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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catching up more with books and comics and museum exhibits

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

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

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

TMNT

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

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

Heavy Metal Parking Lot, The Story of 1, Green for Danger, Samurai Spy, & A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

Heavy Metal Parking Lot is a short 17 minute documentary that's about how much Judas Priest sucks. Seriously, they suck, and their fans in Landover, Maryland and who went to see them in 1986, are evil. A bunch of drunks, drug users, and underage girls wearing terrible fashions and not afraid to be proud of all of it. I sort of wish that these people would have done enough drinking and drug-using so that we didn't have them around anymore. People do stupid things as kids. Once you hit your 20s, though, your excuses start to sound as ridiculous as Judas Priest.

The Story of 1 is an hour long documentary about the number 1. It was strange. Terry Jones, from Monty Python, is the host, and there are some very stupid jokes, and silly things all throughout, but the thing is that it is interesting. Maybe I'm just a nerd (well, ok, I am), but I love that this important part of history has the documentary to explain it to people who have no interest in reading boring nonfiction.

Green for Danger is a British film about a murder at a hospital during a V-1 attack during WWII. Kept me guessing until the end, and I was convinced the murderer was someone other than who it was. I also was a big fan of Alastair Sim as Inspector Cockrill, who is just about perfect as the annoying, whimsical officer. It may be a slight film, but it has enough pleasures to make it worth watching for those who enjoy English films and mysteries. That's me.

Samurai Spy is the last of the four Rebel Samurai films from Criterion (Sword of the Beast, Samurai Rebellion, and Kill!). This is about as good as Sword of the Beast and Kill!, but not nearly as good as Samurai Rebellion. I wasn't entirely familiar with the history of Japan at the time, but I seem to be learning a bit. I just didn't like enough of the film. The soundtrack, occasional fight scenes, and cinematography are great, but the twisty plot doesn't always make sense.

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints got New York Groove by KISS stuck in my head. I will never forgive the film for that. But it also has Robert Downey Jr and Rosario Dawson, two of my favorite actors currently working. Add in Chazz Palminteri and Dianne Wiest and there's a lot of talent there. The story was interesting, but some of the decisions by Dito Montiel in scenes like the ride to Coney Island just got on my nerves and the film never quite was what I was hoping for.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Duck Season, The Hidden Blade, Once in a Lifetime, & Three Times

Duck Season was a movie made for my friend Matthew Barney Gumble (hey, I decided to use their pre-approved interwebs handle, if you don't have one already, get one, they're for all awesome people!). Two fourteen year old Mexican kids are left in their apartment with enough money for a pizza and two cokes, and they want to spend the entire day playing Halo. Unfortunately for them, a 16 year old female neighbor shows up wanting to use their oven to bake a cake, the power goes out, the pizza guy shows up 11 seconds late and refuses to leave when they say he showed up 11 seconds late for the 30 minute price guarantee. So one of the boys ends up challenging the pizza deliveryman to a game of Pro Evolution Soccer (Man U v Real Madrid) after the power comes back on. And then the cake burns, the next one is terrible, and some pot brownies are cooked and consumed. To get any more specific would be a shame, because it's a little film that works. It was produced by Alfonso Cuarón, so at least Cuarón's helping to improve Mexican cinema. Not that just by existing and making great movies he hasn't helped enough.

The Hidden Blade made me think at at least a few times in it that I'd seen it before. This was, of course, impossible, but I had déjà vu couple times. And then I realized why: it was directed by Yôji Yamada, who also directed The Twilight Samurai. And is also about a reluctant samurai having to fight someone he doesn't want to. I love that a guy who's made all of these rote films for so many years can make these two great meditations on samurai culture. This one isn't as good as The Twilight Samurai, but it's certainly a far happier ending. And really, when it makes total sense, I love that.

Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos is a short little documentary about the New York Cosmos, the star team of the NASL, with Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, Giorgio Chinaglia leading the way to titles and the ruination of soccer as a major sport in this country. Well, that and the overexpansion. But I do wish that more leagues used sudden death and shootouts, as those seem pretty awesome. Not awesome: Giorgio, who comes off as a complete ass. It's a flashy documentary with lots of edits, but the footage includes bits from the games, and you never really realize just how amazing they were until you see them doing those incredible things on a pitch. Interesting for those who want to see soccer footage and people arguing about their recollections of events.

