogy, with Suspriria and Inferno. Suspiria is a masterwork, Inferno is middling, and The Third Mother (for some stupid reason translated as Mother of Tears) is horribly bad. Asia Argento proves that the only reason she ever gets roles is because of her name. She is horrendously bad. About the only thing ok in the movie is Udo Kier being ridiculous before he has his throat slit and then his head hacked in half. Other than that, the nudity is silly, the kills are eh, and the plot makes no sense.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is the surprisingly good version of the Sondheim musical. As my main problem with Sweeney Todd before was my inability to understand many of the songs' lyrics, I appreciated it much more than I liked it, but with the subtitles, and the impressive acting from Depp and Carter (let alone Rickman being his normally awesome bad guy) make it a great movie. I know that it won some Golden Globes, but eh to thinking they could have gotten anything right. Burton clearly was enjoying himself with some mirrors and differing thickness of glass to make people's faces look Burtonesque, and also loved the visual of the dead bodies falling through the chute and landing. Sondheim does an amazing job writing beautiful, funny songs about some extremely evil people.

Mongol doesn't seem like it fits with my theme of horror films, but it really is when you come down to it. It's about the creation of a mass murderer. Endless torture, having his wife raped repeatedly, you know, all the normal things that lead to mass murderin'. Apparently, the history is a little off, but it works fairly well as a movie. Beautifully filmed and with strong performances by Tadanobu Asano and Khulan Chuluun as Temudjin and Börte, which the movie wants you to believe is the love story of all time. I know that reality is likely to be like this, but I bet it's far more accurate than The Conqueror.

Stuck is the last film in my mini-horror fest. Stuart Gordon fictionalizes the story of the woman who kills a homeless man by driving into him and letting him die trapped in the windshield of her car. It really does work as a slasher film for the sections with Stephen Rea as the homeless man, and a weird, but very different, horror film with Mena Suvari as the car driver. It's quite an effective little film, a quick and dirty movie, with a sick sense of humor.

You Don't Mess with the Zohan, Mad Dog and Glory, Knocked Up, & The Rug Cop

You Don't Mess with the Zohan is occasionally very funny. And frequently very stupid. If only hummus could actually solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Maybe we need to send Michael Buffer there to unite them in anti-Bufferness. Did you know he's doing the intros for Duke players at Cameron this year? What the hell?

Mad Dog and Glory would have been better had it been cast the way it was planned with Robert DeNiro as the gangster-comic and Bill Murray as the cop-photographer. Uma Thurman can be the moll anytime. Richard Price scripted it for John McNaughton, two talented people, but it didn't work as a comedy or as a drama. I did like seeing Richard Belzer as the MC at the comedy club.

Knocked Up is a movie I'd seen over half of on E! in a censored version, which is probably not the best way to watch it for the first (or, really, any) time. Eh, I'm not really that sure that anything could have made this movie a comedy through and through. Maybe I just shouldn't expect that from a Judd Apatow film, but this bodes poorly for my appreciation of Funny People. I want them to be funnier than they are, and the overly treacly baby montage really just sucked the funny out of the end of the film. Because otherwise, it's a completely unrealistic relationship, but things were pretty funny otherwise. Actually, can anyone, anywhere, remember an actually funny music montage (besides meta-montages like in Team America)? I'm probably being far too hard on the film.

The Rug Cop is by the same guy who did Executive Koala. So it's weird. In this case, it's about a cop who gets dumped because he's bald, and then discovers he can use his toupee as a weapon. He joins a police station with a handsome cop (women commit crimes just to be interrogated by him), an old cop, a fat cop, a short cop, a young female police officer, and a cop nicknamed Big Dick, who uses his enormous penis as a weapon when he gets aroused. Normal cop film otherwise, really: cop discovers terrorist plot, and then through a series of investigations and random coincidences, solves everything, and ends up with a happy ending. The musical interlude was way too long, causing the film to feel much longer than the short 80 minute running time. The best scene in the movie, though, is the first one, where the Rug Cop foils a bank robbery using only his toupee. Oh, and the most important thing about the robbery is that the robber is the ventriloquist dummy. Not the ventriloquist. It's delightfully low budget. Not as good as Executive Koala. See that one first, and if you want more weirdness, see this.

More Gen-Y Cops

I'm not sure that I fully expressed the terribleness that is Gen-Y Cops in my review of it. As such, I think you need to go here and watch that video. Seriously. I'll wait.

Is that not amazing?

Link found due to the awesomeness that is Paul Rudd's obsession with Mac & Me, and the AV Club's obsession with covering everything that is awesomely terrible with this My Year of Flops entry. I remember watching and liking it when I was 9, but I don't remember the dance scene at the McDonald's or the Buccaneers participating in it (although their dancing explains why they suck). I do remember being insanely happy when Paul Rudd would do Conan and pull out that clip (which I did remember from the movie, because it's horrifying). My favorite part of the Rudd clip from MYOF entry? THE ENTIRE THING!

