"K" is for King Boxer

 As I am led to understand, King Boxer set off the "kung fu" craze in the U.S. when the dubbed version (Five Fingers of Death) made a splash on this side of the Pacific. I hadn't seen Five Fingers of Death, but it seemed like the dubbing didn't help the experience of Django, so it made more sense to watch this landmark chop sockey film in its native language.

 Other than 1978's The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, King Boxer seems to be held in the highest esteem for Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movies, and I can understand why. I suspect that the dubbed version would make it even more enjoyable for Western audiences, but the film is no slouch in Mandarin. For such a simple story (a tournament of fighters that will determine which discipline controls the provinces), King Boxer packs in a number of subplots, introduces new characters nearly every ten minutes, and has crisply shot, kinetic fight scenes. And then there's the gore - it doesn't start until nearly an hour in, but when Chang-hwa Jeong (Six Assassins) commits to eye gouging and decapitation, he goes all out.


Chao Chi-Hao (Lieh Lo) is a student under the tutelage of Master Sung (Wen Chung Ku) and is in love with Sung's daughter Ying Ying (Ping Wang). When bandits attack Sung, he decides it would be better for Chi-Hao to study under Master Sun*(Mien Fang), where Chao's brother Ta-Ming (Bong-Jin Jin) has been training. He sends Chi-Hao out, not knowing that the bandits are servants of Meng Tung-Shun (Feng Tien), who wants to eliminate the other disciplines in order to win the tournament and control the provinces.

 Meng Tung-Shun is, to outward appearances, an honorable man, and in public he stops his son (Shen Chan) from making him look bad. But behind closed doors, he's scheming to destroy Sun and Sung, along with their best pupils. He also collects master-less warriors, including Chen Lang (Chi Chu Chin), a fighter who uses his mighty forehead in combat. Later he attains the assistance of Okuda (Hsiung Chao) a brutal Karate expert from Japan who travels with two swordsmen. They do his dirty work, until Chi-Hao intervenes.

 When Chi-Hao proves himself to be worthy of training, Master Sun teaches him the "Iron Palm," a deadly skill that requires harsh training, all the more so after Meng Tung-Shun's henchmen destroy Chi-Hao's hands (in a very similar way to Django). Not to spoil too much, but let's just say he makes an unexpected full recovery in time for the tournament.

 In order not to bog down the review with names, I'm leaving out several important characters, including a love triangle involving a singer and one of Sun's other pupils - who betrays Chi-Hao out of jealousy - but there's a lot going on in King Boxer between all of the great fight scenes. The lulls between action never feel boring because there's so much going on, so many characters with differing agendas, and allegiances being swapped regularly. It's not the most streamlined movie, but King Boxer is never difficult to follow aside from keeping track of who's who (by name anyway, physically they're pretty distinctive characters).

 I had heard King Boxer was pretty violent, but early on it seemed like that was exaggerating things a bit. Not so later in the film, when blood starts pouring and savage wounds are opened as a result of fights getting serious. Once Okuda shows up, the film takes a decidedly darker turn and as the tournament approaches, King Boxer becomes more of a revenge film than you'd believe early on. Not that I'm complaining, because it elevates the film from "pretty damn good" to "holy crap" in short order.

 Finally, it's worth noting that King Boxer uses the theme from Ironside, and whether you know the show or not, you'll recognize the theme - Quentin Tarantino also used it for Kill Bill, and he appears on the commentary track for this film, which was a nice surprise. I think it's the second commentary from Tarantino I've heard for a movie he wasn't involved with (the other is Hot Fuzz). I will admit it's hard to remove the baggage of Kill Bill when I heard it in the film (and it plays quite a bit in a similar fashion) but that didn't detract from the experience. Call it King Boxer, call it Five Fingers of Death, whatever works for you, but settle down and enjoy some Shaw Brothers at their finest.



 * IMDB says "Sun" but the DVD I watched had subtitles that said Suen.

"D" is for Django

 Django (1966) is the sequel to Takeshi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) and has the distinction of not being one of the many Django knock-offs released between 1967 and 2012. Nah, I'm just pulling your chain, at least about the first part. It is true that Sukiyaki Western Django is ultimately a prequel, but I doubt that Sergio Corbucci (Super Fuzz) really planned for his Spaghetti Western about revenge, gold, and shooting Mexicans was meant to be based on a movie starring Japanese actors speaking phonetic English and Quentin Tarantino talking like he was being dubbed by a Japanese Quentin Tarantino impersonator.

  Anyway, I knew that Django existed for a while, but I'd only ever seen it made reference to, usually in documentaries like The Spaghetti West. I had seen Sukiyaki Western Django and I knew the story, so I was excited to hear that Tarantino was going to make a Django knock-off*, but it was weird that not many people I knew had heard of the original. Well, I figured it was high time for me to see it so that I could impart some wisdom to you good folks, and just maybe you'd watch Django, too.

(For the record, I watched the dubbed version because it was the only one available, so I'm not going to try to comment on performances. Everybody's voices were pretty bad, especially Django's. I'll try to watch the subtitled one when I can.)

 Django isn't really a classic in the way that Fistful of Dollars is, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have its charm. If it's remembered for anything, it's for having a great theme song and an even better gimmick for its title character.

 Franco Nero (Django Unchained) is Django, and we meet him trudging through the desert, dragging a coffin behind him. The theme song hints at loss and of love and I guess it's safe to assume that there's somebody in that coffin, so one can be forgiven when he later tells somebody that it's his friend, "Django." Long story, but we do get half an explanation later. Stick around and I'll share it with you.

 Django comes across Maria (Loredana Nusciak), who is being whipped by Mexican bandits for trying to escape them. Before Django does anything about it, the bandits are wiped out by soldiers who then indicate that they want to kill Maria, so Django brutally murders all of them. One of them even falls into quicksand, which is a pretty nasty way to go but it turns out is mostly foreshadowing the last act of the film. Django takes Maria into town, and into a saloon / brothel run by Nathaniel (Ángel Álvarez), who explains that she is not welcome, but our hero doesn't care.

 In fact, Django is kind of a jerk to Nathaniel and all of the ladies who work there. He drags the coffin inside and makes a mess and later kills a bunch of guys and tells Nathaniel to "clean it up, but don't touch my coffin." He's a pretty presumptuous guy, if you ask me. He's also pretty cruel to Maria, and it turns out there's no real rhyme or reason behind it. I don't know that I want to pull for him yet, but everybody else is pretty much a scumbag too.

 The town is one of those "neutral areas for two opposing factions" that you see in movies like these (and also Yojimbo, where Leone "borrowed" most of Fistful from): there are the Mexican bandits, controlled by General Hugo Rodriguez (José Bódalo), and the soldiers of Major Jackson (Eduardo Fajardo), who hates Mexicans almost as much as he hates Yankees. His soldiers wear home-made red hoods and carry a burning cross when they come for Django. Sounds kind of familiar, but I can't tell why...

 Major Jackson is mad because Django keeps killing his men (but sparing Jackson) but he's also wary after finding out that the "friend" in Django's coffin is a machine gun that wipes out his posse. Jackson is a pretty rotten guy - he gets his kicks out of letting Mexicans out of a pen and shooting them with a rifle as they run away, so we know he has to die eventually.

