Grindhouse

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Major Dundee & a variety of musical notes

Major Dundee was an early Sam Peckinpah Western, set in the New Mexico territory and Mexico. Since it's during the Civil War, you get both racist Confederates and poncy Frenchmen. And a bizarrely Austrian woman. I think she's Austrian, and honestly, I probably just blacked out during that line of dialogue. I was just wondering how they were going to get Heston shirtless with a woman. And then they got him shirtless with a woman who had a bizarre, out of place accent. And then he got hit with an arrow and ended up with some random Mexican woman falling all over him. I guess I will never understand why there was the need to include women in this film. Just have it be the homoerotic masterpiece it should have been. Or change it so that it's more about the boy being deflowered and shaving. Cause that was at least more interesting to me than a lot of this film. I know that there were problems from the beginning when I started to read that the film had been taken away from Peckinpah before he was allowed to film it all. The edited version probably left in the topless Heston though.

Quite a few notes about music I've listened to recently. The new Rosebuds is not nearly as different from the previous albums as I thought upon first listen. It's not as good as the first album (quite punchy pop) or the second one (slightly more melancholy punchy pop about birds), but it's still pretty good. The Talking Heads are one of those bands I'm just going to have to appreciate for what they've done rather than their actual music. I like the first album almost in its entirety, and there's usually at least one song on the rest of them that I love. The idea is far better than the execution. Air is the perfect band for walking down Connecticut Avenue in the dark on a beautiful evening. Air is also quite good. French pop of the Ye-Ye girl variety is far too enjoyable for someone who otherwise claims sophisticated taste. Also, that goes doubly for cheesy J-pop. And Waterloo by ABBA. Can't stand them in general (Dancing Queen should be taken out behind the woodshed and shot), but Waterloo is brilliant.

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was Fritz Lang's last film in Germany before he exited due to being Jewish. As such, the anti-Nazi subtext of the film adds quite a punch to what is, in Lang's typical fashion, an expressionistic masterpiece. And it has some extremely effective set pieces, like the escape from the locked room and the ending car chase. He just knows how to film something. And the use of a master criminal, who is never seen by his associates, but is heard in a ranting tone of voice, ordering them to commit anti-social crimes almost entirely to bring down society, fits quite well with Hitler, but it isn't so much about that, as it is about the ability of people who would otherwise be somewhat, if not entirely, normal to commit heinous crimes because they are ordered to. Which, of course, has not just relevance to the Nazis and the German public in general at the time, but also to today and our inability to actually do anything about, say, the government and its desire to lead us into an unjust and illegal war. That the general public are sheep is not particularly ingenious in its revelation, but that the film itself works so well allows that nice message to work far better than if it were another shrill documentary that can be attacked for its partisanship. It's a blatantly partisan film, with good reason, but it's far harder to condemn a fiction film as that without having to explain the point of it, thus bringing those ideas into the public eye far easier than a Robert Greenwald documentary. Plus, of course, it's not worth even pointing out vast gap in the relative artistic merits of Fritz Lang, one of the greatest directors ever to work during the silent and early sound era, and Robert Greenwald, someone who can't really put together a 78 minute long documentary of how unfair and unbalanced Faux News is without causing the audience to become bored in half an hour. The talent behind the camera allows for far more effective political commentary than if you just put a hack there. It's like a Paul Verhoeven film: you can argue whether his points are valid (e.g. whether the future really is all about communal showers), but his talent allows you to focus on that rather than on shoddy construction (e.g. Robocop 2 & 3, although 3 was far worse than 2). Yes, I did happen to rewatch Robocop this past week. Seriously, TCM is the greatest channel currently on TV. The original AMC was also quite good, before they decided commercials were fine and that Any Which Way You Can was an American Movie Classic, rather than an excuse for more monkey hijinks. Heh, monkeys. I know they renamed the channel just AMC, but that day sucked when they switched.

Foyle's War, The Man in the Iron Mask, & Elizabethtown

Foyle's War is an ITV series about a Detective Chief Superintendent who lives in Hastings during WWII. It's quite good, but certainly just a good detective series. Nothing special or groundbreaking. Does certainly remind me that Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery exists. Which is very nice. Good stuff. Quite a lot of good British TV on that. And I am looking forward to more of that. Starting with Bleak House, and the next season of Foyle's War starting sometime next month. It's interesting from the standpoint of a bunch of well-done detective stories set in a very interesting historical time period. Especially the bits with the fascists and communists. When I started an episode in the third season, I forgot just how much the commies were hated before the Nazis invaded. I just like it.

The Man in the Iron Mask is crap. Really, with that cast, just no. Leo, Jeremy Irons, Malkovich, Depardieu, Gabriel Byrne, Anne Parillaud, Hugh Laurie, Peter Sarsgaard, and Judith Godreche all look very good, and occasionally act well, but the direction and script were blargh in the extreme. Randall Wallace just gives Duke another embarrassing celebrity. Jesus, it is really full of people who were really, really annoying, and went on to be more so. I'm not entirely excluding myself from that, although I probably was not very annoying to start out with. I wanted something a lot better. Isn't coming from Wallace though. I've met him, and he really didn't impress me. Although I was interested enough to watch the film around five years later. The best thing about that evening was meeting Marc "Riley" Blucas, and the two very tall blonde women with him. Seriously, he was the typical movie star. Speaking of which, I refuse to watch any more of Entourage. I haven't enjoyed it in a long time, if ever, and I don't really like anything about it. And The Tudors also got taken off my DVR. Not as good as Rome, and when the only thing to recommend it is female nudity, that isn't a good sign for your show.

Elizabethtown was over two hours long, and most of it wasn't particularly good, and it was completely ridiculous, and, of course, fits well with the film's theme of a fiasco. Crowe is still worth checking out, but he hasn't made a particularly good film in seven years. What the hell, Crowe? You've written great films and made them before. Is it Tom Cruise? Does he control you? If so, check yes []. There were just so many things that didn't work in the film, and it appears to me to be that it's almost entirely Crowe's fault. And that scrapbook and mix cds, really? That is how someone decides to spend their time? What the hell?

Funny Face, Charley Varrick, & Andy Barker, P.I.

Funny Face would have worked better with a younger Fred Astaire. He is just too old for Audrey. And that scene in the beatnik cafe was just completely bizarre. The movie itself was just sort of a mess, which makes total sense considering the songs came from a variety of different musicals and also most of the songs weren't particularly good. It's Audrey, though, and even an old Fred Astaire is almost as good as Astaire at his peak.

Charley Varrick is notable for the return of Walter Matthau to drama, the plane stunts, and Joe Don Baker. Who was outstanding. Threatening, ruthless, and utterly perfect in the role. Matthau is also quite strong in the role, although there does seem to be some question as to how he gets the girl to start boxing the compass. Was it just the roses? Because he doesn't look that good in the movie. Pretty satisfying ending, too.

Andy Barker, P.I. was another show that was canceled before its time. I do wish it had more than six episodes. Because it wasn't as funny as say 30 Rock, but there were bits of funny in every episode. And both Andy Richter and Tony Hale have both had shows canceled well before their time. I wonder if there is a magical universe where good shows go after being unceremoniously canceled. Man, those TV executives really know how to make a good show and then cancel it. If only they did that to say, American Idol. It's been downhill since the first season. Which was only good for two things: Since U Been Gone (and the possibility of more like it) and this. Well, that and the increasing amount of "famous" people who feel like they need to keep in the public eye so they "release" sex tapes or start starring in Skinemax flicks. Good for them. Wouldn't want to just be a non-famous person. You need to flash your jubblies and hoo-has. Anyway, Andy Barker, P.I. was pretty fun, and really could have been a fun show.