Three Times starts with Qi Shu playing snooker in 60s fashion while Smoke Gets in Your Eyes plays in 1966. Well, in case you were wondering, that is all you have to have to make me interested in a film. That was also, by far, the best of the three sections in this film about love in 1966, 1911, and 2005 in Taiwan from Hsiao-hsien Hou, who also directed Qi Shu in Millenium Mambo, and again coaxes a multilayered performance from the former Category III actress. I think I wasn't familiar enough with the history of Taiwan to understand the backstory that probably was the basis for the timing of the earlier two segments. Well, it's quite possible (and likely, based on Wikipedia and a line about the Wuchang Uprising) that 1911 was picked due to its importance to Taiwanese history, but 1966 doesn't seem to have any relevance. And given the anachronistic use of Rain and Tears (a 1968 song from Aphrodite's Child, Vangelis's band (before going solo and scoring Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner among others)), it could have been set in 1968 and not had a problem. Or maybe there's a personal reason for it. But a soldier going off to be a soldier and then coming back to search for the pool hall girl he fell in love with in one day and then travelling all over Taiwan (I imagine, my knowledge of Taiwanese geography is even rougher than my knowledge of Taiwanese history) looking for her is right up my hopeless romantic alley. The other two, 1911's concubine trainer and the journalist and 2005's epileptic bisexual musician and photographer, just aren't as good. As an unrepentent lover of all things Wong Kar-Wai, the obvious parallels with his period pieces didn't hurt my appreciation for 1966.

The Bird People in China & The Twilight Samurai

The Bird People in China takes a lot of the bad taste from Izo out of my mouth, as it's a vastly different Takashi Miike film. And it's actually quite good. It's still sort of strange, but then again, so was Audition, the other "most normal" Miike film I've seen, but it's really still about the same themes that his other films seem to be about: trying to find a place to fit in, usually foreigners in a different land, this time a yakuza and a young office worker traveling to Yunnan, China (the subtitles kept splitting it into Yun Nan, confusing me for a bit, for some unknown reason (both the splitting and my confusion)) looking for a rich vein of jade, but instead finding... well, I don't want to ruin it, except that they do find the Bird People in China. And it's about the danger of bringing technology into an area that doesn't know it. That it's restrained is a nice touch, but that's what's amazing about Miike, because he is actually quite talented, if you can get past the enormous grafted penii, the severed feet, extreme torture, zombie musicals, an assassin who shoot darts from her vagina, and lots of sexual taboos... Wait, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, Miike's talent. Well, he is quite capable of making a touching film.

The Twilight Samurai made me really sad. Another movie that year better than the shit that was The Barbarian Invasions, and yet somehow lost to it. I know I'm somewhat biased (both towards the Japanese and against the damn French Canadians), but this film was really quite good. The two fight scenes are both filmed extremely well, and the ending one is one of the most depressing fight scenes I can imagine. The Foreign Film Oscars are so much of a joke that it's painful to think of how many great foreign films don't even get nominated let alone win when so much crap wins. Life Is Beautiful still causes me to hate Italy. Well, that and their tendency to dive. So, anyway, pretty much it was a couple of sad but excellent Japanese films for me this weekend.

Christmas in August, Starman, Murderball, & Izo

Christmas in August is a sort of depressing Korean film about a camera shop manager (well, he's the only worker, it seems) who is dying and the parking cop who falls in love with him. It was a great film, though, and it was pretty heartbreaking. But ultimately, it was sort of uplifting with the ending. The stars reunited the next year in the quite good Se7en ripoff, Tell Me Something, which I saw on a big screen years ago, so they both looked fairly familiar. Although since they're Asian, I could have just been thinking of a different set of Asian actors.

Starman is John Carpenter doing the romance thing. Oh, sure it involves an alien and a military conspiracy plus the Rolling Stones. And Karen Allen and Jeff Bridges, along with Charles Martin Smith, one of those guys, were very strong centers. Jeff Bridges was sort of loopy as the alien who takes the body of Karen Allen's husband by taking some hair and then growing a new body. And then the scientist says that the technology is 10,000 years in the future. Heh.