 Rodriguez and his bandits aren't much better: they catch one of Jackson's men, Brother Johnathan (Gino Pernice) trying to escape town, so they cut off his ear and make him eat it. If that wasn't bad enough, Rodriguez shoots him in the back as he walks away, so I guess Django will just play both sides against each other or something like that. I mean, I've seen this movie before, and Corbucci already gave away the secret of the coffin thirty minutes in, so what's left to surprise us?

 Well, plenty, it turns out: Django IS working for one side, but he never works for the other, and the side that thinks are his friends end up just being muscle for a robbery the titular character has in mind. Poor Maria keeps getting dragged into this because she ran away from Jackson's men and to the bandits, then realized that was even worse and tried to escape, so everybody wants her dead. Even the other prostitutes (whores?) get into a mud fight over whether it's Maria's fault that Django is killing everybody. In my estimation it's not really her fault that he saves her and brings her back when he didn't know that's where she was running from, but maybe I'm not privy to some inside information.

 There's some gold thieving and some shoot-outs and some betrayals (surprisingly not who you think) and then some frontier justice and more quicksand (this time it's Django's coffin, which has been filled with gold) and a final shootout at the cemetery. Django tells Nathaniel and later Maria that he lost somebody a while ago, when he "was too far away to help" and it looks like he's wearing a uniform under all of those heavy coats. But it's not clear if Jackson was responsible for it - Django seems to hate him but it's never clear what exactly he did - but vengeance must be served.

 I like the aesthetic of this "Old West": yes, there's a lot of dry landscapes, but the town is constantly wet and muddy and cold. There's a continued thread that any water you see in this area has to be disgusting or slimy or quicksand, which is a nice change of pace from dust and sand everywhere. Django's plan, while convoluted, has some pretty clever twists and turns, even if it's never clear why he's doing it. I guess he vaguely references being able to buy off who he was in order to start a new life, but I'm pretty sure the people he'd be paying off were the same assholes he just robbed and ran away from. Oh well, the final show down is pretty cool, and he does it without functioning hands.

 Nero would play Django again in 1987, but in the mean time people continued making Django movies - kind of like the Spaghetti Western equivalent of Asylum Studios - so you have lots of options. Still, this is arguably the best of them, I'm going to go out on a limb and say, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong. It just seems like no knock-off is going to topple the original. I mean, even Tarantino knew better than to leave Franco Nero out of his shameless tie-in to the series...

 * I guess the respectable term for when QT does it is "homage."

Cap'n Howdy Presents: The 14 Best Films I saw in 2012 (Part Two)

 I believe when we left off, the Cap'n was lamenting that of the first seven "Best Of 2012" movies that I only had existing reviews for two of them (The Avengers and Cosmopolis) whereas the second half of the list includes only one movie I haven't already reviewed. How silly of me not to, you know, split up the writing duties between the two pieces, but as it turns out I have plenty to add about the films that made this list.

 If the theme of Part One was "surprises" - and, looking back it it, it clearly was movies I didn't expect to be blown away by - Part Two is comprised of films that I had a strong inclination I would enjoy, but that surpassed even that. It's also become clear that more than a few of these films are ones that people I know (and whose opinions I often respect) REALLY hate. One in particular looks to be a repeat of one of my top picks from last year, and we'll address that accordingly. To save some time, I'm going to let the links to the original reviews do most of the heavy lifting this time and focus my energy on additional reflections now that I've had some time to digest these films and to study reactions from around cinephilia.

 The difficult bit is figuring out where to start, so maybe I should get the most controversial choice out of the way first:


 Looper - To be honest with you, I was expecting The Master or Cosmopolis to be the movie I had the most disagreements about this year. Even Zero Dark Thirty and Django Unchained seem to have a healthy debate surrounding them, but I'm continually surprised by the immediate and negative reaction I get for suggesting Looper was one of my favorite movies of 2012. It's akin to my inclusion of Drive in last year's list, when I discovered that many good friends really and truly hate that film, often for the very reasons I enjoyed it.

 I get the impression that people don't like Looper because the time travel logic is nonsensical, or that the resolution of the story leaves audiences feeling like they wasted their time, or that (in the words of an acquaintance of mine) the film felt like someone was shooting "a first draft."

 Needless to say, I don't agree, but this is a much more hotly contested movie than I had any idea after seeing it. Whether you left the film feeling ripped off or wanting to see it again immediately, I guess it's better to feel strongly about it than to feel nothing, but for my money Looper was worth revisiting. I think that Rian Johnson sets up a world with its own rules about time travel, sticks to them and tinkers with themes set up in the film in clever ways. He also leaves a few elements ambiguous (I find it amusing that in his downloadable commentary, Johnson is fascinated by the "Kid Blue is Abe" theory but doesn't say one way or the other). I've given Prometheus grief for intentional ambiguity, but since Looper is a self-contained story that is pretty clearly about closing Joe's "loop," the story elements not specifically addressed don't fall under the "kick the can down the road" sequel-izing that Prometheus and Tron Legacy are guilty of.

 You'll notice that in my original review I posited a theory that can't possibly be right. One commenter suggested another theory, so I checked to see if that held any water.

This is the comment:

 I saw this posted on another blog about Looper and watched the movie again and realized yup this person has got it right: ( I was a bit uncomfortable with the thought of Joe sleeping with his mother but turns out he didn't at all)

"I'm going to throw everyone for a "loop" no pun intended. If anyone paid attention, Young Joe slept with a hooker whom had a daughter named: SARAH. "Sarah" was the girl looking after Cid. Considering the hooker knew what Young Joe did, and that Old Joe went after the hookers daughter(Note long hair of the kid the hooker carrys to the room, it's blonde.) as one of the three targets this leads you to one conclusion. The hookers daughter is the Sarah watching the young Rainmaker. She herself looped back to change him from a young age, remember Cid stated that, "Sarah's a liar, she's not my mother. My mother was killed." and Sarah stated she was trying to raise him properly. Boom, now you know how Sarah know's what Looper's are.

I caught it the first round. If I hadn't heard the hooker state her daughter's name was Sarah, I would of never of caught it." 

 Unfortunately, none of this is true. I literally just finished watching every scene that Piper Perabo's Susie is in the film, and she never once says her daughter's name. The child is also not blonde, but brunette (which helps the argument because Emily Blunt / Sarah's hair has brown roots). Rian Johnson is actually pretty tricky in avoiding Susie's daughter's name, even in the deleted scenes, but when you look at the age matches Old Joe finds, two of them are visible:

 The cagey bit is leaving the bottom one off (and the edit happens right before the bottom picture gets close), but since Cid is one of the possible choices and the other possibility was the boy that Old Joe kills, I think we're meant to believe that Megan Richardson is Susie's daughter (even though the address doesn't match). So that doesn't help my theory or the reposted comment theory, but I guess if you hate Looper for "not making any sense," then this is only going to bolster your case.

 Fair enough. I'm not going to try to argue with you about whether every plot point makes perfect sense or not, or in failing to do so that it means the film is terrible (and I've heard that a lot). I still think that Johnson sets up the universe well, raises the stakes in a compelling way, and tells an interesting story that leaves you asking questions. Are the answers to those questions in Looper? Well, I've seen it several times now, with and without the commentary/ies, and I find there's something new to discover every successive time. For me, that's successful, but I get that for others, the film collapses under its own logic. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one.


