2004-04-20 - 14:55:00
Current music: Denali - "Time Away"
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BLACK ROBE (1991) - d. Bruce Beresford
I had this confused with 'Brotherhood of the Wolf'. For some reason, I thought Mark Dacascos was going to be in it, delivering equal parts religious zealotry and kung fu whoop-ass to the Native (North) American folk. Or maybe I thought Christophe Gans was directing it. Anyways, I was wrong. No kung fu in this one. Not a whole lot of hand-to-hand combat, to be honest. If you want buckets of violence with your Cowboy v. Indian, 'Last of the Mohicans' has your name on it.
A few things I learned from watching this movie:
- Hurons had sex in public. And when they did it, they did it doggy-style.
- Sandrine Holt is Sandrine hottt.
- Taking over foreign countries, installing your leaders, pushing your religious beliefs, and expecting the natives to fall in line never works out well. Unless, of course, you're Hallibu -- sorry -- unless you're the US of A.
- Those Iroquoi are feisty fuckers.
I'd never even heard of this movie until a friend told me that my Canada-lovin' ass would like it sometime last fall. Now that I've seen it, as good as it is, I know why it was under my radar. It's great, but it's also medicinal. The story involves the Christianizing of the Huron people during 17th century in Canada. Canada was New France back then, and the French were still, in many ways, guests of the Huron and Algonquins (the Iroquoi? Not so tolerant..). Anyway, the main character in the movie is a Jesuit priest who's been sent from Quebec on a trip up to the Huron Mission, which is pretty far out of town. He's heading there with a bunch of Huron who've been paid in things like beads and flints by Champlain. Plot and character aren't paramount to the story's effect. What matters most, surprisingly, seems to be 'the truth.' There's little sense of revisionism in this movie, despite the era in which it was made. In place of political correctness, the unexpected happens and you're assailed with arguments from both sides. Euro-Indian relationships are thoroughly explored here, and you have to admire the attention to detail, both emotional and physical.
Other than coming out the other end with a much better sense of how the Hurons and the French got along circa 1634, you realize just how beautiful Canada is. Beresford's movies are always interesting to look at, but here, the cinematography, by Peter James (also an Aussie), is flat-out amazing. In between scenes, they throw down jaw-dropping overhead shots of the Canadian landscape. You kind of wonder if Robby Müller hadn't seen them when he went to shoot the chapter cards for 'Breaking the Waves,' because they have the same sense of Zhivago-esque magic.
'Zhivago-esque'. Ugh. I am icky.
PERSONAL VELOCITY (2001) - d. Rebecca Miller
I was thinking that it's probably a little bit easier to get your book published or your movie financed if you're Arthur Miller's daughter. I'm not hating on Rebecca Miller, I'm just saying...
I stayed away from this movie for a while because, clearly, anything called 'Personal Velocity: Three Portraits' is going to be high on the estrogen, low on the tolerance of men. Turns out, though it's very much a woman's film (video?), I didn't have to worry. It was better - and less anti-male - than I'd expected. I don't know if I'd have been willing to see it at all if Ellen Kuras hadn't shot it, and she knocks it out of the park, but there's more between the ears here than just good photography. I wouldn't put it up there with 'Gas Food Lodging,' which is the only chick flick I would see again because I genuinely respond to it, but it's more than tolerable. When it played at festivals, when it was released, there was a lot of talk about just how great 'Personal Velocity' is and I'm pretty sure it ended up on a lot of critics' year end lists. Those people aren't telling the truth. It's a very solid movie, but let's leave it in the 'strong debut' category.
Parker Posey's sequence is the best of the three, and the fact that it hews closest to Miller's own life is telling. There are some misfires - it didn't need to be so rooted in its literary origins, the music and score hit some false notes, Kyra Sedgewick's ass isn't near as legendary as her story suggests - and some points where you wish it had gone farther, but you walk away impressed with what Rebecca Miller is capable of. Finally, I don't know whether or not to give her credit for swiping the bracketing device from the 'Three Colors' trilogy. She's got to know that the audience for something like this is going to catch it, so I guess we let it slide. This time.
MENACE II SOCIETY (1993) - d. Albert & Allen Hughes
I thought I liked this movie better than 'Boyz N the Hood,' mostly because the main characters here are the ones with the guns. I saw 'Boyz' about a year ago, and watching this again, it turns out neither movie has aged well. 'Menace' is a good debut with some great moments, and I think Los Bros. Hughes have a better idea of what to do with a camera than Sr. Singleton, but the writing and acting are weaker here.
Oh, well. We'll always have the "I'll suck your dick for some crack"/"Who wants a cheeseburger?" exchange.
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Tummy Trouble
2004-04-14 - 20:44:00
Current music - The Rosebuds - "Drunkards Worst Nightmare"
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I have a confession to make.
I have been consuming shit.
HONEY (2003) - d. Bille Woodruff
This seemed like a good idea, and for a few minutes, I still thought it was.
In its early stages, 'Honey' works well as entry-level softcore. The box cover hints that it's got plenty to offer stomach fetishists, and it doesn't disappoint on that end. Jessica Alba's mid-section is a thing of great and terrifying beauty. Here, it's exposed constantly, and, though Gwen Stefani might have something to say on the subject, I think even No Doubt fans have to admit, this is the current gold-standard.