Ridicule, Mr. Death, & The Innocents

Ridicule makes me wonder about what I was thinking getting this right after Dirty Pictures. Who else thought I was going to discuss urolagnia in two straight posts? Well, this wasn't really sexual pleasure derived from urination, but there was on-screen urination in the first scene. That was certainly unexpected. Watching it so soon after Marie Antoinette also wasn't intended. Fanny Ardant, Jean Rochefort, and Charles Berling were good, and the movie had some funny lines, but the main reason to see this film, was Judith Godrèche, who was both a moral center and a luminous presence, but ultimately was just a pretty thing to look at. As a whole, the film just felt a little paint-by-numbers, with the good people being rewarded and the bad ones punished, just like a typical Hollywood film. The touches of quirk the film has (the diving bells especially) just make it seem slightly less hokey. But it is hokey. Admittedly, I enjoyed it while watching, but there's little there. Oh, rich people at court are superficial. What a surprise. Sorry, make better films. At least Patrice Leconte went on to make the excellent The Girl on the Bridge. So he isn't that bad.

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. is another look by Errol Morris at some quirky person who few people would really remember. Unless you're Jewish or a Holocaust denier. If so, then maybe you remember about the guy who builds execution machines (lethal injection, gallows, gas chambers, and electric chairs) who was a complete moron and thought he proved the Holocaust didn't happen. And subsequently lost his job, wife, and all respect from the vast majority of people out there who are not crazy Holocaust deniers. The eventual downfall couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, but man, he deserves everything he gets trying to gain some measure of popularity by doing messed up cyanide detecting tests and then going around to denial conferences to speak about them. The Holocaust happened, and those who don't believe it deserve all the lambasting they get, and a lot more besides. That said, the film did humanize him, and, as an Errol Morris film, was extremely well-made. Even with my distaste, no make that abhorrence, for capital punishment, I couldn't help appreciating his desire to make it more humane, even if it never will be truly so. As much as I hated Fred Leuchter, I felt bad that he was so desperate for attention that he would produce shoddy science that proved nothing and destroyed his life, even as I'm extremely distressed at how far his misinformation was pushed.

The Innocents was billed (in a terrible trailer that has more shots from the last scene than any other in the film) as an "adult" chiller. Really, it's a ghost story that doesn't insult the audience. This excellent version of The Turn of the Screw will probably never be topped as an adaptation of the script. My only real complaint is how I feel disappointed by The Others as a film, due to its obvious inspiration from this, although it doesn't work nearly as well as this film. Which again proves that explicitness is fine, but it doesn't add to the scariness of a film. A creepy atmosphere, realistic characters just slightly off-kilter, and great performances will always freak me out more. And the more you wonder about whether any of this was really happening, or whether it was a psychotic episode, or whether Miss Giddens was just a sexually-suppressed governess, the more effective the little touches become.

Dirty Pictures, Marie Antoinette, 1776, & The Weather Underground

Dirty Pictures was a movie by Showtime made ten years after the events depicted: the Mapplethorpe/Contemporary Arts Center trial in Cincinnati. Of course I was interested in seeing this, since I actually remember this whole thing. I am pretty sure my parents went to see the exhibit. The pictures themselves are really nothing more than typical porn, with the exception of the urolagnia picture and the two "child porn" ones, of which neither are anything more than a typical picture of a kid in a bathtub, which I'm sure most people have. Just because you see a penis doesn't make it erotic. Just take a look at, say, Ken Davitian in Borat. He's naked, and man is he not attractive. Unless you're into overweight bears. I've gone off topic. The film is quite well done, with real interviews interspersed with reenactments. And I'm, of course, completely sympathetic to the film, with its message of free speech, along with the dangerous threat of the bringing of completely spurious lawsuits that go to trial because of biases. There's also the epilogue of the creepy People for Community Values guy explaining why these lawsuits without merit are brought, along with the threats made against those willing to put up art. Just made me frustrated. I hate me some bigots.

Marie Antoinette has a good soundtrack, but ultimately disappointed me. I get that Marie-Antoinette may have been a young woman who didn't really understand anything outside of her life. Then again, it fits in perfectly with Coppola's other films, with a young woman struggling with her location in life. And this has outstanding costume design, well deserving of its oscar, no matter how stupid that "it's literally a feast for the eyes" line in the telecast was. Really it's just not as good as I was hoping, even if I'm not entirely sure how to make it better. There already was a monkey in it.

1776 was long, the songs were boring or stupid, and beh to it all. Yeah, that's all you get 1776. I'll give you three sentences.

The Weather Underground is an interesting look at a violent leftist organization that bombed many establishment places to protest violence against blacks or Vietnam and the like. I really didn't know very much about them, so it was nice to learn a lot. Also, Ian MacKaye, Jerry Busher, Amy Domingues, and Brendan Canty were involved in the music for it, giving it that added bit of DC indie rock cred. The music is reminiscent of Philip Glass's scores for Errol Morris's films, so I bet it was successful in that plan.

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists 3/29 at 9:30

The Sons of Cain
Dial Up
Me & Mia
Army Bound
Who Do You Love?
Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?
The High Party
Annunciation Day/Born on Christmas Day
Bomb.Repeat.Bomb
Some Beginner's Mind
Counting down the Hours
Little Dawn
A Bottle of Buckie
The Unwanted Things
The Lost Brigade
Biomusicology
------
Timorous Me
Walking To Do
Rappaport's Testament: I Never Gave Up

90 minutes of greatness? Hellz, yeah. A little light on some of the songs I wanted (Ballad of a Sin Eater and Bridges, Squares), but man, it was a good set, and the songs I didn't expect to do well (the new album ones) actually were quite good. Living with the Living is growing on me, and after a second listen, it's not nearly as good as the first two real Ted Leo albums, but it's almost as good as Shake the Sheets. Which, whenever I write it or say it, I immediately have to double check to make sure I didn't write Shake the Streets. Or maybe that I'm convinced it is the actual name for it. Anyway, I still am waiting for Ted Leo to cover Dancing in the Dark live for me, but I guess I just have to deal with that. Like I'm not going to see Eric Bachmann cover Long Black Veil again. Even if I asked his drummer. Damnit. The addition of James Canty actually made the whole thing sound much more together, and strong. Ted Leo still went crazy (and maybe a little too crazy on the guitar solos), but that second guitarist made the songs sound tighter. They always put on a good show, and only my unfamiliarity with the new album kept it from immediately satisfying me as much as previous shows had.

Andrei Rublev, The Jewel in the Crown, The Picture of Dorian Gray, & the ends of Rome & Slings & Arrows

Andrei Rublev was a three and a half hour long film about a Russian 15th century icon painter. It's by Andrei Tarkovsky, who also did the original Solaris, another extremely long Russian film. That one, however, was far better than this one. There were some good scenes, scenes that I will remember far longer than the rest of this overlong film. Maybe if I cared about icons, or, say, Russians, it would have held my interest slightly. Eh. It's really just crazy topless witches and wandering around vast flat areas in storms. And some jesting. But a big eh to the film.

The Jewel in the Crown was a 14-hour long "limited series" about the end of the British Raj done by Granada Television for ITV, but it feels just as high quality as the best BBC production. Well, except for the occasionally muddled sound and soft picture, but that's probably because it's from 16mm film, which is basically all about that. The film itself is about a British officer, his grudge against a British-born Indian, and the many people touched by both, along with a lot about the Indian National Army (Indians who fought alongside the Japanese in World War II). It's quite good, and Tim Pigott-Smith and Charles Dance, along with Geraldine James do very well. It's quite worth the listing as one of the top British productions (although any list that has Pride & Prejudice at 99 is questionable). I do wish that it were a little less depressing of an ending. And a little less obsessed with homosexuality, but then, I guess British soldiers at the time were a little flamboyant. Or, at least, more accepting of it than say, we currently are. Somehow.

