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.