Unfortunately, they also try to tell a story. That doesn't go so well. Since it's about music videos, a world I know something about, it was even harder swallowing all the caca. I don't get it - one half fetish film, one half feel-good success story - who's the target audience?
Bottom line, I don't turn a lot of movies off. The last time I did that was for 'The Order,' and the fact that 'Honey' made me do it again - in spite of that belly button - is saying something. I didn't make it past the 45 minute mark.
MEAN MACHINE (2001) - d. Barry Skolnick
Really, really pants. And I like Vinnie Jones and will watch anything soccer. There's one consistent theme in all three of these movies: none of them keep anything like a consistent tone. This one has a sense of humor which could only appeal to a 12 year old knacker but throws in the occasional 'fuck' to make sure that it gets an 'R' rating. Wait, that's probably the same thing. Anyways, strange. The only good that's come out of it is that I'm finally convinced I need to see 'Victory.'
Oh, and if someone can give me the address of Ska Films, there might just be one more London bombing that gets blamed on the IRA.
THE CROCODILE HUNTER: COLLISION COURSE (2002) - d. John Stainton
Probably the best of the three movies. I still wouldn't wish it on anyone else.
I'm going to go watch some good stuff now. I can't take this anymore.
Current music - The Rosebuds - "Drunkards Worst Nightmare"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have a confession to make.
I have been consuming shit.
HONEY (2003) - d. Bille Woodruff
This seemed like a good idea, and for a few minutes, I still thought it was.
In its early stages, 'Honey' works well as entry-level softcore. The box cover hints that it's got plenty to offer stomach fetishists, and it doesn't disappoint on that end. Jessica Alba's mid-section is a thing of great and terrifying beauty. Here, it's exposed constantly, and, though Gwen Stefani might have something to say on the subject, I think even No Doubt fans have to admit, this is the current gold-standard.
Unfortunately, they also try to tell a story. That doesn't go so well. Since it's about music videos, a world I know something about, it was even harder swallowing all the caca. I don't get it - one half fetish film, one half feel-good success story - who's the target audience?
Bottom line, I don't turn a lot of movies off. The last time I did that was for 'The Order,' and the fact that 'Honey' made me do it again - in spite of that belly button - is saying something. I didn't make it past the 45 minute mark.
MEAN MACHINE (2001) - d. Barry Skolnick
Really, really pants. And I like Vinnie Jones and will watch anything soccer. There's one consistent theme in all three of these movies: none of them keep anything like a consistent tone. This one has a sense of humor which could only appeal to a 12 year old knacker but throws in the occasional 'fuck' to make sure that it gets an 'R' rating. Wait, that's probably the same thing. Anyways, strange. The only good that's come out of it is that I'm finally convinced I need to see 'Victory.'
Oh, and if someone can give me the address of Ska Films, there might just be one more London bombing that gets blamed on the IRA.
THE CROCODILE HUNTER: COLLISION COURSE (2002) - d. John Stainton
Probably the best of the three movies. I still wouldn't wish it on anyone else.
I'm going to go watch some good stuff now. I can't take this anymore.
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Lil' Cidade
2004-04-10 - 13:11:00
Current music: Cat Power - "Shaking Paper"
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GOLDEN GATE (PALACE II) (2002) - d. Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund
This is from the same Paulo Lins book which was the source of the feature 'City of God.' It's a 21 minute short, and I don't know if it was made before 'CoG' or at the same time, but it played the festival circuit and was clearly intended as a stand-alone film. Undereducated guess is that this was shot as a sort of test, and then, as they were pulling 'City of God' together, they put 'Golden Gate' out as an advance look at the world of the feature.
'Golden Gate' stars two of the main kids from the feature, but in different roles. In 'City of God,' Darlan Cunha (aka Steak and Fries) and Douglas Silva (the young Lil' Ze) play two of the nastiest characters in the film's early stages. They're front and center again, but their characters aren't nearly as 'hard' and the story is much more about the transition from being a kid into the life of a street tough. The two want tickets to see a really cool band play, and though cash is hard to come by, they try to avoid running drugs for local dealers to get it. There's a great sense of humor in the film as it details all these different little low-fi scams that favela kids pull, and it gets heavily into the code of the street. This storyline wouldn't have worked in the feature; the humor is too front and center and there's breathing space for the kind of nuance that doesn't easily fit a multi-character narrative.
More than anything else, what's amazing is how well this story works as a short. It's just great, pushing the comedy without avoiding the harsher stuff that feeds 'City.' The kids are incredibly real. I liked it at least as much as the feature.
Current music: Cat Power - "Shaking Paper"
----------------------------------------------------------------
GOLDEN GATE (PALACE II) (2002) - d. Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund
This is from the same Paulo Lins book which was the source of the feature 'City of God.' It's a 21 minute short, and I don't know if it was made before 'CoG' or at the same time, but it played the festival circuit and was clearly intended as a stand-alone film. Undereducated guess is that this was shot as a sort of test, and then, as they were pulling 'City of God' together, they put 'Golden Gate' out as an advance look at the world of the feature.