Outsourced, Perhaps Love, & Wristcutters: A Love Story

Outsourced comes up with a fake Kama Sutra position: Monkey Pulls the Turnip. What could the turnip signify? I need to know, but since it's not real, I got nothing. The film itself is a fairly typical plotted romantic comedy, although this did have the added bonus of Indians in cheese-heads. And some kind of idea of cultural critique of outsourcing and ridiculous Americanness. The lead female had huge eyes, and was in a Doctor Who episode and Attack of the Clones. And there was a poop joke, pretty early on. So, recommend or no? If you see one film about outsourcing leading to a cheesy George Washington commemorative plate wearing a third eye, see this one. It really all depends if you want to see a non-offensive romantic comedy in there.

Perhaps Love is a big budget, for China, musical. It's about a director and actor fighting over the same woman, making a musical about two men fighting over the same woman. I think it's trying to say something, but I didn't enjoy the musical numbers and I didn't enjoy the film. Eh to it all.

Wristcutters: A Love Story stars Patrick Fugit as a guy who commits suicide (SPOILER ALERT!) in the first scene, and goes to a sort of halfway world of no smiles, weirdness, and little color. He meets a family of suicides and starts to wander around, picks up a hitchhiking Shannyn Sossamon, has to search for Tom Waits's dog, and watches Will Arnett be wacky. It's full of Gogol Bordello songs (and other great music) and Eastern European names, along with some strange ideas about what the afterlife would be like. But I enjoyed the film, and even though it's a little cheesy, it's an enjoyable film.

Doomsday, Gen-Y Cops, & La Vie en Rose

Doomsday is a mess of a film, mixing 28 Days Later, Mad Max, and Reign of Fire together and getting a film that is much, much, much less than the sum of those parts. Bob Hoskins is fun, but Malcolm McDowell was utterly worthless, and Rhona Mitra is not a particularly good actress. Not a good movie, and makes me start to rethink my likes of Dog Soldiers and The Descent. Really, there's actual car stunts, decapitations, and crazy amounts of violence in this film, and I still hated it.

Gen-Y Cops is terrible. Paul Rudd, however, is in a Hong Kong action film where he helps to fight a robot. And, yet, reread that first sentence.

La Vie en Rose has some odd stylistic choices, like not one, but two newspaper montages, a completely gratuitous topless shot, and a wordless montage of Edith Piaf's big performance. The film was really just a mess. It could have been better, but it wasn't very good at all. Marion Cotillard was good, I guess, but I definitely do not think this movie was for me at all.

Hana, Maiko Haaaan!!!, The Eagle Shooting Heroes, & Ashes of Time Redux

Hana is a samurai film from Hirokazu Koreeda, who also made the amazingly good Afterlife. This one wasn't all that, but an interesting tale of a young man plotting revenge against his father's murderer. He falls for a woman with a young son and starts to teach writing and math to the local kids. And he has to decide what's more important to himself, revenge or living his own life. Of course, it's a subtle attack on the desire for revenge above all, and one of the things that I like: pointing out ridiculousness in history that generally gets ignored by most period movies. I liked it, but it's definitely not Koreeda's best, and not as good as Mabrosi, either.

Maiko Haaaan!!! is a slapstick comedy about a noodle bowl company worker who is obsessed with Geisha, to the point of ignoring his girlfriend and taking a job in Kyoto so he can meet Geisha. And then the girlfriend starts to become one, and he starts fighting in real life with someone flaming his Geisha website. And... well, it just gets far too ridiculous and stupid. The lead was distractingly over the top in a film with almost entirely real-seaming characters (some of the things they are able to do are silly, but they undeniably live in a real world, while the lead just doesn't exist in any reality remotely near ours), there are musical numbers, and the entire movie revolves around strip baseball, which I am pretty sure is just an extremely bad translation. There were no strip grand slams that I could figure out. Boo.

The Eagle Shooting Heroes is a slapstick wuxia film made at the same time as Ashes of Time (which, although I definitely watched when I had a blog, I never actually wrote up when I saw it in November of 2002, and was, in fact, my first ever movie from Netflix). This is horrible Hong Kong slapstick, full of mistaken identities, cross dressing, gay "humor", ridiculous wirework, fake sets, and just general crappiness. It's strange to see so many extremely talented actors (really, it's almost every famous Hong Kong star of the 90s except for Chow Yun-Fat) just horribly waste their talent in service of this crap. This was a perfect excuse to watch my Ashes of Time Redux DVD, though. As it has been about 7 years since I saw the original version of the movie, and it was a particularly crappy DVD, I can't quite say how much better this version was than the original. But I almost was able to follow the plot this time. Just kidding.

