Current music: The Soft Boys - "Have A Heart Betty (I'm Not Fireproof) #1"
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I've got a double dose of good news for those who like Zhang Yimou. First off, Miramax has decided to release 'Hero' untouched, which means that I'll put my Weinstein voodoo doll back in the drawer. Second, I found a Japanese version of the trailer for 'The House of Flying Daggers', his next film, on Ain't It Cool News. Generally, it ain't cool, but this sure is: HOUSE.
I want to post more regularly, better than once a week. I've been getting bogged down lately, and that needs to stop. I will post again by Friday or die trying.
BROKEN LIZARD'S CLUB DREAD (2004) - d. Jay Chandrasekhar
Any good will engendered by Broken Lizard's first big release, the sloppy but easily digested 'Super Troopers', just got shot to shit. Or, more accurately, slashed to shit, because Jay Chandrasekhar's follow-up comes in the form of 'Club Dread', a crap-assed T&A comedy slash slasher flick. T&A comedies slash slashers or similar variants should be a no-brainer, a poodle could make the format work, but not the boys in Broken Lizard, oh no. The overwhelming impression I got from this movie is that Broken Lizard, as a group, spent too much time being impressed with themselves and maybe should've spent a little more time bringing the funny.
The members of Broken Lizard are stunned to silence by the shitiness of their film.
The stench of smugness was one of the most frustrating aspects of 'Super Troopers', but there was more than enough crass whackiness to go around, and the overstuffed mash of drugs and kinky sex references actually worked in an 'I know this movie sucks but it's still fun to watch' kind of way. The problem with the first film, which is pretty much quadrupled here, is that once you break it down, there aren't a whole lot of funny jokes in the movie. In 'Club Dread', if I think really hard on it, I might be able to come up with two. One of them involves a real world version of Pac-Man played by people dressed as giant pretzels and bananas, where the ghosts are hot chicks who strip down to bikinis when the contestant finds a power pill/shot they have to drink, and I'm going to have to get back to you on the second funny part, because I have to go be ill now that I realized what I just wrote. And that really is funniest scene in the film. Kill me.
Another complaint levied against 'Super Troopers' is that Chandrasekhar, the film's director and de-facto leader of the Vermont-based comedy troupe Broken Lizard, doesn't really know how to make movies. It was easy to gloss over that fact the first time out, because the story of 'Super Troopers' was irrelevant, and there were decent costumes and production design and the film was exposed properly. Really, if there's even a handful of marginal laughs, that's generally enough to make a stoner comedy work. But 'Club Dread' has higher aspirations, laboring (and I mean LABORING) to tell a story with plenty of twists and turns and stuff that just flat-out does not matter.
If you want to know what's wrong with the movie, just watch the first scene. No, not the part with the two topless chicks making out and about to double-team a guy, the part where those same chicks end up getting chased through the woods/jungle. Who doesn't know how to make a chase scene through the woods? Isn't that Horror 101? Or Horror Pre-School? I can't really explain it even if you have seen it, but, apparently, you don't just need to have a chick running through the woods with the camera chasing her to make it work. Really and truly, before seeing this movie, I thought that was all it took. But somehow, Chandrasekhar has discovered a way to make a horror film chase scene that is flat, styleless, and devoid of tension. Congratulations, Jay, do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to Kevin Smith Jail. We'll spare everyone a critique of the murder scene in the maze, except to say that there's a movie out there with a chase scene in a maze, and it's called 'The Shining' and, Jay, you could've watched it, or if you were at the library and maybe 'The Shining' is a little too hardcore for your library to carry, you could've looked through the kids videos and picked up 'Labyrinth'. I mean, dude, Jim Henson can out-direct you. From the grave.
Mr. Chandrasekhar, I don't particularly care for T&A comedy, but once you've established your film as a T&A comedy slash slasher flick, and you have a sex scene involving an Olympic gymnast, you might want to come up with a sexual position more exciting than the 'Cowgirl'. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for 'Cowgirl', but she's an OLYMPIC GYMNAST. I mean, it's not even 'Reverse Cowgirl'.
For shame.