'Golden Gate' stars two of the main kids from the feature, but in different roles. In 'City of God,' Darlan Cunha (aka Steak and Fries) and Douglas Silva (the young Lil' Ze) play two of the nastiest characters in the film's early stages. They're front and center again, but their characters aren't nearly as 'hard' and the story is much more about the transition from being a kid into the life of a street tough. The two want tickets to see a really cool band play, and though cash is hard to come by, they try to avoid running drugs for local dealers to get it. There's a great sense of humor in the film as it details all these different little low-fi scams that favela kids pull, and it gets heavily into the code of the street. This storyline wouldn't have worked in the feature; the humor is too front and center and there's breathing space for the kind of nuance that doesn't easily fit a multi-character narrative.
More than anything else, what's amazing is how well this story works as a short. It's just great, pushing the comedy without avoiding the harsher stuff that feeds 'City.' The kids are incredibly real. I liked it at least as much as the feature.
Friday, April 9, 2004
Kung Fu, Taking It To You
2004-04-09 - 20:59:00
Current music - Fruit Bats - "Glass In Your Feet"
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ASHES OF TIME (1994) - d. Wong Kar-Wai
Woo! Horse-fucking meets the Shaw Brothers! Does fun get any more fun?
In case anyone is still confused about this, Chinese names are surname first, given name second. Wong is the 'last' name, so it's first. Kar-Wai is the name his parents gave him. So, if you ran into him on the street, it's 'Yo, Kar-Wai, what up, ace?' not 'Yo, Wong.'
So yeah, Señor Wong takes on a King Hu-style swords and more-swords epic, delivering the costliest film to that point in Hong Kong history, its content enough to make the timid weep. If you haven't seen a Wong Kar-Wai movie before, this isn't the place to start. 'Chungking Express' and 'Fallen Angels' are much simpler introductions to his aesthetic, and, if you believe all the oohs and ahhs from the world of world cinema, 'In The Mood For Love' is his masterpiece. Any of those movies will do... As a quick primer, there's a heavy debt to early Godard (is there any other kind?) running through his work. The temporal shifting, restless camera, and general disregard for the constraints of trad narrative are all hallmarks of the French New Wave. Wong's narrative, generally, is less beholden to Western ideas, and doesn't often lend itself to the genre workouts Jean-Luc and his boys were so in love with. This movie does see Wong putting some time in at the genre gym, but anyone who's watched 'Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater' can tell you that Aristotle and 'Poetics' aren't part of the average chop-socky dialect, so any tropes - beyond slicing and dicing and a dash of honor - 'Ashes of Time' explores aren't gonna matter much to us western types.
I'd seen the movie before, but it's become a recurring theme for me recently, as I get to know my Netflix queue, that a lot of the movies I saw between, say, 18 and 22 weren't the viewing experiences they should've been because I was pretty consistently drunk and/or stoned.
Back to the timid weeping part...
Emphasis on the word 'time' in the movie's title. It only runs for 100 minutes, but it's not 100 mins with a ton of pace. That's not to say it's boring, it isn't, but it does require patience if you're coming in expecting a fight scene every four minutes. The real difficulty I think most people are gonna have is that it's just damned weird. It's constantly on the verge of making sense, but, honestly, feels like it's only on the verge as an excuse to get even stranger when the spirit moves. Somehow, it all fits together, but you have to be paying pretty close attention if the storyline's an important part of your enjoying the proceedings. Also, there's cross-dressing and horse-fucking.
About the DVD - I have a serious suspicion that the disc is transferred from the same VHS tape I rented back in Berkeley about seven years ago. There's even a point where you can see something clearly goes wrong with what looks to be the tape (it could be a film fuckup, but the glitch looks very cassettey). Anyway, you can still tell that Christopher Doyle shot the film as awesomely as ever, and at least the image isn't atrophying further, but you can't say that this über-muddy version's doing anyone any justice. Someone made the genius decision to take a 1.85 movie and shift the picture up to the top half of the screen. This makes it easier to fit the subtitles in, sure, but the bottom half of the screen is gray instead of black. And the subtitles themselves are pretty fucked up. The translation's more or less fine, and I can deal with a few spelling errors, but sometimes things are onscreen for a good long while, and then sometimes you seriously have to make sure you're not blinking when dialogue pops up. Headachey.
Bottom line, this is the problem with 'Ashes' being a kung fu movie. The company that put the DVD out is called CAV Distribution and Replication Services (as opposed to, say, Criterion Collection) and, from what I saw on the site (www.cavd.com), they mostly churn out braindead fighting films with names like 'Blooded Treasury Fight' and 'Fatal Flying Guillotine,' and probably are without the resources to release this baby right. They do have most of 'Star Blazers' on DVD, so they aren't all bad... Anyway, the benefits of having the movie out at all definitely outweigh the negatives of the poor release, but hopefully someone comes along someday and does a super-ultra-deluxe version.
Again, horse-fucking.
Current music - Fruit Bats - "Glass In Your Feet"
--------------------------------------------------------------------
ASHES OF TIME (1994) - d. Wong Kar-Wai
Woo! Horse-fucking meets the Shaw Brothers! Does fun get any more fun?
In case anyone is still confused about this, Chinese names are surname first, given name second. Wong is the 'last' name, so it's first. Kar-Wai is the name his parents gave him. So, if you ran into him on the street, it's 'Yo, Kar-Wai, what up, ace?' not 'Yo, Wong.'