Speaking of British attitudes towards homosexuality, I finished The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I never had actually read before. I'd seen the BBC movie version with Peter Firth, Jeremy Brett, and John Gielgud, and was vaguely familiar with the plot before that. The problem I had with it was the typical Wilde-isms interspersed that seemed to serve little purpose other than social commentary. Then again, the whole book was commentary, so I'm not sure why those bothered me. Also, the subtext of homosexuality was ridiculously obvious throughout. It was nowhere near as good as his plays, but his best plays are pretty much perfect in almost every way, so it's a little rough of a competition. Oh well. After finishing it, I went by Second Story Books and bought my next six books. I look forward to filling in a couple more holes in my reading.

This weekend saw the ends of two show I watched. Rome suffered from being a little too bloody (especially all the decapitations and dismemberments) and sex-obsessed, along with playing fast and loose with history. I enjoyed it. And I'm sorry to see it end, but the thing had to have been extremely expensive to produce and never got as popular as the actual good shows on HBO. Slings & Arrows finished with King Lear and Sarah Polley. Along with lots of fun backstage shenanigans with the hooker and junkie musical. I know the series wasn't supposed to run beyond the third season, but the show was just very enjoyable, and I was sorry to see that they decided not to do another series. Although they did the three best tragedies.

Romeo Is Bleeding & Southern Comfort

Romeo Is Bleeding was actually made before Pulp Fiction. After watching it, I was shocked. It has all the hallmarks of an indie ripoff of Pulp Fiction. Wait, you're saying, Pulp Fiction was itself a ripoff of many other films. Yes, but the hyperviolent, time-shifting, slightly comedic, mob film really started becoming insanely popular after Pulp Fiction. This movie is only worth watching if you enjoy Lena Olin, who is outstanding. She's about the only good thing, with the possible exception of Gary Oldman, but he is not nearly as good as he was in other films of the same vintage.

Southern Comfort is the story of a female-to-male transsexual who is dying of ovarian cancer. What an unhappy story. He even says, "The last part of me that is female is killing me." It's difficult to watch, with the knowledge that he's having problems getting treatment because the doctors don't feel comfortable treating a transsexual. That doctors, of all people, can't handle something like that is disgusting. They deal with lots of crazy stuff, far more disturbing than a woman who has become a man because she wasn't comfortable in her body. It's a unique film.

Blog Wars

Blog Wars was an hour of masturbatory congratulations by bloggers on both sides about how important they are. Haven't we gotten past that and just accepted that we're all people sitting around in our underwear making fun of all those people who think about actual reporting? Well, I'm generally not in my underwear when blogging. At least I'd look a hell of a lot better naked than most of the bloggers in this. I think. Well, at least the guys. Well, at least the fat ones. Really, it's nothing at all new for those of us who have actually been reading blogs since 2002. Yeah, I'm one of those early adopters. Most bloggers don't avoid having those archives available easily, allowing for quick reference on how to make fun of them. Because they all seem to love themselves, and, in the case of John Hinderaker, it's both too much and literally. Have you ever read his posts about Miss America? He needs to embrace his inner moppet and spank it a lot. Maybe he'd stop being so Republican. This has devolved. I was surprised by bits of it, mainly in the structure, but it just made me want to hurt Joe Lieberman and Dan Gerstein a lot. Self-serving pricks. And made me want to force Michelle Malkin to spend some time in an internment camp, just to see how she likes it. But this is all neither here nor there. It's a 60 minute long documentary mainly focusing on the Lamont-Lieberman primary and the blog reaction to the race along with a brief history of blogs. I couldn't help but notice that the right-wing blogs were completely unhinged, while the Democratic blogs were only slightly unhinged. Partisan bias? Not here.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8.1 & Heroes

Being such a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I couldn't really skip out on reading the comic of season 8 now, could I? It feels like a show, but on a bigger canvas, due to the new state of Dawn. It does feel like only half a show though, as it never really hit enough of a plot for a real episode. I love that I'm getting more of the show though, so looking a gift lion in the mouth is probably a bad idea. Not enough Willow or Giles, since they really only got a mention, but we did get some Xander, which makes me happy, along with an explanation for The Girl in Question Angel episode. That's one annoying thing down. Speaking of Angel, there's apparently going to be a 6th season of Angel in comic book form as well. I'm not sure about that, considering how perfectly that show ended. But it's Joss, so we'll see, because he can probably deal with it very well. I will continue to read these.

I finally broke down and embraced my inner nerd even more and started to watch Heroes. I spent pretty much all weekend watching the first 18 episodes. Basically, how can you hate a show that knows how to use George Takei and Malcolm McDowell, not to mention Eric Roberts (yeah, it's a joke...), Richard Roundtree, Clea Duvall, Christopher Eccleston, and Nicole Bilderback (ok, she was only a Cordette on Buffy, but still, she was instantly familiar)? Oh, and I will enjoy anything Greg Grunberg is in, far more than I should. It's really fun, goofy, and I want to be Hiro. Wait... No, I really do. I'm happy this show is doing well, because it is definitely doing something you don't see on TV. Even if that is more vivisections than I normally would expect. Quite a bit of gore on the show, which surprises me, considering it's on at 9. I mean, we can't show nipple but we can show many people split in two or worse, and heads sliced open? Even with that though, how many shows have me grinning like an idiot that frequently? How long until the next episode?

An Inconvenient Truth, The Idiot, Harakiri, & Sunday in the Park with George

An Inconvenient Truth was quite good, not that it presented all that much new information. I mean, except that we're all pretty much doomed to have to learn how to swim. The little bit of Futurama just reminded me of how great that show was. Man, that show was consistently the best cartoon ever. Mainly because it wasn't allowed to go far too long. But it also rewards intelligence, nerdiness, scientific and mathematical knowledge. The couple digressions about Gore's life don't entirely add that much to the story, except to show that the science around smoking was against it, and industry didn't want to accept those truths either. It's clearly an important film, and the message is essential enough that the Oscar win cannot be begrudged it, unless you don't believe in climate change. Which, if you do, shows a distinct lack of intelligence. I do want to point out what most people don't seem to understand: Al Gore didn't win an Oscar. Davis Guggenheim did. Al Gore is not an Oscar winner. Then again, he was elected president and people took that away from him.

The Idiot is Akira Kurosawa's love letter to Fyodor Dostoevsky, and it is outstanding. Depressing as hell, but that's to be expected. It was also, apparently, almost two hours longer in the original version. I've never read any Dostoevsky, but I have seen The Brothers Karamazov on the stage, and I saw Crime and Punishment in Suburbia (that's sort of a joke... well, the movie was). He always seemed like one of those depressing Russian writers discussing being depressed and horrible things happening for hundreds of pages. Weird how that is. Especially since I was right. There are only so many days in my life I can read utterly depressing Russian works of literature. There are many more hours I can watch great films of depressing Russian works of literature, so I was quite happy to watch this. Well, I liked that I was able to watch this, not that I was at any point happy watching this. Because all movies like this do is remind me of things I have messed up in relationships. I'm not quite sure whether that makes me associate more with Kameda or with Ayako. Either would be depressing enough. And I'm not suggesting that anyone I was attracted to was a kept woman. I don't think so, at least.

Harakiri is Masaki Kobayashi's denunciation of the Samurai culture. I'd only seen Kwaidan, but man, he's very talented. The facade of samurai culture needed to be poked, and mocked, and more. Committing seppuku because it's honorable is a joke. Man, suicide is stupid. Ritualized suicide is even stupider. The script, by Shinobu Hashimoto, who did pretty much every great Kurosawa film of the 50s, is excellent, and Tatsuya Nakadai is suitably anguished and threatening as the vengeance seeking father. The scene of seppuku by bamboo sword was horribly painful. It's always nice to be reminded that bamboo can't cut very well.