KUCH NAA KAHO (2003) - d. Rohan Sippy
I can pretty much watch Bollywood all day. There were times, growing up, where my brother and I would be stoned and turn on the International Channel (okay, this isn't really that long ago..), hoping that we would find something from India, preferably in the brownsploitation vein, and preferably starring Amitabh Bachchan. We didn't always luck out, but Saturday and Sunday afternoons were surprisingly rich with fight scenes starring bull dykes who quickly morph into men with silly wigs when the stunts got scary (think the diner scene in 'I'm Gonna Git You Sucka' x 3), car crashes from only one angle, and, then, to cap it all off, someone breaking into song - and all of this without subtitles. That's specifically the brownsploitation genre, a sub-sub genre of the Bollywood architecture whose primary touchstones were American cop movies and blacksploitation. And, to be fair, Bachchan made a whole hill of movies, and most of them don't fit the brownsploitation mold.
Bachchan, in fact, is one of the stars of 'Sholay', a film with so much cultural traction in the Hindi community that we would need to combine 'Star Wars', 'Lawrence of Arabia', and 'Gone with the Wind' into one film just to compare. Indian culture is hugely influenced by the west, perhaps more so than in any other Asian culture, and the ebb and flow of Bollywood trends closely follows the trends of Western filmmaking. 'Sholay', directed by Ramesh Sippy in 1975, is a classic example of the 'Curry Western' genre, and it lays on a heavy dose of Leone alongside everything else you'd come to expect in an Indian film. What should you expect in an Indian film? Music, baby, music. And lots of over-acting. And über-long running times. But mostly music, mostly unmotivated or undermotivated, and mostly with a higher fructose count than a pack of Hostess Sno Balls. There are few things in the world more genius than a Bollywood musical number, and Indian music - which gets a terrible rap, is very much fucking great. I dare you to watch a Bollywood film and not walk away feeling better about the world you live in. Maybe it's something they put in the Ganges, but the relentless optimism of these movies is beyond compare. And, in between, you might just learn something about a culture insanely different from your own. If I was going to give a total novice advice on where to start an Indian film kick, I'd go with 'Sholay' and 'Lagaan', two very different films which do a good job of hinting at everything Bollywood might offer in-between. You can get them both off of Netflix.
With that said, I liked, but didn't love 'Kuch Naa Kaho', the first film from director Rohan Sippy (son of Ramesh, who is Bollywood's answer to Spielberg), and one of India's biggest blockbusters last year. The name means 'Don't Say A Word', and the song 'Kuch Naa Kaho' is a Hindustani romantic standard. The film stars Abhishek Bachchan (that's right, son of Amitabh!) and Aishwarya Rai*, Bollywood's Julia Roberts, in a glossy, effervescent romantic comedy which trades in some very big, and very modern, ideas about the rights of a woman in a changing world. It's fun, and not a bad primer on Hindi rom-coms, but it's dramatically slight (it suffers from a bad meet cute), and the excellent musical numbers are all that holds attention until the film's second half. Still, by movie's end, if you're not noticing just how much feminist doctrine is slipping through under cover of night, then you're not watching. And it shows up on-screen without tasting a bit like medicine. But that's where Bollywood tricks you. You think you're watching crap, but underneath all the artifice and the ridiculously catchy song and dance, filmmakers have plenty of space for ideas write large, and the opportunity to change the world they live in.
*Get used to the name Aishwarya Rai. She's starring in 'Bride and Prejudice' - Gurinder Chadha's curried take on Jane Austen - and has two or three more high-profile Western flicks on the horizon. I think she's a little too mousy, a very Western ideal of beauty, but she's an excellent actress, and a safe bet to make the crossover work.
THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1941) - d. Ernst Lubitsch
Lubitsch = Genius.
Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius Genius.
There's also a short film packaged with the DVD, a little MGM doohickey called 'A New Romance with Celluloid'. If you rent this DVD and do not watch 'A New Romance with Celluloid', you've made a mistake.
SINGLES (1992) - d. Cameron Crowe
I was so disappointed when this movie came out that this is only my third time seeing it. The only film, before I reached 'killing people in foreign countries' age, that I ever anticipated with close to this much excitement was 'Batman', if that offers perspective. I was expecting the man who'd delivered 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High' and 'Say Anything' to take things up yet another notch, and deliver a seminal treatise to love, rock 'n' roll, and how totally bogus the mainstream is, dude. In retrospect, 'Singles' doesn't miss quite as bad as I'd remembered, but it still ties itself up in knots to no apparent effect. Campbell Scott is the only actor who walks away from this movie cooler for having been in it.