So yeah, Señor Wong takes on a King Hu-style swords and more-swords epic, delivering the costliest film to that point in Hong Kong history, its content enough to make the timid weep. If you haven't seen a Wong Kar-Wai movie before, this isn't the place to start. 'Chungking Express' and 'Fallen Angels' are much simpler introductions to his aesthetic, and, if you believe all the oohs and ahhs from the world of world cinema, 'In The Mood For Love' is his masterpiece. Any of those movies will do... As a quick primer, there's a heavy debt to early Godard (is there any other kind?) running through his work. The temporal shifting, restless camera, and general disregard for the constraints of trad narrative are all hallmarks of the French New Wave. Wong's narrative, generally, is less beholden to Western ideas, and doesn't often lend itself to the genre workouts Jean-Luc and his boys were so in love with. This movie does see Wong putting some time in at the genre gym, but anyone who's watched 'Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater' can tell you that Aristotle and 'Poetics' aren't part of the average chop-socky dialect, so any tropes - beyond slicing and dicing and a dash of honor - 'Ashes of Time' explores aren't gonna matter much to us western types.
I'd seen the movie before, but it's become a recurring theme for me recently, as I get to know my Netflix queue, that a lot of the movies I saw between, say, 18 and 22 weren't the viewing experiences they should've been because I was pretty consistently drunk and/or stoned.
Back to the timid weeping part...
Emphasis on the word 'time' in the movie's title. It only runs for 100 minutes, but it's not 100 mins with a ton of pace. That's not to say it's boring, it isn't, but it does require patience if you're coming in expecting a fight scene every four minutes. The real difficulty I think most people are gonna have is that it's just damned weird. It's constantly on the verge of making sense, but, honestly, feels like it's only on the verge as an excuse to get even stranger when the spirit moves. Somehow, it all fits together, but you have to be paying pretty close attention if the storyline's an important part of your enjoying the proceedings. Also, there's cross-dressing and horse-fucking.
About the DVD - I have a serious suspicion that the disc is transferred from the same VHS tape I rented back in Berkeley about seven years ago. There's even a point where you can see something clearly goes wrong with what looks to be the tape (it could be a film fuckup, but the glitch looks very cassettey). Anyway, you can still tell that Christopher Doyle shot the film as awesomely as ever, and at least the image isn't atrophying further, but you can't say that this über-muddy version's doing anyone any justice. Someone made the genius decision to take a 1.85 movie and shift the picture up to the top half of the screen. This makes it easier to fit the subtitles in, sure, but the bottom half of the screen is gray instead of black. And the subtitles themselves are pretty fucked up. The translation's more or less fine, and I can deal with a few spelling errors, but sometimes things are onscreen for a good long while, and then sometimes you seriously have to make sure you're not blinking when dialogue pops up. Headachey.
Bottom line, this is the problem with 'Ashes' being a kung fu movie. The company that put the DVD out is called CAV Distribution and Replication Services (as opposed to, say, Criterion Collection) and, from what I saw on the site (www.cavd.com), they mostly churn out braindead fighting films with names like 'Blooded Treasury Fight' and 'Fatal Flying Guillotine,' and probably are without the resources to release this baby right. They do have most of 'Star Blazers' on DVD, so they aren't all bad... Anyway, the benefits of having the movie out at all definitely outweigh the negatives of the poor release, but hopefully someone comes along someday and does a super-ultra-deluxe version.
Again, horse-fucking.
Thursday, April 8, 2004
Early Kubrick and Shitty Third-Gen Tarantino
2004-04-08 - 09:41:00
Current music: Kanye West "School Spirit"
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Last night, I found out that my friend Graham's been working on 'The Swan.' Words, for once, fail me.
A little catching up here. I'd forgotten two movies I saw over the weekend, and I watched 'Spun' last night...
KILLER'S KISS (1955) - d. Stanley Kubrick
Um, I was really expecting to fall in love with this movie. The era suggested that this was going to be Kubrick really telling an old-school noir story. Instead, it's a bit more of an exercise in noir style, as Kubrick was only getting his feet wet (this is his first narrative feature). The best thing about the film is its 67 minute running time, but, to be honest, it still feels long.
Here's a quote from the man himself - "While 'Fear and Desire' had been a serious effort, ineptly done, 'Killer's Kiss'... proved, I think, to be a frivolous effort done with conceivably more expertise though still down in the student level of filmmaking."
There's some strong visuals and cutting, a wild (though not exciting) final sequence, and anyone who tells you that they can tell that all the dialogue was recorded in post is a flat-out liar.
Anyone who defends it as Stanley's first masterpiece is also a flat-out liar. Worth watching, just don't have your expectations too high. Oh, it's about a boxer who falls in love with a mob moll. Then they face the mob. The end.
You gotta get to 'The Killing' to see Stanley do it right.
SPUN (2002) - d. Jonas Åkerlund
Ugh. Crap. Shit.
'Meth-heads in SoCal' should be a good movie. It isn't. A lot of people compared it to 'Requiem For A Dream,' a movie I don't think is nearly as good as everyone else seems to. I also don't think they're that similar, other than the fact that drugs play heavily in both. Instead, 'Spun' is more like a poor imitation of second and third-generation Tarantino motifs. If someone's entire cinema experience was 'Kalifornia,' 'Love and a .45,' and 'Two Days In The Valley,' it would explain this movie. As it stands, it's too crap to bother explaining. Mickey Rourke is good. Eric Roberts is passable.