Sunday in the Park with George is a Sondheim musical, so some of the songs are far too complicated. However, if you ever needed to be reminded of how talented Mandy Patinkin is, just watch this, as he's excellent as Georges Seurat, and Bernadette Peters is also quite good. The musical wasn't nearly as good as Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, or Into the Woods. Better than Pacific Overtures, though. Maybe I should see that one again, because I saw that one a long time ago, and the first time I saw Sweeney Todd, I didn't care for it at all. Sondheim is definitely not the easiest to appreciate, although I'd take him in an instant over Andrew Lloyd Sucker. Man, I hate him. Yes, I do. I love that there are options to watch the original Broadway cast performances of these musicals.

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, Sherman's March, The Woodsman, & Othello

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib was extremely distressing. Depressing, as well. That Americans could possibly do the things that they did in Abu Ghraib is a permanent stain upon our country. The use of the Milgram experiment footage fits quite well with the concept of a government that not only condones, but encourages torture. Graner's commendation for his work at Abu Ghraib definitely suggests that it was encouraged. It's definitely interesting, even if there was nothing I didn't already know (except for the bits blurred out in the pictures available online, but I am familiar enough with the male anatomy that I didn't need them unblurred). That it is available really does make one wonder why anyone thinks that torture is a good way to do anything except turn people against you.

Sherman's March: A Mediation to the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation is both an interesting and inherently masturbatory look at one man's search for a woman to love in the 1980s South. It's quite long, but that allows for a slow rhythm to be created allowing the film to live up to that subtitle. Ross McElwee is an odd man, although I do wish that constantly carrying a video camera around would help you pick up women now rather than just have them think you're a creep. McElwee is clearly not a creep, since he seems to be genuinely nice to everyone, except possibly Burt Reynolds, but he deserves it. The biographical aspects of Sherman do work quite well with Ross's look at his love-life (and lack thereof). The survivalists who were building tennis courts don't really fit in well with anything, except the shambling nature of the documentary. Not quite as focused on Bright Leaves, but quite worth watching if you either enjoy 80s female hair or navel gazing. I do wonder if that exercise works to fix cellulite, though. Maybe I just need to watch more women do that to make sure...

The Woodsman bothered me because it was Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. Actually, it's mainly Kyra Sedgwick. Not a big fan of hers. It does deal with the important issue of how to reintegrate sex offenders into society without turning them into repeat offenders, but just eh. I didn't like anyone in the film, except Robin, so I pretty much was just eh. I didn't care. I guess it was good, and Mos Def occasionally was interesting, but eh.

Othello was the one with Orson Welles in blackface. Yes... sigh... I wish that it was just because they couldn't have a black man kissing a white woman, but it's really because it wasn't that big of an issue. It is more visually interesting than most of Shakespeare's movies, but I am not at all a fan of the play. Give me King Lear any day. It's just overwhelmingly depressing, with the innocents punished far too much, being unnecessarily unpleasant. I wish Welles had made a movie that didn't require him to wear blackface. It's good despite that, though.

Dead Like Me, Gate of Flesh, Story of a Prostitute, & The Yakuza Papers

Dead Like Me was Showtime trying to do Six Feet Under but without the pot. Well, a lot less pot. It's quite fun, and probably would have gone to a very interesting finish, had it really been allowed to finish. That was sort of frustrating, because I wanted to know what happened to these characters. They're pretty interesting, because just when you think one's gone too far, they are able to do something interesting with them. Without resorting to something that completely changes their entire character randomly. Which I hate. I really did just associate myself with George, showing that Bryan Fuller can create great female characters (Crap, I didn't even realize he was working on Heroes... Damnit, gotta start watching). Man, I miss Wonderfalls. And I would have missed Dead Like Me if I had Showtime and would have watched it. I do wish they had taken a little more advantage of having Mandy Patinkin, with maybe a silly Spanish accent, or more than just one song. Drunkeoke! And I know the producers were upset with Rebecca Gayheart, but they couldn't have brought her back for an episode or something to explain what the hell was up with that? I mean, what a dropped plot thread right there. I wish that they'd figure out what was going to happen and then let me know.

Gate of Flesh begins a Japanese prostitute minifest. Well, a Seijun Suzuki prostitute minifest. Don't get to have too many of those. Unless I were to rerent the same films. Gate of Flesh was a typically abnormal film, focusing on five prostitutes and the soldier who comes in between them. Plus, there's a rape of a priest, black market penicillin, and did I mention that it was filmed on huge indoor sets that were interconnected and the four main prostitutes wore clothes of the same color. It's insane, although not as good as Suzuki's more famous films, but it's one of those films that no one else could have made. The use of color presages what would come in Tokyo Drifter, but he still kept it somewhat under wraps, even if the women generally weren't. Although there was only one actual nude scene, there were many artfully staged scenes. I enjoyed the canned pineapple bits, but that's entirely due to my love for Wong Kar-Wai.

Story of a Prostitute is a film about comfort women (the Japanese Joy Division) in Manchuria. One falls for a soldier and tries to get him to become less of a typical Japanese soldier, kowtowing to the adjutant with whom the comfort woman was forced to sleep. There's some philosophical aspects, along with a bit of Suzuki-madness, but overall, it felt more conventional to me. That it delt so clearly with some of the bad aspects of the Japanese wartime experience does make it noteworthy for that. The anti-militarism of the film is also striking, as clearly Suzuki had this on his mind, pointing out the absurdity of war both here and, far more obviously, in Fighting Elegy. The Suzuki touches were mainly plotwise, although the scene where Harumi runs for Mikami during the battle was just impressive no matter who had directed it. The tracking shot of her running among the tracers and explosions worked beautifully. Interestingly, this was a remake of an earlier film written by Akira Kurosawa, but that one was more of a romance, plus the comfort woman were "entertainers". Doesn't entirely make me interested in watching it. This film is a typical melodrama made great by the artistic decisions. Which could describe pretty much all of his famous films.

The Yakuza Papers were five Yakuza films made in 1973-4 by Kinji Fukasaku. It's fairly hard to keep the extremely complex loyalties clear, even if there are recaps at the beginning of each film, along with introductory graphics for most people, along with when they inevitably die. Because there's an insane amount of death in the films. The overarching plot thread of a group of former soldiers starting in the Yakuza right after World War II and then going through the post-war years works as a sort of Japanese history of the same time. The single movie plots work to a varying degree, with my personal favorite being the second one with Meiko Kaji as the niece of a Yakuza boss and the man who she loves, which is heartbreaking. Each boss, subboss, and footsoldier shows that they will do anything to survive, even as they attempt to keep up the idea of "honor". Of course, none of them have any honor, although Hirono Shozo has some, and is, for what it's worth, the Michael Corleone character. The Godfather analogy is intentional, considering it was made so soon afterwards, even if it is far more complex and very Japanese. It feels more like a miniseries rather than a series of films, although there is more violence and occasional sexuality. Not that much, though. The third part, The Proxy War, is a metaphor for Vietnam and the Cold War, while the choice of locating the series in Hiroshima never really seems to be mentioned within the films themselves, except for the opening shot of the Atomic bomb, the opening of the last film, and the final shot of each film of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. The self-destructive nature of the gangs, though, suggests the choice of location was intentional, with the title of the first one (Battles without Honor and Humanity) clearly showing just how Fukasaku feels about the Yakuza. The series is outstanding, even if the last film feels a little too much like they were talking far too much and had too many plot threads hanging. The constant need to introduce new characters to replace the old ones detracts more as the films continue. I do have to appreciate the movement away from pure Yakuza towards dealing with the police and the political parties though. It allowed the series to keep my interest, even as I had to pay attention due to my lack of Japanese knowledge. I might need to find a copy of the box just to marvel over the family tree and see if I missed anything.