BORN YESTERDAY (1950) - d. George Cukor
Hey, here's a cute film! It's on the AFI's 100 Laughs list. I'm not sure it should be in the top quarter of the bracket, but methinks they were trying to make sure George Cukor showed in good standing. Judy Holliday is fantastic as a former showgirl and current lover of a crooked businessman (Broderick Crawford) who's come to Washington D.C. to buy a bit of influence. Holliday's character, Billi Dawn, is so completely uncouth that Crawford enlists William Holden, playing a political journalist, to show her the ropes of the educated class. Sparks fly between Holliday and Holden, and Billi is suddenly transformed into a proto-Marxist, hairy-legged suffragist. Or something. I never thought I'd say this about a left-leaning film not directed by Ken Loach, but all the hand-wringing about equality for everyone and the perils of capitalism ends up being overkill. Still, worth watching for Holliday.
CATCH THAT KID (2003) - d. Bart Freundlich
Pity Bart Freundlich. From 'Myth of Fingerprints' - kinda weak, but a promising start - to glossy kid movies in just three films. And, it would be one thing, Bart, my boy, if you made that move with style. If 'Catch That Kid' was something special, I'd be singing your praises right now, but it isn't, and you're the one to blame.
The thing about 'Catch That Kid' which is most disappointing is that it's based on a Danish film called 'Klatretøsen', which was a monster-hit in Europe, and is supposedly the best kid's action film since time immemorial. All of that is surely too much hype, but I've been dying to see the real article; my sweet tooth for kid-related fare which cops grown-up genre conventions is crying for a root canal, but all I want is more sugar. And, no, while I think it's nice that people have responded to the 'Spy Kids' series, and it's sadly as smart as anything out there right now, those movies don't cut it. You couldn't run a red in the eighties without hitting six or seven decent kids' movies. Now the situation's so dire, we end up treating Rodriguez like Les Bros Lumière.
Original and poor facsimile.
'Catch That Kid' starts with the outlandish premise that a 12 year-old is an unsupervised and accomplished mountain climber. Ridiculous, sure, but it's a kids' movie, so you have to give a little to get a little, and after that, the movie - and this, I think, is its big strength - hews a lot closer to reality than most action films. Her dad ends up getting really sick, and the only surgery that can save him involves flying to Denmark and dropping $250k. That's a tall order, all things considered, but mom is a security specialist working for a soon-to-open superbank with a tough to crack supersafe designed by momma herself, and the supersafe is going to be filled with cash on the night of the bank's opening party (not exactly the case, but for purposes of brevity..). In order to break into the bank, our girl, Maddy, enlists her two best friends, two guys her age who are constantly competing for her affection.
There's a lot of places where the movie goes wrong, and really only a couple places where anything goes right. The actress who plays Maddy, Kristen Stewart (Jodie's daughter in 'Panic Room'), still looks exactly like Jodie Foster, and still seems to have more chops than actors two and three times her age; she may not be Evan Rachel Wood, but, in her first lead, she's more than capable of working her way through the silliest crap. Unfortunately, other than Stewart and Jennifer Beals, nobody else in the film seems to know how to act. Maybe Michael Des Barres deserves some credit for bringing the camp to the party, but even his role deserved more menace. The boys playing Maddy's best friends, Corbin Bleu and Max Thieriot, well, they're more at the Nickelodeon sitcom stage of their acting careers. Structurally, the film mostly works, and should be really entertaining, but the screenplay's dialogue is painfully leaden, and it's hard to imagine Judy Dench salvaging many of these scenes, let alone 12 year olds. More woes in the form of crappy editing, overkill production design, and a soundtrack that only a movie this poor could deserve.
In the interests of full-disclosure, because I don't expect anyone else I know to see this movie, I followed up by watching the trailer to 'Klatretøsen'. The films look almost identical from the trailers, shot for shot in some places; even some of the annoying stylistic flourishes in 'Catch' look as if they've been lifted directly from the original. I don't know if that means a whole lot, because 'Klatretøsen' has a very good reputation and 'Catch' was universally panned, but I thought it was interesting. I won't put much stake into it, because I believe, in the hands of a better director, that 'Catch That Kid' could've been something really special.
Here's the link to the 'Klatretøsen' trailer, just in case you're curious -
Click Me (Yes, the site's in Danish, but go to 'Multimedia' and choose a format. See? Not so hard.)
A SHOT IN THE DARK (1964) - d. Blake Edwards
I'm making my second assault on the AFI list of top 100 comedies. When it first came out, I went out and saw about thirty movies off the list. Until that point, I didn't appreciate anything pre-1960s that wasn't a noir, Hitchcock, Sturges, or Wilder, give or take. But since my first crack at it, I've become a grateful convert. I'm going to see 'The General' again, because I'm not 100% sure I've watched it before, and I still need to see the 'Gold Rush', but at that point, I'll have seen the nos. 1-32 on the list.