HIGHWAY (2002) - d. James Cox
I kind of hate James Cox. If you were at NYU in the just-post 'Atomic Tabasco' days, you'd understand why. There were two camps at school, the 'Five Feet High and Rising' camp and the 'Atomic Tabasco' camp. Atomic Tabasco kids should've just gone to USC and put us all out of our misery. This isn't just an 'I hate him because he's old as fuck' thing.
The guy who wrote 'Highway' also wrote 'Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead,' 'Kangaroo Jack,' and 'High Fidelity'. I don't get the 'High Fidelity' association watching this charmer, but I do get the other two.
Tarded. This is Jared Leto after he'd semi-legitimized himself with that p.o.s. Aronofsky movie, but he's out of his depth as a leading man here. The costume design stands out as particularly bad, and Jared's outfit's probably the dumbest. This is also an early Jake Gyllenhaal role, and he didn't know what he was doing in front of the camera yet. The 'plot' involves stolen-ish money, a guy who looks like an alligator and a pilgrimage to Seattle because Kurt Cobain's just shot himself. The less said, the better. Even John C. McGinley sucks in it.
This dude, also James Cox, had two surgeries for testicular cancer, was turned on to medical marijuana because where his balls used to be hurt so much (and the disease was eating his stomach), was busted by cops investigating a break-in at his house, and got hooked up with a fifteen year prison sentence. After five years in prison at age 50, an attempted suicide, and two stomach surgeries, he's out, but his parole requires twice-weekly piss testing. Doctors started giving him morphine for his tummy aches, and now the feds are thinking of sending him back to jail because he tested positive for opiates. Can I get some love for mandatory minimums?
Current music: Kanye West "School Spirit"
--------------------------------------------------------------
Last night, I found out that my friend Graham's been working on 'The Swan.' Words, for once, fail me.
A little catching up here. I'd forgotten two movies I saw over the weekend, and I watched 'Spun' last night...
KILLER'S KISS (1955) - d. Stanley Kubrick
Um, I was really expecting to fall in love with this movie. The era suggested that this was going to be Kubrick really telling an old-school noir story. Instead, it's a bit more of an exercise in noir style, as Kubrick was only getting his feet wet (this is his first narrative feature). The best thing about the film is its 67 minute running time, but, to be honest, it still feels long.
Here's a quote from the man himself - "While 'Fear and Desire' had been a serious effort, ineptly done, 'Killer's Kiss'... proved, I think, to be a frivolous effort done with conceivably more expertise though still down in the student level of filmmaking."
There's some strong visuals and cutting, a wild (though not exciting) final sequence, and anyone who tells you that they can tell that all the dialogue was recorded in post is a flat-out liar.
Anyone who defends it as Stanley's first masterpiece is also a flat-out liar. Worth watching, just don't have your expectations too high. Oh, it's about a boxer who falls in love with a mob moll. Then they face the mob. The end.
You gotta get to 'The Killing' to see Stanley do it right.
SPUN (2002) - d. Jonas Åkerlund
Ugh. Crap. Shit.
'Meth-heads in SoCal' should be a good movie. It isn't. A lot of people compared it to 'Requiem For A Dream,' a movie I don't think is nearly as good as everyone else seems to. I also don't think they're that similar, other than the fact that drugs play heavily in both. Instead, 'Spun' is more like a poor imitation of second and third-generation Tarantino motifs. If someone's entire cinema experience was 'Kalifornia,' 'Love and a .45,' and 'Two Days In The Valley,' it would explain this movie. As it stands, it's too crap to bother explaining. Mickey Rourke is good. Eric Roberts is passable.
HIGHWAY (2002) - d. James Cox
I kind of hate James Cox. If you were at NYU in the just-post 'Atomic Tabasco' days, you'd understand why. There were two camps at school, the 'Five Feet High and Rising' camp and the 'Atomic Tabasco' camp. Atomic Tabasco kids should've just gone to USC and put us all out of our misery. This isn't just an 'I hate him because he's old as fuck' thing.
The guy who wrote 'Highway' also wrote 'Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead,' 'Kangaroo Jack,' and 'High Fidelity'. I don't get the 'High Fidelity' association watching this charmer, but I do get the other two.
Tarded. This is Jared Leto after he'd semi-legitimized himself with that p.o.s. Aronofsky movie, but he's out of his depth as a leading man here. The costume design stands out as particularly bad, and Jared's outfit's probably the dumbest. This is also an early Jake Gyllenhaal role, and he didn't know what he was doing in front of the camera yet. The 'plot' involves stolen-ish money, a guy who looks like an alligator and a pilgrimage to Seattle because Kurt Cobain's just shot himself. The less said, the better. Even John C. McGinley sucks in it.
This dude, also James Cox, had two surgeries for testicular cancer, was turned on to medical marijuana because where his balls used to be hurt so much (and the disease was eating his stomach), was busted by cops investigating a break-in at his house, and got hooked up with a fifteen year prison sentence. After five years in prison at age 50, an attempted suicide, and two stomach surgeries, he's out, but his parole requires twice-weekly piss testing. Doctors started giving him morphine for his tummy aches, and now the feds are thinking of sending him back to jail because he tested positive for opiates. Can I get some love for mandatory minimums?
The Harry Knowles Fan Appreciation Society
2004-04-08 09:20:00
Current music: Autechre - "Vose In"
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Still thinking about how much I don't like Harry Knowles. Shit like this is why - a review/Penthouse Forum he wrote for another del Toro movie: Blade II
Current music: Autechre - "Vose In"
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Still thinking about how much I don't like Harry Knowles. Shit like this is why - a review/Penthouse Forum he wrote for another del Toro movie: Blade II
Wednesday, April 7, 2004
Jake and...