49th Parallel, Where the Buffalo Roam, Vice Guide to Travel, & Virtua Fighter 5

49th Parallel is another Archers production, this one a propagandist piece trying to stir up anti-Nazi feelings in both America and among the dirty, dirty Québécois. Those dirty, dirty Québécois were pro-German because they hated the English. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend, apparently. Plus, who doesn't love the Vichy government? Anyway, it has Laurence Olivier playing a French trapper with a bad accent. Were they just trying to piss off the Québécois? Because that would have done it for me. The story is that a German U-boat gets sunk off of Canada and the six German survivors have to get home somehow, fighting through Olivier's accent, Glynis Johns's naivete, Leslie Howard's smugness, and Raymond Massey's desertion. Or something like that. It's quite impressive, but ultimately, it's just a well-done propaganda piece that runs a little too long. Really, that's about all you would expect from it. Powell and Pressburger were consummate professionals, and they did a fine job.

Where the Buffalo Roam was a sometimes worthwhile, but mostly worthless "adaptation" of Hunter S. Thompson's writings. Really, it just didn't work. Fear and Loathing worked, because it actually felt like it was a story and was trying to keep (internally) consistent, but this was just far too episodic, and far too slapdash, to be anything but Bill Murray's Thompson impression for 90 minutes. Plus, the soundtrack on the DVD wasn't the same as the original, which always pisses me off. Stupid recording artist organizations don't understand just how much better something is when it's allowed to be how it was originally planned. Just like Tour of Duty had Paint It Black taken off the opening credits to the show on DVD, it messes with how the film feels. I bet it worked much better with the original music. The Neil Young musical parts were at least effective.

Vice Guide to Travel is a trainwreck. The few shorts that were interesting (Pakistan, Bulgaria, Beirut, and Paraguay) were more than outweighed by the terrible choices that ruined what could have been worthwhile ones (China, Rio, Congo, Chernobyl, and the extra of the crazy guy rambling on about nothing). Well, that last one never could have been worthwhile. I do wonder why Spike Jonze was even included on the DVD. He added nothing except as a sort of audience that could have been done by actually having the correspondent address the issues in an articulate manner. That would pretty much have improved all of the shorts, actually. And I liked the Bulgarian one in the booklet about running from gangsters after winning money in a casino rather than going over just how easy it is to purchase a nuclear warhead, which really is disturbingly easy, and that could be why so many films since the fall of the Soviet Union have dealt with that. Chernobyl was ruined by their inability to do anything other than be very very drunk and look at a Geiger counter. Thanks, that was... boring. Maybe if you had actually found any of the mutated animals you were obsessed with, then it would have been better. Rio was terrible due to "Trace Crutchfield" and his asshole persona he put on. Basically, the ones that actually tried to deal with issues were better than the ones that just had people get trashed and try to look at crazy things. What a surprise: getting drunk does actually change your performance. I felt dirty almost the entire time I was watching, and it actually made me feel dirtier than any other time I've been exposed to Vice and their media empire. They have managed to put out some good music on their record label, but there is not that much else to recommend them.

Also, the lack of movie watching was due to three things: 1) I held off on watching a movie for much longer than normal from Netflix (it's all good though), 2) I have almost finished watching Dead Like Me (look for my half-assed comments on that when I finish it later this week) and 3) I bought Virtua Fighter 5, and have been trying to unlock lots and lots of stuff. It's a fighting game, and I have at least two characters I'm acceptably good at, so that makes me happy.

The Tales of Hoffmann, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Mississippi Mermaid, & Bed and Board

The Tales of Hoffmann was outstanding. As it was an Archers production, it was absolutely gorgeous and the special effects were very good. I was really impressed with pretty much everything. Especially due to my missing of ballet due to being sick this weekend. So I got some ballet in anyway. And some opera. So I was all "Gimme some culture", and this movie was all "Here's some culture", and I was all "I'll watch", and it was all "Offenbach!" and I was all, "OOOH!" and "AHHH!". Really, really gorgeous in every way. Impressive. And, um, apparently, I can thanks this film for Dawn of the Dead and The Departed. Yeah, apparently, George Romero and Martin Scorsese fought over a 16mm print of the film and a projector. Really, wow. I knew that Scorsese was an immense fan of the Archers, but I never knew that Romero was such a fan. Makes me even more thankful for them, besides the brilliance of the films. I really didn't expect to see an interview with Romero on the disc. Criterion, thank you.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice was a short, done by Michael Powell, which was done by Disney fifteen years earlier. It works a little better without Mickey Mouse, though. I also want to thank Criterion again for putting this on the disc. Sonia Arova was pretty impressive, although I would have wanted to see the full 30 minute version, because 13 minutes just doesn't feel very long.

Mississippi Mermaid was a little disappointing, although there were two gratuitous Catherine Deneuve topless scenes. I mean, two completely necessary scenes. Yes. I guess I've never been in love quite enough to kill for it, but I liked the nod to Shoot the Piano Player near the end. It just felt a little light.

Bed and Board was... what the hell Truffaut? You really created Antoine Doinel to be my favorite character in movie history, right? I mean, seriously. Although I've never spent any time with prostitutes. Although I've always wanted to have a job moving remote-controlled boats around a model of a port. And that I'm pretty sure that I would have much more to talk about with a Japanese lady. Plus, why would I leave Claude Jade? I am pretty sure that Kyoko was made to be boring, and it was very successful. And what's up with the name Hiroko Berghauer? Strange.

The Little Matchgirl, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The French Lieutenant's Woman, & Stolen Kisses

The Little Matchgirl is an Oscar nominated short, which I watched online. See, the internets are good, MPAA, don't destroy them. Of course, it's based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, so it's depressing as hell. But it's directed by the guy who did The Lion King, and wrote Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, so it's actually quite impressive and Disney-feature film quality (at least before they killed off 2D-animation). The problem is that it's a former-workers-at-Disney-production, so I can't quite tell whether its chances will be hurt or helped by that for the Oscar. Stupid Oscar can go screw itself for the horribleness it has inflicted upon society since it's creation.

Never having had any illegal drugs of any kind (save alcohol before I was 21), I never really spent a lot of time lionizing Hunter S. Thompson. I had read a lot of his columns on Page 2, and had seen and enjoyed the movie version of Fear and Loathing, but I never read any of his books. And then I ran out of books and my friend didn't have his copy of Lolita (mmm, 12 year old girls...), so I borrowed his copy of Fear and Loathing and read it in a relatively quick fashion. I still only read on the metro to and from work, but when you get stuck on it for around an hour extra in one week, it really helps speed through the short book. It's crazy, makes me want to know what kind of article could have been produced from such a drug-induced haze, and increases my curiosity about mescaline. Not that I'm ever going to try it, but it seems, from the book, less bothersome than ether, at least. Having said that, LSD will continue to be a drug I will never, ever try. I want to get back to the book, though. There are some seriously funny scenes, and some seriously disturbing Ralph Steadman drawings. Weird book. But, as a student of American history, and a fan of reading, I heartily recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it. Plus, you get funny looks on the metro when you're reading it and smiling like a mofo in public.