 Moonrise Kindgom - While I will continue to debate with myself what my favorite Wes Anderson film is, I'm settling down comfortably with saying that Moonrise Kingdom is his best made so far. For a film that's set in the period that Anderson fetishizes unabashedly in all of his other movie (the mid-1960s), Moonrise Kingdom manages not do feel bogged down by its period trappings. I don't mean to diminish Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums or The Life Aquatic, et al, but Moonrise Kingdom's cast of characters feels less like a motley collection of "let's see what these types would be like together" and more like an ensemble that fit together in the story. In particular, I like the way the adults are continually flummoxed about how they're supposed to handle Sam and Suzy's determination to stay together, in particular Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) and Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton). I don't think I mentioned it in the old review, but the scenes with them talking to Sam's foster parents and Social Services (Tilda Swinton) over the phone made me laugh as hard as anything in the film.


 Argo - Ben Affleck made a Zero Dark Thirty that doesn't seem to bother the people bothered by Zero Dark Thirty. Does that make sense? I don't wish to diminish his truly engrossing, exceedingly well made retelling of a declassified true story by implying that because it doesn't address torture that the film is somehow "less than" another movie that retells something more recent. Not at all. Argo is Ben Affleck firing on all cylinders, and while I enjoyed Gone Baby Gone and really enjoyed The Town, that didn't prepare me for how accomplished his third directorial feature is.

 The parallels to Zero Dark Thirty are inevitable - both deal with CIA Operatives who, in real life, tenaciously pursued their goal and succeeded when nobody believed they could. One was made with the cooperation of the individuals involved and the other wasn't (if you don't already know which is which, go check - you might be surprised). Both manage to keep the audience engaged in the narrative, to give them a laugh or two, but to then turn that switch and be genuinely suspenseful even when we know what happened. Zero Dark Thirty is harder to watch, but don't take that to mean I'm suggesting that Argo's palatability (probably not an actual word) means it should regarded with kid gloves. I've seen it twice, and it holds up both times. Hopefully we can get over this "Ben Affleck who stars in crappy movies" stigma and begin to enjoy his second life as a director of high quality films. We know what he can do, and I look forward to seeing him top himself after setting the bar this high.

  The Master - If Cosmopolis is a hard movie to like, then The Master is its mercurial cousin. Paul Thomas Anderson continues to push his films further away from the concept of conventional narrative and towards specific types of character studies, of dichotomies. Since Punch-Drunk Love, he's edged away from the "three act" structure of conventional cinema and instead hones in on two specific archetypes, pits them against each other, and plays out the result in front of us. The films don't so much end as they drift off, and even more so than There Will Be Blood, The Master is less about the lives of Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) and Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as it is the specific intersection of their paths for a period of time lasting no longer than two or three years. We learn as much about Freddie as we're ever going to before he meets Lancaster, and what little we know about "the Master" comes from the way that other people react to him.

 I can understand the frustration from audiences (and working at a theatre where The Master was playing, I saw it first hand), but I don't believe the point of the film was to tell a story about these two men - any more than the film is a meditation or expose on Scientology - so much as it was to throw the embodiments of two essentially divergent philosophies together and allow them to coexist for as long as humanly possible. Or perhaps you'd like to think of The Master as the Id and the Ego clashing, as the Super Ego strains to separate them, all the while acknowledging a futility in fighting their codependent addiction. In the end, they both get what they want, and unlike most Hollywood films that turns out not to be each other. Eventually I hope to be able to talk to more people who have seen The Master, as so far it's been a limited sample size.

 Skyfall - It took MGM going bankrupt to settle the Daniel Craig as James Bond run of 007 films. Like another movie on this list, the down time helped, rather than hindered, the end result, because for all of the promise of Casino Royale and all that Quantum of Solace failed to build on, Skyfall at last figured out how to bring Bond full circle. Yes, it borrows a bit liberally from The Dark Knight in its villain's story structure (I'm sorry, but it's hard to watch the interrogation scene and not see Javier Bardem giving his best take on the Joker), but where it stumbles in some places it excels in others. Yes, Silva sometimes resembles a certain Clown Prince of Crime in his philosophy and execution, but his reasoning for it is more sound in the Bond universe, and his maternal fixation to M (Judi Dench) elevates some of the "copycat" mechanics of the plot.

 But besides all of that, Skyfall is a cracking good James Bond film that feels like it's a James Bond film. Gone are many of the Bourne-inspired aspects of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, and in its place are clear action sequences, clever quips, and nods to the earliest of 007 films that serve a purpose beyond just referencing the series. Skyfall ends in a comfortable nook that should have James Bond fans very excited for what's to come, because it's the promise of what we've been looking forward to married to the series that brought us here in the first place. The revelation of who a certain character is caught me completely off-guard because of how well Sam Mendes, John Logan, Robert Wade and Neal Purvis built their arc (I'm being cagey just in case you haven't seen it and want to) in the story. Needless to say that we end Skyfall in a very familiar location with a fitfully intriguing dynamic moving forward.

 It's fair to mention that there isn't a "Bond Girl" in Skyfall, not in the conventional sense or really in any way that you'd define the character type. There are characters that would seem to fit into those roles, but without spoiling too much, neither of them actually where you think they'll be. Instead, Skyfall focuses more on Bond's relationship with M, with Silva's relationship to M, and briefly where Bond himself came from (all the while debunking the long-standing theory that "James Bond" is a code name assigned to 007 agents). On the other hand, I can't gripe too much with a movie that brings back Q and the Ashton Martin and has refreshingly clever things to do with both of them.


  Django Unchained - I don't know that I have a lot more to add to my review of Django Unchained. It is, bar none, the most fun I've had watching a Quentin Tarantino film, and that includes the giddy experience of watching Pulp Fiction when I was far too young and that first audience reaction to Kill Bill Part One. It still makes me chuckle that Tarantino brazenly gets away with using a Jim Croce song and it's totally appropriate for the montage he includes it in. That, even more than the Rick Ross or the James Brown / Tupac Shakur mashup, made me laugh out loud in the theatre. If you want to read something silly, Google Armond White's critique of Tarantino (and more specifically, of Samuel L. Jackson), "Still Not a Brother." It's hilarious in the way that almost everything Armond White writes is, and if you haven't heard of the intentionally contrarian reviewer before, it's as good a place as any to learn what he's all about.

  The Cabin in the Woods - I was watching Serenity the other night, and when I finished it made sense to watch some of the extras again. In particular, I wanted to watch them for the conception of Joss Whedon in 2005, when he was still mostly known as the guy who made Buffy and Angel and Firefly. He had a small legion of devoted fans (of which the Cap'n counts himself, to a degree) that helped turn the cancelled Firefly into Serenity, which didn't set the world on fire (at first, anyway - today it has a solid fan base I run across frequently). Whedon made Dr. Horrible and Dollhouse, and then 2012 happened.