Murderball was pretty short, and it made me feel somewhat uncomfortable thinking about these guys being so violent. It's just one of those films I felt like I should see, even if I knew that it wasn't really for me. The supermacho just make me feel like they're trying to overcome something they lack. In this case, it makes some sense for them to overcome their various ailments or accidents, but I still don't particularly feel comfortable with them. The supermacho, not the handicapped. Made me have Light & Day stuck in my head for a good portion of today.

Izo starts with an impregnation (sex-ed style), and then goes into about a minute of a guy being crucified and run through, repeatedly, with spears. Then it goes into a montage catching up on Japanese history from the end of the shogunate and samurai to the present day, with a heavy focus on violence, sex, and the Westernization of Japan. Where the long dead Samurai is now roaming the streets of Tokyo killing pretty much anyone he can. Oh, and of course it's a Takashi Miike film. There's crazy violence, incestuous sexuality, and a seemingly indestructible killer. Plus, the English subtitles don't match the English dialogue, one of my least favorite things to have. The dubbing is terrible though, which is necessary for a film like this. Not one of Miike's better films. The constant jumping back and forth in time doesn't really serve much of a purpose. It just seems to be bizarre for the sake of bizarrity. I think it's all about hell, but going through a bat guano insane film for two hours with a guy killing everything just is too much. That every scene seems to be a different Japanese pop culture cliche suggests a cultural satire. Or is it as simple as violence begets violence?

Sword of the Beast, The Day of the Locust, & Inserts

Sword of the Beast is another anti-Samurai film like Harakiri, although this doesn't work nearly as well. I was pretty confused during part of it, because I thought one guy was another. I think I probably should have just given up and tried rewatching it from the beginning, but I didn't enjoy it enough to do so. But it could just have been that the film itself doesn't tell you what the hell is going on until pretty far in, and it's only 85 minutes long, so it's just sort of confusing for more than half, and then it starts tossing a bunch of rapes in there. Oh, wait, there are rapes all over this film. I think every female character gets raped or sexually assaulted in some way. Maybe that had something to do with my disliking of the film. Sorry, Criterion, I didn't like your choice of this film.

The Day of the Locust would have worked better without Karen Black in it. I just got so annoyed by everything she did. And I didn't really care for any of the characters besides William Atherton, but that's mainly because he's the only relatively sensible person in the entire film. Plus, it was long and Donald Sutherland played a character named Homer Simpson who was a religious nut. And the use of songs also grated on my nerves. I had this feeling that the last scene would have some type of effect on my ability to sleep, but nope, creepy people in white masks just aren't scary. You hear me, Michael Myers? I'm not afraid of you.

Inserts allows me to add a new actress to the list of Good Actresses Whose Labia I've Seen: Veronica Cartwright. Well, at least I think I saw it, it was pretty hairy, you know, down there. So that makes it four: Veronica Cartwright, Holly Hunter, Jenny Agutter, and Toni Collette. And, this made these two films into a mini-Golden age of Hollywood as seen through the filter of the decadent 70s (with references to Clark Gable) minifest. I foresee quite a few more of these little links in weeks to come. Inserts felt just like a play, with an establishing shot of the only actual set (besides the screening of the stag film that opens the film), but infinitely dirtier than anything I saw on stage. Well, actually I did see Metamorphoses in Cincinnati, and that included full frontal male nudity (which shocked the audience, but really, it wasn't like it was enormous or anything), and an actress who, unfortunately, ended up wearing a very short skirt (but panties) and facing in my direction quite often. I felt fairly uncomfortable, because I was basically at her crotch height for most of it, and if it wasn't eye contact, it was panty contact. Which is a lot funnier if you misinterpret that. It was a good play, though, as I'm a total mythology nerd. Anyway, Dreyfuss, Cartwright, Hoskins, and Harper were all quite good, but Stephen Davies just was eh. And the story itself was also eh, as it was about a former great director who couldn't make the transition to sound films, and then starts to make porn in his house with a heroin addict and a completely naive guy with Hoskins as the money behind it all, and Harper as the wanna-be starlet who doesn't know what inserts are. But the nudity was extensive and pretty much constant. And how can you go wrong with that? I'm still not sure if it was artish porn or pornish art, but either way, I've seen Veronica Cartwright's hoo-ha.