The French Lieutenant's Woman has another movie where Jeremy Irons is a creep. Not creepy though, just a creep. And Streep has a different accent this time. Because it wouldn't be an Oscar nominated performance for Streep without it. She's good, but the film feels strange, because it's a film within a film, but you don't really get that feel, because there are very few breaks between the 19th century story and the current time story. You get them commenting upon it, but you don't see them break character to go to the current time. I think the lack of that threw me for a loop, especially after the car in the background of the first scene. I would have thought there'd be more of it. It was quite well made, but it didn't connect with me, because I was expecting more of a post-modern approach. Of course, this does allow for the filming of two of the endings to the Fowles novel rather than just one, or filming all three and confusing the audience. I am fascinated by the film, and the more I think about it, the more I appreciate it, but that doesn't mean the long film was necessarily worth it. I also want to read the book.

Stolen Kisses is the third in the Antoine Doinel series, and it's all about him after leaving the army and trying to find his way in life. What's up with Truffaut pretty much able to do everything well? He's just amazing, and this film is hilarious. Easily up there with the best of Truffaut, Stolen Kisses finds both Truffaut and Leaud clearly enjoying themselves with the character, and that enjoyment really comes through in a couple set pieces, like the private detectives at the hotel and the accidental "sir". Really, I just enjoy his work immensely. Bravo to you both. And to Truffaut for understanding just how delightful Claude Jade was, and trying to marry her.

Journeys with George, Gun Crazy, Grace of My Heart, & The Brothers Grimm

Journeys with George is depressing. I imagine that it's the same on pretty much every political press junket, but man, why the hell were people so charmed with someone who seems to view bologna sandwiches and Cheetos as haute cuisine? Plus, ugh. I bet that the film would have been slightly better had it not been released after 9/11. Because that probably cut out quite a bit of extra stuff. There's no way that was the film as originally intended. Karl Rove is not a guy who throws snowballs and jokes about the liberal media. He's a turd blossom of evil. And man, he was so ridiculously wrong about New Hampshire. It's frustrating to see the media like this. The craptacular system we have now where the media has to suck up to the candidates in order to keep their place in the circus just leads to fluff articles, which really don't help in, say, anything. We need serious articles, and serious coverage. We need to stop the fluffing of candidates.

Gun Crazy is a proto-Bonnie and Clyde, although since it was made well before the end of the Hays code, it feels far more wild than it is. The shooting competition scene was impressive in its suggestiveness. Lighting matches? Woo! It's really pretty darn good, and quite as good as the classic film noirs of the time. And the opening scenes of the young Bart Tare and his obsession with guns are pretty impressive. Impressively phallic. Seriously, the kid is completely obsessed with holding guns. And aren't we all?

Grace of My Heart is full of great music, retro-chic songs by the likes of Elvis Costello, J Mascis, and Sonic Youth, among others. Yeah, the movie messing with history is crazy, but it's still fun to see Brill Building and mid to late 60s Beach Boys. The problem is that the movie is melodramatic to the extreme. How many men can mistreat Illeana Douglas? Oh, every single one in the film? Ok, sounds good. Basically, the film was good, but should have been far better. Just try to make some multi-dimensional characters, and you'd have a great film.

The Brothers Grimm is a mess of a film. Nothing works like it should, and the film is hopelessly muddled. The use of fairy tales is nice, although the unnecessary confusion of details is bothersome. As much as I wanted to like it, I didn't. Probably the worst film Gilliam's done that I've seen. Damn shame.

Vernon, Florida

Vernon, Florida is Errol Morris's second film, an hilarious look at a small town in Florida, and the crazy people who live there. Seriously, it's only 55 minutes long, but it's 55 minutes of crazy, crazy frakin' people. It's up there with The Thin Blue Line and Fog of War as his best films. I could just try to list my favorite people in it, but how can I do that, when it's really just touching and sidesplitting stories after the same. I just wish there had been more of a structure and more film. 55 minutes of goodness was great, but it could have been better with more. Also, seriously? Bare bones DVD on a 55 minute film? Come on!

A little housekeeping

I have decided to move over to Feedburner for my feed needs. If you are reading this in a RSS or feed reader (and if you aren't, then you aren't getting quick notes on new entries and are wasting your time..., I recommend the very cool Google Reader, because Google owns all, and if you do, let me know, so we can share posts easily), add this feed (or http://feeds.feedburner.com/CaseusVelox if you are having problems with the link for some reason), and remove the other feed you might have. It allows me to add some fancy new features. And know how people are getting to my blog. And generally be a good internet stalker. I will be removing the old feed in around a week or so (unless I forget or someone actually says something to convince me to not delete it), so do it fast to keep up on all the pop culture consumed. Even if I'm not talking about my prodigious TV, music, and video game consumption as much as I probably should.

Somehow, this incredibly disjointed and beparentheticalled post made sense to me at some point. Basically, use http://feeds.feedburner.com/CaseusVelox for your feed rather than whatever you're using now, because I am not going to use the normal Blogger feed anymore.

Also, I added labels for my posts. If you happen to see any posts about things that I haven't labeled, let me know. So you can go read all of my posts on any of those topics on the side.

Went the Day Well?

Went the Day Well? was far more brutal than I was expecting. Were all the British censors too busy being involved in the war effort that they didn't bother with a film that kills many innocent people? I mean, they're Nazis, but they even shot the kid in the leg. What the hell? That said, it's a great and suspenseful film, something which would never have been made by a major Hollywood studio. Especially not in 1942. The war was starting to turn, but the use of a post-war framing device made three years before the end of the war was a very interesting choice, and it works pretty well. It's not like an English film wouldn't have ended in the way you'd expect, but it took quite some time getting to that point, and with a lot more casualties than I was expecting. Good for them. I definitely enjoyed the film, and I recommend it if you liked The Eagle Has Landed, or are a fan of Graham Greene who wrote the short story the movie was based on. I need to read some of his stuff.

The Phantom of Liberty & Small Change

The Phantom of Liberty was the first in an unintentional episodic film minifest about life in France in the 1970s. As this was by Buñuel, it was quite a bit more insane than the next film, but as it's Buñuel, it was very funny. Some classic scenes, like the missing persons report and the dinner party, make the film necessary, especially for fans of surrealism, but it doesn't reach the heights of Discreet Charm or Obscure Object. Oh, and I forgot about the monks playing poker. Um, and the nephew-aunt incest. Strange film. It's about the absurdity of bourgeois society, so it basically fits in perfectly with most of Buñuel's oeuvre. And the episodic nature of the film means that the criticisms aren't quite as effective.

Small Change, on the other hand, was a completely excellent look at children in small town France. Truffaut understands children in a way few people do. It was not a very deep film, but all the scenes were enjoyable enough to make up for it. Like the abandonment of the child who liked the dirty bag, the boy buying flowers, and the small kid and the pasta. But there was at least some anti-child abuse theme to the film, which was good. Because child abuse tends to lead to kids who become criminals. Boo child abuse.

Bells of Innocence, Antoine et Colette, & Les Mistons

Bells of Innocence apparently cost $2.75 million. I am pretty sure it all went into the coke the writers were taking when they thought this was a good idea. Wow, it was outstandingly bad. Every single person in the film was a terrible, terrible actor. Even Mr. Chuck Norris. And the names... Jux Jonas, Oren Ames, Conrad Champlain, Joshua Ravel, and Lyric? Seriously? I swear some 12 year old's D&D character is named Jux Jonas. Or, I guess, since WOW is so popular, some Horde warlock is named that. Are warlocks even an option there? I don't know, and I don't need to, really. It's bad enough I know that the two factions are the Horde and the Alliance. The more I know, the more likely I am to get involved in that crackrock. The movie is amateurish in every possible way. The ADR (or Additional Dialogue Recording, for those of you who didn't spend too much time with film nerds in college) was atrociously obvious. And I was rooting for a nuclear holocaust to wipe out the film crew on set. Too bad that I knew that wasn't going to happen. I kept hoping though. The set itself, the town of Ceres (nice overuse of Greek and Roman mythology and names to just point out how sacrilegious those people were), looked like it was only one street, and they just kept changing camera angles. Good for them for that though, because otherwise I never would have noticed that the same fence kept going behind them when they were walking down the street. Oh, the movie is so terrible it's somewhat enjoyable, but man, that 97 minute running time felt like I was in hell forever. Soooooo long.