 Now he's the proven box-office commodity / smash hit director slash writer of The Avengers, a movie that really shouldn't have worked and even then shouldn't have worked as well as it does. The world is his oyster, but it's funny to think that because MGM went bankrupt, the Whedon-scripted / Drew Goddard-directed meta-horror film The Cabin in the Woods went from coming out to relative anonymity in 2009 (when it was made) to being a preamble of sorts to the blockbuster to come. And honestly, if I really had to choose between the two, I'd give the edge to The Cabin in the Woods.

 I've mentioned it before, and because horror films are something of a specialty for the Cap'n, I come back to it a lot, but The Cabin in the Woods doesn't necessarily deconstruct or redefine horror films in the way that I think some people believe it does. That fact, counter-intuitively perhaps, actually helps the film more than it hurts it. Scream was a deconstruction of slasher films while also being a slasher film. The Cabin in the Woods slaps the structure of "Scooby Doo" on top of the concept of horror archetypes - trust me, you'll have a hard time finding a horror film that corresponds closely to the "rules" of Cabin, especially The Evil Dead - and then uses that pretext to explore what audiences expect in scary movies.

  The Cabin in the Woods is clever as a meta text not because of how it deconstructs the genre, but in exploring why the genre persists when people firmly believe that it's the bottom of the barrel in "entertainment." Whedon and Goddard throw in a few specific references (a Pinhead stand-in complete with puzzle box) but by and large focus on the broader purpose of horror, and of audiences who don't get what they want. Look at it this way, complaining about the way the movie ends is really making their point.

  Had The Cabin in the Woods been released in 2009 or 2010, I'm not sure how people would have responded to it. That was still in the height or remakes and Saw-mania, and I think that unlike some movies that sit on a shelf for a few years, Cabin benefited from being able to wait until a lull in horror trends. The impact was that much stronger last April, because not knowing what I was in for made all the difference that first time.

 And yes, to be fair, it was following Lockout, the worst movie I saw in 2012, but I've seen The Cabin in the Woods three times since that fateful weekend, and I tell you with confidence that it still delivers the goods and rewards multiple viewings. So, sorry Avengers, but in the battle of Whedon projects, you come in second this year... 



 * I'll include the link down here, although I generally disagree with everything in this review and don't necessarily see the connections he tries to make with other films listed.

Blogorium Review: Django Unchained

 Django Unchained is by far the most entertaining of Quentin Tarantino's films. This comes from a fan, an unabashed apologist. I look forward to Tarantino films and I rarely find myself disappointed after finishing each new offering. (The exception being Death Proof, which had the unfortunate task of being immediately compared to Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez's crowd-pleasing horror portion of Grindhouse.) As I revisit the films, I find I appreciate them more, and while Django Unchained may not be my favorite - not after one viewing, anyway - it's the most fun I've had watching a Tarantino movie since I saw Pulp Fiction at far too young an age.

 It's worth noting to the five or six of you who read the Blogorium but haven't seen Django Unchained yet that like Inglourious Basterds, its attachment to the title and the adherence to the legacy of the Django series of Spaghetti Westerns is tenuous at best. Yes, Franco Nero appears in the film, but most of the audience I saw the film with (and many of my friends) a) didn't know who he was or b) weren't aware that the title was based in any way on anything, let alone half a dozen movies about the titular gunfighter sometimes - but often not - played by Nero and directed by Sergio Corbucci*.

 That said, you don't really need to follow any of Unchained's cinematic antecedents - or necessarily be aware of them - to enjoy the story of Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave separated from his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) turned apprentice Bounty Hunter by Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). If you've seen the trailer, you know the basic beats: Schultz is hunting the Brittle brothers (MC Gainey, Doc Duhame, and Cooper Huckabee), and because they captured and split up Django and Broomhilda, his associate has the benefit of knowing what the brothers look like.

 What I didn't expect was how quickly this particular plot point is resolved, and for the most part by Django without the involvement of Schultz. It turns out that "the kid is a natural" at the bounty hunting business, not to mention the "fastest gun in the South," and by the time Django and Schultz head into the heart of Mississippi to rescue Broomhilda from Calvin Candie (Leonardo Di Caprio), the apprentice has surpassed the mentor. When it comes to dealing with the discomforting reality of slavery, and particularly of "Mandingo" slave fighting, Django has more of a stomach for it than Schultz does.

 Since we spend most of the film with Django and Schultz, I'd like to mention Jamie Foxx's stoic, composed title character (until he sees Broomhilda, anyway) and Christoph Waltz's amiable, conflicted Dentist / Bounty Hunter. As if to counter-balance Hans Landa, Tarantino gives Schultz's German dentist an appropriately disconnect European opinion of slavery - he feels uncomfortable at the concept of having to buy Django, even though strictly for legal purposes in order to free him. Until late in the film, when he can no longer help himself, Schultz is a man capable of maintaining whatever ruse is necessary to win legally. Django, he discovers, has a natural talent as a gunfighter, as a bounty hunter, and a fierce loyalty to what Schultz taught him. As he slowly transitions into the character audiences are expecting to see, Foxx earns our good will because he doesn't begin the film as "Bad Ass Django." When we come to the end of the film, he's earned a just victory.

 On the opposite side are Calvin Candie and his house servant Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson). Candie is the spoiled, sadistic, and not particularly bright third generation owner of Candieland, the third biggest plantation in Mississippi. While not immediately apparent, it becomes clear that Stephen is the real power behind the throne, and he realizes quickly what Schultz and Django are up to. There's been some debate about the merits of Stephen being arguably a worse human being than Candie, and I'm not sure what side of the fence I land on. It's clear that he's happy to perpetuate slavery on the plantation in order to maintain his own standing, but much of what he does in the film is a reaction to his distaste for Django in principle.

 Much as it pains me to say it, Tarantino really dropped the ball with Broomhilda, the least developed female character I can remember in any of his films. Yes, she occupies most of the first half of the film in Django's imagination, linked to Die Niebelnungen by Schultz's recognition of her name (Brunhilde was in all likelihood "Americanized" to Broomhilda by the Brittles or Candie), but when we're finally introduced to Kerry Washington's character in the present narrative, she's naked and being kept in "the hot box" for trying to escape. Admittedly, she doesn't have it quite as bad as the other failed escapee, who Candie feeds to his dogs after Django seals his fate. Nevertheless, Broomhilda never develops beyond a crying, fainting, screaming, tortured plot device. I don't blame Washington so much as I do Tarantino, because there's just not much of a character there.

 Django Unchained may suffer from that in other instances, as there are a lot of recognizable actors in small roles, many of which you might miss entirely. I saw Amber Tamblyn but not Russ Tamblyn, neither of whom factor into the narrative at all. Candie's toadies include Tom Savini, Robert Carradine, and almost unrecognizable Zoe Bell, and Walton Goggins, who may be the only character that registers at all.You'll also see Bruce Dern, Tom Wopat, and James Remar in two roles - once as the slaver Schultz kills to buy Django and later as Candie's "muscle."

 Tarantino pops up late in the film with another superfluous cameo, this time with a terrible Australian accent to answer the question "could this be any more obnoxious?" He's accompanied by Michael Parks and Wolf Creek's John Jarratt, and if nothing else, Tarantino's (SPOILER) death scene elicits laughter enough to justify his nearly pointless appearance.