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.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated, The Departed, The Island, Walk the Line, & Bad Education

This Film Is Not Yet Rated continues the Great Documentary Revival of the last few years. Yay for that, and the movie was extremely satisfying for someone who has read multiple books about film censorship (some of them were even for fun) and finds the MPAA a bunch of morons. The interviews with the filmmakers were definitely worth seeing the movie for, especially if you want to see just how silly the rating system is. The private investigator scenes were sort of funny, because she was so insane, but also it was disturbing because these were vaguely illegal things being done to people, who, while perpetuating a stupid and ineffective system, are still human beings. Then again, the MPAA is full of crazy people who don't mind lying, so they deserve pretty much everything in it.

The Departed is my pick for best film of the year. And if Paul Haggis wins another frickin' Oscar I will have to come back here and complain about how stupid the academy is. Anyway, the accents were good, everyone in it was excellent, Nicholson didn't bother me, Leo again proves that he's not just a pretty face, Wahlberg had some of the funniest lines, and Baldwin was just Baldwin (who has been the best thing about 30 Rock, as well). Knowing how everything was going to pan out and most of the plot points allowed me to savor the little things, like the accents, the perfect cursing, the good musical choices (even if I did get Comfortably Numb stuck in my head for a while, and I don't even like Pink Floyd), and Walhberg making fun of his brother. Little things like that make me happy.

The Island, on the other hand, didn't make me happy. So much talent in front of the camera, why did there have to be so little behind the camera. Because Michael Bay is a no talent hack. A two hour chase scene is a great idea there, genius. No one will ever get bored by characters running from one implausible escape to another. Nope. All perfectly reasonable for Scarlett and Ewan to fall many many floors on an R and then get saved by a conveniently strung netting. Yep. Apparently, my intellect is far above what was needed not to have my intelligence insulted by the movie. At least it did allow me to play a lot of Ninja Gaiden Black, which is both insanely fun and insanely hard. I suck at it, but the opportunity to decapitate multiple people at once is... well, worth the many, many, many deaths you will suffer before you figure out how to do all the crazy moves.

Walk the Line is the white man's Ray with worse music and the least talented Phoenix. Man, why did River have to be the one to die? Couldn't it have been this one instead? Ugh. And I wanted Cash to stay with Ginnifer Goodwin instead of running off with that tramp Reese Witherspoon. And the music wasn't half as good as Ray either. And I say that as a white male semi-hipster who should enjoy outlaw country. But little in that movie was as good as Jamie Foxx doing What'd I Say.

Bad Education felt like a little bit of a retreat for Almodovar from the brilliance of All about My Mother and Talk to Her, and a move back to his crazy 80s roots, but with the artistic maturity of his more recent work, but it didn't work particularly well, in my opinion. I should have really loved the film within a film and the messing with the audience's expectations of what was real and what wasn't, but I just didn't entirely connect with anyone in the film. Was it just that I'm not gay, or a transsexual, or a pedophile priest? I'm not sure.

Valley Girl, Ugetsu, Walk Don't Run, Out of Africa, & Last.fm

Valley Girl has one of the best soundtracks of any 80s films. Yes, I'm, like, totally serious. The Plimsouls, Josie Cotton, and, of course, Modern English, with one of the best songs of the 80s. I Melt with You was outstanding, but the third homage to The Graduate in the film (after Plastics and the entire scene between Skip and Suzi's mom) with that song playing was great. I know the song was great, but I thought it wasn't entirely necessary to play the song so often in the movie. But the music just was very good overall. And Nicolas Cage (in his first appearance as Nicolas Cage) was not too goofy, and there was much gratuitous toplessness, as is the point of a good 80s teen movie. Very few people in the movie really went on to do anything much afterwards besides him, but that's a shame.

Ugetsu, based on reading some reviews when it was released on DVD, was supposed to be a ghost story. After watching it, it still is, but it's much more about the problems with being very greedy, and the ghost story parts just happens to further emphasize that main moral. It feels very much like an early Kurosawa film, and subsequently, it was very good, even though it was more moral than I would have liked. I know that even a movie like Seven Samurai has a very pro-farmer message, but they just didn't feel as if they were morals.