I also saw two Truffaut shorts, Antoine et Colette and Les Mistons. The second one is a story of five pubescent boys who torture an attractive older girl because they don't know how to express their real feelings for her. And the first is a sort of sequel to The 400 Blows, but instead of it being about a juvenile delinquent, Antoine Doinel has grown up to be a young man who is very impressive with parents but not as impressive with the woman he's in love with. No, I have absolutely no connection to either of these protagonists. They were both around 20 minutes long, and Antoine et Colette was actually from a collection of films, Love at Twenty, that included four other foreign films. Apparently, it's unavailable anywhere. So maybe the other films were nowhere near as good, or something. Because this was great. I'm looking forward to finishing off the Antoine Doinel collection in the upcoming weeks.

My Left Foot & The Man Who Laughs

My Left Foot was outstanding. Daniel Day-Lewis was crazy, really, as expected, he was pretty much in character the entire time he was on set. But he was very good, as was his mother, Brenda Flicker. Quite a life-affirming movie. Definitely worth watching, although if you get depressed by cerebral palsy or Hamlet, then maybe you should watch it only if you want a good cry.

The Man Who Laughs is one of the last great silent films and one of the best German Expressionist films. It stars Conrad Veidt, who, even though I have seen the excellent The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, I still think of him as Major Strasser. It actually is fairly similar to Hunchback of Notre Dame, although it works better. But I don't like the Hollywood ending. That's fitting, considering the strange dichotomy between two "freaks" and gypsies and both written by Victor Hugo and the silly Hollywood ending in both films. But the actual parts of the film that follow the plot of the book was very strong. The hatred of the gypsies is quite messed up though. Feels a little like the hatred of Jews. I mean, they're all dark and swarthy, like me, but man, boo. Strange how it's always about someone not white. Oh, wait. It's just that racism is so easy. Anyway, the film is a horror film in the sense of most films of the time. Not actually scary at all. Quite good anyway, though.

Untold Scandal & Born into Brothels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chain Camera & Divine Intervention

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chaos

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

Lost in Time

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

Twentieth Century & Uzumaki

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

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

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

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

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

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

When the Levees Broke, Bitter Victory, & House of Bamboo

When the Levees Broke is powerful must-see filmmaking. There is nothing more that needs to be said. If it doesn't piss you off immensely, your last name is either Bush or Cheney.

Bitter Victory has Christopher Lee in it. Huh. But it's also the film that caused Godard to say, "henceforth there is cinema, and the cinema is Nicholas Ray." Does it live up to that? Of course not. Hyperbole of that sort pisses me off. Godard is a completely silly man. Is it a good war film? Yes. Richard Burton and Curd Jürgens having a constant argument ostensibly about anything other than that they both love the same woman, and that they want to kill each other but can't for various reasons. All set in the North African desert. You have the idealistic former archaeologist and the career army man. The deeper meanings of the conflict are pretty clearly similar to Rebel without a Cause and other angry youth films of the period.

House of Bamboo is why I watched The Street with No Name. Because it's a Samuel Fuller remake of that film set in Japan, and was the first Hollywood film made there. Those two reasons were more than enough. Too bad the original was so eh. At least they didn't bother to have any whites playing Japanese. Man, that pisses me off to no end. Fuller and the cinematography are excellent. It's a shame that the movie itself is so damn weak. It's the whole documentary touches that just take you out of the film that make it worse. Still suffers from "White-guy-yells-to-make-himself-understood-in-foreign-country" that just is annoying. The movie just doesn't work, but to the extent it does, it has nothing to do with the script. Also, eyebrows are attractive to Japanese women? Interesting...

Non-movie apology & PS3!

And with that, I'm caught up. However, don't expect me to see as many films in 2007 as I did for most of 2006. I bought a PS3, and I have to play through some games I missed since I don't have a PS2. But if you ever catch me humming along to the Katamari Damacy theme, well, that's the price you pay for me getting a PS3. Plus, you know, I'm running out of movies I haven't seen. And what's up with an insane amount of hits from Europeans looking for a blog named Caseus? I think that there might be a European sex blog with a name similar to Caseus. Man, if only I had a sexblog, I'd be raking in the cash. Everyone wants to read my comments on hoohoos and penii!

October, A Touch of Zen, Fitzcarraldo, & Murder on a Sunday Morning

October was pretty good, but it's nowhere near as good as other Eisenstein films I've seen. Damn shame too, that Trotsky was edited out. Stupid totalitarians and their desire to remove all history that doesn't dovetail with the prevailing point of view. Man, totalitarians suck.

A Touch of Zen is, seriously, one of the best wuxia films I've ever seen. I clearly need to see King Hu's Dragon Inn. Interesting plot, impressive visuals, and about the only thing I can really complain about it is that the DVD kept the film in two parts, with an extra credit sequence and the fight scene that ends the first part replayed. What's up with that? If anything were different, I would not complain, but the scene was pretty long and completely unnecessary to replay. Oh, and there were, of course, some awkward subtitles, and swords that were clearly not particularly sturdy, but that's to be expected. That it was outstanding really shouldn't have been, considering it's one of the many evil eunuch films. Man, eunuchs suck.

Fitzcarraldo was long, but a fascinating look at ice-making in Latin America. Oh, wait, that was The Mosquito Coast. I mean, this was a long, fascinating look at getting a steamboat over a hill and down the rapids. To build an opera house. In the jungle. In Peru. Yeah, it's not most people's idea of a good time, but I enjoyed it. Insane, but I enjoyed it. Klaus Kinski as a part Scot? Sure! Man, moving a steamboat over a hill sucks.

Murder on a Sunday Morning is a documentary about a black 15 year old kid who gets accused by the long arm of the law of killing a white older tourist by her husband, and is clearly not given due process. The lawyer who is involved is very impressive in his investigation, especially given that he's a public defender. It's a damn shame that more lawyers aren't that good. But everyone owes it to themselves to see the film. And learn, maybe, that everyone that gets arrested by the police isn't necessarily guilty. Man, Florida sucks.

Strangers with Candy, A Dirty Shame, Layer Cake, Walk on Water, & Transamerica

Strangers with Candy was funny, but it suffered from the same problems that most TV-to-movies suffer from: it's hard to hold someone's interest for 22 minutes at a time, and then try to make that character interesting for an hour and a half. That said, if you loved the show, you'll love the movie. I found some episodes great, and others not as good. So consequently, I found some scenes hilarious, and others just fell flat. Pretty much every scene with Allison Janney and Philip Seymour Hoffman stood out, and Colbert, Dinello, and Sedaris were all very good. Just some comedy, in my mind, didn't work very well. Others will clearly have differing views.

A Dirty Shame is pretty much the correct title for a film that, while filthy, is at least better than some of the crap that gets put out and gets lower ratings. It also doesn't work as well as Waters's "cleaner" films. Pecker, Hairspray, Cry Baby, and Serial Mom are all good films, but this was just a mess. Damnit Waters, I try so hard to enjoy your films, and even then, I just can't. So I will just continue to appreciate you as a filmmaker, while still enjoying many, many, many other films much more. I do, of course, commend him for releasing an NC-17 film, because not enough of them are released nowadays (except the straight-to-video Skinemax trash, or the American Pie series (technically unrated, but you know it'd be NC-17, because only those under 18 would be interested in that crap)).