 In the past, moreso in the pulpy Kill Bill films than in Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino has mixed humor in with his violence to keep the audience engaged, but I can't recall anything quite as funny as the proto-Klan scene in Django Unchained. When Big Daddy (Don Johnson) brings together his posse to kill Django and Schultz for (legally) killing the Brittle brothers on his plantation, they quickly realize that wearing masks with hoods on makes it almost impossible to see. The impromptu meeting to complain about the masks is played broadly, with Jonah Hill of all people the straight man, one of Big Daddy's lackeys who tears his eyehole. It's one of many scenes in the film where the comedy is overt and designed for the broad laughter it invariably gets (at least from every review I've seen). Juxtaposed with the at times brutally violent sequences - Candie's introduction, for example, which is accompanied by an exceptionally rough "Mandingo" fight - Tarantino balances entertainment with a sobering truth about the world these characters inhabit.

  But is there a degree of "white guilt wish fulfillment" in the revenge narrative of Django Unchained? I feel like the question can't be avoided. It is apparent that crowd reactions to the movie have been similar - if not identical - to the one I experienced: laughter, gasps, uncomfortable chuckles, and some degree of cheers as Django tears his way through the slimy bastards at Candieland, saving Stephen for last. The audience I saw the film with was racially mixed, but it seems like there is a sense of relief in seeing Jamie Foxx blowing holes into these villains that satisfies a white audience's discomfort over our past.

 Yes, it's not all of our pasts, and not all of our ancestors had slaves, but slavery remains one of the great unresolved chapters in American history, so Django Unchained, like Inglourious Basterds before it, allows audiences to feel comfortable (by proxy) watching excessively violent retribution against two universally loathed types of people (Nazis and slave owners). In both instances, the oppressed turns against the oppressor and systematically dismantles their enemy, regardless of historical accuracy. (Unless, of course, historians have been wildly exaggerating Hitler's final hours.)

 Was it historically appropriate to use the same racial epithet 109 times in one movie? Probably. Does it still feel excessive? Sure, but I might argue it's necessary to. It tempers the escapism a bit, and calls into attention the baggage surrounding Tarantino's use of the "n-word" in his earlier films. Like the flashbacks to the dogs tearing into the runaway D'Artagnan, there is a conscious level of discomfort in place during Django Unchained. The question is what end it serves: to contextualize the fictional narrative in real horrors or to justify further audience catharsis when Django has his vengeance?

 Slavery and the Holocaust were both very real, and while to some degree I can understand Spike Lee's reasons for dismissing Django Unchained as "disrespectful" sight unseen, Tarantino's film is, like Basterds, a movie. Since Kill Bill, Tarantino's output has largely been increasingly operatic tales of vengeance, enacted on increasingly horrendous villains. Django Unchained is more streamlined, more satisfying as entertainment - it's a two-and-a-half-hour extension of the climax of Basterds, and while the film doesn't skirt around uncomfortable imagery, there is a concerted effort to leave viewers cheering at the end. It's escapism, constructed brilliantly, and so I'm conflicted about how much I should simply allow Tarantino's accomplishment to stand as a film and how much of what's behind the hybrid of Spaghetti Western and Blaxploitation influence what makes me uncomfortable while laughing.

 Can I give it a pass because it's just a movie? Particularly when Tarantino doesn't let John Ford off of the hook for putting on a KKK hood as an extra in Birth of a Nation, or the following paragraph (used partially out of context when reprinted by The Huffington Post):

"One of my American Western heroes is not John Ford, obviously. To say the least, I hate him. Forget about faceless Indians he killed like zombies. It really is people like that that kept alive this idea of Anglo-Saxon humanity compared to everybody else's humanity -- and the idea that that's hogwash is a very new idea in relative terms. And you can see it in the cinema in the '30s and '40s -- it's still there. And even in the '50s."

 If Ford and, by extension, Griffith, were perpetuating a notion, that Tarantino is theoretically rebuking with Django, I'm still torn as to how to reconcile the ugly reality present in the film with the heightened reality of a revenge film, one told to provide a cathartic reaction for audiences who feel some degree of discomfort about said ugly reality. It's not whether Django Unchained can have its cake and eat it too, but how we as an audience are complicit in reacting to this disparity. It's not "did I enjoy Django Unchained" so much as "should have I enjoyed it as much as I did" and why?


*   To be honest, it's not really an issue unless you're expecting Django Unchained to be a Spaghetti Western (or "Southern" as Tarantino prefers to call it), but I'd suggest you look a little more locally for direct influences on the film. Specifically, Fred Williamson's "Charley" trilogy, which I  would prefer not to mention by their full names, and of which only the third film - Boss - is available on DVD. They center around a freed slave who ends up on the run (it directly influenced the Blacksmith's backstory in The Man with the Iron Fists) and who alternates between fighting oppression and tormenting the racists he comes across.

Retro Review: Trees Lounge

This October, fifteen years will have passed since the first time I saw Trees Lounge, a movie I'm constantly surprised to find people have never heard of, let alone seen. I can understand that John and Jane Multiplex might not be aware of a 1996 indie film written, directed, and starring Steve Buscemi, but even most indie-heads seem to have totally missed the film. It's possible that the popularity of Trainspotting overshadowed Trees Lounge, but then again I might just link the two together because I saw them both around the same time at the same place. With the number of Steve Buscemi fans continuing to rise in the wake of Boardwalk Empire, maybe it's time to look back at his first (and arguably best) directorial effort.

Tommy Basilio (Buscemi) is a functioning alcoholic that can't seem to do anything right but drink. He loses his job as a mechanic for "borrowing" money from the register and losing all of it at Atlantic City, and his ex-girlfriend Theresa (Elizabeth Bracco) is with his boss Rob (Anthony LaPaglia). Tommy spends most of his time in Trees Lounge, a neighborhood dive bar populated by (barely) functioning alcoholics, where he entertains the locals and charms newcomers with his drinking games. When Uncle Al (Seymour Cassel), an ice cream truck driver, has a stroke and dies during his route, Tommy takes over driving, although he's hardly a worthy successor. Tommy does strike up a friendship with Debbie (Chloë Sevigny), Theresa's teenaged niece. Their relationship irks Debbie's father, Jerry (Daniel Baldwin), and is only compounded when Tommy takes it too far. Can he turn his life around, or is Tommy Basilio destined to become another slouching barfly?


 I wish I could remember how or why I knew that Trees Lounge existed in 11th grade: it was so early into the age of the internet that I can't imagine that it came from that direction. There's an off chance I saw a review in the local newspaper (which is, curiously enough, the only reason I knew Donnie Darko existed five years later), and I do know that I was on a serious Buscemi kick, having finished most of his collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers, and Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion (another movie that deserves to be better known than it is).

 Regardless of where I found out about Trees Lounge, I know exactly where I saw it: The Studio. I mention The Studio quite a bit; whenever I wax nostalgic about the concept of "grindhouse" theatres, that shoebox duplex of movies that weren't big enough for The Rialto and were too commercially unfriendly for The Colony (and believe it or not, there was a time when you could see Trainspotting with next to no one in The Studio, when people hadn't seen it and wouldn't for years). I saw Trees Lounge with a new-ish friend that transferred to the high school the Cap'n went to, one who shared an interest in "art house" cinema. Nobody else seemed that interested, and I guess that's been the story of Trees Lounge to this day.