'A Shot in the Dark' is the excellent follow-up to the original 'Pink Panther'. Generally considered funnier, probably because Sellers' Clouseau has significantly more screentime, and it's on the AFI list where 'PP' isn't, but I'm not convinced. It's a very funny movie, and I'm glad I watched it, but I'm going to vote for the original. The addition of Herbert Lom as Dreyfus, the chief of police, is inspired, but the cat-and-mouse between Sellers and David Niven in the 'PP' carried more dramatic weight. This time, the story is Agatha Christie light. Also, 'PP' has better locations, a better Mancini score, that amazing Fran Jeffries song and dance number, and Claudia Cardinale, who I'll take eight days a week and twice on Saturday over Elke Sommer.
But, yeah, Sellers is definitely even funnier this time around, so I guess it's just a matter of taste.
THE SURE THING (1984) - d. Rob Reiner
I'm not sure how I missed this film growing up, but ne'er did I see it. Super-young John Cusack meets super-cute Daphne Zuniga and they reenact 'It Happened One Night' except with a slightly different plot and a lot of the chick from 'Falcon Crest' wandering around in a thong. Cusack and Zuniga are both pretty up for it, though JC's just a little too young to convince, and the casting in general is inspired. This was a pedestrian choice for director Reiner, coming off the masterstroke that was 'This is Spinal Tap.' It's not a bad movie, I respect that they tried to put together a smarter teen romance, but I don't feel retroactively scarred for not seeing it in my wee-lad days.
EL ARTE DE MORIR (2000) - d. Álvaro Fernández Armero
The art of the slasher flick is a lot like the art of the Bollywood flick or the porno flick: people don't care about what happens in between money shots, but you gotta get the money shot (for Bollywood, please replace 'money shot' with 'song and dance sequence'). In slasher flicks, nothing counts more than the death scenes. Good death scenes forgive EVERYTHING in the land of horror (see: peoples' responses to 'Final Destination', a film with elaborate but only marginally decent death sequences).
So what a bummer then, watching 'The Art of Murder', a Spanish slasher film with plenty of ideas, some clever fundamentals, and shitty shitty death scenes. If I wanted, I could spend a month pointing out everything that's weird or wrong with this movie, but it stars Fele Martinez, my favorite Spanish actor, so I'll go easy.
But not before I land the horror fan kiss of death: clearly directed by someone who doesn't love horror movies. Sacrilege!
KISSED - (1996) - d. Lynne Stopkewich
This is a Canadian film based on a short story by Barbara Gowdy. Molly Parker works in a mortuary and has sex with dead guys. It's kinky, but also tender, original, and oddly reverent. In spite of its subject, it's nothing like a horror film, and it's the best unheralded Canadian movie I've seen since Don McKellar's 'Last Night' (which is brilliant and must be seen by everyone and their mother). If you can find 'Kissed' on Sundance or VHS, and you're able to get past the subject, it's more than worth your time. Which means Greg will rent it and then whine about how much he hates it. Greg, this is more of a Stef movie, ok?
SHORTS
DOPPELGANGER (2001) - d. Michael Horowitz & Gareth Smith
This is everything that's wrong with short films. Pathetic. An over-financed UCLA production starring Timothy Olyphant, Rebecca Gayheart, and a bunch of unnecessary digital effects which add absolutely zero to the story. I hope Rebecca Gayheart gets run over by a Hummer.
NO PROBLEM (2001) - d. Gene Lushtak
I wish that this was a student film, so I could hold it up as an example of a perfect counter to 'Doppelganger's glossy shittiness, but it isn't, and it's not that wonderful anyways, but still.. 'Doppelganger' is just so bad. 'No Problem' is clearly a work of autobiography, and it's about a very young boy whose family has just emigrated to the States from Russia in the late 1970s. Basically, what you get is a too-cute kid suffering the humiliations of a horrible day at school until the deus ex machina machine stops by to make things go happily ever after. I'm being harsh, and really, there's little to complain about with this film. Camera looks good, costumes look good, sets look good, sound mix is good, etc.. etc.. Perfect example of someone using a short to prove they're ready for a feature and coming out the other end looking like they're ready for a feature. Amen to that.