2004-04-07 23:35:00
Current music: Rodan - "Bible Silver Corner"
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Go Huskies. Thank you, college basketball season, for ending and letting me have my life back.
CRONOS (1991) - d. Guillermo del Toro
First off, his name is my name, too; I like the guy more than I should.
I talk about this movie all the time, even though I've only seen it twice. The last time I managed to properly watch it, I was still in my first tour of duty in college.
What a great movie. What a great movie 'Mimic' could have been if they'd let him go where he wanted to go with it. What a better movie 'Mimic' would've been if they'd made it without Mira Sorvino. What a great director del Toro was, even at this early age.
I've been meaning to watch Cronos again since the DVD came out in October. I'd rented it on tape last spring and realized that there was no way I was going to sit through such a muddy, shitty pan & scan. So, yeah, the first thing you notice is that this transfer is absolutely amazing. Guillermo Navarro, the film's DP, is part of the bumper crop of Mexican cinematographers who are only recently getting their due stateside (Rodrigo Prieto, Emmanuel Lubezki, Gabriel Beristain, etc.) and, even at this early stage in his career, you can tell that Navarro is the man.
The other guy who's the man is Federico Luppi. The plot of this movie involves Luppi, as antique shop owner Jesus Gris, finding a statuette of an angel with a hollow bottom. Inside that hollow bottom is a weird little gold device (made by an alchemist seeking eternal life, of course) that ends up acting a whole lot like an insect when you turn the dial (watch your hands). Anyhow, Luppi gets bitten in front of his loving granddaughter, behaves a whole lot like a vampire, and becomes way fricking addicted to the 'cronos device' - which starts making him younger and able to shave. Originally, del Toro had Max Von Sydow in mind for the part of Señor Gris, but Luppi, who's one of Argentina's biggest stars, brings a warmth and gentility to the role which ends up defining the film.
This is a kooky horror film. A young Ron Perlman hams it up in English, the body count is more of a trickle than a trip to a matadero (though the gore count is reasonably high), and, ultimately, it's more about the love between Jesus and his grand-daughter than any horrible, evil-demon-seed-to-rule-the-world contrivances. Really clever, and a clear sign that there's more pistons firing in del Toro's brain than there are at any Fangoria convention.
Also, there are a tiny handful of directors who give really good commentary track. Steven Soderbergh comes to mind. Del Toro is another one, and his interview and the sparse extras really make the rest of the DVD stand up. I wish more directors could talk about their craft like SS and Guillermo do, because they're just as useful as film school at a billionth the cost.
HELLBOY (2004) - d. Guillermo del Toro
I just read David Edelstein's Slate review of this movie, and this, to me, is the crux of the pro-Guillermo argument: "he's in a class with Peter Jackson as a fan-boy who gets it."
Totally, Mr. Ed, totally. Guillermo's as big a geek as Harry Knowles, except, unlike Harry, he actually has something to say, and the aesthetic taste to pull off all different kinds of genre material.
I got a copy of the screenplay to this movie well before they started shooting because my friend was working for a publisher who would potentially be releasing the script. I'd already become a fan of the comics right around the same time that 'Devil's Backbone' (also starring a Sr Federico Luppi) came out and I realized how much of a del Toro fan I was. At that point, all sense of objectivity was lost. This was supposed to be his labor of love, and he'd even brought Mike Mignola - he who created Hellboy - on to help with production design on 'Blade II' (which is a bad movie only if you can't take a joke). The script I read then was great, pitch-perfect, and one thing that shocked me watching this in the theater was how little changed from script to screen in the 18 or so months in between.
Back when, I read an interview with GDT where he said that 'Hellboy' was going to fulfill his dream of doing a movie where monsters kick the crap out of each other. Ooh, boy, did he succeed. There's a comic book texture and feel to this movie that I haven't really seen before. Though the first Batman and Superman movies and X-Men 2 are great at balancing comic booky-ness with smarts, this is the purest synthesis yet of comics and film. Which basically means that it's just a shitload of fun, and that fun is a primary point of emphasis. You had to know that making a movie starring Ron Perlman painted red was a brilliant f'ing idea, and, yeah, turns out that it pretty much is. If I'd been 14 and sitting in that theater, would've lost my mind.
Again with the Peter Jackson comparison, but he and del Toro have a great eye for special effects. Just like as he did in 'Blade II,' del Toro combines practical and digital effects seamlessly, and creates visuals which wouldn't work if they weren't hybrids and had to stand on one technology or the other. He's still a little bit over-reliant on creating figures digitally, but they've made big strides in that department since 'Blade II.' More often than not, those digital figures work well (Hellboy vs. the bad thing at the end), but sometimes, in the case of Abe Sapien, it leaves something to be desired. Abe Sapien as a whole leaves something to be desired. They did a good job designing him, but then they made the egregious boo-boo of having David Hyde Pierce do the voice work, and they may have also motion-captured him for Abe's scenes.