 It really is a shame, because there's a lot to like about Trees Lounge: Buscemi's writing, directing, and particularly acting chops all serve the low-key story well, and he surrounds himself with great actors in smaller roles: Carol Kane, Seymour Cassel, Mimi Rogers, Debi Mazar, Michael Imperioli, Kevin Corrigan, Mark Boone Junior, and a brief appearance by Samuel L. Jackson, playing against the "type" he'd been cultivating while working with Tarantino. It's a film of small moments, of characters that hover in and out of the story, where the story is less important than the players.

 While I described the plot very nearly in full, Trees Lounge is more interested than your average "sad sack" alcoholic movie, even if it infrequently rises above a tone somewhere between downbeat and depressing. Buscemi is able to keep the character study engrossing because Tommy is such a likable loser; as an audience, we understand why people have trouble completely giving up on him, even though he seems to be incapable of keeping a good thing going. There's an easygoing charm in his performance, one that might surprise people used to Buscemi's twitchier, chatty performances in films like Fargo and Reservoir Dogs.

 Speaking of Reservoir Dogs, there's a moment early in the film where Tommy is driving around town, and he passes a familiar sight to fans of Tarantino's debut:

In the commentary for the long out-of-print "special edition," Buscemi insists that this was a coincidence and not intended to be a visual reference to the opening credits sequence from Reservoir Dogs. While I take him at his word, it struck us immediately in 1996 and continues to be a pretty big coincidence if you ask me.

 The out-of-print disc is, unfortunately, the only way to see Trees Lounge in widescreen, because when Lionsgate picked up the rights, they dumped the transfer and all of its extras for a pan-and-scan disc at a bargain bin price. The only upside to this was that when I finally - after years of unsuccessfully searching - found the first DVD, instead of paying $25, I only had to pay $7.99 since the updated retail price was lost on a bored employee at Coconuts. It may seem silly to have been so excited, but every now and then one feels that way when a movie goes overlooked for so long. Considering that it's better than subsequent Buscemi directorial efforts (Animal Factory, Lonesome Jim, and Interview), I'm hoping this review turns some of you on to a better slice of understated independent cinema. Think of it as proto-mumblecore, if that's what you're into.

So You Shouldn't Have To: Blu-Ray Edition

From time to time, I like to mention to readers that new releases on DVD or Blu-Ray are coming out that may be of interest to you. I often include the caveat that no one is paying me to say this, because it's true - no one is paying anything for this blog*. I rarely tell people not to buy something; there are instances of movies where the Cap'n says "So You Won't Have To" but that's more of a "you're curious, I'm curious, but it's better that we all don't spend time and money on this."

That said, I am strongly advocating that people avoid any and all Miramax titles coming to Blu-Ray in the new few months. Most of it isn't going to be high on your list of priorities anyway, but since a few of the titles that people might want (including From Dusk Till Dawn) are already appearing at Best Buy for $10, I can already see people I know picking up a few of them. Don't.

There's something that many people are not aware of that directly impacts what you're seeing and will be seeing over the summer. Part of the Miramax settlement after the company crashed was selling off its catalog - it's why you haven't seen Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love, The English Patient, Jackie Brown, Good Will Hunting, Amelie**, or From Dusk Till Dawn on Blu-Ray to this point (instead, there were a handful of released after they collapsed like Clerks and No Country for Old Men, as well as earlier discs for Kill Bill and Bad Santa). Some of the films went to Lionsgate: the Scream series, and many of the "marquee" titles listed above you've been waiting for.

However, many of the Miramax / Dimension films went elsewhere: specifically, Echo Bridge Home Entertainment. Ever heard of them? Probably not, unless you're a big fan of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, 2012: Doomsday, War of the Worlds 2, or Mega Piranha. They specialize in releasing dirt cheap DVDs (and recently, Blu-Rays) of movies that straddle the line between Syfy Channel Original and knock-offs designed to capitalize on better known films.

And it turns out they got most of the horror, science fiction, thriller, and action films, including From Dusk Till Dawn, a movie I'd very much like to have on Blu-Ray. Miramax's DVD had a bunch of great extra features, including deleted scenes, a commentary, and even a full-length documentary about the film called Full Tilt Boogie. The problem is that the movie itself isn't enhanced for widescreen TVs, which wasn't an issue when it came out eleven years ago.

So what does the Echo Bridge Blu-Ray, selling at Best Buy for $9.99, have on it? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. They treated it like any of their other "get 'em out cheap" titles, took the extras away, reframed the image from 1.85:1 to 1.78:1, didn't bother remastering the film for Blu-Ray, and dumped it out there. The early reviews on Amazon are from people who bought it, and aside from the person Echo Bridge is targeting these released to (people who don't really care about extra features, subtitles, or decent picture / sound quality and don't want to pay much), the consensus is a big SKIP IT.

Halloween fans might want to also check out the write-ups on H20 (unless you also plan on buying Halloween 6), because the Echo Bridge Blu-Ray reformats the from the much wider picture 2.35:1 to 1.78:1, and drops the DVD's 5.1 surround sound for a cheaper 2.0 stereo mix. Plus none of the extras or anything listed above. Hellraiser and Children of the Corn completists should also take heed to the warnings about Echo Bridge's cut rate tactics.

Nothing here is new - all Echo Bridge releases are like this, including Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. The company doesn't really care about putting quality titles out, just cheap releases that require the bare minimum of effort before dumping them in a "bargain bin" at your local Big Box Retail Store. Most people won't even care, and I can already hear people saying "Awesome! From Dusk Till Dawn for ten bucks! Who cares that it looks like crap, it's TEN BUCKS! What did you expect?"

What do I expect? Better than that, to be damn sure. If a company doesn't really care about the product they're putting out, they just dump it out there and take your money, then I don't want anything to do with that company. For five dollars more, I can get the same DVD you mastered your Blu-Ray from, and with another disc and actual extras, and it's only going to look marginally worse.

Here's the kicker, and I want cinephiles that are saying "What are you getting so worked up for?" to think about this: after Echo Bridge dumps these out, and their license runs out, someone else will pick up the rights to these movies. Someone who will probably care more than Echo Bridge does. Lionsgate at least put some effort into the Scream Blu-Rays, and you'd better believe there's going to be a world of difference between their BD's and Echo Bridge's.

For once I don't feel like it's a pipe dream to see From Dusk Till Dawn have a Spine Number on it. Why not? If Echo Bridge could afford it, why couldn't Criterion? That's a Blu-Ray I'm willing to wait for.





* Unless you count the cost of internet, power, etc.; in which case, I am paying for it.
** You can, by the way, order Amelie from Canada's Alliance on Blu-Ray, with everything you'd find on the DVD, for a very reasonable price.

Coen Brothers Final Day Two: Music and the Coens

2. Music is an important element in Coen films. More than background score, the songs and their lyrics are carefully selected and integrated to comment, create humor, and / or to underscore themes and motifs. Isolate and explicated examples of the use of music in several Coen films. In conjunction with their use of music / sound, it would also be interesting to consider the films that are marked by the absence (or minimal use) of music.