Walk Don't Run is Cary Grant's last film, and it's also a remake of The More the Merrier, about a housing shortage in WWII DC. This time it's 1964 Tokyo during the Olympics. Jim Hutton is a starched shirt, making this film not nearly as good as The More the Merrier, especially as Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea were very good, as was Coburn, and only Grant really stood out in this one. Mainly because he's Cary Grant, and he's always the best thing in the whatever film he's in. This one does have George Takei as a policeman though, so that was a sort of strange thing to see. Then again, it does make sense, considering he's Asian, he was a somewhat famous actor in America, and the movie was set in Japan. Yay for Hollywood having a very small list of non-white actors to choose from in roles. It's clearly gotten better, and, in this case, Takei is at least Japanese, so it's better than others. Back to the movie, it's nothing particularly special.

Out of Africa is long and beautiful. I have a very strange strange mind and I won't say what I was thinking. Of course, Meryl Streep is very good. And the movie is beautifully shot. Robert Redford was British in the movie? Really? Did you know that Kevin Costner was English in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as well? My, what outstanding accents these men had. If you haven't seen this, block out three hours of time and she it, it's worth watching.

I also added a little bit to know just how awesome my musical tastes are. Look on the bottom right under the Blogger button and the counter. And you'll see the last ten-ish tracks played by me on iTunes and my iPod, and by clicking on it you get to see a lot of info about how much music I listen to and what I do listen to. As it only goes back to March 2005 and doesn't even include a lot of the songs I played on my iPod, it's not entirely accurate, but it'll give you an idea of just how much my musical taste rocks. Note that I don't listen to songs over and over again. So that explains why songs I absolutely love don't get played hundreds of times.

Beatboxing & Incident at Blood Pass

And if you do a beat in 3/4 time, suddenly they become bicurious!

Incident at Blood Pass is the last Yojimbo film, although it's not a Kurosawa film. Mfume is still there, but he's clearly aging. Plus, the movie is a little confusing for a samurai film, with a lot of double-crossing. And I'm not entirely sure that it makes sense. I haven't seen any of the original Zatoichi films, so I figure I probably should, since the guy who plays Zatoichi in a lot (or all, I'm not entirely sure) of the series is pretty damn good in it. Basically, worth it if you love samurai films, but only if you can handle one without violence for a large part. Trying to put the plot together really needed that extra time. Otherwise I think I would have been completely confused rather than just somewhat confused.

The Stranger, Spanking the Monkey, Gozu, Versus, & The Gingerbread Man

The Stranger is interesting from a historical standpoint, but the studio limitations, the main one being Edward G. Robinson rather than Agnes Morehead in the G-man role, make the movie nothing that special, except for the finale in the clocktower, which is pretty effective. Otherwise, Welles doesn't put too much of his own stamp on it, except for making the Nazis really really unpleasant. My favorite bit of weirdness was that apparently Edward G. Robinson can hear a dog being kicked within a 15 mile radius even when asleep. Thems some good hearing. But the thing that actually woke him up was something I immediately noticed upon the hearing of it. Nobody says things like that except for Nazis. Edward G. Robinson clearly wasn't at all intelligent as the rest of the movie made him out to be.

Spanking the Monkey was a little Oedipal for my tastes. Also strange seeing a young Carla Gallo. Interesting though, but sort of strange, and I'm not just talking about using Morphine for the soundtrack. Jeremy Davies is excellent, as is his mother. I thought that the ending was very appropriate for it, as that was one seriously messed up family.

Gozu is typical Miike weirdness. Insane yakuza imagining yakuza attacking dogs and cars, more lactation, reincarnation, plus a full-grown man being born during sex... I didn't even mention the cow-head. Pretty weird freakin' film. Not nearly as good as his other films. Still insane, but the weirdness doesn't seem to have as much of a point as others.