I do have one other problem, though it's a biggish one. Sure, as a big-budget, mainstream film, 'Hellboy' needs a sense of lightness and simplicity that the often-dark source comics don't offer, but, at the end of the day, I wish there was more Mike Mignola going on. Many of the sets are straight out of his brain, but the angularity and 'half the frame is just a big splotch of black ink' style of his work isn't here on screen. Still, it would be nigh impossible to do a better version of Hellboy in the studio, or any other, setting. The point of this movie is that it's fun and kicks ass, and it mostly succeeds.
And, man, is 'At The Mountains Of Madness' gonna kick.
PRETTY AS A PICTURE : THE ART OF DAVID LYNCH (1997) - d. Toby Keeler
Um, I should start off by saying that I do not believe David Lynch and/or Terry Gilliam and/or anyone else cosmically weird to have invented cinema. I went to school with a lot of you types, and there are stakes in my back yard and a couple bags of Diamond-brand with your name on 'em. One could make an excellent case that Lynch is of the highest order among directors, but I won't give Stanley Kubrick the full credit he's due, so why should I start with these guys?
And, anyone who's going to mention Tim Burton in a sentence with any of the above three names - unless the sentence sounds something like 'Tim Burton was influenced by....' - you need to get out right now. Get out. Now. Seriously. Out.
Not to say that Burton isn't a very good filmmaker who's made great movies, just trying to clarify the pecking order for those who name 'The Matrix,' 'Amelie,' or 'Fight Club' among their favorite films. Go listen to Staind and leave us alone.
Ahhh, the rarified air of the film snob.
I love David Lynch. I want to be his friend. I do not like 'Lost Highway.'
I guess I should talk about the documentary now...
I don't really get it. You have access to David Lynch. You have access to him on a film set. You have access to him in sound mixes and post-production. You have access to him while he's painting. You have access to his earliest work. He's a legendarily affable guy. So, um, what's the fricking deal?
'Pretty as a Picture' isn't a bad movie. The subject is way too interesting to lead to a 'bad' movie. There's interesting stuff in here, especially the excerpts of his earliest films and some moderately revealing interviews. Watching Lynch shellac an oil-painting covered in rotten, maggot-laden meat is a sight to behold. One does get an overwhelming sense of how much 'art' and 'idea' have to do with one another, so it's not a total misstep. Still, I just can't help but feeling like someone got it all remarkably wrong. It's like it's pulling punches - not in the sense that no one asks the tough questions, just in the sense that no one's asking any questions. Again, with the level of access and the talent of the subject, I don't get why it's all so damned bland and devoid of craft. It's like watching 'Italian For Beginners' except this is a documentary, making it even duller. One thing that was confirmed for me was the fact that I don't like 'Lost Highway.' Now I'm inclined to rent it one last time to be sure.
You're not going to do yourself any harm in watching this. You'll definitely know more about Lynch by the time you're done. But, once the credits roll, give me a shout and let me know what you think of that Prague montage, and whether or not the Prague montage doesn't just about say it all.
Current music: Rodan - "Bible Silver Corner"
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Go Huskies. Thank you, college basketball season, for ending and letting me have my life back.
CRONOS (1991) - d. Guillermo del Toro
First off, his name is my name, too; I like the guy more than I should.
I talk about this movie all the time, even though I've only seen it twice. The last time I managed to properly watch it, I was still in my first tour of duty in college.
What a great movie. What a great movie 'Mimic' could have been if they'd let him go where he wanted to go with it. What a better movie 'Mimic' would've been if they'd made it without Mira Sorvino. What a great director del Toro was, even at this early age.
I've been meaning to watch Cronos again since the DVD came out in October. I'd rented it on tape last spring and realized that there was no way I was going to sit through such a muddy, shitty pan & scan. So, yeah, the first thing you notice is that this transfer is absolutely amazing. Guillermo Navarro, the film's DP, is part of the bumper crop of Mexican cinematographers who are only recently getting their due stateside (Rodrigo Prieto, Emmanuel Lubezki, Gabriel Beristain, etc.) and, even at this early stage in his career, you can tell that Navarro is the man.
The other guy who's the man is Federico Luppi. The plot of this movie involves Luppi, as antique shop owner Jesus Gris, finding a statuette of an angel with a hollow bottom. Inside that hollow bottom is a weird little gold device (made by an alchemist seeking eternal life, of course) that ends up acting a whole lot like an insect when you turn the dial (watch your hands). Anyhow, Luppi gets bitten in front of his loving granddaughter, behaves a whole lot like a vampire, and becomes way fricking addicted to the 'cronos device' - which starts making him younger and able to shave. Originally, del Toro had Max Von Sydow in mind for the part of Señor Gris, but Luppi, who's one of Argentina's biggest stars, brings a warmth and gentility to the role which ends up defining the film.
This is a kooky horror film. A young Ron Perlman hams it up in English, the body count is more of a trickle than a trip to a matadero (though the gore count is reasonably high), and, ultimately, it's more about the love between Jesus and his grand-daughter than any horrible, evil-demon-seed-to-rule-the-world contrivances. Really clever, and a clear sign that there's more pistons firing in del Toro's brain than there are at any Fangoria convention.
Also, there are a tiny handful of directors who give really good commentary track. Steven Soderbergh comes to mind. Del Toro is another one, and his interview and the sparse extras really make the rest of the DVD stand up. I wish more directors could talk about their craft like SS and Guillermo do, because they're just as useful as film school at a billionth the cost.