Music plays a supplementary role in the films of Joel and Ethan Coen, although in a very different way that it is conceived for most Hollywood features. While many studios are content to package songs for a soundtrack and haphazardly insert them into films where they (vaguely) see fit, and other directors (Quentin Tarantino for example) use music to augment the mood, the Coens integrate songs into their films in order to comment on the themes or underlying narrative. As they continue to make movies, the Coens have shifted the use of music (or, occasionally, the lack thereof) to include the score as commentary.

As early as Blood Simple, music is used in a discursive manner. The Coens use “It’s the Same Old Song,” by The Four Tops, repeatedly within the movie. It functions both to accentuate the decisions made by characters (the love triangle / murder angle), but one could also argue that the Coen brothers are using the lyrics to comment on their own decision to begin moviemaking with a neo-noir. Indeed, it is “the same old song / but with a different beat since you’ve been gone…” The Coens announce to audiences, critics, and the film community that, while their neo-noir is “the same old song,” narrative-wise, their technique distinguishes itself from previous instances of film noir revision. Their incorporation of unorthodox camera techniques (some borrowed from Sam Raimi) and willingness to ironically comment on the admitted un-originality of Blood Simple’s narrative provides a “different beat” needed to distinguish their debut from other first time filmmakers.

In Raising Arizona, Joel and Ethan begin using music to juxtapose styles and themes. The film’s score is primarily a southern / western combination of banjo music and “roots” flavored vocalizations, punctuated by a bluegrass version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Interspersed with these lighthearted musical excursions are Ennio Morricone-esque “Spaghetti Western” cues (attached to the “apocalyptic” biker Leonard Smalls) and a synthesizer score reminiscent of Goblin’s score for Suspiria. These darker elements create a contrast to the otherwise upbeat tone of Raising Arizona.

The Big Lebowski continues the juxtaposition of music and setting, although the Coens opt to let songs provide much of the commentary. Much of Lebowski’s soundtrack is designed to distinguish the Dude’s mindset from the film’s actual 1991 setting; songs like Bob Dylan’s “The Man in Me” or Kenny Rogers “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” roots Lebowski in the late 60s / early 70s, where the Dude peaked mentally and likely remains, regardless of the year. The inclusion of The Sons of the Pioneers “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” as The Stranger’s theme not only creates a juxtaposition between The Dude and Sam Elliot’s mysterious “fourth wall breaking” narrator, but also comments on their shared ability to keep “drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.”

The Man Who Wasn’t There includes a primarily classical score, commenting on a tendency of classic noir films to use the more contemporary jazz set pieces – strange for a movement that priding itself on a fascination with the past. Similarly, The Ladykillers uses its songs to intensify the juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane, alternating between hymns like “Come, Let Us Go Back to God” and Nappy Roots’ “Another Day, Another Dollar.”

Later in their career, the Coen brothers make a bold choice with No Country for Old Men by removing a musical score altogether. The most noticeable song in No Country is used to punctuate the seriousness of Llewelyn Moss’ injuries as a cheerful Mariachi band plays over his collapsed body. The film is otherwise barren of music, perhaps a result of the Coen brothers unwillingness to dilute Cormac McCarthy’s source material with their ironic detachment. Although credited with the score, Carter Burwell has only one musical cue, and that appears during the closing credits.

A Serious Man alternates between traditional Jewish music and psychedelic rock music, creating a juxtaposition of the Old world and the shift in American consciousness in the late 1960s. The recurring musical message, that of Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love”, asks “when the truth is found / to be lies / and all the joy / within you dies / don’t you want somebody to love”, the question underlying much of Lawrence Gopnik’s existential crisis. There is an interesting side note to A Serious Man’s use of Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, and Credence Clearwater Revival: the former both reflect the age at which Joel (born 1954) would be 13 and having a Bar Mitzvah, and accordingly the film’s setting of 1967. The latter reflect Ethan (born 1957)’s 13^th birthday and Bar Mitzvah. Danny Gopnik, the 13 year old son of Lawrence could then be considered an amalgam of Joel and Ethan Coen, and the film’s music reflects an autobiographical aspect of A Serious Man.

From the Vaults: Blogorium Review - Grindhouse

(editor's note: the power situation is far from resolved. That being said, I've been slowly working on a proper review of A Serious Man, though I really feel like I should watch the movie again first. The short version is that I loved the movie. I can't help but feel like another go-round would be helpful, as I get the impression that I'm missing something. Like the first time I saw Barton Fink, but more ephemeral. Anyway, enjoy the review of Grindhouse, from shortly after its release)

It occurred to me that while in Cary, the absolute perfect conditions existed to do something I hadn't done in a long time, which was see a movie with Adam and Cranford, in this case the almost** perfect pairing of theatre to movie; Mission Valley and Grindhouse.

That's right, I watched it, and by golly, I liked it. A whole lot. Cranford and I liked Planet Terror more than Death Proof, and Adam really dug Death Proof. We all liked the trailers equally, and agreed we'd go see any of them that became movies.

The easiest way to digest the experience is just to break it down, because it's more than just two 80 minute movies with trailers, it really is quite a package deal to be involved in.

After stock cards for Coming Attractions and "thanks for coming" spots you might recognize from Kill Bill, we get the first trailer, which is

MACHETE

"He gets the women. He kills the bad guys" "If you hire him to kill the bad guys, make sure the bad guys aren't you" "they fucked with the wrong mexican" Machete plays like the Mark Wahlberg movie Shooter that we'd actually want to see. Danny Trejo kills people in four or five different and brutal ways, and then Cheech Marin is a priest who walks around with two shotguns avenging his brother.

Then we get a title screen that involve kittens and the old R rating screen, one that I admittedly had never seen, and then it's time for

PLANET TERROR

I forgive Robert Rodriguez for Sin City. Really, I do. If you're one of those people who really, REALLY liked The Faculty and From Dusk Til Dawn, or you have a real love jones for the Globus / Cannon era of 80's Sci-Fi / Action / Horror movies that ripped the shit off of John Carpenter and George Romero, then hands down this will be your favorite of the films. Not only does Rodriguez play by those movie rules, he also makes fun of them in ways that don't stand out like a sore thumb.

And look at that cast! Michael Biehn (The Terminator), Jeff Fahey (Body Parts), Tom Savini (please, like I need to tell you who that is), Josh Brolin (The Goonies), Naveed Andrews (Sayid on Lost), Bruce Willis, Nicky Katt (Insomnia), Marley Shelton (Sin City), Michael Parks (From Dusk Til Dawn), Freddy Rodriguez (Six Feet Under), Stacy Ferguson (Yes, Fergie), and Rose McGowan (Scream...?)

I saved McGowan and Ferguson for last because it'd make sense for them to be weak links, but damned if Rose McGowan doesn't really steal this movie right out from everyone else. BEFORE the Machine Gun Leg even. I was beginning to feel like the machine gun looked a little dumb in the ads but much like Shaun of the Dead, context really is everything.Fergie doesn't actually have much to do, but she's actually not sucky in the first great Zombie kill scene in the movie. (Or mutants... it's really up for grabs)

Naveen Andrews... man, if you liked him on Lost, he's really something in what amounts to a cameo. He has a particular fascination with a part of the male anatomy that makes his first scene quite memorable.