LA SALLA (1996) - d. Richard Condie
Painful Canadian film which just happens to be digitally animated. It also happens to be really fricking stupid. The short is courtesy of Richard Condie, the guy who later went on to curate the animation show 'O, Canada' which I'm pretty sure used to run on Cartoon Network in the '120 Minutes' time slot many moons ago.
MIRIAM CORNSWIG'S FAREWELL PERFORMANCE (2002) - d. Victoria Arch
It's better for all of us if I just leave this one alone..
SHE LOVES ME, SHE LOVES ME NOT (2003) - d. Jamie Rafn
No dialogue, just beefy classical music over a montage detailing the romantic ups and downs of an impossibly beautiful young British couple. Shot on 35mm, the best thing the film has going for it is that it looks outstanding. It's all very accomplished, but it's also very hokey, and I'd want to see another film from this director before I let him/her direct anything other than music videos. Which is really what this is.
EVELYN: THE CUTEST EVIL DEAD GIRL (2002) - Brad Peyton
Another Canadian short, 'Evelyn' is so terrifyingly unoriginal that it makes my 'moving to Canada' plan an urgent necessity. You see, I need Canadian citizenship, and I need it soon, just so I can take National Film Board of Canada grant money away from Brad Peyton. Ok, ok, I'm being unfair. 'Evelyn' has some cute ideas going on, but most of them are riffs on Tim Burton - especially 'Nightmare Before Christmas' - and Dr. Seuss (see: rhyming narration). Neat sets, though. The whole thing looks like a cartoon come to life. I wouldn't have any issues at all if there was a real sense of story to it. Just because you have a beginning, middle, and end doesn't mean your work is done, buddy. Universal is paying this kid to make a feature called 'The Spider and the Fly', and if this film is any indication, it may not be live action. Stinks like stupid to me.
ZULU 9 (2001) - d. Alan Gilsenan
This is a short film from Ireland which obviously had a ton of backing from the Irish Film Board/Bord Scannán na hÉireann, but doesn't live up to its promising premise. I lived in Ireland a while back, just as the refugee discussion was kicking into gear - most rich-world EU countries have been overrun with asylum-seekers in recent years, and the British Isles have been particularly hard hit - and because my first roommate was African-American and socially-aware, I spent a lot of time with refugee-status immigrants during my year in Dublin. The refugee issue is only going to grow as the world gets smaller and the canyon between the haves and have-nots engulfs poorer nations, and I always thought that the subject of refugees in Ireland would be a ripe one for a film.
Fifteen to twenty years ago, Hibernia was a place which people wanted to leave rather than come to and - thanks to their status as England's punching bag - the Irish have long harbored an inferiority complex about the appeals of their country. The UK is seen as the holy land for many in search of asylum, and while things are nowhere near as out of control in Ireland, it's still an appealing option for those on the run from their homes, be they political or economic refugees. Even ten years ago, Africans, Arabs, and Asians were a novelty in Dublin, but in recent years, things have shifted dramatically, and there are now growing enclaves of Somali, Pakistani, Ivorians, and East Timorians in the city. The hard truth of Ireland's move from economic backwater to first-world promised land is that the Irish haven't been the most welcoming of hosts, and it's a truth that 'Zulu 9' ignores as it highlights the immigrant debate in what is essentially an action film format.
'Zulu 9' is a twelve minute short which essentially takes place in real time, as a long-distance trucker, clearly just off a container ship from Wales or the continent, discovers that he's got a party of stowaways in the payload of his eighteen-wheeler. He radios in to a Garda (Police) channel, and the action follows the trucker as he rolls along the highway, picks up a police escort, and is steers into a 'clear zone' ready to receive his human cargo.
The film's two biggest problems are Gilsenan's hyperactive and hyperacute framing of the image, and his poor handling of an ending which is dramatically appropriate but ineffectively executed. I don't have a problem with hand-held camerawork and flashy, staccato editing, but it's more of a linguistic flourish than an elemental piece of the lexicon, and it needs to be justified by the narrative. 'Zulu 9' presents a perfect opportunity for this kind of ornamentation, and stuttering edits and a shuddering camera do add to the tension, but Gilsenan goes far overboard, with his feet in cement, and the bulk of the film's nervous energy is due to its phenomenal sound mix. I'd like to see it on a bigger screen before passing a final verdict, but as it stands, a lot of time and money went into this film and I know that the Irish Film Board runs on a tight budget; a stronger finished product would've justified the Board's decision to put a lot of eggs in this one basket.