Versus is bizarre Japanese zombie-samurai-yakuza-(a bit of) vampire craziness. Good fight scenes, and a somewhat interesting idea for a movie. I don't entirely think that the movie's ending actually makes sense. There were some very funny bits, some very good gore, and the acting is acceptably crazy for the movie. Probably just would have been better if the director had actually made an ending. Sequels are fun, but it would have been nice for this one to make a little sense.

The Gingerbread Man is overlong and a mess of a movie. Branagh's accent is good, but the movie's nowhere near good for an Altman film. I'm only somewhat suprised, as it was in the midst of his dry spell. Not sure whether anyone could have made a good movie of this though. At least Grisham's other works are... well, actually none are particularly good. This one just seems to make a little less sense than the others. And that Mercedes convertible can really handle everything. I'm impressed.

Land of the Dead & Visitor Q

Land of the Dead is vastly superior to Day of the Dead, but that isn't really saying that much. Romero shows that he can do the barely hidden metaphor in a zombie film better than anyone else. That it has Dennis Hopper being an evil, evil man is an added bonus. My main complaint was actually that it had too much flesh eating. Yeah, I wouldn't have thought that possible. I did see the unrated version, so that could explain it. Leguizamo was actually not annoying either, which I also didn't think was possible. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the zombies getting brains and figuring out tools and the like. I know that Bub in Day of the Dead clearly was learning, but I think that the zombies learned how to do a little much in a very short period of time in this movie. I have to say that it was enjoyable, and I definitely prefer the slow zombies of this to any fast zombie movie (with the notable exception of 28 Days Later, which is the only good fast zombie movie I can think of, and that wasn't really a true zombie film). And how much better this was than the Dawn remake just goes to show that Romero is needed for any good movie in this universe (note that I'm including remakes, recuts (that horrible extended Night of the Living Dead), and movies that are supposed to happen in the same universe (the horribly nihilistic and mainly craptacular Return of the Living Dead movies)). Wow, that was horrible sentence structure. Score one for the non-writer.

Visitor Q is a typical Miike film. If you don't come out feeling extremely dirty after seeing one, I don't think you truly saw the movie. Incest, prostitution, beatings, lots of lactation, drugs, rape, necrophilia, loose bowels, pissing, you name it, this movie has it. Except a giant robot monkey pirate ninja zombie. They still haven't made a movie with that yet. Note that if they did, I would immediately love that movie. I think the movie is saying something about the state of reality TV and Japanese society, along with the damaging effects of violence and sex on family life. Plus, are we really supposed to think that Visitor Q is a god of some sort? Wait, that's sort of a spoiler, except that that's never really discussed in the movie itself. It just makes some sense if you try to figure out what the hell the movie is about. Because I'm not entirely sure it succeeds in what Miike's trying to do. It does succeed in being one of the most sick, twisted, weird, funny movies you're likely to see. Unless you've seen other Miike films. This is by no means a well-made movie (straight to video, boom mikes frequently visible), but it is unlike almost anything I've seen before. And for that alone, I thank Takashi Miike.

Sword of Doom, Beyond Borders, & Dave Chapelle: For What It's Worth

Sword of Doom was strange. I'm not sure what to think of that ending. Or the middle. It was different from what I was expecting. The beginning made some sense though. I... wow. Nakadai was crazy as hell. Twisted as well. I still get bothered when I see a crazy big samurai fight with guys attacking one at a time. I mean, really, just wait for him to stick his sword in someone and he can't get it out and then just go for him. It happened more than enough in the last fight. You're telling me no one would have done that rather than just attacking in order and getting sliced up? And I'm not happy with some of the loose threads. Well, actually, it seems like everything was a loose thread at the end. But still, I want to know what happened a little more. I think I know what happened, but I really don't want to have to read the original stories to figure out for sure.

Beyond Borders was liberal claptrap. Blech. And Angelina Jolie and Clive Owen couldn't save it. The only thing that made it interesting was the ending. Boo on landmines, but pretty unexpected for that to be the ending for a character like that? Are they trying to get people to stop helping? Or are they trying to show how terrible the situations are? Or could they just not come up with a good ending?

Dave Chapelle: For What It's Worth was funny. Not "I'm Rick James, Bitch" said by white frat guys funny, but a dying kitten impaled on a spork slowly bleeding to death is funnier than that. It was just pretty funny. Could have been a lot worse.