I could really rave about Planet Terror, but I'll just leave it at this: Jeff Fahey and Michael Biehn play brothers. One is the Sherriff; the other owns a Bar-B-Que place. And the "missing reel" is f'n funny. And a Nouvelle Vague singing "Too Drunk to Fuck" in a scene not to be missed.

At the point that ended I really had to pee, but there was NO way I was missing my shot at seeing the Thanksgiving trailer again. But first was the ad for:

WEREWOLF WOMEN OF THE SS

Easily the most retarded of the four trailers, Rob Zombie stuck every Ilsa, She Devil of the SS movie into one trailer, added Sybill Danning, Tom Towles, Sherri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Udo Kier, and the BIG surprise, Nicholas Cage. Yes, the same Nic Cage I rip into so readily caught me totally off guard when the announced said "AND NICHOLAS CAGE AS..... FU MANCHU!" and Cage does the most ridiculous Fu Manchu impression ever with the fakest looking moustache you're gonna see this year. The trailer is just quick cuts of every nazi exploitation standby ever, and then repeated shots of some werewolf with a machine gun and two naked she-wolves behind him for no good reason.

After that we got a nice ad for some Barbeque place in Texas called Acuna Brothers with random shots of various foods, and then a trailer to help you vomit said food back up:

DON'T

I'm not even sure I can explain the Don't trailer, because it's really dependent on the Voice Over Guy and how he says things like

"If....You're.....Thinking....of....going....in....that.....house..........DON'T"

and something really strange or disgusting happens. Edgar Wright really fashioned an ad for one of those British movies from the seventies came in the wake of Hammer studios collapsing. Really funny in a disturbing way.

(If it helps, you should think of the trailer as a combination of The Legend of Hell House and The Burning.)

and then, there was

THANKSGIVING

Seeing this online was cool, but seeing the Cheerleader / Trampoline thing with an audience is that much better, as were almost all of the fucked up things Eli Roth does in his two minute slasher money shot homage. I would pay to see Thanksgiving right now if he made it. The same goes for Don't and Machete. I might not pay full price for Werewolf Women of the SS, but I'd see it.

I should mention that in addition to being scratchy, losing audio, and film distortions, in between every "reel" of trailers or movies is a few seconds of white space, as though the projectionist didn't cut it properly and left part of the "tail" on, runing the "illusion". As a former projectionist, I got a kick out of that.

Finally, even though I missed part of the credits, there was

DEATH PROOF

Here's what I don't exactly like about Death Proof: There are VERY long stretches in the beginning and middle of the movie that exist only because Tarantino*** wanted to write Tarantino-esque dialogue for women, and had he only done it the first time, I'd be okay with that, because what happens between those yap fests makes up for it.

What I do like about Death Proof: The driving sequences are the SHIT. When Tarantino drops repeated references to Vanishing Point (going so far as to put the car from Vanishing Point in the movie), he'd damn well better deliver on the car portions, and yes, does he ever. This easily could have been Tarantino slobbering over his standby obsessions again, but instead he simply uses the things he loves about Hot Rod movies and slasher films to make a high octane car chase that rivals The French Connection or Ronin. Really.

Kurt Russell really brings his A-Game to Stuntman Mike, a character that's alternately psychopathic and really, really pathetic, and all of the girls in the second half bring it (including Uma Thurman's stunt woman from Kill Bill, Zoe Bell, who plays herself and does some ridiculous car stunts). The ending will probably remind people a little bit of Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill, as that is the spirit it closest resembles, but there's just that gap between the first time Stuntman Mike looks at the camera and winks and the next time he does that really doesn't need to be.

So anyway, Grindhouse is a SEE IT IN THEATERS, because this is meant to be watched with your rowdiest friends in a raucous crowd in the dive-iest theater you can get to late at night. And don't feel bad if you get up and walk around, because almost everyone else in the theater did at one point or the other, including all three of us. Oh, and we didn't need to say shit, if that tells you anything. The experience is half the fun of the show, so check it out.


** The perfect pairing would've been Grindhouse at The Studio, but since that can't happen anymore, Mission Valley is a close second.
*** I should mention that QT has roles in Death Proof and Planet Terror, but you're not gonna care about the Death Proof one once you've seen what happens to him in the first movie.

Get those wallets ready, fanatics!

I seem to come back to this every few months, but in the waning days of the DVD market, the Cap'n finally has the opportunity to show you just how tricky it is for a smaller distributor like Criterion to keep movies, let alone get the ones you really want them to carry*. For the first time that I can remember, Criterion sent out an email letting viewers know exactly which movies would be added to the dreaded "Out of Print" list.

The list is as follows:

Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard)
Carlos Saura’s Flamenco Trilogy (Eclipse Series 6)
Le corbeau (The Raven - Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Coup de torchon (Bertrand Tavernier)
Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson)
The Fallen Idol (Carol Reed)
Forbidden Games (René Clément)
Gervaise (René Clément)
Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir)
Le jour se lève (Marcel Carné)
Last Holiday (Henry Cass)
Mayerling (Anatole Litvak)
The Orphic Trilogy (Jean Cocteau)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)
Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné)
Quai des Orfèvres(Henri-Georges Clouzot)
The Small Back Room (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
Trafic (Jacques Tati)
Le trou (Jacques Becker)
Variety Lights (Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada)
The White Sheik (Federico Fellini)

Criterion is losing the rights to these films soon, and they'll revert to Lionsgate, who will release them in their own way as they see fit. I wouldn't be surprised to see several films by the same director released in "no extras" boxed sets, which Lionsgate has done recently with other "art" films. Or they might get Blu-Ray releases. It's hard to say, because as DVD winds down, studios are groping for whatever they can get in order to package quickly and get into stores.

As they mention in the email, Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion has another important distinction for any serious Criterion collector: in addition to being a terrific film, it bears the Spine Number 1. Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is still Spine Number 2 (and Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes 3), but soon it's going to be tricky to begin your collection. I suspect, like many low numbered items, that Grand Illusion will become the expensive "collector's item" out of this batch, but it's a hefty list of movies to pick up quickly, if that's your steez.

In the mean time, if you were still wondering why your favorite random movie wasn't getting the full-on Spine Number treatment, they have their hands full hanging on to the films they have. Taxi Driver probably isn't going to be the kind of movie they can get ahold of. In fact, the HD release of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has none of the Criterion supplements; just the barebones Universal dvd "spotlight on location" and some deleted scenes. But, if I may interject, 2010 is the 25th anniversary of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, so maybe Universal and Criterion could cut some kind of Blu-Ray deal. Maybe?

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Finally, I found at least half of this video - which posits the question "what if famous directors filmed the Super Bowl?" - amusing. The David Lynch joke has been done to death, but the video is totally worth it for the one-two punch of Jean-Luc Godard and Werner Herzog at the end.



If only they'd thrown in some footage from Natural Born Football Any Given Sunday and pretended it was Oliver Stone's "Super Bowl" footage.


* Yes, this goes back to the long-standing "Troll 2: The Criterion Collection" joke, among others, like Cannibal! The Musical.