HELLBOY (2004) - d. Guillermo del Toro
I just read David Edelstein's Slate review of this movie, and this, to me, is the crux of the pro-Guillermo argument: "he's in a class with Peter Jackson as a fan-boy who gets it."
Totally, Mr. Ed, totally. Guillermo's as big a geek as Harry Knowles, except, unlike Harry, he actually has something to say, and the aesthetic taste to pull off all different kinds of genre material.
I got a copy of the screenplay to this movie well before they started shooting because my friend was working for a publisher who would potentially be releasing the script. I'd already become a fan of the comics right around the same time that 'Devil's Backbone' (also starring a Sr Federico Luppi) came out and I realized how much of a del Toro fan I was. At that point, all sense of objectivity was lost. This was supposed to be his labor of love, and he'd even brought Mike Mignola - he who created Hellboy - on to help with production design on 'Blade II' (which is a bad movie only if you can't take a joke). The script I read then was great, pitch-perfect, and one thing that shocked me watching this in the theater was how little changed from script to screen in the 18 or so months in between.
Back when, I read an interview with GDT where he said that 'Hellboy' was going to fulfill his dream of doing a movie where monsters kick the crap out of each other. Ooh, boy, did he succeed. There's a comic book texture and feel to this movie that I haven't really seen before. Though the first Batman and Superman movies and X-Men 2 are great at balancing comic booky-ness with smarts, this is the purest synthesis yet of comics and film. Which basically means that it's just a shitload of fun, and that fun is a primary point of emphasis. You had to know that making a movie starring Ron Perlman painted red was a brilliant f'ing idea, and, yeah, turns out that it pretty much is. If I'd been 14 and sitting in that theater, would've lost my mind.
Again with the Peter Jackson comparison, but he and del Toro have a great eye for special effects. Just like as he did in 'Blade II,' del Toro combines practical and digital effects seamlessly, and creates visuals which wouldn't work if they weren't hybrids and had to stand on one technology or the other. He's still a little bit over-reliant on creating figures digitally, but they've made big strides in that department since 'Blade II.' More often than not, those digital figures work well (Hellboy vs. the bad thing at the end), but sometimes, in the case of Abe Sapien, it leaves something to be desired. Abe Sapien as a whole leaves something to be desired. They did a good job designing him, but then they made the egregious boo-boo of having David Hyde Pierce do the voice work, and they may have also motion-captured him for Abe's scenes.
I do have one other problem, though it's a biggish one. Sure, as a big-budget, mainstream film, 'Hellboy' needs a sense of lightness and simplicity that the often-dark source comics don't offer, but, at the end of the day, I wish there was more Mike Mignola going on. Many of the sets are straight out of his brain, but the angularity and 'half the frame is just a big splotch of black ink' style of his work isn't here on screen. Still, it would be nigh impossible to do a better version of Hellboy in the studio, or any other, setting. The point of this movie is that it's fun and kicks ass, and it mostly succeeds.
And, man, is 'At The Mountains Of Madness' gonna kick.
PRETTY AS A PICTURE : THE ART OF DAVID LYNCH (1997) - d. Toby Keeler
Um, I should start off by saying that I do not believe David Lynch and/or Terry Gilliam and/or anyone else cosmically weird to have invented cinema. I went to school with a lot of you types, and there are stakes in my back yard and a couple bags of Diamond-brand with your name on 'em. One could make an excellent case that Lynch is of the highest order among directors, but I won't give Stanley Kubrick the full credit he's due, so why should I start with these guys?
And, anyone who's going to mention Tim Burton in a sentence with any of the above three names - unless the sentence sounds something like 'Tim Burton was influenced by....' - you need to get out right now. Get out. Now. Seriously. Out.
Not to say that Burton isn't a very good filmmaker who's made great movies, just trying to clarify the pecking order for those who name 'The Matrix,' 'Amelie,' or 'Fight Club' among their favorite films. Go listen to Staind and leave us alone.
Ahhh, the rarified air of the film snob.
I love David Lynch. I want to be his friend. I do not like 'Lost Highway.'
I guess I should talk about the documentary now...
I don't really get it. You have access to David Lynch. You have access to him on a film set. You have access to him in sound mixes and post-production. You have access to him while he's painting. You have access to his earliest work. He's a legendarily affable guy. So, um, what's the fricking deal?
'Pretty as a Picture' isn't a bad movie. The subject is way too interesting to lead to a 'bad' movie. There's interesting stuff in here, especially the excerpts of his earliest films and some moderately revealing interviews. Watching Lynch shellac an oil-painting covered in rotten, maggot-laden meat is a sight to behold. One does get an overwhelming sense of how much 'art' and 'idea' have to do with one another, so it's not a total misstep. Still, I just can't help but feeling like someone got it all remarkably wrong. It's like it's pulling punches - not in the sense that no one asks the tough questions, just in the sense that no one's asking any questions. Again, with the level of access and the talent of the subject, I don't get why it's all so damned bland and devoid of craft. It's like watching 'Italian For Beginners' except this is a documentary, making it even duller. One thing that was confirmed for me was the fact that I don't like 'Lost Highway.' Now I'm inclined to rent it one last time to be sure.
You're not going to do yourself any harm in watching this. You'll definitely know more about Lynch by the time you're done. But, once the credits roll, give me a shout and let me know what you think of that Prague montage, and whether or not the Prague montage doesn't just about say it all.
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