Layer Cake actually made me want to see Casino Royale. It's really impressive. Man, Daniel Craig was good in it, and why hasn't Matthew Vaughn done anything since then? Why the hell didn't he work on Casino Royale? He would know exactly what to do. Of course, I am now interested in his next film, which is based on a Neil Gaiman novel, Stardust. Layer Cake is one of the better last drug score movies I've seen. Definitely see it, especially if you like stylish films about drugs.

Walk on Water is an Israeli film about Nazi hunting, homosexuality, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israeli folk dancing, and the fact that apparently you can be naked on the shores of the Dead Sea. And the differences between circumcised and non-circumcised penii. An Israeli assassin (working for Mossad, but it never really is mentioned) starts to regret his career choice, but still is given a job to learn where the Nazi who killed his parents is, by leading his grandson around Israel on a tour. It works surprisingly well, considering how many ideas it tries to stick in the running time. I guess it's better for someone with an interest in all those things I said it was about, but even if you aren't interested in all of those (me!), it's not bad at all.

Transamerica is manipulative dreck. Seriously, it was all, GIMME AN OSCAR! and I WILL SHOW YOU FELICITY HUFFMAN WITH A DICK! Sorry, you need a non-cliched plot. Replace the transexual angle with just a normal deadbeat dad, and it's not noteworthy at all. Oh, sure, Felicity Huffman is "ugly" so she's a great actress! And it has a Dolly Parton song! Nevermind that the song sucks, and being ugly doesn't make you a good actress. About the only thing I really liked in it was Carrie Preston, someone I enjoy entirely because of her role in Wonderfalls as the wound-up penguin. Sorry, people who liked it. Watch more movies and you'll see many vastly better films. And you'll realize just how eh the film was.

James and the Giant Peach & Flight of the Navigator

James and the Giant Peach has bad songs, and the live action sections are full of overacting. But the stop animation work is typically brilliant Henry Selick. I probably should have seen this film years ago, but thanks Netflix.

Flight of the Navigator is another film I am pretty sure I had seen before, but I don't really remember it at all. So I watched it again, and realized that it's actually a pretty good kids film. Who knew that Disney was capable? And Sarah Jessica Parker all-80s'd up? Well, not really attractive. But I still wish that Four Weddings and a Funeral had costarred her instead of Andie MacDowell, or Jeanne Tripplehorn for that matter. Anyone other than Andie MacDowell. So bad.

The Talk of the Town, Fury, The Great McGinty, The Sea Hawk, & The Street with No Name

The Talk of the Town really doesn't quite match the title. Is anyone seriously talking about Cary Grant running from a lynch mob? And Jean Arthur and Cary Grant and Ronald Coleman are all well and good, but who eats borscht? It lost me with that, but the whole thing just seemed over the top, and not in the good screwball way. The debating scenes were just boring. Too much political diatribe, not enough comedy.

Fury is another film about a guy hiding from a lynch mob that took a very different approach. Too bad it suffered from the inability of the code to accept that a hero can be evil. Because man, I didn't want Spencer Tracy to be at all good. I wanted him to be an avenging angel, exterminating those who wanted to railroad him. I bet the original script had him painted in more shades of gray, maybe even made him evil. Because that would have made me like the film, rather than just have been bored with it. Well, not bored, because there were some good scenes, but it doesn't work as good as it should have.

The Great McGinty doesn't work as well as later Preston Sturges films, but really what does work as well as... well, any of the films he made over the next couple of years? The film has a place in any film lovers heart, because it allowed Sturges to make his later films, plus it helped to create the writer-director, which gave us such great cinematic geniuses as David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Edward Burns. Brian Donlevy is great as the corrupt beggar, voter, and politician who gets a conscience and suffers his downfall for that reason. It's still a funny film, and all, but it's short and really feels it.

The Sea Hawk is worth it just for Claude Rains as a Spaniard. Who knew? Well, the swashbuckling is a little on the eh side, not nearly as good as some of Flynn's other works, like, ummm, his prodigious sexual appetites. And the expression "In like Flynn", and being responsible for one of the good songs on Combat Rock, in a roundabout way (his son was the Sean Flynn of the song, and who attended Duke University). The film itself is a weird combination of one that goes on far too long, and doesn't do enough. Or maybe I just couldn't pay attention to the boring bits.

The Street with No Name is no good. It's a "realistic" film noir, but it doesn't work nearly as well, as other docudramas of the era, like Call Northside 777. And Mark Stevens was a stuffed shirt. The only thing at all worthwhile in the film is Richard Widmark, but he's far better in other films, like, ummm, his war or western films, or Pickup on South Street. Don't watch a bad film just because it has a good actor in it. I still haven't quite learned that lesson. And don't even get me started on those scenes at the FBI. Such a waste of time.

Inferno, The Transporter 2, & The Sea Inside

Inferno is... bad. Not nearly as good as Suspiria, which would probably have made me appreciate the film a little more if I hadn't seen it before. But I didn't care for it at all. Yeah, it's stylish, but who cares. It makes no sense.

The Transporter 2 is worse than the first. And it's not just because Qi Shu isn't in it. It's because it isn't any good. About the only thing worthwhile in the film is the scene where Frank beats the crap out of guys with the hose. Which I saw before the movie premiered on some video sharing site. But it was on HBO or something, so I DVR'd it and wasted an hour and a half.

The Sea Inside was a movie I wanted to see because it was done by Alejandro Amenabar, who did Abre Los Ojos, Thesis, and The Others. Too bad all three of those films were much better than this. Javier Bardem was good, but the movie was far too long and I just couldn't get involved.

Casino, Borat, & The Quiet American

Casino is overly long, but it's a very good film. I highly recommend it. I have no idea why I hadn't seen it before. I really don't. I mean, Goodfellas is a great frickin' film, and Scorsese doing gangsters is just good. Well, Scorsese in general is good.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is funny, but the more I think about it, the less I'm impressed with it. I enjoyed it while I was watching it, but I pretty much never have to watch it again. And I never want to watch the wrestling scene ever again.

The Quiet American actually was closer to the remake than I was expecting. Yeah, there's the expected cop-out ending, because you can't have an American being a terrorist, but it was pretty good until that point. I still have a soft spot for Audie Murphy, so I enjoyed it, but it's not really a good film overall.

Faust & Man with the Movie Camera

Faust and Man with the Movie Camera are two late-era silent films by European directors, Faust by F.W. Murnau and Man by Dziga Vertov. Murnau, of course, is a vastly talented director, while I've never heard of anything by Vertov. It's an experimental film, following a man, who just happens to have a movie camera, around the Soviet Union making the film that we're watching. It's... strange. It's interesting, but it just seems a little too out there for me. Faust is one of the classic stories, and it's a very good retelling. Well, the impressive imagery is typical of Murnau, but there are typically melodramatic touches that hurt the film. Of course, they weren't as cliched back then, but they are now. Faust is the better film, but Man with the Movie Camera is the more important film in history for it's cinematic inventiveness.

Loves of a Blonde & Closely Watched Trains

Loves of a Blonde and Closely Watched Trains are two of the best Czech New Wave films. Also both are all about sex. Well, Closely Watched Trains is also about the anti-Nazi resistance late in WWII. Loves of a Blonde is a Milos Forman film, while Jirí Menzel directed the other one. I don't think I know any of his other films. They're both about young people who are immature about love, Loves being about a factory girl who follows a pianist to Prague, and Closely Watched Trains being about a train dispatcher who loves a conductress but can't get it up. Of course, both are really about the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. It's more obvious in Closely Watched Trains, but the totalitarian society that has a factory town of 16 women to every man clearly just is depressing. Both are worth watching, but I prefer Closely Watched Trains. Only partially because of Jitka Bendová. Yeah, she's hot. But it also just feels more important of a film. Anyway, definitely see them.