Caseus Archivelox: The Piano Teacher, Blow-Up, The Magnificent Ambersons, Happy Together, Fallen Angels, Kissing Jessica Stein, & Tape

2002-10-27 - 10:11 p.m.
I then went off to Griffith to watch The Piano Teacher. What the f--- is it with the French and pretentiousness films about sex? Baise Moi, Romance, Fat Girl, and The Piano Teacher. I've only seen Romance and The Piano Teacher, and neither were worth my time. Although now I can say that I've seen an Italian porn star's penis. That's not really something that I am proud of though. I just don't see the point in a movie about a sado-masochistic pianist who lives with her mother. And it didn't have an ending that made much sense. I don't see why the French make pretentious sex movies. And then they get praise or notoriety because of said stuff. I guess we Americans aren't completely immune, as we make a hell of a lot of porn each year and percentages say that some has to be pretentious. Hell, some softcore porn I've seen would fit into that category. As in, it tries to have some deep meaning, but it's really just an excuse to see silicone on screen. But at least most wasn't being raised to some lofty height and being suggested that it said something deep about the human condition. The movie was about Schubert and S&M, nothing more.

I went with Blow-Up and The Magnificent Ambersons. Both excellent movies. Blow-Up would've been better had Antonioni used the Velvet Underground as originally planned, because all I could think of when I saw the Yardbirds was how much cooler it would have been with the VU. Mime tennis is also bizarre. Magnificent Ambersons had my new reply when someone asks me what I want to do with my life: a yachtsman. That sounds like a fun job. Neither movie was particularly happy (I choose to ignore the ending added without Welles's blessing).

I checked the online catalog and went with two Wong Kar-Wai films: Happy Together and Fallen Angels. I started with Happy Together, and it's a very gay movie. Lots of shots of the two main characters in tighty whiteys. It is full of wonderfully Wong Kar-Wai touches: fast-mo, slo-mo, freeze frames in the middle of shots, changing grains, going from black and white to color (much better than in the early version of 13 Days I saw), handheld shots, shakycam, very good use of music, lots of overexposure and very bright shots. I was just thinking that the major problem I had with The Piano Teacher was the masochism. I'm not a masochist, at least not a physical one, and I don't like pain, so I just felt incredibly uncomfortable, and I didn't like when she couldn't suppress her gag reflex. I do, however, seem to pick women who are likely to cause me pain. That's not really relevant to anything though. It was just a great movie. Wong Kar-Wai really knows what he's doing, and Chris Doyle is a perfect complement to his skills. I just checked and he also cinematographer for Liberty Heights (a beautiful movie) and for the as-yet unreleased The Quiet American. I really want to see that.

After that, I watched Fallen Angels, originally to be the 3rd part of Chungking Express. The DVD video quality was much worse than for Happy Together, with lots of obvious grain. The gunfights are staged to be as outlandishly over-the-top as John Woo's, but the plot is much more affecting. And the scene where He falls in love with Charlie is one very cool scene. And it hurts all the more afterwards. I mean, it was such a sad and beautiful movie. So if you're wondering what makes me cry: Fallen Angels. That is just a great movie.

I then went to see Kissing Jessica Stein at Griffith. I guess it was good but my friends and I all saw parts of our families on screen, but we also saw almost every plot twist telegraphed. One reason is that we've seen too many movies, but more likely it's that the movie (with the exception of the lesbian angle and the occasionally unnecessary jump cuts and other weird editing and handheld camera choices) was a fairly run of the mill romantic comedy: two neurotic New Yorkers meet, have some immediate attraction, and then have a series of humorous misunderstandings leading to eventual relationship difficulties and an eventual happy ending for all concerned. The only reason this got so much press (mostly good) was that the two stars wrote it and instead of a male and female lead, it was two women, showing that lesbian chic (postmodernly referenced in the movie by the two boorish men before finally driving Jessica into Helena's arms showing beyond a reasonable doubt (as in beyond the clichéd bad date montage) that men are pigs and that's why many women are driven to lesbianism) is still popular. I'll check and see whether I've put my lesbian vs. gay theory here, but I haven't, so here's the short version: anal sex=dirty, oral sex=clean. Thus, gay men are dirty and lesbians are clean. That and the whole having sex with two women at once thing, but if it doesn't concern the man as a threat to his masculinity and male dominance to have a woman probably pleasuring the other woman more than he can, than they are either supremely gifted or supremely deluded. Anyway, that's part of my rant about gays and lesbians. Also, what was with the hardcore rap song when Jessica and Helena were going at it? That attempt to be edgy worked as well as the bickering gay couple (BGC). Although for different reasons: rap didn't fit the film at all, and the BGC is so clichéd that it has its own sitcom.

I saw he had Tape and wanted to see that more, so we watched the little DV film Linklater did while waiting on the long postproduction for Waking Life. Ethan Hawke was excellent, Robert Sean Leonard (whom I saw on Broadway with Billy Crudup in Arcadia, one of the best performances of a play I've ever seen) was also good, while Uma Thurman was the weak link, if mainly for the fact that her character is strangely distant. There were also a lot of shots of the soles of their shoes. It's not a good idea to drink, smoke pot, and snort cocaine, because it really messes with your judgment. And the DV looked very impressive, with only some problems tracking quick movements betraying the DV rather than film.